Two full weeks

Last week went too fast. Morgan and Diane visited us and, while Morgan was at the office with Darse, I showed Diane some of Dublin. Since the weather is constantly changing here, I tried to show her as much as I could as long as it didn’t rain. Apart from a strong wind, we caught a beautiful day. We walked at least 10km along the coast. The sea was agitated and here and there made big splashes on the rocks. We started in Bray, the town south of us in Wicklow County, and then took the Dart to Dun Laoghaire (where I hadn’t been before). There we saw the shopping area, the harbor, people’s park, and had lunch and Irish coffee in a pub. Then we walked more or less along the coast to Dalkey. I had seen this area last year with Christine – actually we visited the “castle” where four actors showed four tourists how things were back then – but walking through Dalkey made me realize that it’s an extraordinary charming village/town. Too bad that I didn’t have my camera with me but Diane took some great shots. The day ended with dinner at Dali’s restaurant in Blackrock where we saw people parasailing and wind surfing.

Next day I wasn’t feeling so good so we just went to see how the big stores look. I showed Diane Cornelscourt, which is a good place for all shopping needs. Saturday we met them and other friends downtown, went to the well known tourist hotspots, and then visited a couple of pubs. After a nice dinner, the boys went to play some poker at the casino and the girls went to a nearby club, Café en Seine - beautiful setting, very crowded and the atmosphere reminded me the one at the castle for New Year’s Eve.

Sunday was income tax day. Unfortunately we couldn’t finish them, so this weekend it is mandatory to submit. As you can see, we didn’t have much opportunity to use our new car.
Actually, with the car parked in front of the house people ring my doorbell more often than before - usually service providers for gardening or charities. The good thing is that now I don’t find anymore notes in my mail from utility companies saying they came by and I wasn’t home. Now they actually ring. Talking about utilities, here you have to pay 160 Euros/year TV license if you own a TV. Otherwise you pay a fine of 634.87 Euros – I wonder how they came up with this number. In Romania it’s the same thing but it is not actually enforced. Here I’ve already received four letters about this. Finally, I called them and I will have to sign a declaration that I don’t possess a TV.


This week went by too fast, too. I am so thrilled to start learning again. The Open University is a UK long distance learning university. It is one of the biggest in the world. No wonder they are very well organized. Their website is so easy to use and has so much useful content. It seems that they thought of everything. I spent my time reading course preparation materials. It will be exciting to try creative learning instead of repetitive learning. It makes so much sense. The rule is: put the main ideas in your own words and challenge everything you can, and then recombine everything. Also, I’ve learned how to learn (most of it I already knew ;-)) and how to write essays for social sciences. Once a month I will have tutorials on Saturdays where I will meet my tutor and other students. They also have a list with students who, even though they cannot attend tutorials, would like to meet other students for learning and discussing purpose. They are called learning groups.

Next weekend is a long one. I am going to try to plan a small trip and hope for good weather.

Slow motion and fast forward

It is still spring in Ireland. It looks like the spring will never end. There are still trees without leaves, cherry trees are bloomed, and tulips and narcissuses are everywhere. It is spring in slow motion and I feel like doing something to speed up the process. I guess I can’t push the sap in the buds. That’s nature’s role.

On the other hand, it’s hard to believe that nature invented slugs and snails that eat big, soft and beautiful flowers. I had a slug attack on my petunias! They ate all the petals. Yum, slug delicatessen! Then I spread some blue chemical chips on the ground and the next day there was a snail cemetery in the flower bed. I couldn’t believe how many there were!

The other news is that we finally bought a car -- a 2001 Honda Civic. We picked it up from the dealer today, and we both got to drive it on the way home.

[Darse: We had been waiting for weeks for an advertised 1.3 litre Corolla to arrive from Japan, but when we finally got to test it out, we much preferred the 1.5 litre Civic. I was actually a bit unnerved driving Aaron and Christine's 1.0 litre Yaris, as it seemed somewhat under-powered when i needed acceleration the most -- like merging onto the highway, or turning in the middle of an intersection with double-decker buses coming at me in both directions... The 1.3 litre Yaris we test-drove was much zippier, so i thought the Corolla would be everything we'd want. But it didn't really have a lot of zip either -- maybe because it is much heavier than the fly-weight Yaris. The Civic isn't like my little sports car, but the it gives me much better piece of mind when it comes to evading all the crazy drivers! It is also in *amazing* condition -- it only has 36000 km, and has been impeccably well-maintained.]

The car is comfortable to drive and has lots of space inside. I think we made a good choice and can’t wait to see the Irish countryside now that we have wheels. Now we have the fast forward option for getting around town, too. We still intend to use the public transit system for convenience, especially to commute and to go downtown. The Luas LRT and Dart train systems are very good for that purpose. They don’t need 20 minutes to cross half of city center.
[Darse: the insanity of driving in downtown Dublin would require a full blog entry to itself. I fully intend to avoid it -- forever.]