Sep
11
Duplicates!
Filed Under Daily
Alright, this is the VERY LAST TIME, I will ever have to make like 4 copies of my pictures in my two laptops and my two Hard Drives. As soon as I am in Manchester, I will order an online storage web space and I will put my precious data on a server. This is too stressful to carry on. I cannot rely on physical devices to handle my data. At least on these servers, they have regular backups!
Today the new and expensive tool that is supposed to reveal the god particle is all over the news. All I was looking for is the number of asian/chinese workers among the team. I do not want to be mean but I do not trust chinese researchers/post docs anymore. I believe the work is mainly copy/paste if there are more of them. Surprisingly there aren’t many Asian researchers among them. Maybe hidden somewhere in the labs.
My box is wrapped and ready to be picked up: 16 kgs! It contains my skiing suits/glasses/gloves..etc and my old laptop. I cannot find the courage to throw away this old computer. It has been with me for more than 4 years now. It is so slow compared to the other one. I am getting too materialistic. I give feelings to non animated objects!
Sep
10
The burden of my life!
Filed Under Daily
Every time I am about to move to a new place comes this feeling of an ending: everything that precedes that final week, is considered as the “last” event that I will do. Today is my last crowded Tuesday in the pool. That was great! It is funny to think few years back. I would never expect myself to be traveling that much. Was I lucky? I do not know, there is a big burden in being homeless anywhere in the world but I cannot think of doing anything else or being different. Once you start getting used to my lifestyle, you just keep on traveling and searching for happiness in a different place every now and then.
I was invited to join the next hiking event on Saturday and I already agreed. It would be my last hike as well. I hope I will get some pretty pictures. Howth, the coastal city where we will go, is one of the nicest place here in Dublin. Maybe the sun will be out?
Sep
8
Rah Rah Rah!
Filed Under Daily
I wish time goes faster. I am so impatient to be in Manchester and start something new. That’s the first lesson from this “life change operation”, it takes time! There is nothing to do here but swimming and this continuous rain is really annoying! There is no more good and new movies to watch. I think I have seen all the good movies the last 5 years!
I am waiting for the Australian Superannuation check to come next week and I hope it will be here! I am moving three days earlier than expected just so that I only pay half of the rent here. Therefor I had to request three days early arrival to my hall and it has been accepted. It was cheap anyways, only 10 GBP per extra night. I am also looking for a part time job in Manchester.
Sep
7
Big Mouth!
Filed Under Daily
I am known as a “big mouth” person when it comes to social relationship. Today, when the owner of the apartment came to talk about the bond and the conditions of my departure, her husband, herself and one of my flatmate could “enjoy” my simplistic and direct way of speaking. The tone of the conversation became immediately colder after my very first sentence: “The room is overpriced and we could not find a suitable candidate to take it”. I hate to explain to stupid people the gap between their perception and the reality. Anyways, I let my flatmate do the politically correct talking. I doubt they like me even after the explanations but none of them could contradict me…same for my flatmate who had the pleasure of witnessing my “true” nature. I bet he did not expect me to be that direct. He had a handicap, he was not saying the whole truth whereas I was simply telling the facts!
All the same to me as long as I get my 250 Euros back :). I wonder why people lie all the time even when it’s not worth anything? It is like an exercise. The more they practice the better they are! Consequently, I am not very good at it since I rarely practice this “social” game!
Sep
6
It feels Good!
Filed Under Daily
To be able to shave normally again! Bye Bye Painful Blisters! Friday relaxing evening for me. The room is clean, the drawers are empty, the box is made, and finally the transition promises to be smooth. I also sent a SMS to the owner asking for my bond. This is always something tricky to recover…we shall see. I do not mind loosing 250 Euros but I think I can have 4 or 5 nice dinners in Manchester with that money if I ever manage to recover it.
I am also exhausted because of the intense swimming workout. I do swim 36 kms a week and if I am racing the team squad like I did last week, my arms an shoulders are completely dead by the end of the week. Luckily I do not swim on Saturday, too crowded!
I cannot wait to leave Ireland. I really really hope it will not rain that much in Manchester! I know that the UK is like Ireland concerning the weather. I will see it by myself in 10 days anyways. They do have a nice high tech swimming pool there too :). That was one reason why I chose Manchester!
Sep
5
So Much Trash!
Filed Under Daily
I cannot believe I could accumulate so much trash only in 5 months and half. Nothing dramatic and nothing I will regret later though. Looks like everything fits nicely in the luggage and one box to be sent by mail next week. Let’s hope the move will be smooth. It is not hard to fly back to Dublin from Manchester. What worries me is the check from my Australian Superannuation. It has been processed since I can no longer log into my account. Will it arrive before I leave…?
The current collocation has been quite smooth like my last one in Australia with Nils. Maybe things will be better at Manchester. I chose the luxury student apartment in the city center. It consists of 4 rooms with their own bathroom and a common kitchen/living room. Maybe I can find a part time job in Manchester to prepare the next move which will fatally happen at the end.
The first thing I did yesterday after registering for my IT account at Manchester was to activate my internet connection in my future room. The best transition would be me moving there and having internet access the SAME day! This time I will have a nice cold Heineken and a huge steak in a fancy restaurant as soon as I arrive. Since it will be 5 min walk from the city center, it should be feasible!
Sep
4
How much does your life weigh?
Filed Under Daily
About 40 kg is mine. I should find a place to store my pictures. Loosing my data is my biggest worry. I can replace almost everything else but my pictures.
I was so tired today after yesterday’s swimming performance. If I was drilling the water the day before, today I was hammering it hard! It’s getting crowded with the kids back to school! Very annoying, I wish they return after I leave.
One chick at the CS hiking event took some of my pictures and put them on her web page. It is a nice compliment. I was happy she chose the one with the bridge in it, I also liked it very much. Her pictures are rather common and their quality is quite bad compared to Nikon d200’s performance. As soon as I get more cash, I will buy the Nikon d700.
Sep
3
Packing time!
Filed Under Daily
I will try this time not to throw away 90% of my clothes. Thanks to the “discount courier service” I might be able to ship the extra kilograms in one box. Only 12 days before I leave Dublin. Dublin and Ireland in general has made it to the bottom of my list of big cities. I was not impressed by Dublin. If it was not for the awesome high tech swimming pool, I would probably move away earlier. The rain, The rain the rain! It kills your mood. The coasts have their unique charm but it is not exceptional compared to other coastal cities.
List of cities from the best to the worse:
1. Lyon (best city to live in: the two happiest years of my entire life)
2. San Francisco (very pretty)
3. Chicago (windy but nice pier)
4. Brisbane (very good weather but extremely poor architecture and very noisy: birds + bad electrical converters)
5. Versailles (I had very good impressions)
6. Melbourne (I would not mind living there longer)
7. Sydney ( I like this smaller version of New York)
8. Paris (so so but I never really had the chance to live in Paris)
9. New York (too extreme: poor, rich, dirty, pretty, noisy, scary, crowded)
10. Dublin (bad weather ALL THE TIME)
11. Saigon ( too young to remember anything about it but it cannot be worse than South Bend)
12. South Bend (very shitty there can NOT be anything worse than this shit hole)
Sep
2
A moment like this!
Filed Under Daily
I’ve been waiting for this day for a very long time. Today was THE DAY. The fastest member of the team squad started to eat meter by meter the gap that separated us. I expected him to pass me with every lap that went by. This moment never came and we swam for 3 kms. After the first kilometer, I started to gain speed over the other members who were slower. After 2 km, I was faster than the girl and the polish guy. At 3 km , the fastest guy stopped as I continued my lengthy workout all by myself: 6kms. I know they saw my speed and they probably wondered about the Tech Toc I wore!
It did take me 2 full years of training! Such a good feeling! I never stressed out and never broke up the perfect rhythm given by the Tech Toc. Extremely smooth and long arm moves! I loved it!
A DRILL: I never understood the meaning of this word in swimming techniques before. How can one drill the water like a screw would drill a piece of wood? Today I fully understood its meaning as I drilled the water myself!
Sep
1
Since 1999, the year I arrived in the US, I have discovered for the best and the worse the usage of the World Wide Web: INTERNET. I’ve become extremely good at surfing the internet and finding everything I wanted. Even though I have not found happiness using it, I have found ersatz to my social life. Everything is “easier” on internet, you can say whatever and be whoever you want. Most of the time I stay very sincere to myself, maybe too much sometimes! There is a risk of disconnection with reality and it has become a real burden to me. Staring at two dark screens all day long is not very healthy. I would like to be less dependent of internet. Social life might not be as fun most of the time for me, but I should deal with it in different ways than trying to escape or ignore it completely.
In the end, I went to the CS Hiking event on Saturday. I had a very good time meeting new people and walking for a whole day. I took a lot of pictures and I posted them on Flickr. I did not have many pictures of myself though :(. I need to meet people with fancy SLR cameras and also someone who would take my own pictures. We went to a restaurant/bar in Dublin after the walk and I had my very first GUINESS. It was not bad but I prefer a Heineken.
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