The last few days have been a good few days for yours truly. Everything just seemed to be going my way. So much so in fact I was preparing for the inevitable heap of pure bad crap that usually always follows a run of good fortune. It's just Sod's Law. It's his job to kick you in the nads when your on a high and least expecting it. As expected and right on schedule, Sod came alone and did his job.
So, where to begin? Well, lets start with the good stuff first. Last Saturday evening I went along to a charity event held by a swing dancing friend in aid of Habitat for Humanity. It was an Oscar themed swing dancing event. Before you went into the event you were asked to fill out a sheet predicting best actor, best actress etc. A big prize was then given to the person at the end of the night who managed to give the same predictions as that of the local resident "film expert" in Filmbase Ireland. It just so happened that I was that lucky person... yay me! I won myself a lovely big hamper of goodies and a weekend for 2 away in Galway. I knew all those misspent late nights watching crap movies would one day pay off. Up to that point in time I have never ever won anything in a raffle or anything of that nature before.
Roll on Monday morning. I had a driving test scheduled for that afternoon and had borrowed a friend's car over the weekend for the test seeing that I didn't possess any wheels of my own. The test was in Rathgar which was not the original test centre I had applied for (still with a 6 month wait I wasn't about to complain). I had previously checked the pass rate at the Rathgar test centre and it stood at 44.5%, the lowest pass rate in all the test centres in Dublin. So needless to say I was not looking forward to the test and was preparing myself for failure. On top of that, I managed to stall the car every single time I went out in it over the weekend which was not doing anything for my confidence. In any case, roll on Monday afternoon and the test... Low and behold I passed!!! First time and all. Didn't stall the car once! Of course on the way back home I stalled it again :)
So at this stage the Sod's Law alarm bells were starting to go off in my head. Too much good stuff was happening to me without any bad stuff. Now the bad stuff.
About a month ago, on a whim I applied for a position with a particular animation studio in the States (lets just say the name of the studio starts with a P and ends with an R). Not thinking anything of it, 3 weeks ago I get an email from their HR department asking for a quick phone interview. So since I was to fly out on my ski trip at the time I scheduled it for the Tuesday that I was back. Of course, I didn't tell anyone about this interview cause I didn't want to Jinx it. The interview itself when I finally had it was a short 20 minutes or so chat with one of the software engineers in the place. They basically wanted to talk to me to see if it was worth flying me out to California for a proper full interview. The guy at the end of the phone seemed nice enough and he didnt' really ask me anything that I couldn't answer. He basically described the position and what the job entailed and asked if I had done x,y and z before to which I answered yes to, promptly followed by long winded examples of using x,y and z in current and previous work (it's what I tend to do when I'm nervous, I babble). In fact the position from what was described to me was exactly what I always wanted to do and just seemed so perfect for me. In anycase, at the end of the "little chat" I was told that I'd be contacted shortly about their decision. All in all, despite my ramblings I thought the "interview" went quite well.
So a week later on Monday evening, the day that I passed my driving test and when Sod's Law alarm bells started going off in my head I received a PFO letter from the HR department :(. It wasn't entirely unexpected. I did get my hopes up there for a while after the initial interview but overall I guess it was just nice to know that my background and qualifications were good enough to warrant being noticed among probably the dozens of other applications I'm sure the studio gets everyday. I'm just going to put it down to that they decided at the end of the day it would be less hassle for them to interview and hire someone local. Besides, they are surrounded by some of the top ivy league universities in the states (i.e. Stanford and Berkley) so it would make more sense to interview and hire graduates from there and save the inevitable headache and cost of potentially hiring someone from abroad. Still, I'm glad I got the initial interview if nothing else. At least it shows that I'm more qualified than I've given myself credit for in the past.
So, now I'm expecting Sod to continue his "good" work and I'm bracing myself for a lot more crap that he's going to throw my way in the next few weeks. To Sod, all I'm going to say is : "Bring it on!".
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Ski dancing week
Just got back from a week of skiing in St. Anton's in Austria followed by a kick ass weekend of dancing in Herfordshire in good old merry England. My legs ache, my arms ache, my neck aches, in fact my entire body is in a considerable amount of pain at the moment.
Mental note; "do not go directly to a 3 day all day all night dance festival straight after spending a week skiiing. You are not as young as you once were" :(
All in all, the skiing was good and despite the fact that the "Aprés ski" was better in Austria than it was in France (and also ignoring the fact that everything was almost twice as expensive as would have been in France) I think I still prefer the usual resort in France that I usually go to. Speaking as a person who dosn't drink (well hardly ever anyways) and/or generally likes really noisy pubs and bars the "kick ass aprés ski" thing is meaningless to me.
This time around I went with a rather large group of people. There were 11 of us in all but there might as well have just been the 2 of us. We rented 2 apartments (each one about 5 minutes from each other but a good half hour walk to the slopes) since there were so many of us. 7 in one apartment and 4 in the other. The majority of the people were all the new post grads from the new lab which meant that I really only knew about 1 and a half people there (I say half because I know one of the post grads but only on a friendly hello basis). So as a result of this, they all went off and did their own things with each other for the most part and never made an effort to include myself or Chris (the other oldie) in any of their activities. I didn't mind so much as I was there for the skiing but still a token gesture towards the "old folk", no matter how meaningless, would have been nice, otherwise we might as well have gone on our own (which wouldn't be too far from the truth in this case).
As for the ski runs; we were lucky enough to have good snow fall for most of the week but a lot of the ski runs at the resort just didn't do anything for me. Instead of having the usual 4 marking systems (i.e. green, blue, red and black) for piste difficulty levels, the pistes at St. Antons' did away with the super beginner green and just started at "improver" blue (probably presuming that only menly men go skiing at St Antons and thus would never be caught dead on a green slope). This I later found out was a bit of a misnomer. Some parts of the blue runs I would probably consider easier red runs and the black runs (the supposedly most difficult runs) were nothing more than what I would have considerd a hard red. In fact some parts of the red runs should have been blue runs. The marking system overall for the pistes were a little erratic.
I left the ski resort a day earlier than the others so that I could catch a plane from Zurich to London and then onto Haileybury College (home of Harry Potter) in Herfordshire for a long weekend of swing dancing. I arrived at 11pm just in time for the evening soiree.
Haileybury College I must admit is actually quite a nice place. You can definitely recognise the locations used for the filming of the Harry Potter movies. You could also see that it is quite a rich, posh school. Fortunately, the students were all on mid term break so we were given make shift accomodation in around the common areas of the students' usual accomodations; for example the students' tv room (which incidently had a huge 46 inch flat screen plasma tv in it). Because we got there a bit late all the good spots were already taken so we had to make do with laying our sleeping bags inside one of the small corridors outside the students' rooms. The only problem with this solution was that the corridor lights were controlled via a motion sensor. This meant that everytime someone turned in their sleep they would set off the motion sensor and thus switch on the lights and wake up everyone else :D This problem was promptly solved the next night with some tin foil and selotape, McGuyver style.
Caught the 6am flight back to Dublin on Monday morning to be nicely on time for work (after having danced all night the previous Sunday evening till 4am before getting a taxi from the venue straight to the airport). Luckily I fell asleep for a few hours (ok it was a lot of few hours) after dinner on Sunday so work on Monday wasn't as bad as it could have been.
Oh, and did I mention I had a driving lesson straight after work? Now that was a loooong day :)
Mental note; "do not go directly to a 3 day all day all night dance festival straight after spending a week skiiing. You are not as young as you once were" :(
All in all, the skiing was good and despite the fact that the "Aprés ski" was better in Austria than it was in France (and also ignoring the fact that everything was almost twice as expensive as would have been in France) I think I still prefer the usual resort in France that I usually go to. Speaking as a person who dosn't drink (well hardly ever anyways) and/or generally likes really noisy pubs and bars the "kick ass aprés ski" thing is meaningless to me.
This time around I went with a rather large group of people. There were 11 of us in all but there might as well have just been the 2 of us. We rented 2 apartments (each one about 5 minutes from each other but a good half hour walk to the slopes) since there were so many of us. 7 in one apartment and 4 in the other. The majority of the people were all the new post grads from the new lab which meant that I really only knew about 1 and a half people there (I say half because I know one of the post grads but only on a friendly hello basis). So as a result of this, they all went off and did their own things with each other for the most part and never made an effort to include myself or Chris (the other oldie) in any of their activities. I didn't mind so much as I was there for the skiing but still a token gesture towards the "old folk", no matter how meaningless, would have been nice, otherwise we might as well have gone on our own (which wouldn't be too far from the truth in this case).
As for the ski runs; we were lucky enough to have good snow fall for most of the week but a lot of the ski runs at the resort just didn't do anything for me. Instead of having the usual 4 marking systems (i.e. green, blue, red and black) for piste difficulty levels, the pistes at St. Antons' did away with the super beginner green and just started at "improver" blue (probably presuming that only menly men go skiing at St Antons and thus would never be caught dead on a green slope). This I later found out was a bit of a misnomer. Some parts of the blue runs I would probably consider easier red runs and the black runs (the supposedly most difficult runs) were nothing more than what I would have considerd a hard red. In fact some parts of the red runs should have been blue runs. The marking system overall for the pistes were a little erratic.
I left the ski resort a day earlier than the others so that I could catch a plane from Zurich to London and then onto Haileybury College (home of Harry Potter) in Herfordshire for a long weekend of swing dancing. I arrived at 11pm just in time for the evening soiree.
Haileybury College I must admit is actually quite a nice place. You can definitely recognise the locations used for the filming of the Harry Potter movies. You could also see that it is quite a rich, posh school. Fortunately, the students were all on mid term break so we were given make shift accomodation in around the common areas of the students' usual accomodations; for example the students' tv room (which incidently had a huge 46 inch flat screen plasma tv in it). Because we got there a bit late all the good spots were already taken so we had to make do with laying our sleeping bags inside one of the small corridors outside the students' rooms. The only problem with this solution was that the corridor lights were controlled via a motion sensor. This meant that everytime someone turned in their sleep they would set off the motion sensor and thus switch on the lights and wake up everyone else :D This problem was promptly solved the next night with some tin foil and selotape, McGuyver style.
Caught the 6am flight back to Dublin on Monday morning to be nicely on time for work (after having danced all night the previous Sunday evening till 4am before getting a taxi from the venue straight to the airport). Luckily I fell asleep for a few hours (ok it was a lot of few hours) after dinner on Sunday so work on Monday wasn't as bad as it could have been.
Oh, and did I mention I had a driving lesson straight after work? Now that was a loooong day :)
Friday, February 1, 2008
Back with a bang... of sorts
After over a month of silence I've decided to give this whole blog thing another try. You know, with the new year and new resolutions and all that other jazz. It's not that I've had nothing to share or say, it's just that I got lazy.
So, in another attempt to get my literary juices flowing again, may I be so bold as to suggest the topic of the humble "rail gun". Why do I bring this up I hear you mumble? Well, other than getting the chance to play with one in Quake, it now also seems that the US navy get to play with one in real life as well. It's not as, erhem, "portable" as the one in Quake it would seem but I'm sure the US navy boys/girls are going to have just as much fun with it. The lucky gits.
So, in another attempt to get my literary juices flowing again, may I be so bold as to suggest the topic of the humble "rail gun". Why do I bring this up I hear you mumble? Well, other than getting the chance to play with one in Quake, it now also seems that the US navy get to play with one in real life as well. It's not as, erhem, "portable" as the one in Quake it would seem but I'm sure the US navy boys/girls are going to have just as much fun with it. The lucky gits.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Cymothoa exigua
Just came across this on my interweb travels and just had to share it.
Behold the almighty Cymothoa exigua. Possibly the most disturbing parasite I've ever had the pleasure of reading about.
While I'm on about things connecting to other things, I came across this fantasy proposal to connect ireland to britain via a bridge over the Irish sea. I don't see this ever happening in my lifetime but would be very cool if it ever did happen.
Behold the almighty Cymothoa exigua. Possibly the most disturbing parasite I've ever had the pleasure of reading about.
While I'm on about things connecting to other things, I came across this fantasy proposal to connect ireland to britain via a bridge over the Irish sea. I don't see this ever happening in my lifetime but would be very cool if it ever did happen.
Christmas Parties
So it's been a while since I updated this blog. I haven't forgotten about it. It's just that I've been a little busy lately and plus I haven't really had anything really interesting to share.
I've been doing a lot of dancing at Christmas parties over the last few weeks. This means my time has been taken up by work during the day and then practice after work in the evenings for these Christmas party gigs. At first I thought it would be fun to be paid to dance but boy was I ever wrong! I don't mind the performing for the crowd bit. It's more the bit afterwards when the organisers want us to hang around for the next hour interacting and dancing with the "punters". I personally hate to be bugged after dinner by some fake cheerful git coming up to me trying to drag me up to dance with him/her while all I really want is to sit there in peace and chat with my friends. But yet, I am the fake cheerful git this time around doing that very thing to people that I know I would hate to be done to myself. Not only that, it feels like your gate crashing someone else's party most of the time as everyone on the dance floor has their own little group who they dance with and then you jump in.
The type of crowd at these things really do make all the difference. Some nights the crowd are great and really get into it but other nights they are just disinterested and it's just horrible. The gig I did last night was possibly the worse night yet. Not only was there possibly more "lads" than girls (this makes a huge difference as girls are more likely to be enticed to dance and guys are more likely to get up and dance once they see the girls dancing) but in general the crowd was a purely "lets get rat arsed" crowd. This meant that there was hardly anyone to bug to drag up to fill the dance floor as the majority of them were all hanging out at the bar or outside smoking. Those that did stick around at their table just wanted to be left alone to their drinking and chatting with their mates so were irritated when you tried to get them to dance. In fact, at one stage, I believe I was told to "fuck off" by some girl in a lovely thick Dublin accent and some guy thought I was asking him to dance with me so also came close to telling me to "fuck off".
Quick word of advice to anyone who is organising their Christmas party; If your place of work is predominantly guys or "the lads" do not book them into a Greased themed Christmas party. Save yourself some money and just drag them all down to the local instead. They won't notice the difference.
To top off my current Christmas misery, I pulled my right pectoral muscle a couple of weeks back and with all these Christmas gigs I haven't given it any time to heal. So as a result it's still really really sore. I can't wait till this silly season is over and things are back to normal again.
I've been doing a lot of dancing at Christmas parties over the last few weeks. This means my time has been taken up by work during the day and then practice after work in the evenings for these Christmas party gigs. At first I thought it would be fun to be paid to dance but boy was I ever wrong! I don't mind the performing for the crowd bit. It's more the bit afterwards when the organisers want us to hang around for the next hour interacting and dancing with the "punters". I personally hate to be bugged after dinner by some fake cheerful git coming up to me trying to drag me up to dance with him/her while all I really want is to sit there in peace and chat with my friends. But yet, I am the fake cheerful git this time around doing that very thing to people that I know I would hate to be done to myself. Not only that, it feels like your gate crashing someone else's party most of the time as everyone on the dance floor has their own little group who they dance with and then you jump in.
The type of crowd at these things really do make all the difference. Some nights the crowd are great and really get into it but other nights they are just disinterested and it's just horrible. The gig I did last night was possibly the worse night yet. Not only was there possibly more "lads" than girls (this makes a huge difference as girls are more likely to be enticed to dance and guys are more likely to get up and dance once they see the girls dancing) but in general the crowd was a purely "lets get rat arsed" crowd. This meant that there was hardly anyone to bug to drag up to fill the dance floor as the majority of them were all hanging out at the bar or outside smoking. Those that did stick around at their table just wanted to be left alone to their drinking and chatting with their mates so were irritated when you tried to get them to dance. In fact, at one stage, I believe I was told to "fuck off" by some girl in a lovely thick Dublin accent and some guy thought I was asking him to dance with me so also came close to telling me to "fuck off".
Quick word of advice to anyone who is organising their Christmas party; If your place of work is predominantly guys or "the lads" do not book them into a Greased themed Christmas party. Save yourself some money and just drag them all down to the local instead. They won't notice the difference.
To top off my current Christmas misery, I pulled my right pectoral muscle a couple of weeks back and with all these Christmas gigs I haven't given it any time to heal. So as a result it's still really really sore. I can't wait till this silly season is over and things are back to normal again.
Monday, December 3, 2007
R.I.P. Matteo
I just heard this weekend that Matteo (or "Matt the Jap" as he was more commonly known as to people) of whom I had recently written about had just passed away. This is very sad news indeed. He was one of Trinity's last remaining characters. I had thought he looked very frail the last time I saw him and hadn't expected him to have many more years left but I had never expected that the years I thought he had left were only to be mere weeks.
Rest in peace Mr. Matteo (Masahiso) Matubara.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Matteo the Japanese Gentleman
I recently encountered again after many years, a little Japanese man named Matteo (or "Matt the Jap" as he is more commonly known to the students, staff and visitors of Trinity College Dublin), one of Trinity College Dublin's' resident characters. Matt, for lack of a better name and description for him is a well known but very mysterious little Japanese man (usually seen with walking stick and his bag of sandwiches and newspapers walking around the Arts block or Front Square) whom you will eventually bump into if you ever idle long enough in Trinity College Dublin. Every student who has passed through Trinity since the early 80's (to late 70s even, I think) would have at one stage heard of and quite possible have seen Matt walking slowly past them.
Not a lot is known about him but there are plenty of rumours. These range from Matt being an eccentric genius who studied in Trinity a long time ago but the pressure of his thesis was too much for him so he snapped to him being thrown out of college for fouling an ancient manuscript (by writing footnotes on it) in the library. Some say that he is deaf and dumb while others say he is perfectly fine but just doesn't like to talk to people. Some say that he is actually French and not indeed Japanese. There are people who say that he is harmless while there are others that tell a different story saying that Matt is indeed a violent male chauvinist pig with a grudge against all women.
My recent sighting of Matt got me thinking again about what actually is his real story. These days, sadly to say, he is looking very old and frail and I'm sure that he hasn't many years left on this earth. I'm sure he must have had led a very interesting life at one stage. One that many students and staff of Trinity would like to know about (even if it is just to reaffirm some of the rumours about him). Luckily for me I got some of my answers via this little interview I found today done by the Record with Matt. It's not a great interview and needs to be taken with a pinch of salt (partly because another rumour about Matt is that he is a notorious liar) but non the less it has shed some light on this mysterious little man whom I associate to be part of my overall college experience. From my initial reading of the interview it does seem that some of the rumours do run true. He does indeed appear to be deaf and he does seem to bare a somewhat a grudge against women as this shows from some of the answers he gives in the interview.
On a completely different topic. I went to see "Eastern Promises" last night. Damn good film. I highly recommend going to see it when you get the chance. It's David Cronenberg at his best... and for the ladies, you get to see Viggo Mortensen's, erhem, sword, erhem, at some stage in the film.
Not a lot is known about him but there are plenty of rumours. These range from Matt being an eccentric genius who studied in Trinity a long time ago but the pressure of his thesis was too much for him so he snapped to him being thrown out of college for fouling an ancient manuscript (by writing footnotes on it) in the library. Some say that he is deaf and dumb while others say he is perfectly fine but just doesn't like to talk to people. Some say that he is actually French and not indeed Japanese. There are people who say that he is harmless while there are others that tell a different story saying that Matt is indeed a violent male chauvinist pig with a grudge against all women.
My recent sighting of Matt got me thinking again about what actually is his real story. These days, sadly to say, he is looking very old and frail and I'm sure that he hasn't many years left on this earth. I'm sure he must have had led a very interesting life at one stage. One that many students and staff of Trinity would like to know about (even if it is just to reaffirm some of the rumours about him). Luckily for me I got some of my answers via this little interview I found today done by the Record with Matt. It's not a great interview and needs to be taken with a pinch of salt (partly because another rumour about Matt is that he is a notorious liar) but non the less it has shed some light on this mysterious little man whom I associate to be part of my overall college experience. From my initial reading of the interview it does seem that some of the rumours do run true. He does indeed appear to be deaf and he does seem to bare a somewhat a grudge against women as this shows from some of the answers he gives in the interview.
On a completely different topic. I went to see "Eastern Promises" last night. Damn good film. I highly recommend going to see it when you get the chance. It's David Cronenberg at his best... and for the ladies, you get to see Viggo Mortensen's, erhem, sword, erhem, at some stage in the film.
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