Musical Night Life

Apparently, June 21 is Le Jour de Musique in France. This year it was on a Tuesday, so I ended up at the Café en Seine in Dublin . None of the sites I’ve found really do this place justice. It’s the kind of place I would never have thought to go into if the French people I work with hadn’t invited me. Really very nice. I hope to take Carol there someday for lunch; it’s a café during the day and a bar at night.

On Friday, Dell paid for a night out for all the server teams at Johnny Fox’s Pub – the highest pub in Ireland. Technically, geographically, it was the most altitudinous pub on the island. The décor was a bit over the top, but it worked for this place. They managed to pack so many people in by putting the tables in long rows and close together. Forced congeniality at its best. You can see from their web site that they specialize in seafood. I’d have to say their real speciality was entertainment.

The “headliners” were a 4 member band consisting of two young guys playing guitar and banjo, an older man on bass, and an old skinny Irishman in a beret on violin – all playing traditional Irish folk music. The intermission entertainment was a group of dancers – 2 guys and 3 girls doing what I suppose was traditional Irish folk dancing. If you can let go of the cliché for a second, it resembled somewhat the River Dance – a combination of ballet, tap, and clogging. The girls kept running off to change costume, which I found a bit excessive. The 2 guys were pretty good and didn’t seem terribly self-absorbed. It’s not until you see them up close and watch the feet that you realize how complex that style of dance really is.

Anyway, the band came back and played again. To describe the most striking song of the night requires that I set the scene. I’m sitting with the French techs; at the end of our table are the Spanish. Past the Spanish in the corner are the Italians, and behind us all, against the wall are the Germans. The rest of the place is filled with either Irish locals or British tourists. I’m sitting next to a really cool bald-headed Algerian named Kalid. Having set the scene, I’ll now tell that the song played by the afore-described band is none other than Four Non-Blondes’ “What’s Going On?” Not only everyone around me, but even the middle-aged British tourists across the room are all singing the lyrics at the top of their lungs.

Getting back to Dublin was going to be tricky. At that hour, the trains and buses had all stopped running, and there was some question of whether or not the taxis were going into Dublin – not because of the time, but because of the massive traffic jams from people coming to Dublin for U2’s concerts. I shared a taxi with two French techs who are staying in the same apartment complex as me.

Transportation & Accomodations

People have been asking me about my living accomodations over here. Dell has provided me with an apartment in east Dublin, across from the greyhound race tracks. See this map from http://www.softguides.com/dublin/maps/centre.html To get to work, I walk to the Dart station at Landsdown and take the train into Dun Laoghaire. Dun Laoghaire is the small town (pop. 200,000) where I’m moving next week. I walk up the road half a block to the bus stop and take the either the 7 or the 111 to Cherrywood on the south end of Dun Laoghaire. Most of the buses are double-decker and if you pay by coin you have to tell the driver how far you want to go. I buy a week pass at the SPAR (Ireland’s 7-11).

It’s in waiting for either the train or the bus that I waste the most time. Each trip (bus or train) only takes 20 minutes, but if I don’t time it right, I end up waiting 10-20 minutes for each. That combined with the walking means I spend easily 1:30 one way. Needless to say, I have a lot of time to read.

Cars here are small. That 2 door GEO Metro I drove for a few years would be on the large side or average over here. I’m not kidding. Ford makes a newer 2 door Ka that kind of slopes forward over the back wheels. There is an older Nissan model (Micra) that is really small, but the winner has to be the Daewoo Matiz ; it’s probably 70% the size of the GEO Metro. I’ve only seen one Smart Car, but it seemed large compared to the DaeWoo.

Oh yeah, they drive on the left hand side of the road. It’s not the driving that throws you off (not that I can speak from experience) – it’s walking around. You’re always looking out for cars in the wrong direction.

Books I’ve read since arriving:

Marc Bloch l’Etrange Défaite

Gregg Easterbrook The Progress Paradox

Morgan Spurlock Don’t Eat This Book

Merrill Chapman In Search of Stupidity

John Kay The Truth About Markets

Dublin - International City

My temporary apartment is on the east side of Dublin, just across a canal from the greyhound race tracks. Dell is letting me stay there for a month while my rental in Dun Laoghaire is finalized. (By the way, if you want to know how tight the real estate market is in Ireland, check out www.daft.ie. A majority of the other users of the Internet cafe I frequent are playing tag team on the phone and using daft.ie to locate a place to live before it gets rented out from underneath them. Unfurnished places are a lot harder to find than furnished). I took the bus into the city today. As I was coming in, it struck me how international this place is. There are always lots of people walking on the sidewalks, but today a couple of groups caught my eye. Heading one direction was a group of pre-adolescents from South America, all wearing matching yellow backpacks. In the other direction was a group of mixed age women wearing matching black t-shirts personalized for each of them. The two groups didn't pass each other so much as blended together for a moment before emerging from the other side.

The internet cafe I like to go to is run by a group of Africans. I often hear French and Italian there, some Russian, but mostly Slavic languages I can't understand. Some of the stations have video cameras, and some people teleconference there.

On the streets, you hear all sorts of languages. Because of the proximity to water, there are a lot of Philipinos here - merchant marines and their families. It's summertime, so a lot of the people I'm seeing are on vacation - especially the French.

Dublin is home to Trinity College but is too big to be influenced by the students into becoming a college town. Still, when school is in, I'm sure there are a lot of foreign students there, too.

The weather today is nice. I might try to get a sandwich and hang out at St. Stephen's Green. I still haven't found a really good coffee shop here, yet.

A Place For Thoughts

Well, I'm in Ireland. So, of course, the template for this blog site would have to be green.

I hope to use this site to post notes and pictures of our sojourn in Ireland. Right now, I just want to get something posted.

As far as internet access goes, it's not as direct as we're used to in the states. Even getting a phone line is not necessarily automatic. The apartment I found in Dun Laoghaire still had a box for the ISDN line the previous tenant used. So, I'll probably be typing my stuff on a laptop at home (which has the French version of Windows XP and a different keyboard layout), save to a USB drive, and then post them at an internet café.

Anyway, that's the idea. That and the reduction of spam.

Enjoy