tonskudaigle.info

Do this and that…

Over the past 9 years, basically since I first moved from home to my own place, I've had the luxury of handling with the Finnish bureaucracy which by all means isn't of course a fantasy land where everything goes smoothly and we drink tea at the offices. But moving to a new country is a whole new story to tell. So lets go back 2 weeks when I arrived to Ireland with no idea how things work and how to get from point A to point B without looking like an idiot lost in time and space.

First thing is to notice that where I come from (Tornio), we don't or at least to my knowledge we don't have public local transportation. So if you wish to get from A to B, you either use a car you have or your parents have. Option B is to either walk or use a bike. Well basically the distances aren't more than like 5km between any two places you need to go to, be it a pharmacy, video rental or a pizzeria. Or option C is to take a cab which costs money but will take you where you want to go in a matter minutes. Living in Rovaniemi, I used the local transportation very little due to living close to everything I needed to go to or if I went downtown, I just took a cab home as I was usually just too wasted to even walk. But that's a whole another story to tell... someday, somewhere.

Now coming to Ireland without any knowledge where the point A (myself) even is, it is next to impossible trying to think how to get to point B. So I was rather amazed to be honest that before I came here, I received an e-mail giving instructions how to get to Leixlip from Dublin airport. The following is a quote from the e-mail I got when talking about my relocation to Ireland:

Toni could get a bus from the Airport to Drumcondra and get the Maynooth train from Drumcondra train station to Leixlip Louisa Bridge station

None of these names meant anything to me so I could have imagined myself wandering around the Dublin airport looking for buses (probably the easiest part). Not to mention trying to get on the right bus and then when sitting in the bus, actually knowing where to get off. I mean looking out the window doesn't mean a thing when you're just amazed that "Damn, I'm actually here now then...". All you see is green trees and the bus from inside. There's no sign inside the bus saying "next stop: Drumcondra". Nor would have I known how to get a train ticket, yet it goes without saying that it's common sense how it works once you've done it once or twice. But things work so differently in every place. Like in Finland, when using a train, I get in the train and get the ticket from the conductor or if I manage to have the time, I get it before getting in the train from the train station office. But exploring my options with 2 big bags isn't an option, not always.

So... On to this day.
Work's nice. I mean people come and go and I don't mean just in the office, but I mean people working in help desks know what I mean. You either are right for the job or you are not. If you're not, you get fed with it quite fast and get the fuck out. Myself, I try not to think "how long I will be staying there" or "will I be suitable to do the job for lets say a year". I aim to go one day at a time as you never know what will happen in 3 months or 6 months. All I know is that I will need to get up tomorrow around 7:45am, take a shower, put some clothes on and get ready to take a train to Louisa Bridge and then take the free shuttle bus to HP. But I would be lying if I said that I hadn't thought about if I like the job that's ahead of me. Of course I think about that. And I've come to a conclusion that I might even be good at it due to my IT skills, but I know that I will need to work on my customer support skills as in greeting, talking the right way and making sure I do it all according to "the book". But I'm quite confident :)

As for the place to stay... I did reside in Hazelhatch Park for a week until unfortunately I was "evicted" due to apparently I snored too loud at night. I do know that I can snore quite loudly during the night, but I mean... there's no quick solution. Big boys do that, I know. But so do some smaller boys too. So I reckon it's just partly bad luck that this happened. The day I heard about this was last Friday. My landlord tried to call me, but as I was in work, I wasn't able to answer. So instead he sent me a sms saying the he had complaints from one of the roomies and even the next door neighbor. The walls are quite thin, but still I was rather amazed that even the neighbor heard my snoring :D
So anyway, I got this sms around 10am, I called him back and we talked a bit and he gave me a week to find another place. I kind of paniced and also felt a bit sad as I really liked the place and the other roomie I had was also a Liverpool fan so I think we got along quite well to be honest. But the fact was that I had to move out. So I immediately started looking for new places... I just had my work computer installed and had an hour to spare so I started looking for new places. The first thing that crossed my mind was if I should look for another shared apartment and just move my snoring problem elsewhere or just get a place on my own. I decided to go with the latter option. Sure the rent would be at least double the money I paid for that one, but yet I felt very good about having the place all to myself after sharing apartments for over 5 years. So I looked for options from daft.ie and found a few places that I contacted. Then one guy told me about an opening in Riverforest...

We talked with the guy over the phone for a few minutes and as he was just checking another apartment in the same building, he suggested that he'd pick me up immediately from my work and take me to check out the place. And so he did, 15mins later I was on my way to check an apartment in Riverforest in Leixlip. I saw the place and liked what I saw so we made a verbal agreement and headed on to the estate agency's office to get some info from me and pay the first month's rent. 700 euros... hurts, but hey... good things are never free. The next day, I moved in here :)

So here I am, in a two room apartment, all by myself. Shopping centre next to me and with a train station nearby. I like it although I must admit that after actually moving in, I noticed that there hasn't been anyone living here for a while as I even saw a spider in the bathtub not to mention a spiderweb :D But I got some cleaning supplies the next day and now it's a lot better.

So, there we go... TODO:
- better(!) internet connection
- furniture opportunities
- basic equipment from trash bins to having something to hang the laundry on