tonskudaigle.info

27Sep/100

My blank memory

It's time to update some stuff again and I swear, I had so many things to mention here and yet every time I think of typing those things down on a note or to my phone, I just forget or am too lazy to do it. Now I'm just sitting here thinking what I was supposed to write about. How stupid is that...

So anyway, work's good. I'm not going much into details as there's not much new to tell. I started working on last Tuesday with the other Finnish guys and we get a taxi every morning paid by the company from in front of our doors. It picks all three of us around 5:30am and we're always about 15 minutes early. Which reminds me that today we actually didn't have a taxi. I went outside at 5:20 as the taxi is usually in front at that time and I waited around 10 mins until I noticed that we're supposed to be picking the second guy already so there must be something wrong. So I called the local taxi company without knowing who actually takes us to work. Turned out that the company I called to doesn't even usually take us to work and instead it's some other company. Well anyway, this local company takes us to work for 5 euros so it's no problem, but since I didn't have the 2nd guy's phone number, I just called the 3rd guy and told him that we'd pick him up. I tried to persuade the taxi driver to pick the 2nd guy as well, but he didn't want to go and "just stand in front of the house in case he's not there at all". So we didn't pick him up at all. But we got to work and due to our poor financial status (pay day in 1,5 weeks), I had to pay the whole 7 euros for the taxi. The company better pay me back... with interest :P

Oh oh oh! I got to tell you about this though... I went to Dublin city center on Saturday with a couple of my Finnish co-workers. We got stood up by the 4th guy, but that didn't really matter. We went to this place called Woolshed and oh man I got to tell you, it's awesome! It's a sports bar so you can imagine that they show sports. But they are something else to what I'm used to :P
There's like a 200 inch screen on the wall in the middle of the place and unless you're blocked by the poles around the place, you can see it. Also next to it is a somewhat 120 inch screen as well which on Saturday showed a different event compared to the big one. Oh and if you're blocked to see the game, no worries. There are... let me refresh my photographic memory... 8 LCD TV's around the two floor bar. And they also offer food, to my observation until around 10pm!
So you know... I was just thinking and also checking out already. What if I had a Saturday off, the English Premier League had games on that day, Liverpool was playing and I felt like "having a few"... You get where I'm going with this? ;) I was thinking of going to Woolshed on 20th of November. I think the games in EPL were Man City - Arsenal at 12:45, then some other game, I don't care, then Liverpool a game and after that it's already around 8pm. I like it :D
Definitely something worth trying some day! And you know me, I rarely turn down football and beer together if there's also food available :)

Also I didn't manage to sell my desktop so I'm trying to have it shipped over here as my laptop is already pretty much overdue with its lifeline. The screen is flickering every now and then plus there are some weird things happening as if the graphic adapter was giving up. But hopefully I'll get the desktop here soon so I just need to get a monitor and a desk for it all. Problem is that the shipping costs are huge and I'm talking like 120 euros. Plus I'm a bit afraid the whole thing will be broken once it gets here. I've heard some horror stories about computers being shipped over and them arriving in smaller sizes due to whatnot being crushed and becoming useless :(
Also am hoping to get my xbox360 here as I just had my Madden 11 three days before coming to Ireland. So am kind of gutted not having been able to play it. But as I get my tax returns in December, I might be getting a TV here (I don't have one at the moment). Will do wonders for my house to have something more than myself and a laptop here :D I had a Norwegian co-worker stopping by on Friday for a couple of beers and since I've nothing to do here, we just sat in the living room for a good 45mins. Sure girls do that every now and then and I didn't mind that as we talked about stuff. But you know a TV, music or something would be nice to have in case of visitors! :D
So I have my eye on this offer at Curry's for a 37" Samsung Full HD TV with a very nice TV stand included for about 600 euros.

So what else... I should start writing down on these things I should write about. Maybe it's just the 6-15 working hours that are drinking the juice out of me. I now there are shitloads of things to tell about, but I think this update already reached its peak and "maximum" length.

But I'll write something more later this week, I promise. I'll make that list even just to motivate me :D

17Sep/100

Power up your social life!

Well, lets start with yesterday which was something I haven't experienced in a while. I was browsing on my laptop yesterday around 8pm and suddenly I just saw the lamp flickering above me and I was like okay, it's the light bulb running out and I should get a new one just 2 weeks after moving in... And as I thought about that, the whole apartment went dark and these high pitched noises started going crazy all around the place. I went to check my alarm box or whatever it is called and it said "main fault". I noticed there's an alarm going crazy outside as well so I went outside to see what the hassle was all about. The whole block went blank. No lights, no nothing. I came back to my apartment and waited for like 5 mins hoping for it to pass and everything getting back to normal. Well needless to say, that didn't happen so I just got out the door and knocked on my neighbors door. Their alarm box was quiet but the whole place had these high pitched noises going on so it was really irritating. I didn't have a code to silence my alarm so there was a slight problem there. Eventually we (me and two neighbors from apt 1&3) ended up talking in the hallway and getting to know each other for like 2 hours. So at least something good came out of it and they seem like (and are) really nice people. So all in all, it turned out really well and it's really nice to get to know your neighbors at some point. This happening to me after just 2 weeks was excellent. I've been sucking new information about living, practical things and all over the past 3,5 weeks I've been here from pretty much everyone I've met and who knows something :)
The powers were down for 2 hours and from what I understood, the whole town was down :D

Apart from the power and alarm problems, things are going better everyday. Today I had a final quiz + test call and on Monday I'm supposed to go live with the Finnish customers answering their calls and helping with technical problems. I've some problems with a few practical things, but I trust and know that it will get a lot easier once I get started and get some hands on experience. Listening to lectures and watching PowerPoint slides doesn't help much, not to mention compare to actually doing it. So it should be okay.

Few things though about being here...
- Rain. There hasn't been much the past couple of days which is nice.
- Prices are quite the same as in Finland really. Well that is in SuperValu though. It's the closest grocery store I've over here and since the prices are quite the same as in Finland, I don't really see a reason to get a bus or something further away to for example Lidl and save a couple of euros.
- Beer. I need some and will get a few tomorrow. End of discussion.
- Internet connection. I should be getting my UPC broadband tomorrow. There's supposed to be a guy coming here tomorrow between 1pm and 6pm to install it. Good stuff! No, make it EXCELLENT. I so hate this Three Mobile Broadband. I mean it's enough for basic use, but with my usual usage habits, it's useless. I can only use it for basic surfing, checking e-mails and so on.
- Beer. Not sure if I mentioned this, but hell I'm getting some tomorrow.
- I want a TV and a desktop computer here. This laptop is is falling apart and it doesn't have the performance to run Trackmania properly. Not to mention Football Manager.
- Man Utd vs. Liverpool on Sunday. You'll never walk alone!

I think that's it for now. Better leave something to rant about for later entries as well :D

18Jun/080

Austria vs. Germany @ Vienna

We went to Vienna on Monday (16th) to see the Austria - Germany game at one of the fanzones. I had no idea personally where those were but gladly we had a bunch of people going so I didn't even have to worry about it :)
Due to weather forecasts, there was high probability for rain so we decided to go as late over there to avoid any rain showers as it would have really sucked to go there and stand in the rain for hours. But as we decided to leave at 5pm to train station, the weather was ok and it seemed unlikely to rain at all. And once we got to Vienna, we found out that the fanzone is completely full so we decided to head over to the parliament front yard to watch and it was really full of people. But it didn't really matter. I was drunk as hell :D

Anyway, here are some pictures from the trip...


Pictures from the city centre on our way to the fanzone. Though the first one is actually from Bratislava train station.


Yet again, from the city centre. These Austrian fans were LOUD, but looked like they had fun so I guess it's ok. Besides I don't think there was a minute in the city when you heard something related to Germany or Austria :)
Oh and the escalators... I've never been to a metro/subway (at least from what I remember and we don't have such things in Rovaniemi or Tornio) so just as an impulse, I took a picture of these. We actually tried getting a metro to the train station, but the problem was that we ran out of time and had to use a tram instead.


Yet again, pictures of the fans and city centre. In the middle is Mr. R.


City centre, city centre, city centre... Actually if you look close to the guy in the middle picture, you see a nice mohawk :)


Nice car, eh? And then some big private yard in the middle. Austrian fans on the right.


Never seen this yellow can before so I just took a picture of it with our Slovak friend, Zlaty Bazant. Me and Mr. R got our German flags on our cheeks and since they were so proud of me supporting Germany, we took a picture. You know, this doesn't happen too often. Bloody Germans... :D

A close picture of the flags and the favourite guy in the audience... This Austrian guy painted his body and was photographed a lot among the audience. Nice job though, got to give him that :)