First thing that people think of when they think of Ireland, is the weather. At least usually, so lets dig into that one first. Sure I've been here during the autumn season so it's pretty much the same everywhere, but then again it also usually changes the same way when we talk about winter or summer too so just to give you an idea what I know about the weather here:
It's raining. At the moment it's raining and it's been raining every day the past week or so. When I came over there I didn't see a drop coming down for about a week and I was honestly a bit amazed by that. Sure enough the locals told me that this is very unlike from the Irish weather, but it was nice when we had plus 20 degrees and sun was shining like it was still summer as it should be.
Then came the rain and it has been raining pretty much every day. Some days had heavy rain and light rain all day and some have had just light rain all day. Despite the rain, I comfort myself with the assumed fact that there's no snow during winter, which I hate quite a lot after living in the North for close to 30 years. And it's also not supposed to be so cold over here either. Minus 5 degrees might sound bad to some, but that being the lowest temperature you usually get here during winter time, I think it's no biggie. Someone like me coming from -15 to -30 degrees most of the winter time, it makes me consider about buying more shorts and t-shirts.

I went out on Friday with other Finnish pals and had a lot of fun. Sure enough was raining, but that's a whole another story which I pretty much covered in the previous chapter. Next day though, I woke up and was barely able to stand on my left foot. For some reason, be it the drinking and the partying or not, my foot must have somehow been twisted because I can barely bend my ankle while walking. It hurts like hell when I do that, but when it's resting, it's just fine but I still can't bend it like I should. I figure there are two possibilities for this...
A) I twisted my foot at some point on Friday, but can't remember shit about it or it just didn't hurt when it happened
B) All the walking to work, back to home and in work has caused some sort of a stress to my foot. I mean the HP building is huge and me being such a lazy dawg, I don't walk too much and with the left knee fucked up, it may have caused my left foot to strain a bit or something. I mean my right foot is fine, as always.

It's so funny that everything that happens to me, it's always my left leg. I've never had problems with my right leg. My left leg instead had the knee spiral problems since teenage football times, ACL injury back in 2007 and with the ACL surgery just being a knee spiral surgery, it's not fully healed and I'm pretty sure there's still something quite wrong with my left knee. So I just hope it's not something that projects to my whole left leg.
So anyway, a doctor here is around 50-60 euros from what I heard and 3 times a year the company is supposed to pay like 30e for each visit. So it's a bad deal I reckon, but I will give this foot a few days to see if it passes by. I don't feel like going to my boss after 2 weeks at work that my leg hurts, can I get a sick leave... boohoo.

Also today at work I discussed with my fellow Finns about the remaining holidays from work. I'm supposed to have like 9 to spend before the end of the year so naturally spending it in Finland with my family during Christmas sounds like a natural option. But then again, considering the flight expenses from here to Northern Finland... It can be quite a hefty pile of money. I'm talking like 25% of my monthly salary so it's quite a lot to be honest when like 40% of it is going to rent already.
So I was thinking that I have like a couple of options that I've figured out so far:
A) Fly to Finland for Christmas and spend the holidays over there in -20 degrees before coming back here.
B) Take a Ryanair flight to for example Fuerteventura in Canary Islands for about half the money I'd pay for a trip to Finland and spend my holidays under a palm tree or something with my shorts on drinking nice cold drinks.
C) Stay at home over here and save the damn money and use it for something else.

And to be honest, I'm seriously considering the 2 latter options. Not that I don't love my family, but I'm sure they understand that this is an option where as everything else too. I'm planning to travel to Northern Finland in March anyway so I don't see it being much big of a deal. Sure it's "holidays and you must come", but lets be realistic here for a moment. I've been here for 3 months when it's time to book the flights to Finland and I've had 3 paychecks by that time. Everyone here keeps telling me that it takes like 5 months to settle down decently over here and to get yourself financially organized. So I must admit that I'm a bit uncertain about having the money to travel forth and back in December already without running into financial trouble.

I'm sure you're all wondering about how my job is... Well since it's a job, I'm sure you're all also very well aware of the fact that the companies like a bit of privacy for themselves so I can't go much into details here. Instead I will just give out the bits and pieces :)
Toni's work course 101: He works as a technical support agent for a company called CPL located in an HP building (not working for HP though) in Leixlip, Ireland. The first 3-4 weeks are basically just training to get to know how things work and what's going on around the place while settling down (hence the previous titles in my blog). TSA job is pretty much about answering e-mails and phone calls from customers while logging their information and trying to solve the issue(s). It's not a glorious job, but I think it's one of those jobs that you either suit for or you don't. Sure it depends a lot on the attitude, but it's in everyone's interest that you keep your head cool and try to do your job until you're just fed up with it and want to move on. Which happens quite a lot in this job, no matter where you work. Some are here just for the money and then get off to a vacation in Thailand. Some are here to get work experience before eventually finding a better paid job elsewhere. Myself? I think I'm more looking for both experience and work experience. The career opportunities here are very good though so you don't have to spend years and years answering phone calls either, you can actually climb up the ladder and that naturally makes everyone happy.

Now to my apartment. Last and final chapter, I promise :)
I pay 700 euros for the apartment and it's around 60 square meters. It has a living room, a kitchen, bathroom and a bedroom. It's (almost) fully furnished and the bed is a double size so me being a single guy, I like it (for sleeping purposes you pervs!) :P
But a few things have crossed my mind, flaws you might say, that need some repairing or attention:
- The toilet seat is a bit loose from the other side. So I hope to get it fixed before I some tiring morning or evening after a night out go to toilet to take a crapper... I accidentally crush my balls with that thing. So I got to get that fixed asap. It's also very uncomfortable to use when the seat is going from side to side.
- I don't understand why warm water has been made such a big thing here. In Finland and even in Bratislava I was used to just turn the damn handle that said HOT and you get at least warm water. But here you apparently need to heat it up first and that's just... from the middle ages to me. I don't know how things work related to this, but if I have to get up 20-30mins earlier to get hot water from the shower, it blows. The timers are hebrew to me. It has no logic at all and nor did it have to Irish people either.
- Water heater or the kettle... Doesn't work. I just saw an opened junction box on my desk last week and figured the landlord might have tried to fix it, but it's not working so I wonder what it was for or if the landlord just forgot it. Haven't seen him, but I heard he's a really nice guy and 82(!) years old. So I got to give props to that o/
- Internet connections are shite. My neighbors upstairs got one from UPC, but apparently I can't get it from them. I don't know why, but that's what they said. Now I'm considering Vodafone at the moment which I reckon is the next best thing (though far from UPC in price and quality). Also the damn landlines... Every ISP (Internet Service Provider) here offers phone deals with the internet connection. So yes, the landlines here are still used very much. I haven't used one for like 10 years so you can imagine how much this seems like the dark ages to technology jackass like me.

That's it, now this is the last chapter after all. But I'll keep it short. Take care everyone!

Anyway, plenty of changes coming up in the future as I'm installing plugins and tuning up the site to make it work the best way possible :)

Daigle out.