Dublin Apartment

We're probably not staying in the apartment here in Dublin longer more than one more month. Partly because the project is set to finish in mid Juli, and my colleague are not yet scheduled for the next phase, and partly because I'll be on holiday the last two weeks of July.

Somehow we got into talking about which project might be the next one and what ideas we had about accommodation. Soon it became a bit of a race to see who could come up with the cheapest, and given the next project would be in Gloucester, the cheapest option was 10 pounds a night. at the local campsite ;) one thing let to another and we ended up looking at caravans on this campsite. They really didn't look all that bad...

I doubt we'll actually go for an option like that, but it wasn't difficult to see the idea of it, especially during summer. Each caravan was a small (bit not tiny) two bed house with decent showers, kitchen, bedrooms etc. The best part was the views though, as the ones we looked at overlooked a beautiful lake and some woods in the background. Further more it would provide plenty of opportunities for a barbecue and beers on the patio after work :) given that the project would probably require 6-7 consultants, it could probably be some fun barbecues.

Oh well, here in Dublin it'll be quite difficult to find a place with the possibility of a barbecue, so we'll just have to see what's available when we know more about the amount of time we'll be out here. They'll start work on the planning of phase two next weeks so hopefully we'll know how many consultants are needed for the next phase and for how long. Once that's in place we can start to speculate who'll stay for phase two and who'll be shipped off to Gloucester.

Friday in Dublin

It Friday in Dublin. As usual we left the office early as the other guys were flying home but this weekend I'm staying behind to experience Dublin with Katrin. Since i haven't been here on a Friday before, it surprised me to see how lively and packed Grafton street can be. Musicians are playing and you can easily tell by the people in the street that it's Friday and finally a chance to relax and have a few beers.

I have just finished the book i bought last week, and wanted to pick up the second in the series as the first one had a real cliffhanger ending. Really unfair in a way especially since the second one doesn't seem to be out yet - even though the first one was published in 2005! Can't image having bought it when it first came out only to be waiting years for the follow-up. I'm sure it's just Ireland that hasn't gotten it yet or it's a glitch in the computer when they can't find it in their systems. Now I'm potentially waiting for three books due to be published: the last Harry Potter, the last in the Age of the Five series and now this one...I'll have a look when i get online again.

The sun is (was - is - was...damn clouds :) shining and I'm on my way to meet Katrin in the airport; a not yet published book haven't got a change my good mood.

Update: Apparently, Innocent Mage (the book I just finished) was first published in Australia in 2005, but wasn't published in the UK before April 2007. Even though the second book in the series was probably published in Australia years ago, it won't be published in the UK (or the US for that matter) until October 2007, so I guess I'll just have to wait...

This could be Rotterdam or Anywhere...

"...Liverpool or Rome
Cause Rotterdam is anywhere
Anywhere alone
Anywhere alone".

The lyrics above is from the song Rotterdam by The Beautiful South, and I heard it the other day on the radio and thought: hmm...that's actually quite right.

On a daily basis it wouldn't actually matter much if I was in Rotterdam, Liverpool, Rome or Dublin, as I really don't get to see that much of the city itself. I know, I've only got myself to blame for that as I should just get out, and take some walks around Dublin. The only thing is, that once I leave the Office the shops are either closed or closing and so are the touristy places. Sure I could go to the Temple Bar area and hang out with the other tourists, but that brings me back to why the song made very much sense to me. It sucks going out alone, even more in a new city.

Luckily I'm not completely stranded here, as I'm sharing an apartment with one of my colleagues, and we're now up to a total of 8 people form the company on projects here in Dublin. We're going out to see the Champions League game tomorrow, and hopefully the guys from the other project will have a bit more spare time after they've gone live in a few days. I doubt that we'll explore any other places than the various pubs Dublin has to offer, but trying to visit them all would probably be quite a challenge :)

I feel sorry for the people who're away on their own, and have to try and get by in a, most likely for them, strange place. If you're in that situation, I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter where you are alone; looking at it like that, all hotel rooms are the same...

There should be a good chance of seeing more of Dublin soon though, as Katrin's coming out this weekend, and we've got the whole weekend _and_ a bank holiday to explore the city and all the sights!

I can't wait 'till Friday

More pictures from our apartment

As we've finally managed to get some pictures on the walls and a bed frame for the bedroom, I thought it was time to upload some new pictures :)

As usual the link is http://picasaweb.google.com/dennis.newel

Bookstore bliss

It finally happened: I found not just one, but two large bookstores here in Dublin. I saw them from the Aircoach on the way to the airport on Friday, but didn't go until today.

As always, I brought a book to read while on the plane, the tram or just being bored in the apartment, and again I was in the situation of having brought a book that just isn't catchy enough. Books for me are a bit like portable sanctuaries; a place to escape to, to get away from reality in a way. A normal day includes so many different sights, sounds, impressions, demands, ideas all mixed up at the same time, so reading a book becomes something calm and soothing, simply by just concentrating on one media/input at a time. The problem is that if a book isn't captive enough or too complex, like The Child Garden, I loose focus and my mind start to wander. Once this happens there isn't much calm about trying to read a book, as I sometimes have to go back half a page or so to catch up to what I thought I had read.

Anyway, this started to happen again, this time with a book called Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, and I had to get a replacement. To be fair to the book, I've only read the first part so far, which is about 70-odd pages, and it could still turn out to be a very interesting and catchy book. I just haven't got the patience for waiting at the moment.

I started out going to Hodges Figgis, which I take is a local store/Irish chain. It had three floors filled with books, and what looked like a very nice selection of travel books. The main problem at the time though, was that I could not find a toilet anywhere, and they didn't have a cafe or something where you could sit down with a cup of coffee and look through the books that you considered buying. Not really a good point to judge a store, but at the time those two things were something I vitally needed. Combine a good book with a decent cup of coffee and a quiet and hopefully comfy place to sit, and that makes the sanctuary ten times more efficient.

Just across the street from Hodges Figgis was the other large book store I've found: a regular looking Waterstones. I was very pleasantly surprised when I entered though. The main feature in the store is a huge staircase connecting the ground floor with a mezzanine, on which is a cafe, an onwards to other floors above. I think there are three floors plus the mezzanine in total. Going up the stairs to the first floor, you walk into a huge room with high ceilings and a massive tainted window. I'm not sure what the building have been before, as i didn't look that closely at the outside of it, but it could very well have been a church or something similar.

After having visited their toilet and looked through their fairly sized selection of sci-fi books, I found a few books I wanted to look closer at, got a cup of coffee and sat down to have a closer look at the books. Unfortunately I only got to look at two of the books before a woman came into the cafe and announced that they were now closing. At 7pm! that was way too early for my taste, and I still had two more books to look at in the current batch of books. However, I couldn't do anything but pick a book and head for the cashier. I just hope this book is better than the Perdido one, or I might have to back there again tomorrow. Not that that's a scary thought, but I shouldn't really buy more books before I've read the ones I've got at home :)

More images

I've just gone through my latest images from the trips Katrin and I have made in and around London. It's not that many, but we've certainly enjoyed the trips where they were taken. The images are here as usual, or via the link to the right...

The Child Garden

I picked up this book (The Child Garden) in a bit of a rush a few weeks back. I had forgotten the book, which I had just started reading, on the plane coming to Dublin, and there I was without a book, and the only book store I could find, was a small one on Crafton Street. Unfortunately it doesn't have a big selection of fantasy or other books that I felt like reading, so my choice was fairly limited. The story sounded promising enough though, with people being educated by viruses and living in a sort of communistic London with Mao, Stalin and others as role models. It must be said that the world that Ryman builds up is very interesting. The problem is, that he simply tries to do too much at once.

Ryman is trying to explain the our world ended up like the one in the story, at the same time he's trying to explain how the world works, how the universe (both ours and the future one) is constructed, while at the same time trying to tell stories about forbidden love, people who are destined to live forever, how it would be like to only have 35 years to live, friendship, great ambitions, deep hatred, knowing you will die soon and finally the end of the world as he describes it.

There are material enough for two, three or even four different books, but unfortunately Ryman decided to cram everything into one book. It's not even that big, probably the size of one of the six Tolkien books, but it was as difficult to get through as all of Lord of the Rings...okay, that's probably grossly exaggerated but I was just disappointed about all the open stories he left behind and the way half the book is just a mix of incoherent memories.

Another problem I found with the story, was that I had no chance of identifying with the characters at all. The main character is a girl who's been brainwashed so badly by the viruses that she can't see the flip side of the world, until she meets this genetically modified woman who is just as much polar bear as she is human. These two find fall in love, but as it's not allowed to be homosexual in this communistic world they can't show it, and this situation and ackwardness is a great part of the first 100-150 pages...

So sorry, but that is just too far away from anything I'm can relate to. It's not the fact that the main character is woman, or that she's lesbian, it's the entire thing that just seem to get out of hand in a way. Somehow I can easier relate to a cold-blooded female mercenary with reflective lenses build into her skull to shield her eyes (yes I'm referring to the Trinity character in one of Gibsons trilogies) than with a young girl trying to be an actor who falls in love with a polar bear :)

There are clearly a very creative mind behind this book, but I'm not sure I'll try another of his books, as I've come across authors who I find get their stories much better across and who can tell a fascinating story without having to explain everything under the sun. To wrap this up in an easy recommendation; try something by William Gibson or Charles de Lint instead :)

Wolf Moon

The book I brought with me to Dublin last week was Wolf Moon by Charles de Lint. The only bad thing about it was that it was too good (and short)to last all week. It's a fantasy story which, like Forrest of the Heart, is build on old folk tales and myths, but with a very interesting twist. As you might have guessed, the book is about a werewolf, but in this story he's the good guy. This time werewolfs are not the blood thirsty beasts like normally told, but simply people with a gift/curse of being able to transform into a wolf. He wasn't bitten by a werewolf to become one and he's not restricted to changing only during full moon, but because of the stories we all know about werewolfs, he's as hunted and as feared as always.

Besides being crafted around mythology and old tales, the story is basically a love story and a story about the need to belong. As with Forrest of the Heart, Wolf Moon is well written and the length of the story is actually really good. If Charles de Lint had made it longer, it would have needed a few more villains or perhaps more werewolfs, but that would have distorted the message and probably killed the story. It could lead to similar stories set in the same world, and I'm yet to discover more books from Charles de Lint, so perhaps it was only the beginning of a small series of book. One could hope so.

In all: a very good story which is definitely worth buying. Just don't expect to have it last more than a few days, especially if you travel a lot like I do now :)

May Bank Holiday

I'm in London today as it's a bank holiday both in the UK and Ireland. It's not exactly a great day to be off work, one because it's not a holiday in Denmark meaning I'm here alone, and two: it's raining. Not just raining, it's pouring; coming down in buckets, raining cats and dogs; the Niagra Falls have been moved to be above London; Heaven has a serious pluming problem - call it what you will, I haven't seen it rain like this in ages (global warming leading to extreme weather?).

To make it even worse, I decided to go out to get a few things (it was only a slight drizzle at that point) and of cause this weekend I left the umbrella in Dublin. The last few weekends have been really nice with good weather and no rain, so i decided to leave the umbrella simply because I didn't want to carry it around. Besides, "empirical data" had shown me that the weather is always nice in London on weekends, so naturally it would continue that way - you know, just like house prices never go down ;)

Anyway, I'm just a bit bored and can't get around to start packing or to figure out how I'll get to the airport without being drenched, so I thought I'll just complain a bit about having been soaked to the skin within 5min...

Isn't that what blogs are for?