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Friday I wrote my last exam: Innovation and Entrepreneurship. It was okay, because I already have some knowledge from my studies in Bamberg. My fellow Irish Computing students were not so happy. I am not sure if one was really able to do well in this exam without any prior knowledge. The lecturer, the class itself and the material were not very helpful. However, exam time is over; done.

Afterwards, all Erasmus students, InCuSo members and some of the Computing students went to the Fitzsimons in Temple Bar, where a pint is more expensive than a bar of gold and a cover band played great songs. They even tried Satch. But where was the Doktor? We sent him an SMS: „O Doktor, where art thou?“. His reply „Still in the universe“. Whatever that meant, he finally showed up.
Later, after Anna had accidentially wished Chris a happy birthday, we sang as loud as we could for our birthday boy Tom.

And suddenly it was time to say goodbye, because many people already planned to leave on Saturday. Some of the people I will probably never see again, some others I really do not want to meet ever again and then there are those that I already miss although they are just gone. Such as Tom, Stefan and Mr. Klaus. I really hope that I’ll meet you in Nijmegen, Kapfenberg, Derby or wherever you’ll roam (Bamberg?). It was very awkward to say goodbye and I am sure that I did not find the right words. Bye, guys!

Saturday, the leftovers (read: people who were neither already on their way back home nor had a hangover) met at Elodie’s flat for this semester’s last Erasmus party. Surprisingly, there were not many, but it was fun anyway. In the end, of course, time for more goodbye’s. Bye, everyone!

On Sunday Daniel, Herr Doktor and I went to Anna in order to help her moving all her stuff to Antje’s place in the city centre. The hard-earned prize: bruised shoulders, tons of food that she and her house mates were not able to eat before they left and a nice meal when we finally arrived. Tired and lazy we spent all the evening on Antje’s comfortable sofa before we had to say farewell to Anna and Antje. Bye, girls!

However, there was another mission to complete: we got a bike from Antje, but how were we supposed to get it from the city centre to our house? We thought it might be possible in the Luas, but the security staff in the orange vests just gave us a very unfriendly gesture to get lost. They did not even bother to speak to us. Just a gesture. Of course, not a single word about a refund. Where is a hero when you need one?

Herr Doktor offered to ride the bike home for us so that Daniel and I could take the Luas. Very nice of you, Chris! There’s our hero! When he finally arrived completely soaked in Kingswood, we said goodbye to our housemate and friend Daniel, who left on Monday at an ungodly hour. Bye, Bobo!

Bye, bye!

We finally received our navy-blue ITT Dublin hoodies:

Add some tracksuit trousers and you could think that Daniel and I are genuine Irish students.

Last weekend was great! Yoann asked everyone to come to the Metro on Saturday, his birthday. Although one could already hear the bad 90s music from hundreds of metres distance, it was pretty cool. Almost everyone, who was already back in Tallaght, showed up and we really had a great time together. I haven’t had so much fun while going out in months.
The day after, Thomas, Chris and I were invited to come to Anna for dinner (yummi wraps!) and I helped her migrating all her data from her old laptop to her red, new Dell. Did I already mention that I could possibly start working right away as a customer service representative for them right away? I already helped and gave advice to so many people that configured and ordered Dell laptops over here that I would like to ask: „Where is my bonus, Mister Dell?“

Enter Examinations:
Wed, 12:30-14:30 Corporate Social Responsibility
Thu, 15:30-17:30 Management and Organisational Behaviour
Fri, 09:30-11:30 Human Resource Management
Fri, 12:30-14:30 Economics 1
Fri, 15:30-17:30 Software Development 5

„O horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart
Cannot conceive nor name thee!“
Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3

Fortunately, this is last week’s exam time-table and not this week’s. This means: it’s already part of the past. Yay! Despite the circumstances, the exams went pretty well. Of course, I was not able to learn and prepare everything to the extent that I originally wanted to, but my instincts did not let me down and I correctly identified the most important aspects and learned them.

However, I am not very happy with the exam as well as my performance in Software Development. I do not know if it was just me, but there were way to many small syntax questions, where you could write everything in between two short sentences and a full-fledged thesis. Thus, time became an issue.
In my opinion, some of the questions were a bit stupid. If there are more searches than inserts, why would you keep things sorted by regularly sorting them instead of inserting at the right spot in the first place? And why the hell would you want to use a Bubblesort? Moreover, as often in class, there was a lack of sound object-orientation in the interfaces that had to be implemented as specified.
Of course, fatigue reared its ugly head after all these hours of examination and my performance (as well as my handwriting) went dooown. But I am not too worried: the examination only makes about half of the grade and the CAs and lab work hand-ups that make up the other one were almost perfect. More than 95% I think.

After this examination marathon, there is one more exam next Friday: Innovation and Entrepreneurship. I thought I deserve one or two days off now to recharge my batteries. So yesterday evening, Herr Doktor and I went to meet Tom at his place, where we chilled and played some games on the Xbox 360. Boy, it was good to see him again and I’m looking forward to tonight, because we’ll probably go out with some other guys that I haven’t really seen in a while (Chris!).

Happy new Year! Yesterday Chris and I showed Thomas a bit of Dublin: Trinity College, Grafton Street, National Gallery etc.
We really had to make plans for the evening, because we did not want to end up spending New Year’s Eve on our own.

Luckily we met someone during our explorations and kind of invited ourselves to a party. Moreover, we knew that there was a get-together at Anna and Georg’s place and Klaus invited us for some beers with him and the other Austrians. In the end, after a lot of back and forth and some stupid incidents, we just had a few beers and nachos in our living room and watched Mister Bean on telly before we went into the city centre.

At about eleven o’clock we finally arrived in Temple Bar, which was veeery crowded. Most of the pubs and clubs asked for entry fees (>= €20), but somehow we managed to find some that didn’t. Chris convinced us to get a shot of the „world famous ass juice“ in The Mezz. Well, it was probably not the greatest idea. Then we had a pint of delicious Smithwick’s in Farrington’s. There was barely enough air to breath, because the location bursted at the seams.

Just some seconds before midnight we arrived Half Penny Bridge where we met Anna, Georg, Klaus, Stefan, Immanuel, Julia, Lizzy and many more. The small pedestrian bridge was full of people from every corner of the world. You could hear English, Italian, German, Spanish, Polish and whatnot. Stefan had bought lucky charms for everyone (a pig with a top hat for me) and some stranger hugged everyone.

Being used to the extensive (and expensive) run for the best fireworks in Germany it was a bit strange to see no fireworks at all. Therefore it became boring outside very soon and Georg led all of us to a Hogan’s, a cool bar in Georges Street (haha!).
Unbelievable: they closed at quarter past one in the morning. On New Year’s Eve! So we asked some local who told us to head to The Globe, another nice pub just around the corner. That was a straight tip and we had a pretty good time over there until they closed, too.

All in all I had a ball. I have to admit that I missed the fireworks, though. New Year’s Eve in Ireland is indeed very different from German Silvester. It ended for me lying happy in my bed at approximately half past four in the morning where I dozed off while listening to some audio book using my mp3 player.
Some hours later, in the middle of the night, I suddenly woke up with „Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds“ in my ears. A great song for a great night.

Today I returned to Ireland. I had a great time in Alfeld where I shared some good ol‘ German beer with my „homies“, spend a lot of time with my family and ate way to much of the „good stuff“.
I could write for ages without covering even more than yesterday evening (which was truly brilliant!), but I prefer to dedicate this blog to my adventures in Ireland and I think noone would like to read all of that anyway.

So here I am. Back. Finally. Why „finally“? Well, while my flight to Germany went well, coming back was rather stressful. Diesen Beitrag weiterlesen »