Jump to content
gdf

Life

Recommended Posts

If you're talking about outside Dublin as in suburbs/nearby, there are buses and a light rail service but you'd probably wanna look into individual places. There's a lot of buses but they're kinda expensive and unreliable. I believe that outside of Dublin most towns are walkable really if you're living in them. Dibs might correct me on that though, I've mostly been in the not as big towns.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Towns are walkable/bikeable if you don't mind a bit of leg work, you will rarely have trouble getting to shops etc if you check your location out beforehand. However, getting between towns is a lot less fun. As SBM said, busses and trains are not our greatest strengths. Between the bigger towns you will be grand, but you might be a bit isolate otherwise.

 

Are you tied to living in a big city? I mean, you could move somewhere like Galway and be within walking distance of the beach/sea whenever you wanted a good brisk winter walk. Galway is a really cool town, and easilty accessible. There is for instance a bus service that runs from the city straight to dublin airport (as there would be from Limerick and from Cork). Galway is also quite artsy, so it might be a good place for support if you are writing. Weather would be utter shite most likely. Ireland has rather mild weather, but also rather wet. Cork is cool too (i live there), and Limerick isn't bad (i used to live there).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Winter in Seattle is very gloomy and rainy, but also typically not that cold compared to the horrors I've heard of New York(just below freezing at night, warming up too high 40s during the day most of the time.) I imagine Vancouver would be the same.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

She's actually an amazing cook, but she hates cooking. I like cooking, but I have zero talent in that area. I've enjoyed the handful of times that we've stayed in and made something, but she definitely hasn't, so home cooking is more of a "special occasion" thing for us.

As someone who is fairly good at cooking and enjoys it some of the time, I've been really thankful when my wife is willing to try her best and cook something from a premade freezer bag or something. Maybe kicking her out of the kitchen so she doesn't have to worry about cooking would be worth the lack-luster results to her? Might be worth asking.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

And I never thought about the Netherlands—I'm just reading now how thoroughly English has muscled in on Dutch throughout your country, osmosisch.  I apologize!

Eh, it's fine. I'm partially to blame anyway as a half-Scot ;)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You are now looking at the new associate edition of Milkfist!

A lit mag that focuses on avant-garde, experimental, weird, surreal and horror short stories, poetry, photography and non-fictional stories. ;:D

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You are now looking at the new associate edition of Milkfist!

A lit mag that focuses on avant-garde, experimental, weird, surreal and horror short stories, poetry, photography and non-fictional stories. ; :D

More than one edition I hope?

 

(congrats!)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

If you ever want to know what all your friends would sound like as Mon Calamari (REAL STAR WARS RACE), just get two ear infections at once!

 

Have you had one of them say "Its a trap!" yet?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So I have an interview in Germany soon. I really want the job, and I think I've got a good chance of getting it. Do any German thumbs know how imperative it is for me to learn german if I do indeed get the job. Everyone I'd be working with directly speaks English so that's not a problem, but all the other people I'd have to talk to in normal life probably won't.

 

It's not like I don't want to learn, and I will certainly try, but I'm incredibly bad at learning languages, so even if I do manage it, it'll take a long time. I spent a few months in Italy when I was younger and I barely learned a thing...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I had an interview about a month and a half ago, they said they'd be in touch within a few weeks. I'm 99% sure they haven't hired anyone, but I'm wondering if I should contact them. Not sure if it's pushy to do so, or if it seems like I'm disinterested if I don't etc.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

In my experience those things are hit or miss.  My first job out of college I was told I'd be contacted in a few weeks and I got called the next day with an offer.  The job I had before my current one also told me a few weeks, then after 3 months of zero contact I was suddenly called with a job offer.

 

I think you're fine contacting them at least once. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I had to wait almost a year before my current job gave me the offer.

 

Not exaggerating!

 

Express interest, but don't pester daily. That's what I do!

 

Advice always given to me: they'll never not hire you for being interested in the job. In general, I email once a week if I get no response after the time limit they set. If it goes a month with no response from emails every week, I assume they don't want me anymore! If they do, they'll get back to me later. (Like this one did, and like SAM's did!)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm feeling really overwhelmed at work right now.  I already have a number of projects that I'm responsible for and don't really have enough time to get them done to the degree that I would like.  But on top of that one of my colleagues is quitting to move to New York to be with his wife who is currently attending school there.  He's basically been solely responsible for a rather large project for the past 2 years and the implementation date is quickly approaching.  Because I was tangentially involved at the beginning, I will inherit his project when he leaves.  I've been out of the loop for the bulk of those 2 years and yet I'm going to be responsible for making sure it's done.  I'm also being asked to babysit about 5 other things by someone who is going on vacation, all of which I know basically nothing about.  Every one of them is pretty large in scope.

 

I feel like I've been handed several flaming chainsaws then forced to learn to juggle them.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So I have an interview in Germany soon. I really want the job, and I think I've got a good chance of getting it. Do any German thumbs know how imperative it is for me to learn german if I do indeed get the job. Everyone I'd be working with directly speaks English so that's not a problem, but all the other people I'd have to talk to in normal life probably won't.

 

It's not like I don't want to learn, and I will certainly try, but I'm incredibly bad at learning languages, so even if I do manage it, it'll take a long time. I spent a few months in Italy when I was younger and I barely learned a thing...

 

I don't think it would be a problem at all to just get by with English in Germany. Heck, an American friend of my sister once said that it was hard for her to learn German in Germany because everyone immediately tried their best to answer her in English! The average grasp of the English language that Germans possess is pretty good, of those of at least mid-tier education at least.

Nevertheless, I certainly love my language, so I hope that sooner or later you will fall in love with it, too! ^^

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Just an FYI, there is Duolingo that has German courses you can take to at least get some vocab under your belt.  The hardest part of German for me (someone with rudimentary german language skills) is not vocab (there are a lot of cognates, and root words are easy to use to figure out what words mean) it's cases & noun genders in sentence construction. 

Like I know what the dative feminine articles are, but remembering the gender of a noun + figuring out in a grammatical sense when something is an indirect object was very hard for me.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks for the info. I would love to learn a second language, I've heard that German is one of the more difficult European languages to learn. People responding in English is the main reason I couldn't learn Italian when I was younger. I would say something in my broken awkward Italian and everyone would reply in perfect English.

I think people tend to be quite forgiving when it comes to tense and word gender, well from my experience speaking to a lot of Romanians and Poles if I can understand what they're trying to say, I don't correct them, I just have a conversation.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't know about german being one of the more difficult european languages to learn, you got hungarian, finish, any slavic language, serbian will have you maybe learning a different alphabet. German feels more "cleaned up" than english to me. There's only so many irregular verbs to learn, maybe less than english? Learning the genders of words might seem weird if you're coming from english being your first language.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

One really nice thing i thought (in secondary school and 1 year at uni) about German was that it is very easy to read and pronounce once you learn how. There never seemed to be any hidden pronunciations or anything.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I can't roll my r's in any capacity, so my American accent really shines when I try and pronounce German (there's like a guttural, rolled quality to German r's that I can't replicate), but it is a very approachable language as a(n native) English speaker from a pronunciation aspect. No silent letters, there aren't short/long vowel sounds that look the same on the page that you have to memorize, no irregular pronunciations except when they just straight up co-opt french words.

Like I said, because there are so many words that are similar (haben = to have, Buch = Book, as a couple super basic vocab examples) it makes vocabulary memorization fairly straight forward, and verb conjugation is, like Jutranjo said, pretty easy as there are very limited irregular verbs.

If you have a good understanding of english grammar, it may be easier for you to construct sensical sentences than me. Direct objects, indirect objects, independent clauses, etc. are all things that affect sentence structure & word choice in German, and because I know how to construct an English sentence doesn't mean I can accurately diagram one out, which hindered my growth and stunted my speaking ability.  Reading for me was much easier.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm feeling really overwhelmed at work right now. I already have a number of projects that I'm responsible for and don't really have enough time to get them done to the degree that I would like. But on top of that one of my colleagues is quitting to move to New York to be with his wife who is currently attending school there. He's basically been solely responsible for a rather large project for the past 2 years and the implementation date is quickly approaching. Because I was tangentially involved at the beginning, I will inherit his project when he leaves. I've been out of the loop for the bulk of those 2 years and yet I'm going to be responsible for making sure it's done. I'm also being asked to babysit about 5 other things by someone who is going on vacation, all of which I know basically nothing about. Every one of them is pretty large in scope.

I feel like I've been handed several flaming chainsaws then forced to learn to juggle them.

I don't understand the reality of work-situations like this. It sounds like you have been saddled with an amount of things that you literally can not do the entiriety of. If you approached a supervisor and said "I was originally on track to do [whatever], but because of people leaving, I am overloaded and some decisions need to be made about which of these projects are higher in priority unless you can help me delegate them into capable hands." would you be reprimanded for it? If so, that seems like a management problem to me.

Full disclosure: I work part-time, alone, at an easy job partially because I don't want to deal with these types of situations.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Without going into complete detail, the bottom line is we're understaffed.  Everyone has a lot on their plate.  To save money, the company has initiated a hiring freeze meaning that relief isn't coming any time soon.  In fact it's only going to get worse because of a lot of upcoming retirements.  The main thing I'm complaining about is that I was handed a bunch of things all at once and almost all of them just before they're due.  In terms of priority, they're all a priority otherwise we wouldn't need someone to babysit them.  Some of them are actually being done by outside contractors, but I still have to review and oversee their work, which can actually take up even more time if they give me a bad product (and so far at least one of them is).  My supervisor is fully aware of the situation but there's really nothing he can do about it unless he somehow gets the authorization to hire more people.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That sounds super stressful SAM. If things turn out poorly that's a management failure, not your failure.

Definitely ask, a month and a half sounds like a long time though, so I wouldn't get your hopes up.

I was going to reach out to them, but I just got a notification that someone else got the job. Right before that though I got called to an interview for a different PhD position, so I guess that evens it out.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×