Dublin is reaching its peak summer weather, with highs in mid 70s F / mid 30s C tempered by a refreshing breeze. I have been decompressing over the last couple of days since my CMA exam on Wednesday. Yesterday I took the DART commuter rail down to Dalkey to pay a visit to my landlord who lives there. Once I knew I would be staying in Ireland through at least the end of 2021, I negotiated a 10%...
I survived the second CMA exam today. It was about as gruelling as the first one, and the 4 hours went by more quickly than you’d think. I finished all the multiple choice questions but had to guess on a few due to time constraints. The essay / short-answer questions were straightforward. The standard turnaround for results is 6 weeks after the end of the month of the exam, which would be...
CMA Exam Yesterday I completed a full 4-hour exam simulation on my study programme’s website, although I only scored 69% (the target is 86%). The programme recommends taking it easy the day before the exam, but today I’m doing some more practise questions and reviewing the ones I’ve missed. I’m sure if I wasn’t doing the study programme in a compressed timeline then...
Today is the Euro 2020 football (i.e., soccer) final match between England and Italy, basically the equivalent of the SuperBowl in Europe. The 2020 season was postponed due to COVID-19, and it’s not entirely clear to me when the Euro 2021 final match will take place… from now on will they always be off a year?! Who knows. The last time England won was in 1966, and at the time of this...
Today I finally received an initial offer from University College Dublin! The additional reference I provided earlier in the week for my time at UC Berkeley was accepted and approved by the hiring manager, whew. The salary is at the top of the range for the position, although it’s still considerably less than what I used to make in the U.S. That said, it’s much more than what Jigsaw could pay and...
Rock band on Crow Street This morning I was surprised to hear the sound of a drum kit coming from Crow Street. I look out the window to see that a rock band has set up in the middle of the street with a camera crew. Over the course of the day, the band plays multiple takes of the same song, so I’m guessing they were recording a music video or a pre-recorded performance for an online event...
It appears that the built-in email functionality with Blogger / Blogspot / Feedburner has stopped working, so I finished up the migration today to my new website domain: . Anyone who has been receiving new posts via email have been imported into my new email service (MailChimp), and new email updates will be coming from hugh@theirelanddispatch.com. Hopefully they won’t get flagged as spam...
It’s been a relaxing Saturday. I slept in a bit then had a relaxed breakfast until my my SuperValu grocery delivery arrived early around 10:15am. Since I’m caught up with my CMA studies, I spend a several hours working on my blog migration project. So far, it seems that Blogger’s email subscription feed is still working, although I’m expecting it to stop any day now. By...
COVID update Public discourse over the government’s decision to delay the reopening of indoor restaurant/bar service has been heating up. Ireland is the only country left in the EU where indoor dining is categorically not allowed (the only exception is that hotel guests may dine indoors at on-site restaurants). Unlike some other EU countries, Ireland has not developed “corona...
Today marks nine months since I arrived to Ireland on October 1st last year. There have been some encouraging developments over the last three months, including: • Being invited to several job interviews and receiving a few offers (no further update from University College Dublin today); • Sitting for the first Certified Management Accounting (CMA) exam in May and accelerating my studies for the...