It’s been a few days since my last post. The latter half of the week was mostly uneventful, so there’s not been much to share, but today I have some worthwhile updates.
First off, I received my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine today! A text message confirming my appointment came through on Thursday, about a week after I had registered online. I was assigned to the vaccination centre on the south side of Dublin at Aviva Stadium (named after a British insurance company that has a large presence in Ireland who bought the sponsorship rights). The entire process took about 30-45 minutes, including the 15 minute wait in a sitting area to make sure there wasn’t any adverse reaction. Mostly the people were around my age, although there were some older folks that were probably coming back for the second shot. I should expect to get another text message confirming an appointment for my second dose in another 3-4 weeks, which means I’ll be fully vaccinated by mid-July. Woohoo!
After a long, wet and cold spring, Ireland is finally enjoying some gorgeous weather — some news outlets have exaggeratedly called it a “heat wave” — today’s high is in the upper 60s F (maybe even 70!) / 20 C. Originally I had made plans with my friend CJ to go on an outing somewhere outside of Dublin to take full advantage of the weather. However, with my vaccination appointment scheduled in the middle of the day at 2:50pm, we ended up scaling down our ambitions to somewhere closer. We met up around midday, walked down Pearse Street on the other side of Trinity College to pick up some sandwiches the Pig and Heifer deli, then hopped on a DART commuter train at Pearse Station a block away and rode a few stops down to Sandymount Beach. The train was packed with people heading to destinations even further south, so perhaps it wasn’t a bad thing that we changed our destination to somewhere less popular. Out on the beach, it was a bit windier than I expected, but still plenty warm enough for shorts and a T-shirt — probably the first time I’ve left the apartment without a jacket or sweatshirt since my arrival last October.
Pearse Street station:
Views from Sandymount Beach:
There is a noticeable exuberance in the air as Ireland continues to emerge from the months long strict lockdown. On Friday evening, Taoiseach Micheál Martin announced the phase reopening of hospitality and travel, summarized in this graphic from the Irish Times:
The most anticipated date is probably July 19, when non-essential international travel is scheduled to resume. This coincides with Ireland’s expected implementation of the EU’s Digital COVID Certificate programme, which will serve as a standardized platform for verifying testing and vaccination data so that travelers can more easily navigate the varying country restrictions.
Although outdoor hospitality (restaurants and dining) is not opening up for another week on June 7, more and more people are enjoying take-away drinks and food on the streets. It was another boisterous Saturday night in Temple Bar. The Garda arrived to disperse the larger crowds around 11:00pm, but groups of young stragglers continued to amble loudly up and down Crow Street for another hour or so. The noise doesn’t bother me so much, but the morning after it’s such a shame to see so much litter and rubbish left in the streets… beer bottles, plastic cups from take-away pints, food containers. To their credit, the Dublin city sanitation workers are doing their best to clean it all up.
In other personal news, I finally received more job onboarding details from Jigsaw. My start date will be Monday June 14, which gives me two weeks to prepare for going back to work after almost a year-and-a-half since my last job at UCSF. Technically the job offer is still contingent on me passing a background check with the Garda / police, and Jigsaw also asked for two professional references that I already had ready-to-go. In order to get paid, I’m having to open an account with an Irish-domiciled bank, which is required for their payroll processing and also for tax purposes — technically my TransferWise euro account is associated with a bank in Belgium. Although I already have a PPS number (which serves as a tax ID number like social security numbers in the U.S.), there are some additional steps required to register with the Irish tax authorities that I need to figure out.
In the meantime, I’ve also been trying to stay on track with studying for my second accounting exam scheduled for mid-July. Yesterday I spent a few hours taking online practice tests on the first section of material, which includes a lot of financial ratios that have to be memorized. On my third attempt, I missed the target score by one question, so I’ll have to take another practice test and hit the magic passing score of 86% before I can move on to the next section in the study programme. Thankfully, Jigsaw agreed to me starting off at 3.5 days per week until after my second accounting exam to give me some extra time to study. Even so, it’s going to be a challenge to cover everything and be fully prepared.
Until next time….
