It’s Friday! What a busy week… not to mention month. Where did January go?! Dublin has been having chilly, but we’ve been having mostly sunny bright winter days. I don’t understand why people complain about the weather in Ireland at this time of the year, saying that it’s gloomy and depressing. Yes, it still gets dark relatively early but the days are getting longer...
This week has probably been the most stressful yet at work. My one staff person was out on leave again, so it was just me holding down the fort. I’ve been borrowing staff from a couple of other teams to help get some of the day-to-day transactional work done, but it feel like the mountainous backlog of overdue tasks that has built up over months (much of it before I even started) is resting fully...
A year ago today I arrived to Dublin on an overnight flight from Newark, New Jersey, landing in the morning local time and meeting my landlord at Sprangers Yard, which has been my home for the last 12 months. It’s the longest I’ve lived outside of the U.S., overtaking the previous record when I spent my college junior year abroad in Russia for 9-10 months. There are many milestones...
The weekend went by uneventfully. I took it easy on Saturday, going for a walk with a friend and enjoying being outside most of the afternoon, then spent a quiet evening at home. On Sunday I slept in, cleaned around the apartment, and then took a trip down to Dalkey to meet up with my landlord. As previously mentioned, I’ve negotiated a 10% discount on rent by paying two months at at time...
There hasn’t been much of interest to write about over the past few days. The weather has continued to be warm and humid, highs around 70 F / 20 C. I’ve been fighting off a sore throat, and consequently, I have forgone some walks in the evenings to rest instead. Geese and ducks in St. Stephens Green from a walk earlier in the week Work continues to be unrelenting. I’ve managed to cross a few...
When I went to The Ireland Dispatch website to write this post today, I was dismayed to be greeted with a white screen and an ominous message that a “fatal error” had occurred. I tried to remain calm and not panic. Thankfully I found plenty of information on how to fix the problem, but it was frustrating nonetheless. Apparently one of the “plugins” stopped working after an...
It’s been a long week. Work is becoming increasingly frustrating. There is a lot to do, but I haven’t received enough training about how to do it, and in some cases, not even an explanation about all the responsibilities that fall to our office. For example, emails about “OHF approval requests” suddenly began appearing in my inbox, but I had no idea what an OHF actually is despite my best efforts...
I’ve wrapped up the first week of my new job with University College Dublin (UCD). It’s been a lot of onboarding tasks, system access requests, and some initial training on research grant financial reporting. Today I paid a visit to campus so that I could pick up a laptop, external monitor, keyboard and mouse. There were very few people around due to COVID-19 restrictions and the...
My first couple of days in the new job with University College Dublin (UCD) have gone well. It’s a Financial Administrator position in UCD’s Research Finance Office, one of the departments under the Bursar / VP of Finance. My primary responsibility is to oversee grant reporting for research funding from the European Commission’s Horizon Europe programme. Currently, UCD has about 200...
Today is one of the four yearly bank holidays in Ireland (the others being in May, June, October). I’ve been relaxing and taking it easy — catching up on some TV, talking with a friend in the U.S. over a long phone call, doing some small chores around the apartment. Yesterday I met up with a new friend, P., for drinks out at PantiBar where the streets were crowded with people enjoying the...