Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is dominating the news in Ireland and Europe, surely to an even larger extent than it has in the U.S. given the closer proximity of events. There have been many comparisons of the situation to World War II, calling Putin the 21st century Hitler, etc. At least Ireland is an island so it’s not directly connected to the European continent. However, the Irish...
It’s hard to believe that I haven’t written a blog post in almost a week. On Saturday, I had a first date with someone new, another “J.” We met at Bewley’s on Grafton Street, ordered some take-away coffee, then walked around St. Stephens Green. The conversation was easy going, and both of us seemed interested in extending our time together, so we headed to a bar...
It’s been a short work week due to the Monday bank holiday, but it has seemed much longer. My team had a number of grant financial reports to file with the European Commission before the end of October, and we’re still working on a few reports that have been granted extensions from previous months. Two temporary employees from staffing agencies ended their assignments today, leaving...
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...