Flour Power

I really couldn’t take all that pinkness. Maybe if it wasn’t so strong, or if the stay was shorter, I could have endured. But not this way. And the pink curtains with the pink Playboy bunnies didn’t help either…

So I spent this past weekend repainting the room. I decided for a red color. Not “Benfica red”, but a darker shade of red. They call it “English Fire”.

Saying the painting process was hard is an understatement, but I’ll describe all the pains in another post, if I can get myself to write it. It started on Saturday afternoon (was supposed to start in the morning, but I couldn’t wake up early after one week of sleeping only 5 hours per night) and lasted until just a few hours ago. That included going to the shop to buy the paint, removing everything from the room, placing some masking tape, applying the first coat, waiting for it to dry, applying the second coat, waiting for it to dry while washing the brushes and the roller, removing the masking tape, and finally moving everything back inside the room. That basically meant spending the whole weekend stuck inside the house and, to make it even worse, the weather was the best since I arrived. Even the sun decided to show up…

All things considered, I still think it was worth it. I can now spend bigger amounts of time inside my room without going nuts, and it’s somehow cool to have a room that you painted yourself. Ando so, without further ado, I present you “The Room”, now in red:

Yesterday was the end of my first week here in Galway, and I think a brief summary is in order. I’ll jump to the fun part in a moment because I don’t want to bore you with the work details. I just want to mention that I’ve been very well received by my boss and all the co-workers, and that the work is running smoothly.

Now for the fun part, some numbers:

• 10+ street musicians, including: a saxophone player, a guy playing acoustic guitar under a shop’s door frame, a guy playing Green Day’s “Basket Case” on an electric guitar (with some kind of portable amplifier), and some blokes with a drumset!
• 6 pints of Guinness (I plan on keeping a counter on these);
• 6 pubs visited;
• 0 zebra crossings spoted;
• 100+ girls with short skirts spoted, even though it’s always about 5ºC and raining most of the time;
• 5 minutes of sun exposure;
• (X – 5) * 0,9 minutes of rain exposure (approximately), where X is the total number of minutes I spent on the street;
• 0 square centimeters of dry asphalt seen;
• 6 Portuguese people met;
• 6 trips to the supermarket (that’s what happens when you don’t have a car to carry everything in one go).

And since I like statistics, I started using Buxfer to register all the money I spend and get reports that will help me understand where all the money is going, because otherwise I may go bankrupt from all the money spent on vegetables and fruit… I’ll post some results of this experiment when I have some more data.

I’m also promising to share some of the hundreds of short skirts with you all, as a special “gift” to those living in countries much warmer than Ireland and still the girls have more clothes on than an Eskimo (yes, Portugal is in that group).

Over and out!

I don’t believe in miracles, but something out of the ordinary happened yesterday, just one day after I wrote a post “complaining” about how difficult it is to find a room to rent in the center of Galway. I thought that only a miracle could save me:

As you can see, this is not easy. I have to change my requirements a little bit. Like looking at places a bit further from the centre, and also considering paying a bit more (which means less beer). Unless some perfect house miraculously shows up…

Well, I guess some kind of miracle happened! Here’s a summary of how it went.

On the way back home, at the entrance to the apartment complex (called Dun Aengus) where I’ve been staying since last thursday (at Sónia’s place), there was a handwritten note saying that a single and a double room were available. I called immediately, since rooms in this area are very sought out for, both because of the great location and because they’re quite modern. I managed to arranje a viewing for an hour later and after dinner I was moving in, from number 57 to number 54.

I won’t go into a lot of details, but I want to mention the most awesome of them all. First I was shown the single room and I thought it was nice: not too small, furnished and with a nice view to the marina. Then there was the double room, and just before showing it to me they told me something like “But there’s a small thing… that you might not like…”. And this is what I saw (minus my stuff).

Yes, that’s right, the room is pink! PINK! I was shocked at first, but then they told me I could paint it, and that they had painted theirs just a few days ago, so I relaxed a bit. I still considered taking the single room instead of this one, but its color was not that better – purple! I ended up choosing the double because if I have to paint it anyway, I might as well take the biggest room.

So I found exactly the house I was looking for. It fills all my requirements (location, price and Internet) and it even comes with a very good extra: friendly and party-ready flatmates (who are Polish, btw, which by itself is another bonus).

I’m now on the process of setting up the room (my clothes are still inside the suitcase), and I have to pick a new color for the room ASAP. The plan is to paint it on the weekend.

Any suggestions?

Who said that finding a room to rent would be easy? No one did. And if someone had, that someone would be dead wrong.

It’s not that I didn’t start early. I spent some time on http://www.daft.ie/ (the self-proclaimed “Ireland’s Biggest Property Site”) and when I arrived I already had a list of more than 20 places that seemed “nice”, which is quite difficult to evaluate because most of the listings don’t have any photos. My requirements were something like:

• Close proximity to the centre (not more than 10 minutes of walking);
• Rent not higher than €400 per month;
• Internet connection.

So when I got here I was ready to start with the viewings and all that. I have to confess I didn’t start as fast as I could have, but I was still getting the hang of the city, to know where each place is located. And now that I know, it seems that every place is already taken. Or the house doesn’t have Internet (although the listing says it does). Or the description has “males only” and “ONLY PROFESSIONALS” on it (I don’t know about you, but that scares me a little bit). And so on…

After a great deal of phone calls I’ve been able to view 3 places:

1. Great location, good price, but soooo small…
2. Good location, spacious house, but no Internet…
3. Good location, cozy atmosphere, but only available on the 27th…

Number 1 will not alow me to fit in bed. Number 2 is not even an option if I can’t get Internet there. And I still have to find a broadband provider that doesn’t require a 12 month contract (I’m staying for 6). Number 3 seems like the most viable option, but I don’t want to be occupying Sónia’s (my host, and a former participant of the Inov Contacto program – C11) living room for so long. And even if I do decide that I want the room, the current occupants still have to choose me from all the people that want it…

As you can see, this is not easy. I have to change my requirements a little bit. Like looking at places a bit further from the centre, and also considering paying a bit more (which means less beer). Unless some perfect house miraculously shows up…

On the upside, I now have quite a good knowledge of the street names in the city centre.

Hello everyone! (yes, both of you!). I present you the first post of what I hope to be my long lasting personal blog.

First, some background.

I’ve been planning to start a blog for some time now. I guess I felt the need to have some kind of presence on the web besides having an account in all the major social networks. Or maybe I just wanted to share my ramblings with more than just the person that happens to be next to me at the time. The truth is, the blog never got started until now. And why was that? Those that know me might say it was laziness (which, I must admit, is one of my many “skills”). I prefer to think it had to do with the fact that my life wasn’t that much interesting and that I shouldn’t waste my time writing uninteresting stuff for no one to read.

But something happened to make me take the step to actually do it…

And that was being selected to be part of the Inov Contacto program! What that meant was being sent for an internship in a company I didn’t choose, in a city that could be anywhere in the world. My destination: Galway, Ireland!

This was the tipping point for the blog creation and so, from now on, this is going to be my small space on the web. For starters, I’ll be posting all kinds of adventures I happen to stumble upon during my stay in the country where Guinness was born. Since this is a personal blog, you may also expect to find posts about my interests, which include movies, music, tv shows, poker, technology, books and, of course, funny stuff on the Internet. And then there might be some seemingly senseless posts…

You might be wondering why am I writing in English since I’m actually Portuguese. Well, this is yet another attempt to keep improving my English. And I have quite a few non-Portuguese-speaking friends that might be interested in reading what I have to say. And I’ll write in Portuguese whenever I need to say something that can’t quite be expressed without the richness of our beautiful language

And that’s basically it. Join me for the ride!