Flour Power

It's now more than a month late, but I need to get this one out of the way: on the 15th of January, my Guinness counter hit number 500. It has come a long way since number one, when I first arrived to Ireland.

And since this was more than just another pint, I made sure I drank it in the same pub I had the first one in. And more: I was sitting at the same table. And this took place exactly (give or take a couple of hours) one year after Guinness Pint Number One. Historic, eh?!

"And now what?", you might ask. Well, now I stop counting. It was fun as a topic of conversation, but the fun was gone when people insisted on telling me how much money I had spent on Guinness.

Now that I'm done with the counting, I also got rid of the counter in the sidebar. I just felt the need to point this out, otherwise people might think I stopped drinking Guinness altogether, which is not the case at all. Rest assured, Guinness people, I'll keep sending money your way...

132 will mark the next milestone in my Guinness counter. Why? I'll explain.

As you might remember, I previously mentioned that 1 pint is not equal to half a liter. In fact, it's something like:

1 Imperial pint = 0.568261485 liters

Now considering that my body weight is approximately 75Kg and that the density of Guinness is the density of water (which I know it isn't, each beer has a different density based on a variety of factors, but the variation is too small to be relevant for the case at hand) - 1g/cm³ - let us make the following calculation:

75 / 0.568261485 = 131.98

What this means is, by the time I finish my Guinness pint number 132, I'll have drunk my own body weight in Guinness! When presented this way, it sounds a little bit overwhelming.

Anyway, judging from last weekend, I guess I'll get to that number quite soon... And then I'll probably stop counting. Or I'll just remove the counter, so that people don't think of me the drunk-bastard-that-likes-to-show-it-off-on-his-crappy-blog.

I just hope I can get the milestone glass this time.

2 months, 18 days, 5 hours and some minutes after I arrived in Galway, I drank my one hundreth pint of Guinness!

What? Don't give me that look! It's not like I was binge drinking a lot to get to that number. It's just that Guinness goes down so easily that most of the nights out I get to number 4 without even noticing it. For me, it's much easier to drink than the lager I always had before coming here, which is much more common in Portugal.

And the big One Oh Oh was drank on the 2nd of April, which is also my birthday. Makes it a historic pint, doesn't it? Well, maybe not, but whatever. Here's the (very artistic) photo of Pint Number 100:

I only regret not being able to keep Glass Number 100 (it was gone from the poor hiding place by the time I was on the way back home). It would go right next to Glass Number 50 and Glass Number 69 (yeah, I know... typical... but I had to keep it...).

Next milestone will happen in roughly 30 pints, but I'll have to do some math to get the exact number

I “promised” a detailed report of the small trip I did to Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day, right? So I invoke the “a picture is worth a thousand words” rule, and here are roughly 17 thousand words about my trip. Is that detailed enough?

The 16th of March, having dinner and then going out:

On St. Patrick’s Day morning afternoon, a taste of the parade and all the festive mood around the city:

And also a few shots of buildings and suchlike:

And for the more distracted, in the last few days I have been posting a few funny pictures shot during Paddy’s Day.

And that was very disappointing...

So I ordered a Guinness instead

Shouldn't be too hard getting to 100...

After going to The King's Head two days in a row, yesterday I decided to go somewhere else for a change. After all, the idea is getting to know as many pubs as possible, and not going to the same ones every time.

The destination of choice was Coyotes, a place I had been curious about since I passed in front of it a few weeks ago and liked what I saw at the door. And Wednesday the drinks are cheaper - only €3.5! A bargain, I say!

Upon arrival we (two of my housemates decided to come with) were greeted with a queue - they were asking for everyone's ID. This didn't sound very good, because it probably meant that the crowd inside would be very young... so young that they really needed to check everyone trying to enter, to make sure no under-18s would be able to slip inside unnoticed. And my suspicions were right. We were probably the oldest people there (apart from the staff), and I felt like I was someone's older brother, there to keep an eye on my sibling. And to make matters even worse, the music was terrible! So after one Guinness (in a plastic cup!!), we headed off to the next stop - The Living Room.

The Living Room is a pub with a small dance floor, that becomes somewhat nightclub-ish later at night. It's a good alternative to the "pure" nightclubs, and the crowd is usually on my age range. The problem yesterday was that, apparently, it isn't very nightclub-ish on Wednesdays, and since the gals insisted on getting some dancing done, we immediately left to our final, and longest, stop of the evening.

Which was Róisin Dubh. I had already been there a few times, and knew that at around 11pm (after the live performance of the day), a DJ goes on stage and the concert area turns into a dance floor. Yesterday was no exception, and after some time I was jumping around like crazy. The music there is not the mainstream stuff you find in nightclubs. It's more of a rock genre, and yesterday's playlist included Pixies, Franz Ferdinand, Beirut, Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, Gomez, Nirvana and Blur. Great stuff! When I got home at 3am (yes, I had to get up at 7am to go to work...) my ears were still buzzing...

This episode helps proving that here in Galway there's no such thing as only going out on the weekend. There's plenty of animation every single day of the week (I didn't even mention the queues to the nightclubs, but maybe that was Rag Week's fault). The only problem is that I have to sleep every once in a while, and having to wake up every morning to go to work doesn't help...

On my attempt to really get to know Galway's nightlife, I took upon myself the task of not staying at home a single night during this this week. Only two days have passed and the tiredness is already building up, but so far it has been worth it.

On Monday the destination was The King's Head. It's one of Galway's oldest pubs, and well known for it's nightly live music gigs. I have to say that there is a good reason for it to be known for the live music gigs. A two-man band was playing a nice selection of covers, including some Jack Johnson, The Beatles and Counting Crows. The crowd (mostly foreigners, a lot of them Americans) was always very involved, especially in everyone's favorite Galway Girl (with a few improvised, and much more interesting, verses).

I was too lazy to record any videos, but I did take a couple of pictures:

On Tuesday the idea was going to some other pub, but after checking out a few of them, all of which were either too crowded or too empty and with no music, I ended up at The King's Head again. And I was again greeted with a two-man band (a different one), playing great covers. A special reference to the awesomely performed Hotel California and, of course, Galway Girl. And this time not only did I take pictures but I also recorded a couple of songs. The problem is, they turned out pretty dark, but at least the sound is decent. So, here's Galway Girl (a few seconds missing at the beginning, but the more interesting verses are still there):

Update: Did some editing on the video to try and make it less dark. The result is embedded above.

It's been one month (on Sunday the 15th) and I sure haven't been bored at all during this time:

• The room I rented was pink so I had to spend a weekend painting it red;
• I've been to quite a few of pubs, including one of those typical Irish pubs and one great concert in a pub;
• My Guinness counter is growing steady and is now at 30, which is just under 1 pint per day;
• I keep finding funny, weird and cool stuff around and taking pictures;
• I also keep spotting girls in short skirts but I'm lacking on the taking pictures part, and I apologise for that...
• It's always nice to walk around the main street and listening to some great street performer.

And since it's been a while since my last Galway report, here are some random stuff that the most bored of you may find somewhat funny:

• I still haven't had any road accident (or some kind of scare, for that matter), even though they drive on the wrong side of the road and there are no zebra crossings. I guess they compensate it by being extra careful and driving extra slow all the time;
• There seem to be less short skirts when the temperature gets better, which doesn't make any sense and kind of makes me sad because the weather has been quite reasonable in the last few days;
• I'm starting to be able to figure out how to tell a good Guinness from a not-so-good one. And I have been informed of where are the best places to have it;
• Whenever I look sleepy at work (which is always), everyone asks me if I went out last night, but not in a way to imply that's reprehensible. On the contrary, they ask it with a smile, as if approving it

And that about sums it up for this first month. It's been loads of fun, despite all the cooking, cleaning and washing. It will be even better when friends start coming over to visit. Right?

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!