The Deep Blue Sea

For the past three weekends (during my long absence from blog posts), I have been exploring the coastline around Dublin. Dublin has some of the most spectacular and strange geography I have ever encountered; it is positioned on a river, but within 20 minutes of both the sea and the mountains, which makes it, frankly, beautiful. The Irish Sea is also lovely, and I have explored it from both sides of the bay, Clontarf in the north and Dun Laoghaire in the south (more on pronunciation later...)

The first weekend of my explorations was warm enough for me to venture ankle deep into the sea. My Irish companions on this journey did not join me in the water, chalking my frigid wading up to some strange American gene that clearly never made it to Ireland. After about 25 minutes, however, I found myself unable to continue wading. Suddenly, I felt great sympathy for the passengers of the Titanic. Now, however: Pictures!




This is the beach at low tide in Clontarf, the site of a very important battle in AD 1014. It is still a beachfront town, although this picture is a bit confusing, because of the land mass in the background. That is actually the island of Howth, and there is open sea between Clontarf and Howth.








This photo shows the same area, but it is slightly easier to see that Howth is an island, and that all that green-looking area in the middle is actually just the sea bed at low tide. This is also close to a park that I visited, but I have too many pictures of that to put them all here...






The middle weekend, I went to Clontarf again, but the following weekend I went to Dun Laoghaire, which (in that wonderful Irish way) is actually pronounced "Dun Leary." Of course. Nevertheless, Dun Laoghaire was even more gorgeous than Clontarf, if only because it is the site of the main harbor for Dublin city, and I do love boats. Pictures!



Obviously, I found the yacht club.

And there were yachts there:


I also took a whole bunch of really lovely photos of the pier at Dun Laoghaire, which you can see in the background of the picture to the left. These are again too numerous to put on this blog, but maybe I will pop them in to a later post. For now, I am getting hungry, so I will end this post with another apology for the latency between posts, and promise that it won't happen again!

Freshers Week

Trinity College Dublin must have one of the latest start dates of any university, given that it is only now that students are once again gracing the fantastically Neoclassical halls. One unforseen side effect of this academic influx is the strange and magical (and sometimes frightening) period of time known as: Freshers Week.

A Fresher, as you might have guessed, is a first year student, or for you less PC people, a freshman. They are invited back to campus a week before the rest of the students, so that they can be properly orientated, introduced, and intoxicated before being thrown into the arena of death. I mean, the Student Societies and Organizations Fair.

Every afternoon for the past week, the front courtyard of the campus, known as Parliament Square, has been innundated with people setting up and then manning booths offering a bevy of delights from philosphy to rifle shooting to surfing. I can only hope that the surfing club has rather a large budget for wetsuits, because I have been in the Irish sea, and as far as I can tell, the only reason it isn't the Irish Glacier is because there is a whole lot of salt in it.

In any case, there is something intoxicating about the Fair, although this effect could be put down the presence of a vast multitude of freshers, who seem to release alcohol from their very pores. Perhaps it was this airborne drunkenness that overcame me yesterday, because I found myself stumbling into the midst of the booths and stands, in all likelihood looking like a seriously overdressed fresher. It was at this most vulnerable moment that a young man in a painfully bright green shirt attempted to enlist me in the Fencing Club. After this, the memories are a bit fuzzy. Buffeted down the gauntlet of club members advertising and recruiting at the top of their lungs, I can only recall a blur of papers and signs and words I have never seen before (I assume they were in Irish), but I think I might have accidentally joined the Japanese Students Society somewhere along the way. I can't imagine how this would have happened, given my distinctly non-Japanese heritage, but then again, I think there was something in the air...

I emerged on the far side of the Fair looking disheveled and grasping a pile of flyers, a clear cue for the enterprising banker from Bank of Ireland lurking at the gate to pounce on me. After assuring him in the most forceful tone I could muster after my recent drugging that I was not, in fact, a student, I escaped Parliament Square and headed, resolutely, for the hills.

Europeans are no mugs...

Now that I work in Ireland, I am entitled to take 'tea breaks'. While every one of the neuroscientists working here will tell you that tea, as it contains caffeine, is a sort of addicitive substance, I get the feeling that the rush to the staff room at 10 and 3 every day is actually more of an excuse to stand around and chat than it is a caffeine fix. Not that I am complaining.

Since I am new to the whole tea culture, I don't have my own mug, and am therefore obligated to borrow one from the Greenland-sized store of them kept in one of the cabinets. (Honestly, I had no idea it was possible to put so many mugs into such a small cabinet.) Today, I noticed that my randomly-selected mug had words on it, and when I read them closely, I decided that I needed to share them with you.

This mug purports to list the things that are great about Europe, which, according to my tea cup, are (in this order):

1. Protecting consumer rights

2. The Euro

3. Work and study abroad

4. European health insurance

5. Irish Beef

6. Cleaner environment

7. Lower call charges

8. James Joyce

Now, you might be able to tell that this is a teacup made in Ireland, as they have given due acknowledgment to Joyce and beef, but the rest of the list is a bit confusing. I am also worried that they could only come up with a list of 8 good things about Europe (none of which is the EU, you'll notice), since there is definitely space for two more things on the mug...

Ye Moste Officiall Documente

Part of becoming a new staff member at a university older than my native country is participating in the similarly archaic traditions and requirements of that most noble institution. Now, I get a big kick out of walking across the campus here at Trinity, mostly because the entire place is basically a Neoclassical paradise. More on this in a later post. For now, I would like to relate the story of Ye Moste Officiall Documente, or, as it is more commonly known, my new library card.

There are a few libraries on Trinity's campus (again, more on this in a later post), but in order to use any of them, new staff members are required to go to the office of the main library and (I'm not kidding) declare their library rights. I had a bit of a chuckle when my boss, Katherine, told me I needed to do such a thing, but when Wouter, my Belgian coworker, assured me that it was a very serious proceeding for the college, I resolved to present myself at the library in a proper state of gravitas.

I arrived at the library, having made an appointment with the Provost (whatever that is), and prepared to declare my library rights. It was every bit as solemn as I had been warned. First, I had to stand and quite literally (and loudly) proclaim my rights, in language definitely not used since before America was known to Europeans. Maybe even before that. I was then presented with the following document:


You will notice that this document is quite old, and in fact, basically unintelligible. Being a wary Yank, I asked the Provost to translate this for me. Here is what it says:

Know all men by these presents that I, (and here I signed my name using a feather quill) am bound unto the Provost , Fellows, and Scholars of the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, in the sum of six hundred and fifty euro (and here is where I wondered how Queen Elizabeth could possibly have predicted the euro), for which sum well and truly to be paid I do bind myself, my heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, firmly by these presents. Sealed with my seal and dated this day of the year two thousand and eight.

Whereas the Provost and Senior Fellows of the said College have agreed to lend to the said person (I'm pretty sure at this point they mean me) the twenty printed books now in the library of the said College.

Now the condition of the foregoing obligation is such that if the said person shall return the said twenty printed books to the said Library on or before the agreed day in the same plight and condition in which he receives the same, that then and in such case the foregoing obligation shall be null and void, otherwise to remain in full force and virtue in law.

At this point, I was obliged to make a sketch of my heraldic crest at the bottom of the page, since I had not brought my official scribe with me. I did, however, impress my initials in wax beside the (obviously well drawn) crest, using my handy signet ring.

Altogether, it seemed like an awful lot of trouble, if there are only twenty books in the library...