On The Remainder of Time Here

I leave Ireland in ten days. I arrived home from London yesterday in the early morning, and have spent yesterday and will spend today here in Galway. Tomorrow and Wednesday I'm down in Clare, and Thursday I'm back once more, plan-less. I've considered going back over to Dublin, and I might, I haven't decided on anything yet. I could also go down to Cork, where I've not been, or somewhere in the midlands, where I've only passed through.

On Road Safety in Ireland

For those of you that have been here, well, you probably some of Ireland more back roads aren't the safest. However, there is a Road Safety Authority here. And they put out commercials such as the following , which are horrifying (but very good to have). They're especially bad during dinner, but I guess the effect is what they're going for, so they're quite successful in that sense. Not sure how well they work, though.

On Pentecost in Ireland

Pentecost, this past Sunday - incidentally also the 150th birthday of the state of Minnesota, was less than spectacular here. I went to three different services, two Catholic, one Anglican, and none were exceptionally festive. It was, as someone described to me, "just another feast day". The Anglican church was by far the most excited about the holiday, while the first Catholic service I went to - an abbey church - acknowledged it only through the readings. A bit disappointing if I might say so.

On The Lisbon Treaty

The Lisbon Treaty, the agreement signed last December (in you guessed it: Lisbon), will shortly be up for vote here in Ireland. All of the countries in the EU have to ratify it in order for it to go into effect and while all but Ireland are sending it directly to Parliament for easy ratification, Ireland, by a clause in its constitution, is having a general referendum in addition to a parliamentary vote.

For those of you not familiar with it, it's meant to replace the draft European constitution. More people than not seem in favour of the treaty, but most people I know are opposed. Not being a voter, I haven't looked much into the treaty and so don't know which way I'd vote if I could vote.

For more information you can visit yestolisbon.ie which provides general information on the treaty and well, tries to convince you to vote for it, or the bbc's article here or RTÉ's site here. A consolidated breakdown, thanks to RTÉ, can be found here.

Despite my lack of knowledge on the subject, it is a big subject - there are signs along the road every 100m urging us to "vote yes". I think they're part of Fianna Fáil's campaign for a "Yes" vote, led by the new Taoiseach.

On Current Events

Yesterday was Brian Cowen's first day as Taoiseach here in Ireland. While nearly everyone I talked to had a good opinion of Bertie Ahern, pretty much no one has anything to say about Brian Cowen except how boring he is and how much less personable than Bertie Ahern. A grand start I'd say! Everyone was hoping Mary Harney, the minister for health and children (and described as "a joke"), would be replaced, but she was one of the ministers that wasn't.

In other news, the Journal of Evolutionary Biology just published an interesting article on flowers and their tendencies to "wave" in the wind and how it relates to pollination (to read the BBC article click here). And! Nature just published an article on the genome of the platypus.

On Changing the World

Change.ie

On Exams Once Again

I have now completed three of my four exams; I had exams Monday, Tuesday and Friday mornings. My last exam is the 12th of May. All of them are again at the racecourse (lucky me, that's 3euro each time for the bus out there, adding up to a neat 12euro or just over $18!). For my last exam there weren't enough seats on the second floor so I got bumped to the first floor with a couple other people. Everyone else on floor one was in engineering and so was male (so it made me think of Lena and her classes). And I didn't get to see how long the exam took everyone, which is how I gauge how I'm doing relative to others.

The weather lately has been amazing; it is undeniably summer and very reminiscent of mid June in Minnesota around the time of my birthday. Guess I'll get two Junes this year!

Finally, happy bank holiday to all!

On More Commercials

And on the topic of good commercials, here's another everyone enjoys (we love watching commercials):

On the Guinness Commercial Everyone Loves

We've yet to meet anyone that doesn't like this commercial:

On May in Galway

May 1st, I was told repeatedly the other day, is the first day of summer. It really is summer, too. Today perhaps isn't the best example of a day as, surprise surprise, it's cloudy and gray, but the vast majority of days of late have been warm, sunny, and insect filled. Exams are finishing up - first arts have been done over a week. I have three of my four exams finished with now, and were it a sunny dry day would be down by the bay. As of today we have 15 hours and 12 minutes of daylight; when I left the library last week after ten it was lighter out than when I used to walk home from lab at 5. I no longer get soaked every time I walk to and from college, and when I walk in to catch the bus to exams at 7 it's actually light out now (much preferable to the dark, cold, wet walks made in December). The average May temperature is just over 10C and the average wind speed is down to a mere 7m/s. Additionally, only 18 of our days are "wet", and we only get about 70mm of rain. It really is summer.