World Cup Fever!

Ireland doesn't have a team in the World Cup, but everyone in Ireland has World Cup fever! It's very funny at work because we can all stream the game from the internet from www.rte.ie. Most people at work secretly have the game hidden away under a few windows on their desktop and are listening on their headphones. It's funny because I will be working away silently at my desk and then all the sudden hear "YEEEAAAAHHH!" from the cafeteria downstairs and then 5 seconds later hear another "YEAH!" from everyone streaming at their desktop (the internet stream is a bit behind the TV). The kitchen staff who run the cafeteria are quite loud with their cheering and the office staff are usually a bit more reserved (although not always).

I've gotten into the world cup too. I am supporting Germany this year. No real reason, I just have a few German friends and I like Germany as a country.

Even Microsoft is getting into it as you can see with the flags in our building.

I got a black eye last week from playing soccer. Both myself and another guy on my team were both going for a loose ball in front on the opponents goal. We both collided. His forehead hit my cheek. My cheek was cut up a bit initially, but the next morning my eye also became black.

The funny part of this black eye is that I had to update my immigration card just a few days later. Of course, they took a new picture for my new card and my new picture has the black eye. So this incident will be immortalized for another year.

As promised, I put a few pictures up of or new place. We finally got a vacuum and a microwave from our landlord, so I cleaned the dirty carpets up a bit for these pictures. You can find the pictures here. Again, the location is better than the apartment. I really love the location!

Here's a picture Julie took of me on a Dublin bike in front of our place. I love these bikes! I have really become good at riding through city traffic (something I was not used to before).

Right now I am writing this blog from a pub just outside my apartment that has free wireless internet. At the same time I am watching the Ghana vs USA world cup match. I am using the laptop that work gave me... I love this little macbook laptop. I bought a new battery for it off ebay and it gets almost 3.5 hours of life. The laptop is about 3 years old, but its actually still really good!

Tomorrow I'm going to meet up with some friends in town at a pub to watch the England-Germany game and the Argentina-Mexico game. Should be good fun.

Right now Julie is flying back from Oxford, UK. She was attending a conference at Oxford university on the "history of childhood - problems with adolescence". Hopefully she made some good connections and learned something useful for her dissertation.

Anyhow, that's all for now

Cya