go cleveland
yankees lose!
a shame; i'd have loved to see us sweep them again.
heard tell of a pub to go to for World Series games, though!
Sunday night: a "literary pub crawl" with Andrew; met Rachel from Aurora (awesome the way these things work) and ate Persian food in Temple Bar before the pub crawl. At the end of the night they quizzed our trivia; first prize was a t-shirt and second was a baby bottle of Jameson. I (with no conscious manipulation) took second. During the tour, we learned about a few famous Irish writers, but more importantly a few honestly good places to drink. The Smithwick's at the Stand, for example, is fantastic, and O'Neill's on Suffolk St serves Hoegaarden downstairs. The Palace has a touristy session on Sunday nights (if not others) and a decent, if watery, Guinness. Plus, I totally saw the dude whose apartment we played at on Paddy's 06 telling some Erasmus student to come to Kielys. With another friend, we tried the microbrews at Messrs just near closing time (their Weiss is nice), and then walked home drunk.
It's a reason I wanted campus housing, this convenience.
Yesterday, classes started. I have a class with John Saeed. He was the author of the unbearable semantics textbook; thankfully in person he's actually a good lecturer. The other one is looking to be boring; all she does is read from her powerpoint presentation. I have a prospective bestie in Shauna, whose dad's from Alabama but has lived in Nenagh all her life. Like me, she just finished her undergrad and popped straight on to grad school, though there don't seem to be many in my course for whom that's the case. Anyway, she and I spent part of the 4-hour break between classes browsing linguistics books in the library -- mostly dictionaries of Hiberno- and American English, as well as one of sexual terms. Who knows what a bumfiddle is?
In the evening I found myself chilling with Alex, the final-year (undergrad) from NoCal with the septum piercing. Wait... is it NorCal?
Point being, I showed him Hebrew Hammer and then, because he'd never actually heard anything about it besides the title, found him some Fiddler on the Roof on YouTube. It's the Jewishest I've yet had to get, explanation-wise, so far here.
Today's day was completely uneventful, but the evening found a meeting with the boat club coach, a graduate students' union-led campus tour complete with wine reception, and a talk by Steven Pinker after that.
Pinker was awesome. He's a better speaker than Chomsky because he's engaging, has PowerPoint presentations, and is accessible. I've decided to term him a pop linguist because he publishes books that are not going to shatter linguistic theory, but make linguistics accessible to the layman by addressing topics that are easy to discuss and abstract.
I then ran into Feargal, who told me I should come visit the suburbs some time. And then spent time running around with Richard and Brian, trying to photocopy Richard's book with tomorrow's syntax assignment. Thankfully it's due in the afternoon, so I know what I'll be doing during the 4-hour break. when I'm not watching Heroes.
As I was standing outside the copier-less all-hours library room, Richard pointed out to us the smell of hops. Guinness is roasting tonight, and it doesn't get more Dublin than that. I then pointed out it also doesn't get more Golden than Coors at the roast.... but there's something better about the Guinness than the Coors. In all sorts of ways.
a shame; i'd have loved to see us sweep them again.
heard tell of a pub to go to for World Series games, though!
Sunday night: a "literary pub crawl" with Andrew; met Rachel from Aurora (awesome the way these things work) and ate Persian food in Temple Bar before the pub crawl. At the end of the night they quizzed our trivia; first prize was a t-shirt and second was a baby bottle of Jameson. I (with no conscious manipulation) took second. During the tour, we learned about a few famous Irish writers, but more importantly a few honestly good places to drink. The Smithwick's at the Stand, for example, is fantastic, and O'Neill's on Suffolk St serves Hoegaarden downstairs. The Palace has a touristy session on Sunday nights (if not others) and a decent, if watery, Guinness. Plus, I totally saw the dude whose apartment we played at on Paddy's 06 telling some Erasmus student to come to Kielys. With another friend, we tried the microbrews at Messrs just near closing time (their Weiss is nice), and then walked home drunk.
It's a reason I wanted campus housing, this convenience.
Yesterday, classes started. I have a class with John Saeed. He was the author of the unbearable semantics textbook; thankfully in person he's actually a good lecturer. The other one is looking to be boring; all she does is read from her powerpoint presentation. I have a prospective bestie in Shauna, whose dad's from Alabama but has lived in Nenagh all her life. Like me, she just finished her undergrad and popped straight on to grad school, though there don't seem to be many in my course for whom that's the case. Anyway, she and I spent part of the 4-hour break between classes browsing linguistics books in the library -- mostly dictionaries of Hiberno- and American English, as well as one of sexual terms. Who knows what a bumfiddle is?
In the evening I found myself chilling with Alex, the final-year (undergrad) from NoCal with the septum piercing. Wait... is it NorCal?
Point being, I showed him Hebrew Hammer and then, because he'd never actually heard anything about it besides the title, found him some Fiddler on the Roof on YouTube. It's the Jewishest I've yet had to get, explanation-wise, so far here.
Today's day was completely uneventful, but the evening found a meeting with the boat club coach, a graduate students' union-led campus tour complete with wine reception, and a talk by Steven Pinker after that.
Pinker was awesome. He's a better speaker than Chomsky because he's engaging, has PowerPoint presentations, and is accessible. I've decided to term him a pop linguist because he publishes books that are not going to shatter linguistic theory, but make linguistics accessible to the layman by addressing topics that are easy to discuss and abstract.
I then ran into Feargal, who told me I should come visit the suburbs some time. And then spent time running around with Richard and Brian, trying to photocopy Richard's book with tomorrow's syntax assignment. Thankfully it's due in the afternoon, so I know what I'll be doing during the 4-hour break. when I'm not watching Heroes.
As I was standing outside the copier-less all-hours library room, Richard pointed out to us the smell of hops. Guinness is roasting tonight, and it doesn't get more Dublin than that. I then pointed out it also doesn't get more Golden than Coors at the roast.... but there's something better about the Guinness than the Coors. In all sorts of ways.