Dublin and I

For anyone who is interested in reading about my adventures in Dublin. By the way, you can click on the pictures for a bigger / better quality version, and if there are multiple pictures in one post, just use the arrows on your keyboard to go to the next one ;)

[dublinandi]

Seomra Spraoi! See my previous post for more information.

[dublinandi]

April 4, 2012

Unfortunately my camera's memory was full so I only got a short fragment of their performance, but this is just an attempt to show you why I love this place called Seomra Spraoi, where I often go for very good (vegan) food, meeting nice new people, and occassionally, live music.

I don't know the girl's name, but the guy is Eli Wirtschafter, a pretty cool student/musician from California who is currently studying at Trinity for just one semester. I thought their voices and instruments combined very well, and I hope they'll perform at Seomra more often.

[dublinandi]

This week was Rainbow Week at UCD, which means a number of events were organised to raise awareness about issues that LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) people have to deal with, and promote acceptance, and protest about the fact that these people do not have equal rights (compared to other people) by law.

To protest against the law which illegalises same-sex marriages in Ireland, the LGBT society organised a Pride March, which means we all walked from the Student Centre towards the UCD lake with rainbow flags, shouting "What do we want? Equal rights! When do we want it? Now!" and then held 3 mock gay weddings. This means we went through a little ceremony where three same-sex couples were "married". It was a lot of fun, see the pictures and video below :)

[dublinandi]

[dublinandi]

Part of the wedding ceremony. Three couples at the same time, that must be a record!

[dublinandi]

Another happy ending :3

[dublinandi]

And then the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, came to give a talk here at UCD. I know very little about Irish politics, but this seemed like a good opportunity for me to learn a little more about it. It was actually quite inspiring! He talked of hope, and our abilities as individuals to make a change.

The most exciting part, however, was when a former student of his (probably from his time as a lecturer at University College Galway) stood up in the audience and (quite loudly) asked why Mr Higgins did not go back to being a university teacher, as this would the best way to get to his message across to people and make a real change (in his eyes), rather than being in politics. Mr Higgins thanked him and replied that the student was a much better speaker than he himself would ever be.

[dublinandi]

A little fragment of the President's talk.

[dublinandi]

Big Day Out celebrations (the day after St Patrick's Day), at Merrion Square.

[dublinandi]

More St Patrick's Day Parade.

[dublinandi]

[dublinandi]

Happy St Paddy's Day/weekend!

We're having a long holiday weekend here in for St Patrick's Day and it's great! (St Patrick's Day was yesterday, but the festive activities started on Friday and go on until Monday) The weather has been lovely today, so that definitely added to the good atmosphere. I was at Merrion Square, enjoying the sun, the live music, the park, taking pictures of the fair and catching up with my international friends. Yesterday I went to see the big St Paddy's parade. It was extremely crowded, but I got to see some really nice floats, including ballerina's and giant "fish". Tomorrow is still a bank holiday here in Ireland, so I'll be doing some more relaxing before I have to start studying again.

Two weeks ago I went to two concerts at The Academy: the first one by American singer Tyler Ward, who has become famous through Youtube! It was a really good gig, he did a lot of interaction with the audience and because he and his band played so many covers we could sing along to almost everything. The second concert was by Ben Howard, who has been my favourite singer-songwriter for some time now. I first saw him live two years ago, and I didn't know who he was but I was blown away by his performance. Since then I've taken every opportunity to hear more of him, because he's always amazing live. (you may remember I already went to a previous show of his in Dublin a few months ago - I feel very lucky that he came here a second time!)

My second semester here at UCD is going well. A new course that I really like is Film Sound. I learn about how the whole film industry changed when the silent era ended because live sound techniques were introduced. Apart from that, I also learn a lot about the important part that sound plays in our lives in general, and why it requires so many people to get the sound effects in a film right. The lecturer is really good, and the course helps me enjoy films even more now that I'm aware of how well the relationship between sound and image is used in films. During the last class before term break we watched "Requiem for a Dream". I've always thought this was a great film, and now that I was encouraged to pay extra attention to its use of sound (not just music, all sounds), I'm even more amazed at its clever use of such things as rhythm and sound as shock effect.

Of course many other fun things have happened since the last time I updated (sorry about the long wait!), but my memory is already fuzzy, and I think I've covered the most important things now. Over the upcoming three weeks, I will be visited by some lovely people from back home, so I can proudly show off my favourite places in Dublin to them =D

Only 1,5 month left until exams, and after that I'm finished here at UCD! Oh no! :'( How time flies when you're having fun!

[dublinandi]

In December, many UCD students were campaigning for the elections of Student Union officers. It got a bit annoying after a while - getting flyers shoved into my hands wherever I went, getting strangers come to our appartment to give a speech on why to vote for their candidate. And I don't even care about these elections, because they're for the next academic year, when I'm no longer in UCD!

One night I was at a party and a few girls got the idea of turning some election flyers into "Warhol art" (originally they were all greytones). They were very frustrated when they couldn't find a yellow pencil or marker, because "without yellow it won't be a real Warhol!", and they considered a lot of weird improvisations to fix this problem: egg yolk, curry powder, butter... none of it worked, but they were quite thankful when I found an orange marker. Now they could finish their masterpiece!

[dublinandi]

Pizza at Bewley's Café Restaurant. With goat cheese and pine nuts.

[dublinandi]

Cute bonsai trees @ Powerscourt Shopping Centre.

[dublinandi]

St Stephen's Green

[dublinandi]