The Dublin Community Blog

Anywhere that I have lived there has been a joke that if you don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes and it’ll change.  Well, that was certainly true today.  When I got up, it was sunny.  A little later, it was cloudy.  Then it got cold and windy.  Then it was hailing.  And finally: snow.  And 15 minutes after the hail started, it was sunny (but cold) again.  Unfortuntately, the weather meant that some of the St. Patrick’s Day festivities got cancelled.

  

 As tourist season and Paddy’s day approach, I feel a need for public service announcement.  As with any city, there are pick-pockets around Dublin.  Living next door to a pub in Temple Bar, we periodically see women’s wallets thrown into our entryway.  The thieves throw the wallets out of a bathroom window which conveniently shares the entryway to our building.  Most of the wallets that we have found have been from foreigners.   I don’t know what the actual stats are for pick-pocketing but if you can keep your stuff  (and yourself) safe, you’ll have more fun here in Dublin.

So, ladies (and gents), watch your belongings while out having a great time here in Dublin.

According to Wikipedia, Dublin has a population of 1.7 million. So, I thought that I’d never run into people I knew. Wrong. I actually bump into people on a pretty regular basis. One day, I saw one of my friends as she was on the way to the theatre. On another day, I ran into one of my coworkers twice in two different parts of the city centre but we were both shopping. I also periodically see a former coworker who now works in the city centre. We pass each other as she walks to the train and I walk away from the train heading home. I have seen clients out and about a few times.

I have now seen a coworker’s fiance twice. Each time, I recognized his face but couldn’t place him (I’ve only met him once). The first time, I was getting on the train and he was getting off the same train. He immediately knew my name and we had a brief interchange. I knew that I knew him but just couldn’t remember from where. Today, he was getting off one train and I was waiting for a different train. I was distracted and but when I saw him, I recognized him and he said hi. I was a bit thrown off because I was trying to figure out what was up with the train I needed and I am always thrown when I see people I know. When talking to my coworker today, she told me that her fiance texted her telling her about the interaction and to tell me who he was! I was slightly embarrassed. Oh well.

Anyway, what is my point? For a largeish city, Dublin is really a small town. Everyone goes to city centre still for shopping or going out and there is always a chance that you will bump into someone that you know. Dublin is a big enough city yet it has this down home, friendliness to it.

Happy Pancake Tuesday all. Last year was the first time that I heard about Pancake Tuesday but I didn’t realise what it was until after the day. Today, my coworkers were talking about the pancakes and what they like on them. One coworker puts ice cream on her pancakes. Another likes lemon and stuff on them. They commented that they don’t like savory pancakes. Since I am not familiar with savory pancakes, I decided that I should clarify what type of food they were talking about. See, what I call pancakes are fluffy “American style” pancakes. What are typically called pancakes this side of the pond are what I know of as crepes. I asked them what they meant and one person rattled off the recipe. However, she used ounces so I have no idea what this value means (I use cups, teaspoons, etc). It sounded like what she made was somewhere between American pancakes and crepes.

Anyway, all this talk of pancakes made me wonder what Pancake Tuesday was. It is also known as Shrove Tuesday (or the end of Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday in the U.S.). According to Wikepedia, pancakes are associated with the day before Ash Wednesday because during Lent you fast for the 40 days and eat plain foods. Eggs, milk, and flour were considered rich ingredients.

So, two questions for the Dear Readers. One, what did you put on your pancakes. Two: are you giving up anything for Lent (is this part of the whole fasting concept?). I am giving up caffiene (unless it’s in chocolate) and alcohol. I don’t really know why I’m giving things up since I’m not Catholic and don’t have to give things up. It just seems like the thing to do in a Catholic country…

Recently, I met a woman who works for Irish immigration. While chatting, she mentioned that the work authorization scheme (which I am on), has been discontinued. In its place is a green card. So, there are now different options for the paperwork involved in working here legally. First, if you are an EU citizen, this doesn’t apply to you.

For non-EU citizens who may need to renew the ability to work in Ireland: I am not entirely sure what we do. The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment site simply says this about work authorizations: “The Working Visa/Work Authorisation Scheme has ceased with effect from the 31st December 2006.

Any renewals of current Working Visa/Work Authorisation will continue to be processed by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Department of Foreign Affairs.”

If you are new to Ireland or will be moving over soon, then there are other options. They are the Green Card scheme, work permits, spouse/dependent permit, and intra- company transfer permit. Information about these can be found on Oasis’s website.

I have started reading the pdf file on the Green Cards and there appear to be some critical changes to the system. First, under the work authorization scheme, the employee only needed a contract and wasn’t tied to an employer. From what I have read and what the woman who works in immigration told me, the Green Cards are tied to the employer to some extent. You are required to stay with the same employer for the first year of the initial 2 year Green Card. You then have to apply for a new one if you want to change employers. Hence, a lot less flexibility for employees.

The second major change I notice is the price of the permits. The work authorization only cost me about 150 USD, I think about 100 Euros was the cost quoted on the Oasis site at the time. The new green cards are 1,000 Euro for an inital and 1,500 for a subsequent one (good for an indefinate amount of time). That is a huge difference. It also says that the employee must pay this fee! I guess I had bettr start saving now since I have been told that the guarda card also costs 100 Euro now while it was free two years ago.

The third difference that I see is that the shortest amount of time for a Green Card is two years. On the work authorization, you could get it for three months or two years. Not a big deal, but a bit of a hassle and huge expense if you don’t want to work the whole two years or if you want to work only a couple months after the work authorization is up (which a friend was planning on doing).

The fourth difference is who is elligible for the Green Card. Any professional making over 60,000 Euro is elligible. If you make between 30,000-60,000 Euro, then you have to be in one of the approved lists in the appendix. From scanning it (and looking for my profession), they appear to be mostly the same professions that were covered by the Work authorization scheme.

On an aside, according to the pdf, Green Cards will not be issued to prospective employees if more than 50% of its employees are non-EU nationals.

On the 20th of this month, I took a knitting class from This is Knit in the Blackrock weekend market.  There were about 8 women learning to knit and two instructors but I was the only absolute beginner.  We went up to the “meeting room” which was the upstairs of a pub.  We were supposed to meet until 12:00 but none of us left until 1:45 PM!  We just got into the groove and lost track of time.

If you are a knitter looking for people to knit with, there are a lot of groups meeting around the Dublin area and the Stitch N Bitch yahoo group site has a calendar so you can look for group meetings near you.  There are regular meetings in Bray, Swords, Rathmines, and city centre.

Yesterday, after a shopping misadventure, we decided to try a Chinese place that we had walked past on other occassions and looked nice.  While looking at the menu outside, we wondered out loud if the food was nice since the menu certainly looked good.  A guy also looking at the menu said that it was “deadly.”  So, we went in, as did they.

The Good World has a nice interior with large tables.  The menu is fairly large and has many of the standard Chinese dishes.  Since a lot of Chinese food has MSG, I thought that I would take a chance and ask a waiter.  I flagged one down (which was quite easy) and asked him if the food had MSG.  After clearing up the miscommunication about what I said (he didn’t understand me), he said that some dishes have MSG and others don’t.  The king prawn cashew that I wanted could be made without MSG.  We were interested in a starter but the waiter was able to tell us that they had a trace amount of MSG since many of them are prepared elsewhere or ahead of time.  After ordering, the waiter came back to tell us the the dish my boyfriend had ordered had a trace amount of MSG in it!  He actually went to the kitchen to check.

So, the food arrived quite quickly and was excellent.  The portions were good sized (but not huge), which was nice to see since the prices were about 12-18 per main (entree).  As per usual here, you have to pay extra for a serving of rice but we were able to share one between the two of us, mostly because I don’t eat very much rice.  We had a pineapple fritter for dessert, which was also tasty.

The service was also excellent.  The waitstaff was friendly and attentive. They filled our water glasses without us having to ask and observed when we were finished with our food.  They allowed us time to relax/let our food digest before asking if we wanted tea/coffee/dessert.

So, we have finally discovered a good Chinese place in Dublin!  I am quite happy about this, since we miss Chinese. Oh, for those interested, Good World is on George’s Street over by Dunnes store.

Last night we went to the Porterhouse for dinner.  We hadn’t been there in ages since we went home for Christmas.  I was missing the chips and the Koppaberg mixed berry cider so we went out for dinner.  Yummy cider but the chips tasted different.  Anyway, it was about the emptiest I think I have ever seen the place, any time of day, and we were there for dinner.  Luckily for us, we had no problem finding a table, and even really got two (small) tables to ourselves!

My hypothesis as to why the Porterhouse was so empty is that many people seem  to  “go off the drink” during January.  Between my boyfriend and myself, we know about 6 people who are not drinking right now because the drank too much in December.  Is this a common thing, the detoxing, not the drinking too much?

My boyfriend asked one of his coworkers why not just drink 3-4 pints when going out instead of 10?  His coworker seemed agast at this suggestion.  Why is that?  Now, I know Ireland has a significant pub and drinking culture, but why not just drink a few a night instead of going through periods of not drinking because you overloaded your system so much?  Help dear Dub/Irish readers.  :)

Did you get everything on your wish list for Christmas? If not or you are just a bargain hunter, now is the time to shop. Most stores have some sort of sale announcement in their windows. Even BT2 has a sale on! On Sunday, I took a stroll down Grafton Street to try to get a feel for the vibe in the post Christmas city. It was quieter than I have ever seen it but at least there were some people out. One thing that I noticed, however, was the lack of shopping bags.

Ok, it has been a long time since my first post about how to move to Dublin and I thought it was time to do another one. So, after you arrive in the country, you need to find a place to live. The two main websites for this are daft and my home. There are probably others but these are the two that most people I know look for. I personally prefer daft because it tells you exactly how old an advert is and I have found it updated more frequently with rental properties.

When I first looked for housing, I was very confused about all of the different types. So, here are some descriptions and general prices of housing within the Dublin area. Note, these prices vary GREATLY depending on where you are trying to live.

• Shared accomodation: pretty self explanitory. You are living with other people. However, some people share actual bedrooms in addition to rooms within a house so you would have to check if it is a room for let or a bed in a room with other people. Prices vary greatly but generally 400-600 Euros a month
• • Bedsit: this is usually one big room with a bed/couch, kitchen area. You may share a bathroom, may have a private bath. Pricing is generally 500-700 Euros a month
• • Studio: this is usually bigger than a bedsit. Most are still one large room but you would generally have a bed area, kitchen/dining area, and living area. Prices are usually 600-800 Euros a month
• • Apartment: come in different number of bedrooms, have private bath and are usually purpose built as apartments. Usually cost 850 and up
• • Flats: I am still not entirely sure what these are as people seem to use flat and apartment interchangeably. I believe that a flat is a floor of what used to be a house that has been converted to a self contained living space.

So, that is the basics on housing types. Where you want to live depends on a lot of factors such as if you have a car, how much money you are willing to spend, if you depend on public transport, how far you want to live from work, etc. If you are depending on public transport, city centre is by far the most convienent. Trying to get from one end of the metro area to the other is difficult no matter what but all public transport goes through city centre. That is how we ended up living where we do.