about an Austrian living in NY City
Archive for August, 2008
Some pictures of Ireland
Aug 31st
It’s about time to post some pictures. As you can see I was lucky and there were some sunny days as well 
Lost in translation…
Aug 29th
Here is another nice example – my regular readers remember the first one for the windows login screen – taken in my hotel room here in Dublin to show the result of a either poor translation software or a weak translator: (you have to be able to read/understand German to get the flaw but basically it does not really specify which kind of product you should put in this bag. The other mistake I would count as a typo…)
Rain, rain, rain (Dublin)
Aug 11th
Today I was flying over to Dublin where I am scheduled to be at a client site for the next couple of weeks. The weather here sucks! It’s raining the whole day long and the weather forecast predicts rain for the whole week 
But also the flight to here turned out to be a nightmare. When you are on a business trip you defenitely don’t want to go with Ryanair. After being charged a high airfare as I booked the flight on short notice and already paying high fees for changing my flight twice they charged me another 130 pounds today for overweight luggage. What I didn’t know is that you have to pay 12 pounds for every kilo your luggage is over 15 kilos overall. So my flight turned out to be over 400 pounds which is way more expensive than if I would have chosen another airline. And last but not least my flight was delayed for over an hour which is really unusual for Ryanair as they promote to have 95% of their flights on time. Never ever again.
And to make things worse: I checked into the hotel here tonight that was suggested by the client and they only had smoker’s rooms available. I feel like sitting in an ash tray and really hope that they are able to move me to a nonsmoker room tomorrow.
Spending my bday in London
Aug 11th
As already mentioned before I spent my bday in London and not as planned partying in Manhattan. After having a nice English breakfast with sausages, fried eggs, mushrooms, grilled tomatoes and loads of coffee and juice in the hotel we went to the Columbia flower market as this is one of the only markets that is open on a Sunday. You have to imagine a kind of “Hamburger fish market” where everyone wants to sell you flowers by screaming out how cheap and good they are We had some nice coffee at a bakery there and when we decided that we’ve seen enough flowers for the day we went straight to the pub in Angel the neighborhood of a colleague of mine. We had some Guinness there and then agreed that it is time for some Austrian beer and my colleague know exactly where to get that from draft in London and so we went there. That saved my day 
Concluded was by bday by some nice Indian food in Angel after which I was not able to walk anymore since I ate way too much….
British beer festival
Aug 11th
I’ve spent the first day of my weekend in London at the British beer festival with friends. Sounds pretty good you would say? Yeah actually it sounded really good to me. Problem was that it was just a hall full of beer stands and most of them selling ale. I’m not really a big ale fan. But we found some lager as well which wasn’t too bad.
Working in London
Aug 8th
So my first working really busy week here in London is already over. Have been at a client here in the city center for the last couple of day and worked on several issues in their system there. On Monday I’m supposed to fly to their office in Dublin and work there for the next couple of weeks.
This weekend was planned to be my big bday weekend in Manhattan. We had already a big party in a club in the city arranged but now I’m on the rainy island instead. Tomorrow some friends and I might visit the London Beer Festival. I’m sure we can get some drinks to celebrate my bday and forget about the bad weather there
One thing why I would not be able to live here beside the weather is defenitely the food here. After being spoiled in NYC by various choices of good food it feels really like a completely different place over here eating sandwiches nearly every day. Tonight at least Roman and I had some nice Japanese food which was quite alright.
Prices here though for living are really high compare to New York (other than rent). Everything has the same price tag here in London as in NYC but the problem is that it is in English pounds….
First entry written on my iPhone
Aug 8th
As I have my new boys toy now and I managed to get it connected to the wireless internet here in the hotel, I would like to try out how the wordpress application works on the iPhone. I originally thought that I would never get used to the keyboard on the touchscreen of the iPhone but I have to say that you really get used to it.
being flexible
Aug 4th
Working as a consultant means also being flexible. I had to experience this weekend what that exactly means. My plans for the month of August were the following: moving on the first weekend into my new place, having a big bday party on the second weekend and go on vacation on the third one. Now everything is different.
I got a call on last Friday that I have to go to a client in Dublin for 3 weeks and that I have to be in London for meetings on Monday and Tuesday. Since I was moving this weekend I could push the flight to the Monday (instead of Sunday) and at the point of time when I’m writing this blog entry I’m already in London. The plan was to have some meetings tomorrow in the London office and then fly to Dublin and be at the client on Wednesday. But now after I got here the schedule changed again and I will be here in London until end of this week and then fly to Dublin and be there for another 4 weeks. I’m pretty sure this schedule might change again and I will keep you posted
Would you be flexible enough for that job? I have to say that it is really hitting the limit this time as the moving was really exhausting and before I was packing for my trip to the EU I was still assembling curtains in my new apartment at midnight just to go to the airport at 5am on the next morning.
Anyways, the flight with American Airlines was really smooth and I got here safe and hope that the meetings tomorrow will go well. Fingers crossed.