14th April 2013 - Sorry for not posting an update

I know that this is very bad behaviour but I had my reasons. College is just washing over me. Exams are around the corner and I only posted my last assignment a few minutes ago. I am just tired, exhausted and I have another 3 weeks to go.

I've spent the last few hours in the library, learning about Greiner and Mintzberg organisational models and there is actual smoke coming out of my ears. I am sick and tired of my laptop, kinda start hating it even. Would love to through out my laptop and bang my head against the wall, I am so sick of starring at a computer screen.

First exam is on Monday 29th April: Information Systems - all this general stuff about inputs and outputs and hardware and software and supply chain management and system types and bla bla bla. Hope my lecturer is not reading this. Not that I didn't like his subject, it's just so much stuff to squeeze into my brain. At least I am sleeping like a baby at the moment. 11pm comes around and fall asleep like a stone and don't wake up before the either the alarm goes off or the sun is high up -- as it's the case on weekends.

I sent an email to my class asking them for things that motivitate them to keep studying. A few good things have come through. It's less a lack of motivation on my side, it's more that I just too tired to look at a book and my right hand actually hurts from writing notes. No clue how to survive TWELVE hours of writing exams. At least it's over soon. Two weeks of exams and the two longest ones of them (three hours each) are in the first week.

At least it's over in four weeks and the assignments are off my back. Will watch a bit of Netflix, just to distract me.

Sorry, really had to rant about this. I am so tired ...

11th March 2013 - Just a short note

Just to let you know that I am still alive, posting and working on college stuff. College is really taking over now. Exams around first and second week in May but still, I have decided to start gathering materials. I also got another assignment to hand in and another three to work on, two of them haven't been defined yet.
I have finally made up my mind and will do a 2000 word report on "Artificial Intelligence" for one of the assignments - explaining it, where we find it modern society and what we can expect will happen within the next years. I found some interesting material on the Gartner website. I might pick up some ideas from movies, such as "I, Robot", "Minority Report" and "Total Recall". Might find some good stuff.

I have also decided to take Friday, 15th March off. I will go to the library early and I have agreed to help a student from one of the year above me to give an interview on adult education. The topic personally interests me and I am happy to help. It will also get me out of the library for an hour or so. I hope my answers will be of help.

I went to IKEA yesterday and bought a few bits. I got myself a plastic container with a separator you can take out, to store my fabrics. IKEA has some lovely new prints with roses (picture hopefully to follow soon), so I got myself a squaremeter of that. Looking forward to my parcel with all my sewing stuff, cutter and hot-glue gun. Last week, I bought a book on paper crafts and I got a few ideas I would like to realise during summer and for that I need a hot-glue gun. Thanks to my mum for going shopping for me.

At this point, I would like to dedicate a few words to my friends, Marco, Michael and Simone:

Leute, noch einmal vielen Dank dafür, dass ihr meinen Eltern ausgeholfen habt. Mag sein, dass einige das für selbstverständlich halten, jedoch finde ich es super von euch, dass ihr geholfen habt, den Keller leer zu räumen. Michi, tut mir Leid wegen deiner Hand, ich hoffe, der Schnitt ist am Verheilen. Wüsste nicht, was ich ohne euch täte.

Aerlingus has flights on offer for summer, so I am looking at holidays for June. Might be able to get something for around €200.

Now, I will check a few sewing pages. I have this crazy idea of sewing myself a dress, a red dress ...

5th March 2013 - Saw this ...

And thought I share it with you.

Picture taken today, while train stopped at Tara Street Station.

Camile offers to take order via QR code scanning. Might be normal to other people, I found it an interesting "new" and fast way of ordering takeaways. Each dish has its own QR quote. You scan it in with your smart phone and place the order online, while you have the dish already selected. I didn't try it now - don't even have a QR scanner (memo to me: download one!)

Another thing: I have added a new recipe to the Download page for "Stewed Apples". Currently it's available in English only. Don't know when I get the chance to work out the German translation with being back in college. We received another assignment tonight, so next weekend is reserved for another Visual Basic programming session. At least we were told, that it adds 40% towards the overall mark which means that the final exam for the module is worth 40% too. The first assignment gave us the first 20% for the module. So far so good.

16th February 2013 - Back from Starlight Express

Had a great afternoon at the Bord Gáis Theatre. First, I thought I got lost in the city centre. Thanks to my mobile phone which died later on due to a low battery, I found my way savely to the theatre. It was the first time, that I went to see something in there.

When I arrived, I got a lovely surprise. I had booked a ticket over the internet and was told when I went to the box office, that those seats were not available for this show so I got promoted on my seat which meant I moved down four rows towards the stage.

My previous seat was in row N, number 27. I was more than delighted. The purple finger is the Shellac treatment I got done to my nails and yes, I am wearing high heels.

I dressed up a bit for this event. A while ago, I bought this lovely beaded cardigan in a vintage store that didn't fit me before Christmas and now it finally does. So I bought it and it was still on sale.

The show was fantastic, I really loved it! It was like experiencing a childhold memory. I used to listen to the music of Starlight Express a lot when I was younger so I am happy that I finally managed to see the musical. The stage wasn't very big, all the activity during the show took place on the centre stage. During the racing parts of the musical, we had to wear 3D-glasses as these parts were prerecorded and then shown on a big screen in 3D.

I was amazed the amount of kids that attended the muscial. Shows you how much it takes you in as a child.

Dun Laoghaire tomorrow ... here I come!

16th February 2013 - A Little Owl Favour

I had a lovely knitnight in my friends house last night. We talked about knitting, fabrics and all other stuff that is going on. We had pizza and so on and watched some good old TV. When our discussion turned to fabrics again, I happen to mention that I bought two nice owl print fabrics back in Germany and she asked me to send her some pictures. I decided to put them on my blog instead to share their cuteness. Here are the pictures:

I really like owls at the moment. I think they are really cute. So cute indeed that I got the Pandora Owl charm last time I went through an airport.

Owls are so cute. This one looks so innocent.

I also found this pattern on vogueknitting.com and I think I will download it. Their patterns are on sale at the moment and I saw another few things I really liked. The owls in this picture are indeed a cute looking family.

About the fabric above, I got a sewing book in Germany just containing bags. I got some matching plain fabric and now I am waiting on my mums cutting board and cutter to start working on the pattern. I got the padding already and I know that I will turn the fabric into a clutch. With exams coming up and more assignments for college to work on, I am not sure when I will get the chance to work on any sewing projects. At least I am getting work on my sweater done, the back is almost finished.

My plans for today: I got a concession ticket for Starlight Express at 2:30pm and before anyone is asking, I am going on my own. Not really sure who to bring with me anyway. Tomorrow, I am going to a Vintage Fair in Dun Laoghaire with a friend, so I hope I get a few nice bargains and a few pictures for the blog.

Happy reading.

3rd February 2013 - Moment of Peace

Finally, I can have a bit of a break. I have no new assignments due until the beginning of March. I have to work out two pieces for Information System. This is finally the more techy stuff in college. Looking back at the first semester, we definitely had the less interesting subjects first. I would actually say it was pretty boring.

We were assigned to teams in college to work on a presentation for Organisation and Management. As I was part of team one, our presentation was due last Wednesday. We had less than 2 weeks to work on it but we managed. We used DropBox to get started and threw in all the research and the presentation into it. I was working mainly on the presentation. The topic was "Strategy" in an organisation of your choice, using the PEST analysis and Porter's Five Forces. We chose my company as it was the easiest to get updates on our strategy and insurance pretty much affects anyone. We had some very interesting discussions afterwards and we got top marks for it. We were are very delighted, as the presentation already contributes 25% to the overall module mark.

I also got my math assignment back and I am proud to announce that I got 95% in the overall assignment. Unfortunately, it only adds 10% to the overall mark of Business Methods but at least it's a very good 10%.

To some other news: I was pretty busy the last couple of days, partly due to the presentation but I also was catching up with friends. One friend of mine treated me to dinner in a restaurant called "Tigers", as she had purchased a voucher on the internet. Here are a few pictures of the food that was served:

Smoked salmon and salat with japanese mayonnaise in rice paper. Was called Vietnamese Springrolls. We shared them and they were just gorgeous

We then shared two main courses: Peanut Beef and Drunken Prawns. We chose mildly spiced dishes and it was heaven. The rice was lovely and mixing the two dishes was the best thing we did.

For dessert, we both had Coconut Panacotta, with meringue, lychee and passion fruit which was a very nice finish.

Here is a close-up picture, where you can see all the layers on it. Wished the dish had always reflenished itself. Such a pity when I had finally eaten up.

So much for the culinary side of life. After all the assignments, I so deserved going for food like this. On Monday, I am catching up with more friends for chicken wings.

Today, I am going to Howth to meet my friend and have lunch in one of the restaurants over there. I had a look at the map and it should be easy enough to drive there. Weather unfortunately is not very promising.

I got an idea yesterday for a game I think I could program in Visual Basic. I recently downloaded a game for my phone which unfortunately only works with the internet on and I am dependent on other people to join. Anyone who can download "Ruzzle" for their phones, let me know. I will do my best to be online on the train. It's like Boggle just online and you match each other. Anyway, now that we are introduced into functions and subroutines in VB, I thought I could write a programme to do exactly the same as the mobile version, less fancy but I think I could get the basics to work and then it's just adjusting the code to make it easier to use and it counts points properly. I have to do some housework and tidy up my room a bit and now that I have the 4th season of "Fringe", I think it will take some time until will start working on it. Just saw that season 5 is coming out in May. Can't believe the series is over then.

Will get ready now. I have finish a hat so that I can wear it in Howth. Looks like it's pretty cold out there. Hopefully, we will see seals.

19th January 2013 - Recovery

I had a few rough days which involved staying in bed recovering from a flu. It started of with a nasty cough on Monday and then I got a runny nose on Thursday. My GP gave me some funny meds now I am lying in bed. Everyone in work was worried about me as the cough did not sound healthy. I spent most of Thursday lying in bed, sleeping. I also had this massive headache.

But as I said, there is no need to worry, I am on my way to recovery. Feeling much better today.

I am back in college so I am actually not surprised that I got sick. It's going around at the moment and spending time at the train station, waiting for a train in this cold and wet weather sort of increases the chances of catching something. Just feel bad about the fact I missed college on Thursday. It was one of the new subjects and after reading the material that was posted online afterwards, it really made me hating my flu. It's all about infrastructure, system architecture and information exchange. It's the stuff that really interests me. I hope I can catchup. Especially as we have new assignments to do.

Weather is not the nicest at the moment. It's a mixture of rain and snow and it's cold and windy. It's real bed weather. I have a weather noticifaction on my phone that was never displayed before: a picture with rain and snowflakes. Will find it hard to get up this morning. At least I don't need to go the library. I solved my Visual Basic problem after having a moment of enlightment. Now I just have to debug everything and make it a bit more user friendly. It's good that I can actually "afford" being sick as I am ahead of the assignment schedule and got more things done during the Christmas period.

Well, I better get out of bed or won't get up at all ...

10th January 2013 - First Post in 2013

Hi. Sorry for all the delay. I am in the middle of doing my assignments so the space here won't fill as quickly as usual. December was busy and it seems this will continue on during the month of January - at least until 25th January.

Hope to post more in the coming days once the assignments are done.

Wish you all a Happy New Year!