Finally! Our kitchen issue has been resolved and we and our up stairs neighbors can go back to actually using our kitchens. I don’t know anything more about what caused the problem, and I’m not sure I want to. What I would like to know, though, is why the guys who built this place didn’t leave some access way to the pipes behind the wall. As you can see, the nice people who were in here day takin’ care o’ bit’niz really did just that – they punched a hole in the wall! Now all we can hope for is that the hole will be filled with something that will leave the next pair of hard working postgraduate student who move in here with more kitchen time and less water on the floor…
Browsing Posts published in March, 2007
For some possibly simple yet still unexplained reason the kitchen sink here at my humble abode has been clogged for the past week or so. Not being the busiest of chefs I think my flatmate has had it worse than me, but then again he fled the city Friday afternoon and I believe has yet to return. For me on the other hand, skipping town to go home just ain’t that simple – I have 1200 km to travel.
So I stayed in with no greater plans for the kitchen than breakfast and a possible late night snack. Friday passed without too much hassle, though the dishes remain. For Saturday dinner I settled for the local free delivery – ham and mushroom pizza. Simple, affordable, and quite OK when washed down with a can of beer.
Later that night, Saturday that is, I decided to finish off that last can of beer I knew was in the far corner of the bottom shelf in the fridge. I had about 40 minutes left of a Poirot movie and was getting thirsty from all the mysterious shooting and cold, logical thinking. (Also, I had been eating Pringles.) I hit pause and swung out the door heading for the kitchen… And was met by a pool of water half an inch deep – not including the height of the carpet – covering the whole kitchen area and half the living room area. The sink was full and overflowing with odd colored water.
It took me three turns with the bucket – probably close to 40 liters – that the maintenance guy had left “just in case” when he was in last Thursday to try to fix the soon-to-be-smelling problem. (Obviously to no avail. And the plummer he had called for had yet to show up.) I even had to sacrifice one of my two bathroom towels to get at least some of the dirty water up from the carpet and down the toilet where it belonged.
Not knowing where the water came from (I hadn’t been using the kitchen sink all day), I feared that the monster of greasy wateriness would return and take over even more of the flat. And as the hour was well past 1 o’clock, I took a stroll down to the security guard to let him know what was going on. He joined me back and together we reasoned that there was nothing we could do but wait and hope. He would leave a note for the maintenance guys to return and have another look first thing Sunday morning.
As said was done. As sharp as 10 o’clock as anything can be on a Sunday morning the same maintenance guy who was in on the Thursday came knocking the next morning. He was quite surprised at the amount of water that had left it’s tracks after finding it’s way back up to an unscheduled tete-a-tete with our wall-to-wall carpet and quickly restarted his search for the secret monster lair.
He struck water (!) on his first attempt. Seems the my unwelcome guest originated from the kitchen sink one floor up and had carried with it the remains of what had been a late, 2nd floor dinner. Both sinks were quickly declared off-limits.
Having neither appetite nor will to make even the simplest of breakfasts I hopped the first bus to town and spent the whole day taking advantage of one of the things this city really knows – Sunday shopping. I didn’t really buy anything, but I’ve had two large coffees, one foot-long Subway, a pint of Guinness, a glass of wine, a Chicken curry (in which I found a hair and had it returned for a new plate – with out hair but with cold rice. Not going back there any time soon!) and a Jameson on the rocks. No clogged sink is gonna keep me hungry!
Oh, the beer, by the way, was left in the fridge. It will be enjoyed once the coast is clear – pun intended.
Blood, violence and half naked men (and women) with a message of patriotism, heroism and freedom. I think that about sums it up…
But it was good! I liked it. The choreography was awesome and the graphics breathtaking. The plot on the other hand was fairly thin. After all, it’s basically all a big fight scene with a bit of intro and an impressive ending.
Thing is, that is all it takes. I think we were all impressed by the way the Spartan’s fought against oppression and tyranny. There were cheers from around the audience when the big monster had it’s eye stung out by the broken spear, and the gasp was almost in unison as the spear glided through the air in slow motion towards the god-kings head. Not to mention all the sobs when the hero finally fell under the hail of the scarab-shaped arrows.
So, if you’re out for an evening of blood-gushing, hard-core and impressive entertainment, this is the movie for you. I give it a solid 5/6.
March 17th is, as you all know, St. Patric’s day. The day when everyone is a little bit Irish and Guinness, Bailey’s or whiskey (note the ‘e’ in whiskey) is mandatory. Paddy’s day is thing to celebrate and we know all about that. Or at least, we try… Yesterday was the day of Paddy’s ball. A long awaited and much planned for party arranged by the DCU Student Union and DCU Snowboarding. (I have no idea what the snowboarding club has to do with this, or even why an Irish college has a snowboarding club – ain’t much snow ’round here – but I’m sure they have loads of fun.)
The party was held at The Helix, a large venue here on campus, with room for hundreds of people, a large stage and a nice little bar. Only the reception hall was used for this party, and with I believe some 500+ tickets sold I was expecting the place to be crowded and spirits high. Not the case. Peaking at we-can-still-get-seats-level and with a fairly narrow minded DJ playing hardly dance-able music it was easy to see we were heading down hill.
What I was most baffled by was the way they arranged the bar. In front of the permanent bar was placed a second movable bar and a queue system was in place where you had to queue in one end and exit the other, kind of like in a shop. Seven people were working the bar, some of them behind the permanent bar pouring beers, others in front behind the movable bar mixing “drinks” and pouring bottles into plastic cups. The service was so slow I think we spent close to 30 minutes per round. (The guard telling people to go around to the other side to queue didn’t look happy either by the way.)
Comparing this to the nightclub I used to work where we serve 800+ guests with 6-7 barmen, all capable of mixing drinks and two doing advanced cocktails, I can’t call this anything but a disaster. And the fact that the organizers didn’t see that two bars without organized queues would speed up the process 100-fold doesn’t make any better. Sorry folks – the bar chaos-system is tried and tested world wide; and used world wide. Get with the program – it works!
At about 0115 the fire alarm went off. Everyone was evacuated resulting in an unruly crowd and three assaulted volunteers. The whole thing turned out to be sabotage as several break-glass alarm points were smashed, one I believe being jammed with a nail. The clock inched towards closing time and with no working fire detection system the whole thing was called off and people were let in in small groups to collect their jackets. All in all, a pretty bad party.
The whole thing was pretty sad. There was a great potential in this – the venue is fantastic, the anticipation and expectations were great and it would have been the perfect way to start St. Paddy’s day bank holiday weekend. Not blaming the SU or the Snowboarding club for the fire alarm story, and recognizing that they have probably worked very hard to set this up, I have to say the result left a lot to be desired.
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