Spring Break Shenanigans

The way our schedule worked out, the class was on a trip to Dublin right before spring break started, so the majority of my classmates left from there on various trips around Europe. I planned on enjoying the cottage to myself and not having to go anywhere or do anything. Since I'd be going home to the cottages, I organized getting everyone's luggage from the trip back into the rightful cottages, and in the process I ended up with keys to three other cottages. So, of course, I had to do something.

I rounded up Joy and Elise, the only other students on campus at the time, and we set off for some pranking. First came cottage 5 with its crowning achievement of the volleyball bra. We put a sports bra around a volleyball, used clementines for boobs, and set it atop the lampshade to watch over the living room.

Volleyball bra!

Doesn't look like much, but all of her clothes are tucked into 

Cottage 4 was already a mess when we walked in, so we had two options: clean it or try to contain the mess to one area. And we sure as hell weren't cleaning! So we piled every piece of furniture in the living room in front of the door. We made sure to leave enough room for the door to open, but the boys are going to do a bit of climbing when they get home.

In front of the door

Joy with all the bottles from the mantle now in the bathtub

Elise tucking Luke's clothes into bed to look like a body

(clean) pans in Willie's room

We concentrated on the kitchen and living room of cottage 8 and just switched the placement of things around, including hiding things in the oven, microwave, and washing machine.

Switched the drawers

Squash and potatoes in the washer

Bakeware in the oven (which they didn't find until the next day)

Food in the microwave

Our professor and his wife were gone, too, so we couldn't just leave them out. We decided to go very subtle with something they'll only find when they go to eat: tin foil all their silverware. We wrapped each knife, fork, and spoon individually in a sheet of tin foil and put them nicely back in the drawer.

Shiny!

Waterford Crystal

Last Thursday we stopped in Waterford to tour the crystal factory there. The tour started with a little introduction on the company and the history of making crystal.  Brothers George and William Penrose started making crystal in Waterford in 1783 and their business continued until 1851. A Czech immigrant by the name of Charles Bacik decided to open another crystal shop there in 1947. The city was still known for the quality of the Penrose brothers' crystal,  which is why Bacik decided to center his business there.

The first room of the tour is the mould room, where moulds are made out of beach or pear wood. These wooden moulds are generally used for special orders or when developing a new product. Even though beach and pear wood withstand heat incredibly well, the moulds usually only last between 7 and 10 days. Pieces that are produced often, like things you would find in their catalogue, would be made in cast iron moulds instead.

Right: blowing the molten crystal into vaguely the right shape
Left: putting the crystal into the mould

Next you enter the blowing room where the crystal actually takes shape. The furnaces heat the molten crystal to 1300°C (2372°F). Once the crystal is red hot, the blowers remove it from the furnace and use wooden tools and their lungs to shape the crystal before putting it in the mould. Once the crystal cools to its normal clear color the piece is removed from the mould, checked for impurities, and is off to the kiln to slowly cool to room temperature.

Once the pieces are fully cooled they go through a series of quality checkpoints.  If they have any slight imperfection, they are smashed and remelted for another go round. The pieces then go to be marked for cutting. A temporary pattern is drawn on each piece that later gets cleaned off during the washing and polishing stage.

The next part of the process is the most interesting and impressive part. Master Cutters use diamond-tipped wheels to cut the patterns into each piece. Even though the pieces are marked with the pattern, the Master Cutters know the designs by memory; they have to before they can finish their apprenticeship. The other way the pieces are cut is by a pair of large, automatic cutting machines.

Brendon working on a bowl at his wheel

What's really cool about this room of the tour is that the Master Cutters will actually talk to you and tell you what they're working on. One Cutter named Brendon chatted with Molly, Joy,and I for quite a while. He talked with us about the differences between machine cuts and cuts done by hand. Horizontal cuts along rounded objects are difficult and time consuming for the Cutters so they often have the machines do these. The machines also do circular cuts, which is what is happening in the picture below.

Gaelic Football

Today we went up to Castlebar for a football match—but it was neither American football or soccer. It was Gaelic football. Going into the match, we didn’t really know a whole lot except what our lovely bus driver, Owen explained to us on the drive up. Two teams of 15 players each try to score by either kicking it through the uprights like in American football or kicking it in the goal like soccer. But here’s the crazy part: they can use their hands.

At the pitch—the field—there was a large section of modern stadium seats under a roof to shield from the rain, and the rest was just old benches that looked to be poured concrete. We were all a little apprehensive about where we would end up sitting because the old benches did not look very comfortable. Lucky for us there are no reserved seats, so we followed Owen under the canopy to the newer seats.

Our team, County Mayo (Maigh eo), proudly donned their red and green jerseys against the #1 ranked Cork (Corcaigh) team. Even though we didn't fully understand what was going on, a handful of my classmates and I got really into the game, shouting and chanting along with the rest of the Mayo fans. Whenever Mayo scored a goal, nearly everyone immediately jumped to their feet and screamed. I never thought it would be so easy to get so swept up and consumed by the excitement of a sporting event. I go to baseball games every year, but I’ve never got so into the feverous fervor of the crowd. After the second goal I actually spilled hot chocolate all over myself, but it didn’t matter. We ended up seeing a brilliant match that left us wanting to see more. And it was a huge plus that Mayo won!

F*** Off

A couple weeks ago, some mates and I were at a pub in Westport talking with Debs, who’d grown up in Louisburgh. Someone asked what the best way to get a guy to go away when you aren’t interested in talking to him. With a straight face, she said, “Fuck off.” We were a little taken aback, surely that was a bit too harsh for someone who was just being a little annoying. She must have seen the looks on our faces so she elaborated, saying that it isn’t taken offensively here.

Of course, you can be rude when you say it, depending on the tone you take. If he’s really persistent, it’s okay to sound a little angry, but sounding pissed off will get you labeled as a bitch. Alternately you can also say it nicely, like, “Hey, fuck off,” softly (this is not to be confused with quietly—saying it quietly will get you nowhere because he won’t hear it).

Nobody really bats an eye when you tell someone to fuck off at the pub. This isn’t to say that you can go around telling people to fuck off whenever and wherever you want. It isn’t acceptable in all situations, so reserve it only for when someone is really bothering you and won’t take the hint to leave.

Pants on the Ground

For some reason, Emilee and I must attract weirdos at the pubs, especially the guys who like to undo their trousers while dancing. The first time we encountered this, Emilee, Claire, Luke (three of my classmates) and I went with the local darts team to Westport. We all ended the night at one of the late pubs, Cozy Joe’s. Emilee, Claire, and I were dancing while Luke talked with our friend Paul. We weren’t by the main dance floor, so we were a bit surprised when this guy came up and started trying to dance with us. And then we realized, his belt was undone and his trousers were unzipped. The trousers were still up where they were supposed to be, but we saw a lot more of his boxer-briefs than any of us cared to. Not knowing what the hell to do, we just stopped and looked to Paul for help. After all, he is a tall guy and can maybe look intimidating if he wanted to (I say maybe because I don’t know that I quite believe that). So what did he do? Got up and mimicked the kid until he got fed up and left.

Paul later told us that dealing with that type of kid is tricky because he’s drunk and talks a big game, but doesn’t have the bullocks to do anything. Merely telling him to f*** off won’t even scratch the surface of his ego. So you’ve got to do strange things to get him to go away, and even that likely won’t last long. And it didn’t. The kid was back trying to dance with us within 20 minutes so we just walked away. None of us had the energy to deal with him.

The second time Emilee and I dealt with someone like that was while we were in Killarney. It was Friday night when we were at the Killarney Grand Hotel. The front half of the Grand is your typical Irish pub that has music every night of the week, but the back half is a nightclub. We were in the nightclub after the band had finished in the front, dancing and having a good craic, when a guy starts dancing with us. Neither Em or I paid him much attention, and a few minutes later, we look over and he’s working on his belt, a mate on either side of him egging him on. Once he gets the belt, he doesn’t just unzip his trousers like the lad over at Cozy Joe’s had, he drops the trousers down to his ankles. Unfortunately Paul wasn’t there to chase the guy off, so we quickly put a few people between us and him, hoping he wouldn’t follow or try to find us later in the night (he didn’t!).

I’m not very familiar with the bar/club scene back home, so I don’t know whether it’s common to see someone dropping trou , but I have a feeling that it’ll happen wherever there are idiots mixed with alcohol. 

Yelow One Update 2

We've been here six weeks so far and the score stands thusly
Emilee: 5.5
Steph: 19

LTL SLR

On our trip throughout the south of Ireland, we stopped in Cork for an hour and a half lunch. Emilee and I were still pretty full from breakfast so we decided to do some shopping instead of eating. Less than a minute after we stepped off the bus we saw a shop that peaked our interest. The sign above the door was canary yellow, and the name, 'It's a Deal!' was lettered in candy apple red. An assortment of kitchen goods and crystal decorations sat in the window, and behind them you could see that the shop was packed with tons of random merchandise.

We browsed around and realized it was basically a garage sale in a storefront. All the prices were on little yellow stickers with initials of who the seller of each item was. Behind a couple bins of records was a cabinet housing a half dozen film cameras. Most were just simple point and shoots, but there were two SLRs. One of them was black and looked very similar to my Minolta X-700, but it had a large, strange looking flash unit attached. I don't remember what the brand was, but it was definitely some European one I'd never heard of before. The body was priced at €20 and the flash was €15-20. It was a really cool camera, but €30-35 was a little too steep for me right now, so I turned my attention to the other SLR.

It was a silver Praktica LTL-3. I knew nothing about Praktica—I'd never heard  of it before then—but the design of the camera was so interesting. Instead of the shutter button being on the top of the camera near the film advance lever and the shutter speed wheel, it was on the front of the camera just to the left of the lens (if you're looking at the front of the camera; to the right if you're taking a picture). Another interesting thing about this camera is that it's a screw-mount lens, meaning that the lens actually screws into the body instead of twisting in. It takes about 4-5 full turns to get the lens attached rather than the 1/4 turn required of normal lenses. I asked one of the guys working at the shop about it, and he said, "It's German, I think. The guy I bought it from told me they're practically bomb-proof." How cool is that?

Even though the light meter wasn't working, I bought the Praktica for €20. Once I get a new battery, I'm assuming it'll work just fine since the rest of it seems to be in really good condition. Later I did some research and found out that what's in the camera now is likely a mercury battery, so that's awesome... I'll have to figure out how to dispose of it properly. But I can get a new, non-mercury battery in the States for $10. I also found that Prakticas were made in East Germany from 1970-1975. Since mine's an LTL-3, it has to have been made in one of the later years (there was an LTL and LTL-2 before the 3 came out, each with only slight changes). This puts my camera collection up to 11!