Days, daze

Although it feels like forever ago now, I went over to Dublin to see parents for the first weekend in August. I had some nice Japanese fabric with maple leaves on it, and some with stripes, and decided they would make a nice box-and-coaster set for Dad. ^_^

I managed to work around the bus strike to get into town (taxi - DART - taxi) and got caught out in the insanely heavy 10 minutes of rain for that day. I went into Dunnes and bought a face cloth to dry my hair with, and am now the owner of a cute folding rain jacket I never used in the end. It's been added to my box of things to travel with.

The main reason for going into town was to visit the Open University centre, which is not far from the Science end of Trinity. They kindly let me spend an hour and a half with the books for all of the level 2 and some of the level 3 courses I want to take over the next two years. I also spent about half an hour chatting with the receptionist and talking about my options, etc. I have now signed up for the three level 2 courses I need (S205: The Molecular World - heavy-duty chemistry, S240: Analytical Science - should be good reference for translating with lots of explanations of how analysis is done, and S294: Cell Biology - which just looks fascinating). I bought a copy of the books for SK277: Human Biology as it's another course I'd love to take but I'll learn more from Analytical Science, and for SK320: Infectious Diseases and Public Health as it's going book-free from this year and I rather fancy having the books. I am going to have to give up Coursera come October when all this starts... and I know what I'm doing first week of June next year. THREE EXAMS.

Dublin didn't look like it was suffering too much from the bus strike, which was thankfully resolved a few days later. Some nice graffiti on an electrical box near O'Connell Bridge. 

It's been a crazy two weeks work-wise and I've barely got out for walks. We went out in the early evening and walked along by the river, and saw a lovely view of the dark, glassy river pouring over the weir. The phone really can't do it justice.

Hard to believe that I'm off to Cologne next weekend for Gamescom followed by a long weekend city break. It's all go until the end of September at this point - Cologne, Bristol, Paris, London. And himself is coming to Japan for a week, so need to sort all that out too!