Ireland Trip Notes – 2006

While cleaning out my web directory I just found some notes I had written during a trip to Ireland in Summer 2006 for a conference. It was my first conference trip as a graduate student, and I was presenting work done by another student from my lab. Rather than just let my notes disappear into the recycling bin, I figured I’d post the story here.  It covers most of the trip except for a day trip I took outside of Dublin to Glendalough. You can find a less detailed but prettier description of the trip here.

My trip was to start with a flight from Hartford to Philadelphia and then a flight on to Dublin. I’m used to things going terribly wrong at some point during my international flights, so I was less than surprised when while sitting in the terminal in Hartford, sirens started going off and the loudspeakers informed us of a “critical situation” requiring us to evacuate the building. People gradually got up and headed towards the exit of the security area. There, everyone seemed to be milling around, unwilling to leave the area since then we would have to check back in through security. Weighing the risk of a fiery explosive death against having to take off your shoes is quite a difficult decision! Just before I was about to give in and leave the building, the sirens stopped. There were no further messages or explanations over the intercom, but we all assumed that this meant everything was fine and we were allowed to go back to our gates.  I suppose the sirens also could have stopped because the terrorists finally reached the control tower and disabled the alarm, but fortunately it appears to only have been a false alarm.

In the end my flight left more or less on time and we reached Philly with plenty of time for me to buy an overpriced slice of pizza and head to my gate. I was happy to see my plane already at the gate almost an hour early, and naively predicted an on time departure. Naturally that was foolish of me, and we ended up leaving about an hour late. Luckily I had no other flights to meet, and I ended up reaching Dublin only a little later than expected.

Once in Dublin I wasted time looking for an ATM (it turns out there was only one as the other two were out of service). At first I mistook the ATM’s line for the line to a Disney World ride since it wrapped around and around the terminal. Realizing this, I simply I changed $20 at a currency exchange and bought my bus ticket to go downtown.

I didn’t dally in downtown Dublin as I was anxoius to get rid of my luggage. I took the next bus to University College Dublin (about 20 minutes outside of town). On the bus I saw someone vaguely familiar carrying a Dell laptop case, and I sucessfully guessed that he was also going to the same conference. In fact he was a Rutgers student, and the following day I discovered he had actually been my TA for the Parallel and Distributed Systems course while I was an undergrad there the previous year.

We eventualy found our way to the registration area for the conference. We checked in, but didn’t go to any of the day’s tutorials. Instead I headed over to the dorms where I was to stay. There I discovered I had not been put on the list for a room, so I spent two hours sitting in the shade of a very nice tree waiting for the residence manager to return.

Eventually my housing was resolved and I dropped off my things and took the bus back downtown, as it was still only early afternoon. After a brief stop at an internet cafe, I walked down O’Connel Street to Trinity College.

Trinity has a very pretty campus full of old stone buildings and nice green lawns that you are not allowed to walk on. I stealthily followed a tour group about for a bit, and learned about the residences of a few noble laureates and other trivia. After an unsuccesful search for free wireless, I settled down on the main green where the students seemed to be gathering for their evening beers. As I said, you aren’t allowed to sit on the grass, so they were restricted to about a 15 foot zone of grass sourounding several acres of pristine grass. Somewhat strange, but I guess it adds to the social atmosphere.

After taking a brief nap on the lawn (I was jet lagged!) I headed back to UCD for an early bed time.

The next day I was up fairly early for the conference start at 8AM. The talks had mixed levels of interest. Most of the keynotes were industry speakers with high level talks about broad system automation that weren’t overly interesting. The later talks were better. I gave a 10 minute talk on the self-managing storage system I was presenting on behalf of a former student in my lab.

I ended up leaving the poster session early to go to dinner with some researchers from HP and IBM. The guy from HP had terrified me earlier in the day when he came up to my poster and immediately began complaining that we had “mischaracterized Jason’s work.” Since I had no idea who Jason was, I had some difficulty responding, although I must have placated him enough as he paid for my dinner later on! We went to Eden, a rather fancy restaurant downtown. Afterwards we went to a fairly touristy bar in the Temple Bar area and had some Guiness. It was interesting to talk to them about life in Industry.

At the end of the day, the conference banquet was at Johnny Fox’s Irish Pub… the highest pub in all of Ireland. Also sure one of its largest tourist traps! We sat at long tables on little benches and drank Guinness while waiting for our food. I had the rack of lamb, which was actually quite good. Very tender. The desserts on the other hand were less exciting.

After another long period of sitting around, the night’s entertainment began. There was a group of traditional Irish musicians who were probably a little disappointed by our complete lack of knowledge of the lyrics to the Irish songs that they kept trying to make us sing. The volumes on their microphones was poorly set up, so we couldn’t hear what they were singing at all. This was followed by some traditional “hooley” dancing. Two men and three women jumped around on stage in a tap dancing style show.

When this was over, it was nearly midnight. We had expected dinner to only last until 9, so people were itching to leave. After all, there were talks starting again the next morning at 8 AM, and we had a 30 minute ride back to the hotels! Just as we all got up to go, the announcer told us that the band was about to return for another performance. In an extremely awkward moment everyone looked around and then continued their way out the door. I’m sure the band was a bit surprised when they returned to an empty hall!

Thursday was the last day of talks, and they went by pretty quickly, although it still lasted until around 6pm. I was tired so I headed back to my dorm and relaxed for the evening.

Friday morning I was finally free, so I headed into town. It was Bloom day (for James Joyce’s character in Ulysses), so I went by the pub on Duke St which is supposed to be one of the main stops. I was a little disappointed – there were a ton of people standing around, but none of the street performers or reciters which I had heard about. Perhaps I came at the wrong time.

Next I headed to the Natural History Museum, although once I was inside I discovered I was actually in the National Museum instead. That was also on my agenda for the day, so no big problem. They had interesting exhibits on Viking and Medieval history. Next I went a little further down the road and made it to the actual Museum of Natural History. They have something like 10,000 animal specimins on display. Some were very interesting, including skeletons and antlers from Giant Irish Deer – a long extinct creature which made their moose specimin look tiny.

After this I headed to the National Art Gallery which has a mix of classic paintings and a large Irish section including the work of the Irish impressionist Yeats.

And that seems to be all I wrote down.  The following day I took a nice trip up to Glendalough where I took a slightly rainy hike through some amazingly green scenery.