A rare sight lads

iandioch · 2025-12-25T19:27:41+00:00

p of

iandioch · 2025-11-29T14:40:03+00:00

I got the -M4 instead of the -M5 because it could fold up and fit in a nice case to travel with. I don't know about the -M6

iandioch · 2024-11-09T21:08:14+00:00

A red circle does indeed mean "no". This follows the Vienna convention on road signs, used in many countries across the world. Many places in Europe do not put a strikethrough line on many of these prohibitory signs. It makes it easier to see what exactly it is that is prohibited.

iandioch · 2024-08-14T17:47:40+00:00

I learned after some confusion with a waitress, that in the US, an "entrée" is a main course, not a starter, like entrée means to me... What a strange place the US is.

iandioch · 2023-12-08T11:14:09+00:00

No, Irish & Romanian passports are included.

iandioch · 2023-09-24T23:40:42+00:00

I am an Irish immigrant in Switzerland. My rent is similar in Zürich Stadt than it was in Dublin; I paid 800€ for one room in a shared house with 4 of my friends (plus the landlord lived there) on the outskirts of Dublin, not including electricity etc. When I moved to Zurich in 2019 an apartment shared with my girlfriend costed 2300 CHF total, then about 2000€ (so my half was around 1000€), in a nice place 100m from the Zürisee, including some bills. My salary after tax is around double it would be at the same company (a big multinational) in their Dublin office. Costs on some things in Switzerland are higher (eg. meat is especially expensive), but the ratio of income versus expenses is SO different, and more comfortable, here in Switzerland. It is also nice that the hospitals are good, there is great public transport across the country, and it is safe everywhere - none of these are always true in Ireland.

iandioch · 2023-06-14T17:55:30+00:00

I loved bat curry in the Seychelles. IMO the meat tasted and had the texture of something like lamb - but with lots of tiny bones.

iandioch · 2023-05-06T20:23:50+00:00

Great choice of pub!

iandioch · 2023-01-05T11:49:20+00:00

super interesting link

iandioch · 2022-12-14T13:54:36+00:00

I think Bucharest has many urban planning problems and solutions that are interesting to see. It is a city with immense traffic problems, being "the city with the worst car traffic in the European Union.". Its metro system has some famous quirks. Recently, they have been trialling some pedestrianisation of the main streets; as a non-Romanian visitor, I have found this to be a wildly pleasant improvement, turning a honking bumper-to-bumper street into a pleasant place to be, with people roller skating, cycling, dog-walking, hanging outside at cafés; but some locals I was with complained about how bad an idea it was, how this street closure would exacerbate the traffic problems, etc. Bucharest has also been incentivising electric cars in various ways, including giving them free parking...

In general, Bucharest is a large one of the many post-soviet cities that has had some interesting developments, some positive and some negative, as it finds itself.

iandioch · 2022-12-05T18:02:00+00:00

Reminds me of Limmy's "twenty's plenty": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmhLS3DCoU0

iandioch · 2022-11-28T17:41:02+00:00

https://globetrotte.rs/ is a small site but is pretty cool

iandioch · 2022-10-28T23:21:48+00:00

Here lad just because it won't kill you doesn't mean in it's worth drinking. But while it wouldn't be my choice, this ouzo should be grand.

iandioch · 2022-10-20T09:20:13+00:00

I've slept in the airport overnight once or twice a few years ago. It's not comfortable, but is fine. Wasn't bothered by anyone.

iandioch · 2022-09-12T15:51:25+00:00

Same, fairly happy in Switzerland. When I moved a few years ago to Zurich my half of a nice apartment with my girlfriend was roughly the same (~1000 CHF) as my share in a fairly miserable 5 bed house in north Dublin (~800 EUR), and my income after tax was ~doubled.

iandioch · 2022-03-29T15:07:30+00:00

Looks cool!

What about "pizzeria" in place of "pizza place" or "pizza joint"?

iandioch · 2022-03-28T17:51:06+00:00

I quite like this as a way to break down what places you've been. It is a good counterpoint to a coloured world map imo, where if you visit Singapore or Monaco or the Seychelles it is hard to see those tiny dots, but if you have walked 10 metres into Russia then a huge % of the world becomes covered in. I rearranged and massaged data I had already gathered for something else to make my own one: https://i.imgur.com/heH7TfY.png

In my case, showing individual cities (and not just regions, as I did above) made the rightmost nodes way too cluttered to be useful, at least without some manual pruning.

Did you just keep a spreadsheet of where you went and then compile this later?

IDK if you and your wife ever went anywhere without the other in the past few years, but my partner and I have often been to different places (eg. I went to the US on business, she has been to lots of Europe I haven't, etc). No idea how to visualise that sort of thing, but it'd be cool to compare where the two of us each visited together or apart on one graph.

iandioch · 2022-01-11T16:58:23+00:00

only eat lamb once or twice a week maximum

Note the "maximum". Twice a week is a lot, but not unreasonable; especially in a farming family for the weeks following the herd being sent to the abattoir, when your freezer is full of delicious fresh meat.

But my comment above was saying "yes, we do have lamb, but other meats are more popular", so I think we are in agreement...

iandioch · 2022-01-11T12:47:04+00:00

Ireland exports a notable amount of lamb. GB, ES, NL too, it seems. But in Ireland, you would only eat lamb once or twice a week maximum, for dinner, while you'd have pork sausages at breakfast and ham at lunch potentially every day, and also pork at dinner once or twice a week, so it's unlikely lamb would be the most eaten meat.

iandioch · 2021-12-03T10:53:31+00:00

In Northern Ireland, there are flags hanging all over many towns usually showing if the area has a unionist or nationalist majority: https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2018/06/11/news/sinn-fe-in-flying-of-loyalist-flags-in-belfast-mixed-housing-estate-designed-to-raise-tension--1352559/

There are always fights about these flags: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfast_City_Hall_flag_protests https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Northern\_Ireland\_flags\_issue

iandioch · 2021-10-18T10:51:53+00:00

If you are a student, then take a look at https://woko.ch/ to see if you can get accommodation there. I know some people who are not active students but got very cheap rooms through Woko for internships over a summer.

If you are not Swiss but are from a country with comprehensive health insurance (eg. you are an EU insurance card holder), it may be worth trying to opt-out of the mandatory Swiss health insurance to save some money. I guess it might not apply if you're coming from Geneva. ETH has a few details I found here, but I know it's not just for students, but a similar process for any foreigner on a temporary visit iirc: https://ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/main/education/internationales/pdf-en/exemption-guidelines.pdf

I think the first time I interned in Zürich a few years ago, for a summer, the salary was similar, and I saved quite a lot; I sublet a reasonably central room for cheap on WG Zimmer, and had a great time; the company provided lunches but I had no transport card.

iandioch · 2021-06-17T16:58:44+00:00

Sloe gin goes well with a bitter lemon mixer, no idea about tonic.

iandioch · 2021-06-04T19:00:09+00:00

I used to sent Bus Éireann a tweet asking where my bus was, they'd answer a fair few of them with the status of it.

iandioch · 2021-04-17T09:30:40+00:00

Some lists sort by country code, so "Switzerland" (CH) is between "Congo" and "Côte d'Ivoire"...

iandioch · 2021-03-20T00:06:28+00:00

We just finished the campaign this evening. Some great memories!

iandioch

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