An Alappuzha Achayan parks his vallam and walks into an Irish Pub on the banks of An tSionnain

I set off from my cousin's place with the intention of being the first non-Irishman to set foot on the eastern most point of the mainland portion of the Republic of Ireland. As I wound my way down Thormanby Road I took a  snap of the electric car recharging station in front of the local library. [8:40:43 PM] I took a right turn to get a view of the Howth Church. [8:40:58 PM]. I've become used to it being very bright with sunlight so late in the northern latitudes now. Instead of going down to the pier I found a narrow path to walk between two houses on to the eastern part of the peninsula for my walk. I would have never noticed this path or known about it without Google Maps. [20.52.51] This was what I saw at around 80% of the way ...  just walked by the 🏠 house Yeats lived in, in Howth. I assume he wrote this poem while living there because the view from there looks just like those in this video  And also because the poem is quoted on a plaque on the wall of the house. ...

I knew to expect from history that English was a essentially just creole  or mixture of various Gaelic and Germanic languages. Before moving to Ireland to do my masters degree on the ides of March 2021, I tried a little Irish on the mobile app Duolingo and then realised where English gets its soul from. The body of English is of course Germanic (mostly Frisian, Dutch and Danish). The clothes are Latin fabric made by a Greek tailor. Sometimes the clothes make the man. Don't forget that French (another parent of the mongrel English) is itself just  a vulgar Latin with Norman (Nord-Mann - Norseman - North-men) and Gaulish grandparents. And Gauls are just European mainland Gaels. But while Duolingo rocked for Deutsch, it sucked for Irish. It was probably made worse by the fact that I studied German for 18 months. And the use of the Latin alphabet with ridiculous pronunciation styles doesn't help. I wonder why Irish Gaelige doesn't use something more native to the language like ...

I wanted to post about the flight and arrival in Ireland ,the extreme cold (imo) and landlord issues. But I've had too many things to catch up with and so will post about it "properly" later. For now, here's a partial summary of 15th to 17th ... ---------------- The power sockets here don't match my devices. so got adaptors from a shop nearby. Got internet and power after more than 24 hours. Phone and laptop batteries were dead. Ippozha onnu ushaar aayathu. I feel so homesick So cold I already hate it here dinner at 6:24 PM ☹️ ivade saippum madammayum okke 10PM inu orangum 😒 now my bad sleeping habits when adjusted by 5.5 hours suddenly makes me a gud boi 😀 I usually sleep at 3 AM in India. Here that is 9:30 PM 😛 Madamma Ammachie making some bland meals ... have to eat fast or it gets cold very soon at home even if it is not hot anymore we can eat or use the microwave. here it goes from hot to warm to cold to frozen in 10-15 minutes. I told a friend that I miss...

I finally - after trying to do so for over a week - finished packing all my stuff in my Ernakulam flat and moved to Alleppey / Alappuzha on Friday the 5th of March. I am still struggling with the inventory in Alappuzha. The final 20% of your packing takes up 80% of your time and effort. It's hard to decide what to leave and what to take with you. The flat I was staying in in Ernakulam belongs to my friends who are doctors abroad and they would be cool with anything I did. I could have taken anything I wanted or left anything behind. And yet I couldn't make up my mind in time. So I did what all great planners with OCD do in times of crisis … I just winged it. As the deadline for departure departed making a nice whoosh sound, I just piled everything left behind into the remaining bags without any discrimination, categorisation or sorting of any sort and dumped it all into the car. Not the most pleasant or orderly way to go about doing these things but sometimes thinking twice bef...

So this is the first post on this blog about my future adventures in Ireland. I'll write a few posts about previous days if I have the inclination and the memories ... later. I thought it appropriate to type something today since I created the blog just a few minutes ago after 2 days of deciding title and url. My course guide (not sure if that is his official title) just gave me an allowance on the tests since I got the visa late and will be reaching Baile Átha Cliath  (and then possibly if there is no airport quarantine, on to  Luimneach )  on the 15th of March. I was reminded of the phrase from Shakespeare's " Julius Caesar ". I then googled it to realise to my pleasant surprise that the ides of March usually falls between the 13th and 15th of March. While I was in school, my father used to tell me that while he was in school, the teachers and other elders used to tell his peers to "beware the ides of March" since March and April are the months when most ...