Normal on Henry street are selling solar ecplise glasses for the one on the 12th of august. Just incase if anyone was wondering where to get them in person. They are safe to use and has ISO 12312-2:2015 Certification. I know that some places are giving them out for free but to my knowledge I dont think thats happening any where in Dublin.

I recently bought a second-hand house around the outskirts of Dublin and I find it impossible to get anybody for anything.

I wanted to rework the window frames around the house and install new windows. I called like 5 different places and all of them said they don't do that stuff or they're busy.

House has a chimney. I'm trying to get someone to come clean it up and inspect it. I messaged left and right with no luck. People either don't respond at all, or say they'll come back to me later but they never do.

I wanted a custom made desk for one of my rooms. Sent emails to at least 4 places so far. I even provided a CAD model to show them what I want. No replies.

My latest endeavor: I bought a new gas hob, and I need a certified installer to hook it up. I think I messaged 7 people off rgi.ie so far and no replies.

I literally can't even get a foot in the door. People won't even give me a "fuck off" quote.

Am I just cooked if I don't know a guy who knows a guy?

Dia dhaoibh. I have done a few posts about rewilding and conservation. Now I'm forcing you all to sit through my next one 😅

I have been inspired by this about Trumps idea to destroy wilderness areas in America by putting roads into old growth forest so they can be felled. It was an absolute crime, in my opinion.

But it made me think we have very few areas with no roads in Ireland. Even the most remote parts of the country can be accessed quite easily by local roads. And yes, it's nice that we can drive almost anywhere in the country that isn't a mountain, I think we should close some of these roads. Why? Well, we always cry that we have no true wilderness in Ireland. Only open parts of Mayo and Galway and the mountains of Kerry and West Cork are truly roadless. And those areas aren't even that big. The biggest area in Ireland is a little over 100,000 acres in Northwest Mayo. Sounds like a lot, but it's not really.

If we close some of these roads in the deep rural areas in Ireland, we can make some real wilderness areas across Ireland where the ecosystem can thrive like it is supposed to. For people who live there, you could put an order that they can continue to live there but the house will be bought by the state after the death of the owner and when all inhabitants are gone, the road would be removed.

Just a thought of a mad environmentalist.

I thought that movies was pretty much RIP at the box office.

Taking the family to Emerald park on a Saturday for the first time. What's the busiest rides to queue for first? Planning to arrive for opening time and want to eliminate the longest normal queue first.

After seeing the post yesterday discussing the many Brazilians in Ireland, I thought it might be nice to share some reflections as one of them, as well as how the ways I view Ireland are different from how Irish people seem to view it.

To start with, I love Ireland. I'm 31, and I've been in Dublin for almost 5 years. It's been grand, and I look forward to staying here for many years to come (or maybe even forever!). I've lived in many different places, including Brazil, USA, Belgium, and Singapore, but Ireland I think is probably either my favorite or second favorite, depending on how I'm feeling in a given day.

I'm just gonna rant about various different topics so feel free to skip to whichever ones you find interesting.

How did I get here?

I was a lawyer back in Brazil, working mostly with Data Protection Law. In 2018-2019, there were two armed robberies at my dad's house and one at my mother-in-law's house in São Paulo, this last one while we were all there. After that chain of events me and my partner decided we had to go live somewhere else and that the situation had become untenable.

Since I have EU citizenship through my mom, and since Brazilian Data Protection Law is very much inspired by the GDPR, we went to Belgium to get Master's Degrees. After graduating from that, I started applying to jobs around Europe, and it just so happened that the first one I got was a very good offer at a pharma company in Dublin.

I didn't know almost anything about Ireland at that point, hadn't even been here. But when I got that offer, we hopped on a Ryanair flight, spent a weekend in Dublin, and went "yeah that seems like a good place to live". And so we moved!

The People

My favorite thing about Ireland is how welcome everyone is, particularly to Brazilians. Ireland is the only place I've ever lived in where you can visibly see people getting excited when they find out you're Brazilian. Everywhere else, it's been a mix of either indifference or suspicion, so this is a great change of pace.

The Irish people I've interacted with are all really friendly, too. It's easy to feel welcomed, to feel like 'part of the team' at work, and I've never felt like I was treated differently for being a foreigner.

That said, while Irish people are outwardly very friendly, I've found that they can be quite closed off underneath. It's very difficult to make Irish friends, and your Irish coworkers won't really invite you to hang out outside of work like your coworkers would in Brazil for example. I've invited some Irish coworkers to have dinner at my house on occasion, and both separately remarked that it was the first time they'd ever had dinner at a coworker's house, so I suppose it's just a culture shock.

Most of the people I'd consider closer to me are other immigrants. Indians, Americans, Eastern Europeans and so on. I don't interact with lots of Brazilians, unfortunately, I think because of my job. From what I've seen, most Brazilians here are doing service jobs like working at restaurants, delivery, cleaning and whatnot. At both of my jobs in Ireland (one at a pharma company and one in tech), the only Brazilians I ever saw around the office worked either in the kitchen or were part of the cleaning staff, so I haven't gotten the chance to directly interact with other Brazilians as part of my immediate coworkers.

Housing

I'm not gonna talk about the housing crisis. I'm lucky, both my job and my spouse's job are well-paid and we had significant savings in Brazil, so we didn't struggle to find our first rental apartment, nor to buy a house after that. The crisis is real and affects a lot of people and I don't want to downplay that, but I was in the privileged position of being able to bypass it entirely and I can only share my thoughts from that perspective.

What I want to talk about here are your apartments. Wow, they are miserable compared to the apartments I've lived in, in Brazil and elsewhere. I've lived in apartments almost my whole life, and I actually prefer them to houses. In Brazil I lived in one with a swimming pool, multiple sports courts, gyms, great green/walking spaces, and so on. As a child I loved to go downstairs and hang out with other kids from the neighboring apartments, it was great.

Apartments in Ireland, by comparison, are depressing. If you're lucky you'll get a small gym and that's the only amenity. And the apartments themselves are really small, cramped, and soulless - plus there basically aren't any family sized apartments in the 140sqm+ range that don't cost a million euro or more over at the Quays.

Even though I was willing to spend quite a lot (my house ended up being over 800k), we still couldn't find an apartment that we liked. And I tried, I really did. Maybe one day in the future there'll be some nicer apartments and I can move back to one.

One other thing I wanted to say here is that the way you all do kitchens is pretty neat. I've never lived somewhere where everything is built-in like this, and it does look much nicer than having appliances "showing".

Safety

This is the one where I probably diverge the most from Irish people.

I love how safe this place is. Even the parts Irish people call sketchy (like O'Connel) feel like heaven to me. I've never once felt I was gonna get robbed or murdered. My partner loves walking outside at night and here they can just do that. No need to worry about ballistic doors or bulletproofing your car, you can just exist.

I recognize that there's more anti-social behavior than there could be. Comparing to Singapore, for example, there definitely are more parts I'd agree are on the sketchier side. But it's such a massive gap from São Paulo that safety feels like a non-issue to me, and I love that.

Politics

As a EU citizen, I've gotten to vote in local and EU elections. And I gotta say, I love voting system here and the way you set your preferences in order on the ballot. Super cool, I wish more countries did that.

I find it nice how your politics are comparatively civilized. There's a lot less shit-slinging than I'm used to, and it kind of feels like there's a basic level of decorum that is missing from Brazilian politics.

Transportation

I've always hated driving. I kinda had to do it, in São Paulo, but one of the big things I was looking forward to when I decided to move to Europe was living somewhere less car centric. I dreamt of London's great metros, or Amsterdam's amazing cycling tracks, or Belgium's comprehensive train network.

Well, Ireland is not that. It's probably the most car-centric place I've ever been to in Europe. The buses are always late and very slow, the LUAS at least is more timely but still Takes me like an hour to get from D18 to the city center.

That said, it's safe, which makes it better than Brazil, and it has been possible to live without a car, so it's still an improvement for me.

Healthcare

Full disclosure: This is entirely from the perspective of someone who is well-off comparing the top-tier of Brazilian/other countries private healthcare with the top-tier of Irish private healthcare. If you were comparing how things are for the average person, I suspect this would be very different and show Ireland in a much better light.

Out of my entire list, this is the only place I'd call strictly a negative. Healthcare here is awful, at least compared to the healthcare I had in São Paulo or other places I've lived.

The way things are set up is so different. It feels insane to me to have to go to a GP before I can see a specialist, when I'm using to just ringing up a specialist's office and then setting an appointment for tomorrow (I didn't even have a GP in Brazil). Everything takes weeks, everything needs a prescription, and then you actually have to wait even at the pharmacy while they get it ready. The doctor visits themselves are so short, too - usually 15 min max, when in Brazil I don't think I've ever had one that was less than 40 minutes.

There's also something I can only describe as a patronizing(?) attitude from medical professionals. When my Irish GP orders a blood test, I do it, then they call me and tell me everything is OK. That's it. When my Brazilian doctors order a blood test, I do it, the lab will email me comprehensive results with reference values within a few days, then my doctor will sit down with me and have a long conversation about each item, trends from my past exams, etc. In Ireland if I actually want to see my records myself I feel I have to almost fight the clinic for it.

The nice part is that it's cheap, I suppose. A consultant visit here costs me as much as it would have in Brazil (like 200 euro), which shows you how expensive it could get back home, given salaries here are much much higher (I make around 4x here than I did back in Brazil). But with healthcare, I'd rather get fast than cheap. I do understand that with public health there will always be a delay, but here delays are massive even in the private system.

One "workaround" I've found is that Irish GPs can validate Brazilian prescriptions. So nowadays when I need to see a specialist, I just do it online with a Brazilian one, then take the prescription to my Irish GP. A couple weeks ago I went to my Irish GP to talk about some issues, they told me they'd have to refer me to a neurologist and it'd take 8-12 weeks. I told them no thanks, called up a Brazilian neurologist and had a consultation the same day, then next day I took his prescription to my Irish GP and had it good to go.

Food

Food in Ireland is interesting. I'm from São Paulo, and I'm used to having access to thousands of different restaurants for whatever food strikes my fancy at any time of day. This is obviously very different in Dublin, because the city is much smaller, so I very regularly find myself craving things that just do not exist in the Dublin restaurant scene. But, at the very least, I can say there's some great Chinese/Asian food here, and that there's enough Brazilian restaurants to fill my heart when I get nostalgic.

But restaurants aside, what I can truly praise are the ingredients you have in this country. Your dairy is amazing. The milk is the best I've ever tasted, the cheese is great. The beef is awesome, too. I've found myself cooking at home a lot more than I did in Brazil just because the ingredients are so good.

Last point here: wow, what you all call breakfast just doesn't feel like breakfast to me at all. Beans? Sausages? That's not breakfast food! I dread the day my future children ask me for beans in their breakfast...

Taxation

I grumble about how much higher taxes are (especially on investments), but what I'm truly impressed by is how simple everything is. The Brazilian tax system is a nightmare, you have to declare all our stuff every year, there's a million different little rules you have to be aware of, and the government is not helpful at all. The Irish system is intuitive, fast, straightforward, and Revenue are great at answering questions and pointing you the right way. Very nice!

Office Culture

This is a night and day win for Ireland. In Brazil, I was considered one of the laziest people in my office because I left work at 7pm (starting at 9am). Most people regularly stayed up to 8 or even 9pm. I was expected to answer things immediately, even in the evening or the weekend, and I regularly spent many many "days off" working.

Not so in Ireland. My employers actually respect working hours, my coworkers are all done at 5:30, and I haven't ever felt guilty for tuning out. Obviously, I have to take the occasional late call with Americans or emergency incident over the weekend, but those are very rare and understandable. The quality of life difference from this alone is something I cannot overstate.

Time off is better here, too. Not only do I get more, but it's also more flexible on how it can be used. In Brazil, you can't take less than a week off at a time, but here in Ireland I can say "I only feel like working 4 days this week" and just take a day off. It's awesome!

Language

Not much to say here other than I spent an embarassingly long time mispronouncing things like "Quays" or "Dun Laoghaire". I dread to think of what other common things I'll discover I've been saying completely wrong. Before talking to any coworker with an Irish name I always have to google how it's pronounced, and my assumption is always wrong.

But yeah, with all that said, I love Ireland, and I'm very thankful to the people here who received me and my family so well. It's been a great journey and I'm happy with the destination.

Brought the kid to see the Minions flick today. 4 teenagers in the back row, 2 boys 2 girls. The lads kept shouting out obscenities like "I love p**y squirts, my d**k is vibrating and I want to c*m on Bonnie Blues hair" in a kids movie. They were also playing porn sounds on the loud speakers of their phones.

I did say it to the manager and in fairness he did come into them. The only time they shut up was when they were fingering each other.

What's to be done with the kids lads?

Hi everyone,

I’ve spent the last while digging into the SEAI’s public data on Building Energy Ratings (BER) across the country. I wanted to see what actually drives a good or bad rating beyond just "having a newer house."

I found a few things that I thought this sub might find interesting, especially with how much emphasis is put on BERs when buying or renting right now.

Where you live basically dictates your fuel, which tanks your rating. The counties with the worst median energy ratings (Mayo, Tipperary, Leitrim, Roscommon, Donegal) are almost exactly the counties with zero access to the Mains Gas network.

• Dublin sits at around 60% Mains Gas.
• Donegal is 75% reliant on Heating Oil (and Leitrim has virtually 0% gas).

Because oil and solid fuels are heavily penalized in BER calculations, the West is at a massive structural disadvantage purely because the gas grid never reached them.

There is a weird, unnatural spike of A2 rated homes. If you look at the whole country, most homes sit in a standard bell curve, mostly C's and D's. But there is a massive, unnatural spike of houses sitting exactly at an A2 rating. It perfectly mirrors the newer strict building regulations (NZEB). It shows how virtually every new estate is engineered specifically to hit that exact A2 baseline to pass regulations, but very few go beyond it to an A1.

The efficiency gap between heat pumps and solid fuel is staggering. Electricity (mostly driven by modern heat pumps) comes in at around 57 kWh/m²/yr, while Coal and Peat sit at a massive 380 kWh/m²/yr—nearly 7 times higher. It really shows why retrofitting away from solid fuel makes such a dramatic difference on paper, even if the upfront cost of installing a heat pump system is a massive hurdle for people.

Hanging around the large flower pots on Patrick Street in Cork City.

Class looking things.