Where is Pepe?

Where is Pepe? That's a good question... Well, I have to apologize because I haven't written anything but I had three internet-free weeks due to some problems with the cable company... It seemed back to the nineties, when nobody had internet at home. Just a decade later it feels like an electricity or current water cut-off!

Pepe has been spending last month with María, first in Germany and now in the U.S. and Mexico. Just to let everybody know that he's still spinning around.

We're looking forward to hear from him and María. Coming soon!

Pepe had surgery

After arriving in Faro, we went to my town in Huelva and, shortly after that, Pepe and I drove to Seville to visit Jose, Javi and Pablo.

We went to the city centre for some tapas and cañas but Pepe decided to stay home. I guess that coming from Ireland the temperature change (today it was 32ºC in Seville) might have affected him so we found Pepe wearing a Venetian mask and strangling Kenny to death with an earphone wire...!


Fortunately Pablo is a student of medicine in Seville and figured out what was wrong with him. It seems that too much alcohol in Ireland had heavy and massively affected Pepe's liver and was causing him some kind of dementia. Thus, he decided to remove and replace his liver for a new more resistant one.






Now we hope Pepe will be able to join us for some beers tonight.

Waiting at the airport

Pepe's next scheduled destination after arriving in Ireland was Switzerland, but we've had some unexpected problems and he'll be going to Germany instead. However, the delay will allow him to come with me to Spain, where we'll be visiting my family after a week of hard working at Tyndall.

Now we are in Shannon's airport, where we've spent the whole night because our flight to Faro is scheduled at 6:25 am and there's no bus services from Cork that early.


Quite luckily, Shannon's airport provides free WiFi access for all passengers so we've been doing some internet surfing!

Dublin

For the weekend Pepe and I went to visit Gupi in Dublin. Gupi and I went together to college in Tenerife. Last year right before graduating in physics he decided to go to Dublin to learn some English. He enjoyed the experience and after doing his last exams he came back to the island. Now he's looking for a PhD position to continue with his career.

Here in Ireland, all the public holidays (except Christmas) are always on Monday, so the so-called mayday, the worker's day, which in most of Europe takes place the 1st of May, here was celebrated the 4th. I guess the day depends on that year's calendar.


There's a lot to see in Dublin, but Pepe, Gupi and I focussed on the Irish national and widespread sport - drinking. We were partying all over the weekend and, specially on Saturday, I guess we partied too much...


Irish people are kind and open, and it's easy to make friends and chat with unknowns in any pub around the city. We also got to know some friends of Gupi from the language course he's attending. There were many beautiful girls that I unsuccessfully tried to convince I'm from Liechtenstein... I thought I was better at this...

Anyway, Dublin is a nice vibrant city full of pubs (there was even one inside a former church!) but watch out your money, you won't be paying less than 5 euro a pint!

First day in Ireland

I have the pleasure to introduce you to Pepe. He's a sock monkey and will be visiting places all around the world for the next few months.

The hosts will be entitled to show him the place where they live and some stuff about what they do and then share it with us here, in the blog. For the first weeks he'll be planning the first stages of his tour with me in Ireland. If you want to host him just let me know writing a comment or sending an email.

Pepe arrived to Ireland in an envelope but since I was working at that momment I couldn't pick him up so he spent his first weekend at the post office waiting for someone to care about him. Not a good first impression I must say.

Lucky him, Aoife, who works with me at the Tyndall Institute in Cork, offered herself to go get Pepe today in the morning and bring him to me.


Now he can't stop repeating the wait was definitely worth it. Aiofe, you totally charmed the boy!

After that he tried to help me out with my work, and programmed some very interesting stuff on the computer to solve some issues we've being having at the Photonics Theory Group concerning the piezoelectric polarization in nitride semiconductors...


Man, for not having gone to school I have to admit you're a genious...