Ireland day 0729. Wednesday 27 September 2023- Trabajando *

Ireland day 0729. Wednesday 27 September 2023- Trabajando

Today’s summary	Val was at work so I spent the day doing Spanish homework and attending no fewer than three webinars on various business and geological subjects. Windy and wet as Storm Agnes passed through
Today’s weather	Heavily overcast with just occasional breaks in the cloud briefly in the late afternoon. Rain much of the day, occasionally torrential. Stormy south westerly wind. Appx 16C

Today’s overview location (The green mark shows the location of my route)		Close-up location (The orange line shows where I walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): In the wake of Agnes

Commentary

(Summary blog only. Last full blog was Day 0368).

¡Yo he estado trabajando casi todo el dia, hoy!. I have been working almost all the day, today.

Actually, the coincidence of a few work-y type activities with the arrival of a major storm was fortuitous, as I meant I had a justifiable excuse for staying in most of the day, as Val was out at work, pursuing my various travails.

My first task was to tackle the written deberes (homework) that I’d got in the Spanish class last night. It wasn’t too difficult, fortunately, but I expect it will get harder. By the time I’d finished that, the storm was up to full strength and it was time for me to join my first webinar – a panel discussion organised by KPMG to talk about the potential impact of artificial intelligence on business.

It was quite an interesting discussion, especially the preamble about the short term prospects for UK and European economies (“mixed” is probably the most generous interpretation). But I had to leave after only half an hour, to join another webinar, organised by EuroGeoSurveys, on systems for assessing and recording the CO2 and Hydrogen storage potential of salt caverns, disused oil and gas fields , and saline aquifers.

The seminar covered similar territory to the workshop I went to in UCD on Monday. Interesting, but perhaps of limited immediate practical application in Ireland at the moment.

The webinar ran on till mid-afternoon by which time my Spanish teacher had emailed through the final part of our homework – this time an audio. I thought that, as it was still raining outside, I might as well just knuckle down and do it. Normally, I find understanding spoken Spanish quite hard, but today’s correspondent spoke slowly and clearly, so I managed to decode it relatively easily. Phew.

As a treat, at this stage I decided to brave the elements and go to the chemist to book my Covid and Flu vaccinations – now pencilled in for the end of October. Something to look forward to. Since the rain and wind was also abating a bit, I extended my sojourn to include a walk around the demesne – which did, I have to say, feel a bit hazardous as the wind was still whipping through the trees overhead and causing an ominous roaring to fill the air.

My final bit of “work” was yet another webinar in the evening – so now I need to sign off from this blog, and dial in to a quick update on Indian pegmatites organised by the Irish Geological Association. What an unusual day!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Agnes scuttles overhead	It will soon be time to start scuffling

A few twigs down in the castle demesne, but no major damage as far as I could see	Sheets of rain heading my way!

Castle hunkering down in the storm

Charting Agnes’ progress