Pressure, pressure and more pressure!

So I am only a few days away from beginning final exams of the semester and the pressure is on! I'm very worried that I am not going to get through all the material I have to get through in time for each exam even if I only have four of them!

This semester took me by surprise as I did not expect it to be so intense and stressful. Final year is very demanding and it is so hard to keep a balance with work, social life while working hard at college to get the grades you want.

I found my Erasmus year last in year in France to be quite difficult. Throughout the entire year, I reminded myself that all the college work would help in preparing me for my final year here in DkIT. How wrong I was in thinking that. I forgot the minor detail that I had a part time job here in Ireland whereas all I had was college work in France. This meant an extra 20-25hrs per week being taken up at my part-time job which left me without weekends to catch up on college work. I also had a three day week in Lyon compared with my five day week here at home.

This semester has had many ups and downs with stress due to many assignments being group assignments and all have very close due dates. I found it tough without the study weeks as it was hard to catch up on work and now only after finishing the final CA's and exams last week, starting straight into studying for exams that start Saturday is very demanding and exhausting.

I think it is very very safe to say, I have never looked forward to a break so much in my life. Its not so much that I'm even looking forward to Christmas, it's that I'm looking forward to parking myself in front of the TV, or going out to a club or even visiting a friend without that niggling feeling that you should be somewhere else, doing something else and that you are doing something wrong by not having a book or laptop open.

Mobile Commerce

Mobile Commerce is growing more and more each year. The technology that is constantly being developed is unbelievable. The smallest of devices are being brought out and can perform everything from downloading photos, videos and music, Internet access and transmitting payments. This is a major change if compared with the first 'brick like' mobile phones that were made just over ten years ago that were limited to only phoning and texting people.

Mobile Commerce is being coming more and more important to companies. This is due to people being able to complete business transactions, retrieve information and communicate with each other when outside the office. WiFi, is becoming a necessity. However, this is not only with businesses. I find myself becoming addicted to checking my emails and facebook page and so I need WiFi hotspots to enable me to do so. I find it easier to log on to WiFi networks through my itouch rather than my laptop, as it is a lot more convenient.

WiFi is also very important in relation to how companies run their businesses. For example, paying with credit cards that are wirelessly linked to the cash desk, or ordering food and the order is sent straight to the kitchen through a mobile device.

I find this all quite interesting, and in a way hard to keep up with, as it is constantly changing and improving. I do think, after using these technologies that it is hard to understand how we communicated and operated previously. I'm also very intrigued to see how the world changes and adapts into using smaller mobile devices that incorporate, calls, texting, web cams, Internet, downloading pictures and videos etc, in to one main device.

Reminiscing on Erasmus

Recently I have been thinking of how different life was last year in Lyon at Christmas. We were just back from our last minute trip to Disneyland Paris where we spent the night in a Disney hotel with the theme of a circus. I had visited it before with my family, but going with friends was so much more fun! We had to get up at 5am to the catch an early train in order to check in and arrive at the park before 9am. It was the usual case of nearly missing the trams and then the train as one of us found it hard to get out of bed in time. On the train we were told off by the French as they wanted to continue to the morning naps on the TGV, whereas we were so excited about going to see Mickey Mouse and all his friends, especially since is was Christmas time we knew it was just going to be magical. The hotel room itself was unbelievable with biggest beds, multiple TVs and it all looked like we were in the middle of the circus! It was any child's dream and for that weekend we were all children. It was so much fun!

We had to come back down to reality after that as exams were soon approaching and the workload was massive. The next thing we had to look forward to was going home on the 17th December to see our families again. I had changed my flights and so none of my friends knew when exactly I was coming! I was so excited to see them!

The atmosphere in Lyon was brilliant with Place Carnot, the square outside our college been taken over with hundreds of different coloured huts selling, jewellery, candles, pottery and meats and Christmas cards. But my favourite was the smell of crepes, hot apple cider and hot wine whenever we were coming out into the cold. The were delicious and we always treated ourselves after a hard days study.

At the time I was so stress out and just wanted Christmas to come fast to exams would all be over, but now I would give anything to go back to France and have some crepes and hot apple cider and just spend time with the other Erasmus students who were my friends, family and backbone while I was there. When thinking of the stress of 4th year and the pressure that goes with it that I never expected would be this hard, I would take Lyon back any day and I truly miss it so much!

Religion in Irish Modern Society

I think it is safe to say that Ireland and it's society have changed greatly in the last 10-15yrs. From my own experiences, going to mass with my parents every Saturday evening or Sunday morning was just the norm and only for a major reason and excuse would we miss mass. This situation for me today is significantly different in that, I can't remember the last time I attended mass. Honestly, actually thinking about this makes me feel a little guilty. I also found writing this blog tough and I have put it off many times, probably due to the fact that I did not want to admit this guilt to myself.

There are many excuses that I could use for not attending mass such as working on Sundays and late on Saturday evenings. It is easy to use these excuses and I feel as a nation we have become much more lazy about religion and issues concerning it, but in truth with a little more effort on my behalf, mass could be attended if I really wanted to.

This feeling isn't solely possessed by me as very little of my friends attend mass and when asking them of their opinion on this topic they would simply tell me that they dont have one as they no longer attend mass. However, I do also believe that a person does not need to attend mass in order to have a religion and be religious. Their beliefs are just as important.

I find this quite sad in a way, that religion does not play as an important role in modern Ireland, as we are losing the sense of importance and lifestyle that religion has held through decades gone by. The world and its differentiation of lifestyles has effected us greatly and changed the way we think.

Online Adult Industry

Sitting in E-Business, learning all about the online adult industry was a bit of a strange experience for me. On one hand, it made me quite uncomfortable while on the other hand I was completely astonished at the statistics involved with this type of industry.

Between 2001 and 2005 visits to pornographic websites have doubled with the majority of this being for recreational use. This is true, even while more and more children and women are becoming more susceptible to abuse and violence due to the pornography industry.

I was shocked to see the size of the Pornography industry being as big as $57 billion worldwide, with Internet accounting for $2.5 billion of this. Another fact that I couldn't believe was that porn revenue is bigger than all professional football, baseball and basketball franchises put together, and all revenues combined from ABC, CBS, and NBC. I had no idea of the size of this industry. Pornography websites also account for 12% of all websites on the Internet.

However the online adult industry has revolutionised the development of the internet. It was ahead of all other websites, as it was one of the first industries to develop video streaming, live chats, web cam and video conferencing, payment systems, security systems and fee based subscriptions to the Internet. Its online advertising methods were also quite advanced at an early stage with the development of banner ads, ads associated with works, traffic for cash ads and pay-per-click ads.

I don't pay much attention to the fact that there is an industry like the pornography industry, but whenever I do think about it, I don't really agree with it all that much as I find it quite degrading towards women, children and I suppose men aswell. However, the technical advances that the risk takers, in the online porn industry have helped in shaping other website worldwide with their security systems and payment methods.

NAMA

I wasn't totally sure what exactly National Asset Management Agency was all about, so I went and tried to research it a little. My understanding of it is that NAMA is not a bank but an asset management company.
The objective of it is that it will take every bank's land and property debts and put them all into NAMA. This means that NAMA will become the biggest landowner in the country with debts of between €80billion and €90billion. This leaves every other bank free to resume lending money out to people.
NAMA could be in existence for as much as 10-15yrs as a long term solution to the recession and the country's debt.

Social Networking

Social networking sites such as 'My Space' 'Facebook' and 'bebo' are all forms of virtual communities. A virtual community is a gathering place for people who all share various interests and relationships in some form or another.

Virtual communities are non-geographically bound and so these communities therefore enable people from all across the world to have conversations and communicate with each other about many different topics. Therefore the community must be user friendly and must also made interesting to the user.

Facebook for me has become a part of everyday life. I must admit, I check it one quite a regular basis, being probably more than once or twice a day. I think the ability to check how my friends across the globe are and what they are up to is brilliant. Uploading pictures, sending private mails and posting public comments and opinions is a great way of keeping up-to-date with everyones day to day life. Extra features on facebook, enable me to keep up-to-date with TV programmes, news paper articles, friends birthdays and up and coming events.
I can't remember what life was like with out networking sites like facebook but I couldn't imagine what life today would be like without it.