Archive for North Campus

Maynooth University Cat Updates

Posted in Maynooth with tags , , on October 27, 2022 by telescoper

Earlier today I found myself on the South Campus of Maynooth University where I encountered Maynooth University Library Cat looking not entirely gruntled. Behind bars like that I thought he looked like he was in the doghouse!

Anyway, this meeting reminded me of some important campus cat news from earlier in the week. On Tuesday afternoon I was just about to start my usual 3pm lecture on Vector Calculus and Fourier Series in Hall H on the North Campus. It was quite warm that day and all the windows on the side of the room (which is on the ground floor) were open. As soon as I started talking about line integrals I was interrupted by a plaintive mewing from outside which turned out to come from a small white cat who made its way outside to the rearmost window, climbed in and took a seat in the back row. It was quite disconcerting to see its little head looking at me, and its appearance put me right off my stride for a bit, but fortunately it didn’t ask any difficult questions and eventually dozed off.

I’ve never seen this cat before but apparently it has been hanging around near the Phoenix restaurant, where presumably it is being fed. It has no collar and, as far as I know, no name. We have recently experienced another visitation by rodents in the Science Building and wonder if it could be persuaded to investigate on our behalf?

So now we have a black cat on the South Campus and a white cat on the North Campus, polar opposites. Perhaps one is the anti-cat of the other? I do hope they don’t annihilate each other if they ever meet!

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Building Up

Posted in Maynooth with tags , , on January 27, 2020 by telescoper

On my way back from lunch today I saw the chance to get into shot both of the big cranes operating on the site of the new building going up on the North Campus at Maynooth University.  This new edifice is right next to the existing Science Building where my office is; part of the roof of the Science Building can be seen to the right of the new structure; it won’t be long until we’re hidden from view at least from the Kilcock Road, which is the road in the foreground of the picture.

I was quite impressed when I saw a big crane on site a few months ago, but then I realized that it was only there to help put up the much bigger white crane you can see in the middle of the picture!

Having been involved a little bit in the past in large campus construction projects elsewhere this one has followed a similar pattern. It always seems to take ages to do the preparatory work of laying foundations, services, drains and the like, but once that is done the actual building goes up quite rapidly.  I walk past this site every day and it’s fascinating to see the progress. Here’s what it was like last summer. We anticipate this part (phase 1) of the new construction to be completed by the end of this (calendar) year. I’m looking forward to the new building being opened, not least because the recent growth in student numbers is causing a bit of pressure on space.

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