/photos/Kerry and Fire
There are new photos from the cycling trip Clare and I did around the Ring of Kerry and some others from a giant carbon-burning (but very cool) fire "performance" at the Dublin Fringe Festival last weekend.
Clare and I are off to Greece for a week. Hurrah!
New Albums from the Gallery
/Free Via Rail Money
Thanks to Via Rail's generous delay-related policies, I have a ticket stub worth (I think) ~120CAD in "Via Rail Bucks"; half of the value of my ticket can be used against a Via Rail purchase made in the six months after the delay in question, which was July 10th.
I have no use for this, so the person with the best story and/or equivalent donation to suitable charity is welcome to it.
/travel/freighter/More Photos
I've finally posted the rest of the
photos from the rest of my time on the MSC Malaga. I thought I'd done this
a while ago, but apparently not. My bad.
I've told lots of stories about it to lots of people, so I sorta forget what I wrote about. After the last (truncated) entry, I basically spent the last day hanging out with the various pilots that came on board to guide us through the St. Lawrence Seaway. We got into port at about 3am, and I was told I'd have to wait 'til 9am for customs to come onboard to clear me.
At 9am, I was told a cruise ship had come in, and they got priority. I was stuck on a boat, moored in a port of my own country, and I wasn't allowed to hop off onto the land. Weird feeling.
Finally, they came onboard. Two women, one in tough boots and generally tough looking, one rather more dolled up. Very good-cop, bad-cop. They asked me a lot of detailed questions, about why I took a frieghter, etc. They asked if I had obscene material on my laptop. They searched my stuff really thoroughly, but didn't pat me down, presumably 'cause they'd have had to call in a guy to do that. Finally, they decided I was clear, and pointed me at how to get out. They sat in their van, running the swabs that they took of my stuff, and then made certain I left the port area, and had the guy at the little entrance booth place call me a cab, and off I went.
I watched the finals (IIRC) of the World Cup while eating a pizza in the Montreal bus station, and caught a bus to Ottawa to visit Kathleen.
/meta/Renamed
I've renamed my blog. No longer does it share its title with a Pixar film.
It's now called ... wait for it ...
"Blog".
Oh yeah.
/travel/ireland/The Irish Don't Either
The committed reader may recall that getting a smile from Finns was hard work. I've finally started running again, and it's pretty clear to me, the Irish don't smile much either.
They do the same no-eye-contact thing, and many seem to do the same I'm-smiling-because-I-think-you're-crazy thing. On Thursday, the only proper response I got was from a sharply dressed Indian boy, who appeared be late for school, and so was running in the opposite direction. I got a couple of reactions today, but most people dont' even look at you, and avert their eyes when they realize they've accidentally made eye contact.
I had convinced myself that my runners were too old, and combined with my iPod being hosed, running was too unpleasant. Now, my iPod is back, and away I go. Hurrah.
Yesterday we had an "offsite" with work. It was the sort of team-building exercises you might imagine it to be -- cooperation, leadership, blah blah blah. But we have pretty good input into what we do on our offsites, and this one was organized by another engineer, so we all have a good time. It's sorta funny how the people running these things seem to assume (1) we don't want to be there and (2) we're not used to working as happy team. The closing little "goodbye and thanks" speech from one of the event people was all about how they hoped we'd gained something from it all. Hah.
The offsite was in Carlingford, near Dundalk. Clare and I spent a weekend there with another couple just after I flew back to Ireland, so I knew it well. It's a really gorgeous setting, and there seemed to be some interest amongst my co-workers to go back there to do some sea kayaking.
Work is really good these days. The whole Dublin office is doing well, and we have some exciting stuff coming up that we're getting ready for. We've had lots of visitors over the last couple months, including a guy sent out to train me on some new stuff, which was great. He was a fun guy, and did a good job teaching me what I needed to know.
I found a couple of blog postings that never made it, from my trip to Ontario. They're below "Crude Awakening" or you can find them in the significant new /travel/canada category.
I've been working on an essay that I hope to submit to the Globe and Mail Facts and Arguments page, though it was rather longer than they ask for, and I like it less now that it's been shortened. We'll see.
In other news, a couple days ago I received the final, utter, total rejection to all things I applied to: I was on the waiting list for University of Victoria Law, despite having no intention of going (and I told them as much), just to see if I made it. I got the mail a couple days ago that I hadn't. My plan now is to take some distance ed economics courses from UW this winter. We'll see.
