Worst defeat in 40 years
Yesterday I went to watch my first football match at Lansdowne Road Stadium in Dublin. The title in this morning’s Irish Independent was "Ireland suffer worst defeat at Lansdowne Road in 40 years". Since I’ve been here we had the wettest march, the driest summer and the worst soccer defeat. Hope Lord Mayor is not reading this blog lest he decides to chuck me out of here.
We arrived 10 minutes late and we had to collect the tickets from the ticketmaster stand at the other side of the stadium. By the time we got in Ireland we already loosing 1-0. The game ended 4-0 with 2 goals scored in each half. Pretty bad for my first game but then I’m used to it from back home. The last score I remember between ‘the spot’ and Netherlands was 0-8, so we’re half as bad here.
On a better note, tomorrow I will be finally leaving for New Zealand. This time I’m pretty much guaranteed to at least arrive to LA after I (this is a bit of an overestimation) paid for my first transatlantic ticket with Delta Airlines. I will be spending three weeks in Kiwi land then back to Dublin, so the blog will be pretty quite during this time.
Damn the terrorists
Just my luck!!! When did the damn Islamic terrorists decide to bomb planes? Why should you ask a question which such an obvious answer? The day before I was flying to the US, of course.
Yesterday morning my father woke me up by an early phone call from home to tell me that any hand luggage must be stored in clear plastic bags because there was a terrorist attempt in Heathrow. Partly because I was still a bit shaky from the previous (birthday) drinking night, and partly because I was still asleep I didn’t register any major concerns and went to work as usual. It soon hit me that the situation was disastrous as everybody in the office stared at me as if I just turned white as I opened the office door. Flights from Ireland to London were being cancelled as well as several flights leaving from Heathrow. To cut a long story short I spent the whole day deciding whether to risk flying to LAX on Friday or not. The problem is that with cancelled flights on Thursday people will need to be reallocated on the following days which leaves no chance for flying on standby. At the end I decided that the least risky path to avoid remaining uselessly stranded in London was to delay the trip to NZ by a week. A very very shitty day indeed.
This means that I’m going to spend my birthday in Ireland after I celebrated it prematurely last Wednesday. It’s probably going to be one of the worst birthdays to date. At least I’m getting some birthday boy treatment at work having my mates singing happy birthday and taking me out to lunch. I took a chocolate gateau in return.
Some stories for future reference:
Monday 7th update
I've been living more than writing these last couple of weeks so I've neglected the blog quite a bit. These last few weeks have been a good mix of work and fun. At work I had to work fast enough to make up for the three weeks I'm going to be missing and the rest of the days I felt the urge to enjoy the good Irish weather while it lasts.
In the same way that May was the wettest May in the last couple of years, this summer was the driest summer too, in fact farmers in the countryside were panicking that there wasn’t any rain. We're not talking months without rain here but a mere two weeks. The weather is too hot of a topic here, whether it's cold, rainy, cloudy, sunny or humid rest assured that someone is going to complain. I must say that I enjoyed the Irish sun without the thermometer hitting the 30 degree mark so it was all great. In fact thanks to the good weather I pumped up my fitness level cycling and jogging.
Work is all good, and the best indicator of this is the fact that I don't feel the need to touch anything related to computers after work. It means I'm having a healthy dose of technology during work hours which decreases my geekiness. I've realized that since I've come to Dublin my technology page has never been updated which probably suggests that I'm working at work.
The last weekends were purely social events. Three weeks ago I went to Donegal and met some very nice people at the hostel I was staying at. Two weeks ago I had a birthday party where I had the opportunity scavenge a partly nibbled appetizer table. And this weekend my old school friend from Birmingham came over for a visit. All good fun!
The rest of the story is all about New Zealand. At last the time has come to see this country. I've done lots of reading but little planning for the holiday so I basically know what I want to do but not how. This will be a new traveling experience particularly because I'm traveling alone for a longer period of time. In these last couple of weeks I've started to rethink my self perception of being a social scarecrow considering I've been mixing quite well with new company. Let’s see what will happen in Kiwiland.
I'm leaving for New Zealand next Friday so most probably this will be the last post for the next couple of weeks. This time I'm note going to promise to upload a full travelogue of the journey on the blog because I've never managed to do so till now. Although I can't deny that I'm secretly hoping that because I've not promised to do it, I will manage to write it all and upload it here.
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