The trip to Dublin was no less painful than expected. Two days constantly hearing my wailing boss is an experience you wouldn't wish on your enemies. She was like Ross after being dumped by his girlfriend. It's amazing on how many things one can grumble about; the bacon is too salty, the dish is too hot (she said this to everybody at least 10 times), the suppliers are horrible at keeping dates, we need a better product, we need a better product, there are no tomatoes with breakfast (even though she explicitly ordered only sausage and bacon), the pizza is a wonder, we must make some visits on e-ticketing (x5) … ad nausea. My desperation to all this was reflected in the number of SMS's I've sent, which amounted to 8 Euros worth of messages.

Living outside working hours with somebody provides an opportunity to gain some further insight to their day to day intelligence.

• After 10 years in the airline she tried to board the plan with a scissors in her handbag.
• After noticing that all people were dressed casually for a formal meeting she dressed in a suit for dinner (the others were almost in Hawaii shirts).
• She arrived at dinner with her brief case instead of hand bag.
• Despite being one hour early for breakfast she brought her suitcase to breakfast with her.

The best part of the holiday was the sponsored Thai dinner on Monday. We went to a restaurant called Siam at Malahide. My great finesse at dinners was betrayed at the very start after I choose Guinness as an aperitif. I was quite conscious of my foolishness but my romantic love for black magic in Dublin got the better of me. For starters I had "Crab meat in bean curd" and as a main dish "Duck seafood hangover". Both dishes were great even though the main dish was just almost too hot and had only two pieces of duck. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get the name of the South African wine, but it was a full bodied strong wine.

Today I finished my first real JUnit test for EJB. The main stumbling block was overcoming a whole set of configuration issues which were partly my fault because I was too stubborn to use Cactus instead of JUnit. Nonetheless the tests I wrote helped me identify one fatal error so my time was well spent.

The problems for the Malaysia trip are piling up. Last Sunday we faced the first Mefloquine challenge. There are three different anti-malarial products in the market but the only one effective for the Sabah / Sarawak region is Mefloquine. Unfortunately this product has some very nasty side effects described "…visual disturbances and emotional changes such as depressive moods, confusion, states of anxiety, hallucinations, convulsions, paranoid reactions and drowsiness." We spent the whole of last week debating on whether to risk the pills or not, and on Sunday we made the bold step towards the first pill. Apparently my favourite one had some anxiety attacks on Monday, but I am quite unaffected for the time being.

This week we also read about bird flu and haze. According to the news bird flu has manifested itself again in South Asia. The haze problem seems a little bit more serious because apparently the country is covered in haze originating from logging and crop burning in Indonesia. This issue is not really making news in Malaysia as they are used to it but some people on forums even suggested that isn't worth visiting the country because of this. I hope that this is affecting only cities and not the whole country. On a more positive side, today I received a mail from my new Malaysian friend saying that the haze is slowly disappearing.