Was I Really There?

Clouds setting on this awful development... One of the great things about being in Germany and not Malaysia (for the time being), is the ability to go back home to Ireland whenever you want – if, of course, you want. So far, that’s meant I’ve been able to be back three times in total this year; which would have almost certainly been only once if we were still in Malaysia, if at all. This weekend, I made a very impromptu ad-hoc last-minute (you... Read More

Greetings from Ireland…

Dublin, it’s been a while. Last August, with great excitement and a degree of anxiety, I left the country bound for an unusual emigration outpost; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Over there, I took up what was by all means a quite successful internship for six months, where along with the work at hand, I made contacts and all that good stuff, and wound up with plenty of work on my plate from others. Roll on a few months and March 2011 sees me standing,... Read More

Chicken Chop is not ‘Western Food’.

The view from Sky Bar of a clear evening... After slightly over six months working away in Malaysia, it’s time for us to part ways. That’s not to say I won’t be back for certain, who knows what way things will go from here, but it does mean that for now at least, I won’t be enduring the major sweat-inducing heat on my way to work every morning, nor will my walk home be largely dominated by trying to avoid taxi drivers trying to offer me a... Read More

Discovering Ireland…

Yes, Discover Ireland and here's the compulsory 'tourist shot'... For the weekend, we decided to take up Fáilte Ireland’s generous invitation to go and ‘Discover Ireland’ and Anna organised a trip to Rosslare to see what was going on down there. When I was a kid, I always wanted to go to Rosslare – largely just to see the ferry port, which I’d imagined in my head was massive – and was always told by my grandparents, who lived... Read More

A Whole World of Pain…

Setting off for the Wicklow hills... This year I, once again, took part in the Wicklow 200 cycle ‘challenge’, which covers 200 kilometres of spectacular Wicklow countryside, most of which you don’t notice as you struggle with every ounce of energy to just get round the course. I first did it back in 2008, and left from UCD, chatting with another cyclist all the way up into Stepaside and towards Enniskerry, where I had my first real experience... Read More

The Summer’s Best Escape Routes…

Will it or won't it...not a safe bet this summer, I'm afraid... Last week I made a bold speculation that the airlines may very well be screwed over for the next 2 years – if, as it did the last time it erupted, the Icelandic volcano continues on for that length of time. What that means, until such time as the respective European aviation authorities manage to gather around one table and sort out a unified response and guidelines on what... Read More