the blog of brendan o'ceallaigh
We have finally moved into our own apartment in Dublin near where Gwen works and close to the Luas and really close to the Dundrum Town Centre as well, much to Gwen’s delight. It’s a lovely one bedroom apartment fully furnished. We moved in last Thursday and at this stage have moved all our bits in and are loving it. Not living out of a bag is great. So is having your own space 😉
If anyone wants to post us anything just email me and I’ll give you the address.
Well I fooled em!! And I am being teed up for the 2nd interview next week. Now must get back to geeking up 😉
I have been on the move using various computers for about a month. I have had the pleasure of using Portable Firefox, Portable Filezilla, Portable Skype, Portable GAIM and now Portable Thunderbird. All running from my USB drive. It’s great just sit at a machine, plug in your USB drive and you have everything you normally use and you can take it all with you as well. Go Portableapps 🙂
Just a quick thanks to Matt for a brilliant spellchecker that works in WordPress.
To get the info just go to Matt’s excellent blog.
First off, apologies for no recent updates. It has been a hectic time.We have arrived in Ireland. The weather is improving and we have even had a few days of sunshine 😉 Gwen has a job at Originate and we have found a place to live in Dublin. As Gwen has been working she hasn’t seen much of the sun…
All is going well I hear you mumble to yourself BUT there is one small part of the near perfect equation missing. I have not secured employment yet. Yes that’s right I am a bum, a lazy good for nothing. Worse than that I am actually a kept man. I send my poor fiancée off to work every morning safe in the knowledge that she will keep the wolf from the door…
Well not quite. I am making a concerted effort to look for work and I have even had a first interview with a large company that you will all know. I will let you know if I fooled them into thinking I was any good or if there is a deafening silence from their head of HR. I suspect the latter might possibly be the case but it is all good experience. I am pursuing other means as well. In Ireland this means getting in touch with everyone you know and asking them if they know anyone looking for an IT whiz. Or something like that.
Later my good buddies…
Hey everyone,
Just to let you know that I have uploaded the photos of our travels to my website.
They are on the main menu so you might need to flush your cache to see the new ones.
There photos there from Oz, Thailand and a few from London as well.
Enjoy 😉
Brendan : See Gwen I told you it wasn’t that cold here.
Gwen : Yeah, I see what you mean. Why are you turning blue Brendan?
Brendan : Hmmm it could be because we have just come from Koh Samui, Thailand to Heathrow, England and it was 34 degrees there but it’s 4 degrees here and I am standing here in shorts and a t-shirt. Hold on (sounds of rucksack being opened and clothes being ruffled noises) That’s better!
Gwen : Yeah but you do look a little silly with ALL your clothes on…
This is basically what happened (with a bit of humour thrown in for those that didn’t spot it) when we arrived. At first I was actually trying to put a brave face on, but it froze like that and when it did eventually melt I covered it up but not after catching a cold first.
Gwen was wise and went out and bought a hat, scarf and gloves immediately and managed to fend off the cold for a week, but the persistent little bugger eventually got her.
Being here is like a double edged sword for me because it is great being this side of the world where my family is but it is bloody cold. Ok I will stop going on about the cold once you get the idea it is really cold here and the wind cuts through you. I had forgotten this…
We made our way to Clapham Junction and made my sister Gillian’s place our home for the next week thankfully.
Gillian and Dave (here Kiwi bloke he he he) and Gwen and I all went out and got nicely pissed on Cuban coctails and then had some lovely Argentinian steak in a Lonon Resteraunt. How cosmopolitan are we?
We did some sight seeing as well notching up The London Eye, Big Ben, Covent Garden, The Houses of Parliment, Dali World, Picadilly Circus, Leiscester Square, Buckingham Palace and I am sure others…
We had a great time and Gillain and her flatmates were very good to us and made us feel welcome. Dave did his bit too and supplied some alternative accomodation for Gillian so we could have her lovely double bed, how nice of them to do that ;-).
This is just a quick update to let you all know that we have been to Oz and it was amazing. Thank you to everyone and I will give detailed info and thank you all very soon.
We have been to Bangkok and it is big, full of people, brilliant fun and most of all smelly.
Were now in Koh Samui just having the most relaxing time in the world and sweating like pigs, sorry that should be “glowing”. Sure beats working…
Thinking of you all and more to come soon.
Brendan
Australia…. Australia is a big big country with a lot of peopla and it is hot. For those of you that didn’t know this it may come as a surprise.
We have had such an amazing time here with Bella & Paul Norton, Ca & Vincent Carroll, Liz & Innes (and Harry & Elisa) Hendry in Brisbaine. We were chaufferred to Surfers Paradise and Malooloolaba on the coast and South Bank in the city. We ventured into the city ourselves and hopped on the City Cat (water taxi type catamaran) and had a wander as well, so we got a really good feel for the city.
We then Jetted to Melbourne where we were extended the legendry Kelly family hospitality. Geoff picked us up from the airport and took us over to Donna and Brett’s. Chelsea, Sharny and Chloe all came home one by one and suddenly I had more family than I ever knew.
Then we went out for a meal and I got to meet more of the Kelly side and there is even another Peter Kelly that looks like my Dad a little in Oz. Great people.
I also got to meet up with a good mate of mine from school, Eamonn and his partner Anna. Chelsea, Sharny and one of Gwens mates, Kristal, from NZ came out with us and we ended up in a place called Big Mouth funnily enough in St Kilda. Needless to say there was some chatting done that night and Gwen got to meet some of my Irish mates, the transformation has begun. It was lovely to catch up Eamonn and hope to see you on the other side whenever that is 😉
Donna, Brett and the girls took us up (or across) to the Yarra Valley and Mansfield where we ate, drank and generally had a brilliant weekend. I got to see a kangaroo in the wild, which was lovely and we also saw a bush fire on our way back on Sunday… Quite awe inspiring and humbling when you see how it can destroy peoples lives in an instant. Chelsea was able to give us all the inside info as well as she works for the Rural Fire Department that covers a lot of the big fires. On Monday we took the train to Epping to visit Gwen’s lovely Auntie Wendy, the Whanau (family) just gets bigger by the day on these travels… 😉
After we had washed our clothes and rested up and been looked after so well we headed off to the airport for yet another flight to another city (Sydney) for a connecting flight to Tahiland.
Sydney airport is expensive but there is a few free Samsung internet terminals which are cool to use if you are there for 8 hours. It was initially meant to be 4 hours but the outgoing flight was delayed twice. Needless to say we were glad to finally take off.
All in all Australia was wonderfull, we were looked after very well by all 3 sides of the family (Donna and Brett) and had such a lovely time. I know that it will be a great place to go back and spend some quality holidays…
Well it has finally come around. After so long talking about it Gwen and I have managed to get everything packed and are ready to leave New Zealand for the sunny shores of Ireland tomorrow morning. But we will have a few stops on the way, namely Australia, Thailand and England. We have been offered generous accommodation by many friends and relatives in Australia and England, which we will be gladly taking up. It will be great to see you all and catch up. I am just looking forward so much to seeing Australia and Thailand and just generally having a holiday with Gwen on the way home.
I have to say that I have a million mixed emotions right now. I am really sad at leaving New Zealand and all the wonderful people we have met here. My cousins and friends, we both really do have family away from home here in Napier. Gwen’s friends in Palmy have been so kind and welcoming to me as well once they figured out I wasn’t a dodgy Irish fella. And basically everyone else I have met here. From my sisters mates in Auckland that became my mates (Congrats Barney & Sue) to the lovely farmer I worked for who became a mate in Central Hawke’s Bay (Thanks Mike) and to Gwen’s lovely Mum, Joan.
Joan, God bless her, has been looking after us both this last week and as you can imagine we have both been a little stressed but Joan just kept smiling and serving up the loveliest home cooked meals to get us through it. Thanks Joan!
I would also like to send a special shout out to all the people we have both worked with. I know that I have met people that have changed the way I look at the world and I will cherish their friendship forever. Just keep giving me hassle guys 😉