So, I woke up at 7:15 this morning, 10 hours after going to bed and I could have still slept another 2 or 3 hours. Oh well. I had to get up to go to the client site. Myself, Jeff, Chris and Julio and one more engineer, Allan, will be consulting [...]]]> Wednesday 7 February 2007

So, I woke up at 7:15 this morning, 10 hours after going to bed and I could have still slept another 2 or 3 hours. Oh well. I had to get up to go to the client site. Myself, Jeff, Chris and Julio and one more engineer, Allan, will be consulting on site for a client in Ireland for 6 weeks.

We went to work and had a good experience – the client is teamed with fantastic enthusiastic people, and we were eager to get started. It was nice hearing the melodic Irish accents throughout the work day. I think I’m going to like working here

Let me explain a little about the building we work in.

We had a taxi driver drop us off at the end of the street where the office is located – it was a one way street and we didn’t want to waste time waiting for him to find the other side. So we got out and started walking the last 200 or 300 yards or so.

We saw the front entrance come in to view, and literally across the street – like 30 paces away – are the glorious solid black heavy doors accented with gold lettering and a gold harp of the world famous Guinness Storehouse. For a beer drinker, this has to be in the top 10 most hallowed places on Earth I thought it was really cool – in the heart of old Dublin, surrounded by really old brick and stone buildings, with the Guinness family name right there staring you in the face. Sweet!

After seeing the exterior of the Storehouse, we went in to the client site and received a brief office tour from one of their employees. She said that the office resides in what was used to be the old Guinness Storehouse and that Guinness had donated the building to the Irish government to contribute to what is called the Digital Hub – sort of a meeting place of high tech organizations, artists, students and researchers. It has a very cool Silicon Valley meets old Europe kind of feel – a very cool work environment.

We were shown to our desks on the top floor. Its awesome knowing that I sit in what used to be the heart of the Guinness operations for over a hundred years!

We broke for lunch and went to a really close local pub called McGruder’s, which had a great warm and inviting pub-style atmosphere – a fantastic place for socializing over a meal. There I had my first plate of real Shepard’s Pie, and it was as delicious as I expected it to be – hearty and satisfying on a cold Irish February day.

We went back to work and finished out the day. I was excited to get back to the hotel, because I had to get ready for Kendo! Yep, I’ve been in the country not yet 2 days, and I already found a Kendo dojo and made arrangements to practice there during my stay. I packed all my armor and shinai prior to leaving knowing that I could train 2 or 3 days a week. In fact that is a general condition of traveling for me for any extended period of time – I must be able to participate in Kendo practice at least twice a week.

I grabbed my gear and headed off to the Dublin Kendo dojo. The school was smaller than my GKA school, but it was still fun and the people were really nice. I’m definitely glad to train there for the next 6 weeks.

After kendo, I caught a taxi back to the hotel. I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch, and it was after 11 pm, and after working out for 2 hours, I was starving and needed something hearty. I cleaned up a little and went down to the hotel restaurant hoping to get something, but it was closed. I was pretty bummed and asked the concierge where I could get something to eat and he recommended this place right around the corner called Burdoch’s. I had no idea what this was, but I was open to anything at this point.

Chris was in the restaurant bar having a drink, so I asked if he wanted something to eat and he was game. We went literally maybe 100 feet around the corner of the hotel and found this tiny little shop built-in to the side of the building. When you walked in, there was maybe room enough for 10 people to stand inside and no seats. When I peeked over the counter, I saw these fry bins used to fry all sorts of fish and fries and other things. I then realized I was at a place that specialized in fish-n-chips.

I’m not too big of a fan of fried food, but I was starving and this seemed to be the only place open. So, Chris placed an order for fresh cod – n – chips, while I waited to see what it was like. He received his order in the traditional manner – on a few sheets of print-free newspaper and we were both amazed at the size of the fish – it was definitely enough to feed both of us. So instead of ordering my own, we decided to take it back to the hotel bar and share it.

We walked back to the bar and both ordered a pint of Guinness. Then I sat down for the first time since before Kendo practice and just relaxed. We then dug in to the fish. I have to say it was amazing! I found out later from some folks at work that Burdoch’s is the most cherished fisn-n-chips place in Ireland, and I have to agree!

That dinner was a great experience for me – and not necessarily because of the fish, which was delicious, but because everything just ‘came together’: Chris and I were eating fish-n-chips with a pint of Guinness in a Dublin pub with Ireland’s oldest cathedral as the backdrop to our view. After a long day and a hard work-out, and being new to Ireland, the meal was a sort of initiation to all the things I would experience over the next 6 weeks. It was a truly sublime experience.

I’ve recently flown out to Dublin, Ireland on a 6 week consulting engagement. And since I’ve never been to Ireland and would like to recall the trip later on, I think a daily blog entry or two would help me do that.

Let me first [...]]]> Monday 5 February (Atlanta) to Tuesday 6 February (Dublin) 2007.

I’ve recently flown out to Dublin, Ireland on a 6 week consulting engagement. And since I’ve never been to Ireland and would like to recall the trip later on, I think a daily blog entry or two would help me do that.

Let me first say that, although entitled Day 1, I’m not really on my first day I’m really on my 5th, but I’m going to try to break up the previous days and then continue on writing a post per day after I’m caught up.

Anyway, on the first day, one of my friends and fellow co-workers Jeff accompanied me on an evening non-stop flight from Atlanta to Dublin. We’ve been friends for almost 10 years, so that was pretty cool – going on a long trip with a good buddy is far more pleasant than enduring the doldrums of airports and sardine-like plane accommodations by yourself.

The flight was just about 7.5 hours long, and pretty uneventful. It was an incredibly smooth ride actually – eerily so. I thought I was on a cruise ship or something it was so smooth. The in-flight movie was A Good Year with Russell Crowe, and I have to say it was downright boring. I mean like really boring. I suppose that’s appropriate though since it was a red-eye flight, and anything to help you sleep in a sardine can is a good thing.

After the movie was over, and my desire to poke my eyes out with the Boring Stick had subsided, I popped open my Nintendo DS Lite and played a little Risk/Battleship/Clue. That was entertaining for a while and then I popped in Final Fantasy III, which I had never played before. The game is fantastic and kept me occupied for about an hour until I was exhausted and fell asleep.

I woke up about an hour later just after breakfast was over and the crew was starting to prepare for landing. 45 minutes later we touched down in Dublin International Airport at 7am local time (GMT) after the pilot had performed a crab landing. He did an ok job, given that crabbing into the wind is hard to do, but I suppose it could have been a little better.

After passing through customs and the baggage claim, we hailed a Taxi to take us to the hotel. It was an interesting ride – we saw how the roads had a very European ‘feel’ (as is expected in Dublin, obviously) – signage, intersections, driving on the left side of the road, etc. It was nice to sit back and watch us getting closer to the city interior – old buildings, cathedrals, and street-lined pubs and restaurants.

Our taxi driver had brought up the topic of Rugby and filled us in on the insanity that was about to ensue the coming weekend – apparently the match is a semi-final of the ‘6 Nations‘ (England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, France, and Italy). The people here are absolutely nuts about it. I mean nuts! In a good way though – the conversation, the edgy feel of the air – you knew something amazing is about to happen. I liken it to what a hosting city feels like immediately prior to the Super Bowl – visitors from both teams mingling in pubs and restauraunts before the game, wearing their teams colors, starting a fight or two, etc. Its electric. The cool thing though is that each game in these final series has the intensity of the Super Bowl – they’re nuts about their sports. Between soccer, rugby, and Gaelic football, this city is teeming with excitement, and its a lot of fun to be around.

I’ll write more about rugby later – the game is on Saturday of this week, and I’ll have more information later.

As we drove closer in to town, we passed by Trinity College near the center of the city. As groggy as we were from the long flight and no sleep, my buddy and I were certainly pepped up – by shall we say, the local population? All I have to say about that is 4 words: college. school. girl. uniforms. And I’ll leave it at that.

After our heads were out of the clouds (or gutters, or both), we arrived at our hotel, checked in and headed up to our room. Man, were we exhausted. It was about 8:30 am local time, which was 3:30 pm Atlanta time. We hadn’t eaten in a while, so we grabbed a traditional Irish breakfast (scrambled eggs, sausage, good canadian-style bacon, baked beans, toast w/ orange juice). The food was ok, but when you haven’t slept for a while and you’re starving, it hits the spot.

We went back up to the room and finally crashed at about 11:30 am Dublin time (6:30 am Atlanta time). We purposely set our alarm to go off in 2 hours so we would wake up extremely sleepy. Although this sounds ridiculous, we had to force ourselves to remain sleepy so that we could go to bed early a few hours later so we could wake up with our bodies adjusted to the local time zone.

So, as painful as it was, we stayed awake, and met up with 2 of our other co-workers joining us for the trip. We all went out to dinner at a local modernish pub and grabbed our first meal. I had the ‘chicken and mushroom pie’ with my first real pint of Guinness. Man, was that an amazing experience – a pint of the real stuff in Dublin, Ireland. It doesn’t get much better than that.

The other two guys, Chris and Julio, were almost as tired as we were, so we headed back to the hotel to hit the sack early and hopefully wake up adjusted to the local time. I finally fell asleep around 9:15 pm local time and didn’t move an inch until 10 hours later. It was a delirious but good first day.