Wild Nights

One of the things that I never really expected coming out here was how much it would be in a living-the-life style. Let me see if I can give you an example of what I mean. A couple weeks ago, one of the co-presidents of the company was leaving the company to focus on other things in his life, so we had a huge farewell party for him. The entire company was invited out to a Cuban-themed bar called Floridita which the company had booked entirely. In addition to the canapés that were distributed to us throughout the evening, the event was open-bar to a dazzling array of some pretty fancy cocktails. It was a pretty fun night, filled with many mojitos. We found our way home via taxi cab at 4 in the morning, and slept in for a little while, but not for too long ...

The very next night, we were invited to the other company president's house for a bit of a smaller party. I'm not entirely sure why I got an invite actually, but I was happy to go. There we were treated to some appetizers prepared by the company's chef, Allan, as well as a fridge full of beer and other drinks. The appetizers were something else ... they were visually stunning, and amazingly tasty. The highlight though was the mini-burgers. These were the most incredible things I have tasted in quite some time. They were freshly prepared burgers with freshly ground beef -- which meant they could be cooked rare, which they were. These were the juiciest, tastiest burgers I think I've ever had.

After a relatively quiet week or so, the server team went out for a dinner last night. We started at a Tapas restaurant where we proceeded to order one of everything off of the extensive menu. Loads of tasty food were delivered to our table which we enjoyed immensely with a couple of bottles of wine. After the meal we proceeded over to a bar where we met up with some coworkers and proceeded to have even more drinks.

This has all been fun, but I understand the company Christmas party is supposed to be something else. We just got the news of what will be going on there, and it looks sweet! The entire company (some 300+ employees) and their spouses will be taking over an Irish town for a night. Since the company is so large, we'll be scattered across the town's several hotels, and be shuttled in to the main event where we have a black-tie affair with fine food, drink, and prizes. It sounds like an amazing time.

I knew that the company was generous, and concentrated on making the employees enjoy their time, but I never quite expected the treatment we're getting. Frankly, we're getting really spoiled -- and it's pretty incredible.

Morgan

Summer Days in Dublin

This past weekend was pretty fun, and now I’m fairly well set up as far as my new household (I have a household!), I can’t pretend I have much excuse for not blogging occasionally. It was a pleasant weekend all through. We started off on Friday having some supper with our neighbours from upstairs. It was nice to get the skinny on their favourite places to eat and share stories from home and about our experiences in Ireland so far. I’m really glad to have these folks around. So far, they’ve helped us figure out how to work the boiler and the washer/dryer, and provided pleasant company too!

Saturday was a games party at Darse & Xan’s. It was a lot of good old fashioned fun, with all kinds of tasty snacks besides. There was Ra, Medici, Carcasonne, Blokus, and RoboRally (I love to be the “TrundleBot” - I’m so gleeful it exists!), culminating in Taboo and Apples to Apples that were good for the whole group to play together. Oh yes, and we got to see for ourselves that Darts and Xan aren’t kidding about the size of their spiders.

Sunday was glorious – the weather was lovely and warm, and it held the whole day. Morgan and I took ourselves over to Dun Loaghaire harbour. My intention was to enjoy the sights and sounds of the Festival of World Cultures whilst finding the farmers’ market, but neither Morgan nor I anticipated how many folks would be taking advantage of a sunny summer day. Everyone and his dog was out, riding the midway attractions or buying things from stalls or watching the many musical acts on the outdoor stages (or watching the ticketed shows – it sounds as though there was a pretty decent line-up in general). To me, it most closely resembled the Children’s Festival, which graces my hometown of St. Albert every spring.

We found the People’s Park and the farmer’s market and something to munch as we trundled though the crowds. (I told you I love to trundle!) We moseyed (dare I say it) down to the shore taking pictures and kept going down the east pier, the weather inviting us to linger there awhile. There was someone making a perspective painting – if you stood at a particular point of the decorated sidewalk it seemed as though you were standing in a glacial crevasse.

Not only was it perfect weather for festivals and street paintings, it was also a very good day for a hundred sea-bathing junkies to participate in the Annual Harbour Swim. It looked a little chilly with everyone in normal bathing suits, but I must admit I was impressed. I mean, not that bog snorkeling isn’t cool too.

Diane

The Church Location

Two Sleeps before the big day! We're getting pretty excited! My dad brought to my attention a little detail we didn't really notice when we printed the invitations. The map showing the location of the church is a bit misleading in that it doesn't really show the proper way to get access to the church.

I imagine most of you will be coming up St Albert Trail. As you come up, before you cross Sir Winston Churchill avenue, there's a left turn that you can take that'll get you onto green grove drive. The lights have a sign saying "Downtown" pointing left there. Take that! You actually cannot get onto Sir Winston Churchill avenue from St Albert trail, so if you miss that turn you'll have to go past it and hand a left to turn into downtown St Albert. Sorry for the confusion!

Here's a map:

View Larger Map

Hope everyone finds their way there okay! I look forward to seeing you all there!

Morgan

Gifts

The wedding is coming up very quickly now! We're now a month and a few days away from the big date, and there's still lots of little details to nail down. One of the things that we need is volunteers to do setup and takedown of the hall. If you're interested in helping out, please let one of us know soon so we can give you a task. // Diane's comments follow

Also, does anyone want to usher or possibly babysit a video camera?  I have made a list of tasks and descriptions that you can look through and decide from the available jobs what you would prefer if you decide to give the gift of helping our big day run smoothly, kind of like a little registry for volunteering.  This would make a very good gift!!

// Aaand back to Morgan

We've been asked by a few people what we'd like for gifts. We're just starting to send the word out that I've been hired by a company in Dublin to start working over there starting August 1st. That means that we're not going to need a lot of "stuff" since we're going to have to be pretty choosy about what we bring with us to Europe.

For those that would like to get us physical things, we've setup small registries at The Bay, and Linens-n-Things. However, the traditional wedding gift for Chinese weddings is cash. If you would like to go along with this, then that's a perfectly good solution too.

We thought about trying to setup a travel registry for our honeymoon, but we heard that many travel registries take a percentage cut of that which didn't really seem fair.

The wedding is in just over a month. If you haven't returned your RSVP cards yet, please do that soon! We'll start bugging people about that soon so that we know if we have enough space to invite a few more people.

Happy spring everyone!

Morgan

Invites

The wedding is getting close, so here's a quick update. Diane and I are now starting to pass out invitations. We're hoping to be able to invite everybody who would like to come, but there are space considerations in the hall and we're likely to hit the max there. Everyone is of course welcome to come to the ceremony. The space considerations are only on the reception hall. As we get replies, we'll update our status and send out invites for spots that are freed up in the hall. If you've already got your invitation, you might be wondering what the symbol on the cover is. It's a Chinese symbol which means double happiness. It is a pretty common word used on Chinese wedding invitations, although Chinese wedding invitations almost always use red. Here's a wikipedia page on the character for double happiness.

The plans are going smoothly, but there's still lots of little details to do!

Morgan