I'm not a celebrity, get me out of here ...

Well I've been speaking to a producer and his assistant in Germany for the last month, they found me on the internet from my blog about the Oceanos.  They were doing a story about the sinking for television and were going over to the UK to interview Moss and Michael, and they wanted to fly me over to London as well so I could be interviewed along with them.  However it was just impossible to try and take time off work and I also had Irene and Candice coming over that exact same week, so I decided that I wouldn't give it a miss.

Then the producer phoned me and said that if I could not get time off work then they would fly to Ireland to Dublin and interview me here, wow okay, and they would fly over on a Friday and we could do all the shooting on the Saturday which meant I did not have to take time off work.

Torsten the producer said they would be at my house at 10 on Saturday morning, well they arrived early I had just got out the shower, so panic panic - anyway I was dressed, and OMG winter had arrived suddenly so it was freezing.  They wanted to go down to the harbor and do some shooting first and then come back to the house.  So I took my car and we drove into town and down along the Liffey, we arrived at one of the passenger terminals but there were all these official looking people who gave us the hairy eyeball.

So off we went to the other side of the bridge and through the Eastlink Toll, and stumbled upon a small rowing & yacht club.  The people there were so nice to us and let us film there, it was great fun but freezing!  Luckily though the sun was shining.  After interviewing me for what seemed eternity, they interviewed Irene - 4 hours later we were still there, neither Irene or I had, had any breakfast so we were starving.

Eventually we headed back to our house after making one stop on the bridge by customs house so they could get some photos, and then home.  I headed straight for the kitchen to prepare food for the masses and then it was interviewing again, while they ate they went through all my memorabilia from the Oceanos and took photos and stuff.

They eventually finished at about quarter to five and by that time Irene and Candice had to rush off to catch their plan, but what a day .... I was exhausted last night and fell asleep just after 9.  At least this time I am getting paid for my troubles.

Beautiful Dublin

 Just when I think that I have seen all the stunning views in Dublin, I stumble across more.  We found the Stella Maris rowing club today where the TV crew from Germany interviewed Irene and myself for a program.  It was stunning to say the least and we had perfect whether, I got a brilliant shot of a typical Irish fisherman putting a boat out, anyway you have a look and be the judge.

Happy Birthday A & B

Yes it's Arthur Guinness's birthday today and also the Boss - Bruce Springsteen ... so Happy Birthday to the both of you!

Yes I took this photo at his concert in 2008, what a man!

My song of the week

Don't Let it Die - Hurricane Smith 1971


You may not know this, but Hurricane Smith was the Sound Engineer for the Beatles until 1965 and then went on to Produce Albums for Pink Floyd,  he was a pilot in the RAF and he was born before my mother - A man ahead of his times, here is the only song he ever made famous for himself. 
Read is obituary here:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/mar/11/obituaries.mainsection

A mountainside, a flower grows
A riverside and the water flows forever
The jungle life of mystery
The wide and graceful history of life

Don't let it die
Don't let it die
The tiger's free, the kangaroo
It's up to me and up to you

For what we see is what we choose
What we keep or what we lose forever
The world is ours to tear apart
But what if it's too late to start again?

Don't let it die
Don't let it die
Or say good-bye - amen

Don't let it die
Don't let it die
Or say good-bye in the end

The Lost Dr. Seuss Poem ... I love my Job, I do, I do ...

I love my job, I love the pay.
I love it more and more each day.
I love my boss; he/she is the best.
I love his boss and all the rest.
I love my office and its location.
I hate to have to go on vacation.
I love my furniture, drab and gray,
And the paper that piles up every day.
I love my chair in my padded cell.
There's nothing else I love so well.
I love to work among my peers.
I love their leers and jeers and sneers.
I love my computer and its software;
I hug it often though it don't care.
I love each program and every file,
I try to understand once in a while.
I'm happy to be here, I am, I am;
I'm the happiest slave of my Uncle Sam.
I love this work; I love these chores.
I love the meetings with deadly bores.
I love my job-I'll say it again.
I even love these friendly men,
These men who've come to visit today
In lovely white coats to take me away.

Dilbert

The Household Budget

A weird thing happened last night, all my cookery books came tumbling down off the shelf, and one of my books which belonged to my mother is a cook book called : The "Royal Hostess", and it belonged to my mother before she got married, it has her maiden name imprinted on the cover, and inside it says "PRINTED IN SOUTH AFRICA PUBLISHED BY ROYAL BAKING POWDER (PTY.) LTD.  FIRST EDITION 1953", which makes it 57 years old.

I have used this book since a child and got some of my baking recipes out of it, but the thing about this cook book is just what it says, it is a Hostess book and it tells you what cuts of meat to buy at the butchers, etc. It is really interesting.  When the book fell the hard cover became detached, so I need to stick it back together somehow.  Anyway, I was paging through the book and came across a section right at the back that says "The Household budget", and it's all kinds of tips on how to plan your budget.  So I was just skimming through it when I got to the last paragraph on the page that read:

                                A good housekeeper will put out the day's (or week's if preferred) requirements regularly and not leave it to servants to help themselves to stores.  Native servants are notoriously extravagant, but they will usually co-operate in economies if approached in the right way.
                               Put out weekly supply of their food - sugar, porridge, samp or beans, etc., and tell them that it must last a week.  Show them how to measure out by cup the amount for each day.  In small households - where only one servant is kept - it is false economy to buy separate amounts of meat etc. for the servant, and to cook an entirely separate meal.                                 
Once or twice a week the servant can be given an extra amount of meat to cook as he or she likes, but generally it can be planned that there is sufficient left over from the family meal for the servant.

I was quite taken aback with it, thinking oh my goodness this cook book actually is quite racist, but then I looked up the work "servant" and Wikipedia told me the following:

Servant is an older English term for "domestic worker", though not all servants worked inside the home.

So it's not just South Africa that had servants, they had them all over the world, even in Ireland in the last century, wealthy families had servants.

I suppose having come through the whole apartheid thing and everyone being so politically correct it just seemed strange to read it in print.  Interesting.

Births, Engagements & Weddings ... oh yes and Divorces

Births:

Seems like something in the water at the moment, you walk around Dublin and every second woman is pregnant, and yet this country was the hardest hit in the recession and we are still worse off than most European countries, except uh maybe Greece ... however, we suddenly are having the highest birth rate.  This is due to the fact that Ireland have some strong employment laws, with all the redundancies taking place in most companies, they can not make you redundant if you are out sick or on Maternity leave - so what do most woman do, fall pregnant!  And then yes while they are out for the 9 - 12 months having their baby, they fall pregnant again and the cycle just goes on and on and puts the country deeper in debt.  I agree to having 2 kids because you are replacing the population, but more than that ... why?  Surely people have noticed that the world is so over populated already, or maybe not are we so selfish that we only think of our wants and needs?

Engagements


So my good friend "Bob" finally did it, on holiday in Italy with his girlfriend Aoife, who I really like and he decided to pop the question!  I'd say about time as Bob is 33 and not getting any younger, so last night while we were out celebrating Trish's wedding, it was just wedding talk - Bob thinks he can probably get away with only spending about €10 - €15K on a big wedding .... I think he may be in for a rude awakening, has no one told him what things cost in this country!  In actual fact it is absolutely ridiculous the amount of money that gets spent on weddings in this country, I told him to elope or going and get married in some 3rd world country where it will cost you a fraction of what you would pay here.

Weddings

Yes we were out celebrating Trish's wedding last night, with a wonderful dinner at "Fallon & Byrne", so Trish is doing the sensible thing and running off to Rome to get married, just her Seamie and mom & dad ... very, very wise I say!  All the old crew from the "society" were there, some of them actually still working there, so it was a great catch up and really had a wonderful evening (considering I didn't really want to go).  I had to rush off at 12:50 before they locked up the parking garage where I was parked and I just made it!  Oh yes forgot to mention that Trish is going to one of my favourite places for her honeymoon - Sorrento, told her she has to do a trip over to the Isle of Capri and the blue grotto.

Divorces

It most cases it has been the man's fault, especially in the celebrity world, I mean look at Tiger Woods, Ashley Cole and now sweet and innocent (not), Wayne Rooney, who I only recently said of  to my mother in law "his about the nicest down to earth player of them all" but yet he has a thing for prostitutes and was even inviting woman back to his bodeaur (spelling) on his stag night ... despicable.
Yet in my world it seems to be the woman who are unhappy with the men and deciding to just up and walk out of marriages that have lasted between 10 and 20 years, and the reasons ... "I never loved him", "his too old", OMG surely when you get married in the first place you know these thing, if he wasn't too old for you when you married him, why exactly is he too old now, did he age more rapidly than you ... one day you too will be too old, and that younger man you have now fallen in love with, will leave you for a younger woman ... I always believe "what goes around, comes around".

Remembering

It's hard to believe that the 9/11 attacks on America happened 9 years ago today, it's also hard to believe that my mother passed away 8 years ago today.

I still remember where I was on 9/11, we had only been living in Ireland for less than 3months, I was hunting for that job (seems I do that a lot), my mother and father-in-law were visiting Ireland from South Africa, but were doing a bit of touring and had gone up north.  We were living in a small 2 bedroomed apartment, and I was busy cleaning the floor, I decided to put the TV on for some reason and I had it on Sky News, as I was watching they were talking about the plane that had smashed into the first of the twin towers, I grabbed the phone and immediately phoned D to tell him what was happening and while I was talking to him on the phone another plane smashed into the other twin tower.  To me it felt like the world had gone mad, but that is now all history, but never to be forgotten history.

On Friday night I was switching between channels and there were a lot of programs about 9/11, it's actually heart wrenching some of the stories that have come out.  Amazingly though, most of the stories seem to be about New York, which of course was the major disaster - however it seems that the media forget about those who were in the Pentagon and the other airplanes that were involved in this disaster.  My heart goes out to all those families who suffered loss on that day, because only after the passing of my mother do I realise how much you can actually miss a family member so much.

My mom passed away on 9/11 8 years ago, my mother like most mothers was very wise and taught me a lot of life skills, things that I hope to pass on to my daughter one day.  The thing I miss most about my mother is that she never got to know her youngest grand daughter who was born 8 months after she left us.

Forever in our thoughts!  (The lady on the right).

If you think ...

Interesting ...

I was reading some fascinating accounts on Monsoons blog today on history of Europe and the black plaque, so now going to start studying some more history and learn about Europe's history seeing as we were never taught this in school.  But something else I found on Monsoons blog which I stole was a saying by Mark Twain:


"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover"


So true.

The summer ... she is over ... or not quite yet

So the holiday was over, the in-laws back in Africa, Em back at school and hubby and I back at the salt mine, which means the summer is over, but yet we have been having fabulous weather.  It was like 23 degrees the last two days, okay you guys in Sunny South Africa don't laugh, I know that is a good winters day.  But honestly it is a different type of 23 degrees and humid and the same heat in SA would probably show about 27 on the thermometer.  

So Thursday Dianne enticed me down to the beach for lunch, pity we had to go back to work because it was just so wonderful looking out onto the blue sea and sitting in the sun.  Yesterday was another Fab day, so I went off to Avoca at lunch time and just walked around in the sunshine.

So no sooner is Em back at school and she has a birthday party tomorrow, I am going to make a big pot of veggie soup in anticipation for winter, and freeze it - that way I know summer will last a lot longer, but I am also going to try and cook some meals for the week, so there is no rushing each evening and besides that way I can get back to my aqua aerobics and the gym.  Besides I need to try and lose loads of weight in the next 3 weeks, help! Think I may have to go onto the high protein diet or starve myself.

I hear thunder - well that is what woke me up this morning and I can honestly say it is probably only the 2nd time in 9.5 years that I have heard thunder, for a minute I thought I was back in Africa, I then went back to sleep and then realised I had to get up because we all had a hair appointment this morning, the 3 of us and you think they would give us a family discount or something .... NO so 115 Euro for 1 kid, 1 man and 1 ladies cut and blow - yes you luck people down in SA, things over here are VERY expensive!  Then it was off to the shops to do the necessary shopping ugh!

This afternoon I picked up a friend from work and went for afternoon tea at my favorite little coffee shop in Milltown, I so needed to bitch about work, so it was great to get a lot of stuff off my shoulders with someone who understood where I was coming from.

So what else has happened today, well how was that earthquake in New Zealand, OMG and here one of my friends is flying over in a few weeks time, to look at going to live ... uh I don't know so much, maybe Australia is a better bet, and of course there was an anti-war protest in down town Dublin, as Tony Blair was out for the week-end to sign his autobiography, got to find out more about those.

New Post, New Month, New Season

Okay I am ditching the details of the holiday, as nobody's really interested in my cultural holiday in Portugal, so as from tomorrow it will be filling you in on "Life" and what has been happening in my little world and on my little Island of Ireland.  Till tomorrow ...