Ireland 2012, Part 3: Dubliners Day 1

NOTE: "Dubliners" is not only a reference to those living or born there but also to a collection of short stories by James Joyce which is the selection for the April 2012 One City, One Book, and the reason for the couple's Joycean theme.

Okay, calling it a "day" is a bit of a lie because we arrived at around 10:00am and by the time we got to our hotel, it was nearly lunch. But I shall call it a day anyway.

Ireland 2012, Part 2: The Flight

In all my travels I had never before encountered an itinerary such as this:

But yes, that is the itinerary that my husband and I got when we booked our flight to Dublin.

Ireland 2012, Part 1: The Journey

Of course we will begin where we ought. No, not with the drive to the airport, but with obtaining the visa.

I mentioned before that we made the plans to fly to Ireland to attend a wedding. It is actually the union of my best friend to her beloved which was also quite the journey spanning Japan, the Philippines, Ireland, and many others in between.

When the going gets tough

Life offline has been so crazy that I've neglected both my daily blogging and my daily photos. I'm still taking them, the photos, but I just don't have the luxury of being able to sit at my PC to edit. *sigh* The frustration, oh the frustration.

72 hours of my life just went into pouring all that I can into proving that I have no intention of pretending to be a tourist only to emerge with a job and a green card. Or whatever it's called. This is unbelievably sad and pathetic because this portion of my application problems--there are others--is not because I have a bad travel track record but because other Filipinos have set a precedent that fuels the suspicion.

And we're back!

First, a massive thank you to the Lord for blessing us with the two-week stay in Ireland. Second, a massive thank you to the same for our safe conveyance to and from Ireland via one of my favourite airlines, KLM, and their partners (or whatever relationship they might have) Singapore Airlines and Aer Lingus.

We, my husband and I, are currently in the state of what I've been jokingly referring to as our "recovery period." The main thing we need to adjust to is the heat, something I did not really anticipate having to adjust to given we were away a mere two weeks, but the difference between 6ºC + constantly blowing cold wind, and 29ºC and still air has made things so that we are both unprepared to face such a rapid rise in temperature. Granted, we were actually warned it would be terribly hot. I suppose neither of us, or at least I didn't at all, think it would take that much to adjust to the heat.

Sunk

Just a quick thing.

I shan't be going to Belfast. I'm actually depressed and disappointed enough over it to blog this very very quickly.

I guess we won't be meeting this year, 2012, the week after the 100th anniversary of the sinking. In fact, people may even think my determination to visit you is merely some curiosity "because it's the centennial" sort of thing.

I assure you that you have been of special interest to me since I was very young, in fact, when I used to believe the possibility of reincarnation, I figured my fascination must be because I had died there.

I guess we'll have to meet at a later date. I'll pacify myself, meantime, with movies and features I know I won't be able to watch back home. That, at least, is one thing I'm grateful for, Ireland.

I still curse that you are an island divided.

Five days to Ireland

I'm actually nervous as heck. This time around I have no checklist to follow and I'm packing for myself and my husband purely based on what I remember bringing when I was last in Europe.

Oh boy.

Something that made me smile today

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook and it just really made me smile. Kind of helps that it's being said by Mr. Bean too. ^_~

The kind of parent I want to be #2: Books

My husband and I are both readers. You cannot be an effective writer without being a reader and while writing does not rely solely on learning from reading, reading is important for a number of other reasons.

The most important, to me anyway, is information. You can never go wrong with learning, whatever it might be that you're trying to learn. In fact, no one should ever stop learning and reading books is a good way to do so. More often than not, you don't even realise you're learning something which makes it even more fun and easier to retain the information.

This may be my last entry for the next three weeks

My husband and I will be flying to Ireland soon. This isn't just for our honeymoon. Actually--shh...don't tell him I said this--the more pressing matter at hand is that we're flying to Ireland for my best friend's wedding! Any other touristy thing achieved during the trip is purely collateral. ^_~

It's been a very stressful past month and at the risk of sharing too much information, my primary proof of the stresses of the past week is the fact that this month's cycle took nearly 40 days to complete. I didn't even realise it had been that long until I started counting.