Recently in Ireland Category

We're doing a little touring over the next few months.
Now travelling on a South African Passport is far from easy. Infact, its near impossible if you're going anywhere that requires a Visa. Which is just about, Everywhere!
Its a real pain in the ass.

So I was at the French Embassy applying for a Multi-Entry Shengen Visa.
The Visa section is a tiny waiting room (Looks like a converted double garage), with 9 seats in a U-shaped layout, and a bank-teller style window where you get grilled about your intentions.

They only allow 10 applicants in at a time (the rest get to stand out in the street until someone leaves). But today, each applicant had a child in tow (except me), so it was a little crowded in there.

Which one do you think would be more effective?

Yes,
I have nother better to do...
No really.

All that prep work and research I did.
All those documents I put together and printed.
Just for the meeting that you requested.

Go right ahead and cancel it 30 minutes before its supposed to start.
With no reason.

Thats fine

In Ireland, nothing starts on time. Infact, some things just don't happen at all.
Like busses, which are never where they're supposed to be.

People in Ireland have this mentality of "It'll happen when I want it to happen".
Meetings... Never happen the first time, or second time around. You have to schedule it, email them, book the room and organise the coffee. Then you wait for 10 minutes for them, then you have to go find them and remind them that they're supposed to be in a meeting.

I presented my first training session today.
I was giving training on a new, and rather important piece of software (which I wrote)

I've been quite busy this week... And this is why.

Yup, we finally bought a car.
After almost a year and a half worth of using public transport, we decided that standing in the rain after work for an hour wasn't the best way to spend our free time.

There are a number of little things I've come to notice over the last year.
Some things are just so much easier in South Africa.

Everything in Ireland has a website, which is great when it comes to getting information thats already on the site. The problem is, most of these places think that having a website means they don't need anyone on the phones to answer queries.
I've had the extreme displeasure of having to deal with a number of companies that simply refuse to list their phone numbers, anywhere.

And now, I shall delve into the depths of Banking in Ireland.
*WARNING* This may be incoherant and rantish, mostly out of frustration.

And after all of that, they apologised.

It shouldn't have happened in the first place, and Monster shouldn't have let it grow to the point that it got to.
But they've apologised, and all is forgiven. I don't think anyone will be forgetting about it any time soon though.

And, Grandad has his say too.

Okay, I wasn't going to blog about this, as I thought there was enough coverage on it already.
But Grandad just came up with this gem, which is well worth sharing.

A basic summary of events, and links after the jump.