Matt and Kat Brown

On Sunday I found myself basking in a sunny afternoon, watching a game of croquet being played on the lawn by men in top hats and tails. As you might guess, we were not in Dublin anymore. We were in Cambridge, England for the wedding of Sam and Zoe Jansen (Sam is a friend of Matt’s from Waikato Uni). It was a fun weekend, really great to be able to attend the wedding and to catch up with some Kiwis over here.

We arrived in Cambridge at lunchtime on Saturday and spent the afternoon walking around Cambridge and taking in the some of the local sights. Cambridge University is comprised of many individual Colleges scattered throughout the town. Many of the colleges have very old, grand buildings on grounds with carefully manicured gardens and lawns that you have to keep off. We walked through Saint Johns College and oohed and aahed at the stained glass, arched doorways and columns throughout (pictures in the gallery).

We stayed at the ‘Home from Home B & B’ in Cambridge which was a good, affordably-priced, place to stay. It was reasonably central and had nice rooms. Would recommend to anyone visiting Cambridge in the future.

We also enjoyed watching the punting on the river which seems to be a very popular pass time in Cambridge with tourists and locals. Unfortunately we didn’t have a chance to go punting ourselves but it looked like a lot of fun. With so many punts on the river most of the time is spent trying to navigate around others without knocking anyone in!

We spent Saturday evening catching up with other kiwis who had come over for the wedding. The wedding was on Sunday at Downing College. Sam and Zoe had a wonderful wedding, the ceremony was lovely, the bride looked beautiful, and the whole day was very special.

The ceremony was at 1:00, after which there was champagne and canapes in the garden and a spot of croquet for those who were keen. It turns out Croquet is not the genteel British game it appears on the surface! Yes, once the real rules of the game were established people seemed to take great glee in knocking everyone else off course and more or less forgot about getting themselves through the course All good fun really.

Later in the afternoon we moved inside again for the ‘Wedding breakfast’ or reception as we would call it in NZ. We were all spoiled with a full five course dinner which was followed by some entertaining speeches and then a live band and dancing into the night. Everyone had a great day.

On Monday we headed back from Cambridge to Stansted Airport for our flight. We got to Stansted with what should have been plenty of time but due to the huge lines going through security we literally had to run through the terminal to catch our flight. We made it, luckily but will know in future to allow a lot longer than the minimum time to check in!

I arrived home safely from New York on Friday morning, my flight was slightly delayed due to a traffic jam on the runway at Newark Airport but the pilot seemed to make up the delay fairly quickly once we were in the air. I flew back to Dublin on Continental which was far ahead of Aer Lingus in terms of the flight experience, however both of them still fall well below the standard set by Air New Zealand!

The remainder of my time in New York went very quickly, even though I only really had evenings available for sightseeing I managed to see most of the “big name” sights. On Tuesday night I ventured on a huge expedition around the city, starting at my apartment and then moving on to to Central Park, the Lincoln Centre, Grand Central Station, Downtown, Ground Zero and finally back to a bar/bistro near Madison Square Garden for dinner around 10:30pm before heading to bed with very tired feet.

The highlight on Wednesday was a free trip up to the top of the Empire State Building during our lunch break, courtesy of the training company whose rooms we were using for the course. The best bit of this was that the ‘tenant’ passes let you skip the huge queues (1-2 hours) in the lobby of the building and go straight up the elevator to the 80th floor (65 seconds). We still had to queue for 30 or 40 minutes to get up to the actual viewing deck on the 86th floor but all in all we got a pretty sweet deal. The weather was beautiful and we got a great view of Manhattan, Queens and New Jersey.

I had a quieter evening on Wednesday, I hung around the Googleplex (photos here – not mine) again and spent some time getting to know some of my New York colleagues before venturing over the 24/7 Apple Store on 5th Avenue to purchase an iPod for Kat. I figured we may as make use of the American Dollar being so low at the moment. I discovered however that Apple have a cunning strategy to try and extract more money from you. I wanted to buy a 2GB iPod Nano, preferably in a bright colour, but to get the bright colours you have to purchase the more expensive 4GB model! A subtle, but no doubt effective distinction between the products. Sadly for Apple bright colours weren’t worth an extra $50 in my opinion, and 2GB is plenty of space for a good selection of music.

Thursday was the last day of the course, and I headed to the airport pretty much straight after it wrapped up. I spent Friday afternoon in Dublin chasing up incompetent Irish banks (we’re switching to Halifax as Bank of Ireland managed to completely loose all the paperwork they made us fill out to change our address and add Kat to the account) and then first thing on Saturday morning it was off to Cambridge on Ryan Air to attend my Friend Sam’s wedding. Kat will fill you in on the details of this before too long.

• New York Photos

I’ve been in New York just over 24hrs now. First impressions are favourable.

I’m here for a training course which is being held in the Empire State Building. We’re only on the 7th floor unfortunately, so no free views for me. The building has far far far too many lifts, it took just over 10 minutes this morning to get to the right lift, and then the right floor, and that doesn’t include the time it took to get through the metal detector, x-ray machine, etc, etc.

After the course finished a few of us headed down to the New York Google office, which is really impressive. It’s huge (and I only saw the fourth floor)! Even at 6pm at night the office was buzzing with energy and there were plenty of people around working, chatting, eating (they serve dinner at the cafeteria) and generally just having a good time. It’s a pity I don’t think we’ll end up living in America any time soon because the office is much much nicer than Dublin :p! Tonight was the televised CNN/YouTube debate, where people from across the country had sent in questions via YouTube to be asked to the candidates. It was democrats only, strange to see so many candidates from the same ‘party’ with such divergent opinions on some topics.

That finished up around 9:30 and I quickly dropped my laptop back at the apartment before going for a bit of a walk around the city, up 7th Ave to Times Square and then back down 6th Ave to the apartment.

A few quick thoughts and impressions:

• Taxi drivers really are crazy.
• The train that sounds like it’s about to hit you from behind as you walk down the street is just the noise from the subway grates below your feet.
• New York is hot and muggy. This is even worse in the subway. The trains themselves are airconditioned (thank goodness), but the platforms are hot (close to 30C), damp and have no airflow.
• Times square and the associated billboards are amazingly bright and gharish.
• No shortage of people out and about in the evening. I love big cities.
• The city isn’t as noisy as I expected.

I’m sure there is more to say, but I’m too tired to come up with anything wittier than that for now.

I don’t have anything interesting to say about life in Dublin at the moment. Life is plodding along, work is good, our apartment is proving adequate and survived the first round of visitors with only one casualty (the toilet cistern!), although we won’t blame that on them, seeing as the other toilet cistern broke identically one week later!

Next weekend (29th July) we’re heading over to Cambridge, UK for the wedding of one of my friends which should be a lot of fun and a good chance to catch up with some NZers that I haven’t seen for a while. We’re trying out Ryan Air to get to there. The horror stories and bubbly recommendations of their service seem to come in equal volumes!

Before that, I’m nipping off to New York for a few days for a training course for work. It looks be to an interesting course so I’m looking forward to learning as much as I can. The trip was organised at the last minute so I’m not going to have much time to look around the city unfortunately. I guess I’ll just have to plan a second trip at a later date.

I leave Dublin on Sunday afternoon on Air Lingus, arrive New York (JFK) Sunday evening, attend the course Mon – Thu, 9am – 5pm and then leave from Newark at 10pm Thursday evening flying on Continental to arrive back in Dublin at 9:30am on Friday morning! Then first thing on Saturday morning it’s off to Cambridge.

I’ll take the camera and keep you posted!

Thought I would blog a few of the things I like and dislike about our new home city.

I like:

1. Taking the train south to the beach on the weekends. Ireland is small – about 1/3 the size of NZ which means its also only a short drive or train trip to go basically anywhere in the country! Perfect for weekend trips
2. Cool old architecture and public spaces – Victorian brick buildings, Georgian squares, quaint little cottages, cobblestone streets…
3. Shopping. Henry St and Grafton St are the two main shopping meccas in Dublin and both have plenty to keep me occupied. At the moment the Dublin Summer sales are on!
4. Plenty going on in the weekends. There are lots of restaurants and pubs around and also a lot of ‘events’ around the city. A few weekends ago was the Maritime festival, then the International Street Performers Competition. A big music festival this weekend. Lots to do and see!

I dislike:

1. Dog poop on the streets. One of the first things I noticed here was the strangely high occurrence of dog mess on the pavements. Watch your step!
2. Too much smoke. As a non-smoker I don’t enjoy the cigarette smoke that is always wafting in the air as you walk along the steet, or the cigarette butts littered all over the sidewalk. Ruins the idyllic surrounds somewhat
3. Rain. Yes, it is summer here but apparently that doesn’t mean it will be sunny or warm or dry The more pessimistic around Dublin tell me summer has been and gone – the few warm weeks in April were Summer. I prefer to hope that Summer is still yet to arrive here in Dublin and very soon we will have at least a few days without rain.