As some of you will already know, my favourite website of the moment is Threadless, a site where people can upload their t-shirt design ideas and the best designs, as voted by the other site users, get printed and sold. I recently bought a new hoody from Threadless. The design is titled ‘Tools of the Trade’ and seemed particularly apt for me. I like it . I like it a lot.
One thing I have learned about Dublin is that you must always take an umbrella when you leave the house. Even if it is warm. Even if it is sunny outside. Even if you’re only going out for 20 minutes. ALWAYS take an umbrella.
I can’t actually complain about the weather too much because these first weeks in Dublin have been unseasonably sunny and fine. According to Dubliners the weather they have been having is more like the weather of mid-Summer than early Spring. While it has been reasonably nice it still feels cold to me and these statements by Dubliners about how balmy it is are disconcerting because I have still needed my woolen coat most days! :-/
Exciting news from me: on Tuesday this week I formally accepted a job offer with a small Irish IT company based in West Dublin. I’ll be the official Web Designer; working on web, graphic, and application design. The Web Designer job is going to be a great fit with what I do well and what I enjoy.
I started my job search last Monday, browsing job vacancies online and picking out a few. I put in my CV and by 6pm that day I had an interview for the following day… by 6pm the following day I had a job offer! My job hunt ended up being much much shorter than I imagined it would be, something I’m certainly happy about. Assuming all goes smoothly in applying for my work permit, I hope to start work in 2 – 3 weeks time.
So far, so good. I survived my first week of work at Google without my head exploding due to the amount of new information that I had to take in!
The first two days were formal training on Google’s culture, policies, procedures and other important information like how to get an Irish bank account and get paid. The rest of the week involved meeting my team and enjoying Google’s famous lunches in the employee cafetaria. I have a lot of learning to do over the next few months to get up to speed with all the Google systems. The operative word for my Google experience so far is ‘big’. Google is big, in pretty much every aspect you can think of.
Yes, it’s official – we are now registered as immigrants, officially allowed to live in Dublin.
On Thursday afternoon we went into the Gardai National Immigration Bureau to register ourselves. We waited for about 20 minutes in line just for our ticket to get into the actual cue to register. After about two hours waiting on Thursday we got Matt registered but then had to go back again on Friday to get my registration completed as we hadn’t brought all the papers they wanted to see on Thursday!
After braving the bureaucratic system I now have a shiny new immigration card complete with photo, immigration number and computer chip.
I’m pleased to annouce that we’ve arrived safely in Dublin after 3 weeks of travel and are being very well looked after by Google.
We arrived on Sunday afternoon and were picked up at the airport and driven to the apartment that Google is putting us up in for the next month. Along the way the driver gave us a short introduction to the city and the current events (including NZ’s win in the Rugby U19s that day which I was completely ignorant about!). The apartment is very nice and is only a 5 minute walk from the Google offices. Click here to see a map.
I’ve accepted a job with Google and we’re shifting to Dublin!
Back in January, Kat and I decided that it was about time we put thoughts into action, and booked some one-way plane tickets to get ourselves to Europe. Our plan is to spend at least a couple of years (more if I have my way) exploring the other side of the world and generally broadening our horizons.
We leave NZ on the 31st of March flying on Emirates to Singapore. We plan to spend a couple of weeks in Malaysia visiting some of Kat’s extended family (who I’ve never met), followed by 3 nights in Singapore, a night in Dubai, finally ending up in London at Heathrow Airport on the 17th of April.