Matt & Kat

Aug 2nd – 10:02
Yesterday we made some eleventh hour travel plans for this long weekend. We’re going on the road – hiring a car for a couple of days and driving generally southwards to see what we find. Good company, lots of music and snack food, nice landscapes and quaint villages, and hopefully a little bit of sunshine!

We’re planning to stay tonight at Benvoy but other than that our plans are pretty fluid. I’m hoping we’ll be able to find some wifi along the way so we can update this post as we go!

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We’re relaxing at home today after an epic adventure yesterday. We went on a day trip with the Apex group (a bunch of 18-30yr olds) from our church to a theme park in Wales.

The theme park (Oakwood) was pretty awesome with some great rides, including a wooden roller coaster with plenty of twists and turns to get the adrenaline pumping. It was a very long day as we had to be up at 4am to leave Dublin on Satuday. We drove 2 hours to Rosslare, took a ferry for 2 1/2 hours from there to Fishguard in Wales, then a short bus ride to the park. 5 hours of theme park fun and then the reverse journey home. Phew, what a day! I was shattered by the time we got home at midnight but we had a great time and got to know a few new friends. We took a few photos along the way.

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In one of my opinion one of the coolest products that Google has launched since I’ve been working there is the Google App Engine, a service that allows anyone to write a web application and host it on Google’s servers. Google then looks after scaling your application and ensuring that as it becomes popular thousands and thousands of people can use it without you having to worry about buying physical servers and all that sort of messy stuff. It’s very cool.

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Our Internet connection went live today which means that we’re now completely settled in our new apartment in the Christchurch area of Dublin. We’ve been here for two weeks now and we are very happy with our decision to move across town.

I have added some photos to the gallery so you can get a feel for what our second home in Dublin looks like:

• Photos from our 2nd Dublin Apartment

The apartment was freshly painted before we moved in, and all the kitchen appliances and lounge suite are brand new! Kat has a much shorter walk to catch her bus in the mornings, and my commute is only about 10 minutes longer, although I now catch a bus rather than walk which means that I might have to stop procrastinating and sign up for the gym at work. Maybe.

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We’ve been kept busy the last few weeks with moving apartments. We’ve moved across town to a slightly older but more ‘homey’ apartment right in the heart of old Dublin. We look out the bedroom windows onto a sea of red brick and out our lounge windows to Christchurch Cathedral just across the road. Its nice to be really central, close to some great restaurants and shops. We have a local bakery and the ‘best chipper in Dublin’ just round the corner.

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I arrived back in Dublin safely on Sunday afternoon following 40 hours of travel from Sydney via Auckland (5hrs), LA (1hr) and Heathrow (another 5hrs). The best part about all the travel is that I haven’t really had any jetlag, I was back at work at 9:30 on Monday morning, and I’ve been back to normal sleep, wake, work, play, sleep routine without any ill effects.

My two weeks in Sydney were very enjoyable, the Google office there is very nice, looking out directly over Darling Harbour from nearly the 20th floor and with a fairly laid-back and relaxed atmosphere. I also caught up with our friends from Auckland, Sam and Manuela who have been living in Sydney for the last year or so and we swapped some stories about our various experiences living overseas and away from family which was interesting.

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What a busy first week back in Dublin it’s been!
I had such a fun time in New Zealand. I think it goes without saying that I loved seeing all our friends again and treasured the time we got to spend with our families. I only wish we got have stayed for 3 weeks more! There was a strong feeling of relaxation and comfort at being ‘home’ when we arrived in Auckland and as we drove the familiar road from Auckland to Hamilton. I’m loving being here in Ireland, the travel and the new places and people but it’s also helped me to see how much I appreciate NZ and all that we’re blessed with there!

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For the last three weeks we’ve been back in New Zealand (and briefly Brisbane) catching up with friends and family. It’s been a very busy, but fun time and it is certainly nice to catch up with everyone in person again. The trip has led to some interesting (and no doubt reassuring for some family members) observations.

When I left New Zealand, just over a year ago, I thought that I would be quite happy to live overseas for the next 5-10 years and apart from missing family I wouldn’t really miss New Zealand all that much. That seemed to be pretty true during the last year in Dublin. I was never consciously homesick or wishing to be back in New Zealand. Skype, VoIP and the Internet do a pretty good job of letting us stay in touch with family and friends, so while I was looking forward to visiting New Zealand I wasn’t expecting my thoughts and opinions about ‘home’ to be significantly changed.

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Starting tommorrow we’re on the move again!

This coming week I’m in Austria on the annual Google EMEA Engineering Conference and then the Ski Trip. Both of which are fairly action packed and tiring from what I can make out.

I get back to Dublin at 6pm on Friday evening. On Saturday morning at 9am Kat and I are back at Dublin Airport to begin our trek to New Zealand where we’ll stay for just over 2 weeks.

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Several weeks ago Craig shared his omlette making skills.

Kat came home after doing the shopping today with all the ingredients needed for an omelette so I decided that it was time to see if my omelette making skills are up to scratch.

It tasted pretty good to me, and I performed the flip while the egg was still quite liquid which helped to bind the ingredients together.

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