miserable cow

I updated my Facebook status just before that I was a miserable cow.

Its true. There was a lot of tears today.

I said goodbye to Mum at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport this morning. We both went to the airport together. I took the 9.40am flight back to Dublin. Mum took the 12 noon flight back to Kuala Lumpur. It was hard.

Today I came home to an empty apartment. I cooked myself miserable noodles, smoked some miserable cigarettes and kept to my miserable self again.

Only last week I had a small fight with Grumpy. The Dublin office asked if I wanted to extend my stay here in Dublin. Because I was my happy self at that time.. enjoying Mum's company, I thought life in Dublin was really quite nice. So for a minute there, yes, I was considering staying back in Dublin. Grumpy asked me why? I said well, because I enjoyed my work here in Dublin and don't really want to go back working in the circus. He was very quick to say that it meant I picked my work over him and my family back home. I wanted to prove him wrong, so I went back to my colleagues in Dublin and said No, I will go home to Melbourne as agreed initially.

At this point, I really do miss home and I'm glad I didn't commit to a longer work assignment here in Dublin. 

Ah well.. 2 more months! 2 moreeeee months!

This is a picture of me in Amsterdam. Lovely city. Gorgeous weather over the weekend. Netherlands is a beautiful country. Again, something to remind me that if it wasn't for work, I wouldn't have the opportunity to visit these amazing places so soon! I'll write more about my trip to Amsterdam later. Going to bed now. Goodnight.

London town

My weekend in London was good. This was my 4th trip to London. It was slightly different compared to my previous trips to London, only because this time I was with Mum, 2 of my aunts and another lady who was a friend of my aunt. Yes, as you can imagine, by the end of my London trip, I was Auntie-fied. All that Auntie talk... the only thing they would talk about is pickpockets in London.. Therefore throughout the entire trip, the only thing that was going on in my head was "I am going to be robbed, I am going to be robbed, I am going to be robbed"

But despite all that, it was nice to meet up with some family I haven't seen in a long time. Was telling Litte Miss Juicy Pops (who sits next to me at work), that this 67 year old aunt of mine, lived in London nearly all her life, still works mad hours (6am til 11.45pm) as a nurse, and is the type of person who lives to work, so that she can send money back to Malaysia. Yes, she belongs to that generation that lives overseas and will ALWAYS make it a point to send money back to her family at home. On the contrary, I also work and live overseas, but yeah.. I just spend ALL my money on myself. She puts me to shame, seriously. 

Hmm... at least I bought Mum tickets to go watch Wicked on a Saturday night. It was absolutely brilliant. If you happen to be in London, you HAVE to go watch Wicked, The Musical. Yes, you can see it in Melbourne, but HEL-LO, this is London's WEST END! Was a little worried Mum would not have liked it, she is quite hard to please sometimes.. but I was pleasantly surprised when she said she loved it and was happy I bought those tickets. Very expensive, but definitely worth it. We're going to another musical on Thursday here in Dublin, the Elvis Presley story...!  

Work was good today. Its actually Little Miss Juicy Pop's last week in the company. I will miss her!! She's got another job with one of our competitors. We're good friends.. she spoke about her going away drinks just now, so I offered to send an email out to the entire department for her... to invite everyone for drinks.

Hi everyone,

 

As you all know, Friday is *Little Miss Juicy Pops* last day here, it would be great if you could join her for a drink at *Irish Pub* after work on Friday (around 5.45pm).

 

Hope to see you there.

 

Thanks.

After I hit the send button, she said to me "Jules, you sound like I'm dying and you're inviting people to my funeral or something.. " hahaha we couldn't stop laughing... Does it?  

cbf mode

This has been quite a busy week. 

I was in London last weekend. Met up with some colleagues from our other offices. It was good fun, but I was exhausted. The weather wasn't all that fantastic too, it rained all weekend in London. 

But I swear, I've been at my laziest... cbf mode. 

I took an early flight home from London on Sunday arvo. Hoping to clean the house. That didn't happen. 

Work has been crap this week as well. Been caught up in other things that have sort of taken my time away from my main project. My boss told me my project, like every other major project, will probably be delayed.... bad news, because if that gets delayed... I don't know... I still hope to go home to Melbourne by December. Good thing is I've been learning about hedge funds... there has been so many problems, my colleagues absolutely hate it, haha but I love a challenge! Hedge funds? Bring it on!!!

Anyways, enough about work. Mum arrives Dublin tomorrow morning. I am so excited! Mum's excited herself. We go to London together next weekend, and the following weekend, we'll be in Amsterdam. We'll both get high together in Amsterdam. 

I have the best mother in the world, seriously. When Grumpy left, she was sad as well, sad because I was sad. Sometimes looking back at everything, I am standing here in Dublin today... it is all because of her and Dad. My parents were the two people that has made everything possible. The opportunities I've had, the challenges I face, the many people I've met, my time in Australia, Dublin, Europe, my studies, work, house, everything... ultimately everything was made possible by my mum and dad. I'm so blessed to have such loving and supportive parents. Grumpy's family has been equally supportive as well. Which we are both extremely grateful and thankful of. 

Mum's time in Europe will be interesting. She will be multiplying everything by 5. 

True Love

True love is when Grumpy flew around the world – rushing like crazy in the many different airports in between transit to make it for the each flight… to come see me here in Dublin!

True love is Grumpy buying me a kimono, 10 different types of Japanese cup noodles, 6 different flavoured Japanese lip balms, Japanese cakes, rice crackers, biscuits, chocolates and lollies while he was in transit in Tokyo. Bearing in mind, all I got him while I was in Germany earlier in July was a packet of Knoppers. Hehehe it is a delicious chocolate wafer, and only cost me 40 cents.

True love is us not having a worry in the world, even though his luggage didn’t arrive Dublin that night when he got here, because we were happy as long as we had each other.

True love is us unable to sleep that night he got here because we were so excited after being apart for 7 weeks, despite the fact that we knew we had to be up early as I’d booked for a taxi to pick us up at 4.30am the next morning to bring us to the airport to catch our flight to Rome.

True love is us, still unable to sleep during our 4 hour flight to Rome, because we had so much catching up to do. We couldn’t stop talking!

True love is when Grumpy went down on one knee, pulled out a beautiful diamond ring in a lovely romantic restaurant in Venice and asked me to marry him.

True love is us having the ability to share unforgettable experiences in Rome, Venice, Prague, Berlin, Paris, London and Dublin. We will never forget our time together here in Europe.

True love is me returning to Dublin at midnight each Sunday, going to work the next Monday.  Then come Friday afternoon, we are off again to another country. This was really hard work!

True love is when Grumpy bought me a cake, lit candles, sang Happy Birthday at 12 midnight on the eve of my birthday.

True love is when Grumpy bought me a Louis Vuitton bangle as a gift for my birthday, and when I said I loved it (which was a bit of a white lie)… I didn’t sound convincing enough, so he took it back and exchanged it for a Chanel bag instead, which ended up costing a lot more… hehe I am so spoilt.

True love is me, begging Grumpy to stay… every 5 seconds.. during the final week of his time here in Dublin.

True love is Grumpy cooking me scrumptious meals, and freezing them up, making sure I had yummy food to eat when he is no longer in Dublin with me.

True love is me crying my heart out in the airport, because Grumpy was leaving Dublin to make his way home.

True love is me taking up smoking again, to curb with us being apart again.. it will be another 4 more months before we get to see each other again! Too long!

True love is cruel love.

True love is beautiful love.

Three more days... OMG

You cannot imagine the excitement in me right now..

In three days, Grumpy will be arriving here in Dublin!! 

It feels like forever. I bet the next three days will be the longest three days ever!!

Although, today at work, I was checking out his flight itinerary, and looking at the day he leaves Dublin to go home. He's not even here yet, and I'm already sad that he will be leaving me end of August to make his way back to Melbourne. With a stopover in KL, which is totally unfair, but thats a different story. I dread the time he goes and leaves me here all by myself again. I could not cope. No way. I will be devastated.

Not only that, he has the wackiest flight routes too. He flies Melbourne > Tokyo > Copenhagen > Birmingham > Dublin. And guess what? He arrives Friday at 11pm. We fly off to Rome Saturday 7am! I emailed Mum and Dad today.. with my Europe itinerary. And I said to them, if Grumpy's flights to Dublin are somewhat delayed or cancelled.. does that mean I am going to Rome alone? 

I sound like a Negative Nancy.

But on the flip side, there is a lot happening at work this week, so that should keep me occupied. On Monday, an email was sent out to kick start a pretty significant project here. I'm the lead business analyst on this. Exciting, yet the other side of me is terrified. The 'tidak apa' attitude of some people in the teams here worries me that when they go live on the new implementation, it will fail. And no way I want to fly back to Melbourne with a 'FAILED' stamp on my forehead.

I sound like a Negative Nancy again.

The next two days I'm busy with workshops. We have 2 colleagues from our Lux office here for these workshops. I've been asked to be their host tomorrow night and take them out for drinks and dinner, and charge it to the company. That's fine. Only problem is, I'm as much a tourist as they are here in Dublin. Little Miss Whats-For-Lunch said "don't forget your map, Jules!" 

Some pictures that I was looking through before..

Our recent holiday at Queensland. (More pictures to come 'when'.. I mean, 'if'... we make it to Rome. After Rome, we'll make our way to Venice, Prague and then Berlin)

My close friends. I miss them. It would be absolutely amazing if they were all here in Europe and we can do weekends in Paris or London together. 

And of course, my little puppy. He looks funny here. I don't like it when I can't see his eyes. I love looking at his eyes. But Grumpy prefers it when his hair covers his eyes. 

THREE MORE DAYS!!! AHHHHHH

Weekend in Deutschland

Geez I swear, living by myself, I do anything I want, whenever, whatever… 

In an odd way, I must admit it is quite liberating. Minus all the frozen meals. Hahaha 

Things have been going well here in Dublin.

I sleep better.

I go running around the canal.

I drink Guinness with blackcurrant.

And, I went to Germany last weekend.

Germany was amazing. I had such a fantastic time.  I loved it so much, I hope to go back again.

It wasn’t a direct flight to Dusseldorf. I had a stopover in London. Cheaper that way.

Little Miss Gypsy picked me up from the airport. Walking towards her car, I was waiting for her to open the door, she says to me “You wanna drive or what?”

“No, are you crazy!” And then I realised it was left-hand drive! Derrr.. hehehe It felt very weird. Even when on the road, the lanes are the other way round. It took a while to get used to. I felt I was travelling against the ‘normal’ direction of travel and that we were about to hit on-coming cars.

We travelled on the autobahn. It is brilliant! The cars go so fast! Grumpy and I will be making our way to Berlin next month. Another German friend has been kind enough to map me the routes so that Grumpy can go ‘his’ way on the ‘highway’.

Dusseldorf was a nice city. It had a two parts to it, a modern part, and the Old city. Very upmarket. Shopping in Dusseldorf is so much better than in Dublin. Best part of it was the fact it was SOO dog friendly. Seriously, you can take your dog with you inside the shopping centres, in the boutiques, in the airport.

I stayed in Little Miss Gypsy’s home, which was located in Wuppertal. About a 20 minute train ride from Dusseldorf. She lives in a very cosy apartment. Felt very much at home.

We travelled on the Schwebebahn. Something very special to Wuppertal. 

We drank beer, exchanged stories, we even went for a walk with Little Miss Gypsy’s best friend and her dog to the forest in the pouring rain. It was lots of fun!

I guess this trip was really good, because I was with a friend, who was a local, and we went places where the locals would go.  It was also my first taste of non-English speaking Europe. I learnt a lot about Germany during my short trip, picked up a few words… and I am even more curious about Germany now. When I was living in Melb, Germany didn’t appeal much to me. But now that I’ve experienced Germany, I really like it there.  

(More pics in Facebook)

Chips or Rice

Things are going rather well, I must say. I mean, things could be a lot worse.. but they are not. Which I should be grateful for.

I'm here for work... work sent me here.. work paid a lot of money for me to come here.. so of course, in return, I get a lot of 'work'.. and occasionally feel like I'm struggling. I must say, everyone in the office is nice and friendly. I have made some friends, but no one particularly close enough whereby I can hang out with outside of work on the weekends.

Work has mentioned they would love if I could stay here longer. 

On the weekdays, I'll tell Grumpy.. "yea, I could go back for Christmas, and come back to Dublin for another 6 months.." 

And then comes the lonely weekends, I'm all teary-eyed telling Grumpy "I want to go back home now!!!! I don't want to be here!!!! I want to be back in Melbourne!!!!" 

I walk to work each day. Each morning I walk past a church. And this guy brings his Westie out on the church lawns every morning. Its an absolutely perfect way to start my day. Always puts a smile on my face.. 

Today on my way home, I decide to try this Chinese/Thai takeaway place. I look at the menu. The usual.. green curry, red curry, sweet and sour pork, lemon chicken, fried rice. I decide on Chicken with Thai Sauce. The Chinese guy says to me "You want with chips?Or rice?"

Oh gawd. Take me home.