A long time for being offline...

Hello again,

The main reason why there hasn't been any posts for so long is that we have been 'offline'. Since we moved into our new apartment (almost 2 months ago), we have been trying to activate internet at home and it hasn't been that quick. Of course, it would have been much faster if Eircom hadn't messed up in so many different ways (Cannot give our account number by phone, wrong account number given the first time (by post), wrong spelling of names and address, refuse to validate our account number (which they gave us)...) Anyway, we're online now...

These last two month have gone past rather quickly. S's parents both visited us at different times so we haven't been feeling too lonely. :-) S and I both enjoy our jobs very much and S is now working half-time at the Museum. On my side, I have lots of things to do at work for my project and the completion target is the end of June so I am happily-busy... I also found a badminton club so I can get some exercise once a week. Yeah!!

While I'm here: A funny story concerning the local post: We heard that they changed the itinerary and system before we arrived. This resulted in unhappiness in the local staff leading to disruption and problems in the mail deliveries. A couple of facts on that: S's father sent her a Birthday card about a month ago, and S's mother sent her some mail a few days later. The mail arrived within 48hours but she still hasn't received the card. :-(
The other 'problem' concerned the delivery of a package I ordered for S's birthday. We received a small card saying they attempted delivery on one day (during most of which S was home) and therefore we needed to collect the parcel ourselves. I phoned as soon as I could to ask if they could redeliver it and the answer was clear: "No, and by the way you should come and collect it today since otherwise, we may send it back!" (The card said they would keep it one week but of course the date on the card was far from being the actual day on which we received it...) Oh, and the address on the card for the collection was incomplete (just the street name) I guess you're supposed to walk up and down the street until you find the place...!

But some things are better in Ireland than in Scotland. The weather is an example, until now, I don't think we can complain. Yes it rains from time to time but we also have some blue skies and, believe it or not, some sun. I just hope it's not going to be as it apparently was last year: A short summer in spring and the rest was rain (60 days of non-stop rain). We'll see...

Oh, I almost forgot another anecdote about Bank of Ireland. (Quick flashback) When I opened the first account, I filled papers for two accounts: A current account and a savings account and what I got was two current accounts (How practical. Now back to this story).
Since then and because I knew I wasn't going to be able to open any savings accounts at another bank anytime soon, I filled some more paperwork to open 3 savings accounts. Two of them I wanted to use and a third one as a temporary saving account until we could get proper savings accounts somewhere else. We filled the paperwork with an employee from the bank who was telling us what to fill and where and verifying that everything was in order before we left. A week or two later, we received by post some documents explaining that we did not complete the Direct Debit order for this third account (the temporary one) and therefore it could not be opened. And with those, we also received some papers which had nothing to do with the savings account at all (Direct Debit instruction for the Electricity bills). Since in the meantime, I did manage to open the savings account I wanted at AIB, I sent S to the bank to explain that we did not want to open this third savings account anymore and to ask why we were sent those other papers. It took them a while to come to the conclusion that those papers should never have been sent to us. And guess what, they opened the third savings account in the end and did set up the direct debit (without any signature of course!) Oh, well, I guess that's what we call professionalism...

I think that's enough for today...