Kae has posted his thoughts on enjoying a drink. I can’t seem to leave a comment, but I think he’s missed a fairly vital point.

I’m all in favour of enjoying alcohol. Wine or sherry, cider or beer, champagne or cocktails. Red wine isn’t generally my tipple of choice, but there are apparently clear benefits to it for certain groups (generally, the over-40s - does that mean Kae has a better excuse than me? Maybe in a year or two ;-)). But know what you’re drinking.

The Australian guidelines in the general case recommend “no more than 4 (men) or 2 (women) Standard Drinks a day on average and no more than 6 (men) or 4 (women) Standard Drinks on any one day”. Kae seems to think that means 28 pints. But look a little closer.

What’s a Standard Drink? In Australia, it’s 10g of alcohol. In the UK and Ireland, it’s called a “unit“, and it’s 10ml, or about 8g, of alcohol. I had a can of beer tonight. It was a 500ml can, of the local Hürlimann lager - 4.8% a(lcohol)b(y)v(olume). That’s 19g of alcohol - 2 Australian Standard Drinks, or 2.5 UK units.

The Australian guidelines, even without the SNAFU of assuming that a Standard Drink is what you get when you belly-up to the bar and ask for the usual, are fairly generous. But they’re not suggesting 28 drinks a week is ok - unless your normal drink is a small bottle of Bud Lite. Know your units!

The guideline amounts are up to 3-4 units per day for men (2-3 for women). If you convert the Aussie guidelines to units, they recommend up to 5 units a day on average for men (2.5 for women), and no more than 7.5 units on any one day for men (5 for women). The Australians recommend one or two alcohol-free days per week - the Brits suggest 48h of a break after a heavy session (binge drinking is defined as 8 units in a day for men, or 6 for women, although they do state that it depends a bit on the person).

But what is a unit? UK units are dead easy to work out, even if you’re not very mathematical. A litre of drink contains one unit of alcohol for every percentage point of alcohol by volume. So a 500ml bottle of Rekorderlig mixed berries (7%abv) is 3.5 units - a day’s allowance. A 75cl bottle of Moët (12%abv) is 9 units - better get some friends over! A 35ml shot of Absolut (red label - 50%abv) is 1.75 units - two of those, and you’re done for the night.

So by all means, have a drink on the way home (as long as you’re not driving - or cycling!), or a glass of your favourite with dinner. But don’t overdo it, and remember to give your liver a rest now and then. Particularly in this, the season of Christmas parties and overindulgence - know your limits! And a huge shout out to Dad, his department and many others like it, and the ambulance crews around the world, who have to deal with the excesses of the people who don’t.

I’ll never forget,
Standing. At attention.
Fists tight to keep from shaking.
Tongue pressed hard, against my teeth.
A statue, cast in uniform,
In a house too small
For so much grief.

Only my eyes,
Revealing my heart.
A statue, cast in uniform,
But blinking, too much.
Willing back the tears.
Searing, salty tears,
That washed my face
The night before.

Matching uniforms, a sea of black.
Three generations, father, son, granddaughter.
The belt I wore, my grandad’s.
Carried with the coffin, were
His medals and the flag.
The others wept and cried,
While we statues, cast in uniform
Shared my father’s quiet grief

Another year later, I look back at what I wrote about my Grandad’s passing. I woke up last night, in tears, remembering him. I’m not one for idolising squares on a calendar, but there’s something natural about anniversaries too. The seasons change, and we remember past changes. The years go by, and the events of many years add up.

Grandad died in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Stephen and I had gotten home from our honeymoon eleven days prior, and although we’d had vague plans to visit that weekend, we never did. I still regret that, in one sense - although I treasure the time that we had on our wedding day, it wasn’t the same as getting to spend time with him, just with him.

On the Saturday, we had resolved to visit - but we popped out to the Christmas market in Farmleigh first. We were there when dad phoned, and suggested that we go to visit Grandad. He was asleep, and likely to remain that way. We visited, and he seemed peaceful. There was a sense of foreboding, but how many times had I heard “I don’t think he’ll make it through the night”? And so we left, went home, just like normal.

The phone woke me the next day. I think I knew, when I heard Dad’s voice. I didn’t really believe it though. Stephen dropped me off at Trees Road. Eoin and Rosie were still asleep. It was strange to be back there, with the house seeming so empty. The three of us went over to Spiddal Road. We sat, and had tea, while the undertakers dressed the body. When they brought him back, and laid him out, we opened the window to let his soul join with the angels. Rituals.

I went home, and packed up - my laptop, and a 3G modem. My uniform, of course. I went to sleep in my own bed, as if everything were normal. And I cried, like I have never cried before.

So many things happened on Monday. We sent off the death notice via laptop and 3G modem. Of course, the proof had to be faxed back, so we ran over to the priest’s house to collect the fax. Dad and grandma and I looked through the undertakers’ catalogue to find the plainest coffin we could. Who knew undertakers had a catalogue?! So many people arrived, comforted us, and left. Family and friends coming and going. Everyone with a story, of something he’d made, or fixed, or resurrected. Gates and washing lines and bikes and lecterns. Anything at all, he’d put his hand to. And even the scraps, the waste, were turned into something beautiful.

Eoin and I spent Monday night with Grandad, the window long closed. When Eoin fell asleep early in the morning, I couldn’t bear to leave Grandad alone, even long enough to go and get Colm. A family of nurses, all of them used to the night shift, it was my first time. I couldn’t sleep, even the next day, when they sent me to lie down in Grandad’s room. The whole floor of the room, taken up by a double mattress. Hardly room to take off my shoes! All changed - Grandad had been nursed in the front room, where there was more space. It hadn’t been his room for a while.

The cousins started to arrive. Tired, after a long journey. Nervous and shy of so many people who clearly knew them, but most of whom they barely recognised, if they even knew. Their parents, my aunt and uncles, so desperate for time with Grandad, with each other, trying to make sense of it all. The children eventually brought off to various beds, by their aunts. Bernie and Bernie, making sure everyone was looked after, making sure that the normal didn’t get lost in the abnormal.

How bizarre that I remember, but we had some really nice lasagne. Mourning food - thrown together to feed as many mouths as turned up, or pulled out of a freezer as a quick, easy meal when no one could think of cooking.

As the removers brought Grandad’s remains downstairs, the coffin in the hall, we whispered, with silent shocked laughter. He was buried two years older than he died! The plaque on his coffin, the wrong years inscribed. “Don’t let Grandma see! She’ll go mad!” And yet, what does it matter?

The ladies from the parish centre, making sure everything was arranged. Tea and sandwiches. Trying to figure out who would carry the coffin. Going down to the church. The young undertaker, his father’s apprentice, barely older than me, rearranging us by height. The coffin heavy, and yet the weight reassuring, comforting. So many more people at the removal. So touched by the presence of people who had barely met my Grandad, but who came out of love for me, or my parents, or my family.

Back to the house afterwards, everything a blur. Trying to organise the order of service, and give everyone a part. Practising the music, composing a harmony. The funeral service was lovely. Chaotic, we handed out the Prayers of the Faithful in a rush, halfway through the Mass, and the only one that didn’t go to a family member was the one about our family But the Brigade was as much grandad’s family as any of us. Dad’s eulogy, beautiful, perfect. It summed him up - a man, and yet more than just a man. A simple man, but a pillar of society. They don’t make them like him any more, so many people said.

The truth is, they don’t. It’s hard to believe a whole year has passed. Rest in peace, Oliver Plunkett.

A year ago today, I was married, and getting ready for my wedding. We had arrived at the registry office in good time, only to realise that one of the witnesses didn’t have their ID on them. Much rush and panic ensued, as they went to get it, the previous wedding party finished up and left in a cloud of feathers and sequins, and we frantically stalled, willing them back with our combined telekinetic powers! The civil marriage went smoothly after that, and we retired to dinner at home.

Mum had baked the most beautiful Challah, which we broke, and then it was time for grace. The natural choice was to ask our pastor, who was sharing dinner with us before we had a quick rehearsal. Of course, he’s always the natural choice - so as a bit of a joke, he suggested “let’s sing Kumbayah”! What a mistake, in our house - no one seemed to realise that he was joking! The joke was, of course, explained, and we enjoyed a lovely dinner. After the rehearsal, everyone headed off to their respective homes - but at 15T, the prep continued.

I had previously made the serious tactical error of informing my parents that the loo in the attic (the main guest room, in our house) wasn’t refilling properly. With visitors due the next day, who would be staying in the guest room, now seemed like the obvious time to “sort it out”. So my father was dispatched. Unfortunately, my father is an emergency physician, not a urologist - and his knowledge of plumbing is generally limited to “stabilise the patient for treatment by a specialist”. But, with the night that was in it, this seemed to be an emergency. By the time the (clean!) water was spurting out of the tank and almost hitting the ceiling, I think we all regretted that triage! Nothing for it though, we turned off the water at the mains, and called my godmother’s husband (a real plumber), who promised to come over and have a look. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the part he needed, so he stabilised the situation, and headed home.

And so it was that peace was restored, we said our good-nights, and went to bed. But if that were the end of the story, I wouldn’t be blogging about it a year later. I woke up in the middle of the night, wedding nerves abound, and I could still hear the monster that had been chasing me in my dream. Hang on, I could still hear it? I heard someone coming out of my parents’ bedroom, and a few minutes later, the monster stopped his “Kkssshhhh”ing. The water pump, of course! Oh well, that’s alright so - I went back to sleep.

At a slightly more reasonable hour, I awoke again. Headed to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and noticed that the water pressure seemed rather low. Rosie turned up, and we agreed that she should have the first shower (since I was doing my own hair, but she was going to the hairdresser). I warned her that the pressure was low - but I wasn’t prepared to see her back in the hall, shivering in a towel, a few minutes later… “There’s no water”, she said. “You mean there’s no water pressure.”, I said. “No, really no water”, she said… Oh cripes! As I mentally inventory the neighbours, and try to figure out the subset of neighbours who are awake at 8am and who wouldn’t completely freak if I knocked on the door to ask if I could use their shower, we get dad back on the job.

Back to the scene of the original crime - the attic. Check everything out, it all looks fine. There was one valve that was a bit weird, maybe that’s it. So into the crawl-space I go, with dad coaching me through the wall… “Is that screw tight?”, “What about the other one?”, “Turn it left a bit?”. Nothing’s working. Hang on, didn’t we do something here last night? “Where’s the mains dad?”, “Does the tap work now?” - sorted! Back downstairs to turn on the water pump, and I hang around a bit, waiting for it to get up to a reasonable pressure. At this point, the order of things starts to get a little fuzzy - so bear with me…

While mum and Rosie head off to the hairdressers, I take a shower under a trickle of water. But at least I’m clean! Mum and Rosie turned up at the hairdresser, with appointments with the stylists who know them, know their hair, and know what to do with it. But of course, Gar never works Thursdays. And Aileen is off these two weeks! Why the appointments were accepted, only the gods may know. But at least no one’s dead - so off with the girls to another hair salon.

At home, dad’s moving the cars around, so that there’s room for me to get into his car, the wedding car. Mum’s car is out of the way, the little blue car is moved out too… But dad’s car, naturally enough (it’s my wedding day, of course!) won’t start. The AA man is very understanding, and hops straight on his motorbike to jump it. It starts up fine, and he heads off. Of course, we have to leave the car running now - otherwise, we might not get it started again!

The make-up artist arrives, and the photographer is only a minute behind her. Mum and Rosie return, we sort out the make-up, Ali takes some fabulous photos, and we all have a lot of fun. Mum heads off to the hotel, to check things out, where she discovers what she later described as a “coffee shaped pool of water”, right where we’re doing the wedding stuff. Three managerial types upstairs are standing around chatting, and inform her that yes, the coffee machine is broken, and that’s why there’s dirty water dripping downstairs. Mum manages not to launch into the mother-of-the-bride’s tantrum, and comes home again

At home, we’re wandering around the house, trying to find a mirror long enough to take a full-length photo of me looking at myself. It’s the one “posed” shot we wanted to get, but the only mirror we can find is the one in Rosie’s room - which has as a background such scenery as Rosie’s bed, and Rosie’s trinkets, and, well, it’s not particularly beautiful or serene…! Until we go into the dining room, and remember the big mirror on the wall there. It’s far too heavy to get down, so wedding dress and high-heeled shoes notwithstanding, I hop up on the table, where Ali gets one of my favourite of the wedding photos. Cheers all ’round, and mum, Eoin & Rosie head off to the hotel.

Dad and I are instructed to stay behind, take it easy, let the others get down to the hotel and get everyone seated and ready. I have a glass of water, we head out to the front to say hello to the neighbours. I learn that while high heels on cobbles are bad, and high heels on grass are worse, high heels on cobbles with grass in between the stones are absolutely the worst of all! Once it’s time to head down to the hotel, I open the car door. Or at least, I would, if it weren’t locked. Where’s the key? In the ignition, of course. (Remember the car wouldn’t start earlier, and we had to call the AA? So taking it out of the ignition isn’t really an option.) Dad runs back in to get the spare key, and locks up the house… I’m standing beside the car, breathing in the fumes, and thinking “man, there’s some serious fumes here… I’m going to smell of petrol, and not my beautifu… ARGH! Where are my flowers!?” Dad is dispatched once more, sets of the alarm, grabs the flowers, fixes the alarm, I’m in the car, and down to the hotel.

At the hotel, Ali takes a few more photos of dad and I in the car - and then we notice one of my friends, trying to upstage the bride The doorman brings dad and I a glass of champagne as we wait for her to head in and take a seat. Rosie and Mark come out join us, and we all head in. We had a beautiful celebration, a wonderful day, and really enjoyed having all our friends and family around to share it with us… (They never got to share the cake, but that’s a story for another day!)

The moral of the story, as far as I can tell, is that if everything is going wrong, and the world is crumbling around you, it’s time to relax - and have a glass of champagne! It’s been an amazing, exciting, tricky, fantastic year. To all my families, and most especially to Stephen, thank you for this year - and here’s to next year!

One of my Joost friends twittered the other day, with a message that I think bears repeating.

It doesn’t matter what happens to the banks, the economy, my job/house/savings. Every one of those things could disappear, and I’d still be better off than most of the world’s population.

With the Irish Budget announced yesterday, and the “economic climate” we can’t get away from, there seem to be a lot of people very worried about what the future holds.

What have you done today, to make the future better for the people for whom your worst nightmare is better than their greatest hopes?

It’s six weeks since we landed in Zurich, and just over three since we moved into our new home. We’ve been to Ikea five times, and have lugged home two sofa-beds. We’ve unpacked sixty-something boxes in our 4.5 room apartment, and ordered twenty UK-Swiss plug adaptors. We’ve gotten bills for seven months of DSL (which we have to pay) and an hour of an electrician’s time (which we don’t). We’ve gotten six chairs, three shower curtains (for our two showers), four “serving wagons” (to make a kitchen workspace), three standing lamps and a light fitting (there were none in the apartment - just bare wires hanging out of the ceiling). We’ve bought monthly transport passes twice, and had our tickets checked once.

Edit: Photos of our apartment (pre-furniture) are now available! No mum, it’s not still that tidy

The instructions for the pizza said to put it on a baking tray in the oven for ten minutes, at 180°C. Hoping to avoid dirtying the scarily-clean Swiss baking tray I had bought earlier today (because there was no way I was going to dirty the terrifyingly clean tray provided), I put some baking parchment on the baking tray, and put the pizza on the baking parchment, before putting the whole lot into the preheated oven.

There was a funny smell of burning, but I presumed it would pass. As I turned to go back to the sitting room for a few minutes, the smell continued, and intensified. I looked back at the oven, wondering what could be causing the smell… Could there possibly be some (shock, horror!) crumbs, hidden somewhere behind the dazzling clean oven fittings? Orange, I thought. Yellow, I thought. Those don’t belong there… Flames! What on earth?! The oven’s on fire!

Actually, not quite. Just the baking parchment, burnt in a nice pizza-sized circle in the bottom of the baking tray. Stephen put out the flames without destroying my pizza, and we cleaned up the ash. And so we come to “Weird things about Switzerland #203: Baking parchment that goes on fire when you put it in the oven”.

Once I got my start date from Google, it took us a little while to figure out when we should do the actual move. Obviously, we needed to have enough time to pack up on the Irish side, but we also wanted some time to settle in on the Swiss side, before I started in to my new job. Adding to that, 1. August is a public holiday here - the Swiss National Day. So rather than fly in on Monday, essentially losing both Monday and Friday, we decided to fly in on Sunday (it’s 7am on Monday as I write, and we’ve got ten minutes to get downstairs and meet our estate agent!)

I was a little bit nervous about landing in Switzerland on a Sunday - getting keys to a new place on a Sunday can be tricky sometimes, and my experience of Munich was that you could really write off Sunday altogether when it came to any kind of administrivia. I didn’t expect Zurich to be a whole lot different, really. But I checked with the relocation co-ordinator, who assured me that it wouldn’t be a problem. When she gave me step-by-step instructions on where to go and how to get the keys, I stopped worrying. I looked up the street addresses on Google Maps, and all seemed to be dandy.

Yesterday afternoon, we landed in Zurich. Hailing a cab was no problem - and the driver was lovely. He gave us a guide to Zurich, and wished us luck in our househunting. He even turned off the meter when we arrived at the right street, and then spent ten minutes helping us locate #71. All in all, a great experience. Until we got to the door of #71, only to find it locked, with no indication of where or how one might procure keys. The apartment number that we’d been given confused the very helpful local who we flagged down - there are no three-digit apartment numbers here, he assured us. Without a name, we could have tried every buzzer in the building, but there was no guarantee that was going to get us anywhere, so we decided to leave the residents in peace. All of the names looked like personal names anyway - they all had initials, and no AGs or GmbHs to be seen.

We headed over to #69a, where my apartment was supposed to be - and yes, my name was on the buzzer of what we decided might be Apt 15. Definitely not the other three-digit number we’d been given then. There was nothing useful to be found in my mailbox - newspapers dating back to March, and a pile of junk mail that would constitute a reasonable start to the Second Tower of Babel.

After talking to a couple of answering machines, and hanging up on a few more, we decided to give up on trying to talk to the relocation people, and phoned a lovely Lady Google. She sounded suitably shocked, didn’t at all seem to mind us phoning such a rather bizarre issue on a Sunday evening, and promptly booked us in to a hotel near Google - even sending a taxi to pick us up. Thank you Lady Google!

And now, we head out to start the hunt for our very own apartment. Things can only get better, right?!

This is a massively monolithic review of the cruise Stephen and I recently returned from. It’s completely incomplete, and it’s so long simply because I don’t have time to make it shorter. Also because so very much happened. I’m posting it here mostly for my own reference - once I’ve gotten photos online, I’ll hopefully post some of the more interesting snippets.

read more …

In ten days time, Stephen and I will be moving to Zurich, Switzerland. Don’t be too surprised if you never got the memo - life’s been rather busy, and I never really had time to send it

Some quick answers to the questions I keep getting asked:

• I’ll be starting work as a Technical Writer in Google Zurich, and Stephen will be continuing the job he’s currently doing, from a new location. A technical writer is, according to Wikipedia, “a professional writer who designs, creates, maintains, and updates technical documentation”. I describe my line of work as translating between geek and English.
• Yes, the photos you’ve seen of the office are real - it has a fireman’s pole, and a slide, and meeting rooms that look like anything but. No, neither of us speak French or Swiss, but I speak reasonable High German, and if my experience in Munich is anything to go by, we’ll survive just fine with English anyway.
• We’re planning on being there for “a while”. We don’t really know how long just yet. It could be three years, or five, or fifty. Probably somewhere in the single digits, but we’ll see how it goes.
• Google have provided us with a generous relocation package, and the nice men will be coming to take our stuff away this time next week. Accommodation will be provided initially, as well as assistance in finding our own place.

If you’re around, we’re having a barbeque at my parents’ house on Saturday, starting around 4pm-ish. If you need directions, please let me know. If you didn’t get told about the date previously, sorry for the short notice, and please don’t worry if you can’t make it. We’re leaving, but Zurich really isn’t that far. You can come and visit us if you like, and I’ve already got my tickets booked for my first trip back home.