Forever Fall

Someone recently described the weather to me in Dublin as "Forever Fall". So true! Sometimes the way it rains is more like spring but on the whole and whole it is like Forever Fall here. And Fall just happens to be my favorite season...

Remember my post awhile back about my 16 Euro dirty martini at the Westin? Well, I've topped it! At the Four Seasons premium cocktails are 20 Euro, and a Silver Margarita with Patron is 25 Euro! Now, I know it's the Four Seasons but how crazy is that! I'll tell you one reason why, alcohol is so expensive over here because they have taxed it to the max. A bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey is cheaper in America than over here. In Ireland. Wrap your head around that one! I think it's because there is a high rate of alcoholism here so they think if they keep taxing it that people can't afford to buy it. But I don't think that's working, I think the Irish authorities are just going to have a high rate of homeless, broke alcoholics if they keep this up. 

Fair play to the Four Seasons though because the dirty martini was delicious. Now if only I could find good sushi I'd be in heaven here.

The gardens at the Four Seasons are lovely, check out this man snoozing on a rare warm and sunny day here in Dubs. He's actually a bronze statue but looks pretty real at first glance.

Another shot from when my parents came and visited. My dad and the Whyte's dog Brandy. They look good together don't ya think?

Friend Brandy Whyte on Facebook, he's been blowing up the newsfeeds lately.

Yet another Keating to hit up Eddie Whyte for lessons in shot gunnery. Eddie was kind enough to bring my little brother Greg shooting when he was here visiting me. Greg wants to know who was better, himself or Kevin. Eddie was very PC and said they were both good, and we'll have to have a shoot out to decide!
  

I've joined the National Aquatic Center's master swim team. It has been a real struggle getting back into lap swimming, but it's nice to have a coach to give you sets and times. Plus it's been fun to meet new people. Most of the team are triathletes who want to get better at swimming, ex-swimmers like me, or even open water swimmers (open water as in the ocean... like people who swim the English channel). In the summer the NAC masters team trains in the ocean in Portmarnock ,which is right next to Malahide. Can't wait to try that out. The picture below is from the paper and is a bunch of people doing the Liffey swim. As in the River Liffey that runs through the middle of the city. Similar to the Chicago River for all my Illinois people out there. I can't even decide which one is dirtier.

Peadar got up one morning at like 6AM to watch Ireland in the Rugby World Cup, since they were playing in New Zealand. Think he could get any closer to the TV?

A couple of swans in Grand Canal Quay...very different to the flooding that went down in the Quays this past week.

I found a mini-Peadar by the crosswalk coming home from work the other day. See the resemblance?

I was being touristy on my way out of town and took a pic of the ole Samuel Beckett Bridge. I will put together a little list of all the check box places you must see whilst visiting in Dubs.

News update: I have friends now! Well 2/3 girls below that are not me are related to Peadar so they have to be nice to me, but one isn't! Her name is Michelle Ryan and she is on the left in the red. Next to me on the right is Pad's cousin Fiona Whyte and his sister Catherine. Together we form the Dirty Thursday club which meets every second week for some shenanigans. Sometimes it's on Friday at which point it becomes the Frisky Friday club. Anyway, great girls, great times, can't wait for this week! :)

This blog has some old pictures (shame on me for not being on the ball, no pun intended) but a few weeks ago Peadar's Gaelic football club won the cup final. Mass drinking ensued.

Pad came home that night at like 3AM and "murdered" a block of cheese. I took about 10 pictures of him chowing down until he finally looked up, caught like a deer in the headlights!!

To sign off, Ciaran (pad's bro) and Jane (his GF and my friend) stayed over recently and played a little prank on me and Pad by creating a full blown image of a blackhawk hockey player in the bed. Luckily it didn't scare me, which it easily could have seeing as how I've been watching too many true crime shows on TV lately. :)

Happy (belated)  Halloween! 

XOXO

Amanda

Cheerio Parents!

Hello to all my friends and family around the world! Lots to update you on from the Keating/Whyte front. The Dub's won the All-Ireland Final, Peadar's parents and mine have met, we all lived to tell about it, we jet-skied the Irish Sea, and more.

To start you off with, check out a classy picture of my lovely boyfriend enjoying a glass of pino grigo after a hard won football match. Very manly ;)

Recently we went to a "blessing of the graves" which is an Irish Catholic tradition. Once a year the priest does a service in the graveyard by the church for all those who have passed on. It was very interesting as I had never been to anything like it. Everyone gathers around and there is a little trailer where the choir sings from and the mass is done on loudspeaker. I thought it was nice to dedicate some time to people who have died... it's comforting to know that even if you are gone you will still be remembered.

As I mentioned before, The Dubs (Dublin County Team) won the All-Ireland final, which is like the Superbowl of GAA. Below is a picture of Peadar and I getting breakfast into us before the game and a subsequent all-day session of celebrating! We got really good seats from Peadar's GAA club and were sitting in the Davin stand, which is like the endzone if you were comparing it to American football.

This past weekend my parents came into town, and we also had the wedding of Louise Whyte and Darragh Mannion. So the wedding ended up being where my parents and Peadar's parents met each other. Louise was kind enough to invite my parents to the "afters". Irish weddings are very different from American ones, they are a flat out party and the dancing and drinking continues until at least 6 in the morning usually. They are divided into two parts, 1) the wedding ceremony, drinks reception, and dinner and 2) the subsequent party of drinking and dancing, also called "the afters". You could theoretically be invited to a full wedding, or just the "afters". Since most weddings are well over 200 people here, it's a way to include people in the fun without having so shell out loads more money. 

 Since I am super pale these days (shouts out to Irish weather), I went for a spray tan the day before the wedding, and I didn't know you weren't supposed to shave your legs or put lotion on before you do that. So my tan ended up being reallly streaky... see picture below. 

It was a total nightmare, especially because ever since I moved here, I have been very aware of the fake tanning industry going on in this country (it's a basic requirement for women because there is very little UV action happening on this island) and am sometimes critical of others tan job. For example, when girls feet are overly tanned and orange and they look like they have a disease. Or the other day I saw a girl wearing shorts and she had very tan legs but pale arms. What the hell? There should be legislation regulating the fake tanning in this country. In Ireland, for a proper tan you either do it yourself (self-tan), or go to the salon where you have to get semi-naked and have some young one (judge you) and spray you down with an airbrush. There are no self-service booths like in the USA. Anyway, I came home freaking out, ready to actually not go to the wedding. But luckily Peadar worked some magic with a self-tanning mitt and evened things out. It looked fine the morning on the wedding. You can now add beautician to his long list of skills and talents: farmer, footballer, musician, beautician. Quadruple threat.

The bride Louise looked beautiful, in Ireland most of the brides I've seen have long traditional veils down the back to the floor and they don't wear them over their faces. The church was lovely, and all the guests had colorful outfits and swanky hair pieces.

 < Bridesmaids, not like the movie. More classy.

Later on in the night, about 3 AM, I was convinced Peadar needed to wear my headpiece and was harassing him for ages telling him he looked gorgeous. Doesn't he?

A pic of the parents, Peadar and I, also at 3 AM! Looking good, don't you think? ;) Anyway, so Kev and Suz meet Eddie and Mary and I think things went really well, considering the late hour and the cultural differences. It was surreal seeing everyone in the same place! Suz wanted to meet "as many Whytes as possible" and she was in the right place for that. I think she met about 150/230 people that was at that wedding, and quite literally almost the whole extended family - which is quite an accomplishment. And she will remember everyone's names too! Better than me anyway....

The castle we were at was Lough Rynn  and is a sister castle to Killronan, where Peadar's sister got married in March. This castle had the most amazing grounds and we took a little nature walk after the wedding and I felt like I was in the Secret Garden. Love that movie, btw.

Lastly, on Sunday, Peadar, Kevin and I went Jet-Skiing in the Irish Sea. It's hard to see in the picture below, but it was a cloudy and rainy day in Howth Harbour and I rented some 215 horsepower, huge, brand new jet skis from some semi-sketchy eastern Europeans. You can see the boat launch in the picture below.

Basically, these two guys were like, have you ever driven a jet-ski before? We were like yes... they said "Sign on dotted line so we not responsible if you die" and off we went! Now I have open-ocean jet-skied before in Maui, Hawaii, and there were some pretty big waves, but it was highly regulated and you generally had to drive around buoys in a big circle. Well this was completely unregulated! They basically said stay away from other boats, you can go all the way around Ireland's Eye, which is a big rock island, and have as much fun as you possibly can. Well we sure did! We were fighting the most massive waves ever and barely staying on our jet skis. I thought I was driving crazy then when we switched and Peadar started driving and I was on the back of ours, I was scared sh*tless! He almost threw us off in a major way! Good thing Mom was safe on dry land, having a glass of wine and reading her book at one of the restaurants. She would have died if she saw what we were up to. My friend Rachel Taggart would have absolutely loved this. It was pure adrenaline for a full hour. Kevin even managed to not listen to the easy-going guidelines, went to close to shore and beached himself, but he was lucky Peadar and another guy helped him push the jet ski back into the water. We wore wet-suits and weren't too cold, but next time we are taking a tube out behind the jet-ski, which is meant to be freaking freezing but a lot of fun. Not sure I would want to fall off the tube in the waves we were in though, it would be tough enough not to get swept away and get back on it! Serious adventure in Ireland....

More for you next week, I've got loads more pictures too!

XOXO

Keating

And I thought Chicago was the the Windy City...

Thursday, September 15th at 1:11, I just had one of those moments... I got a new office chair at work, and the seat is much shorter than my old one. I went to sit down and completely missed it and fell on the floor! It would have been totally embarrassing, but everyone was at lunch so no one saw! Well, it's embarrassing now that I have shared it with you. My rib cage, and head, actually hurt from the impact, haha. Regardless of injury, it's still funny. 

On Monday here it was the windiest day of my life in Ireland, gale force winds left over from Hurricane Kathy which never made landfall on the other side of the pond. Check out her path below:




Apparently hurricanes begin off the coast of Africa, travel up North America, then come full circle around to harass Ireland with their winds. People were like literally being blown around on the streets. Chicago is meant to be the Windy City, but Ireland as a country is entirely more windy than even the most intense wind tunnels in-between Chicago skyscrapers. But a little Chi-City trivia for you, the "Windy City" is not actually referring to the weather but to the "hot air" (i.e. exaggerations) the politicians exuded in the bid to have the World's Fair in Chicago in the late 1800's. It's also said to have began with a rivalry between Cincinnati and Chicago journalists taunting each other in the headlines of newspapers. But the true origin is often contested, as with most nicknames, it's hard to remember how or who started them. And since the weather is actually pretty windy in Chicago, the nickname stuck.

World's Fair Colombian Expedition in Chicago 1893

One nickname I wouldn't want is "Angel Faced Killer". Many of you have probably heard of Amanda Knox, the American exchange student (wrongly) being held in Italian prison along with 2 others for the murder of her UK roommate that occurred when they were both studying abroad in Perguia. After being in prison for 4 years, her appeal has finally been heard, and a decision about her acquittal could be made any day now. A naive, aloof, and with a flaky personality, Amanda did herself no favors in convincing the fantastical Italian authorities that she is innocent. But the DNA evidence does not lie. I am in the middle of a great new book, "The Fatal Gift of Beauty: Trials of Amanda Knox" by Nina Burleigh, an investigative journalist. After I ordered it and opened to the cover, I was thrilled to find that the author (another investigative journalist) of the book "The Monster of Florence" Douglas Preston had fully endorsed Nina's book. Monster of Florence is an amazing labor of effort that covers the Italian investigation and subsequent trials of various people in the case of a serial killer that stalked the hills of Tuscany in the 70's and 80s. The book reveals the numerous and frustrating flaws in the Italian justice system and the paranoid delusion of it's chief prosecutor, Giuliano Migini. I highly recommend these books as great reads, and interesting true stories, and a stark reminder to American and Irish citizens that you do not take your rights with you (as my mother, the lawyer, always use to tell me) when you leave the country. So be mindful of local policies, customs, and law when you go abroad, have adventures but be smart. Even in countries that are romanticized like Italy that appear 1st world, but actually have 2nd world justice and legal systems. I've seen too many episodes of Locked Up Abroad to be blase. Ever see Brokedown Palace?

On a lighter note, last weekend we went to a benefit at the GAA (remember, Gaelic football) club for a fellow that played football in the 90's who now has Motor Neuron Syndrome. I never mind knocking a few back for a good cause, and had never been inside the club house at Clan Muire (Peadar's local club) before. Surprise...the bar is made of potato boxes. Whyte Brothers potato boxes you better believe.

This was taken the night before Ireland played the USA in Rugby. I decided to support Ireland and wear my green dress, green nail polish, and then drink orange cocktails in order to support my new allegiance to Ireland with their national colors. It was Rugby so I didn't care. I still support the USA in matters more important.

See the WB etched into the box on the left hand side of the bar? That's a potato box from the farm.

Peadar heard today that he got tickets for the GAA final which is basically the Superbowl of GAA, and its Country Dublin vs. County Kerry, guess which team we'll be rooting for? "Com'on you boys in blue!" is the saying (Blue is Dublin's county color.) The whole town is buzzing in anticipation on Sunday's game. I'm taking Monday off. Guess why.

Amanda Lynch, Peadar, and I at a Dublin GAA game in '09

Catch ya on the flip side.

XOXO

Amanda

Home..Sweet..Dublin

Returning from my business trip to Germany last week, it was so crazy to come home..to Dublin. While Dublin is now my home for now, Chicago will always be my "home home". 

So Germany! I flew into Dusseldorf, but the conference I was attending called Gamescom  was located in Cologne. I didn't have much time to explore the city since we were at the conference all day, every day for 3 days, then I flew home. But I did manage to take a photo from the cab on the way home from the show.

The cathedral you see there is said to be one of the only things that survived air strikes in WW2. Everything else, like the buildings you see below that were by my hotel, are post-war reconstruction.

Speaking of which, when I mentioned to my mom that I was in Cologne, Germany, it stuck a chord in her memory about my grandfather, Jack Keating's 35 missions in a B-17 "Flying Fortress" bomber during WW2. She dug up his old war journal, and shared the Cologne entries with me, which I have shared with you below. It turns out that he was flying a mission in Cologne 67 years ago to the day that I was there on a business trip.

It was kind of like the Brad Paisley song, Welcome to the Future, when Brad talks about his grandfather at his base in the Philippines fighting the Japanese, but how he (Brad) was on a video chat this morning with a company in Toyko (and he is a SONY recording artist). Brad actually just played 3 concerts in Ireland, one being in Dublin on August 19th! I am devastated to have missed them, but I was still flying home from Germany from the one in Dublin, and the other 2 were in Mayo and Cork. Pad and I have no time for road-trips right now. It's the harvest after all- Peadar goes to work before I get up, and I'm asleep before he gets home! Good (hard-working) man!

But back to Germany. Grandpa K flew 4 missions to Cologne: #16, @24, #27, and his grand finale, #35. Our family is blessed he entered service towards the end of the war, when B-17's had fighter plane escorts. As they were carrying 6,000 pound bombs in them, if anything went wrong it usually did not end up good. And at the beginning of the war the chances of surviving your missions were catastrophically low. Still, 35 missions is a lot to have gone through, even after things got better. 

It took 12 hours for my Grandfather to fly from his base in England to the targets over Germany and back- flying continuously over enemy territory for 10-12 hours. Planes were powered by propeller then, making them slow by today's standards, they didn't go nearly as high, and weren't pressurized, making it very cold! Now we fly at 36,000 feet with our feet up and a glass of wine not a bother in us!

See summaries of his entries here:

Mission #16 was August 15,1944, (67 years to the day from when I was in Cologne). The plane was "Chug-A-Lug"; target was the southeast city airfield.They had intense flak, but with good fighter escort. He flew squadron lead for the first time.

Mission #24 was on October 5, 1944, flying in "Wild Bill." Terrible weather...very hard to locate target which was the MPI Marshalling Yards. They flew at 29,700 feet, the highest he had ever flown! Another flyer's journal referred to the overcast as "Hitler's weather".

Mission #27 was on October 14, 1944 in "Wild Bill", targeting the marshalling yards. They had overcast weather; took a shot in the nose: a piece of flak flew over Carter's head and out the left side. From now on, he will have to lead; may not make X-mas dinner at home. (Carter was the navigator from Merced, California.)

Mission #35 on January 3, 1945. The weather was overcast; they had to divert to the secondary target (PFF Center City); they had 51's for escort. Jack said, "Nice one to finish on. Didn't sweat it out too much. That's all for this tour!" 

*Jack noted in his journal on 11-6-44, "Chug-A-Lug went down today." Grandpa K flew nearly half of his missions in Chug-A-Lug in August and September,1944! However, on 11-6-44 he was flying in "Minnie the Mermaid" and he didn't fly on 11-6-44. The force was with him!  By the grace of God, he made it through 35 missions and I am alive to tell about it!

All of this history got me thinking, and I was recommended the book In the Garden of Beasts  by Erik Larson. Some of you may recognize his name as the author of Devil in the White City (which I heard is being made into a movie with Leo D as creepy serial killer HH Holmes- cannot wait, that will be epic-ly amazing!!) which is about architecture and the Worlds Fair in 1893. But In the Garden of Beasts is about a University of Chicago history professor who against all odds was appointed Ambassador to Germany just as the Nazi party came to political power. His correspondence offers a non-bias look into how Germany transformed in the 1930's, and can help people of today better understand how the Nazi's managed to revolutionize Germany in such a short amount of time. I am only half way through as of now, but it is extremely good so far!

So you may be wondering what I was doing in Germany? We were attending a conference for Gaming companies, and we were pitching boxPAY to them as a mobile payment solution. All the big gaming companies were there:

World of Warcraft and the new 007 Goldeneye game.

In order to eat without getting poisoned, I had to figure out what Celiac was in German, and how to communicate that when I was ordering food. Apparently in German, I am Zoliakie! When I needed to tell them this I just held up my iPhone and had them read the screen on the right below, which basically says I can't have wheat :)

Oh yeah, there was also painted ladies (kind of like the playboy mansion) walking around as well, but dressed as video game characters. And no actual nudity, I think they had underwear on underneath. 

But I am back in Dublin now and happy to be here. Last night we went out for a team dinner at the Schoolhouse Bar in Ballsbridge, and I STILL cannot get a dirty vodka martini anywhere. I think it's because they don't keep olives as a garnish at the bar, and if they do, they are sitting in oil, not brine, like the place last night. I ordered a seafood plate and was fully not prepared for what came out.....

Fully shelled crab, prawns (with claws and eyeballs and everything), oysters and these baby snails things. It was a serious effort to get about an ounce of food! But nonetheless delicious. Would you dare eat the plate above?

As a sign-off, I want to give a shout out to all the farmers out there harvesting 18 hours a day. If you live in Ireland and are driving around in the countryside this month, you might be especially slowed down by all of the tractors and International Harvesters. < Worth the click ;) Just be glad there isn't a traffic jam like the one below that you're stuck in! 

Peace, Love & Tractors,

Amanda

Guten tag! Off to Germany tomorrow...

Hello all my loyal friends and fam, sorry for the no-post last week, I was afraid I ran out of things to say!

But thankfully no, there is always something going on, and this week you can find me talking away on the homepage of boxpay.com, just click the video to watch me talk about our mobile billing platform :)

We also had a painter come into the office this week to install Idea Paint, which essentially turns our wall into a whiteboard that we can brainstorm on, which is pretty cool.

We also went to the Leopardstown Horse Races this week for work, since we had people from our Australia and South Africa offices in. We dressed up all nice and fancy but forgot to take pictures because we were too busy cocktailing and betting on the races.

Peadar and I went to Skerries last night and ate at Blue. I took these pictures from the deck where we were having a drink.

The tide was really low so all the boats were beached! 

 Anyway, I am off to Cologne, Germany tomorrow for my first business trip so I will take good pics there and share with you all!

XOXO

Amanda