WENA PM in photos :)

When I say WE, you say NA :) We turned a few heads when 20+ of us skipped to the park in our matching t-shirts :)


If you have WENA Director in your title, then it must be your birthday :) :)

Malta loves to cook!!

Oh how the Nordics bonded?!

Random photos :)

A night at the Arlington! How is poor Jochen going to cope when another woman arrives in the MC flat/office?!! fun fun fun!

The first of many?! Well...technically speaking it wasn't even the first...but it was our first (and possibly last) in Club M!

Kevin turns beer pong into keep-it-uppy :)

When hunger strikes....head to Burger King :)

Hard to believe we are almost there!

This week sees the end of my transition! I can't say the end of transition for my team because unfortunately we still have that whole process to start with Prue once she gets here! but the fantabulous news from Bucharest is that she has applied for the employment visa, they have accepted the her application and as early as next Monday she could have it in her hands! How terrific is that?!! I am soo excited at the possibility of having everybody together!

The past weeks just seem to be flying by! Today we had official desk handover! and I also inherited Kev's special chair! Once again thank you Kev! hehe we decided it should be used as a motivational tool to get Irish people to apply for the MC here!And I received the official MCP seal from Dominique ( I think secretly Michal is jealous!) Oh and we hoovered today! You don't need to understand our happiness at this event in order to share in it with us!!!

Last week we had an Alumni event which was great! I got to meet lots of people that had been previously involved in AIESEC in Ireland, a couple of Irish Irish MCPs included :) was slightly alarmed to discover that people were reading my blog (hmmmm maybe I need to be more careful about what I put on here?!! hehe) but in general it was a fantabulous opportunity to meet everybody! And even better that lots of them want to help us out :)

We are going to see The Wind that Shakes the Barley tonight! I am very happy about that! It was supposed to be German night but through some elaborate explanation, a movie about the build up to the Irish civil war and the struggle for independence has been linked to Germany so off we go en masse!

No more news really! Friday is D-day I guess when we are really and truly out on our own :S So looking forward to it though! I have a good feeling about my team! We planned this weekend and we have been quietly optimistic! I have the utmost faith that we can fulfill our targets :)

oh! keep an eye on the MC blog...we are profiling this year's team as they leave :) Michal moved out of the MC flat the night before last so his is already there :D

The life of an MCP in transition :)

I have left it sooo long again?! Why do I do this?! But now I have lots to tell and as I am writing this I am sitting in the departure lounge of Basel Euroairport which is kind of an interesting fact in itself! Especially considering the fact that it is technically in 3 countries! Or something strange like that!!

Where to begin?! Oh my birthday!! Which was fantabulous! J Birthday wishes sent from Romania via pictures! A birthday call from my Franky baby in Venezuela! Shane called from Bahrain I do believe ;) Then there was Harry the homosexual hedgehog (Dom and I plan to write kids books about him), Rod and Paddy showing up at my bday party despite the weeks of excuses claiming not to be able to make it, randomly running into a few Cobhites in a sketchy club somewhere (my knowledge of Dublin still not good enough to give street names!)

I should point out that the reason I am referring to it as sketchy is that we were the only people there for a while! I made the boys dance using the classic guilt trip… “ah come on it is my birthday!” funny story though…I momentarily left the dance floor to get a drink or something and when I get back Michal, Paddy and Kevin are standing in the middle of a now packed floor talking…I mean they weren’t even swaying in time to the music! Jeje! Dom and Cliona were faaaaar better dance buddies and at one stage roamed the room looking for boys to give me my birthday kisses J

Oh I almost forgot! Thank you Dominique for making my beeeeeeeautiful birthday book! And also to everybody that wrote her a message or sent a photo to put in there! It was such a sweet idea and the sentiments expressed were truly appreciated!

Next day it was off to the airport again!! Dragged myself from my couch (no I do not have a bed at this point in time) and set off on the aircoach to pick up the ever so slightly delayed Colleen! Only for her to be delayed again….first the flight was delayed and then her luggage was lost or not transferred or something to that effect! How and ever she arrived safe and sound and lived up to all the very high expectations set by Ma! Once again Shirley – cheers for sending that email on to Colleen ;)

Friday night I got to see Aisling! As in actually see her while I spoke to her! We hadn’t seen each other since IMPACT last year! And yet talk at least (emphasis on the at least) twice a week! We helped her celebrate her birthday but that was also the night that Michal agreed to a now infamous bet!

While watching the Poland-Ecuador match we decided to liven things up slightly (it was a fairly boring game). So, after the first Ecuador goal we (Colleen and I) decided we should celebrate with a shot of tequila Michal and Jochen joined us in our tipple and then Michal and I struck a deal! The bet was that every time Ecuador scored he would buy me tequila and if Poland scored I would buy him vodka! Ecuador scored again…he bought the tequila! Later that night while in Messrs, talk drifted to the bet and Michal being full sure that the Ecuador match was just a blip on what would be a very successful World Cup for Poland, agreed to continue our bet for all of the group stage…we even shook hands on it!

Sadly though Michal Malkievicz is not a man of his word! And when Germany scored against Poland last Wednesday night he refused to live up to the his end of the bargain! Shame on you Michal, shame!

And so to WENA PM! 4 amazing days in the most diverse country in Europe! I mean the rest of us claim to be diverse, point to the growing immigrant communities in our countries etc…but Switzerland?! It is incredible when you walk into a shop you can never tell which language they will converse with you in!

Photographs will follow later, right now I just want to get some of my thoughts down before the momentum gets lost and the feeling along with it!

I know I said this at some point during the meeting, but I’ll say it again because it is something I really appreciate about AIESEC. I truly hope that I never take for granted the diversity that our incredible organisation allows us the privilege of sharing! As we sat in the Swiss MC office there were over 20 nationalities represented (I know Taco counts for like a quarter of that :p but still!) and what is more, we all had the same goal in mind!! We were all there to contribute to the growth of our GN! Mairi had us write down all of our concerns at the start of the meeting, seal them in an envelope and then forget about them til the end of the weekend! Which left us free to concentrate on ACTIVATING WENA! Free to work together as a GN to build something that we will be proud to pass on to our successors! And Free to spend some time together and build the bonds that will undoubtedly sustain us throughout the next 12 months!

I for one am certain that I spent this weekend with people that will always have a special place in my heart.

It’s my birthday and I’ll blog if I want to!

Soo much has happened since last I posted! I have finally arrived in Dublin! Was met at the bus by the Dominique and Michal! And they had a sign! And balloooooons and a sparkly windmill!! The story of the second balloon is rather heartbreaking!

Try to picture the scene! Dom and I are struggling under the weight of my two rather large bags, my laptop bag, various shopping bags, etc and of course two very beautiful almost precious helium balloons (a purple heart and a gold star). Some how as we were leaving the bus the string attached to the gold star became loose allowing the star to break free around the bus. We alighted from the bus and attempted to organise ourselves in order to catch the balloon but an evil evil lady on the bus decided to try and help us by starting a game of keepy-uppy and hitting it straight out the door L From where it floated away toward the blue skies over the Coombe!

So that night Dom and I needed to cheer ourselves up to over come the loss of such an integral part of transition: effectively my reception package ;) to the cinema we headed and of course had a slight disagreement regarding what we would see….basically I wanted to watch X-Men III and she wanted to see anything but that (and the new Colin Farrell movie that is getting the worst reviews ever!) So we approached the ticket sales person and inquired about a movie that neither of us had ever heard of! His response made me feel as though there was a hidden camera to capture our faces ;) and I quote:

“It is the moving story of two young Palestinian suicide bombers as they struggle to come to terms with…… it is in Arabic loike, with in English subtitles”

But it was Dominique’s emphatic response that stole the show and made it a true sitcom moment!!

“We’ll have two for X-Men III please”

I then spent my first Saturday in Dublin J and what a wonderous experience that was! Dom brought me to the Templebar market in the morning where I had the most delish tortilla that I have tasted since leaving Asturias almost 2 years ago!! And then we saw the preparations for the rubber duck race in the River Liffey….although we missed the actual event we did later see lots of rubber ducks in the water!

So then I met Abhi and Alan at the docklands and we had fun and frolics at the Maritime festival there! Abhi really likes boats! But really!!!!!!

After the docklands we decided to head to “The Pav” in Trinity. According to Alan it was the place to be on a summer’s day! I had my reservations roysh....wasn’t sure my self confidence could handle so many winners (Shane will get the joke) in one place! How and ever I put my doubts aside and boldly went where no UCC student has gone before….I followed a UCD alumnus :p But shit the bed roysh ‘coz he was actually right! Such a nice place to enjoy (sensibly) one or two (or several if the mood took you) beverages be they alcoholic or not!

And then as if the day could not get any better!!! We went that night to collect Jochen at the airport! After what seemed like an incredible wait (which we filled with speculations regarding what it was he was doing in arrivals: the most popular story being that he was either applying face paint in the form of the irish flag or that he was going to appear in through the arrivals door dressed from head to toe as the blue man) turns out his flight had been delayed! Imagine myself and Dom’s disappointment!

Sunday morning Jochen and I set off on a sparklesome adventure to that well renowned holiday destination that is Cobh! Highlights of the weekend included: the super enthusiastic bus driver that drove the Aircoach that morning! Sitting in my garden until almost 22.00 when it was still warm! Renting DVDs that we brought back to Dublin instead of the movie store, randomly running into Brian at a coffee shop on Winthrop St and doing AIESEC dances on the bus on our way home J

And so our story reaches the point where we begin TRANNY 07 on the scariest day in the history of scary dates 06.06.06!!!

Dominique and I included some trademark P.E.S.K.Y – ness into the logistics of our sessions!! Of course kick-off doesn’t happen for real until next Monday after Prue arrives! And between now and then soo much more has to happen! Colleen arrives, the world cup starts, there is a grand prix, , we are going to Karaoke, we have an interesting intern arriving from Ukraine, and so so so much more!

Of course! Must thank Ms Frega for the supreme effort she made this evening in making me purple cookies for my birthday…they passed through several stages of dust bunny through to devil’s cookies but in the end they were a wonderful shade of purple that Michal felt the need to give feedbacks on! ;)

how terrible is this.....

I use trillian to chat and underneath some words in chat there are little lines something akin to those you get when you mis-spell something...these lines connect you to the wikipedia entry for that word! so while sending some virtual hugs one of these little lines appeared under the word....so I duly clicked on it to see the entry, expecting some warm and fluffy explanation of a hug...to my shock, horror and dismay this is what I got.....

Hugs (Haskell User's Gofer System) is a bytecode interpreter for the functional programming language Haskell. It offers fast compilation of programs and reasonable execution speed. It also comes with a simple graphics library. Hugs is good for people learning the basics of Haskell, but is by no means a "toy" implementation. It is the most portable and lightweight of the Haskell implementations.

Upset I am....very upset!