Monthly Archives: March 2025

I saved a duck from a pub

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Sunday, 03-Nov-2024

Down the street from my apartment there’s a pub.

In that pub, there was a tiny duck. A plastic rendition of a rubber ducky, sitting proudly atop the tap for Guinness, guarding that magically Irish elixir.

From the first time I saw the ducky, I wanted the ducky.

Interestingly, I’d acquired a few neat things during my adventure across Europe – two of those things were small porcelain statuettes of Lipizzaner horses from Vienna. They were a bit bigger, and a bit fancier, than the Ducky… but you know what? They’d make a good trade.

Brian and I headed down, grabbed a pint, and negotiated the trade. A horse statuette left the apartment with me, and a small plastic ducky came home. My MBA is already paying dividends; I am a successful negotiator.

The Book of Kells

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Sunday, 03-Nov-2024

Similarly to the Guinness tour, I’ve already done the book of Kells tour. It was on my list the first time I visited Dublin – back in 2023, checking the city out to see if it’d be a good spot to rest my head for a year of MBA adventure.

Well, it’s been a bit over a year, and Trinity’s redone the Book of Kells experience. Brian’s visiting, I can get in for free now since I’m a student…

So we went.

Brian and I explored, read about the book and how it was made, checked out the book. Basically all the things about the Book of Kells that I remembered from the last time. We walked through to check out the old Library, and… Whoa.

That’s when we set into the new bits – a huge globe art installation in the Old Library. An amazing immersive video about how the Book of Kells made its way to Ireland. A whole interactive scene about the building of the library… Definitely worth the second visit.

A Return to the Guinness Brewery

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Saturday, 02-Nov-2024

It’s been a while since I’ve been to the Guinness Brewery.

Brian’s been here for nearly three weeks, and he hasn’t been to the Guinness Brewery.

This, in the ancient words of the great Scholars, is tomfoolery and unacceptable. So we went to the Brewery. We walked, we explored, Andrea and I bought a Christmas ornament, and we all soaked in the views outside the brewery pub up at the top of the building.

I was a bit sad that they’d redone the tour a bit, and no longer included the distribution network as one of the pillars of Guinness… but c’est la vie, the tour was still absolutely excellent. The Operations Engineer in me was a bit hurt, though, not going to lie.