Today is all about study, study, study… I’m trying to ramp up for the 1st exam for my CMA qualification scheduled for May 13. As a consequence, this will be a brief post.
My weekly SuperValu grocery delivery is scheduled for my usual window of 10:30-12:30, and shortly after 11:00 I get a call from the delivery person saying they are downstairs. I don’t recognize him from previous deliveries… his name is Liam, a short stocky ethnically Irish man with close cropped/buzzed hair. We start up a brief chat, and he mentions that he’s been married for 30 years, although he and his wife have been together for a total 43 years… given that he’s still working, how old would he be?! I’ll let you do the math.
Job search updates — I received an email this afternoon inviting me to interview for the Finance and Administration Officer position at the Dublin LGBT centre (aka the regrettably named “Outhouse”) for which I applied way back in January (!). It’s a part-time position that doesn’t pay well, but hey it never hurts to interview. I also received a follow-up email from a recruiter at Deloitte about the Senior Consulting Associate / Data Visualisation job I applied to in early April, but we haven’t connected yet. It’s encouraging to finally get some responses!
In Ireland news, another bank has announced it will be exiting the Irish market… KBC, a Belgium bank that owns 13% of the mortgages here. The move comes weeks after Ulster Bank’s announcement that it will be pulling out of Ireland. This means there will only be three major retail banks left – AIB, Bank of Ireland, and Citibank.
Also, there’s been an uproar about requiring travelers who are fully vaccinated to be subject to the mandatory hotel quarantine. In a change of heart, Irish Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly said regulations will be drafted and signed in the coming days to allow fully vaccinated people to quarantine at home. In addition, extra hotel capacity will be made available for those arriving over the weekend after the previous pause on reservations until Monday had been announced. Apparently, 18 cases of COVID-19 have been identified among those subject to hotel quarantine, including four probable “variants of concern.”
I’ll end with this ridiculously cute photo of a young bunny that I came across on DoneDeal, Ireland’s homegrown version of craigslist that has a special category for farming and livestock… it came to mind yesterday evening during my weekly DBT group therapy session over Zoom, because one of my fellow participants has a pet bunny who was visible in her video frame and hopping around a lot. I couldn’t help but focus my attention on it… it made the session go by a lot faster!
Until next time….
