Life has been busy! I haven’t posted since October, skipping November altogether… it’s the longest I’ve gone since starting this blog. Without further ado, here are a few brief updates from the last several weeks before any more time passes.
Christmas time is here
Dublin is in full-on Christmas mode. The street lights went up in mid-November, and the festive season has been building towards a crescendo as the days have grown darker. The weather has been quite frosty the last couple of weeks in Ireland, with lows dipping into the mid 20s F / negative single digits C – the coldest it’s been since I’ve lived here. It has dominated the news and small talk even more than usual. This past weekend dozens of flights had to be cancelled due to freezing fog at the Dublin airport, which is not equipped to deal with the cold, so in all fairness it has been a big deal.
November roadtrip
A long time friend from the U.S. came to visit me in Ireland in mid-November during the week of my birthday. I took off from work so that we could do a proper tour of the island in a rental car. I planned a rough itinerary, including places I haven’t been since my first visit to Ireland way back in 2007 as well as some new places I’ve been wanting to check out myself, namely: the Rock of Cashel in Co. Tipperary, Limerick, the Cliffs of Moher in Co. Clare, Galway City, and then a long drive up the west coast through Sligo and on to Northern Ireland where we stayed in Londonderry/Derry and Belfast. We were very lucky with the weather, as it had been a wet autumn and the forecast was calling for more rain. The day hiking along the Cliffs of Moher was especially pleasant with only partially cloudy skies and reasonably warm temperatures for the time of year. Overall it was a fantastic trip, in large part to my friend’s easy-going nature and flexibility.
Other bits and bobs
Last week marked the 100th anniversary of the Irish Free State in 1922, although there was no fanfare or celebration. This step towards full separation from the United Kingdom came at the price of a divided island, with six counties being carved out in the partition to form Northern Ireland. As a result, the Irish civil war broke out between the pro- and anti-Treaty factions, and it wasn’t until 1937 that the Republic of Ireland came into existence.
Ireland’s dominant political parties date back to this time period – Fianna Fáil (which was anti-treaty) and Fine Gael (pro-treaty). In the 2020 election, the Sinn Féin opposition party won enough seats to force Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael into a minority coalition government along with the Green Party. As part of this arrangement, the two dominant parties agreed to rotate the top leadership positions. On 17th December this year, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin, who has been serving as Taoiseach (Prime Minister), will swap positions with Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar who has been serving as Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) and had previously been Taoiseach from 2017-2022. Varadkar was Ireland’s first, and the world’s fourth, openly gay head of government and the first Taoiseach with Indian heritage. Despite being openly gay, he doesn’t seem to foster a lot of support from the LGBTQI+ community, as Fine Gael falls centre-right on the political spectrum. About a week ago a video of Varadkar kissing someone other than his partner at a gay night club was circulated on social media, although that has largely been ignored and condemned as a violation of his personal privacy.
One final personal update: this week, after being on a waiting list since September, I finally received an invitation to schedule my driving test. This is the last step in my year-long quest to obtain an Irish driver’s license. I won’t be able to take the actual test until the first week of January, but I have scheduled a mock test next week with the same driving school I used way back in July for mandatory driver education lessons. Hopefully all goes well…. I feel like I’ve a bit out of practice.
Until next time….
