Grandma's Birthday

Today is my Grandma's Birthday. Happy Birthday Grandma!!! Here is a compilation of photos of her from various Family events etc

My Grandma & My moms dad AKA Grandad

My mom & Grandma

 My sister, My mom, My auntie Valerie & Grandma

 My Grandma, Me and Michael out for dinner celebrating the new appartment

My Grandma and My dad

My Grandma & Guo Zhi Bai

Me, Grandma & Guo Zhi Bai

In October 2010  she moved into a brand spanking new apartment in my town (Bray) Which is probably the best thing she ever did because before she used to live in Dalkey in a big house,  close to no one.  However she did have one hobby Gardening which she had to give up because obviously in an appartment you have no land of your own unless you buy a plot..

Anyway around Valentines day I saw a post about the meaning behind the number of Flowers sent and wanted to share it..Ask a chinese guy

1 Flower: "I love you and only you", "You are the only one for me"

2 Flowers: "I just think of you and me", "Its just you and me"

3 Flowers: A simple "I love you"

4 Flowers: "I promise you love" As I said before, 4 is an unlucky number for Chinese, so clarify in a card or avoid using this amount.

5 Flowers: "I have no regrets being with you"

6 Flowers: "I hope everything goes well for you"

 7 Flowers: "I feel happy with you"

8 Flowers: "Im sorry, please forgive me" Used for saying you're sorry.

9 Flowers: "I will love you forever without regret"

10 Flowers: "You are the perfect lover"

 11 Flowers: "I will love you for the rest of my life", "Your happiness is my only priority"

12 Flowers: "Our souls are forever connected"

13 Flowers: "You have a secret admirer"

15 Flowers: "Im sorry" Same as 8.

17 Flowers: "Lets leave each other on good terms" Used for breaking up.

18 Flowers: "I have a sincere heart"

19 Flowers: "Im looking forward to spending time with you"

20 Flowers: "Forever loving you with an unchanging heart"

21 Flowers: "You are my love"

22 Flowers: "Lets be in love to no end"

24 Flowers: "I miss you, I am always thinking about you"

25 Flowers: "Good Luck"

30 Flowers: "Our love goes beyond words"

33 Flowers: "I will love you for many years to come"

36 Flowers: "My heart belongs to you"

44 Flowers: "I promise you my steady love"

50 Flowers: Same as 5.

55 Flowers: Also the same as 5.

56 Flowers: "My love"

60 Flowers: "May our love be strong and stable"

66 Flowers: "Our love is true and steady"

77 Flowers: "Destiny brought us together"

88 Flowers: "I want to make it up to you" Used to say sorry.

99 Flowers: "I want to be with you forever"

100 Flowers: "Im in love with you 100%"

101 Flowers: "You are my only love"

108 Flowers: "Will you marry me?"

123 Flowers: "Let us enjoy freedom and love"

144 Flowers: "I love you every day, of every month, of every year, of every century"

365 Flowers: " I think of you every day", "I love you everyday of the year"

999 Flowers: "Our love is infinite"

1001 Flowers: "Faithful love forever"

10,000 Flowers: "May our love last for 10,000 years" 10,000 essentially means forever in East Asian cultures. 

Happy Birthday Grandma!!

No ticket to get in

On Thursday Night I attended the Smurfit Business Ball, but thrust me the road there was a bumpy and troublesome one, Firstly we had the problem of No room at the inn and then the next problem emerged on the night, No ticket to get in, 

On Thursday I was basically rushed off my feet,

• Go to the Dry cleaning shop and collect my dress

• Go Bra shoping

 Not just for the sake of it, I needed a strapless bra to go with my dress...

• Go to the hair salon

• Get my make up done

• Find the right shoes

• Get my clothes for tomorrow packed.

Then Panic!!!! 

Just as we were about to leave my house I realized shit! I left my ticket in my boyfriends apartment... And my boyfriend was out with his friends in the city centre so I had to walk/run down the street in my long dress and in high heels, that i could barely walk in !

So I rushed up to the apartment and No Ticket to be seen! then i started frantically searching throwing books newspapers fliers everywhere. I still couldn't find it, and I left my phone in the car so I couldn't ring him 

So in the end I went back to the car and rang up my boyfriend and asked/ accused him "Did you move my ticket?"Oops I think I threw it in the bin! Then I had a huge screaming fit... Whilst my mom tried to reassure me it doesn't matter come on.We were already running late I was suposed to be at the college before 5.30... and this was 5.15 and it takes a good 30 minutes to get to my college

Being worried about being late proved to be pointless as when I arrived there were still crowds of people waiting for the bus, and I met my friends and then they called 3 more seats on the bus. So we decided to go then the man said Tickets please!

OH SHIT! I explained to the man I had forgotten my ticket, I thought he would say OK go ahead... Wishful thinking, he said No we have a strict policy No Ticket No admission I'm sorry there is nothing I can do. Then more Panic and stress. The bus drove off without me...

Then I called my mom and told her. Then she came over and tried to talk to the man, and he even suggested to drive back to bray to collect it... Which obviously was impossible since my boyfriend had thrown it in the bin! She even asked could she buy another ticket for me, Bear in mind each ticket cost a whopping 70 euro. He still said no.

Then I had a stroke of extremely good luck, I noticed my cousin was working at the event. Hallelujah! then he came over and there was more conversing with the man. and then the man said OK don't tell anyone, Paul (my cousin) give her your ticket and I will look after you later...

THANKS BE TO GOD! i got on the next bus! Although I didn't get to sit with friends I was still delighted to be able to actually get on the bus.

Here is my cousin Paul

Here's one from the night... I will tell more in my next post... when I get more photos from my friend and my camera.

The luck of the irish and the mad Hatters

My last post was fairly negative about Ireland so I wanted to post something positive and you can't get much more positive than St Patricks day! Coming soon on the 17th of MARCH!!!

If there is one thing that Irish people are truly proud of and patriotic about, its the colour green, and March is the month with the most important day (asides from Christmas) on the Irish Calender, St Patrick's day.

You will never meet an Irish person who doesn't love St Patrick's day, Obviously I am no different. I love the parades the atmosphere and the freedom to wear your favourite green white and orange attire and not look strange. 

Whether you go to Dublin City Centre or stay in one of the local towns you are bound to have a day full of fun. For me most years I spend it in my home town Bray and it is the only day where you see the streets completely packed and everyone standing on the side of the street watching the parade go by. Also every year we always have a carnival at the sea front, which is always an essential part of St Patrick's day. I am not much of a drinker so I rarely join in any of the drinking festivitiies at night but of course it's there.... 

But one thing I have never thought twice about was wearing the colour green it seems harmless right. Sure some shades of green are less attractive than others... but other than that why not? But today I was alarmed when one of my Chinese friends Jia Qi said to me "Oh my god I can't believe you guys wear green hats!!!!" 

Naturally I was really curious when I heard this, what is wrong with green hats? They are funny and cute and tradition.... 

Then he told me, In China nobody ever wears a green hat it's extremely unlucky... How?? If a chinese man wears a green hat it means his wife has had sex with another man! Wow talk about shooting St Patrick! 

Then tonight I wanted to test my boyfriends reaction as I thought perhaps it's only northern Chinese people who think this way.... NO!!! My boyfriend said "Why do you always learn something bad about Chinese??? Don't ever let me wear a green hat" and then he stormed off.

So I did a bit of research to find out what is the meaning of this strange unluckiness and here it is "There is an old story in China, about a businessman, a tailor, and the businessman's wife. (You can guess where this is going...) Whenever the businessman left his village to go on a business trip, his wife would cheat on him with the village tailor. To make it easier for the tailor to know when the businessman was going away, the businessman's wife asked the tailor to make a green hat for the businessman. Whenever the wife put the green hat on her husband's head, this served as a signal to the tailor that the businessman was leaving the village. Over time, the other villagers figured out what was going on, and they would say to one another...Tade laopo gei ta dai lv maozi le..."His wife has put the green hat on him."

To this day, this phrase is what Chinese people use to talk about wives having affairs. This phrase is the reason why Chinese men never wear green hats"

Looks like I put my foot in it. I know I am considerably early with this post but definitely stay tuned to see some of my St Patrick's day festivities on the 17th of March!

Nobody cares

Today I have lost all hope in society, and am officially sworn off buses. Normally I complain about the unreliability, infrequency of buses and occasionally about the rudeness of bus drivers. Often I have been waiting over an hour an half for my bus to turn up in the freezing cold and once in the snow. Its really the most annoying thing immaginable. Because you are totally powerless, you have no information. Just have to wait and assume it will come at some stage.

But today something entirely different happened and put my rather minor meek complaints into perspective, Today my bus arrived rather uncharacteristically early at about 4.10pm just about school finish time. It was a double decker bus as usual and I sat on top about 4 rows from the front. Stared out the window watched the world go by. The bus was full of secondary school kids from various different schools Newpark, Gerrards, Blackrock college. So it was pretty lively and noisy. 3 college hefty guys were sitting in front of me chatting away.

Suddenly, out of the blew I heard "stop stop I don't have any money, Help, somebody Help. Me and the 3 college guys looked behind us and saw 3 kids about 13 years old attacking a small little younger boy maybe 11 or 12 years old. I ushered the guys in front of me to go and help because I knew myself there is no way I would have a chance. 

They told the boys to stop and leave him alone and next thing the boys started to get rowdy and viscious and gave the younger boy a huge whallop in the eye and then started cursing and telling the college guys to fuck off, mind your own business, watch out we'll get you... They wouldn't let the boy get to the front of the bus one of the bigger college guys had to grab him and next thing the 3 guys legged it off the bus.  Leaving the little boy crying and saying "Why me, what did i do?

The poor little boy was left with a really badly swollen eye. I tried to comfort him and asked him to call his mom while the other college guys asked around did anyone have anything cold to put on his eye. Then 5 minutes later it was his bus stop and the bus driver saw his eye and stopped the bus and asked the boy what happened and then the police were called his mom was called and an ambulance was called. 

The whole thing was absolutely horrible.Initially I felt really annoyed all those kids around him hadn't tried to stop the bad boys and had just watched I just felt it was so disgusting. However when I got home I talked to my boyfriend about it and he said can you really blame them for not wanting to interfere, perhaps if they interfered they may have to look over there shoulder every time they go out to do normal things. Because those boys might come around and attack them from behind next time. so after reflecting on it I guess they were afraid they would be attacked...

But the saddest part about the whole thing was that I actually knew the younger boy, Last semester I used to have one class on a Tuesday, International Business management which started at 8.30am so I always used to have to catch 7.20 bus. Which coincidentally he used to catch that bus as well and every Tuesday we used to exchange our little morning chit chats and every Tuesday I used to watch out for him at the bus stop and if he wasn't there i would automatically know I had missed the bus.  

I thought I would never see him again, but I never thought I would see him in this horrible circumstance.