Paul May

It’s buckin freezing here in Belfast. Cliona was visiting this weekend, which was lovely. Quick swim today, back training tomorrow. Seriously. I am. Promise.

I’m all in for Alcatraz; god help me. 8th of June I’ll be jumping off a boat off into the Pacific for a leisurely swim from the famous island to San Francisco followed by a bit of a cycle and a run. Grand stuff.

Back in the real world we spent New Year’s Eve in the company of Jape and friends at Whelans. Cracking gig and a fun night. I’m back in work today. Yay. Photos of Christmas exploits are on Flickr.

I live in Belfast now. Last week I lived in Dublin. That’s the short version of my move to Belfast to take up a new job with Front, a growing web development company. I don’t tend to blog about work, and that’ll continue to be the case - but the first few days have been great and I’m hoping to make a good go of it here in Northern Ireland. Being away from Cliona during the week is already tough; but hopefully we’ll settle into the routine of me being in Dublin at weekends, or her visiting me here. Anyway, that’s all for now. Wish me luck.

Today was my last day in my current job. I got up a bit later than usual before getting the Dart into the head office - where I handed in my laptop and name badge, did the exit interview, and headed off into the wild blue yonder.

It’s been an interesting couple of years. I’ve met some great people and worked on some interesting projects. I’ve travelled a bit, trained with people from all over the world, and taken up Triathlon. Working with a large (huge) multinational really opens your eyes; you see the scale that a company can grow to, the scale of the money that washes around the global economy, and the “machinery” companies put in place to stay big and get bigger.

On the negative side, I never felt as though the work I was doing was a good fit for my skills or interests. That’s not to say that I didn’t learn things, but that my job sometimes felt like a bit of a detour - and some days I found it hard to motivate myself; which is hard for somebody who considers himself to be pretty driven.

Before the money gets better, before I get a little bit older I’ll take a leap and hope that my next job (which I’ll talk about in coming days) is a much better fit. Belfast here we come.

We’re back from Barcelona and it was great. We spent the 10 days wandering around, shopping, sightseeing, swimming and eating. It was perfect - a really relaxing break. I’ve uploaded a lot of photos from the trip, they tell a better story than I can. I hope you’re well.

I did Triathlone today; It was great - tough swim, nice bike and a confusing run (confusing for me anyway…). I was told three laps by one marshall, four laps by another - so I finished one lap early, had my timing chip removed, then figured out I wasn’t actually finished. I begrudgingly did another lap, but my time for the run will be wrong by a few minutes. Annoying - but that’s life.

It’s 1am now, I’m just packing my things for holidays. Off to Barcelona tomorrow for a break. See you soon.

I fell off my bike about an hour ago coming into work, banged my head and got a bit bashed. Be careful out there people…the weather today had made the roads like glass.

We’re back from Berlin, and back to work. I’ll write a bit more about the trip later today, but some of the photos are up on the gallery.

We’re off to Berlin to celebrate New Years and to finish off the Christmas Holidays. Hopefully, it’ll be as great as it was when I was there for the World Cup - just colder, and with less football on the telly, obviously.

Yikes it’s early. Off to stand in a queue at the airport :) Happy New Year!