Skip to main content

A day in Waterford and to wi fi or not to wi fi

Monday morning and we started off in our usual way--breakfast out. We went to The Bay Cafe for the first time. The owner (yet another Dave) was super talkative and of course asked the question that all Irish ask "So what do you think of Donald Trump?" The answer is we don't think, we moved to Ireland not to think.

Another Irish-ism: I asked Dave where the Waterford bus stop was. "Oh out there in the street." I asked whether there was a sign for the bus stop. "Oh, no sign, this is Dunmore East you know." By which I assume he meant that everyone just knows where the bus stops. I did find out later that the bus stop is directly across from the cafe so I will learn to flag it down I guess.

We then went to the Post Office to get an Irish passport application. On reading it, I realized I need to have a PSC (Public Services Card) before I can apply for my passport. Well that fits with what we were planning to do because the same office that issues PSC cards also issues PPS (Personal Public Service Number) and Richard needs a PPS number in order to get a Senior Travel Pass to get free rail and bus travel. I get it too as his spouse. Have I confused you about cards yet? Anyway we get these by going through the SAFE (Standard Authentication Framework Environment) process at an INTREO Centre. I think that the Irish government consulted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security when it was coming up with some of these acronyms.

So off we went to the INTREO Centre in Waterford. The SAFE process is two-step. We obtained the forms today and an appointment was set up for us on Thursday morning to return and have our paperwork verified. And then it will take a week for them to mail out the letters that have the numbers on them and then we will go online and apply for cards. Or something like that. My eyes were crossing at that point so we smiled weakly, took our paperwork and headed for Waterford City Centre. Had lunch at--wait for it--Burger King!! We are on a food budget at this point (don't know how long that will last) and after eating out for breakfast, Burger King was the most economical. And it was also pretty good--as good as the Burger King in Sierra Vista.

After our usual return-and-replace expedition into Dunne's, and Richard's finally finding a bathing suit in Penney's, we went into The Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity & St. Patrick's, which is the oldest Catholic cathedral in Ireland, built in 1793:





The chandeliers were a gift from Waterford crystal--they aren't 220 years old :)





Waterford Crystal also presented this beautiful sculpture to the Cathedral 

There is a Latin Mass with Gregorian chanting this Sunday at 10:00 a.m. Would love to go but our own church service is at 11:00 across town so will have to miss it.

I truly enjoyed Waterford City Centre with its shops housed in old buildings and feeling of life. In a way it reminded me of when I used to shop on Ste. Catherine St. in Montreal with my mother. Richard is not a city mouse as I am but even he managed to enjoy himself:



We were feeling quite tired but content as we headed home and then, when we arrived home, the "cable guys" arrived. They both spoke with a broad Irish accent--well one I could "just" understand, the other I was totally confused by. I mentally named them Merry & Pippin, reminiscing about the two hobbits from Lord of the Rings in both their manner and their appearance. Merry they were not though. They shook their head over the wiring. I suggested that if they couldn't do it, I might call another supplier for a second opinion. Well that got their pride going and they were determined to persevere. They were finally successful at getting the phone line in (three hours later) but they left with the ominous words "we will have to run a line to an outlet for the broadband" ringing in my ears.  Which ringing might actually be a death knell for my hopes of broadband because I can't authorize any nail holes in the walls. Oh well, I will worry about that tomorrow when I call the broadband company. 

My final Irish-ism from Wayne-the-cable-guy: "Come here, you will enjoy it." So I dutifully got up and walked over to where he was on the floor installing the phone box. He laughed "Oh, come here doesn't mean come over here. It's just my way of saying that you will enjoy Dunmore East." Oh, yeah. And then he laughed and said that the other hobbit, I mean cable guy, had called me a girl as he was leaving. And Wayne chided him that as an American I might be insulted at being called a girl. I told him it was fine, I hadn't understood what he was saying anyway.







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

December in South Arica 1977, Part One

 December in South Africa 1977, Part One I had never understood candlelight in quite this way before. Oh there had been candles on the table Christmases past back home in Canada. For atmosphere, for festivity. While the electric crystal chandelier above cast the “real” light on a table laden with turkey, potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce.… But this, this was different. Here in the corrugated iron shack that my friends had referred to as “the cottage”—not any cottage that I had ever seen in my growing up in Quebec—with no other light either inside the cottage nor outside in the black night of the Transkei, I understood how candlelight could draw a world down into the narrowness of those around the light, as if nothing else in the world existed.  I looked at the six faces around the table, illuminated in the candlelight, my own pulsing with sunburn. "Oh you’ll be grand," they’d told me down at the beach that day. "We’ll tell you when to get out of the sun." And toni...
1 comment
Read more

January 2024 and blogging

  I haven't posted on my blog for a long time. Partly that was due to not knowing what to write about and partly it was wondering if I wanted to put myself "out there" anymore. And in what way. I subscribe to a few blogs on Substack, which is a subscription-based blog. You can pay to have your own blog, you can pay for someone else's blog, and that means you get to write and post and get comments back from a whole lot of people. You can comment on other people's blogs--if you pay--or else you can just read the blog and not pay. Of course you might miss some of the "pay only" content--much like modern news media has teaser stuff but to read the whole article, you have to pay for a subscription. The Substack blogs cover all kinds of topics and there are a few "professional" writers--meaning they're journalists and writers who have published and been paid larger bucks than the $5 a month they get per subscription on Substack--but I think most ...
12 comments
Read more

There's got to be a morning after

And today is the fourth "morning after", with each "night before" a little easier, a little more "make the best of it but take care of yourself." Before I move back to writing this memoir style blog--going to continue with the South Africa trip of 1977--I feel I would be shrinking if I didn't say something about how I feel about this week's US election. As of this writing, Saturday, Arizona still hasn’t finished its count—the GOP did a great job of preventing the mail-in vote for being counted early and messing up the ability to use the machines—so I still don’t know if we are going to be saddled with the odious Kari Lake or whether the House is going to be Republican too. Still, it’s becoming more “academic” than visceral for me, if you know what I mean. Necesitamos avanzar. Sera dificil, sabiendo que muchos, especialmente aqui donde vivo, creen en los planes de Trump y Vance. (I have been practicing Spanish in preparation for a 10-day December cr...
2 comments
Read more