Costa del Clare

Once again we took advantage of the good weather and headed to our little flat in Clare for the weekend. We were up bright and early on Saturday to catch those lovely atlantic waves at 9.30. After two hours or so in the water, we went home for lunch and then back for another surf in the afternoon. Then we went home and fired up a little foil barbeque and cooked some dinner. We asked our landlords, who live downstairs, if they fancied joining us for a drink. When Stuart rocked up to the flat with a six pack of guinness cans under his oxter, I knew we were in for a long night. And it was.

Feeling ropey the next morning, we set ourselves up with a good feed of rashers and sausages, and made for Lahinch hoping for a cold ocean cure. It didn't totally cure me, but I did feel better for it. Afterwards we headed back to base, collected food and barbeque and hit for South Clare. We settled for a lovely sandy beach just outside Quilty, where we bbqed and chilled out for the afternoon. We went back to Lahinch in the evening because John wanted one last surf. I walked on the beach and watched the sun go down, and as I strolled along, a guy on horseback came galloping along the beach. A real Discover Ireland tourism advert moment. After sunset, we packed up and headed back for home. Another blissful weekend. I like this new fun manifesto of ours.

The waiting game

Well I did the on site interview last Friday, a week ago, and I thought it went very well. That evening I had another phone interview, this time with the intercompany funding controller, which I also thought went very well. I came away from both thinking that this is the type of role with which I am very familiar, and I could easily imagine myself working with these people. I was told that the next stage would be an onsite HR interview, and after that there was a possibility that the Irish M.D.'s boss in the US might want to talk to the successful candidate.

So it's been a week, and I have heard nothing from them since. Diddly squat. I really don't know what to do now, and the waiting is just driving me insane. If I was going through an agency, I would be ringing the agency now to get them to chase it up. Would it be very forward of me to call them at this stage to try and get an update? If they had six candidates to interview, and even if I was the first one a week ago, shouldn't they have come to some decision by now? Patience really is not a virtue of mine.

Fingers crossed....

I got an email from HR in the financial services company asking me to come in for an interview tomorrow or Thursday. I said I would prefer Thursday. That gives me a little more time to prepare, and also my car is in the garage getting serviced and there's a better chance I will get it back by Thursday. So I am delighted and crapping myself in equal measures. I really really really want this job. I want so badly to get back to work at this stage, and the job spec fits in perfectly with my experience from my last role. It couldn't be any more perfect.

We spent the weekend up at our little flat in Clare. The car was loaded to bursting point on Saturday morning with all our gear. Luckily our landlords run their own surf shop and hire out wetsuits and boards, so they have a wet room in their house to which they gave us a key. So we were able to offload our suits and boards in there. Saturday and Sunday were gorgeous, so we spent a good few hours in the water in Lahinch. The seafront was packed, but the atmosphere was great. John is getting very handy at the surfing at this point. I'm still keeping with the boogie boarding. My arms and upper abdominal muscles were aching by Sunday, but that's a good sign. If I keep this up I should have a flat belly and arms as toned as Mrs Obama by the end of the Summer!

So the next couple of days will be spent in interview preparation. As this job is all about capital markets and treasury management, I'm going to get my financial strategy textbooks down out of the attic tonight to swot up on financial instruments and the like, in the hopes that I will sound like I vaguely know what I am talking about on Thursday.

Good things happen in threes

1) We're getting the keys of our summer apartment tomorrow. Yay! The hallway of our house is packed with surf boards, boogie boards, wetsuits, surfing boots, camping gear and various household paraphenalia to load into the car and bring to Clare tomorrow. Then it's a weekend of meeting up with friends in Doolin and Fanore, for surf, food and most likely a few libations along the way. Weather is good and the surf forecast for tomorrow is looking good.

2) My phone interview happened on Wednesday, and went quite well I thought. Quite a few technical questions on cashpooling operations and associated issues, which I think I answered reasonably well. I expect to hear by the middle of next week, so we'll see.

3) We've got an appointment for July 16th for the fertility clinic in Dublin, rather a lot quicker than I expected to get one. So we'll see what happens with that. I'm more than a little apprehensive about the idea of heading into fertility treatment when I could be starting a quite demanding job, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. For now it's all good.