One of the things that I never really expected coming out here was how much it would be in a living-the-life style. Let me see if I can give you an example of what I mean.

A couple weeks ago, one of the co-presidents of the company was leaving the company to focus on other things in his life, so we had a huge farewell party for him. The entire company was invited out to a Cuban-themed bar called Floridita which the company had booked entirely. In addition to the canapés that were distributed to us throughout the evening, the event was open-bar to a dazzling array of some pretty fancy cocktails. It was a pretty fun night, filled with many mojitos. We found our way home via taxi cab at 4 in the morning, and slept in for a little while, but not for too long …

The very next night, we were invited to the other company president’s house for a bit of a smaller party. I’m not entirely sure why I got an invite actually, but I was happy to go. There we were treated to some appetizers prepared by the company’s chef, Allan, as well as a fridge full of beer and other drinks. The appetizers were something else … they were visually stunning, and amazingly tasty. The highlight though was the mini-burgers. These were the most incredible things I have tasted in quite some time. They were freshly prepared burgers with freshly ground beef — which meant they could be cooked rare, which they were. These were the juiciest, tastiest burgers I think I’ve ever had.

After a relatively quiet week or so, the server team went out for a dinner last night. We started at a Tapas restaurant where we proceeded to order one of everything off of the extensive menu. Loads of tasty food were delivered to our table which we enjoyed immensely with a couple of bottles of wine. After the meal we proceeded over to a bar where we met up with some coworkers and proceeded to have even more drinks.

This has all been fun, but I understand the company Christmas party is supposed to be something else. We just got the news of what will be going on there, and it looks sweet! The entire company (some 300+ employees) and their spouses will be taking over an Irish town for a night. Since the company is so large, we’ll be scattered across the town’s several hotels, and be shuttled in to the main event where we have a black-tie affair with fine food, drink, and prizes. It sounds like an amazing time.

I knew that the company was generous, and concentrated on making the employees enjoy their time, but I never quite expected the treatment we’re getting. Frankly, we’re getting really spoiled — and it’s pretty incredible.

Morgan

This past weekend was pretty fun, and now I’m fairly well set up as far as my new household (I have a household!), I can’t pretend I have much excuse for not blogging occasionally.

It was a pleasant weekend all through. We started off on Friday having some supper with our neighbours from upstairs. It was nice to get the skinny on their favourite places to eat and share stories from home and about our experiences in Ireland so far. I’m really glad to have these folks around. So far, they’ve helped us figure out how to work the boiler and the washer/dryer, and provided pleasant company too!

Saturday was a games party at Darse & Xan’s. It was a lot of good old fashioned fun, with all kinds of tasty snacks besides. There was Ra, Medici, Carcasonne, Blokus, and RoboRally (I love to be the “TrundleBot” – I’m so gleeful it exists!), culminating in Taboo and Apples to Apples that were good for the whole group to play together. Oh yes, and we got to see for ourselves that Darts and Xan aren’t kidding about the size of their spiders.

Sunday was glorious – the weather was lovely and warm, and it held the whole day. Morgan and I took ourselves over to Dun Loaghaire harbour. My intention was to enjoy the sights and sounds of the Festival of World Cultures whilst finding the farmers’ market, but neither Morgan nor I anticipated how many folks would be taking advantage of a sunny summer day. Everyone and his dog was out, riding the midway attractions or buying things from stalls or watching the many musical acts on the outdoor stages (or watching the ticketed shows – it sounds as though there was a pretty decent line-up in general). To me, it most closely resembled the Children’s Festival, which graces my hometown of St. Albert every spring.

We found the People’s Park and the farmer’s market and something to munch as we trundled though the crowds. (I told you I love to trundle!) We moseyed (dare I say it) down to the shore taking pictures and kept going down the east pier, the weather inviting us to linger there awhile. There was someone making a perspective painting – if you stood at a particular point of the decorated sidewalk it seemed as though you were standing in a glacial crevasse.

Not only was it perfect weather for festivals and street paintings, it was also a very good day for a hundred sea-bathing junkies to participate in the Annual Harbour Swim. It looked a little chilly with everyone in normal bathing suits, but I must admit I was impressed. I mean, not that bog snorkeling isn’t cool too.

Diane

Two Sleeps before the big day! We’re getting pretty excited!

My dad brought to my attention a little detail we didn’t really notice when we printed the invitations. The map showing the location of the church is a bit misleading in that it doesn’t really show the proper way to get access to the church.

I imagine most of you will be coming up St Albert Trail. As you come up, before you cross Sir Winston Churchill avenue, there’s a left turn that you can take that’ll get you onto green grove drive. The lights have a sign saying “Downtown” pointing left there. Take that! You actually cannot get onto Sir Winston Churchill avenue from St Albert trail, so if you miss that turn you’ll have to go past it and hand a left to turn into downtown St Albert. Sorry for the confusion!

Here’s a map:

View Larger Map

Hope everyone finds their way there okay! I look forward to seeing you all there!

Morgan

The wedding is coming up very quickly now! We’re now a month and a few days away from the big date, and there’s still lots of little details to nail down. One of the things that we need is volunteers to do setup and takedown of the hall. If you’re interested in helping out, please let one of us know soon so we can give you a task.

// Diane’s comments follow

Also, does anyone want to usher or possibly babysit a video camera?  I have made a list of tasks and descriptions that you can look through and decide from the available jobs what you would prefer if you decide to give the gift of helping our big day run smoothly, kind of like a little registry for volunteering.  This would make a very good gift!!

// Aaand back to Morgan

We’ve been asked by a few people what we’d like for gifts. We’re just starting to send the word out that I’ve been hired by a company in Dublin to start working over there starting August 1st. That means that we’re not going to need a lot of “stuff” since we’re going to have to be pretty choosy about what we bring with us to Europe.

For those that would like to get us physical things, we’ve setup small registries at The Bay, and Linens-n-Things. However, the traditional wedding gift for Chinese weddings is cash. If you would like to go along with this, then that’s a perfectly good solution too.

We thought about trying to setup a travel registry for our honeymoon, but we heard that many travel registries take a percentage cut of that which didn’t really seem fair.

The wedding is in just over a month. If you haven’t returned your RSVP cards yet, please do that soon! We’ll start bugging people about that soon so that we know if we have enough space to invite a few more people.

Happy spring everyone!

Morgan

The wedding is getting close, so here’s a quick update. Diane and I are now starting to pass out invitations. We’re hoping to be able to invite everybody who would like to come, but there are space considerations in the hall and we’re likely to hit the max there. Everyone is of course welcome to come to the ceremony. The space considerations are only on the reception hall. As we get replies, we’ll update our status and send out invites for spots that are freed up in the hall.

If you’ve already got your invitation, you might be wondering what the symbol on the cover is. It’s a Chinese symbol which means double happiness. It is a pretty common word used on Chinese wedding invitations, although Chinese wedding invitations almost always use red. Here’s a wikipedia page on the character for double happiness.

The plans are going smoothly, but there’s still lots of little details to do!

Morgan

This year has been quite busy and exciting for Diane and I. Here’s a brief-ish look from my perspective at the year that was 2007. Obvious highlights for the year are the engagement in May, finishing my MSc degree in January, and the Man-machine poker match in July.

January was a pretty relaxing month for me, despite my master’s defense being scheduled then. The biggest reason for this was because my thesis needed to be turned in three weeks prior to my defense. So for the bulk of the month of January I didn’t have a lot that I needed to do so I spent a lot of my time playing poker. My friend Mike had convinced me to switch my game over to shorthanded no limit hold’em, and I quickly found more success there than I had had in my couple of years of limit play. After successfully defending my thesis, I was hired on by my former supervisor to continue work on the poker project at the UofA. Finally, Diane and I went on the annual department ski trip to Jasper on the last weekend in January. It was quite fun, as usual. This time, unlike past years, Diane and I spent both days on the mountain skiing instead of joining the usual group that hiked down Maligne Canyon on Sunday.

The biggest event in February was the free beer that I put on with my friend Jeff who also recently defended. In our department, it’s a tradition for freshly defended students to hold a department-wide free beer night. Jeff and I held a rather successful free beer (the bill is pictured). I also happened to have a birthday in there as well somewhere.

In March, Diane and I joined a couple of our friends and for another ski trip, this time to Kimberley. This was the first year in a long time that I had managed to get out to two trips out to the mountains so I was pretty happy about that. The weekend was quite a success, and we look forward to our next trip out to the mountains now that it is wintertime again.

April saw my photography hobby become much more serious as I purchased a couple of new lenses for my camera which had been getting increased use up to that point. I purchased a new low-light wide-aperture lens and a better walk-around zoom lens. You can view some of my work on my flickr page. I’ve been more and more active on flickr, uploading 178 photos over the year. Another key event in April was the first Bayne family reunion in over a decade. We went to Camp Nakamun which is a pretty nice facility, and got to spend some time meeting some family that I haven’t seen in many many years. So that was cool.

Diane and I were engaged on May 31, so that was the big event that month. We had a pretty good meal at the Creperie for her birthday, and I would pop the question later that night. By that time, we had been dating for over 3 years, and we both kind of felt that it was the right time.

June was a frantic month for me as my officemate Darse and I worked hard in preparation for the upcoming AAAI poker competition. The bot we eventually entered won the bankroll competition (with the other UofA entry taking 2nd place), so that was pretty cool. Following the deadline for entering we began working towards building a bot for the man-machine competition which had been confirmed for July. So the entire poker group began working like crazy to get a bot ready.

As the deadline approached, we worked long and hard to get a bot tested and ready for the match. Along with those responsibilities, we also needed to organize the match details, work on public relations stuff like webpages, press releases and interviews and all sorts of little things. The match went pretty well with relatively few hitches. My duties during the match included taking photos and working on a live blog on the website so that people who couldn’t attend could still follow what was going on. After the four sessions were over, we barely lost with a record of 1-2-1. It was a lot of fun, and pretty cool to be able to meet and hang out with the poker pros Ali Eslami and Phil Laak.

After the last match, Diane joined me out in Vancouver to take a few days of holiday. I had only been in Vancouver once before, and we only went to the beach and then moved on in our travels. So there was a lot of touristy stuff I hadn’t had the chance to see. We spent a few days there and saw the Aquarium, the Capilano Bridge, Stanley Park, the Sun Yat Sen Chinese garden, and quite a few other things. We stayed in a lovely bed and breakfast, and it was a quite relaxing trip!

August was a slow month. With all the wild preparation and the work that went on during the big match, I felt quite a bit of post-match let down and managed to not get a lot done in August. It was in this month that I found out my officemate would be going to Ireland to work at Full Tilt. Darse’s departure is a big blow to the UofA poker group.

In September, I was able to start picking up my productivity at work again. Two particular events of note were Diane’s family reunion in Manitou, Saskatchewan, and Darse’s Wedding. The family reunion was pretty cool – Manitou is a small town in Saskatchewan where their claim to fame is their lake that has some sort of mix of minerals (mostly salt) that make you float in the water more easily than normal water. So we spent a fair amount of our time swimming around in the pool that was fed from the lake. I got some glorious photos while I was there (pictured) since we caught sunset at the exact right time over the lake. Darse’s wedding was an honour because I was one of the only people that got invited (thanks to my camera hobby). They held it in a lovely spot next to the river valley, and my job was to take some photos. Several turned out quite well I think and they were pretty happy with the results.

Diane and I had our engagement photo shoot in October, and we started getting down to business with planning the wedding. By this time we had the hall picked out, the church booked, and the photographer chosen so we were feeling pretty good about where we were at. Hopefully the planning continues to get done at a good pace.

November and December lacked any big stories or trips. We’ve been busy with social and family gatherings, and have been out of the house to see people or attend parties. It has kept us real busy and in some respects I think I’m starting to get a little drained.

Christmas was good this year. It was pretty low key, which is something that makes me pretty happy. The gift giving thing has come down to a minimum which also makes me happy — I’m a fan of the main gift of Christmas being the time that everyone spends together playing games, and enjoying each other’s company.

I think I’ve managed to remember most of everything. If I’m missing something important, Diane is sure to remind me and she’ll mention it in her year in review (forthcoming).

I hope everyone had a lovely holiday season and a very happy new year. Good luck to everyone in 2008!
Morgan