SuperFoodie: the return and a well deserved holiday.

I'm temporarily back (again!). We're off on Monday to the South of France for 2 weeks of well deserved holidays. We will be staying with my mum and dad there and I'm sure they will allow me to use their computer to start blogging properly again. Isn't it funny the way most people take a break from blogging when they go on holidays and I'm the opposite. I look forward to being able to blog because I'm on holidays. We have a busy 2 weeks ahead of us, catching up with family and friends. My mum and dad have decided to send Mr Foodie and myself away for 4 days to Marseille. I know it's only a plot on their part to spend some time on their own with the girls but they claimed that it was for me since I haven't had a break from the girls as such in more than a year. We are really looking forward to 2 weeks of peace and quiet and sunshine especially after the crazy 2 weeks we have just had.

The last time I blogged we were in the house for a little over a week and were starting to settle in properly. A good few things have happened since and we even had our first proper visitor. My cousin, who had to cancel a trip planned in April or May over the ash cloud, came over for 10 days. She went home on Thursday morning. Unfortunately, we didn't do as much visiting etc as I would have liked due to reasons I will explain a little bit further, but the good point is that she got to meet SuperFoodie.

Yes, we had to call upon SuperFoodie more than once over the past couple of weeks. It all started on a quiet Tuesday. I was at home. The Sky man was supposed to come and install its machine that would finally allow us to have a decent reception and more channels than we need. My cousin was landing later on in the day. Perfect timing. Well, no, not really, by 11h30 Mr Foodie received a phone call informing him that the Sky man had to go home as he was sick and that he would come in Wednesday instead. Fine by us, what's an extra day without telly at this stage. So, when my cousin arrives, I explain to her that we are waiting on the Sky man so that the next day will have to be spent waiting on him. Of course, she didn't mind.

Wednesday: I get up bright and early as they can come anytime between 8am and 6 pm. And we wait. And wait. And wait. Mr Foodie calls them and Sky assures him that the supervisor of the subcontractor will call him back to reassure him that all will be fine. He comes home from work. Still hasn't received a call back and still no sign of the Sky man. He decides to call them while I go off to the Post Office with my cousin to collect my weekly pitance. Of course, it would have been too good for us to have a bit of good luck. My pitance is not there, and by the time we get home, the elusive Sky man still hasn't come. Mr Foodie decides that now is time for my cousin to meet his alter ego, SuperFoodie. SuperFoodie calls the Evil Sky people. They cannot apologise enough for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, they employ a subcontractor who is closed at this time and there is no way to find out why the Sky man hasn't come. SuperFoodie gives them an ultimatum. Either the Elusive Skyman is here by 10h30 on Thursday or he will be told to turn around, shove his Sky cards where the sun doesn't shine and get back to where he came from.

Thursday: I get up bright and early as they can come anytime between 8am and 6pm. And they were told explicitely to get here before 10h30, or SuperFoodie would engage them in a bloody battle involving Sky cards and arses. 10h30 comes and goes. SuperFoodie is working undercover as Mr Foodie in his office. But he manages to don his cape in a cubicle of the men's toilets in order to use the SuperPhone (that has actually been upgraded since the last time). The minions working in the Evil Sky Lair assure him that the engineer will be here within the next 2 hours, in other words before 14h00. At last, we are going to be able to watch more than the 4 blurry channels, one of which is broadcast in Irish which means that it could be sending messages to Aliens or Russian spies with Irish passports in American suburbia from all I understand from it. 14h00 comes and goes. Mr Foodie takes frequent trips to the loo in order to use the SuperPhone (well, this is not strictly true as he is allowed to use his phone from his desk but it makes for a better story, after all, Clark Kent used phonebooths, didn't he?). Meanwhile, in the Foodie House on the Prairie, we take turns window watching and I desperately try to contact the local Social Welfare (sorry, they recently rebranded, it is now the Social Protection) office to no avail to find out where my weekly pitance has gone to. Mr Foodie comes home from work, no Evil Skyman lurking on the horizon still. Then, Mr Foodie realizes that a voicemail has been left on the SuperPhone by the Evil Subcontractors Manager. SuperFoodie does not like the Evil's Skyman's tactics. Calling into SuperFoodie's voicemail directly is a low blow, only one that the Evil Skyman's Subcontractor could use. Very evasive. Call me back. SuperFoodie calls him back 3 times. The Evil Skyman's Subcontractor does not answer. SuperFoodie gets in Extra SuperFoodie Battlemode. They want a fight, they will get a fight. He calls back The Sky Lair (or call centre) and there are more talks of Sky Cards and arses. SuperFoodie talks to an Irish minion in the Evil Sky Lair and he decides to give them one last chance.

Friday: I get up bright and early as they can come anytime between 8am and 6 pm. And wait. I have to get to the local Social Protection Office so that I can find out where my weekly pitance is and when will I be able to get it. SuperFoodie gets a phone call on the SuperPhone by the Elusive Skyman. He will be here between 2pm and 4pm. I fly over to the local Social Welfare Office and find out that my pitance has been sent to the old Post Office. More than an hour away. And I need to go and pick it up by Saturday 1pm or I might lose it and it will be 4 weeks before they could reissue it. Eventually after about an hour a very kind lady places a phone call and I'm told that my payment should be in my local Post Office by Wednesday and I will be able to pick up 2 weeks payment then. I get home, quite relieved that I will not have to travel 2 hours for my measely pitance. Mr Foodie gets home and the Elusive Skyman hasn't arrived yet. But he gets another phone call by the Elusive Skyman that he is delayed and will get here by 5pm. And he does. Hurray! Well, actually no. Despite what the minions in the Evil Sky Lair told us, he could not install anything at all because we still didn't have a phone line. Actually, we nearly did but, as SuperFoodie found out, the phone company people are not capable of taking down a phone number correctly. So they couldn't contact us on Friday to come by the house to connect our line. Another fight for SuperFoodie. Another talk of arses but this time it's with phones. And the minions in the Evil Sky Lair get told something about Sky Cards and arses again. But this time, it's final.

So, after 4 days of increasing cabin fever and frustration at not being able to show my cousin around, we decided to give up. No more Sky, no more Eircom. It was way too much hassle, too much stress to deal with them and that was even before anything was installed. So we called UPC on Monday, and by Thursday, we had our box installed. No hassle. They said they'd be here about 2 pm and they got here at 2.20 pm (because they went past the house and missed it). By 3 pm everything was sorted. We still have no phone line but we will get one when the boradband is installed. My payment wasn't there on Wednesday again and I went back to the local office. It will definitely be there on Monday morning before we go away, I even got a follow up phone call to inform me.


On Sunday, we went for a walking tour of Dublin, called the 1916 Rebellion Tour and I would recommend it to anybody, Irish or tourist. It is not your typical tour with bland guide going through the motions. The guide is passionate about what he tells you about, is a fountain of knowledge and is funny. He pokes fun at people in the group, and makes the effort of getting to know every single member of the group and talk to them. Check out their website: http://www.1916rising.com/.

So many things have happened, that this is only a fraction of it. Noelie got her MMR on Monday. She had a check up on Tuesday in the Hospital and after 4 hours wait, they could not conduct the test because she had another kidney infection. She reacted quite badly to the vaccine, with temperature and now a rash that has appeared all over her back and belly. She is in great form though so I am not too worried. Our lovely neighbours have organized a playdate when we get home from holidays for Marie with a couple of girls that will be in her class in September so that she doesn't feel lost come the first day of school. We have spent an evening with our new neighbours and they are really really lovely people. Mr Foodie was invited the other day to go clay pigeon shooting and came back from it with a very bruised shoulder. We are all getting used to country life and we all love it but we will gladly do with a nice 2 weeks holidays.

Thanks for still being here despite my really lengthy radio silence,
X
Foodie Mummy

Before our dongle goes...

Hello again everybody! I am back again for a short while. The dongle thingy has to go back tomorrow so I decided it was time to test it to the maximum and see if its powers were strong enough to last through me writing a whole post. I doubt it. I might just throw away my computer at the cows next door in frustration. You see, it's not the most reliable and it tends to not upload / disconnect / not work at the most inappropriate time. So as I am writing this post, I am already dreading the upload. Will I lose everything or not? I'm taking a big gamble here!

So we are finally settled here albeit without phone or TV yet. But it's starting to look a lot less like indoors camping than it was. It's been a pretty busy time for everybody. We managed to move in everything in 3 trips except the girls. They were staying with Mr Foodie's mum and dad while we were shifting things and until the house was to be considered livable and not a health and safety danger anymore. So they spent 3 nights over there. It was the first time we were leaving Noelie for such a long period of time but she had a great time. We were popping in and out of there anyway since Mr Foodie's mum was our designated tea maker / caterer.

Last week was a very busy one. There were so many things to do. Boxes to empty, wardrobes to build and fill. We finally went to Ikea to buy stuff. We had gone there 3 times without buying anything and that took a superhuman effort on my part. So on the first day of the sales, we went there and bought a big TV unit, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. It took Mr Foodie about 2 days to put it all together, while I was unpacking and putting things away. I'm glad we waited though since we managed to save more than 400 euros on the stuff we bought. Had it not been on sale, as much as I liked it, I probably would have settled for something cheaper. Mr Foodie's dad had gone away for a few days so Mr Foodie's mum came to stay with us for a couple of days. She provided an invaluable babysitting service for us while we explored the area, taking whatever road we came across to see where it lead us, trying to figure out where the nearest supermarkets, shops, post offices etc were. We had to figure out our surroundings pretty fast since Mr Foodie and one of his brother had decided to throw a 60th surprise birthday party for his mum in her own house and we were in charge of some of the shopping. We had to throw a 'fake' birthday celebration in our house (meaning that the house had to be presentable for people we invited over) while his brother was decorating her house and getting the food ready.

Last Friday we also invited a couple of friends over for dinner. They ended up staying the night. Since Marie was away in NoodleVille (just east of NoodleLand) for her first long week end, we had a very very lazy Saturday (meaning I took a nap while Noelie was having one) and basically not getting out of our pyjamas all day.

So only now are we trying to find a routine for ourselves. Noelie is exhausted. She has so much ground to cover now that she has to take a couple of naps a day to recover. Marie is having a great time. She met the little boy next door today and has been playing in his house for the past couple of hours. I went to try and retrieve her but our new neighbour invited her for lunch. So she is staying there for a bit. She has no idea that my cousin is coming over to stay for a little over a week today so that will be a really nice surprise.

And I'm here typing a post, praying that the dongle won't die on me and enjoying the silence while Noelie takes a nap. I have to stay in today as I am waiting on our bins to be delivered. Tomorrow, it should be Sky and sometime before the end of the week it will be Eircom. So a lot of waiting around but then everything will be sorted and complete. Well apart from the Internet. That will be another 4 weeks or so. I hope you'll all still be here when I come back.

X
Foodie Mummy

I'm still alive

I thought I would just pop in here and let you know that I'm still here! I'm still alive! I haven't been buried under a pile of boxes only for my body to be found sometime next year once all the boxes are finally unpacked. There is still quite a bit to do. The move went really well. We met our new neighbours who sounds really nice. The old house has been cleaned to the best of our abilities. The new house has been cleaned too and most of the boxes have been unpacked. But there is still quite a bit to do. So this is only a flying visit. Mr Foodie has borrowed a dongle thingy so I could catch up on the blogging world and let everybody know that I'm not dead (how considerate was that!). I will let you know more soon. Promise. But for now I have to get back to my unpacking while Noelie takes a nap.

Talk to you all really soon.
X
Foodie Mummy

We wish to apologize for this interruption in our normal programming.

That's it. Today is D-Day. It's officially the summer holidays and the day we move into our new house. And in case you don't know it's only 6h45 in the morning. Mr Foodie woke me up this morning because one of the cats got sick and he wanted me to clean it up (he's not very good with sick, smelly bins etc..Bless him). I didn't get up to clean it and I let him do it. But since I was awake, I might as well get up.

There is still a bit to pack. But we are not getting the van until later on this afternoon so I have plenty of time. I will take Noelie to Mr Foodie's parents after she gets up and come back to my dear boxes. Marie decided that she wanted to go there yesterday evening so I wouldn't have to get her ready this morning.

She finished in her old school yesterday, and one of her friends gave her a goodbye present. She also spent the afternoon in Noodleland. And she is delighted that from now on, it will be only one visit every 2 weeks rather than 2 visits a week.

We got the keys last night for our new place and brought a few boxes in already. Mr Foodie and I were just beaming while standing in the middle of our new house. It's finally ours (well, to rent but still ours) and after what seems like an eternity, the time to move in is finally upon us. We are all very excited, slightly exhausted already and once again, it makes me realize how well we work as a team. Although at this stage, we have thought of every possible plan of action (Mr Foodie loves his POAs), and I can't remember which one we agreed upon. So I'll just happily take (kind) orders from Mr Foodie and go with the flow. Is it one trip or two we are doing tonight? I can't remember. Am I supposed to go to the new house with boxes after I drop Noelie off, I'm not sure. But all I need to do is ask Mr Foodie and he'll know. He'll probably remind me of a conversation we had the other night, which I genuinely don't remember because I was too busy reading blogs, while trying to listen to the TV at the same time. But it will all go smoothly enough, I know it.

One of the downsides of moving, is that you have to wait ages before things fall into place. Sky won't come in until the week after next, broadband will take about 6 weeks (the national phone service provider doesn't even offer broadband there!) So we decided to go with the new WiMax thing purely because we love the ad because it seems well worth it. If anybody knows what WiMax really is or does (apart from a hunk with a guitar and a very catchy song), please let me know! In the meantime, we will probably have to get one of those dongles that we will have to share between us. So I hope you'll excuse me if I don't post much over the coming weeks. I will do my best to keep reading your lovely blogs and comment and keep you all updated on how things are going.

In the meantime, I'll just leave you with the hunk and his guitar and catchy song. You will probably end up humming it for the next few weeks, that way I'm making sure you won't forget about me *evil laugh*(you'll want to kill me so bad that you won't forget about me!).

A product of your environment?

A couple of weeks ago, we started watching a program on BBC3 (from what I have read on other blogs, BBC3 and BBC4 audiences differ widely, please educate me as I haven't got a clue what the difference is between them) called 'Peckham Finishing School for girls'. I know it sounds like a trashy, reality TV kind of program. We started watching it because some of Mr Foodie's relatives live in London and he did find himself in Peckham. I, on the other hand, wouldn't be able to place Peckham on a map, and had never heard of it apart from Mr Foodie's stories. Also, since Glee finished, we need to fill the big void that have become our Wednesday evenings.

Basically, the program centers around 8 girls, 4 upper class, rich girls who have never wanted for anything, and 4 girls from Peckham which I now know is one of the roughest neighbourhoods in London. I believe the aim of the program is to educate one extreme of the society spectrum with the other. The 'golden girls' are portrayed as your stereotypical stuck up upper class person, all about shopping, partying, playing polo, proper etiquette and have never met (it seems) anybody outside of their high upper class social circle. The Peckham girls are portrayed as the opposite stereotype, the somewhat aggressive chavs living on benefits, in a derelict crime ridden estate.

It's full of the usual stereotypes which make me cringe and it feels that none of them really want to learn from each other's life and everything will go back to normal after the show. Some of these 'fish out of water' programs sometimes lead to changes in people but I really think this one is doomed. They won't keep in contact, there won't be any life changing act of kindness at the end of it. It won't make for memorable TV and certainly won't be TV anthology. But, as there has to be a but, it got me thinking (oops, watch that steam coming out of my ears!): Are we a product of our own environment?

Of course, you can't answer this question without generalizing. I don't have enough knowledge and experience of what it's like to grow up on a crime ridden estate, or on the other type of estate (the one with mansions and horses) to be able to answer without generalizing. But I think the program really shows that, to a point, you are. The girls' speech, accents, vocabulary, dress sense, attitudes all prove to be the result of how and where they grew up and what they had to deal with in their life. Now, I don't believe for a second that you can't break free from your environment and are doomed forever to live on an estate if that's where you grew up. But you will always carry with you something, whether it be skills or knowledge from that environment.

What I know for sure us that I, for one, am a product of my environment. I grew up in a middle class working family in the countryside. Although I knew that it happened, I never really encountered drugs or crime until I went to college. I am not street wise. I am somewhat naive when it comes to all this. Where I come from, we are all pretty polite to each other, I never witnessed fights, bar brawls, shouting in the street, public drunkenness etc until I was in my late teens. I am comfortable with my own company having grown up with no neighbours my age. I love food because my mum and dad were into food. I love reading because that's pretty much all there was to do where I lived. I have the same political opinions as my parents. I am not comfortable with aggressive behaviour and name calling because I never grew up with that kind of thing. I am not good at answering tit for tat when being verbally challenged because I never really had to. I was kind of sheltered from some of the hard realities of life. I am, to a point, the stereotypical country girl even though I have lived in an urban environment for more than 12 years now.

I can safely say that Mr Foodie is also a product of his environment. He grew up in a working class urban environment and is a lot wiser than I am. He has seen a lot more than I have. He knows how to react in some situations in which I would only panic and be completely out of my depth.

We were recently talking to someone we know, who happens to live in what would be considered an underprivileged area. And I was amazed (yet slightly uncomfortable) at how they were describing the everyday life there. Police raids taking place, drug dealing, stealing from shops, people in and out of jail, name calling from a young age etc. Yet, they were relating these events in the same way my grand father used to tell me about his vegetables growing in the garden. Things I would personnally be horrified to witness on a daily basis were just 'normal' for them. Not that they approved of them, far from it, but they had developed a 'That's life, it does happen' kind of attitude, some kind of shell that I don't think I could develop. Don't get me wrong, I know it happens, I have seen it happen but it doesn't make me anymore comfortable with it.

I have also seen how children adapt to the environment they are in. Marie has sometimes come back from Noodleland using words we don't use, speaking differently to the way we speak, or with knowledge on some things that we didn't give to her (like how to french kiss age 5, anybody?). Children, in some socio-economic conditions, have to grow up a lot faster than they should. And I don't think that's right.

Which is why I am glad we are moving to the countryside. Some people might say that I am trying to shield my children away from reality and I suppose I am. I am just trying to give my children the best conditions for them to grow in (without making them sound like some kind of fruit or vegetable), keeping their innocence a bit longer. They won't be living completely in a bubble, ignoring even the existence of things like these but they won't get to experience them first hand, day in, day out. They will gain from my and Mr Foodie's experience and hopefully will become a product of our own environment, a mix of streetwise country naivety, if that's ever possible. I certainly don't want them to be like either of the groups from that program, one completely clueless to life outside their golden cage, and the other that has seen too much in too little time.

So what do you think? Are you a product of your environment? Or do you think my theory is completely flawed? Let us know!

I need a holiday!

With the imminent move and everything else that has happened this month (the cat has deflated, by the way, all by itself!) I need a nice holiday. Heck! I need a nice long holiday, preferably in a nice luxury hotel.

A bedroom like that would suit me just fine!

So to my surprise, I have found a competition being held by Radisson Blu. It's called The Greatest Holiday in the world.

Radisson Blu are offering 365 hotel nights to spend in more than 200 Radisson Blu hotels across the world over a period of 5 years. 1 year of free hotel nights! I immediately imagined that the process to win such a luxury prize would be quite daunting, like writing a novel or something along those lines. But no, it is very simple. You need to visit their website, the greatest holiday in the world, and leave an entry describing why you deserve to win. You can also upload videos or pictures to make your point even further. I'm sure if these people witnessed a day in my life, they would award me the prize straight away! Visitors to the website vote for their favourite entry and whoever has the most votes by July 24th gets to win the prize. Easy!

Please note that this competition is only opened to EU citizens, or citizens from Norway, Liechstenstein, Iceland and Switzerland.

On top of this competition, they are also holding Creativity Awards. Every week, the people at Radisson Blu select 10 of the most creative, funny and original entries and award them with a special Creativity Badge (and a special Radisson Blu prize too). But winning a Creativity award will not only allow you to win that but it will also raise your profile and drive more traffic to your entry, hence the potential to earn more votes. Does that make sense? Are you still following me?


Now, it's time to put my thinking cap on and come up with the most witty, funny, original fantastical entry that will win the judges hearts.

Would you enter? Why would you say you deserve that fantastic prize? Leave us a little comment and let us know!
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Business and Pleasure.

People often say: ' You can't mix business and pleasure.' (Or variants thereof). My answer to them is: 'Why not?'

What if you discovered a way of doing so? What about mixing blogging (pleasure) and business (making a bit of money for it)? Well, I have just discovered a new platform that allows me to do both. It's called ebuzzing.



Ebuzzing is a platform that has been connecting bloggers and advertisers in France since 2007 and has now launched in the UK . By broadcasting campaign videos on your blog (with dedicated players or banners as pictured below), or simply writing an article on something you genuinely like, you could be earning a bit of money for yourself (I can see a new pair of shoes winking at me!).

 

All you need to do is register on ebuzzing.com. Once you have registered, you will have access to many advertising campaigns by well known brands (Coca Cola, L'Oreal, Intel only to name a few). There is no pressure to write about something you don't want to write about, you chose the campaigns you want to talk about, you recommend only what you want to recommend. You apply for the campaign, write a post following the brief and submit it. Once your post is approved and up and running for a bit, ding dong, you get paid for it. It's as simple as that! I always thought that to incorporate monetisation into your blog was complicated, how wrong was I? It is so simple and easy with Ebuzzing!

Still not sure? Why don't you take a look at their blog post called 'Why you should join Ebuzzing' and have a peek at some previous campaigns?

They also run a referral program for bloggers in the UK (not sure about Ireland though), in which you can get a bonus if people sign up and write at least one article (details on their website)

Convinced yet?

Well, I was. Why don't you try it?

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