1.0 Travel from US to Ireland
I left home on a Saturday morning (in early May) to take a flight to Boston. Then took a flight to Dublin. It was about a six hours flight. The whole flight took over the Atlantic Ocean. There is no land or even an island across three thousand miles (pretty scary). As the time zones were changing during the flight, so was my sleeping pattern (actually lack of sleep). The plane landed in Dublin at 5:30 AM on Sunday. After collecting the suitcase and clearing customs, got out of the airport around 6.30. My company has assigned a van and a driver (we will call him Mr. G) to facilitate employees’ travel to and from the airport and to run errands around the town. I established contact with Mr. G before leaving the US. He had been calling and texting me while I was in the plane to make sure that I was enroute. Anyway, I established contact with him after landing in Dublin and he told me that he will be in a gray van, parked outside the departures gate on the lower level. When I got out of the airport, I did not notice the van, so I called Mr. G on WhatsApp and he said, “Do you see the gray van and I said, no.” He said he is a tall guy
wearing a green sweater and he will stand under the connecting bridge so that I could spot him. When I spotted him, I was on the other side of the road behind a four feet steel fence. I shouted to him, “Are you Mr. G”? And he said he was and crossed the road toward me across the fence. There was no opening in the fence to cross over for me to where the van was parked, so he suggested that I scale the fence. I could have resisted doing so but got along with the idea. Well, when I was maneuvering this dare devil scaling, I was cognizant of the fact that if police notice this drama,
The Airport Fence for Dare Devils
I may get in trouble as a terrorist (so sensitive times are these days). Well after this daredevil maneuver, I got into the van and chatted with Mr. G along way to the hotel, about Dublin, Ukraine, and US politics. He is retired and does this job, just to keep himself busy. Genuinely nice chap, indeed.
2.0 First Impressions of Dublin
After getting into the hotel room, when I tried to turn on the lights, nothing worked. I called the reception desk, and they told me to insert key card in a small box by the door to turn on the lights and card had to stay in as long as one is in the room (they must inform customer while checking in about this requirement). Whenever I go on a business trip, I have a habit of ironing my work clothes before settling down. This habit gives me peace of mind so that I don’t have to fuss with this chore on the days that I have to go to the office. In this hotel, ironing board was tethered to the wall. It took me five minutes to figure out how to work with that thing. After ironing the clothes, I decided to have some tea, but there was no sign of a tea pot and the ingredients. I was about to call reception desk about this issue but decided to check out dresser drawers and there you go, there was a tea pot and rest of the stuff in one of the drawers. In the US hotels, tea pot and/or coffee machine and related things are usually placed in an open pantry or a table that are visible to the guest. Another unusual set up was that there were three single beds for one guest, which does not make any sense. I have noticed other strange things (especially in hotels) during previous European trips, as well. There are definitely noticeable differences between US and European ways of tourism industry management.
My manager texted (he had created a WhatsApp group of eight people visiting from various countries that all of us used extensively while in Dublin) to go for lunch in downtown. There is a light rail service called Luas that shuttles up and down from downtown to suburbs quite frequently. The train station was about five minutes’ walk from the hotel. Ride to downtown was about half an hour. Along the way, there were offices, shopping areas and housing (houses and apartments). All those structures were in relatively decent shape. We got off at one of the stops in Downtown. It was raining and cold that day. We walked around for a while and then ate lunch at a pub. Guinness is the world-famous beer that is produced in Dublin. All of us had Guinness that was very tasty. Same beer in the US tastes horrible. Downtown is nice and clean with typical European architecture, but not as grand as other famous European cities. After lunch, we returned to the hotel for a siesta. In the evening we went back to downtown for dinner. We walked in a relatively older area and settled in a typical Irish pub (the next day i.e., Monday was a holiday, so all the pubs were jam packed). Here are some of the gems of Dublin downtown
An interesting fact: there were eight people in our group with seven nationality descents (2 Americans,
1 Indian, 1 Afghanistani,
1 Philipeno, 1 Brazilian,
1 German and 1 Irish). All of these people were genuinely nice and got along on friendly and respectful terms.
Great Diversity within the Work Team
3.0 The Guinness Factory Tour and Other Fun Stuff
Next day, Monday being a bank holiday (it is quite common in Europe to call random holidays as bank holidays and there are a lot of them in a year) and the plan was to have lunch in downtown and then go to Guinness brewery tour. We got delayed leaving the hotel waiting for one of our colleagues whose flight got delayed. There was not enough time to have lunch because the Guinness factory tour was scheduled in about an hour when we reached downtown, so skipped lunch and headed straight to the Guinness campus. From the main downtown area, we took another train and then walked for about fifteen minutes to the destination. This company started brewing beer in 1759 (263 years ago) at the same place it is situated now.
Guinness has created a self-directed tour construct within the warehouse campus with history and beer manufacturing process videos, pictures, and machinery parts across five floors. At the end of the tour, we gathered in a pub (on the fifth floor). It is a round structure with big glass windows so that the tourists can see the city and suburbs in a 360-degree view (very fascinating).
Self-Directed Tour
Restaurant with 360 Degree View
Another unique thing about this tour is that the tourists have the option to have a digital picture taken that is imprinted on the top of beer foam. This is the first time I have come across this type of digitization.
Here is a combined view of our team’s imprinted pictures on beer glasses
The Airport Fence for Dare Devils
After the tour, we headed back to the hotel and stopped over for dinner. Since nobody had lunch that day, all were starving. Two other colleagues from Germany who were in town (one German and one Chinese descent) joined us for dinner at a Thai restaurant near the hotel. Now there were ten people with eight nationality descents. There was lively conversation around the table, and everybody enjoyed the delicious food. After dinner we were hanging out at the hotel patio when our senior manager called to join him at a nearby pub where we spent an hour and then called it a day.
4.0 Getting to Work
Next day we got to work. It was a workshop session (in addition to ten visiting people, twelve or so from the head office participated in work sessions). The workshop was conducted in a conference room, situated above a restaurant. This place used to be a Pub (there are still a lot of whiskey and other alcoholic beverages on the shelves, thankfully, nobody dared to touch them). The restaurant catered nice breakfast and lunch. The working sessions were intellectually stimulating and engaging. After the workshop session, team (there were about twenty people) gathered in the downstairs restaurant for dinner.
Next day was another workshop session at the same place with nice breakfast and lunch servings. At the end of the sessions when I got out of the building, Our CEO (Barry Napier) was walking toward the building. When he saw me, he asked, “are you going to join us for dinner”? Although I did not know that a dinner was planned, I said yes (how could I say no to the big boss?), and he told me to get into the van with other colleagues (same van driven by Mr. G who drove from the airport to the hotel). At the restaurant, Barry
interacted with everybody during the dining session and made everybody feel welcome as his team. I have had the pleasure to interact with Barry a few times since this dinner and now know that at social gatherings, he will ask people around him about what is the latest movie you have watched, your favorite movie, your favorite travel spot, your favorite food etc. This type of light conversation puts everyone at ease.
One thing is sure about Cubic is that they feed you with nice and plenty of food at longer meetings/workshops and social gatherings. After dinner, Mr. G drove us back to the hotel. These types of interactions and social gatherings are still prevalent in small companies but have disappeared in big corporations.
Oh, by the way, there were a lot of South Indian descent young people roaming around near the hotel. I asked one of my colleagues at the office about this phenomenon. He said that the Irish Master Card HQ and IT offices are nearby and most of these people work for Master Card. Naturally where there is an IT office, having heavy presence of software engineers from South India is a natural phenomenon (amazing).
The following day, we went to the company head office to perform the regular work. On Thursdays, they have a companywide communications meeting, called Weekly Catch-up call. It is hosted by senior executives on a rotational basis. People in the office gather in a big conference room and people from other countries join the meeting via MS Teams. Assorted topics like company’s business performance, customer success stories and challenges, introducing new employee, shoutouts / recognition are shared at this weekly catch-up meeting. This is indeed an interesting and engaging experience for the employees.
5.0 Trip Back to the US
Flight back from Dublin to Boston was uneventful. During the flight, they served nice dinner, snacks, and drinks (no, I did not have Guinness, just water). There was about a two hours layover at Boston for connecting flight to the end destination. It was about a two hours flight. After collecting my suitcase, drove for an hour and got home around midnight.
Overall, it was a wonderful experience.