Fish & Chips

I’m a very organized person. Really. I sometime think I’m too organized. Everything always has to be tidy, clean, ticked, within an automated Excel WorkSheet (I swear I’ll switch to GoogleDocs soon) or on my To Do List. That’s the only way I like things to be. I almost never buy something without thinking it over (also known as “Tedying it over” for the lucky few that are watching How I Met Your Mother). It’s ridiculous sometimes to see me debating whether I should buy this or that. To pick my cell phone package for example I’ve created an Excel doc with list of criteria, scores and multipliers assigned to them and formulas calculating which was the most objective choice to make so I could convince myself I was making the right decision. You think I have a problem? You might be right but that’s just the way I am. And from my experience, there are more annoying habits in life.

One thing that comes with being so organized is that I like (have to?) plan things long time in advance. To feel comfortable I need to know what I’ll be doing in the next 12 to 18 months (the long term). I’m not talking about what I’ll be doing every day but at least the job I'll do and the city/country I'll leave in. What’s more, I also like to know what I’ll be doing in the next few hours or tomorrow (the short term). I’m pretty good at organizing this too. I usually write down on a post it note everything I need to do hours after hours. You think I have a problem? Again, I keep this for me and usually don’t bother people with it although my brother Morgan once made me eat that very post-it note (I was pissed that he delayed my post-it schedule. He was right to let me know I over reacted that time but I wish he would have made his point differently).

By now you get that I’m a very organized person who always know what he’s doing in one year or one hour from now. What I’m very bad at, is to plan things for next week-end.

Because I’m too focused on next year and tomorrow I usually forget to plan things for my week-ends. I don’t have enough fingers on my two hands to count how many days off I forgot to plan things for. You know, these days off that allow people to take a 3-days week-end to visit their parents or take mini-vacations? Well I always failed to make the most of them. I can’t seem to be able to anticipate these when I’m so good at anticipating all the rest.

I’m telling you this only to stressed the fact that I actually did something interesting last Sunday although I brilliantly failed to plan it again. I had a party (my roommate did to be honest) on Saturday where I talked with people that invited me to join them for a trip to Howth on the very next day. Howth is a fishermen village in the North of Dublin. After being here for almost a month now this was the first time I wasn’t looking for an apartment so I jumped on this occasion to finally get to visit a little bit this beautiful country. The plan was amazingly simple: walk near the cliffs by the sea after had a classic Fish and Chips for lunch. How lovely! And so Irish too!

So off we went on Sunday. We were supposed to eat Fish & Chips for lunch. I made sure to be hungry by the time would get to Howth (2:30 pm) to enjoy lunch even more. Well, I wasn’t alone (we were 10 to 12 I’d say) and the plan switched to walking first. I looked at the other guys who were just as disappointed as me to postpone eating. Girls (always on a diet and glad to avoid putting on some more fat) usually don’t mind this kind of things. For guys it’s different. We’re always (and I couldn't stress that word enough) hungry. But it’s okay, we could wait another hour and after making sure we’d be back to eat in an hour we started walking toward the cliffs.

An hour later, once on top of the cliffs (or so I though it was) the program changed again. The girls now wanted to go to the (very) top of the cliffs for a two and a half hour “lovely walk”. 3 guys and I felt like we had to step up and announced to the pack that we had to split now, our survival depending on it. After a quick talk, the four of us were firmly walking to the fish and chips place to tackle our first real irish meal.

Once at the restaurant, we ordered the food and enjoyed our meal. It was no cheap or fancy place but still a pretty good restaurant. A beer helped us have fun while eating.

On my way back to Dublin I met friends that went to play golf in Howth too as I discovered. We laugh in the train and once home I though I had a very nice Sunday. And I would still remember it as such had I not entirely vomited that very evening what has become now my first and last Irish Fish and Chips. I guess, the restaurant wasn’t so good after all…