Ireland, Day 3

Today was the big day for my boss and I. The audit we were here to support kicked of at 9am. A Scotsman named Magnus was in as the auditor. It was funny to me listenting to Irish and Scottish people interact. At one point, I thought it had evolved into some sort of match to see who had the strongest brogue in their accent. I almost went over-the-top southern drawl on them!

During the audit, Garrett and I ran into the CEO of Merit, Fred Lampropolous. Fred invited us out to a dinner where the grand opening of our new Irish manufacturing facility would be celebrated by a select few. I didn't know if this was a good or bad thing, but I must say when it was all over I felt pretty honored to be there with Mandy at the dinner that night. But I digress... The audit was a success. There were no findings, which is a good thing, and Merit can continue doing business as normal. It's always a great feeling when an audit goes well because it means your company is doing a good job.

After work we headed back to the hotel to change and get ready for dinner. We caught a bus with the other Merit folks at the hotel and made our way to KC Blake's, a fairly high-end seafood restaurant in the heart of Galway. I'll admit that under normal circumstances these are not the kind of dinners worker bees like myself, Mandy, and my boss Garrett get invited to. However, besides running into Fred at the IReland plant, Mandy and I actually flew on the same flight as Fred from SLC to Paris. He spoke with us first about dinner on the plane, but it was in passing and I figured he was just trying to be polite but maybe really didn't want us to go. The second invitation at the plant meant I was wrong I guess and we got an official email invitation on Wednesday morning.

The restaurant was really nice and the company, drink, and food were all top notch. Mandy got seated next to one of Merit's female sales reps. from Massachusetts who she'd had very close dealings with over the phone regarding some of the woman's benefits. I guess this lady has a son who is a lot Luke regarding some of the peculiar things they do and ways they act. It seemed they talked all night which I was really happy to see (but felt left out by my own spouse! LOL) as Mandy as well all know is normally on the reserved side. I had a rabbit entree which was awesome. Mandy had teh smoked salmon and crab claws which was also very good. I spent most of the evening talking to two guys from the Netherlands who head up some of our operations there. Rene and Camille. They were both very nice guys and Rene had actually vacationed in Austin, TX the year prior so we got to talk Texas which is always a welcomed thing as far as I'm concerned. All in all, it was a great day and night. After dinner Mandy and I strolled back to the hotel and went to bed full on great food and great company.

A few things I forgot to mention about this week:
On our way to dinner Monday night, we walked passed Eyre Square which is a park in between our hotel and Shop Street which is where all the shops, eateries and pubs are. On the square was the "Occupy Galway" camp. It wasn't as big as some of the "Occupy" protest camps in America, but it was fairly large. I snapped some pictures and will post them later. I guess this camp had been there for about 250 days. Anyway, on Wednesday morning the Garda (Irish police) did a pre-dawn raid of the camp to dissolve and remove it. It was peaceful and the news reported there were only 6 protesters in the camp during the raid. By the time I got home from work on Wednesday it was like that camp had never been there. To us it was just weirdly coincidental the camp would be torn down during out stay here, especially after it had been up for more than 8 months.