2018 🚨 THIS IS GOING TO BE A LONG ONE! 🚨

Hello and Happy New Year everyone!

I realize it’s been a while since my last update, but we have been BUSY here at Tibz HQ! And I am still late on publishing the last few Vlogs for 2017: Bali, Malaysia, Dubai part 2, Europe, and the US…

Since my last email, back in October, Shana & I have spent a few days in New York, before heading down to the DMV (D.C. + Maryland + Virginia area) to meet Shana’s family. We stayed about a month there with her brother, Jason, and his wife, Keri, but it also allowed us/me to meet her parents and extended family.

I was very lucky to be accepted by her relatives and we all got along great. I was also really excited to discover this part of the US that I didn’t know a lot about. We went to see a basketball game down in Washington, went out a couple of times (either just the two of us, meeting up with Jason & Keri and even meeting some of Shana’s friends and now-former coworkers. I even got the chance to participate in a real American Thanksgiving, without any drama — I guess these sitcoms I watch have been lying all along! And the cherry on the cake, Shana’s dad, who’s an accomplished Jazz Pianist, dedicated a song to Shana and me. 🎹😍

After the US, we went back to France, first through Paris and then Normandy — to visit my grandfather who was celebrating his 91st birthday. There was a touching moment when he gave a speech to welcome Shana as the newest person to join the family, something else that I wasn’t expecting but felt important.

And then we finally got back to my parent’s place, the *home* I hadn’t seen since I left for my big trip around the world, back in April. It felt nice and comfortable to be back home — like nothing had changed. And as I write down these lines, it doesn’t quite feel like I’ve been away all around the world for 9 months on the road, across Asia, Australia, and the US. I don’t think it’s fully hit me how unreal this past year has been. I don’t think it will.

The majority of our time in my home was spent doing a certain number of things:

In December, around the holiday season, we took a week-long trip to Vienna with Shana and my parents and discovered another city/country that we had never been to before. In 5 days, we’ve walked around a lot, beating the cold Austrian wind to visit local landmarks such as Empress Sissi’s Palace, Mozart’s House, the Emperor’s Palace (which reminded us of Versailles), and the interactive House of Music.

On January 11th, Shana and I moved to Dublin, Ireland, indefinitely. She’s just started a new job, having transferred internally from Washington. And on my end, I’m planning to continue working remotely with my clients, and try to connect locally with Dublin’s thriving tech ecosystem.

So far, we’ve enjoyed what we’ve seen of the city, despite the chilling wind and occasional flurries of snow. However, our number one priority has been to find ourselves an apartment. See, Dublin (and Ireland as a whole) was hit even harder than the majority of Europe during the ’08 recession. As such, they’ve stopped the construction of buildings. But since the economy started growing at a fast pace again, a lot of people have been moving to Dublin, from abroad. But this leaves a pretty big housing shortage and high rent prices. (Thanks to low corporation taxes, more companies are bringing their EMEA headquarters here — and that was before Brexit, which may accelerate this process.)

So it’s definitely been a difficult process — in the first 10 days being here, we’ve seen almost 12 apartments, and requested to view about 30 properties. It’s not uncommon to find a place listed online for 12 hours before a let is agreed on the aforementioned property.

Please keep your fingers crossed for us over the next few hours after receiving this, as it looks like we may have found the one! Once we find an apartment, we’ll finally be in a place where we can try to discover the city much more, and enjoy ourselves.

You know the drill: this is the end of a long overdue email. If you’d like to keep in touch or see what I’m up to, here are a few ways to do that…

I might send another email shortly, with the blog posts you might have missed from yours truly. Emphasis on might. Otherwise, stay tuned for the rest of our early Dublin adventures… in the coming weeks!

—Tibz