Now, where did I put my maple syrup, eh?

(Oh, and don’t worry – I’m not actually up at 2am posting this, I scheduled it so it would go out during daylight Irish time)

Took a bit longer to get back to blogging than expected, due to a bug in the upgrade of WordPress, but all sorted now.

Childers Election Poster

A few online things to note from the campaign – Liveblogs and Twitter really came to life during the counts & results phase.  IrishElection.com did brilliantly at that stage.  The weakness of these media is still there, though: there’s no way of knowing what the reliability of the source is.  In the noise, there are great, solid sources (like your correspondant), and sources that are full of shite (like the Libertas spinners).  However, that applied equally to RTÉ, who occasionally got their announcements wrong.

Blogs, Facebook and YouTube didn’t have much effect on the campaign.  Having talked to a few internet-enabled politicos who were managing candidate websites, the traffic levels on election day and the few days before were higher than normal, but still in the low hundreds region at the highest.

I’m off to Canada in a month’s time (via DC), where the possibility of an election can’t be discounted.  July 27th is the date they’re theorising about, which would give me a good week of campaigning!

On another note, check out my little brother’s blog – he’s travelling around Asia on the way to Australia, and has just completed a 21-day trek in the Himalayas.

UBC Sauder

I’ll be doing the MBA course at the Sauder School of Business there starting in late August (with the pre-course stuff starting in early August).  It’s a great course, and I’m really looking forward both to it, and to living in Vancouver.  I’ll even get two weeks off for the 2010 Winter Olympics, which is nice.

Thanks to all those who’ve helped with the applications, advice, etc.  It’s much appreciated.

Go Thunderbirds!

It’s come down to decision time now, because I’ve received three offers and deadlines approach (thanks to those who helped reviewing my application essays, of course!).

The three are UBC Sauder in Vancouver, University of Western Ontario (Ivey), and of course UCD Smurfit here in Dublin.

Accumulating debt and the time taken to pay it off is a significant factor in the decision, of course.  Vancouver is cheapest overall, with Smurfit second cheapest.  As with every choice, there are advantages to each of them.

A decision will be announced next week, most likely.  At least my decision (taken last October) to withdraw from the workforce for a year starting in August turned out to be fairly prescient of the state of the employment market and economic situation!