Hanging out

http://www.gapingvoidart.com/gallery/

The last few months at work have been very busy with Programmatic Review, Games Fleadh, preparation for the ICT in Education conference not to mention the actual day job of lecturing!!  Thrown into the mix there’s Coder Dojo – in Limerick and Thurles and in the next few weeks the Nenagh Dojo is coming on stream.  It’s easy in all the hustle and bustle to forget what’s really important.  This has been brought back to me this week – it’s been great just hanging out with my children and not running and racing everywhere.  Don’t get me wrong, we all need some routine, but it’s really good to get out of routine too.  There’s been no uniforms, no packed lunches, late nights, late mornings and it’s been brilliant.  We’ve had friends around, gone to the cinema and the plan for tomorrow is a trip to Turoe Pet Farm (well worth a trip if you’re in the environs of Loughrea ) but mostly we’ve just hung out.

The other thing I’ve really enjoyed this week is being able to interact with people on Twitter in a more meaningful way.  My interactions of late have been of the hit and run variety so it’s been great to be able to get involved in conversations with various people over the week.  I’ve enjoyed having the time to do that.

Credit Union Quiz 2012

Sunday 1st April saw the family travelling to Dublin on a bus at 8.30am.  What had us on the bus was my 12 year old, who along with 3 boys from his school, qualified for the Credit Union Schools Quiz National Final.  There were two competitions on the day – under 11 and under 13.  There were fifty teams in each competition – two from each of the twenty five Credit Union chapters across Ireland.  The boys from Nenagh CBS were the first team from the school to reach the National finals and were competing in the under 13 competition.

We arrived at 10.30 and the boys registered.  While everyone got settled Lorcan Murray got things going with requests for the teams and warm up questions interspersed with lots of music.  Next up was photographs for all of the teams with Marty Whelan, quiz master extraordinaire for the day.

At 1.30 the real work for the teams began with 10 rounds of 6 questions each for the under 11 competition and 12 rounds of 6 questions each for the under 13 competitions.  The standard was just amazing with the teams answering questions that many of their parents and teachers weren’t able to answer (well this parent anyway ).  By the end of the under 13 competition the top eight teams were as follows:

St Patrick’s National School on 64 points representing Enniscorthy Credit Union

Ardfert Central National School on 64 points representing Tralee Credit Union

Scoil Mhuire on 63 points representing Kinvara Credit Union

St Oliver’s National School on 63 points representing Killarney Credit Union

Gaelscoil Ui Riada on 62 points representing Bishopstow Credit Union

St Mary’s Boys National School on 61 points representing Maynooth Credit Union

Nenagh CBS on 60 points representing Nenagh Credit Union

St Patrick’s National School respresenting Donabate & District Credit Union

We had a great day in the RDS, thanks to the boys, and a lovely meal when we got home, thanks to Nenagh Credit Union.  At one point towards the end of the competition, the lads were in joint 3rd place, only 2 points off the lead, so there there was great excitement and much nail biting among the parents and teachers. We were all so proud of them that they did so well in the competition.