During the drive home, I thought that it would be a good idea to take a photo of the daffodil and to tweet it. I have been consistently using the #Cork hashtag on Twitter so that anyone interested in Cork can follow me to see what I'm up to in the city. I thought that the tweet and the picture might encourage the people of Cork, at least, to support the Daffodil Day event. I wanted to support the Irish Cancer Society because cancer affects all of us in one way or another; some directly, some indirectly.
My relationship with cancer has been an indirect one, but nevertheless still close to my heart. My mum was diagnosed with breast cancer a little over five years ago. Thankfully, she caught it early,
had an operation and responded well to treatment. A couple of months ago she was given the "all clear", I use quotation marks for obvious reasons with such a fickle disease. However, my wife has lost relatives to cancer, most recently last year, and I have school friends who are struggling against the disease every day.
Cancer is everyone's problem!
After a busy weekend that included a drive around the countryside outside Cork city and a day trip to Myrtleville, the photo of my daffodil and the tweet had been pushed to the back of my mind. On 26.3.2012, the Irish Cancer Society suddenly tweeted me to say, "Thank you for your support". I thought this was a nice gesture, and I was just about to tweet them back to say something along the lines of, "Your very welcome.", when I noticed that the tweet was only the first of three tweets.
The second tweet I had to read twice. Here it is:
Wow! I had won a Dell XPS 10 tablet. How cool is that?!
At first I was just really pleased to have won something and touched by the generosity of the Irish Cancer Society and Dell Ireland. As a Twitter fan, I started to tweet and favourite and retweet, as you do, and post about it on the Pop the Cork Facebook page. But then after the initial surprise had worn off, I started to think: what do I need another device for?
We already have all the devices we could ever need. Added to that, I am in a very privileged position in that I am healthy, happily married and I have three healthy and happy kids. We are here, in the city of Cork, having a great time meeting people and doing fun and interesting things.
Basically, Cork and Ireland have been good to me - I should give something back!
So, that's what I'm going to do. I will be donating the Dell XPS 10 tablet back to where this all started - Cancer.
I have only been in Cork for a little over two weeks, but the city and the people have been so great that I want the prize to benefit those suffering form cancer in Cork. I still don't know Cork that well, and I needed a little help in doing this, so I turned to the guy who brought us here in the first place, John Dennehy.
John is a native Corkonian who is investing in Cork and Ireland by helping IT talent come over to Cork, find work, and get settled in. His company, www.makeitincork.ie is promoting the IT opportunities in Cork and also Cork as a place to live and settle down. It was John who invited my wife over for the two months, and the rest of us followed.
John put me in touch with his wife, Siobhán, who knows a doctor by the name of Clodagh Ryan. Clodagh is a paediatric haematologist at the Mercy University Hospital in Cork city, and she will be helping me to donate the XPS 10 to a young man suffering from cancer.
I'll be posting more details in the near future as they become clear. In the meantime, have a look at the following who made this possible:
http://www.cancer.ie/
http://www.dell.com/ie/p
http://www.muh.ie/
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