First trip to the cinema

Today was a memorable day as I was taking our 4 year old to the movies for the first time. We went to see "Cars" with his two cousins, one is three and the other a little over 2. It was fun.

My wife and I kept mentioning it during the week, making sure that he was sufficiently excited about going to the film. He has been collecting these little toys from the movie in the Cheerios cereal and has also got a couple of toys from McDonald's.

He's not been doing too well with the collecting though since he has three of the same toy and he was a bit annoyed about that. Ah well, what can you do. The other thing that annoys him is that he gets the toy out of the Cheerios, puts the stickers on it to make it look just like in the movie and then his little brother comes along shouting "stickers" and then proceeds to try and peel the stickers right back off again.

Anyway, we've been talking about the movie this week before going to the cinema and he's aware of who Lightning McQueen is (the car in the picture above) and one or two others. I had to go onto the internet the other evening to figure out who these characters are.

We arrived about 12:20 at the cinema anyway and waited outside for the cousins to arrive. They duly did and we headed into the Hypoglycaemic area, also known as the food counter. 6 drinks, 3 big bags of popcorn and 3 bags of junk sweets later and we were on our way in.

His 3 year old cousin panicked when we got to the door of the cinema and he could see the lights were off. My brother took him out to the bathroom, to compose himself I guess, and we all went in.

Straight away they were off with the "I can't see, I can't see!" until this guy in front of us told us that they had booster seats at the door. My brother grabbed one each for the little guys and we were off.

My little guy was sitting right next to me and clearly oblivious of the fact that we were in a cinema and not at home in the front room. He's shouting in my ear.

"DAD, IS THE CAR SHOW ON NEXT"

"DAD, CAN I HAVE SOME OF THAT POPCORN"

"DAD, WILL YOU HOLD MY DRINK"

"DAD, CAN YOU MOVE MY SEAT. I WANT TO SIT ALL THE WAY BACK"

"DAD, DAD, DAD, IS IT NEARLY ON YET"

I'm shushing him a little saying that we're out in a cinema and that other people are trying to hear the film too. He, at this stage, is putting his hand over my mouth in a gesture meant to suggest that I am in fact making way too much noise.

After something like 25 minutes of ads and an amusing short animated film the movie finally starts. Don't these people have kids. Don't they realise that kids only understand "RIGHT NOW" so when they sit down in the seat they expect the film to start right then.

I've got to say that I thought the film was fantastic. It was funny, poignant, clever and witty and a lot of fun for the little guys and adults alike. That's my own view.

The music was well chosen as were the voices for the characters. A film that is a lot like Toy Story but a better story in my view.

About 10 minutes from the end and after twice being asked by my 4 year old "DAD, IS THIS NEARLY OVER?" (caps are intentional) he says to me "I wonder what is on next, maybe it's the pink panther".

He could not be persuaded that we were in fact not in some kind of big living room watching a big TV. He was adamant that Pink Panther or Inspector Gadget was coming up next.

When the film ended I took him to a toy shop and he picked out a little toy car from the film. He knew exactly which one he wanted. He is not the sort to change his mind or to hem and haw. He's a lot like me.

I had fun but I do suspect that he didn't pick up much of what was happening during the movie. I'm not worried because I sense the DVD will make its way into our home and I'll be seeing this again, many times, possibly at the expense of the good people of the California Highway Patrol.

I've been taping the CHiPs episodes and will watch them some day when the boys are off at college:-)

A war that can't be won

Nope. Not what you might imagine. Nothing to do with the middle east.

This is a reference to the fact that Wal-Mart is pulling out of Germany. It has been making losses for quite some time and finding the competition from locals ALDI and LIDL to be intense and sustained.

This is interesting on 2 levels. First I was talking about this just yesterday with Al (of San Diego diary fame) and we were pondering if ALDI and LIDL could ever overcome Tesco. I say why not, especially in light of the fact that the world's largest retailer couldn't beat them in their own backyard. There are ALDI stores everywhere now it seems and they have a simple concept that is hard to beat. LIDL is more concentrated in Europe, and is spreading north and east in Europe.

Name me one person who does not want to buy a product at a huge discount, especially branded products in the case of LIDL.

The other reason it's interesting in my view is that this is the second high-profile US company to concede defeat in Germany, the other being The Gap (or Gap as we know it over here). They pulled out due to intense pressure from H&M and Zara.

Maybe this suggests that the march of Globalisation is not inevitable and that someday we may yet see other high profile chains decide that some places are just not worth having a presence in, especially if the locals just aren't going to give you their business in favour of a more-local alternative.

So Wal-Mart marches on in it's profitable markets and so does ALDI and LIDL. Everyone can win and it doesn't always have to be about the big guy crushing the small local store.

Bookmark disaster

This morning when I flipped up the lid of the computer and launched Firefox something was strange. It did not look remotely like it usually does.

There were some strange bookmarks on the bookmarks toolbar folder. More important my own bookmark folders were not there.

They are gone. Lost. Deleted.

I had a ton of sites that I like bookmarked and now they are all gone.

I can't say in all the years of using a web browser that this has ever happened before. So this is a unique, weird and annoying thing.

This bothered me at first because I am a hoarder. I find stuff on the internet and I bookmark it. I come across blogs that look promising and I bookmark them. Now they are all gone.

Then I was thinking about what I actually had bookmarked there and I figure I can find it again if I really want to.

I do the same with my work-related bookmarks. I have a ton of them and yet it's happened so many times that when I click a link that I haven't used in a while the site has moved. Nowadays I just search everytime and it seems to be equally if not more effective. I now only bookmark the sites I use every week or two.

So I'm not gonna bother to recreate all the links in the browser. Instead I was thinking I might put up a half-dozen or so links on the right-hand side or bottom of my blog, if I can figure out how to do that.

I'm gonna stick with Firefox though, because I just like it and it is simple. And I like there to be some competition so if you want to help to change the world you've got to vote some way. This is how I vote in the browser war.

Man butts horse

Yeah, bizarre but true.

This clip from the BBC is not your usual footage from the world of horse racing.

Not sure if the race has yet to start or has already ended. Either way the jockey is pretty pissed about something and headbutts the horse.

Now wouldn't it be funny if the horse waited until later and gave him a sly kick in the head as retaliation.

If you're interested in seeing this bizarre clip click here

I need the toilet

I was out and about in Dublin city today, visiting the largest department store in the city with my wife. We were on something of a mission given that their sale was ending today. We knew what we wanted and were there to get it.

Anyway I was bursting for the toilet and a trip to the loo in the department store made sense as stage 1 of the shopping trip.

The situation
Arrived at the door of the men's toilet to be greeted by a queue of maybe 10 people waiting to use it. No way I'm queueing there.

Took the escalator to the next floor where the women's toilet was and noticed nobody waiting. Decided this was a better option. Marched in. Granted there were a few onlookers at the sinks looking a bit shocked.

Quickly located a cubicle, nipped inside and proceded to answer the call of nature.

Justified?

Now we're smokin' - why I prefer lumpwood

The second big barbecue of this incredible Irish summer we're having happened on Saturday evening. This time I resolved to do a few things a bit differently to the previous one.

There were some successes and one big failure from where I am standing.

I'll start with the failure.

I switched my fuel from lumpwood to charcoal. Simple reason for this. I had almost no lumpwood left (used it up the previous time) and had a bag of charcoal in the shed. I went through the exact same routine as I was following with the lumpwood and left the thing to burn for 30 minutes after lighting. You know when I took the lid off after 30 minutes you could almost sense the difference. It just didn't seem to be hot enough. The photo above is not one of my own, but serves to illustrate what I was missing. Heat.

I brought out the food, more delicious burgers, and planted them on there. 6 minutes later I came out to check on the burgers and give them a turn, like I did the previous time, but the damn things were not nearly cooked enough.

I'd say all in all the burgers took almost 10 minutes a side to cook. That is mad. Last time with the lumpwood they took about 6 minutes a side and boy were they cooked through.

The other aspect that was so different was the smoke, the smell of smoke and the taste of the burning coals. It was overwhelming. My clothes smelled like I'd been out on the piss in Dublin in 1997. I reeked. This was after a maximum exposure to the smoke of about 90 seconds in total. The food, when it eventually cooked, was really smokey too. I mean the food tasted good and it was cooked through but it definitely tasted different. You could tell it was cooked on charcoal.

Some people might love this. I preferred the taste of food cooked on lumpwood so I'll be buying more of that and forgetting about the charcoal briquettes.

The positives. Well I used the tip about grilling some onions in some aluminium foil with a little olive oil and some S&P. These turned out really good. I also took the tip about the peppers although I let a couple fall through into the coals. What an amateur! I also followed up the beef by trying the banana and chocolate idea. This was definitely a hit.

So, lots of good but my mind is made up on the choice of fuel in future. I'm done with charcoal and switching full-time to lumpwood.

I might try some chicken on the barbecue next time. The chicken on the beer can might be too much for me just now. How about grilling some wings or something. Ideally something like this picture.

Anybody done that? Any tips?

Blog rankings and all that

I don't spend too much time worrying about if anyone is reading my blog. I know for sure that Scubes reads it, god knows why.

Anyhow I'm kind of intrigued by the whole blog ranking concept. I don't really understand it.

There's some entity called technorati and they are somehow responsible for recording traffic. Or maybe that's not what they do. I don't understand it.

Then there are those counters and all that. Again I don't have one and don't know if having one would make me more or less curious about who reads this stuff.

Does anyone out there have a counter or a ranking somewhere? If so, does having it make you think differently about what you write or how you write?

Screw it - there's too much to write about

I'm in the supermarket this afternoon and I overhear this conversation between this guy, his wife and a person working for the supermarket. I don't know who they are so here's my read of the situation.

The guy is maybe mid to late 40s, and the woman is probably his wife or partner or whatever. The person working for the supermarket is definitely a manager. This is clear due to the tie he is wearing and the fact that he is listening intently to what they are saying.

The customers are clearly unhappy. They want some answers from the supermarket guy. They are having a heated discussion, not yet an argument, right in front of the tomatoes. The vine tomatoes to be precise. I know this because I'm trying to get at the damn things and can't get past this trio as they chat oblivious to the actual shopping going on around them.

The crux of the discussion. The guy is miffed that the tomatoes are not grown in Ireland. He can't understand it. He's hypothesising out loud to the supermarket manager about the possible reasons to explain the stocking of tomatoes sourced outside of Ireland.

He then rolls out his conversational Howitzer.

He says, con molto sarcasmo, "maybe the decision is made for purely commercial reasons".

I had to move on at this stage. I'm no business guru but aren't all decisions about what to sell in a retail environment made for purely commercial reasons? Of course they are. Those stores that sell stuff that makes no commercial sense are all gone out of business by now.

So what is the argument here. The patriotic view of selling locally made produce. I agree that locally made produce should be sold but business is business. You would be an idiot to stock Irish-grown tomatoes if they represent bad business.

Businesses should make a contribution to the society in which they operate. I don't think it should be a case of we'll sell locally made stuff today but we might have to lay everyone off when we go bust in a few months.

I bought a bunch of stuff for the barbecue which I had tonight with the family. I smell like I have been out with a fire crew dealing with an industrial blaze. I changed my fuel and I'm not sure it was a success at all.

More on that later.

Drooping motivation

I'm at that point where I'm wondering if I'll keep going with the blog.

I mean it's fun for sure but sometimes I feel like it's another responsibility to take care of.

It kind of scares me, if scare is the right word at all, that a whole bunch of people clicked on my profile to find out something about me.

Granted I don't reveal much but the fact that a bunch of people clicked is interesting nonetheless.


Anyway, I'm not sure whether to keep going, maybe on a less frequent basis or something. I read today that 65% of people who blog don't consider what they write to constitue journalism. Is that really a surprise?

I also read on Robert Scoble's blog yesterday, trawling back a little through some of what he has written recently, that he seriously disapproves of people writing blogs and not telling their boss. I personally don't agree with what he thinks in this instance, but you can make your own mind up by reading the piece here.

I don't really feel like I need anyone's permission to write what I feel like writing. Obviously I'm not going to trash talk about where I work or anything like that. That is just plain stupid.

But the idea that somehow I need to tell my boss that I write a blog. I'm not sure why I would need to do that. Where would that end? With me telling my boss that I'm planning to write a letter to the newspaper or to call a radio show phone in and give my opinion on something.

I'm old enough to exercise judgement about what I write. The main issue now is whether I bother to continue.

Oh yeah Rufus - you know it's true!

Check this out:

Chaka Khan,
Let me rock you
Let me rock you

Chaka Khan
Let me rock you
That's all I wanna do

Chaka Khan, let me rock you
Let me rock you, Chaka Khan
Let me rock you
'Cause I feel for you
Feel for you

Of course you know who I feel for. The poor unfortunates who ring my house offering to save me money on my monthly phone bill. These folks have just about the hardest job in the world and I really do respect them for doing it.

When they call me my initial reaction to the "the reason I am calling you Mr. ___" is to just say "hold on.. let me just stop you there. I'm not interested."

I admit I have done this a few times, especially when I get these calls after a lousy day at work.

More often I let them do their bit and then tell them I'm not interested, usually because I don't want all the hassle of changing phone companies again.

I can only imagine how tough a job that must be.

How easy it is to be the customer sometimes.

It can't be just stupidity

I have had one of those "interesting" days where I really have to wonder about why other people do the things they do. I know why I do what I do but can't for the life of me figure out any of the following that I saw today:

People parking in disabled car spaces. Sure you need to just go into the shop for a minute or two. Or maybe you are just chatting with your friend in the next car space. But really. Parking in disabled parking spaces is just a no-no with me. Don't do it.

I'm not going to mention people parking in "mother and child" (or parent and child) spaces because I know it will really annoy some people ;-)

People who just drop litter on the street and walk off. I was driving around on the weekend and was sitting in a line of traffic when this group of 4 young people (anyone younger than me is a young person in my book) strolled past my car window. Three guys and a girl. One of the guys chucked something on the ground and you could hear it hit the pavement, some kind of piece of metal or something. The girl shouts at him to pick it up. He looks all sheepish and picks it up.

We need more girls like this patrolling the streets. Or maybe people should not just chuck stuff on the street.

I think it's going to lash rain tonight. It has been so hot here today (30C at least) and now the whole sky is covered with grey cloud.

Oh boy we're gonna get it from mother nature tonight!

Maybe the rain will wash away all the rubbish.

Dirty old town

The family and I headed out to Bray on Monday evening. We figured it was such a beautiful evening that it would be nice to head out there for a walk along the promenade and our 4 year-old could have some fun on the beach.

Bray is easy to get to now the M50 motorway is finished. This is such a long story that I won't go into it here. Anyway it took maybe 10 minutes to get there from our home.


The first thing that struck us was the presence of a huge array of amusements right there next to the beach. It gave the place a really good festival feel. It wasn't too crowded.

It's amazing how kids have such selective senses. We were walking from the car towards these huge amusements and our 4 year-old is shouting "look! that car is parked on the grass!". Not sure he even saw the massive silver amusement ride thingy in front of us.

On evenings like this you could almost forget that you are in Ireland. The temperature was really pleasant and the sea was so calm, per my photo below.


I mean this could be almost anywhere on a night like this. We kept walking along the promenade and you know there is something kind of strange and interesting about this town called Bray. It is like no other town in Ireland.

People who are from Bray are fiercely proud of it. I'm not from here but I worked with people from Bray for 8 years and boy do they talk about it a lot.


Anyway, as I said it has this nice promenade (above) that you can walk along. Being a nice evening a whole pile of people had the same idea, meaning that invariably you can expect to bump into people you know.

We met the parents of a friend of the family and we met a family that lives right next to my mother. The guy in this particular family living next to my mother thinks I am my brother if you know what I mean.

He calls me all the time by my brother's name and do you think I have the sense to say "actually you're confusing me with my brother". Nope. This is about the 4th or 5th time in my life this has happened to me.

Oh the pain of the "Marcel" incident. He was calling to me on the beach and I was wondering what the heck is that sound. Then I realised it was him. I just brushed it off, again. What am I like?

Our 4 year-old had a great time on the beach, mostly chucking pebbles into the sea. I overheard him shouting "here comes another grease-ball" and had to double-check with him that he was actually saying that.

I mean that's not something he normally says. It transpires he learned that from an episode of The Simpsons called "Lard of the Dance". He was delighted with himself.

I had to keep explaining that it might be better to throw the stones further down the beach where people were not swimming.

We went for ice-cream and it was kind of the cap on the evening for me. I have to admit I had it in my head first-and-foremost to get the ice-cream. Nice.

Bray is not a bad little town but it is a bit dirty at times like these. All around the place there was rubbish strewn on the ground and spilling out of rubbish bins.

Nobody had emptied these bins in a while by the look of it. There was a fair bit of litter here and there.

To cap the thing off our little man stepped in doggy poo and we had that to contend with in the boot of the car on the hot drive home. He was sitting in the back seat calling out "I can smell poo".

As we left the sun was setting and there were still plenty of people sitting about enjoying the last part of the day. Evenings like this tend to be rare enough so it was great to get out and enjoy it.

I was snapping away with the camera. I'm kind of in experimental mode at the moment and might be finally starting to figure the damn thing out.

Be sure to tell me if you like any of these photos. I'm doing my best to keep the camera level and my thumb out of the way of the lens. Hope you managed to get a sense of the kind of evening it was.

Thanks to everyone who commented on the barbecue. If Friday's weather is good then that might be the next phase of "adventures of a grilling novice".

Easy peasy

Excellent result from the barbecue this evening. Definitely the best yet. Up to now I have been following the guidance from my Weber manual but it turns out that there's a few things they suggested that just don't seem to work.

So I now have made a mental note of what I did and I'm gonna stick with the basic steps here.

Step 1. Talk to people who know what they are doing and ask them for some tips. Thanks to everyone who gave me tips. Some of the clear winning tips include using a meat thermometer (need to go to a hardware store for that.. might not to go Atlantic though) but that will have to wait until next time. Another great tip was pressing down the middle of the burgers to make the middle a little thinner. This worked out really well. Another idea was to use an onion soup as a marinade. Definitely gonna try that one.

Step 2. Get some good burgers. Hey these are my steps so if I want to stick with beef burgers I will. I got some nice big fat ones in Blackrock yesterday. While I was there I bumped into one of my old bosses. It was one of those strange moments where I wasn't sure if we both should pretend we don't see each other. But we didn't do that.

Burgers are shown below before I got near them.

This time I didn't marinade them, or anything fancy at all. A bit of a press in the middle and on they went. Now I had lit the grill maybe 30 minutes before and it was damn hot. I mean really hot. Excellent. That's where I went wrong before. I kept opening the blooming lid to check if it was hot and poking it like men do. That was a mistake so now I light the thing and walk away for a half hour. Lid on and no touching.

My was there smoke. Loads of it as soon as I put these lads on the grill. The whole garden was clouded in tasty smoke. Mmmmmmm.


Step 3. Get your other good stuff ready. Mmmmm. Cheese. Yep slices of cheese does it for me and my clan. And of course you have to have some salad to ease the guilt I guess.

Burger buns, or bundys as we call them over here, are a must. We like the ones with the sesame seeds though god alone knows why this is important.

Step 4. Get the drinks in. The wife and I are working our way (over an extended period of time mind you) through our stash of wine bottles and today we enjoyed a very nice French red.

I am no wine expert but you could tell this wine was from France at the first sip. Full of taste and serious. Nice.


Step 5. Get out there and check the burgers are not still raw or burnt. They were just grand. 5 to 6 minutes a side and they were ready to be introduced to my teeth. The picture below was after the first 5 minutes before I flipped them. You could see the juice in the little depression I made in the middle of the burgers. These burgers were really juicy when they were done. Lush!


Step 6. Stick burgers in a bun with whatever stuff you can cram into your mouth and devour with gusto. Keep a napkin or rag handy in case you drool or juices slip out of your burger. Wash the whole lot down with a large glass of red.

Trés bien fait!

Lovely stuff. Now if we can get a few more decent days of sunshine I'll try something more adventurous than burgers.

If you've had any luck with anything else, you know some kind of exotic way of cooking chicken on the barbecue that even a barbecue novice like me could follow then be sure to fire some ideas my way.

If you've been grilling tonight too hope it's been fun for you also.

Beautiful days and nights

We're having a blinding summer in Dublin if I say so myself. It's been warm and dry for so many days this summer that in my book it already qualifies as one of the best summers in recent memory.

Some ways you know it's been a good summer in my view:

1. The Ice-cream van makes daily visits.. you can hear it coming because of the jaunty muzak they have blaring, including a muzak version of the "match of the day" theme during the world cup.

2. You curse your car because it doesn't have air conditioning. You probably laughed at the idea of needing it when you bought your car but boy are you sorry now.

3. The barbecue has been lit more than once since May. I'm gonna light mine up tomorrow and got some big fat beef burgers this afternoon. Lush!

4. Not every car you see is filthy. We have a lot of dirty cars on our roads, mine being one right now. This is the result of our unique precipitation history. In brief this means if you wash your car it will rain about an hour later.

5. Beautiful evenings, see below. There is nothing like a mad bit of pink in the night sky to make you marvel at nature and all that.



6. Shorts. People are brave enough to wear shorts, safe in the knowledge that the temperature is stable for the day. I had mine on today. I once worked with a colleague who could just not believe that I ever wore shorts. In truth she had a hard time accepting that I had legs too. I don't have time to explain all this. Suffice it to say I have the usual set of limbs etc.

7. Impromptu football matches. I watched a bunch of people having a game of football, the european variety of course, on a field near where I live. I think a lot of them were maybe from central europe. They were really enjoying themselves and I say fair play to them. Beats the stupid idea of swinging a massive rope and hoping the whole street will start skipping on it.

8. Open top cars. Cabriolets I used to call them but that might be a bit of a rare term these days. Soft tops, convertibles or whatever you like. They all start to come out and before you know it you seem to be just about the only person who doesn't have one of these cars. Some cheeky so and so parked a BMW convertible at the entrance to the estate where I live today and put one of those home-made "for sale" signs on it. The right idea on a day like today when people all wish they were cruising around in a car like that.

Yep. It's good times here in Dublin in recent weeks and months, at least in terms of the weather.
Al of "San Diego Diary" fame is back in town so welcome home Al!

A final point.
Anyone got any tips to help me make the best of my burgers tomorrow. The last time I cooked them they tasted like wood. Any tips for keeping them nice and juicy?

Mr. President sir, kiss the baby

Says the aide to President: "it will be great publicity for you sir".

Yeah.

Psycho shoe salesman

Yeah. This is a bit weird too.

I was in a shopping centre in Dublin tonight, on the south side (the best side.. ooh... controversial!) in case you don't know and was sitting on a bench waiting for my good wife to reappear with Orange Juice and Bread when I noticed the guy from the shoe shop walking past. He was closing up for the night at 8pm.

He used to look like this.

Now he looks like this.












Hey I'm all for people doing whatever the heck they like with their hair and all that.

But this is the guy that we have been going to for our kids' shoes.

Kids shoes. Psycho haircut, spikes and all. Jesus H.

Maybe it might be best to wait a while before buying the next pair.

Thank you for the musings

Wasn't that the name of an ABBA song? No? Ah well.

Anyway thanks indeed for the musings about the previous posting about the jar of cock rub. I was up at the house again tonight and it has moved from the kitchen table to the top of the fridge-freezer. Winston reckons this might be dangerous. You're right, what with it being uncannily similar to a travel-sized jar of Nutella. Yuk. But not as yuk as wine coming out the nostrils. Hope it wasn't a vintage bottle of Blue Nun!

Anyway I was tempted to ask about it but decided against doing so. Either way me and the mother were off to the electrical store, yes the same one where I worked for 8 years as a child labourer/teen worker. The mother was buying a tumble drier because the old one was crocked.

Nowadays you can bring and old appliance back and they have to take it in for recycling. When I pulled it out from under the kitchen counter it was manky. Enough about that. Mission accomplished. New drier at home in the kitchen. Old drier on it's way to the electrical equivalent of Bovine University.

So I was in the shop in work today and noticed the headline on the Sun newspaper. It said:

We are all sex mad!

Ireland is a nation of randy bed-hoppers.

I examined this closely and apparently, according to a "red-hot survey", Irish people are all completely sex mad.

Granted there wasn't much sign of this madness at that time of day but presumably the good people of Ireland all head home and tear off their clothes as soon as they get through the hall door.

How on earth do they survey this stuff.

"Excuse me" (to person walking on Grafton Street at 3 o'clock in the afternoon).

"We're conducting a survey about Irish people. Can I just ask you if you are a randy bed-hopper?".

"You are? OK, I'll put you down as a yes so."

Now I know this would go some way to explaining the jar of cock rub but I have to say that my sources inside the family tell me that this is in fact a remnant of a stag weekend. I should add that another remnant of such a weekend, a dashing red pair of "love cuffs" (also from Ann Summers) also does the rounds in my mother's house and is regularly offered to the grandchildren to "play with".

Yeah. I can hear it now. What kind of godforsaken place is that house. It's not your usual mix of paraphenalia but what the heck.

A jar of cock rub

OK. This blog is supposed to be about strange things that happen when I leave the house. This definitely qualifies.

So I'm up at my mother's house today. helping out with the garden. You know, mowing the lawn, cutting the hedge and all that.

I take a break for a cup of tea and I notice there is a jar of cock rub, yes that's right cock rub, on the kitchen table.

You know, I don't even want to know the story behind this.

Hoff under the collar

Excuse the crap pun. I saw this story today on the BBC and just had to mention it.

The All England Club has denied press reports that a "drunken" David Hasselhoff had to be removed from the Wimbledon tennis championships.

How bizarre is that?

Well not as bizarre as the explanation of how he came to cut his arm. He hit his head on a chandelier and "shards of glass entered his arm severing a tendon".

Ok, he's tall but he's definitely not 7 feet tall. Maybe this hotel he was staying in was an oompah loompa hotel or something like that?

You couldn't make this stuff up. Wait a minute! Maybe that's exactly what they did.

"..and would you prefer a smoking or non-smoking room sir?"

I don't hate Microsoft

I have been using Windows on my various computers since about 1993 and have always used the associated programs. You know what I mean. Microsoft Office. Microsoft Internet Explorer and so on. I never ventured much away from that.

I did dabble with Netscape when it wasn't bad but lately it's nothing great in my view.

I once tried to install Linux on my Notebook computer but it just was impossible to follow. I kind of developed a slightly negative view of this whole "open source" software idea.

Then I tried Mozilla Firefox. Let me know if this is beginning to sound like one of those ab-crunching / low-carb-diet info-mercials.

I liked Firefox instantly. It was free. It seemed pretty stable. It had some clever features that weren't in Internet Explorer. I've stuck with it. I played around with Opera once and uninstalled it. Firefox it is for me.

That made me think a bit differently about the whole open source thing again. Not sure why. So recently I installed Gimp, a graphics application for Windows. I know it's available for Linux and other kinds of operating systems but I run Windows so that's that.

It's a really great application with a really bad name. This must be programmer humour or something.

Then I tried Audacity, an audio editing program that allows you to record, edit and manipulate audio and music on your PC. Another great free open-source application.

I'm starting to think I might even give Linux a go again. I feel like I am weaning myself off my Microsoft dependency.

Apologies if this seems like a really dull subject tonight.

The strange side of Belfast

I did notice a few things about Belfast that were odd and they added to the sense of diverse experience over the few days that we were there. So where do I begin.

On Thursday evening we did a scouting mission to find the concert venue so we wouldn't be driving around in desperation on Friday looking for it.

This is something I have always done in unfamiliar cities and it has stood me in good stead on visits to places as diverse as Como in Italy, Novato in California and the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.

We found it easily enough, the Waterfront Hall, located right down at the edge of the harbour in Belfast.



We drove back towards the city, planning to head directly back to the hotel but when we reached the centre of the city I found myself in the centre lane of a 3 lane street with no way to make the left-turn that I needed. No problem I thought, I'll go on to the next junction and take a left and loop back that way.

We proceded to the next junction and made the aforementioned left turn. As we entered the street this was like no other we had driven on in Belfast. I'll describe.

Above the street was a zig-zag of bunting, small red white and blue flags stretching down the street as far as the eye could see. The kerbs (curbs) were painted red white and blue, the lamp posts all featured union jack flags.

Are you getting the picture here?

We had driven into what might be termed a "loyalist stronghold". Me with the family driving on the street in the only car with plates from the Republic of Ireland. Click here for more pictures.

Don't get me wrong. There was nothing that was an obvious concern to me.

I mean nobody was trying to throw themselves on the bonnet of the car like Gary Coleman or anything like that. It was just a strange feeling. It was just so different to a regular street. In fairness if I had driven down the Falls Road I think I might have thought that unusual too. Maybe it was just the fact that I wasn't expecting to see this.

On Friday morning I was sitting with my wife and our boys in a coffee shop on the main street that runs in front of city hall. We were having coffee with a friend who used to work with me many years back. Anyhow I was sitting in the seat next to the window and right opposite me, directly opposite the street in a kind of central-symmetry of an intersection (way to complicate something) there was a huge construction site where they are building a big shopping centre.

I noticed this guy appear at the intersection and he was holding one of those big video cameras, the sort you normally see TV news crews using. He was alone and holding this camera filming the building site.

Across the street these three guys come along, all wearing baseball caps. The minute they spotted the camera two of them put their arms up to shield their faces while the third pulled up the hood on his jacket to hide his face.

I'm looking at this thinking what the heck are these guys doing.

I've never seen this kind of thing before so this too makes it into my "list of strange".

I spent 5 weeks studying Burberry and the problems they have because of the Chav culture in the UK. Well it appears that this culture is alive and well in Belfast too except in Belfast these guys are known as "spides". These three lads were spides for sure.

I'm not passing judgement on these guys or the city culture. I'm just saying that these guys were acting like they had something to hide. This to me is not normal.

Anhow. That's enough for now on the Belfast trip. It was great fun. Next post will probably see me ranting about something trivial again.

p.s. the credit card company refunded me while I was away in Belfast. Good news.

and these things were great too..

I took a walk with our toddler to try and get him to have a little sleep and the street was so noisy.I decided to duck into the Queens University campus and it really is magnificent. This was not on my list of things to visit but I'm glad I did.

Inside the university complex there is a magnificent square with all kinds of beautiful buildings to behold. There's also an ugly administration building but I think there must be some kind of law that requires each university's admin building to be gack. This one sure was.

I also chanced upon the Botanic Gardens on the way back to the hotel and these too are well worth a look. There is a huge glasshouse in the middle of the gardens but I didn't go in. Despite the fact that the gardens are right next to what is a really busy road out of the city, once you're inside the gardens you don't notice the noise at all. That makes this place a real little oasis of calm in a city with lots of traffic noise.

At the edge of the park there is the Ulster Museum though it was closing as I was walking around so I never got to see inside. I hear it's pretty good and there's no admission charge which is good news for parents of children who might go in and decide immediately that everything inside is boring. That's kids for you.

At the edge of the gardens there is a big statute of Lord Kelvin, thrilling for all the Physicists out there.

We were going to check out some of these virtual-reality play centres for kids, you know the places where you go into some huge big indoor "discovery area" where kids can learn about science and nature. Instead we accidentally found a couple of great parks and this was definitely a better way to get some exercise and discover nature. Excellent.

Tomorrow: The side of Belfast that is strange.

Part 1. Things about the Belfast trip that were great

So as I said in my comment yesterday I'm back from Belfast and we had a great time there.

Belfast surprised me in many respects, some good and some not so good but all in all I'd definitely recommend it.

So what was great about the trip?

Let's begin with the Hotel. I stayed on the south of the city at the Wellington Park Hotel, about 5 minutes drive from the city centre and right next to Queens University Belfast. The Hotel was recommended by a colleague and it was a great recommendation. Highlight of the stay. My 4-year old perusing the wide and varied array of breakfast foods and declaring, as if he owned the hotel, "I want Strawberries for breakfast". I was mortified but the lady behind the counter immediately darted into the kitchen and returned with a huge plate of Strawberries. Needless to say they were duly consumed with the kind of gusto only a hungry 4-year-old can muster. Excellent. The staff simply could not have done more to make our stay more enjoyable so top marks to them.

The concert was fantastic. Let me explain. The place was packed with little kids and a whole variety of parents. You had the enthusiastic parents, my wife and myself for example occasionally bursting into a few bars of "fruit salad, yummy yummy". You had the uninterested parents, those who spent more time looking at their watches than at the stage. Finally you had the outsourced parents, typically grandparents who typically don't know what all the fuss is about and "who the bloody hell are these wigglers anyway". Our boys loved it after a kind of nervous start. A few numbers, a dinosaur ballerina and a psychotic dancing fish and they were quickly into their comfort zone. Great fun but the helium baloon for 6 quid was a bit steep. That aside I think it was worth the trip alone.

We also had an accidental discovery of a really beautiful park on the Malone road. We were driving around with the boys just killing time really and chanced upon this vast park, called the Thomas and Lady Dixon Park. It is apparently famous for its roses and you can see why when you venture inside a little. The boys had a great time wandering about, looking for clues and monsters. That's what 4-hours a day watching Scooby Doo does to a young child's mind.




OK - that's about all I can write for now. More on the good stuff tomorrow.