Ireland crushes England.. the world is good

Really enjoyed today's 6 nations match between Ireland and England. Lots of reasons why this match was special today. There was lots of pressure and very high expectations.

Ireland delivered. Big time.

It's one of those days when you feel things are just destined to turn out this way.

When I saw two of the Irish players crying during the playing of the Irish national anthem I knew the performance was going to be all about passion and intensity. It sure was.

And the final score was crushing too.

Feels like vindication and recognition rolled up into one.

And the world judges Britney

I'm not interested in Britney Spears' mental state. I'm not interested in whether her career is over for good or on the rebound.



It seems everyone else is.



There are pictures everywhere of her going to a tattoo place, pictures of her shaving her head, pictures of her waiting to get the tattoo, pictures of her leaving the place and so on.



There are eye-witness accounts from inside and outside the tattoo shop. Someone else chimes in to say that she flew to California in a cheap seat on a flight.



Others are jumping in here to give away information about her rehab experience recently.



Call me strange but isn't this fascination in the realm of obsessive right now. Can this woman, a private citizen I imagine, not do what she wants without the world poring over her every move.



I accept that she is not a typical person, she has come from a position of fame and lately notoriety. But surely there is something wrong with following her around everywhere to see what she buys, what she wears, what she eats, what she throws up.



I'm wondering if these people couldn't possibly find something more useful to do with their time than sneaking around behind Britney Spears hoping she does something "newsworthy".



Who is responsible for making this stuff a headline news item across the globe?



It's really sad that humans, intelligent people, are fed a diet of gossipy fluff, passed off as news and being "in the public interest".

Full of pop

Tonight I drank a whole load of Pepsi. I'm not sure how much exactly but it was 3 big glasses, and of course with free refills one tends not to pay too much attention.



I think the glasses were 20 Fluid ounces each.



I should feel gross now but I don't.



I conclude that I either am immune to sugar or I have a tape-worm.

What kind of music do 11 year-olds like?

Overheard in a restaurant tonight..



"U2 is the best band on the planet"



Conversation was between two 11 year-olds.



Are kids this young already trying to align themselves with stuff like this? Then I noticed a few of them were taking pictures with what looked like expensive digital cameras.



It's a far cry from what I was doing, and what I knew about music, when I was 11.

More filth

Today I got my car back from the garage. It was in for repair. Long story.

I picked it up at 5 PM and by 6 PM it was filthy, courtesy of the muck and general crap splattered onto the side of it by all the trucks speeding up and down the roads near where I live.

I thought we had a law that requires all trucks leaving building sites to have their tyres cleaned before driving onto the road system.

If we don't have such a law then we sure as hell need one.

If we do have such a law then clearly it enjoys the same degree of respect as most other road-related laws in Ireland.

I will probably wash my car at the weekend. No doubt it will then rain, and I shall have the misfortune to drive past a speeding truck which will splatter mud all over my car again.

Are cars in Ireland the dirtiest in Europe? I think so.

p.s. That's not me or my car in the picture... as the saying goes "for illustrative purposes only".

Dog in a coat

On my way to the airport on the excellent Aircoach I spotted a dog being walked in Saint Stephen's Green in Dublin.

It was wearing a snazzy little blue coat. Not a bad idea for a day like that.

I just wonder if there are people sleeping in doorways in Dublin at night while dogs saunter through parks in little blue coats.

Of course it can always get worse or worse again.

Cold weather panic

I don't understand why the sight of a few flakes of snow is enough to bring the UK to a standstill.

Flying last thursday to the UK, Sky News did its very best to create a sense of panic and chaos with its constant breaking news ticker about the weather and which airports were open or closed, and constant shots of the same bit of snow falling shown over and over.

My flight was delayed but truth be told I was more concerned by what awaited me once I landed in the UK. According to Sky News, the highways agency was recommending motorists to stay at home and not to make unnecessary journeys, and if driving was required to bring food, boots, a torch, and even a spade.

I pictured myself picking up my rental car and all the staff shaking their heads and thinking I was mad to head out into the severe weather.

Needless to say when I landed there was barely a problem at all. Sure there was a little snow on the edge of the airport and some snow at the side of roads, but that was it.

This news channel-stoked weather paranoia is plain crazy. "Experts" reckon this bout of weather-induced 1-day absence from work costed the UK some 400 million pounds in lost productivity.

When will this kind of news created by the news channels end? It's just daft.

Old lady bullying

I remember a Monty Python sketch from years ago about "senile delinquents". They were a bunch of old ladies who would go around battering young folk with their handbags.

They operated under the motto "make tea, not war."

Hilarious.

Well I observed something bizarre in the airport on Thursday last, and it made me think of the aforementioned sketch.

I was sitting at the gate waiting to board my flight to the UK when these two old ladies came up to the gate area. I was waiting to board at gate 22 which, naturally enough, is located adjacent to gate 23. The two gates share a common seating area and it was pretty full with people, the flight at gate 23 about to depart for Barcelona and my flight to the UK delayed (yawn.. again) at gate 22. I was sitting over at the edge next to gate 23 not that it mattered.

They rushed up, and the taller of the two old ladies pointed at gate 22 and they charged the Aer Lingus desk. Once there the Aer Lingus ground staff indicated that the flight was in fact delayed and that they should take a seat.

About 10 minutes later what can only be described as a little old lady arrived and wandered over to these other two ladies. From the ensuing conversation it became clear that they were friends and had arranged to meet at the airport on their way to the UK. It then became clear that the littlest lady had arrived first and on arriving at the airport and not seeing the other two had gone ahead and checked in. This seemed to have really ticked off the other two, especially the tallest of the three. She was miffed about this, big time.

The two who were together at first then started picking on the littlest one, berating her for going ahead and checking in, and attacking her justification for doing so. Then they started with a line of dialogue along the lines of "maybe the next time we'll agree to stick to the plan we made".

No matter how the littlest one tried to explain or even to apologise for the mix-up, the other two started berating her all over again.

It was amazing to watch. They were clearly all in their sixties and old enough to know better but it was like watching three schoolgirls, bitching and arguing.

I guess there's always the latent child in each of us.

Here comes a flurry

I have been busy of late and have my business school finals coming up early month.

So, in anticipation of a lack of activity on my part, and in recognition of my recent lack of activity, I hereby announce the beginning of a flurry of posts.

They will be short. Nothing surer.

It sure has been an interesting start to the year.

Time to take to the skies...

Yes, it's time again that I am on my travels once more. Once again I'm off to a business workshop in the UK.

The trip itself is routine, and the place is not far from Heathrow Airport. The big issue this time is the weather.

I've had some annoying experiences in recent times caused by airplane malfunctions and those annoying little lights in the cockpit that light up just as we're all ready to go.

I've had quite a few weather-related inconveniences too, like the time I was flying with some colleagues from JFK to Raleigh-Durham and the toy plane we were flying in kept icing over. It was one of those nights where we seemed destined to not get off the ground but we did. Turned out to not be such a good thing as we ended up stranded in Raleigh for 2 weeks with the coldest weather seen in North Carolina in over 80 years and a curfew imposed by the National Guard as food supplies ran low.

So the forecast for the UK tomorrow is for snow. Not much mind you, not exactly what you'd call a Nordic blizzard. Maybe 5 cm of snow, I make that just shy of 2 inches. Nothing to really worry about until you remember that some parts of Europe just aren't used to snow and cold weather and tend to grind to a halt when a few flakes of the white powdery stuff fall.

I fly in during the afternoon by which time I expect things will have normalised. We shall see.

I don't expect to be able to post anything between now and Monday so have a good weekend and wish me luck as I head into the 5cm drifts expected to cripple the UK tomorrow.

Football violence.. a new low?

I was sitting on the sofa this evening flicking through the channels and waiting for the Republic of Ireland v San Marino match to start.

Over on Setanta there was a highlights programme from the Dutch league. I wasn't paying much attention to the game until something pretty strange happened.

Two of the players got into a bit of a heated discussion and they did that whole forehead-to-forehead thing. Then one of them tried to bite the other on the face. It was bizarre.

I think the match happened at the weekend so it's not new news but nonetheless it was a pretty bizarre thing to do. In my lifetime I've seen players headbutt opponents, I've seen one player pinch another player's testicles, I've seen a player jump into the crowd and attack an abusive fan. Until today I'd never seen a player try to bite the face of another.

Now some reports from the game suggest that it wasn't an attempted bite. I'm not going to say anything other than from the views I saw of the incident the motion of the player towards the other was like lining up for a bite.

Shame on this so-called sportsman.

In fairness the club has sanctioned the guy for doing this and the guy in question, Sebastien Sansoni, has apologised and seems genuinely shocked by his own behaviour.

What makes sports people do crazy stuff like this? Is it really the heat of battle or is it something else?

What happened to "Win-Win"?

I was at one of those print shops in Dublin today, hoping to get a report I have just finished printed and bound so that it looks neat and professional.



I had a hard time finding the place, not helped by their decision to site the sign advertising their business behind a wall at the side of the road. To make matters worse the road they are located on is one-way and you could only possibly see the sign if you were driving like Nicole Richie, i.e. driving the wrong way up the street.



So I'm clearly not Nicole Richie and I drove by the place once on my epic quest to get the document printed.



Anyway, once I eventually found the place and parked I walked over to the front door.



Just to put things into context I called in advance last week to ask how much the binding would cost and was told 5 euros. Grand.



So as I walked over towards the door I saw this interesting sign on the door. It said, and I might not have it verbatim here:

In order to operate efficiently, we have introduced a minimum charge of 25 euro

WHAAAT?



Now call me old-fashioned if you want but there used to be a concept long ago of "the customer". For sure the idea is to be profitable and to minimise waste and to offer good and friendly service to customers.



So where along the way did this hare-brained idea come from?



How has something that is of no concern or interest to me suddenly become my problem? Why are they passing on the cost of their inefficiencies to me?



I enjoyed the service. Once.



In order to spend my cash efficiently I won't be using that service again. Sometimes policies bite back.

Killer lake

I was listening to a podcast in the car this week. It was from BBC Radio 4 and was titled "Exploding Lake".

I listened in fascination and horror to the tale of a lake in Cameroon that was responsible for the deaths of 1800 people.

You should check it out.

You may still be able to get the Podcast via iTunes..

Read about it here or here

Look at pictures from a webcam at the lake here.

Terrible knock-knock jokes

My son has really taken a shine to knock-knock jokes of late.

He's been a fan of these "jokes" for some time. Lately though he's waging a war of attrition against his parents and grandparents.

Now you wouldn't have a problem with this if only the jokes weren't so terrible. Here's a few of his favourites:

Knock knock
Who's there?

Cheese
Cheese who?

Cheese Horse I didn't say chimney

Or this one:

Knock knock
Who's there?

Banana
Banana who?

Banana I bet you didn't think I'd say cheese horse

Anyone else see the problem here?

Now in fairness he's only four-and-a-half and the whole humour thing can be complex. I am prone on occasion to a dash of sarcasm so he might not be completely clear about the whole humour thing yet.

That begs the question though. Do knock-knock jokes exist in some form in parts of the world where English is not the first language?

Is there a Chinese equivalent of the knock-knock joke?
What about Australia, South America, Africa, Central Europe?

I mean these jokes are terrible. Are they terrible elsewhere too?