I'm off jet setting again on Monday... woohoo! Once again its for another dance festival. However this time its for an Argentine tango festival in Palermo for the Sicilia Tango Festival and it's for 2 whole weeks. I like dancing Argentine tango (as well as a lot of other dances) but recently I've gotten a little disillusioned with the tango scene in Dublin and I'm hoping that this tango trip will re-ignite the "tango fever" in me again. If I hadn't agreed with my roommate that I'd be her partner for this tango festival months ago (although at the time it was only for 1 week) there would be no way I'd be going away to tango for 2 whole straight weeks with my current frame of mind for the dance. I'm going to treat this as a 2 week holiday with tangoing rather than a 2 week tango holiday. Luckily I have a few days off where there is no tango where I can veg out or do touristy stuff. Why is it that almost all my trips away this year have involved going to dance festivals or dance related events? I gots to find myself another excuse to take trips away.
In other news, and this one is for Harry Potter fans out there, apparently Dumbledore is gay. I guess the signs were always there. Those beedy eyes, that long white beard, how he always preferred to wear long robes and his unsubtle interest in Harry :P Just think about it, Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movie had the same dress sense and he's gay.
I guess J. K. Rowling had to have one gay character to keep the PC brigade happy. Actually, come to think about it, I can't recall there ever being any black characters in any of the Harry Potter books (of course I could be wrong about this). Maybe I should alert Ms. Rowling to this little fact before the PC brigade does.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Go Ireland
It's official folks. Ireland is the friendliest country in the world according to Lonely Planet's 2008 Bluelist guide. Now, if only we could relay that message onto the customer service people who work in the local Spars, Centras, Londis', Tescos etc. It's just not right when the self service check out machines, despite their limited vocabulary, gives you more conversation and social interaction than the check-out people actually do in some of those places. I'm not looking for a smile or anything drastic like that. I'm a simple man with simple needs. All I want is for the person to stop talking to their friend beside them for 2 seconds in order to properly acknowledge my existence. Sticking your hand out for the money while in mid conversation with your friend/fellow co-worker is not acknowledgment people!
Come to think of it, this week has been a pretty good week for Ireland (and its still only Wednesday). As well as being named the friendliest country in the world we've so far also had:
- an Irish author, Anne Enright, win this year's Man Booker prize
- an Irish firm, Wavebob, be one of a few companies around the world to successfully generate power from using the sea.
- Oscar Wilde named... erhem... "UK's" greatest wit.
On that last point, before people start jumping down my throat with things like :
"We didn't suffer through 800 years of oppression to be still considered part of the UK."
Yes, I do realise that Ireland is not part of the UK. Now, if only we could tell the people who conducted the "UK's greatest wit" survey that. Well, I suppose considering that Oscar Wilde lived between 1854 to 1900 when Ireland was still under British rule I guess technically speaking you could get away with calling him the "UK's greatest wit".
Coincidentally, this is not the first time this week that I've had Ireland referred to as still being part of the UK by the English. During the Lindy Hop Festival that I attended in London over the weekend my nationality was put down as being "British" on my registration/welcome card despite me clearly putting down "Irish" when first registering. Then, when I went to buy the festival dvd and put down my shipping address the girl behind the counter said to me after seeing me put down "Ireland" as the destination country, and I quote : "Ireland, that's still the UK isn't it?". It was at this point that I looked up at her and gave her my best "800 feckin years of oppression" face. It was an honest mistake. I suppose I should have been more specific and wrote down "REPUBLIC OF IRELAND WHICH IS NOT PART OF THE UK". This little incident made me wonder; do a lot of English people still consider Ireland as being part of the UK?
Come to think of it, this week has been a pretty good week for Ireland (and its still only Wednesday). As well as being named the friendliest country in the world we've so far also had:
- an Irish author, Anne Enright, win this year's Man Booker prize
- an Irish firm, Wavebob, be one of a few companies around the world to successfully generate power from using the sea.
- Oscar Wilde named... erhem... "UK's" greatest wit.
On that last point, before people start jumping down my throat with things like :
"We didn't suffer through 800 years of oppression to be still considered part of the UK."
Yes, I do realise that Ireland is not part of the UK. Now, if only we could tell the people who conducted the "UK's greatest wit" survey that. Well, I suppose considering that Oscar Wilde lived between 1854 to 1900 when Ireland was still under British rule I guess technically speaking you could get away with calling him the "UK's greatest wit".
Coincidentally, this is not the first time this week that I've had Ireland referred to as still being part of the UK by the English. During the Lindy Hop Festival that I attended in London over the weekend my nationality was put down as being "British" on my registration/welcome card despite me clearly putting down "Irish" when first registering. Then, when I went to buy the festival dvd and put down my shipping address the girl behind the counter said to me after seeing me put down "Ireland" as the destination country, and I quote : "Ireland, that's still the UK isn't it?". It was at this point that I looked up at her and gave her my best "800 feckin years of oppression" face. It was an honest mistake. I suppose I should have been more specific and wrote down "REPUBLIC OF IRELAND WHICH IS NOT PART OF THE UK". This little incident made me wonder; do a lot of English people still consider Ireland as being part of the UK?
Monday, October 15, 2007
Fire!, Fire!...
So there I was on Friday evening, sitting in Dublin airport, slowly dozing away while I awaited my flight to open for boarding when suddenly I was awoken by two men in what looked like security uniforms running really fast past me towards the boarding gate entrance. I then noticed that half of the people who were waiting for the same flight as myself were up on their feet and had their faces pressed against the window looking out at our plane. Out of morbid curiosity at what people were staring at, I too preceded to look out the window, (as everyone does whenever they see a large crowd of people gathering around a window). What I saw was 6 or 7 fire trucks all parked outside our plane with the lights flashing away and what looked like all the hoses at the ready.
At this stage, I thought to myself : "Oh! maybe the plane had to make a really bad emergency landing". Then I thought to myself : "Ah feckit! My plane has caught fire. I'm going to be stuck in Dublin airport for hours now". It was just then, another really official looking guy appeared. He promptly started walking around to the awaiting (and at this stage, somewhat bemused) people telling them in a hushed sort of voice that the special Olympics Irish team were on that plane that had just landed and it would be really nice if we could give them a big cheer when they disembarked!!! Then a piper appeared out of nowhere and started bellowing "music" out of his bagpipes, the special Olympics Irish team, one by one, started to appear out from the boarding gate and people proceeded to cheer and clap (myself included) until the last of them were off the plane. After the last person disembarked, all the fire trucks drove off, the official looking guys disappeared, as did the bag piper and all was well again.
Now, what was the purpose of that little anecdote? I hear you ask. Well, first of all; I find it highly amusing and somewhat perplexing as to why it was necessary to have all those fire trucks at the ready? Did they expect the special Olympians to spontaneous combust out of sheer excitement at being back on Irish soil again? Has this type of phenomena happened in the past? Our "non-special" Olympians would probably have gotten proper garda security vehicles as landing escorts but our special Olympians get fire trucks instead!?! Perhaps the powers that be just figured "ah sure, they're special Olympians. We'll just throw some vehicles with flashy lights at them. They'll never know the difference".
Secondly; why was it necessary to have some official looking guy run around to everyone telling them in a really hushed voice that it would be really nice if they gave a little clap and cheer for the special Olympians when they disembarked. If they were the Irish team for the "normal" Olympics that was disembarking I can assure you that people would be cheering for them without being told. Why must we be told to cheer (and be told in what I thought was a very condescending manner towards the athletes) in this case? OK, I understand that the special Olympics are in no way near as grand a scale as the "normal" Olympic games but should we not be taking equal pride in our athletes be they "special" or not? The ironic thing about all this is that the Irish team for the special Olympics actually win a crap load more medals than the Irish "non-special" Olympics team ever could. Of course, you had the obligatory smart arse making the remark that all the medals the Olympians had around their necks looked liked giant chocolate gold coins.
OK, little rant over. Onto the Lindy Hop festival that I attended over the weekend... In short, it was OK. Truth be told, I was a little disappointed but I think I ruined it for myself by having really high expectations of it before hand. The classes for the most part were quite good. We unfortunately only had a short (but excellent) class with the one teacher I specifically went over to the festival for which was a real let down. To top it off, my thighs were killing me all weekend which was really weird since I wasn't doing anything strenuous (in fact I wasn't even using them that much). Of course, since I've landed back in Dublin they are all well and good again...typical! The black and tan masquerade ball that was held on Saturday evening turned out to be a black, white, red, blue, green, purple, orange and whatever other colour you can think of and tan ball. People obviously have very different concepts of the colours "black and tan". The highlight of the whole festival for me personally was getting to watch the Harlem Hotshots perform. Those guys are scarily good.
Also got to walk around London for the day to do a bit of site seeing. Hadn't done that in years. It was really enjoyable. More so than I remembered it being all those other times. Of course, it's around about this time in conversation about major cities that I've just visited that I would start complaining about how our public transportation system here sucks donkey balls compared to said city in conversation but I'm not going to. That's more or less a given at this stage. However, why is it that that always seems to be the first thing I notice whenever I'm abroad in any major city? Roll on the first phase of the kick ass Dublin metro in 2010! *Note, I'm being highly sarcastic here*
At this stage, I thought to myself : "Oh! maybe the plane had to make a really bad emergency landing". Then I thought to myself : "Ah feckit! My plane has caught fire. I'm going to be stuck in Dublin airport for hours now". It was just then, another really official looking guy appeared. He promptly started walking around to the awaiting (and at this stage, somewhat bemused) people telling them in a hushed sort of voice that the special Olympics Irish team were on that plane that had just landed and it would be really nice if we could give them a big cheer when they disembarked!!! Then a piper appeared out of nowhere and started bellowing "music" out of his bagpipes, the special Olympics Irish team, one by one, started to appear out from the boarding gate and people proceeded to cheer and clap (myself included) until the last of them were off the plane. After the last person disembarked, all the fire trucks drove off, the official looking guys disappeared, as did the bag piper and all was well again.
Now, what was the purpose of that little anecdote? I hear you ask. Well, first of all; I find it highly amusing and somewhat perplexing as to why it was necessary to have all those fire trucks at the ready? Did they expect the special Olympians to spontaneous combust out of sheer excitement at being back on Irish soil again? Has this type of phenomena happened in the past? Our "non-special" Olympians would probably have gotten proper garda security vehicles as landing escorts but our special Olympians get fire trucks instead!?! Perhaps the powers that be just figured "ah sure, they're special Olympians. We'll just throw some vehicles with flashy lights at them. They'll never know the difference".
Secondly; why was it necessary to have some official looking guy run around to everyone telling them in a really hushed voice that it would be really nice if they gave a little clap and cheer for the special Olympians when they disembarked. If they were the Irish team for the "normal" Olympics that was disembarking I can assure you that people would be cheering for them without being told. Why must we be told to cheer (and be told in what I thought was a very condescending manner towards the athletes) in this case? OK, I understand that the special Olympics are in no way near as grand a scale as the "normal" Olympic games but should we not be taking equal pride in our athletes be they "special" or not? The ironic thing about all this is that the Irish team for the special Olympics actually win a crap load more medals than the Irish "non-special" Olympics team ever could. Of course, you had the obligatory smart arse making the remark that all the medals the Olympians had around their necks looked liked giant chocolate gold coins.
OK, little rant over. Onto the Lindy Hop festival that I attended over the weekend... In short, it was OK. Truth be told, I was a little disappointed but I think I ruined it for myself by having really high expectations of it before hand. The classes for the most part were quite good. We unfortunately only had a short (but excellent) class with the one teacher I specifically went over to the festival for which was a real let down. To top it off, my thighs were killing me all weekend which was really weird since I wasn't doing anything strenuous (in fact I wasn't even using them that much). Of course, since I've landed back in Dublin they are all well and good again...typical! The black and tan masquerade ball that was held on Saturday evening turned out to be a black, white, red, blue, green, purple, orange and whatever other colour you can think of and tan ball. People obviously have very different concepts of the colours "black and tan". The highlight of the whole festival for me personally was getting to watch the Harlem Hotshots perform. Those guys are scarily good.
Also got to walk around London for the day to do a bit of site seeing. Hadn't done that in years. It was really enjoyable. More so than I remembered it being all those other times. Of course, it's around about this time in conversation about major cities that I've just visited that I would start complaining about how our public transportation system here sucks donkey balls compared to said city in conversation but I'm not going to. That's more or less a given at this stage. However, why is it that that always seems to be the first thing I notice whenever I'm abroad in any major city? Roll on the first phase of the kick ass Dublin metro in 2010! *Note, I'm being highly sarcastic here*
Friday, October 12, 2007
London Baby!
I'm hopping over the pond to London this weekend to do a spot of, errr... , Lindy Hopping at the London Lindy Hop Festival :D Those who know me will know that I like to dance from time to time and there is nothing like a bit of swing dancing to get that booty shaking. I'm really looking forward to be dancing with (and being humbled by) all the incredible swing dancers from around the globe that are going to be at the LLH festival this weekend. Why is it that dancers from abroad always seem to be 10 gazillion times better dancers than you are? Must be something in the water.
Also, it's been years since I last stepped foot in London (if you ignore the stop overs at various London based airports while flying elsewhere that is), so I've decided to take an extra day off work to go reacquaint myself with the city of London again while I'm over there. Haven't decided yet whether to try my luck at the London Eye or go sneer at the crack in the ground that passes for "art" in the Tate modern. I only have one free day to explore so I'd better choose wisely.
On a sorta related noted... I hear that they have new proposals for the U2 tower down at the docklands. Its now going to be higher still; 180m higher! That's taller than the spire (about 60m or 197ft taller to be pedantic about it). It's no longer going to be of a twisty glass design, which I thought was quite cool looking. Instead its going to be a tilted triangular tower design, a design by Foster & Partners, the guys that came up with the "Gherkin" building in London (see, I told ya it was sorta related news). Here's the article about it for all those interested. And Ronan, if your reading this, knowing your strange fascination with all things sky scrapery (i just made up a new word :D), you can stop salivating now.
In one way I think its sorta nice that Dublin is going to finally have a nice fancy high building but in another way, considering that I currently live right beside the proposed tower site I'm also sorta a little hesitant over the new bigger, higher, fancier design. I can essentially say goodbye to what little sunlight I have once that tower/sky scraper gets built. Still, considering that the tower isn't due for completion until circa 2011 and I don't plan to be living where I currently am come 2011 I guess I have nothing to worry about. Instead I'll just content myself with having to put up with constant construction work right outside my bedroom window for the next 3 to 4 odd years :(
Also, it's been years since I last stepped foot in London (if you ignore the stop overs at various London based airports while flying elsewhere that is), so I've decided to take an extra day off work to go reacquaint myself with the city of London again while I'm over there. Haven't decided yet whether to try my luck at the London Eye or go sneer at the crack in the ground that passes for "art" in the Tate modern. I only have one free day to explore so I'd better choose wisely.
On a sorta related noted... I hear that they have new proposals for the U2 tower down at the docklands. Its now going to be higher still; 180m higher! That's taller than the spire (about 60m or 197ft taller to be pedantic about it). It's no longer going to be of a twisty glass design, which I thought was quite cool looking. Instead its going to be a tilted triangular tower design, a design by Foster & Partners, the guys that came up with the "Gherkin" building in London (see, I told ya it was sorta related news). Here's the article about it for all those interested. And Ronan, if your reading this, knowing your strange fascination with all things sky scrapery (i just made up a new word :D), you can stop salivating now.
In one way I think its sorta nice that Dublin is going to finally have a nice fancy high building but in another way, considering that I currently live right beside the proposed tower site I'm also sorta a little hesitant over the new bigger, higher, fancier design. I can essentially say goodbye to what little sunlight I have once that tower/sky scraper gets built. Still, considering that the tower isn't due for completion until circa 2011 and I don't plan to be living where I currently am come 2011 I guess I have nothing to worry about. Instead I'll just content myself with having to put up with constant construction work right outside my bedroom window for the next 3 to 4 odd years :(
Thursday, October 11, 2007
The beginnings of a beginning?
OK, so I've been putting this off for years now and I've held out for as long as I possibly could but finally I've crumpled to peer pressure and succumbed to setting up a blog... yay me!
I can't guarantee that I'm not going to eventually forget about this little corner of the interweb and leave it collecting virtual cobwebs. However, I've finally gotten off my arse and started "blogging" so that's just as good a start as any and if i do end up neglecting it after a while at least I can say that I tried... and who's to say, despite my reluctance this might actually end up being something fun (and a somewhat productive exercise in social writing).
For a while there it was a toss up between actually doing a written blog or photo blog. I figured that a photo blog might actually force me to start using my overly expensive digital camera more but I eventually concluded that with a photo blog all you'd probably see is the front of my TV for the most part (or lots of shots of my crotch when I'm really bored). So, to save everyone's eyes from possibly being corrupted we're going to try your normal written blog for now.
To start the ball rolling... anyone interested in being invigorated by a "black bastard"? And I always thought the Japanese were the funny ones when it came to drinks branding (case in point).
I can't guarantee that I'm not going to eventually forget about this little corner of the interweb and leave it collecting virtual cobwebs. However, I've finally gotten off my arse and started "blogging" so that's just as good a start as any and if i do end up neglecting it after a while at least I can say that I tried... and who's to say, despite my reluctance this might actually end up being something fun (and a somewhat productive exercise in social writing).
For a while there it was a toss up between actually doing a written blog or photo blog. I figured that a photo blog might actually force me to start using my overly expensive digital camera more but I eventually concluded that with a photo blog all you'd probably see is the front of my TV for the most part (or lots of shots of my crotch when I'm really bored). So, to save everyone's eyes from possibly being corrupted we're going to try your normal written blog for now.
To start the ball rolling... anyone interested in being invigorated by a "black bastard"? And I always thought the Japanese were the funny ones when it came to drinks branding (case in point).
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