Last Day

Friday dawned, the last day of our trip, and the first day of the local weekend. As it was the only day that Enda would be free to show us around, we were heading out to the desert for the day. But first, we were going to try something that we hadn't done yet: go to the beach. We headed off early fromt eh hotel on the complimentary shuttle bus, and were at the beach by 10am. Already it was 30 degrees! Michelle doesn't swim, so we rented a sunshade for her to sit around under while I went in for a dip. The water wasn't as warm as I was expecting: it wasn't nearly as chilly as my xmas day dips, but there was still a bit of a shiver when I walked in - nowhere near as warm as the water off Bali or Singapore. Then I re-discovered how much the sun really doesn't like me - I'd managed not to get burned so far on the trip by liberal applications of factor 40 sunblock, but in the 15mins I was in the water and getting dried out after, my shoulders and back were already starting to go a bit pink! Sometimes I think I must be part vampire or something....

After our little sojurn in the sun, we hopped in a taxi and headed over to Enda & Joanna's place. Before we headed off, we decided to go for brunch in a local cafe that they frequented. Like most places in Dubai, there wasn't an emirati in sight, all the patrons were ex-pats and all the staff were indian or filipino. Good food tho! Fortified for our journey, we hopped in Enda's big fancy jeep, and headed off.

Contrary to what the movies would have you believe, most deserts aren't just big huge sand dunes, and on the way out we saw the various kinds, scrubland, rocks, and yes some sand (but of various colors). Our destination was on the eastern side of the peninsula, a place called Hatta in the mountains, where there are a series of pools (it seems Enda has a set itinerary for everyone that comes visiting, and this was the desert destination....). About 90mins out of Dubai tho, we hit a bit of a snag. The border between the UAE and Oman isn't straight, and on the way to Hatta you dip in and out of Oman a few times. Normally this is no problem, the only way you know what country you're in is by the flag on the flagpole of whatever little village you go into on the way, but occasionally the 2 countries have a bit of a diplomatic spat (or as enda called it, "a dick-swinging contest") and they close off the borders. So, at one point between one patch of sandy nowhere and another patch, we got stopped by a roadbock manned by a few bored-looking army dudes with M-16s and a humvee with a roof-mounted M60 manned by another equally bored-looking soldier. They were checking IDs, which was a bit unfortunate as, not expecting that we'd need htem, we'd left our passports in the hotel and Enda & Joanna had let their local ID cards back in the house. We could get through that roadblock no problems, but the guard told us that while he could let us though, we'd have problems with the guards on the other side of the road when we got back, and we mightn't be able to get back in without IDs. This wasn't all that good, as Joanna's visa had actually expired 2 days before, and so if we got stopped she was screwed. When it comes to zero tolerance, the emiratis make the NY cops look like irish gardai, and while she was ok so long as she was in the UAE and had her ticket home, if she went out and they checked her on the way back in she wasn't getting back in, period. So, we decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and we did a u-turn and headed back to Dubai.

On the way back Enda decided that we'd go back a bit more of a scenic route, so that we could get a better view of the Dubai skyline. So, we turned off the main road and took a detour through the desert. Along the way, we saw a herd of camels so we took veered off into the desert so we could get a closer look. I had my new big shiny camera, but Joanna, being a fashion designer, had an even bigger one, so we both started snapping away while the other 2 looked at us as if we were mad. After that, the next stop was to see the skyline, which we were seeing at right-angles to the way we came in from Abu Dhabi so we got to see it all, as all the big-ass skyscrapers pretty much was along the side of Sheihk Zayeid Road. Even from this distance, the Burj Dubai was head and shoulders above all the rest, nearly twice as tall as any of the other ones.





Once we got back into the city, we headed for The Palm Jumeira, the man-made islands in the shape of a palm tree. You were allowed drive out on it as far as the Atlantis hotel, the big 5-star hotel at the end (about a mile out from shore), but if you were a resident there, you were able to take the monorail - the bloody palm has its own public transport system! Thing is, once you're on it, it doesn't actually seem like it's any different from any normal island, the only way you can see the shape of it is from the air. After seeing the Palm, we headed out for Jumeira Beach, which was as close as you could get to the Burj Al Arab as you could get without paying. The place is so bloody exclusive (well it would be being a 7-star hotel and all), you can't just walk in and take a look around, you have to book a meal or "afternoon tea" - and at 80 quid a head for afternoon tea, we decided to give it a miss (even if it was an all-you-could eat buffet, which sounded like a good challenge to me - could I eat 80 quid's worth of buffet food?). We got to the beach just as the sun was setting, so the view was quite impressive - and the beach was cool enough to walk on, even better! :-)



After that, we headed back to Enda & Joanna's place to change and go out for dinner. On the way out, my parents had given me their leftover dirhams from when they were over (about €100 worth), on the understanding that I used some/most of it to bring "Little Enda" and his fiancee out for a meal. So, we grabbed a taxi and headed back to the Madinat Jumeira, a huge shopping/eating/entertainment complex near the Burj Al Arab. Place is so big and swanky they don't have streets, they have canals and water taxis to bring you from shop to shop and restaurant to restaurant! We weren't sure whether we'd be able to get into the hotel bar, place was one of those ones where if you're not one of "the beautiful people", you're probably not getting in, and while we weren't exactly scruffy looking, we didn't have a designer label between us. We blagged our way in tho (the trick is to walk fast and look bored apparently), and soon found the down-side of the "good life" - over €35 for a round of 4 drinks, 2 of them being beer!



After our lovely posh drinks, we wandered around the souk, a very up-market version of the souks in the old town, and Enda showed us the infamous stall where my mother had managed to haggle the stall owner into giving her a lantern at what was probably below cost price the year before (she'd thought she got one for Dh35 the day before at that stall, so she wouldn't give in until she got it at that price, turns out after she'd got it for Dh70... Never haggle with my mother!). Unfortunately there were no lanterns there that I could bring her back, but there was a shop around the corner which was selling xmas decorations so we got a few in there for the ppl back home. We also got some bars of camel chocolate - chocolate made from camel milk, which is apparently extra-creamy!! Once the shopping was done, we decided to go for food. Problem was, there were too many choices! We sort of narrowed it down to a Mexican place, a Cajun place, and an Italian place. We tried the mexican, but they were full up - we could have waited for a table, but we'd be waiting something like 45mins! No-one bar me was really brave enough to try the Cajun place, so we decided to go for the safest option, the Italian. Food was fairly OK, nothing overly spectacular but adequate. Afterwards, we hung around for another drink and then decided to leave, as me & Michelle had to be up at around 4am to catch out 5am bus to the airport. So ended our little adventure in Dubai!

Getting out of Dubai

On day 4, we decided to do something a bit different: my cousin had mentioned that you could get to the neighbouring Emirate, Sharjah, by taxi. But first, I had a little bit of business I wanted to take care of. So, we headed out shopping again! First stop was the Wafi Mall. This is a smallish (by Dubai standards, huge anywhere else) boutique shopping center. The translation of "boutique"? Bloody expensive! Imagine a shopping center with an Egytpian motif (i.e. shaped like a pyramid with fake-egyptian heiroglyphs and statues all around the outside), where the cheapest shop there would be along the lines of Chanel or DKNY. I've been on some of the most expensive shopping streets in the world, Rodeo Drive in LA and Via Condotti in Rome, but this was like someone decided to take these streets and turn them into a 200-outlet shopping mall. The easiest way to gauge how upmarket it was is that there were no price tags on anything - the old "if you had to ask, you couldn't afford it" syndrome! Another way to gauge it was the parking: when we pulled up in our taxi, the valet parking area beside us had porsches, bentleys, rolls royces and propping up the bottom of the price pile, a BMW jeep (must have been the janitor...). As Michelle put it, it was "a whole shopping centre that makes brown Thomas look like Penneys" (Irish ppl will get this analogy) :-)

After browsing in Wafi for a bit (because we ain't going to do anything else there, like actually shopping!), we headed back to the Dubai Mall. As we had a fairly decent idea of the layout this time, we split up again and went off to do out own thing. I really only had on target in mind tho: the Sony centre, where I decided to pick up that camera I'd seen on my last trip, a Sony Alpha 230 DSLR. It's not the biggest and fanciest and most feature-rich of the entry-level digital SLRs, but it's one of the cheapest, the lightest and, as I was getting it with a second lens, 4Gb memory card and a carry case, it was about €100 cheaper than I'd get it at home!

After meeting back up with Michelle (who also had a pretty productive shopping experience), we headed back to the hotel. After plugging my camera in to charge, we went outside and hopped in a taxi to Sharjah. herein came the first little glitch, that no-one had mentioned: as the taxi would be going outside Dubai into a different emirate, there would be an automatic Dh30 added to the fare. Well, isn't too much we figured, so why not? So, we headed off!

Now, the impression I got from Enda and from our guidebook was sort of a small, rustic little hamlet of a place, the sort of small middle-eastern town like you'd see in the movies. Wrong! If anything, it was more built-up than Dubai, but with all cheaper, slightly run-down looking apartment blocks. The only way we knew we were actually outside of Dubai was when the taxi meter clicked up an extra Dh30 and we passed a sign saying "Welcome to Sharjah"! We were thinking that the taxi driver was taking us a bit of a scenic route, as it seemed a few times like we were doign big loops to end up a bit further down a road wed already seen before. then, to make it even better, we passed the bus station and he idly informed us that if we wanted we could get the bus back for about Dh5! This at the end of a Dh150 taxi ride! :-(

We'd asked the taxi driver to take us to the heritage museum, as from the map that pretty much looked like the center of all the touristy things, so he dropped us at the side of what he called "the historical area", which apparently had a load of museums etc in there. We deiced forst tho to head to the Al Hisn fort, which was a few streets over to see that first. When we got there, it was obvious that all of the pictures we'd seen of it had either been extremely well-positioned or just out-and-out photoshopped - the fort was in the center of a traffic roundabout and surrounded by 10-or-more-story apartment blocks! Well, we were there, so we might as well go in, eh? Oops, big sign on the door: "Closed for renovation from July 2008" - agh! So, we went back to the historical area, which we soon found out was about as interesting and as full of stuff to do as the heritage village in Dubai! There were hardly any signs up on any buildings as to what they were, and the few things we did find were closed (and not for lunch, this was about 4pm). About all we found was the covered souk, where we soon discovered that (a) the stalls had nothing but the usual tourist tat and (b) we were the only ppl there that didn't look like they worked there! No pressure to buy anything there, like! After beating a hasty retreat, we eventually found the heritage museum - it seems that while we'd asked our taxi driver to drop us off at the museum, he had dropped us off at the far end of the "historic complex" to it, and we were coming at it from the back! After going in, we again discovered we were the only tourists again - and looking at the visitors book, we were the first visitors in a few weeks! No wonder the receptionist dude looked so happy to see us!

After that, we decided to find our way to the bus stop rather than sending another taxi driver's kids to school, so we started walking. Thing was, we had a vague idea where the bus station was, but not how far it was, and there weren't a huge amount of taxis around to get us there. So, I had to ask some old dude sitting outside a shop for directions. The conversation went something like:

"Sorry, can you tell me is this the way to the bus station?"
"Bus station, yes"
"How far is it from here?"
"far?"
"How long to walk there, 5 mins?"
"5 mins, yes"

So, that could either be them agreeing that yes we were going the right way and that we were fairly close, or them not actually understanding English and just repeating the last few words of whatever I said (which is a trick I've done myself when abroad). Luckily for us, it was the former :-)

So, we got on the bus and headed back, and yes it was a lot cheaper than the taxi, and yes we realised pretty much straight away that the taxi driver had indeed taken us the scenic route.......

As soon as we got back to the hotel, we pretty much had to jump straight in the shower and head out to Enda's place, where we were supposed to have dinner with them before heading on to a table quiz in their local pub. As we were running a tad late due to the bus, dinner was a slightly less than leisurely affair if we wanted to get in in time for the quiz! The pub itself was your typical english pub abroad, complete with wood panelling, fake london bus/tube signs, shite music and an obnoxious DJ. The beer at least was genuine though - not a bad feat for a country where you're supposed to have a license to drink alcohol, and where the police can and do raid pubs and nab anyone drinking without a license! We managed, all beer aside, to come a fairly respectable joint 3rd (which would have been just 3rd if we'd won the argument with the DJ about one of our answers), and wandered back to the hotel around 2am - not a bad night out for a dry country!

Dune Bashing and Belly Dancing.

Day three started out pretty easy, Michelle wasn't in the mood to do very much so I headed out to try to find the electonics souk I'd seen on the map, as I was in search of a cheap iPhone and a new digital camera. So, I boarded the abra and headed back across to Deira where I got happily lost in the little windy streets for a while before I found my intended destination. Unfortunately, when they said "electronics" they meant exactly that, it was all electronic parts & hardware shops, with a few mobile phone shops thrown in for good measure (but no cheap sim-unlocked iPhones) and no camera shops. After finding my way back to the hotel, we had lunch in the hotel restaurant and then got ready for the main event of the day: the desert safari! We'd booked this the previous day after seeing an ad for a safari in a leaflet in the back of a taxi that was nearly Dh100 cheaper than the one the hotel were trying to flog us.

Unusually for these kind of things, our driver was actually early - we wandered down at about 1:45 to see where we could wait for him, and he pretty much arrived in the door just as we got there! We got in the jeep, and after a little bit of haggling over the price, we set off to collect the other people in our group. These turned out to be a Brazilian couple on their honeymoon, who had arrived in Dubai the night before at 9pm and were leaving for 2 weeks in Thailand at 2am the next morning. Talk about a whistle-stop tour! They had pretty much "done" Dubai that morning, had spent it racing around in taxis seeing all the sights they could (which was more sights than we'd managed to see so far!). So, our little party was now complete, and off we went into the desert.

It took us about an hour to get out where we were going, and one spot of sand looking pretty much the same as any other to us, the only way we knew we were there is when the driver suddenly veered off the road into the sand. We only went in about 500m into the desert, where we met up with 2 other jeeps, and we stopped for about 20mins while we waited for another jeep to meet up with us and while the drivers let some air out of the tires. Naturally, everyone spent pretty much the whole time taking pictures. After that, off we went!



After a while it became obvious that the guys weren't just haring around the desert at random, they had a definite track that they were following. Nonetheless, it was quite an energetic ride! We were the third jeep in line in our little convoy, and about half the time you couldn't see the jeeps in front as you were either staring at the sky as we ramped up the side of one dune, or staring at the sand seemingly rushing up to meet you as you slid down the other side (sometimes nearly sideways on some of the bigger dunes). Definitely not a ride for someone who suffers from motion sickness! You were thrown about the place in the back of the jeep as we zoomed around, and as I had the center seat all I had was a lap belt so I had to wedge my knees in the backs of the seats in front of me to avoid being thrown around like that dude in the Road Safety ad that was on TV a few years back.


Follow the leader...

After about an hour of this roller-coaster ride (about only 5 mins of which was spent with the jeeps traveling straight and level) and just as the sun was starting to go down, we arrived at our encampment for he evening - a "bedouin village" where we were going to get our BBQ and night's entertainment. Apparently the entertainments on offer were camel rides, quad bikes, watching a desert sunset, dune boarding, sheesha pipes, a BBQ with unlimited (soft) drinks and a belly-dancer. Sounds pretty good eh? Well, the first thing on offer was the camel rides, but we decided against this after seeing that (a) you went around in a circle about 100m wide and (b) you had to pay Dh50 each for the pleasure. So, instead, we decided to watch the sunset. As the encampment was in a dip between several sand dunes, we had to climb the dunes to see it. Unlike at home, there's no twilight to speak of, the sun starts going down
and then 5 mins later, its gone - you can actually see it moving as it goes down. Last time I saw that was down in S Africa. Me & Michelle were nearly the only people to bother watching this tho, as all the other tourists were still getting their pictures taken with the camels :-)


Sunset

After the initial camel-induced frenzy was over, there was about an hour where nothing happened - apart from them opening up a few stalls full of touristy crap in the hope that we'd be bored enough to buy something! While we were waiting, me & the brazilian dude from the jeep decided to try the dune boarding - which consisted of grabbing the snowboard left lying up against one of the huts, picking a steep enough sand dune, and trying to figure out out for ourselves - in the dark :-) Only fell once, which wasn't too bad, until I realised that now my hair, pockets, etc were all full of sand.... After that, we were able to get dressed up in traditional bedouin garb and get pictures taken with a falcon, which I did. There was also a bar, which surprisingly enough was selling a full selection of alcoholic drinks (you got the soft drinks for free, but had to pay for the booze). Then, eventually, the entertainment started.

The first thing on was a couple of whirling dervishes - guys who pretty much spun around in circles while doing mad acrobatic stuff with umbrellas and various colored skirts that they had tied around their waist. That was fairly impressive - I would have lasted about 1min of spinning without wanting to fall over and probably puke, but they kept it up for a good half an hour non-stop and managed to do an entire well-choreographed routine as well! After them was a girl doing that usual spin-two-balls-around-yourself-on-a-rope thing that you see ppl doing in the crowd at pretty much any music festival you've ever been at, except she was dressed up and was spinning balls of fire on the end of chains, so I suppose that makes it traditional. Then, there was a break for the BBQ, which consisted of a couple of lamb kebabs, chicken skewers, some sort of possibly-vegetarian curry with rice, and some othe stuff i couldn't recognize. Tasty enough, even if the chicken was a bit on the black & crunchy side. After that, was the belly dancer. Was a pretty good show, apart from the bit near the end where she grabbed some "volunteers" from the audience. Much to Michelle's amusement, I was one of the ppl dragged up. Let's just say I won't be changing careers and taking it up professionally any time soon..... Turns out as well that the dancer was from eastern europe! :-) At the very end tho she got a bit more than she bargained for, she tried to get up a few ppl up, and ended up with a few slightly (or more than slightly) drunk indian guys who pretty much decided to do their own thing, and they were joined by a few more ppl (coincidentally, the ones that had partaken of the booze at the bar), and I don't think any of them even noticed when the bellydancer finished up!


Me, blending in

After the belly dancing was over, the lights went out and things wound up for the night. We all got in the jeeps and headed back. I though that we might go a bit slower over the dunes as it was pitch black out, but no! The driver just turned on his lights and went hell-for-leather like before! It was only about 1km to the nearest road/dirt track tho, so wasn't too bad - but I'd called shotgun on the way back so I got to see how close we actually came to all those bushes and rocks along the way.... We stopped off once on the way back at a service station so that they could re-inflate the tyres (and coincidentally so the station owner could hawk us more tourist crap), and were back at the hotel for about 10pm. On the way I got chatting to the driver and it turns out that not only was he a local (pretty much the first we'd met!) but he also was only volunteering for the desert driving for the fun of it - the company we booked though only paid his petrol costs and that was it. For the last bit of the day, we decided to take a detour before we went to the hotel: the brazilians we were with had said that the only thing they hadn't managed in the day was to go across the creek on the abras, and as the abra station was only about 200m from our hotel, we decided to show them where it was (and where the souks were, if they wanted to do some shopping). So, after that, it was back to the hotel, and bed- it had been quite an eventful day!

Dubai, the Old Town and the New

Before we knew it, our alarm clock was going off and our first full "proper" day in Dubai was beginning. We'd decided that as we'd paid for breakfast that we might as well get up early enough to get it, so the alarm was set for 8am to give us plenty of time to wake up, get showered and ready and get breakfast before it closed at 10am. And quite a nice breakfast it was as well, once you get over the slight strangeness of the "sausages" being chicken and the "bacon" being veal - well, we were in a Muslim country, what are you going to do? After breakfast, we decided to head down to the Heritage Village, at the mouth of the creek, while the day was still cool enough to be able to go out walking (a "mere" 28-30 degrees at 10am!). So, we walked the kilometer or so down by the creek-side to the Heritage Village and the neighboring Diving Village. Well, what can I say, they're free in and they're still not worth the price of admission. Maybe in the afternoon there may have been something going on, but at 10:30 in the morning they were ghost towns, apart from us there were 2 guys repairing a wall and 3 very bored stall-owners who couldn't even get up the motivation to hawk us their tourist crap. So, if you have the Lonely Planet guide to dubai, you can pretty much skip the last third of their "Heritage & History in Bur Dubai" walking tour, you ain't missing anything :-P

All was not lost however, on the way back we still had the Sheikh Al-Maktoum house, the Sheikh Bin Thani house and the Architecture Museum to go to. We deliberately had left those until the way backas it meant we'd be inside in (hopefully) air conditioning on the way back when it would be starting to get hot! The Sheikh Bin Thani house was an islamic center, which could pretty much be summed up as "See, Islam isn't that scary, it isn't that much different from the Bible really, and the Qu'ran got a lot of sciency bits right that scientists are only figuring out now". The Sheikh Maktoum house then was mostly a photography exhibit of what Dubai looked like back in the 50s before the building boom took off. Place made Waterford look like a metropolis! The architecture museum, well, pretty much does what it says on the tin really. After browsing around in those for a while, we sauntered back to a restaurant near the the Bur Dubai abra station for a spot of quite tasty lunch (which we picked at random from the menu as we hadn't a clue what anything was!) before heading back to the hotel to regroup before the afternoon's exertions.


Dubai in 1952

In the afternoon, we decided to see the "other" side of Dubai, so we hopped in a taxi and headed out to the Dubai Mall, what is probably the biggest shopping centre in the world. Imagine 1200+ shops, an ice skating rink, an aquarium and 2 waterfalls, all under the one roof! You almost expect someone to greet you on the way in, giving you your complimentary map, compass, and sherpa guide! On the way there you also get to appreciate the Burj Dubai, the world's tallest tower at 160 stories. Is so tall that it still looks big 15km away, in the old city center! But back to the shopping. When we got in, we wandered around a bit and then decide that I'd just be cramping Michelle's style, so we separated and agreed to meet up back at the skating rink in an hour. Thing was, an hour would just about give you enough time to get your bearings in the place and figure out roughly where things were, never mind do any actual shopping! Place has more shops than Dublin city, and is about the same size as Dublin City Center from Parnell St down to Stephens Green - but on 3 floors and all under the one roof!


The aquarium in the mall

As we were meeting Enda again, we just went for a bit of food and then wandered around a bit more before heading out with hm to watch the fountain show. Maybe by now you might have gotten the idea that everything has to be bigger and better in Dubai, well, this even applies to the water fountains! Between the Dubai Mall and the Burj Dubai, there's an artificial lagoon, which has a dancing fountain. If you've seen "Oceans 11", you'll remember the dancing fountain at the Bellagio hotel at the end of the move, well, this being Dubai, its like that only bigger and better (the highest water jets in the world, naturally). Is quite impressive, I'll definitely say that!


The dancing fountain (click to play)

After the water show, we headed to the rooftop bar in the Assembly Hotel, a puny building of a mere 60 floors situated beside the Mall. Or rather we tried to, the prick bouncer wouldn't let us in with sandals on (some things are universal no matter where you are, and bouncers being assholes is definitely one of them). Luckily, Enda lived around the corner so we headed back to his gaff, me & Michelle borrowed some shoes, and we headed back again :-) So, we got to see Dubai by night from the bar (quite nice), the dancing fountain from above (looks better than at ground level), and despite being 60 floors up, we still had to crane our necks to see the top of the Burj Dubai across the lagoon! Seeing Dubai by night from above sort of reinforced that wierd felling I had about the place when I was coming in on the bus: it's all big buildings and bright lights and modern shiny things, but as your eyes travel out to the horizon, it's like someone drew a line and just erased everything beyond it: unlike most cities which just sort of gradually straggle out to the outskirts so you can't really see where the city ends, with Dubai there a definite line where the city ends and the desert begins again. Or maybe that was the mojitos talking. Anyway, after a hard day's touristing and shopping, it was back to the hotel to get ready for the next round - the safari!

Dubai - getting there is half the fun

Well, I promised myself I wouldn't do with the Dubai trip like I did the Warsaw trip and procrastinate on updating my blog to the point where I don't want to bother writing it any more, so here we go :-)

As usual, whoever said getting there is half the fun never took a long-haul flight. We decided to go direct with Etihad rather than having a 4hr stopover in either Heathrow or Amsterdam, but that meant leaving at 8pm on saturday night and getting in around 7:20am on sunday morning. So, we lose one whole day of our 7 days, and we also miss the weekend in Dubai (their weekend is friday and saturday). We could have had a 5pm flight on the friday which would get us in early on saturday, but that would have meant taking another half day and Michele didn't have the hols to take that. The flight itself was an eye-opener after flying for so long with the likes of Ryanair and Aer Lingus: first we didn't have to pay for our bags and we had a 23Kg allowance, then when we got on the plane, we got free food and as many drinks as we wanted, the food was actually tasty (I've had far worse Lamb Koftas in restaurants over here) there was an in-flight entertainment system, and the hostesses were actually attentive and friendly! The only issue I'd have is that with all the stuff you got, the flight was almost too short at 7 1/2hrs: You took off, you got fed after a while, you watched one of the many movies on offer, then you only had about 3hrs to try to get some sleep before they woke you up for breakfast. I'd almost prefer a longer flight, as I only got about an hour's sleep! :-)

We arrived into Abu Dhabi airport anyway, roughly on time at around 7:20am and with only an hour's sleep under our belt.

When I got in, I discovered I had a problem: my phone didn't work, so I had no way to contact my cousin Enda to let him know we were in, so that he could meet us off the bus! I'd had an idea that this would happen, so I went off looking for a kiosk that I could be a pre-pay local SIM card in. Bit of a problem: the kiosk that used to sell them was closed down, and the shop that was open was only selling bill-pay SIMS that'd take a day to activate! Luckily, we figured out that it was the network I was roaming on - bit of advice if you're going to Dubai and roaming with Vodafone: don't let your phone automatically pick the network, manually select Du over Etisalat.

After that little kerfuffle was sorted out, we got on the complimentary Etihad coach for the 1 1/2hr trip to Dubai anyway at 10, and set of. Michelle promptly fell asleep on my shoulder, but once I'm awake and it's bright out that's it for me sleep-wise, so I just got to stare out the window at the passing scenery. Was my first time seeing "real" Desert, and my first reaction was "wow, tide's gone really far out hasn't it?" :-) Eventually in the distance I started seeing tall buildings, and then finally after about 45mins on the bus we got to Dubai. My first impression wasn't very favourable I'm afraid, there were lots of really nice really huge skyscrapers, any of which would be a landmark building in any other city (especially here, where our tallest building is a puny 16 stories) but they were just sort of plonked there on either side of Sheikh Zayeid road with nothing else around them - with some of them, if you looked at the gap between the buildings you could see the desert starting again about 100-200 yards back. So, it sort of almost had a movie set feel, or that it wasn't a city as such but more like someone decided to start a collection of really tall buildings with no real interest in giving them a proper setting.


Dubai from the road

Enda collected us off the bus anyway, and brought us in to our hotel. We'd definitely picked a good location: in the center of the "old city", directly across the road from the Dubai Museum and about 2 blocks from Dubai Creek. There was only one small problem: despite the fact that I'd specifically asked for an early check-in, our room wasn't ready, and wouldn't be ready until 2pm (and this was around 11am). So, Enda decided to take us on a quick whistle-stop tour of the area before he had to go back to work. So, we went on a very quick walk through the Bur Dubai souk, the Hindu Temple, down by the creek and ended up in a little restaurant in Bastakia, the former Persian quarter which now consisted of renovated buildings acting mostly as restaurants and art galleries. Here, I was introduced to what would become my drink of the holiday: fresh mint lemonade. We needed the drink and the sit-down, it was about 36 degrees and we were still dressed for irish weather! After Enda headed back to work (complete with his "care package" of rashers, sausages and black pudding), we pretty much just sat in the hotel lobby and tried to stay awake until our room was ready, which it finally was around 1:30pm.

Once we hit the room, we pretty much collapsed on the bed for a 2hr "power nap" before showering and heading out for a more leisurely stroll around the city (Enda had sort of forgotten that we were fresh off the plane and had been awake for nearly 20hrs straight and had set a rather brisk pace). This was one of the reasons I'd have preferred to arrive in the evening: our first day was pretty much a wash-out as we were too knackered and disoriented (and hot!) to so anything really. Around 7pm, we met up with Enda again, and his fiancee Joanna. They took us out on a tour of the souks, the textile and the tourist souk in Bur Dubai (the area we were staying in), then across the creek on board the little water ferries called abras. They were interesting: imagine a rickety little 15-foot boat with a bench down the middle and a bit of an awning and the "pilot" standing up in the middle. They pulled up to the dock, didn't bother tying up, you climbed on board, sat on the bench facing out the way, paid your 1 dirham (about 20c) and ye set off. There was a fair bit of competition for berths so occasionally you'd have a few abras bumping off each other or off the dock while they jockeyed for position, like a water taxi version of bumper cars - not for the faint-hearted but quite fun!


One of the abras on the creek

On the Deira side of the creek, Enda & Joanna took us up through the spice souk (which looked like one of the Harry Potter films should have been set there) and the Gold Souk (entire streets looking like a Mr.T costume party) before getting some food at a street vendor. I was actually a tad bit disappointed with the souks, I'd imagined they'd be a sort of cross between the stalls I was used to from the Silk Market in Beijing and the slave market scene from "Gladiator", but it was all nice and clean and proper, with proper shops on the side of the streets. After that, we sort of had to call it a night as we were knackered, so we headed back across the creek in the bumper-car abras and were unconscious pretty much as soon as our heads hit the pillows.


The Bur Dubai souk

LA Story

This time 9 years ago, I was on the road to LA, barreling down Highway 5 from San Francisco in our rental car with U2 blaring on the stereo. Me & Bones were over working in Sun HQ in Mountain View and we had a long weekend to kill, so we flipped a coin to see where we'd go for it: heads LA, tails Las Vegas. It came up heads, so we booked a hotel and off we went. My first (and last) ever thanksgiving dinner was in a restaurant opposite Mann's Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Over the weekend we almost went to Disneyland (too expensive and wud take a whole day of the 3 days we were there), Universal Studios (closed just as we got there), and did get to the Hollywood sign, Rodeo Drive, Hollywood Boulevard, La Brea Tar Pits, and Malibu Beach, along with getting lost along the way a good few times (bloody first generation in-car GPSes.....). I wouldn't call it he highlight of that trip to the US, but was a fairly good weekend.

Man, where did the time go eh? Is 9 fecking years ago......

here we go....

Just heading off to the airport now. Yay! Goodbye 8-10 degrees and rain, hello 30+ and sunburn! :-)

Yay Vodafone - again....

Well, here I am again, more fun & games with Vodafone and my new(ish) phone. I'm heading off to Dubai on saturday, and I won't be able to use my Vodafone SIM card over there as for some reason while Vodafone have roaming agreements with post-paid customers in Dubai, they don't have it for pre-pay (as my parents found out last year). So, I need to buy a pre-pay SIM card in the airport when I go out there and use it for the week. One slight problem tho: my phone is sim-locked so I can't put in a non-Vodafone SIM card.

So, I go to the web page to get the network unlocking code, look up the IMEI, put it in, and get told NAC code cannot be found for IMEI entered (MM-NAC-14). Well, this is Vodafone Ireland, it'd be silly of me to expect it to work first time out, right? So, I try to ring up the cust care. Miracle of miracles, I manage to get a human after about 30secs and only 2-3 "please press 1 for blah" menus! So, I tell her what I was seeing on the web page and stuff, I give her my IMEI, and she tries to look for my unlock code. Guess what? She can't find it, she's getting the same error I am! So, what can I do? Well, they can get the unlock code from Samsung, but it'll take 10 working days. Not much good to me seeing as I'm flying on saturday is it?

So, with my lovely new Samsung phone, I can bring it on hols and take pictures with the 8Mp camera, and I can tell where I am using the GPS (provided I have a map with me so I can interpret the latitude and longitude, as google maps still works by the cell info), but I can't actually do such trivial things as make calls or send txts on it. I mean, why would you want to do stuff like that on a mobile phone? Think I might see how much a sim-free iPhone is in Dubai's tax-free shopping....

Pics from Warsaw

Hmm, have been a bit remiss in updates here recently haven't I? Normally I put up a few posts describing my last holiday, but I seem to have totally forgotten it for Warsaw. Well, can't remember all the nuts and bolts of it now, but for a bit of info, here's My Flickr Album.



That's Plac Zamkowy, in the heart of the Old Town BTW :-)

Strangely enough, these pictures have been the holiday pics source of pretty much everyone that was there, as me and Michelle were the only people to (a) get up earlier than 2pm any day and (b) go out, do touristy stuff and take pictures of it :-P

Down the Quays

In part of my effort to get semi-fit (or at least to not get any unfitter), I try to do a long-ish walk at least 1, 2 evenings a week. Normally I take the DART out to blackrock and walk back in, either via Ballsbridge (about 8.3km, 1h20m) or via Strand Road/Irishtown (about 7.5km, 1h15m). Sometimes tho I don't want to take the dart out, as that adds maybe another 20mns onto the walk time, so I walk down the quays as far as the O2 (formarely point depot), cross the East-link bridge, down by Ringsend and come back down by Grand Canal Dock, for a walk of about 5.5km.

Anyway, while I'm doing so I occasionally take a few pictures with my mobile phone, as it's not a walk you'd do very often. So, I've decided to throw a few up here, for no particular reason (descriptions underneath):



Am not sure of the name of it, but it's an Argentinian sail training vessel that was moored on the quay for the docklands festival a few weeks ago. The ship in the foreground is the Cill Airne, a floating restaurant/bar on the quays.



The new Samuel Beckett bridge, just before they actually put it across the river.



The view upriver from the Eastlink bridge, just before the new bridge was put up.



The Jeanie Johnson, an old famine ship which is moored on the quay as pretty much a permanent exhibition (altho I've never actually seen it with ppl aboard...)



The new Beckett bridge in place, looking out towards the mouth of the river.



Looking back upriver from the Eastlink bridge, with the Beckett bridge in place.



The new Aviva Lansdowne Rd Stadium under construction, as seen from the bridge at Ringsend. I dunno about you, but to me the shape of the new stadium's roof always reminds me of the front of the Battlestar Galactica from the new series...

There we go, not too bad for a camera-phone camera, eh? Are reduced from the original 2048x1536 resolution as well. Will maybe add in more here as I take them.

New Laptop

I finally heard back from the computer shop yesterday, after I dropped in my laptop there about 3 weeks or more ago. The news isn't really good. As I was suspecting, the graphics chip is shagged. Unfortunately, the gfx chip is soldered onto the motherboard, so I need a new motherboard. And that ain't cheap. Combined with parts & labour, it'll probably cost me about €600, maybe €700 to get it repaired. It seems that when it comes to HP & Compaq laptops, the build quality isn't exactly the best, they have a habit of subcontracting to parts manufacturers who may not be exactly overly concerned about quality control. They've had to do a few recalls of laptops in their 6xxx, 8xxx and 9xxx series (mine's a 9500 series, wasn't any recall on them), and in quite a few other cases, ppl have had laptops die on them just after the warranty expired, with similar problems to mine. Some have gotten HP to extend their warranty and so didn't have to pay for it, most didn't.

So, my options are not very appealing:

1) I get it fixed by the guy who has it now, which will take a few weeks, cost €6-700, and I'll have no real guarantees that the same problem won't happen again with the new card.
2) I get it back from him, send it off to HP, have them charge me €300 for just looking at it as it's out of warranty - and then probably have them charge me as much as the other guy for parts & labour.
3) I keep using my 7 year old Alienware laptop running OpenSolaris (so no games, videos) whose DVD drive works when it wants to, whose PCMCIA slot doesn't work so I can't use wireless (is the last-gen laptops before wireless came in as standard), which reboots spontaneously every now and then, whose battery life is about half an hour, and whose display flickers on and off if you have the screen tilted at the wrong angle.
4) I say "screw it" and go out and buy a new laptop with the money that I would have to spend on the repairs, and just use the old banjaxed laptop for parts (RAM, HD etc)

I reckon I'm definitely leaning towards option 4 at the mo. I know one thing for sure tho, if I do get a new laptop, it won't be a HP......

And I thought vodafone phone support were bad......

Well, I just rang up HP tech support to try to arrange to get my laptop fixed. Jesus christ! I tried to avoid doing this in the first place by trying to use their email support, but the only reply I got on that was "yeah, your laptop's pretty much screwed, contact our out of warranty people to arrange a pick-up" at which point I got directed to the UK cust care web page to get the number. So much for email....

So, in my misguided attempt to avoid talking to the UK, I go looking up the irish site. So, I ring the irish cust care number for out of warranty support (a 1550 number so I'm being charged 80c a min). First thing I hear is a voice with a British accent telling me I'm being charged 60p a minute for the call - so great, their Irish number automatically redirects to the UK anyway. Next thign I get a guy with an extremely thick accent which I can barely make out (and I'm normally good at working around accents), who after I explain that I need to get the laptop picked up for repair, forwards me to the tech support team. So, after about 4-5mins on hold, I get a guy with a Sitt Iffrikan accent (so is 50-50 whether I'm still onto the UK), to whom I have to explain things again. As soon as he hears that it's out of warranty, he says "ok, you have to talk to the special out of warranty team", and passes me over. This time I'm definitely talking to Mumbai. So, I explain the problem yet again, and then I get told that they have a standard rate for an out-of-warranty repair of £257.61 and I'll need to ring this other UK number to get a pick-up arranged!

So because I'm about 3-4 weeks out of warranty, I have to pay €301 (or just under 1/3 the price I paid for it in the first place) to get it fixed and talk to yet another 2-3 helldesk drones to arrange it! Think I'm going to try to find someone else who'll fix it......

Well, that's my laptop fucked.......

OK, have tried a few things here with my laptop, and it looks like it's totally hosed. Whatever that windows update did, it was bad. It looks like it was trying to do a firmware upgrade and fried the graphics card, 'cos even the bios screen is screwed up. Tried getting into the system restore partition, and was no good, couldn't see it. Tried putting in an opensolaris liveCd and still couldn't see anything, so I know it wasn't just windows. If you can't see your bios screen tho it's a pretty good indication that you're screwed. And to make it even more fun, I took out the HD and put it in another laptop, and now it seems that with all the constant restarts that were happening 'cos of the graphics card being screwed, the windows partition was screwed up as well! Luckily, most of my important files are on the 2nd HD.......

So now I have to go looking for the receipt for the fecking laptop now, and hope the shop I got it in does repairs - if not I have to rely on the tender mercies of HP's customer care dept! Have the machine about 13 months as well so is just out of warranty too :-(

It's so true.... :-)

Nvidia users, beware windows update!

Here's a word of warning to anyone out there using a HP Pavillion laptop running an Nvidia graphics cards: beware of "automatic updates" on Windows Vista!

I was running a manual update yesterday (I don't trust M$ enough to let them update automatically, they've buggered up too many machines on me), and one fo the updates that windows was telling me I should install was the "NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller". Foolishly I let windows decide that it knew what sort of hardware drivers should be on my machine and checked it for install. Next thing, after I did the obligatory "windows has updated a trivial non-critical piece of software so you must restart" reboot, I realised I had a problem. Windows started no probs but nearly immediately after logging in, my display went crazy, the usual kind of shit you get when a graphics driver has gone screwy. tried rebooting but then got a bigger shock - even the BIOS screen was screwed up! My screen at the moment is a sort of mustard color with a few pixels flashing in the background in a slightly different shade of mustard, in the sort of pattern that indicates it's trying to display about 12 desktops at the same time.

Normally in this situation I'd just curse microsoft under my breath and roll back to the last system restore point before the update, which I've had to do many times before. This time tho it's different: even the BIOS start-up screen is shagged so I can't even see to get into safe mode! Hell, I can't even see the options to activate the system restore partition that comes with the laptop (my only easy way to do a reinstall as no manufacturers ship CDs any more)! System is totally fucked! Am going to have to go off and try to find an install CD for something that lets me access my HD to hose out the fecking bad driver! :-(

Shoud've just gotten a new number to begin with...... :-(

AAAGH!!!!

There's a chinese phrase that I use occasionally, "Ku xiao bu de" (哭笑不得), which translates as "not knowing whether to laugh or cry". Well, that's where I am with vodafone at the moment!

Last update I had here was that I was having problems accessing the voadfone.ie website. Well, that was only the tip of the frickin' iceberg. I tried setting up that "calls and texts to 087 for free" thing on the phone (which the muppet in the shop never told me I had to do, he just said I'd get it automatically) by sending "FREE" to 50222. What did I get back? "I'm sorry, you must be a Vodafone prepay customer to use this service". Eh? Funny, I thought I was, seeing as I was adding and using credit on my account! Ok, rang up the helldesk again, asked them what was going on. Guess what, I wasn't actually a proper vodafone customer! Seems port out #4 failed, so I was still sort of on the O2 network. So, what did I have to do? Go back into the shop and ask for the port-out again!

Right then, off in I went last Friday week. Explained the situation to yer man in the shop (I should just write it down and hand it to them at this stage) and so I got a new SIM Card and told it'd be activated in about an hour. Guess what? It wasn't. Strange that. So, waited until Monday and rang up cust care again (I know the number off by heart now). Guess what? It hadn't gone through! Meanwhile, I couldn't get into the website either, so I asked them about that too. Yer man did a bit of investigating and told me that my account was apparently coming up on different systems as (a) a bill-pay account (b) a pre-pay account and (c) an O2 account, depending on where he looked! Guess what I was told the solution would be? Yup, you guessed it, go into the shop and ask them to do the port-out again. So I did so, and told them "ignore whatever it is you are seeing on your screen, it's a port-out from o2 pre-pay to vodafone pre-pay". So, I left them to it, and went back to work.

That night I got another "welcome to Vodafone prepay" text, so I thought, maybe it's fixed. I go to the website and sure enough, I could get in now! There was one problem tho: according to the website, I was still a bill-pay account, and moreover, I had a bill saying I owed them €38.15 on what looked like 2 pre-pay accounts! So, I go ring them up again, and my account is still in the shagged state it was the day before. I get the usual advice about going into the shop and refused, as it's be the 4th or 5th time I did it (I've lost count at this stage) so the nice foreign girl said she'd put in the call herself and I should see the results in an hour or two. Guess what? No change!

So, I decide to go the route of email, as quite frankly I was pissed off talking to the helpdesk and not getting anywhere. So, I bang off a rather testy email on the website "contact us" form on Friday last. I get a reply about 24hrs later: "Can you provide us with your mobile number?" What? of course, I didn't actually give it to you because I foolishly assumed that as I was logged into my vodafone account and it looked like the number was automatically attached to the "contact us" mail page, that you'd know who I was! I sent it off, and heard nothing back.

So, I tried ringing up on Monday again (the 8th June, or approx 3 weeks since I started having all these problems). Got one guy who seemed to be making progress on getting a fix - and then I was disconnected while I was on hold while he was talking to the port-out team. Rang up again and got someone else who seemed to actually have a clue. After a bit of digging, she realised that the reason I looked like I still had a billpay account was because I still had - the bill on the website was the last line rental on my previous account, which I had foolishly assumed that they'd included on the last month's bill that they'd sent me after I'd already disconnected. The pre-pay account wasn't set up properly as well - whoever had set it up had apparently not given me a customer number, so the system couldn't register me for stuff like he free texts, webpage etc. So, she got me to give her the number from the back of the SIM and set it up for me, and said the registration for the webpage would take about 24hrs but could be done sooner. So, a few hours later I tried it and it worked! I had a pre-pay setup and could see my balance and send web texts and all! Alleluia, it was all fixed! :-)

And then we come to around 6pm last night.

So, I was leaving work, and was txting Michelle to say I was heading out to Blackrock and would be back around 8ish, but for some reason I couldn't login to the webpage, kept getting "Sorry, logon services are currently unavailable (SRV-WL-57).". OK, Vodafone have screwed up their website again, normally happens around once every 2-3 days. So, tried sending the txt from my phone. "Sending failed". Eh? Kept trying, and it kept failing. Tried checking my balance to see how much did I have, and got "service unavailable". Tried ringing 1741 and got "we are experiencing technical difficulties". Tried making a call and just kept getting a busy tone. Thought it might be that the network had totally gone tits-up, but when I got home, M's phone (also 087 pre-pay) was fine.

So, rang them up earlier this morning. After a bit more faffing around, I got an answer. It seems that despite what everyone had been saying for the last 3 weeks, my account was coming up invalid and coming up as only created on Monday. As my account was invalid, some automatic process must have reefed me off the system. Meanwhile, Vodafone still thought that the number was owned by O2, and O2 were still saying that they didn't own the number. Apparently Vodafone's porting team were refusing to just fully set up my account as without o2 giving their blessing on what should have been the port-out, it would be "illegal to do so". WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T THEY SAY THIS 3 WEEKS AGO?

So, that's it. I fucking give up. I wanted to keep my old number as I've had it for about 11 years, and I didn't want to go though the hassle of letting everyone know of the change, updating the contact info on my bank accounts, credit card accounts etc. I'm sick of banging my head off their tech support people tho, however much hassle it is updating everything and letting everyone know, it is infinitesimally less hassle than actually trying to get the fucker fixed. The original cock-up can probably be blamed on a combination of o2 and Vodafone, but the sheer incompetence of the Vodafone helpdesk/tech support in figuring out the problem over the last 3 weeks is pretty much fucking mind-blowing. Actually no, I'm not blaming the helpdesk people, they seemed to actually want to try to fix it for me, it's the numptys in the porting team and the 2nd/3rd line tech support are the incompetents. I work in 3rd line tech support, and I know if I had a case going on as long as this for a user who tried ringing up to get it fixed as many times as I have, I'd have been shot for it by now.

Given a choice, I'd be dropping Vodafone like a hot brick at this stage, but seeing as there is zero coverage for Meteor or O2 in my house in Waterford, I'm stuck with them. Have just gone into the shop and gotten my new number, and even managed to get the €15 that was still on my old account before they nuked it transferred over. Now to go updating all my accounts and letting everyone know I have a new number......

Funny thing is, I was in the Vodafone shop getting my new SIM card, and there was another girl in there trying to port over from O2. Sales assistant was saying to her "well, this might take a day or so, but don't worry, you'll have no problems porting over from O2 pre-pay to us". I was tempted to run over, grab her by the shoulders and shout at her, "Run! Run now, while you can! they'll fuck up the transfer and you'll be stuck in limbo until you want to beg for sweet, sweet death, but you wont be able to, your number is doomed!"

Election posters

I was walking up Westmoreland st yesterday and I saw a few rather interesting posters for the elections:



Translation: "If we get into government we'll fire all the friends and relatives of the last government that they put into the civil service, and we'll replace them with our own friends and relatives!"

And:



I somehow doubt that this is a genuine Fianna Fáil election poster! Either that or they're boasting: "Yeah, we did all this, we know you don't like us but we don't care, this is only a local & eropean election so you can't get rid of us anyway, nyah nyah!"

MORE Vodafone muppetry!

Well, here we go again. More vodafone problems. Now the problem is with their web page.

I decided to login to the web page today to see what the options you get with pre-pay are. So, assuming that after I'd cancelled my last account that they'd deleted my web account as well, I tried to set up a new one. Hmm, nope, got told This number is already registered. Have your password resent by clicking on the 'forgot your password' link below ". Did this and got sent the same passwd that I had before. Ok, no probs so far, I'll just login as before. Ah, this is Vodafone tho, that'd be easy! Every time I try, I get

There was a problem with your account, please contact Customer care (SRV-WL-03).

Well, I don't really have the strength nor patience at this stage to ring up their helldesk, so I decide to just email them. So, I go to the "help & support" page, is no option in the FAQ for "my account won't let me login". Right, ok, so I'll go to the "contact us" page. there's a link there for "email us" under the pre-pay section. Where does it take me? To the fucking login page! if I could login, I wouldn't have to report a bloody error would I?

These guys are really pissing me off. I'm going to have to take several dozen deep breaths here before I try the cust service number (which I now know off by heart). Is no point in reefing some poor sales drone out of it because the rocket scientists in charge of the back-end can't get their shit together.... :-(

New Phone

Well, I've had the new phone up & running & working about a week now, so I might as well give my impressions of it, seeing as it took so much fucking hassle to get it!

Well, first bit I suppose is the touch screen. I've used the iPhone a bit before, and while it's maybe not quite as intuitive as that beastie, it's still pretty good. The icons are pretty big & easy to click, the fonts are pretty legible, you can flick the screen to scroll (and of you don't like that, the volume keys also let you scroll thru menus), and the screen is pretty legible even in bright(ish) light. Well, ok, we haven't had any scorching hot bright days, but it's been a bit sunny and I had no problems seeing the screen. this is apparenly an improvement on previous Samsungs - one of my friends had the Omnia and got rid of it 'cos the screen was terrible. The UI has a sidebar which you can put some of your most commonly used widgets/apps on for easy access, and then to make things even easier, you can drag the widgets to the "desktop" for even easier access. So, at the moment I'm one click away from writing a new message or reading my txts. One niggle with this is that you can't just put anything on the sidebar, just a limited subset that samsung seem to have decided you'll use the most. Is still handy tho.

One of the reasons I got the phone was the camera - is an 8 megapixel, so is 2Mp higher than my sony cybershot! Megapixel count tho is only really a way for camera makers to practice biggerdickism with their devices: at 8Mp I can print photo quality up to an A1 page, how many times am I going to do that? The picture quality is pretty good, about as good as you're going to see on a phone - the only better one may be the Sony Ericsson C905, but I didn't really like the look & feel of that one. I haven't done a huge amount of pic shooting yet but what I have done is pretty decent. The phone doesn't come with wi-fi but I figured I used the wi-fi maybe 2 dozen times tops on my last phone in the year and a bit I had it, so no great loss. the music player is decent enough, and plays most formats, and has a dolby-like option which reall puts a bit of "whoomph!" into your songs - I want to try this out with my Sennheuser headphones! The radio is pretty good too, and has a rather unusual feature that allows you to record off it, altho I haven't tried that yet. The video player on it is able to play DivX movies, I tried it and it works pretty well, and the sound quality is excellent too. Only problem tho is that all bar one of my movie collection on my laptop are XVid-encoded not DivX! The phone ships with the ususal other crap, alarm clock, calendar, calculator etc, and all are adequate enough, and for some reason they are selling it as a "gael fon", so it has an irish-english dictionary built in. Eh? :-P

And now onto the niggly little bits. One of the big selling points of the phone was apparenly that it has built-in GPS, but that's just a gimmick. All the reviews I read of the phone said that there were some built-in apps that took advantage of it, but it seems Vodafone in their wisdom took all them out on their version, so the only thing that uses it is the camera for geo-tagging pictures. I tried installing google maps, but even that seems to use base station triangulation rather than the GPS to find out where you are. In the phone settings you can get the GPS to get your location but it's fairly flakey, about 3 times in 4 it fails to find the satellites. So, if you're looking for a phone that has working & useful GPS system, don't get this one.

This is also the only touch-screen phone on the market that has an actual keypad as well, which slides out at the bottom of the screen. it seems tho that Samsung have fallen into the trap of all mobile phone manufacturers and put all the function keys wherever they want rather than in a commonly agreed place - space is on the # key, caps is on the *, punctuation marks/symbols are on the 1 which is normal enough, but t9 options are on the 0. The layout of the keypad means as well that the keys are out to the very edge of the phone, so if you're one-hand texting with your thumb, the space key is uncomfortably close to the base of your thumb, you're nearly stretching your thumb back to get to it. So, most of the time I just use the on-screen touch keypad not the physical one. Also, there's no actual delete key or any direction keys - delete is a soft-key on the touch-screen and to change the cursor position you tap on the screen where you want to go. You also can't select a word you already wrote to change the spelling, you have to delete the word and start again. so, if you type "he" and you wanted "if" instead, you can't just select it and use '0' to change the spelling, you have to delete it and go again. Having said that, the touch-screen typing is pretty fast, faster than I'd manage on my old phone - so long as you don't make a typo and have to go back and change spelling, for the reason I mentioned a sec ago. Also, the T9 dictionary is a bit flakey, it comes up with some "interesting" spelling options. One nice thing tho (which I just discovered today) is it autocompletes punctuation, so to type "can't" you just type "cant". This all just needs a bit of practise I guess, and the phone has at least passed the "drunk test": I was out for a few pints last nigth and was able to text easily enough about 5-6 pints into the evening! :-P

And now onto making calls: The phonebook only holds one number per entry, which is a bit awkward for ppl with multiple numbers, and for some reason when you make a call from teh phone book and hang up, you're left back at the phone book entry rather than at the "desktop" like on pretty much any other phone, so you ahve to exit out of it to get back. Also, there seems to be a lot of "spillage" of sound out of the earphone, when you're on a call you can turn the phone around backwards and nearly hear the other person as well as you could the right way around! There's great sound out of the headphones in a call, and if you don't like the Smasung headphones there's a normal headphone jack on the speaker part where you can plug in your own - the connection to the phone itself tho is a Samsung proprietary one which also doubles as the power port. It has a cover over it but instead of a sliding cover it swivels around and sort of sticks out when you ahve the 'phones plugged in, I can't see it lasting a huge amount of time without being smapped off.

All in all I guess, it's a pretty nice phone, worth the money I eventually paid for it (altho a little less vodafone-related hassle wud have been nice), but there are a few arez it does fall down on a little - apart from the GPS it sort of has the feel that as well as skimping on wi-fi, Samsung went to make a great multimedia camera device, and forgot to put very much effort into the actual "phone" features of the device like calls & txts....

Dirty windows

Am not totally sure what got into me this evening, but I decided to clean the windows on the door leading out to the balcony on our flat - is a good while since they were done and I thought they looked a little bit mucky. A little bit!

I did one window first and the difference between that and the one I hadn't done was pretty gruesomely obvious.



Guess which one is the clean one eh? here's a closer look out through them, that last shot isn't the best:



And now the view from the outside looking in:



I'd sort of forgotten that you should be able to see a reflection in a window!

This is what you get when you live over a busy city center street. I can't remember how long it is since they were done, but the amount of shit that came off them, especially when I wiped down the frame! :-(

Well, maybe next time I won't leave it as long. Only problem now is, the other flat windows, the one where there's no convenient balcony to stand on when I'm cleaning them, look really awful......

The Phone Saga - over at last!

So, last time I left this little problem was last thurs night, when O2 had pretty much turned around and said "well, sucks to be you, we'll maybe call O2 and ask them pretty please to give us the number". Friday morning, I decided to try ringing them again to see was there any more progress. Despite the fact that the previous day, the last person I'd asked said they'd get onto O2 again to release the number, the helldesk person I got this time pretty much told me the same thing the dude had told me the day before, they'd tried 3 times and failed, and someone was going to contact o2. I asked him exactly what I could do here, and he suggested I try to put in the number change as a new request again, seeing as o2 were after blocking the same request ID 3 times in a row, tehy were harly likely to let it though again.

Ok, no problem, I decided to try that. Asked the guy would it help if I rang O2 and got them to release the number, and he told me I wouldn't have to do that. So, I went into the vodafone shop on fri to sign up again. Slight problem: I forgot that for a pay monthly account I needed ID and a bill. Well, there goes that plan. So, I decided to wait until monday to get it done again, as even if I signed up online I'd still have to wait to get the SIM in the post. On Sunday, just to be sure, I rang up O2 and asked them to release the number., What was I told? "Well, your number is a pre-pay one so there shouldn't be any problems with porting it over to Vodafone, should happen straight away". Eh? Isn't what Vodafone were telling me!

I finally got to go into a vodafone shop at lunchtime today. Went up to the counter, said "I'd like to set up a pre-pay account thanks, I want to port this number over from o2". The reply? "certainly sir, what's the number?" and that was it. Number was working before I got half-way back to the office with my sandwich! This begs the question, what the fuck were those muppets who were giving me the run-around on weds and fri trying to do with the bloody number? Then again, is maybe not surprising that they'd fuck something up, given the fact that the helldesk guy I was talking to on fri wasn't aware that the 1800 number had been having "technical problems" that meant you couldn't get through to a human on it for 3 days - "oh right, thanks, I'll pass it on"!

So, the phone is working now, all I have to do is get used to using a touch-screen - pretty much means you can't just txt with one hand now, as it's too awkward using the touch-screen one-handed. Also, I decided to switch to pre-pay instead of bill-pay - if you top up by €20 a month you get free calls & txts to other vodafone numbers and with bill-pay you're paying €19.95 for 50 free txts and calls a month that don't roll over from one month to the next, so for the same price as your contract on bill-pay you get more free stuff, plus you still get to spend the €20 on calls. Besides, I've seen how well they reward their loyal bill-pay customers......

Well, we'd better hope for all our sakes now that there isn't anything wrong with my phone in the next few weeks, 'cos if there is I'll probably be going into the Vodafone shop with a trenchcoat and a shotgun!

Class Reunion

Well, I'm now definitely officially old. I'm just after having my 10-year college reunion. 10 years, Jesus. Where did the time go?

Was a fairly good event, as these things go. Met up with Eamonn in Town for lunch, then headed out to the college a bit early so we could take a look around. The atrium and the canteen pretty much looked the same as it did when we were there, but after that, it looked like a totally different place. when we were there, there were 2 buildings in the college, plus the gym & the Dome (the campus bar) Now there are 6. And even of the two we had, one was unrecognizable. What used to be the library is now more lecture rooms, and the D corridor is now admin offices for the school of business rather than the computer rooms we used to spend our time in. We pretty much had the whole place to ourselves wandering around, as it was the last day of the exams and the place was deserted.

The official reunion itself started at 4 with a drinks reception in the Tourism & Leisure building, which now occupies what used to be a football pitch in my time. Me & Eamonn were one of the first in there, so we settled in with a drink and watched ppl come in. Apparently there were a lot of reunions on, for 10, 15, 25 and 30 year classes (obviously the 20-year ppl never bothered replying), so there were maybe 200 there in total. Out of our graduating class of about 80 tho, there were only 6 that turned up, including myself.

Once everyone was in and settled with at least a few drinks under our belts, there was a small bit of speechifying, followed by a quick tour of a few of the new bits of the college (which I'd seen already). Our "tour guide" was Paul Barry, who used to be head of our department but was now something big in the applied mathematics dept. After the tour, we had a surprisingly decent meal in the Gallery restaurant, one of the new bits of the college. Place is a far cry from the canteen we used to have to put up with - even had a pizza/pasta counter and a smoothie bar! After the meal, we all repaired over to The Dome, which was also twice the size it used to be (which was disappointing, it didn't feel like the place we were so used to). After a few pints in there, it ws into town to Geoffs, which we'd figured out was the only bar we used to go to that wasn't either renamed, remodeled, under new management or (in the case of 2 places) had been totally razed to the ground and rebuilt! So, we stayed there for a few more pints and went our separate ways again around 1am.

It was a good day, but was a bit depressing in ways It was good to be able to wander around the college and recall stuff like "remember when mick duggan brought the pint of guinness into the computer room during rag week?", but it was a bit of a shock to the system to see how much the place had changed. Also, the turn-out was a bit disappointing, 6 pl out of 80? I knew when I'd signed up for it back in early april that there weren't many going, and I know everyone has their own lives to lead and all, and that some ppl were living too far away to be able to make it, but still, a 10 year anniversary isn't something that crops up every day, and I know of at least 5-6 people from the class that are still around waterford that could probably easily have made it. Also, the people that did turn, up, with the exception of Eamonn, weren't really people I would have hung out with much in college, they were in different classes to me in 1st & 2nd year and most had done the commercial stream rather than the industrial stream when the classes split in 3rd year. I'm not saying that we didn't get on, but there were ppl I would have seen a lot more of in college that didn't come.

Well, at least it wasn't a secondary school reunion - altho if we have those, it'll be 15 years next year. The only reason I'd go to one of those would be to see how many of the fuckers I went to school with have ended up stuck on the family farm, in prison or as single parents on the dole. I could count the no of ppl from my Leaving Cert class that I wouldn't mind seeing again on the fingers of one hand, just about.

(update)

I was tidying out my press there today as well, and I found this tucked inside an old college prospectus....



Damn, that brings back memories! Am not sure what happened my face tho....

New Phone

Well, I have my new phone at last. There's only one problem with it: I can't actually use it. :-(

I finally figured outhow to get around the Vodafone problem of getting a new phone without paying full price and still keep my same number. Seems that while I couldn't go from one account to another on Vodafone and keep my number, I could switch to o2 and keep my number - and then switch back. So, that's what I did, mostly.

So, I rang up vodafone and told them I was leaving to go to O2, and could they cancel my account. Guy on the other end of the phone told me it'd take maybe 2 days to port my number over to O2, but I decided to try it anyway. So, at lunchtime that day, I headed up to grafton st, went onto the 2 shop and asked them could I get as pre-pay account and keep my vodafone number on which I'd just cancelled the account. I told the sales dude waht Vodafone had said about how long it'd take and, he laughed and said that they always said that and it'd be a lot quicker. Sure enough, after I left the shop I decided to drop into the Bagel Bar on Dawson St to grab lunch to bring back, and before I'd even gotten my bagel, beep beep on my phone, "welcome to O2". Easy peasy!

So, I had just bought a O2 pre-pay SIM for €10, and had €10 credit on it, all I had to do was wait til my last vodafone bill cleared and I used up my free tenner's o2 credit, and back I go. THe Vodafone bill duly arrived, so I decided to get my new phone. And this is where Vodafone started to spanners into the works of what was up until then a prefectly simple plan. I ordered the phone online on monday, the new Samsung Tocco Ultra, touch-screen, 8Mp camera, GPS, real fancy like, plus free bluetooth headset, for €99. THen the trouble started. While I could have the phone by tuesday, the web page wouldn't let me swap the numbers over until weds at the earliest. Fair 'nuff, I thought, I have enough credit left til then (I actually got an extra €2.50 off O2 for registering online), so I chose to have the number ported over between 8am and 10am. The order went though, but in the email confirmation I was warned that "We'll strive to switch you to Vodafone at your preferred tine, but on the rare occasions when this is not possible we'll ussually complete the switching process later on your preferred day.". Ok, fair enough.

The new phone arrived early on tuesday afternoon, all shiny and new, so I was all eager to get it up and running and playing with it. Slight snag tho: no signal on my new Vodafone SIM, and the phone is SIM-locked so I can't use my o2 on in it! So, while I could play with it and get used to the menu system, using a touch-screen phone etc, I couldn't actually use it. Is a nice little entertainment system, has a decent enough music player & radio, camera is pretty good as well, but it isn't actually a phone yet. That had to wait until I'm not an O2 member any more.

So, yesterday morning 8am arrived, so any time now I should be back on vodafone. Problem tho: no "beep beep, welcome to vodafone". 10am arrived, still no port out. I decided to ring them at around 3pm, to see was I one of the "rare occasions" and when could I expect it to be done. First thing, to get support on the Vodafone helpline, you have to enter your vodafone number. Oops, didn't really have one yet. Got though to a human after having to wade though several menu options and listen to several "We are pleased to announce vodafone have brought out several new offers X, Y and Z, which you won't have any choice but to hear us talk about, your call may be recorded if you ever get through, but your call is still important to us" messages, I got a human. So, I explained that I was still waiting to be welcomed into the Vodafone fold, and got put on hold a few times while she figured it out. Apparenly Voda had tried to get the number off O2 but o2 had refused to release it as I had only been a customer a short while. Instead of letting me know, Voda had decided to sit on it and do no more about it for a while! I told them to tell O2 I was a genuine port out, and she promised someone would get back to me soon.

That was around 3pm on weds, it's now about 11pm on thurs night and no word. I tried to get through earlier but depending at what stage in the menus I got to, I was told either "All our operators are busy" or "we are experiencing technical difficulties, please call again later". So, I now have 2 useless phones as I'm at my parents house and there's fuck-all signal for anyone except vodafone here, and besides, I'm down to about 20c O2 credit as I was expecting to be swapped over by now and I don't want to buy more as I could be transferred over at any time (yeah, right). So, am going to have to make some rather unfriendly phone calls tomorrow (from a land-line) to get this sorted.

Vodafone pt II: "All customers are equal......"

"...but some are more equal than others.

Well, I rang up Vodafone like I said I was going to do, to see could they do anything about the upgrade for me. Nope! According to the support guy I got (who was actually Irish, I was nearly shocked not to hear an Indian voice), the way they used to determine upgrades was how long you were a vodafone member, but back around December they moved to a new system which adds in a whole load more qualifications. Now, your eligibility is determined by stuff like how long you've been a member, whether you pay on time, whether you pay by direct debit or not, what price plan you're on and how much you spend on it. Am all good there apart from the last one - apparently since the new system went in, no-one who's been on the lower price plan (perfect fit 50) for less than 18 months has ever gotten an upgrade. Seems ppl on that plan don't spend enough according to Vodafone...... Guy even asked his supervisor could they push the upgrade through anyway, but the new automated system doesn't even allow them to do that

So, given my current account, I won't be able to get a new phone for at least another 6 months. So, I'd need to set up a new account. Asked the guy would I be able to do that and transfer over my existing number to use that. Apparently I can't, the only way to do that wud be to move my existing number to pre-pay, set up a new account to get the new phone, and keep the old number as a backup. Now I know that last year when I got this phone, I got the number transferred from my old account to a new account, and then back again - but then again it was a company phone so the new account was a business account, so vodafone probably bed over backwards for those guys.

So, according to Vodafone, the easiest way for me to get a new phone and keep my existing number is to move to O2! You'd think that these days that any company would want to keep their existing customers if they possibly can, especially given that the turnover in accounts with mobile phone companies is quite high. Apparently Vodafone tho don't think my business is important enough to them to allow exceptions, despite the fact that they've been getting my business since I left college. Well, is off to ebay etc for me for my new phone so, and if I can't get a good price there, Vodafone will not only be losing the potential €120 from my upgrade, they may be losing a customer too!

Vodafone: "your call is important to us - but not your loyalty"

Well, as if I needed it, another indication that once you sign up for something with one of the big companies, they don't care about you any more. I decided I wanted a new phone for my birthday, so I picked one out (Samsung S8300, the new 2Tocco Ultra") and went into the vodafone shop. Phone is €429 SIM-free but only €129 on Perfect fit 50, which is the price plan I'm on. So, I go up to the counter, say "I want XYZ phone", dude asks me if I'm already a vodafone customer and I say yes. So far so good. Next thing tho, I get told "sorry, you're not eligible for an upgrade". I ask how much the phone wud be if I wanted to get it, and he said €429, or the full whack. The only way to get it at the discount price is apparently to get a new account with a new number.

So, despite the fact I've been with vodafone for about 10 years, pay my bills by direct debit so I never miss a payment, and have my existing phone a year already (literally, was apparently a year yesterday, dude in the shop said), I'm not enough of a "good customer" to warrant getting an upgrade. Come to think about it, in the last 10 years I think I've only been eligible for an upgrade 2, maybe 3 times - most of the times I get my phones myself. Apparently a "good customer" is one who spends lots of money with them, and I keep my bill pretty low by using the 300 free web texts a month that I'm entitled to as a customer, and make most of my phone calls from work.

If however I was someone who wasn't on vodafone and decided I wanted to drink the kool-aid and be enfolded in their warm embrace, I'd get the phone at the cheaper price. Then again, even if I was like that, I still couldn't get the phone I really wanted: vodafone ireland, in their infinite wisdom, seem to have decided that the Sony Ericsson C905, which every other network in Ireland have had out since before Xmas, is still too new to offer to the their customers. So, instead, they're still trying to plug as their #1 high-end phone the Blackberry Storm, which no-one who has a choice in the matter actually wants, and those who have to have it (i.e. office types) don't like. Unfortunately I'm not allowed to change network: both my parents and my g/f are on vodafone and have free calls & texts to me, which they wouldn't have if I switched to say O2. so, I'm stuck with vodafone.

So, what do I do, suck it down, and pay the full price? Yeah, right, screw that. Ebay is an option, but the last time I did that with my Sony Ericsson w800i, I had no end of trouble when the phone went tits-up and I had to get it repaired. I could cancel my account and sign up as one of the new customers that vodafone seem to favour over me. Problem with that is I'll prob lose the number I've been using these last 10 years, and I don't want to go having to let everyone in my phone book know and then memorize a new number just for vodafone's convenience. So, will try ringing the customer support line tmro and hopefully if I get someone who can actually speak english, I'll try to see if I can get the upgrade, or at least switch accounts and keep my existing number. I'm not doing it tho because I love vodafone and can't imagine life without them, but because I'm not being given any other choice.

Sobriety - one month to go!

Well, I've been off the drink now since New Years Day. The only time I've had a drink since was on my ski weekend in the beginning of Feb, and the few special occasions I also allowed myself like birthdays (and most of my friends have b'days in september/october - bastards). I said at the beginning that I'd stay off til my birthday at the end of april, so I'm most of the way there now. This time next month I'll be back on the booze! Is a good job too, am not saying I'm an alco or anything but nights out are a bit boring and I'm getting sick of 7up and orange juice!

Bit of a change

Well, I got a bit sick of the look & feel of the blog, so I decided to change it a bit. So, now the text actually goes the whole way across the page! :-)

Microsoft - muppets!

Well, curiosity got the better of me yesterday, and I decided to see what Windows 7 looked like. So, I downloaded a beta copy to try out. Rather than fucking up an actual computer by installing it and have it fuck up (this is microsoft after all - and even worse, a microsoft beta!), I decided to give it a go on a virtualbox VM. This is what I got.

I kicked off the install and got to the window where it asks for the registration code. Having got this build off bittorrent, I didn't have one, but though "no problem, normally you get 30 days trial before you have to put in the key". Nope, not with the beta, even tho it says you can when you're at the registration page. You get through the rest of the install (which half the time tells you you're installing vista, half the time windows 7), you get to the point where you have a user created and are logging in, and then you get told that the license that you never entered has expired and you need to enter it or get a new one.



If you click "access your computer with reduced functionality", then you might be expecting to be logged into some crippled version of the OS where you can do some stuff but not everything - but it's still usable and browsable. Nope, you forgot this is Micro$oft you're dealing with! All you get up is a browser window asking you to buy a license. Or rather you should, but some of the time MS can't even seem to find their own webpage!



So, I looked around a bit on the web, and found that if you have a windows live account then you can sign up and get a beta license key. I have one of those (never use it), so I signed up and got my beta key. Guess what? Like everything else to do with this beta, it didn't work!



There ends my experiment with Windows 7, I just couldn't be bothered putting in any more effort trying to get the damn thing working any more. Microsoft - telling you one thing, doing something else since Windows 95!