New Shiny Shiny

Well, I have meself a nice new phone here. Seems it's company policy that everyone has a company phone, so I took the opportunity to use the company discount to try out a Nokia for the first time in about 5-6 years. So, my new Nokia E51 has just landed on my desk. It looks nice anyway - about the same length and breadth as my K800i but about half as thick. I can't play with it til I get a full charge on it now, but I have a good 2 1/2hrs to play with it on my way home on the train this evening :-)

Some more pics of the ski trip in austria

...courtesy of Clement

New Passport! :-)

Well, I can travel again now. I have my new passport! That was quicker than I thought, I knew they said "10 working days" but this is Ireland so I was expecting it to be another week maybe. Plus I got the old one back with a big-ass "CANCELLED" stamp across the pic page, so at least I get to keep my entry visas from China etc as souveniers.

Going-away parties.

Well, I was out at another going-away party with work last night. One of the girls from our group was leaving - which brings us down to 5 from a team of 14. As one of the girls is relatively new, there's only 4 of us who'll be able to take the support phone foe a good while. So, one week a month I'll be on call!

So for we're still maintaining the record of not having a week this year where there hasn't been a going-away party for someone - and a lot of the more recent weekend do's have been for 2, sometimes 3 people at a time. We were figuring out the numbers last night and realised that we've gone from over 140 in the Dublin office at its peak (before the takeover) to just a tad over 40 now. That's a lot of people gone! At this stage I don't even really bother reading the names on the going-away cards, just sign "all the best", and the having to put a fiver in each card has pretty much negated that bonus I got last month!

Passport

Well, at least now I know for definite that work isn't going to be sending me off anywhere for the next two weeks anyway: I don't have a passport any more! I'm just after sending off my application to get a new passport, and I had to include my old passport to get canceled as well. So, I can't leave the country for the next 10 working days!

Man, I can't believe that it's nearly 10 years since I got a passport. I can remember being so excited about my first trip abroad (to Brussels to see my uncle) that I barely slept the night before. Now I'm so blasé about it that my 2nd last trip to Brussels I left work at about 4pm to get back to the flat to pack my bag and find my passport for my 7pm flight! (the last trip to Brussels I went straight from work, and I'd taken 10mins to pack my bag that morning). Since then, according to them applet thingies on my facebook account, I've been to 9% of the countries in the word - 79 cities in 21 countries. And a few of them (like Belgium, Italy, America and Spain), I've been to a few times. Not bad I guess eh?

Power Cuts

Well, it was fun yesterday evening in work when we had a power cut around 3:30 - no-one could do anything, and just as it came back in, it was time to leave for the evening - but now this morning there was a power cut in my apartment building as well. I was just getting out of the shower and the light in the bathroom went off. I thought it was a blown bulb until I noticed there was no sound of the water heater pump when I ran the hot tap (it's not loud but it's noticeable). Sure enough, when I went out the all the lights were off, and when I looked out the window the traffic lights were out and the building across the road was dark too.

Yesterday in work we were blaming the guys digging a big hole in the footpath outside the building for hitting the wrong wire, but I can't do that for this morning. Maybe some overzealous employee in ESB decided we didn't celebrate Earth Hour enough? Or maybe it's me? Maybe I've started emitting some strange electromagnetic radiation that turns off the power? That'd be cool.......

Hee Hee

I was in town yesterday, and when I was passing by the Great Outdoors I noticed that they had a big "SALE" sign in the window, so I decided to go up and take a look. I saw pretty much the same type of ski boots as I have at a slightly different price - €199, or still €50 more than I paid for mine! :-)

On another note, you can tell that the winter is over and summer isn't that far away, when you see the arrival of the annoying little foreign students. When I was passing by Trinity College, there they were, a big group of about 20 or so spanish (I think) kids in matching backpacks and chatting at full volume, blocking the whole path. A few years ago, we came up with a collective noun for them: a "babble" of spanish students. So, from now on, we'll have to batter our way past them every time we want to go past Trinity, the GPO, and any McDonalds in the city.....

Flights

Well, I'm just after booking my 6-monthly trip over to see Sara in Brussels here. I decided to do it a bit differently than usual - I'm flying out with Ryanair and back with Aer Lingus. Is costing about €78 return, which is cheaper than going both ways with either airline - a return with Ryanair on the same days would be €95 before adding on their stealth charges (so probably about €100) and with Aer Lingus it'd be €126. Most of the flights here are taxes -t eh ryanair flight allegedly costs €3.99 before taxes etc (€30 after) and Aer Lingus was €10 before taxes (or €48 after).

The strange thing is that the Aer Lingus prices seem to vary quite a bit. I got the single flight for €10, but apparenly if I was getting it as the return leg of a two-way flight, it'd be €6.....

The pubs are never opening again!

Well, that seems to be the attitude of Irish people around this time of the year. Twice a year, the pubs close for a whole day and off licenses etc aren't supposed to sell drink (Good Friday and Xmas day), and both times you see people the day before coming out of the supermarkets with trollies packed to the brim full of booze. There's more drink bought on Holy Thursday and Xmas Eve than I'd say in the 2-3 weeks before each put together, and more alcohol probably drank on those days than when the pubs are actually open. Sort of misses the whole point of "day of fast and abstinence" doesn't it really?

It's like primitive man sacrificing animals at midwinter so the sun will come up again, people seem to be afraid that when the pubs shut this evening, they won't ever open again.......

Skiing in the dark

On our last night, Eugene, the Irish guy whose place we were staying in, decided we were going to start drinking up at the middle station and then drink our way down the mountain. He took a bit of a shine to us I think, because he was on a leave of absence from CIE and there were two of the guys in the group from there, so we got maybe preferential treatment to other groups (including the discount on the boots) :-) He knew a little gasthaus that hardly any of the tourists ever went, which was on a blue run off to the side of the final run down to the village (which incidentally was a black run), if you didn't know about it you'd miss it every time. So, the plan was to drink a bit, ski a bit, drink a bit more, ski a bit more and end up in there at around 5pm for dinner and more drinks. The dinner was absolutely fantastic - roast pork, roast potatoes and dumplings, probably the best meal we got in the whole trip! After the meal there was a bit of a singsong, and we wound that up around 9pm. Then came the interesting part: the only way back to the village was to ski down. A black slope. In the dark. With about 5, 6 pints on everyone. Fun! The only light we had was from a piste basher a bit up the slope. Strangely enough, it was probably some of the best skiing most ppl did: if you can't see the black slope, you can't be scared by the fact you're skiing down a 75- or 80-odd degree angle, and the alcohol got rid of any residual nerves anyone had! Everyone made it down with no injuries at all, even the beginner skiiers. So, for future reference, the best way to tackle a black slope is half cut :-)

Nocturnal events: apres-ski in Zell.

Well, no-one goes on a ski holiday to ski, that'd just be silly. The nightlife is as much of an attraction as the slopes, and I've known ppl who've spent more time on the piss than on the piste!

We started off quite well, with the Ireland V Scotland and England V France matches in the Irish pub pretty much as soon as we arrived. The forst match went well, but then we hit an uncomfortable situation for the second match: for Ireland to have a chance at the Grand Slam, France had to lose, so we had to shout for England. Alcohol helped numb that particular pain, and the night ended well apart from the very end: the trek up to the guesthouse. We were staying about 300m up the mountain from the village and the slope up to it was nearly steeper than anything we had to ski! Walking back up there was often more knackering at the end of the day than anything else we'd done earlier.

As the week went on, we took the measure of all of the alcohol serving establishments in the village. The irish bar we tried to avoid, as, well, it was an irish bar and there's too many of them at home. A few of the guys had been in Zell a few years before and had fond half-memories of a bar called "Deiler", but this year that seemed to always be full of 17- and 18-year-old dutch kids and you nearly felt like a paedophile just looking at the dancefloor. The music was brutal as well, so we abandoned that place for a bar called "Crazy Daisys", which didn't always hit the spot music-wise (this is a ski resort in austria I guess, their taste in music died with Mozart) but had a better atmosphere. And once that place shut at 4am, there was always Viva, which was a shite club that only played techno music but stayed open serving alcohol til the last person left or 8am, whichever happened first.

So, there were quite a few mornings where we weren't quite able to catch the first chairlift of the morning at 8:30 :-)

Skiing without snow (nearly)

I remember on my first year skiing I had a bit of trouble adjusting to having to walk around in the village on that cold white "snow" stuff; on our way to the pub the first night and for the few days afterwards I was slipping and sliding all over the shop until I got my "snow legs". I needn't have worried about it this year. Once again, we arrived into a snowless ski resort. It was a little bit better than Kitzbuhel last year in that you could ski all the way down to the village, but only just about better. The day we arrived there wasn't even any attempt to get on the white stuff though, as it was just about getting dark when we arived and there was an ireland match to be watched anyway (strangley enough, same as last year!).

We had just about enough time before the match to get sorted out with gear, and I finally bit the bullet and bought myself a pair of ski boots. Last year, I'd been looking at the sales in the Great Outdoors in Dublin and at the end-of-season clearance sale the boots were down to about €300. Here, the boots started at about €250 and even then I got them reduced to €150 because there were a few of us getting them together and because the shop owner had a deal with the guy we were staying with. So, €150 for a pair of boots I'll wear maybe one week a year, am I mad? No, paying €400 for a pair you'll wear one week a year, that's mad! ;-p

So, sunday morning we headed up the ski slopes. Straight away, we noticed something. It was warm. very warm. Too bloody warm in fact! Normally when you go skiing, you get the expensive ski jacket and pants for a reason: the temp is normally in the minus figures. Minus 5 degrees is nice weather for skiing, anything lower is maybe a bit chilly. Here tho, it was plus 5 degrees - at 9am! By early afternoon, I'd seen a thermometer on one of the ski lifts reading an air temp of 15 degrees! This was nice in one way as you could ski in just your base layer or a fleece instead of being wrapped up like an arctic explorer (altho you couldn't lose the ski pants which got a bit toasty), but bad in that the snow conditions got messy real fast in the afternoon. High temps and lots of ppl sking combined to make the slopes pretty slushy and bumpy by about 2pm, and there were no piste bashers in evidence around to smooth things out again. By later afternoon, some of the slopes were less ski runs and more obstacle courses as you had to navigate around bumps and moguls that had been carved out gradually during the day.

This unfortunately was somehting that didn't change as the week went on: it got a bit cooler but never went below zero during the day, which meant that they couldn't use the snow cannons to make more snow (it needs to be below zero for that to work). Add to that the fact that we pretty much didn't see any snow falling on Zell til the last run of the last day (and even then only on the top of the mountain, any lower than 2000m and it was rain) meant that the snow we had at the start of the week was the snow we were stuck with til the end of the week. The mornings were ok, as the snow had a chance to refreeze overnight and hte piste bashers went in after it got dark, but by the afternoons it was a slushfest again. The worst run was on the last day, a 1km(ish) red run down to the village which by the time we went on it was just pure muck to ski on. Was as much ice and slush as actual snow, you couldn't turn worth shit, was bumpy as feck and even the experienced skiiers with us were wiping out. Everyone was knackered and soaked by the time we got the whole way down.



Then again, it could have been worse. I feel sorry for anyone who was arriving on the day we left - it was pissing rain all morning and as we were dropping our gear off in the shop the assistant told us they were after closing all the lifts as the ski conditions were just so bad - and this was just before lunch! So, if you arrived in Zell on the 1st March, I hope you were into hill-walking 'cos you sure as shit weren't going to be doing any skiing!

Getting there is NOT half the fun!

Well, I'm just back from my ski trip in Austria. Next time we go on a ski trip, I think I'm definitely going to try to convince the lads to fly into the same country as we're actually skiing in! To get to Zell Am See in Austria, we flew into Munich in Germany. I had to get up at 4:30 in the morning to catch an 8:30am flight. Normally I don't mind doing that if I'm going somewhere on the far side of the globe, but Germany? You're barely out of your own timezone there, is way to early in the morning to be doing that! The majority rules tho, and in our group, the majority said we fly early :-

The plan was to get to Munich at around 11:30, hop on the bus we'd hired for a "quick" 2 1/2 hour trip to Zell, settle in and have a couple of hours to spare before we headed down to the irish bar to watch the Ireland Scotland rugby match at 7 to grab our gear, get some food and generally settle in. What we didn't realise before we set out tho was that the week we were going coincided with mid-term break in Holland, and it seems if you're Dutch, the thing to do on mid-term is to head to Austria skiing. So, the whole of Holland seemed to be heading in the same direction as us, the autobahns were choc-a-block with NL-plated cars, and at one stage on the radio we heard there was a 16km long tailback outside Munich! Luckily our bus driver knew the score,and we spent the whole trip on back-roads and side-roads, seeing a lot more of rural Germany than normal tourists do (and I can see why they don't bother with it). The only time we got on the autobahn we took 20mins to get 1km between intersections! So, what on a normal day would have been a nice easy 2, maybe 2 1/2hr trip turned into a 3 1/2hr odyssey.

On our way back, we discovered that Newton's 1st law also applies to traffic: just as for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, so for every mass Dutch migration to the ski slopes there is an equal and opposite mass migration home at the end of the week. And once again we got caught in the middle of it. At least on the way out we didn't really have a deadline to keep, but on the way back we had a flight to catch! So, we arranged for the bus to pick us up way way in advance of what we thought we'd need - 1:45pm for a 7:40pm flight. This time though, some of our tulip-growing pot-smoking cousins seem to have gotten wise to the fact that the autobahn was a recipe for creeping disaster, and so transferred some of the traffic jams and tailbacks onto some of our back roads. It also didn't help that there'd been a big-ass storm the night before so a lot of the roads the driver was planning on taking were blocked by fallen trees, forcing us to take detours. As a result, we arrived at Munchen airport just in time to catch the tail end of the check-in queue! At least we made it I guess.

Having said that, we could have easily taken our time a bit more. I read a statistic somewhere the other week saying that on average about 30% of flights take off late from the major european airports, and this was one of our chances to add to those statistics. We started boarding at about the time we should have been taking off, which is generally par for the course on any flight, but then when we were all nice and comfy and had buckled up and noted the location of our nearest emergency exits (bearing in mind that the nearest exit may be behind us) and ready to go..... nothing. We get an announcement from the cockpit that we'd lost our take-off slot and had to wait for the tower to give us another one - which would be at least a half-hour delay. Half an hour later(ish), we started moving, and eventually got into the air, where we immediately seemed to hit a headwind which stayed with us most of the way over. As a result, what should have been a 9:30pm landing into Dublin turned into an 11:15pm one, and I crawled into my flat just after midnight.

Next year, if we're going to Italy, we fly into Italy and not Switzerland 'cos the flight happens to be €40 cheaper!

The Lisbon Treaty

I was flicking around today on a few of the irish groups on facebook, and came across this article posted about the Lisbon treaty.

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2773

Is about the only thing I’ve read so far on the treaty. This is obviously not an unbiased opinion methinks, but is more detail than I’ve seen on it so far.

The govt here is doing the same thing they did last time around, not bothering to tell us anything about it. I think that they’re not allowed to do the whole “trust us, it’s good for you, now be a good sheep and vote for it” that they did last time we had an EU treaty to ratify, thanks to some supreme court case which said they weren’t allowed come down on one side or other of an argument like this. This time tho, we haven’t even gotten any factual information about what’s in it, devoid of spin or no.

To my mind tho, one of the best reasons to vote for it is that the shinners are dead set against it........

....and off again.

Looks like Cairo is off. Project management problems mean that I'm not flying on Monday like I thought I was. The whole trip is apparently off but I'll have my gear ready to pack anyway, these things have a habit of changing at the last minute, I'm not safe til I leave here fri evening.

Well, if they want to delay things by a week and then get me over there, they get me for 2 weeks not 3 - I don't care, I'm going skiing the end of next month regardless!

Off again......

Well, never mind what I said the other day about Ecuador, it looks like my next destination is Cairo. At least I got about 2 weeks warning on this one - plenty of time to put the light clothes in the wash & get them ready! Looks like it's going to be about 20-25 degrees over there. Nice. Thing is, I'll be back on a sunday and the sat after I'm flying out to Austria to go skiing. More temperature shock!

No dogs, no irish......

You know, every time you go though Heathrow airport, it's very easy to get the feeling that as an Irish person, you're still treated as a second-class citizen. After you check in and go though security, you look up at the board and see:
* Edinburgh: Gate 62
* Newcastle: Gate 79
* Dublin: Gates 80-90
* Shannon: Gates 80-90

In other words, "No! You irish scum don't need to know where you're going. We'll tell you when we bloody well feel like it!".

Then, when you finally get to the gate, it looks awful. You have to go out a long passageway to get to it, and then when you get there it looks like a prefab, a big long tube made from what looks like corrugated iron, tacked onto the side of the main terminal building. Apparently it was put up back during the Troubles to sort of quarantine would-be terrorists coming over from Ireland - so if they blew up the gate it wouldn't cause much damage to the main building. And we're still coming in though there. Yup, thanks guys.

Then, when you are flying into Heathrow from Ireland, or taking a connecting flight through Heathrow going back to Ireland, you have to go though another set of metal detectors, just like the ones you went through getting on the plane in the first place. So, after going through the previous set of security, we're somehow after picking up guns or bombs in the departure area. Very trustful of the UK authorities eh?

Lads, the IRA declared a ceasefire over 10 years ago. We're not the ones trying to blow you up any more. If you're worried about terrorism then maybe put the flights to/from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan through Terminal 1.

Oops, I can't say that, can I? That would be racial profiling based on the country you're coming from.....

Says it all really......

Saw this on my way back though Heathrow Airport last night, on an ad for Aer Lingus. At least they're admitting it now!



I suppose the main diff these days between taking an Aer Lingus flight (or any "low-cost" short-haul airline) and getting a taxi or a bus is you don't have to get to the taxi rank 2hrs in advance and take your shoes off going though a metal detector before you get in your taxi/bus. You get the same quality of service, and just like a taxi, these days if you have any more than one bag with you on the plane, you get charged for it.

Heathrow airport is great though, it really is. I love the way security at airports is so consistent these days - going out through Dublin, you have to take your laptop out of its case and put it though separately, but you can keep your shoes on. Now in Heathrow, you have to keep your laptop in its case but you have to take your shoes off. Also, now in some airports in the UK you're allowed take on 2 pieces of hand luggage but in others you're not. Keeps the terrorists on their toes I guess......

Be careful what you wish for.....

Remember how a few months ago here on this blog I was complaining that the company weren't sending me anywhere? Well, you know the old saying, "Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it!". I'm currently typing this sitting in a hotel room in a place called Newbury, about 10 miles from Reading in the UK.

Like the last trip I was on, I got about 3 days notice on this one. I was sitting at my desk on thurs evening, minding my own business when the boss comes over and says "Can I have a word with you out in the hall for a sec?". Now when this happens it normally only means one thing, and sure enough, someone has to go and firefight somewhere. So, fri morning I got my flights and accommodation booked and here I am!

I got in about an hour ago here, and about the only thing I can say about Newbury is "quiet". I took a bit of a wander around the town after I got checked in and there's nothing open but a Dominos pizza and 2 pubs - and the pubs look like they're shutting up for the night. It sort of reminded me of the night I flew into Shanghai, where I was wandering around with the streets pretty much all to myself (and I'm sure that this is the first and last time in its history that Newbury will be compared to Shanghai)!

So, at this stage there's pretty much nothing to do here bar head to bed! Maybe tomorrow the place will be a bustling hive of activity!

Oh, and while on the subject of "be careful what you wish for", I was talking to one of the project leads before I left, and apparently there will be someone needed on-site in Ecuador for a week some time near the end of January, with a choice of 3 ppl to go. So, my ideas of hitting all 6 continents before my 30th birthday may be one step closer! :-)

New Years

Well, so this is 2008. Doesn't look, smell sound or feel any different to 2007 so far anyway. I guess tho that it's New Years resolution time. Ok, here goes so:

• Number 1 is the resolution I've made every year and have manged to keep it every time so far: I resolve not to die during the coming year :-)


• I'm defintely now more unfit than I've ever been, so have to do something about that. I'm not going to set a target like "lose 5 kilos that I know I'm not going to keep, so an going to make incremental targets: eat out less, walk to/from work more, get back into playing soccer more.


• It's a few years since I did my "no alcohol for X months" thing, but seeing as I have a ski trip in feb and a friend's wedding in 2 weeks time that wud be a bit too hard to follow. I'll modify it to "drink less" so.


• Properly learn a language, or at least start it. I sort of half know french and have a smattering of italian and spanish and was doing chinese before I headed for Cape Town, but I want to get good at one of them before getting to half-know some other language.
  

At least this year though I don't have to make the old "get a girlfriend" resolution for once! ;-)