The Blog

Quick Update

2011-05-17T15:50:00.002+01:00

We have arrived in Pardubice, a town about 2 hours outside of Prague, for our training camp.

We are training at a local hockey rink. The main rink has a 15,000 capacity and we will be playing a warm-up game there against Australia this Thursday.

We just finished our second two hour practice of the day. Feet are a little sore, but the ankle is holding up well.

First warm up game is tomorrow against Pardubice.

There are posters around town to advertise the games, which is cool. Never seen that before.

Can't wait to get to Prague on Friday.

First game against the Iroquois on Saturday morning. Gonna be a tough game.

Good news for anyone who bought shorts & shirts

2011-05-12T11:48:00.000+01:00

Shorts have arrived today! T-shirts will be picked up Thursday. USA orders will be shipped on Friday, May 13th! European orders are still in-line to be shipped after Conor returns following the WILC.

Big news...All of the World Indoor Lacrosse Championship games can be seen here: http://www.wilcprague2011.com/watch-the-wilc-games-live-anywhere-anytime

Ireland Lacrosse - World Indoor Lacrosse Championships Update

2011-04-21T09:37:00.003+01:00

It has been a while since I updated this, been busy working on getting my ankle ready to play in Prague next month.

We have had a few unfortunate injuries over the last few weeks.

Chris Brennan had a very serious injury which he incurred while playing a game. He had to ever two surgeries and nearly 200 staples put in his leg. I have seen the pictures and it was not a pleasant sight. Best of luck to Chris and hopefully we see him back for the 2015 WILC.

Kris Prior also got a nasty injury playing a game. He rolled on his right ankle, landed on his left foot and broke it. So I am lucky that my ankle injury wasn't this serious. Hopefully Kris will be back with Ireland Lacrosse next year for the 2012 European Championships.

My injury seems pathetic in comparison. Some ligament damage around my ankle which has kept me from running the past few weeks. I have been fortunate that I can still walk and can still do some training to get ready for Prague next month.

I got my new stick for the tournament. I will be incredibly easy to spot for people who watch online or for the lucky few to be in Prague. I will be using a silver/black RBK 7K stick with a pink Brine X6 head. The thinking behind is that the Dublin Bay Prawns colours are Black/Navy and Pink so I figured I would represent them in Prague.

I found myself a lovely little alley way near my apartment where I can play wall ball and get myself ready for Prague.

The fundraising brigade are out in force. Selling Ireland Indoor Lacrosse t-shirts and shorts. The shorts are probably my favourite piece of Ireland Lacrosse apparel from over the years. I have had a pair of them since 2007. They are very comfortable and have the added bonus of pockets. People (including myself) love lacrosse shorts with pockets.

The t-shirts are nice and simple with the Ireland Indoor Lacrosse logo on the front with the team's motto "I dteannta a chéile" on the back which means "together as one"

If you wish to purchase a t-shirt or shorts or both then please click here -

http://bit.ly/fia7lj

All support is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Cursed Ankle Injury

2011-03-29T14:22:00.002+01:00

Over 3 weeks ago, we had a game day. I filled on a team that was short players to get some extra game time. I was on the field 5 minutes when I ended up in a collision that ended game day for me.

I am still unable to run on it. I am going to the physio on Wednesday which will cost me money I don't really have, but will hopefully provide me with some useful information.

We are in the final of the Newtownards Cup this weekend against Dublin so I need to be fit for it. More importantly than that, I need to be trainin for the World Cup.

Very frustrating.

Ireland Indoor Lacrosse - Gloves for WILC 2011

2011-03-04T20:30:00.001Z

Ireland Indoor Lacrosse Training

2011-02-21T20:03:00.002Z

We had our first training session as an indoor team since the try outs back in November on Saturday. If there is one thing I am going to take away from the training is that bicep pads are essential.

I should have know that before, but I thought I might get away with it on Saturday. I most certainly did not. My arms are now multi-coloured with bruises and they are so sore, I can barely move them. Lesson well and truly learned.

We had an hour long session of drills, including a one-on-one drill which is where most of the damage to my arms came from. People really enjoyed hitting one spot on my left arm over and over again, which was nice. One-on-one drills are a nice little test of your fitness level. I was absolutely dying after them, as were most people.

We moved on to a 2 hour game. We played 5 on 5 with two subs each. One of our subs left at half time which made a huge difference in the second half. You could tell we were a man down, especially when it came to any sort of transition play. We were solid in the first half, with plenty of talk on defense and some good pick and rolls on attack. I had 4 assists which is unusual, normally I have zero points a game so it was nice to get on the sheet.

One of the assists did not deserve it at all. I made a blind, one-handed, under arm pass across the crease based on the fact I heard someone call for the ball. Bit of a stupid play, but it paid off and would have definitely made the highlight reel, if there was one.

I have put in an order for bicep pads, which I will have for the next day. I also received a RBK 7K shaft courtesy of ProLaxShop.com which was great. I can't wait to play with it, because it seems like a beast of a stick.

95 Days to go...

2011-02-14T10:46:00.002Z

There are 95 days to go until the start of the World Indoor Lacrosse Championships in Prague. As a member of the Ireland team that competed in 2007, I have a pretty good idea of what to expect from this tournament.

It is going to be fiercely competitive in some games and completely lopsided in others, such is the nature of international lacrosse. Our most competitive game in 2007 was against Australia while the other games were much more convincing defeats. With that in mind, I am coming into this tournament with a chip on my shoulder; with zero wins in 2007, we have a lot to prove in May 2011. In 2003, the Czechs won no games and in 2007 they defeated us in their final game of the tournament to clinch their first WILC victory. There was huge pressure on the Czechs to beat us and they handled the pressue well coming away with a 22 - 5 victory.

Ireland will be under similar pressure to get their first WILC victory this coming May. As a team, we face a number of big challenges. We do not have a domestic box league in Ireland. We will not meet again (we met at trials in Belfast in late October 2010) as a team until a week before the WILC in Prague, with little indoor game experience under our belts. We have not drafted any professional players to our team. Having said all that, we do have some very talented players, all of whom are training hard as individuals across the island of Ireland and parts of North America.

There is no doubt that we can get our first WILC victory in May, however it won't come easy and how we train as individuals over the next 90 days before we meet in Prague for training camp will be the major difference between 0 - 4 and 1 - 3 or even 2 - 2 when we compete in Prague.

Imagine this, but with lacrosse instead of soccer

2011-02-11T11:53:00.001Z

Beer Economics - Explaining Taxes With Beer

2011-02-10T16:03:00.000Z

Suppose that every evening, 10 men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to £100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this :-

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay £1.
The sixth would pay £3.
The seventh would pay £7.
The eighth would pay £12.
The ninth would pay £18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay £59.

So, that's what they decided to do....... The 10 men drank in the bar every evening and were quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner said, "Since you are all such good customers, I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by £20".

Drinks for the 10 men would now cost just £80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men? The paying customers? How could they divide the £20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share? They realised that £20 divided by six is £3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.

Therefore, the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing.
The sixth now paid £2 instead of £3 (33% saving).
The seventh now paid £5 instead of £7 (28% saving).
The eighth now paid £9 instead of £12 (25% saving).
The ninth now paid £14 instead of £18 (22% saving).
The tenth now paid £49 instead of £59 (16% saving).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a pound out of the £20 saving," declared the sixth man.
He pointed to the tenth man, but he got £10!"
"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a pound too.
It's unfair - he got 10 times more benefit than me!"
"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get £10 back, when I got only £2? The wealthy always win!"
"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison, "we didn't get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists, labour unions and government ministers, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D. Professor of Economics.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

Ireland Lacrosse - World Indoor Lacrosse Championships 2011

2011-02-08T08:47:00.008Z

As you may know, I am playing lacrosse for Ireland in the World Cup which is coming up this May in Prague. The Ireland Lacrosse team is 100% player funded which makes representing Ireland, an expensive affair.

This year is no different. It will cost each athlete between €1600 – €1800 to represent their country in the 2011 World Indoor Lacrosse Championships in Prague, Czech Republic held May 21st-28th.

Show Your Support For Ireland Lacrosse
You can show your support for the 2011 Irish National Indoor Lacrosse Team, and for lacrosse in Ireland, by sponsoring a player, purchasing advertising or simply making a donation, all of which will be recognized in the 2011 Irish National Indoor Lacrosse Team Media Guide. Printed versions of the guide will be produced for circulation, and it will also be available online. There is more information about Ireland Lacrosse available at IrelandLacrosse.ie

Where does your Donation go?
All funds raised through the 2011 Irish National Indoor Lacrosse Team fundraising programme are used to offset the costs
of our athletes. Your money goes directly to pay for – facilities, accommodation while abroad, food while abroad, uniforms and equipment.

There are a number of different ways that you can help support me and the Irish National Indoor Lacrosse team. You can even help by simply passing this post along to your family and friends or your followers on Twitter, or by posting this to your Blog readers.

If you wish to support the 2011 Irish National Indoor Lacrosse Team, please email me at flopseye@gmail.com

Thank you,

Conor Walsh #24

Probably the worst blogger around

2011-01-29T22:40:00.002Z

I really am terrible at keeping this updated. A brief over view of what has happened since I got back to Ireland in October:

1. Tried out for the Ireland Indoor Lacrosse team up in Belfast.
2. Made the team. We are going to the World Cup in Prague in May.
3. Sent out about 100 job applications.
4. Got offered a job.
5. Got the offer revoked after I asked too many questions about the role.
6. Sent out loads of other applications.
7. Did 3 interviews.
8. Got 1 rejection. Got 1 job offer. Got to turn down a call back for the other job.
9. Started work Christmas week during the snowpocalypse.
10. Celebrated Christmas.
11. Went back to work.
12. Finished my 60 days of the Insanity work out programme.
13 Started Round 2 of Insanity.
14. Updated this blog.

So there you have it. Basically everything that has happened to me since I came back from America.

8100 Miles in 3 weeks.

2010-10-28T05:24:00.002+01:00

There is too much to add into this blog post so I will keep it short and bullet point out the 3 weeks.

- Nashville for one night. Saw some live country music. Kissed a girl and she liked it (possibly, I don't really remember.) Bought a few fridge magnets. Talked at length to a homeless man about how shitty his life was. Gave him a $20 Gift Card so he could buy himself some food. He wasn't happy and asked me for $20 cash as well. Homeless people always want more.

- Cleveland. Helped Joe move his stuff to Philly. Drove back and went to see Falcons v Browns. See last post for details about how friendly sports fans are in Clevetown. I guess when you suck at sports you aren't going to like other teams.

Madison, WI. - Saw where the Badgers play and ate a giant plate of greasy food at some dairy bar. Drove across the Mississipi river.

Minnesota - Stopped off at Blue Earth, MN to see the $46,000 Green Giant Statue which is bizarrely located on Green Giant Lane in a town which didn't appear to have any houses but a few petrol stations and restaurants.

Rapid City, SD - Got our flat fixed and bought camping gear just in case we decided to camp somewhere. Drove back 80 miles to the Badlands which were class. Then went to Wall Drug Store which is like going to an alternate universe and generally is a waste of time. Arrived at Mt Rushmore at night and didn't have to pay. Luckily they lit the presidents up, or we wouldn't have seen them.

Billings, MT - The scariest drive ever. Saw nearly 10 deer on the side of the road just standing there waiting to pounce. The amount of Splat Zones (dead deer blood spots) on the road were a testament to how much deer enjoy running out in front of speeding vehicles. When you are tired and it is dark out, everything looks like a deer on the side of the road.

Yellowstone, WY - Got stopped by many bison road blocks. So much so that I was sick of seeing bison Utilised our cheap camping gear and froze (almost) to death in the below freezing temps of Yellowstone. Our campground buddy, made very strange noises all night. I figured he was some sort of chronic masturbator. We didn't see any bears, but we did see Elk, Deer and Bison. Saw Old Faithful and gorges and waterfalls and mountains and what not.

Jackson Hole, WY - A short drive south through the darkest back roads ever. We stopped the car and killed the engine and the lights to listen to the silence and experience the darkness. It was scary. I kept expecting an axe murderer to jump out of the bushes and kill us both. We saw a Pronhorn and some mountains the next day and drove from there to Denver.

Boulder, CO - Well actually it was Boulder. We stayed with Mike for free which was nice. We went to the Broncos v Jets game. Broncos lost, boo. Ate dinner at the Fado in Denver just to see what it was like. Met up with Gordon (studied in Dublin in 06) for lunch the next day.

Moab, UT - Probably my favourite spot of the trip. Drove through the Rockies, reaching a height of 11,000ft. Some pretty exciting roads go through the Rockies. The Moab brewery was probably the best meal we had. So good we went twice. Arches National Park was deadly. We took our lacrosse sticks on a hike, much to the amusement of everyone else. Got some great pictures and very sore feet out of it.

Grand Canyon - AZ - A last minute calculation meant we could get to the Grand Canyon. We spent a whole hour or two there. Saw more Asian people than I have ever seen in one place before. Why do they always do the peace sign in pictures? Had no time to do the hike. Pictures don't do the place justice. It was incredible. Might have to go back to see it properly. Strangely enough there was a hail storm and 2 inches of hail fell in less than 5 minutes. It was intense.

El Paso, TX - This was a long drive. Thunder and lightning the whole way from AZ to TX. It was the worst hotel we stayed in. I felt dirty after showering there. Luckily we didn't get shot driving along the Mexican border in any drug related shootings. We did get stopped at border patrol though, even though we never left the country. I had no passport but bluffed my way through.

San Antonio, TX - We saw the Alamo and the Riverwalk. That was all SA had to offer us.

Arlington, TX - We managed to get tickets for Game 6 of the Rangers v Yankess series. And the Rangers won for the first time ever. It was great to be there. They actually made baseball exciting, which was something I thought was impossible to do.

Austin, TX - We scalped tickets for $10 each. Face value $75 each. What a bargain. University of Texas v Iowa State. Iowa State won, beating UT for the first time ever. More history. Ate food at Fado. I wanted Fish, Mash and Beans and they had no Beans, which obviously ruined my whole meal. So I got the dinner portion Fish and Chips but some how only one fish came out.

Houston, TX - Went to Houston to see out friend Chris who is really happy and has a great truck that is not a fake hummer. Seriously though, it is cool. We saw an MMA fight in a terrible bar and slept on his couch briefly. Got up at 6am and drove to NOLA.

New Orleans, LA - We got tickets to see Saints v Browns. Saints fans are awful. They are obnoxious like Philly fans. The abuse they gave Browns made the Browns fans seem nice in comparison. Browns won which was great. Another upset. We had a triple threat weekend of sport. Drove from here to Atlanta. Covered nearly 900 miles in one day. Serious going.

Atlanta, GA - Ended the trip where I began. Packed up my stuff. Went to Fat Matt's for the last supper (lunch) and caught my flight back to Dublin. It was nice, I had 4 seats to myself and my own tv.

Now I am home. Living with my parents and job hunting. That's how progress starts right?

Friendly Sports Fans

2010-10-11T18:23:00.002+01:00

So I went to my first ever NFL game yesterday. The Atlanta Falcons v Cleveland Browns. Having lived in Atlanta for the last 12 months and it being my first home away from home I decided to show my support for the team by wearing a UGA jersey (can't afford to spend $80 on a Falcons jersey)

While walking to our section in the stadium I was shouted at by 3 different people. All of whom were hammered. Well basically all the Browns fans were hammered. I guess you have to get really drunk to forget about how terrible your team is. The most welcoming fan shouted "Hey, Fuck You" The level of drunkenness and apparent aggressive nature of Browns fans had me fearful of being punched in the face.

Then we found our section and started walking to our seats. We were in the Dawg Pound which I assume is the safe haven for the most die hard drunken fans of Browns football. On the way up the steps to our seats someone said "Go Bulldogs" and gave me a High Five and my fear of being attacked quickly faded. Approximately 2 seconds later the fans started a chant. The chant was directed at me. And went something like this:

"Asshole, Asshole, Asshole, Asshole, Asshole, Asshole, Asshole"

Some people felt it necessary to stand up out of their seats and point at me, just in case being the only person in a Red jersey there didn't make me stand out enough.

I sat down and was quickly interrogated by the people sitting around me. The Irish accent helped me develop a circle of trust and soon they offered there sympathy. But one rather obese black man felt it necessary to start up the chant every time he was hungry, or anytime he felt the onset of a heart attack, which unfortunately for both of us was pretty frequently.

Once the Falcons put up a convincing lead the obese man had his fill of humble pie and was no longer hungry enough to call me an asshole.

Thanks for the Welcome Cleveland.

Things I miss from home.

2010-06-24T17:39:00.003+01:00

I have been out of Ireland for 9 months now. Slashing my old record of 80 days in similar fashion to Isner and Mahut. I now know that I am going to be back in Ireland by the end of October so I have been thinking about things that I have to do as soon as I get back. A lot of them revolve around food, because other than food most things are the same over here.

1. First things first. I will have a homemade Irish breakfast the morning I arrive home. Fado does one of the best Irish breakfasts I have had outside of Ireland, it still doesn't come close to a homemade breakfast. The ingredients are the same but it is missing something.

2. The Hot Chicken Roll. It is probably the most prized of all rolls. A foot long baguette slathered in mayonnaise to make it easier to slide down your throat. The next step is to add the cheese. Many people add the chicken next this is wrong. Firstly cheese on top of chicken = messy. Secondly cheese on top of chicken doesn't melt quite as well. Thinly slice a golden, thick, succulent piece of hot chicken and layer it on top of the cheese. Accompanied with a bottle of coke, you can't go wrong.

3. The Royal Park Chinese in Greystones. I have tried a number of different Chinese take aways in America all in the hope of getting it in a small cardboard box like in the movies. So far nothing. On top of that, my dish of choice, Sweet & Sour Chicken and Fried Rice is nowhere near as good as The Royal Park.

4. QPC Squared. Which obviously stands for a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and Chips. Obviously you can get this anywhere in America, but it is rubbish compared to the traditional Irish/Italian chip shops back home. The burger buns is better. The burger itself is nicer and the chips are a million times better than anything I have had in the States.

5. The Cold. America is way too hot in the summer. It needs to cool down big time. I wake up in the morning and its already too hot out. Its too hot out in the middle of the night. And then everywhere is Air Conditioned, which is too cold. I would love a nice bit of cold. Somewhere in the middle ground, just like back home.

Family are gone Scanners is here

2010-04-30T21:23:00.002+01:00

Well my family went home to Ireland and just got in ahead of the volcano, so they were lucky. I had a 2 week break from visitors and then Scanners arrived on Tuesday at Midnight.

We went to a Hawks Playoff game in Philips Arena on Wednesday night. I was delighted with myself for getting such cheap seats. They were $5 each. Turns out if I had asked at work about tickets, we could have been court side for free. Maybe next time. The Hawks lost, but it was an exciting game. They blew a 10 point lead in the last 3 minutes.

We went to The Vortex last night for dinner which was class as always. Probably the best burgers I have ever had. And only $9 each, how can you go wrong? Tonight is our first night our so it should be a good one. I know my Dad is probably reading this, so I will not go into any details.

Tomorrow we are playing golf with Clann na nGael GAA club. It is a scramble up in North Fulton. Although I haven't played golf in months I am convinced we will win. I predict we will come in with a score in the early 50s.

Sunday will be baseball day. So I will miss my hurling game. And the next one and the next one. But in better news I got info on summer lacrosse this week. It starts up on May 20th which I am excited for. Gotta get out and hit that wall in preparation.

The Family Come To Visit

2010-03-31T15:30:00.002+01:00

So after many months apart my family have come to visit me. We have gone from a 2-man apartment to a 6-person apartment. So far though it hasn't been that bad of a change. I am lucky enough that my boss is allowing work from 8am - 3pm so I get off nice and early to do stuff with the family.

Monday, we did the World of Coca-Cola. It was alright. It might have been better if the whole tour was guided like the Jameson distillery in Dublin. The first parts are guided and they tell you about how great Coca-Cola is. Then you meander through rooms full of Coke memorabilia. Some of the stuff is pretty cool, but there is almost too much to look at, that you can't take anything in. There is a 4-D movie which was pretty decent. Then they have 64 different drinks that you can taste in the tasting room. A free bottle of Coke on the way out. Mrs Walt took 3, of course.

They spent all day yesterday on the roof by the pool. It hit 21 degrees by 5pm which was nice so we grilled some steaks on the BBQ. I am a grill master. It is gonna get up to 28 degrees tomorrow and Friday. So I look forward to many more grill sessions.

The Irish Car Bomb

2010-03-23T15:56:00.003Z

The Irish Car Bomb is a drink which was invented in Connecticut in the 70s. It is made with a half pint of Guinness and involves dropping a shot of Jameson/Baileys mixed and then downing the whole thing.

The name comes from the fact that the Whiskey and Bailey's explodes in the glass, which reminded it's creator of the IRA. So my question is, is this drink offensive?

I feel like it is offensive, particularly to the people who grew up during The Troubles when car bombs and other IRA violence was common place in Northern Ireland.

If I were to create a drink which reminded me of the September 11th attacks would people allow it to be named a 9/11? I doubt it.

EDIT:

I have invented the 9/11.

Get 2 Pint Glasses
Half fill both with Bud Light.
Place the glasses side by side and rest 2 shots of Jack on the glasses
Drop the shots at the same time.
Knock one glass back
Then the other
And there you have it.

300,000 Million people who don't exist.

2010-03-16T13:56:00.002Z

I have lived in America for the last 6 months and I am yet to meet an American. I have met people who sound American, who act American, who have lived in America all their lives and even those who have never set foot outside of America; but I have never met an American.

I have met weird hybrid people who are somehow from 7 different countries at a time. A typical conversation goes something like this:

"You sound like you have a bit of an accent. Where are you from?"

"Ireland, I moved over here in October for work."

"Oh that's so cool. I'm Irish too, my last name is McNoodle. But I'm also Dutch, Polish, German, Scottish and French."

"What an odd mix."

"Yeah it means I can drink a lot and fight. LOL ROFL"

I am all for people being proud of their heritage and all that, but there comes a time when the influence of your ancestors gets completely diluted out. If our friend was to head back to Poland, Ireland, Germany, Scotland or France and attempted to fit into the local scene I would imagine that not one single local would say "Oh look it is quite obviously one of our fellow countrymen" They would most likely say "Bloody Americans"

It is usually an incredibly distant relative that came over here in search of a better life. They arrived on some form of famine ship and then didn't really have a better life at all. Then the inter breeding began and how ever many generations later we have ended up with a hybrid person from "7 different countries." For the most part I am sure that the influence of each country's culture has become almost completely non-existent other than those few people who try to keep the dream alive by drinking Killians Irish Red (Product of USA) and other nonsense like that.

I find the whole I'm Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh and Iranian thing a bit confusing. America, according to almost everyone in America, is the greatest country in the world, but nobody will admit to being American. Why the shame?

I want to understand the desire for Americans who are like 4th or 5th generation but still claim to be Irish or Scottish or whatever. If your family have been here that long, then you probably aren't going back, so you are now a fully fledged American. Just give up on the dream and tell people you are American. There is no need to be ashamed of it.

First Week With The Bike

2010-03-12T17:38:00.003Z

Well I am still alive which is a good sign. I took the bike out for the first time last Sunday night at 10.30pm and got beeped at once. Other than that it was a successful trip. It was vury cold though.

I have had one single incident with the bike since getting it. I let some of my friends have a lash of it. Especially those who had laughed at it, to show them how much fun it actually is. Enter the most feared person on the road - an asian. Aaron Wang was the ring leader when it came to laughing at the bike and the fact I needed a helmet.

Pictured here mocking the helmet

Aaron was a bit wobbly when he got on the bike first and couldn't quite figure out how to work the throttle or how to turn the bike. So he gave up and gave someone else a go. Michael had no trouble at all, as a former scooter owner himself.

On his return it was quite obvious that Aaron had itchy feet and wanted to go again. He got on a wobbled his way 10 feet down the road and steadied up. He got the point where he had to stop and turn around. He stopped quite well and began to turn. I have seen jumbo jets turn with more grace and more narrow turning circles than Aaron. He even had to put his feet down and walk it around the corner he was having such difficulty.

After well over a minute of wobbling and walking the bike had completed a 180 and was facing us. I was relieved to see he had got the bike through the difficult turn without a scratch. He gently twisted the throttled and began wobbling his way back to us.

5 feet later he had crashed into a wall, jumped off the bike and threw it on the ground in fear. The bike was 4 years old when I bought it and had not a single scratch on it, until Aaron Wang had 2 minutes with it. Luckily the only scratch was on the wing mirror and barely noticeable. Unfortunately though, the same wing mirror is bent out of shape and instead of being able to see the cars behind me to the right, I can look at my belly.

He is officially banned from riding the bike and has solidified the stereotypes about Asians being unable to drive. He is the shame of Asia.

How To Have A Successful Paddy's Day.

2010-03-11T17:59:00.002Z

Here is a short and simple guide about the best way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day:

1. Do not call it St. Patty's Day. Cannot stress this one enough. I am not entirely sure where Patty's Day came from; patron Saint of burgers maybe. Anyway if you must shorten it, it is Paddy's Day.

2. Prepare yourself ahead of time. Chances are you will be covering yourself in as much green, white and orange as physically possible. Make sure you have your outfit all ready to go in advance of the big day. Sometimes outdoor festivals with copious amounts of drinking can lead to accessories being stolen. So make sure to bring back ups. A back up hat and back up pair of sunglasses are a necessity.

3. Line your stomach. It is a big drinking day for most people. Please make sure that your stomach is well prepared for all that alcohol. Eat a big Irish breakfast. Then fill up again at lunch time. This will give plenty of soakage and help keep you going as long as the Energizer bunny.

4. If you meet someone from Ireland, only tell them you are Irish if you can legitimately back it up. "My last name is McFlanagan" or "I have red hair" or "I can drink a lot" are not a legitimate back ups. Being born there or having an Irish passport is legitimate. Feel free to tell them how much you love Ireland and then give them a kiss as a sign of your appreciation.

5. Get plastered. It is a big day for drinking. So make sure you get absolutely poleaxed drunk. Any memories of the day should be short and impossible to piece together. Drink Irish drinks - Guinness, Jameson, Kilkenny, Smithwick's, Bushmills and so on.

Follow these 5 Steps and you should have a successful Paddy's Day. Session On.

Proud Owner of a Honda Metropolitan

2010-03-06T17:49:00.005Z

As you are probably aware already, summers in Atlanta can be very warm and very humid. Being Irish I don't really like when it's very warm or very humid. Generally when it is either of those things, I begin melting.

As a man who cannot afford a car, I have been cycling to work. Over the past 2 months the weather has been very cold. Below freezing cold. And I have arrived to work with a slight glisten of sweat. So I tried estimating what that glisten would be like if I were to cycle when it is 35 degrees and humid. It would be torrential down pour sweat and with no shower facilities in work I figured that I needed some way of getting work with limited exercise and short on time.

So I recently invested $1000 of my hard earned cash in a 2006 Honda Metropolitan. She is a beaut. I have ridden around our car park once and had a lot of fun on it. I was also a little bit terrified by how fast it feels like you're going. 20MPH slow on paper, fast on a scooter. I just bought a helmet which makes me look like the retarded offspring of the toad people from Mario. But it was in budget and should hopefully prevent death and or brain damage if I am unfortunate enough to be in an accident.

So now that I have a helmet and the weather is actually warm out today, I am going to take her out for a spin and hope nothing goes horribly wrong.

My 100th Post

2010-03-06T17:49:00.001Z

This is my 100th post.

Should I keep the blog alive?

2010-02-22T21:04:00.002Z

I have obviously been very bad at blogging lately. I have a feeling it is because my job requires me to be online all day working with Social Media, that by the time I get home to my own laptop, I have no desire to play around online.

I have considered getting rid of the blog. Mainly because I am pretty sure nobody reads it except me. If anyone would like me to keep it going, leave a comment and let me know.

There can only be 1

2010-02-03T16:11:00.001Z

HowManyOfMe.com

There are

or fewer people with my name in the U.S.A.

How many have your name?

How cool is this

2009-12-23T20:21:00.001Z

OK So this isn't exactly soon

2009-12-16T02:24:00.002Z

Well I said I would update this sooner. Initially my plan was to update my blog at least once a week while over here but I just never get around to it. I get home from work and just want to sit in front of the couch for the evening and generally at the weekend I am usually too hungover to think about anything other than recovery.

I guess I will start with an overview of life in Atlanta and take it from there. Life in Atlanta is good. Work is decent as in I don't wake up every morning and think "I would rather murder myself than go to work" It is still work though and naturally I would much rather get paid for not going to work. Somehow I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Since I got here I have been to 2 x NHL games, 2 x NBA games and a College Football game. College Football wins by a million miles in terms of the build up and my desire to be on a College Football team. There was a fly over by 2 Military planes before the game, a billion people marching band and plenty of other things surrounding the game itself. As far as watchability though it loses. I loved the 1st Quarter but the 2nd dragged on big time so we left at half time. NBA and NHL are pretty much tied in terms of watchability. Although the Hawks have won both times I have seen them while the Thrashers have lost both games. It is still up in the air what I prefer to watch.

I have started an Indoor Lacrosse League. We had a pick up game on Sunday which turned out to be 2 games in 1 so my body was hurting big time yesterday. My bike was stolen last Thursday so I have been walking to work. It was pretty rough yesterday seeing as I was still sore after the lacrosse. Today was interesting because just before I walked by a bus stop a bum jumped up out of nowhere and threw up all over the footpath. Had I been a few seconds earlier I would have been covered in homeless man puke.

Yesterday I got a Christmas Card off the lads which was unexpected and very well received. It made my evening. On top of that Pauline sent me a load of stuff from back home including Lyons Tea, 3 Wispa Golds, Selection Box, Multi Pack of Tayto and a book about the Tayto Man. The amount of produce has diminished since yesterday when I got it and I am not expecting it to last much longer.

I have decided to go to Pittsburgh to spend Christmas with my roommate Rob and his family. I obviously would prefer to fly home but it was $1200 and I would only get 4 days back home. So it will be my first Christmas away from home and probably not my last. At least I have Skype so I can call home. Bought the family a web cam so I saw them for the first time in 8 weeks the other day, which was nice.

Have found myself in some "interesting" situations since I got here. One weekend we went to Augusta for a party. Little did I know it was down a dirt road in a cabin and full of middle aged red necks. It was like something out of a Sacha Baran Cohen film. Needless to say I didn't try to push the boundaries in the interest of comedy. Then last Friday we went to a club and it turned out to be full of black people. Pretty sure myself and Rob were the only two white people there. I wanted to stay as I thought it was funny, but Rob wanted to leave. Went to a house party on Saturday and knew nobody, which was fine apart from the fact there were only 6 other people there. It ended up being good craic, but is definitely something I would never have done back home.

Anyway sin é. Should keep this more up to date from now.

Update Coming Soon I Guess

2009-11-23T05:28:00.000Z

Well I have been quite busy and just haven't got around to updating this. Rob has gone home for 9 days so in my loneliness I am sure I will feel the urge/find the time to update this at some stage this week.

Not right now though because its 00:29 and I have work in the morning.

In Atlanta

2009-10-09T21:22:00.002+01:00

Well after many weeks of waiting I have finally made it to Atlanta. The flight from Heathrow wasn't as bad as I expected. Although when we landed the gate we were meant to go to was taken by another plane. We couldn't drive around to another gate because there was building going on and planes do not reverse so we had to wait for somebody to come and turn us around which added about 40 minutes to the journey. The airport is terrible. You have to go through security to get out of it which adds another 20 minutes or so to your trip. We landed in Atlanta at around 7.30 and I left the airport at 9.30. Not a good first impression.

But things got better from there. The apartment is really nice. Plenty of room in it. I went to IKEA on Wednesday and bought a bed, a desk, a chest of drawers and a chair for $600 which was pretty decent. If it wasn't for Rob I would never have been able to put the bed together.The location is pretty good too. We are within a 5 minute walk of almost anything we need.

We went out last night to a karaoke bar called famous. Its a bit of a blur from when we got there but I somehow managed to make it home alive with my wallet and driver's license, which was nice.

Starting work on Monday which I am looking forward to. Hopefully by then I will be adjusted to the time difference. I keep waking up too early. Not this morning though. Slept til the afternoon, all the way through my hangover.

Roadtrip Up North

2009-09-21T15:07:00.005+01:00

Made a decision last Tuesday to go on a weekend Roadtrip up North. Trying to do as much as I possibly can before I move to Atlanta. Originally it was myself, Brave and Fernnt with the possibility of Will coming up on the Sat. Fernnt got called up to play a football match on Sat and Will decided it wasn't worth his while so it was just myself and Brave.

We drove to Belfast on Friday morning. Took about 2.5 hours. Found our hostel without stopping for directions like only men can. Went for a lunch and set off on a wander around the city. Got fairly bored after an hour of wandering so we went to TK Maxx for some dress-up. Found some gems and came away with a pink/purple rain coat for £15. Popped into HMV on the off-chance they would have the Shameless Box Set for less than the €91 I had found it for elsewhere. I was in and out withing 2 minutes one box set better off. I found it reduced from £90 down to £40 making the whole trip worthwhile. 51 hours of TV gold for €45. You cannot go wrong at that price.

We went to the bar at around 4.30 for a few pints because we couldn't think of anything else to do. After some mild flirting with some old geezer women we went to the off-license to get some more drink before heading out. Few tins and a half bottle of Jager. Back to the hostel common area to drink, where we met Chandra. He is a Sri-lankan man who has been living in the hostel for 4 months while his visa clears so he can work in Belfast. Back home he drives a boat on the beach for tourists but couldn't quite come to terms with the Viking bus/boat tour in Dublin. His English was almost as bad as his dancing. He said he was a great dancer and showed off some of his moves. Very similar to the Little Indian dancer on Youtube and came across like one of the bewildered hopefuls of Britains Got Talent. I felt bad for him and invited him to join us on our roadtrip to the Giants Causeway. A decision I regretted when I remembered it the next morning.

We got a taxi to a club and were told to sober up by the taxi man. We got separated after a while when Brave decided to go to another club without telling me. So I was left dancing on my own, doing the same dance move regardless of what song came on. I was drunk enough that I didn't give a flying fuck what style of eejit I looked like. We woke up the following morning to the drum beat of Chandra knocking on our door. He nearly knocked the blessed thing down he was so eager to get in. We told him we would call to his room in an hour when we were ready to go. I half wanted to bring him along for the comedy factor (bad decisions make better stories after all) but Brave was 100% against. Which in the long run was probably a much better idea.

We had an "Irish" Breakfast, not quite what you would get down here but it was grand. We set off, Chandra-less (sadly enough) and made our way to the Giants Causeway. No sign posts for it sadly enough but Google maps had given me the motorway route. So when we ended up on a windy coast road I was almost positive we were going the wrong way, but I didn't mind as it was easily the best road I have ever driven on, not that I have driven on many. Around every corned there is something amazing to look at. The scenery was incredible. I would love to drive it with a more powerful car and with no other cars on the road. Just a great driving road. The lovely scenery and wonderfully engineered road were sidelined for a few minutes when we made an unscheduled pit stop to gaze in wonder as Brave threw up over a wall at a garage. I have never seen a mna in such agony as he threw up. It truly was a sight to behold. We eventually made it to the Carrick-a-rede rope bridge, our first stop.

Parked the car and paid our £4 entry. It was a lovely 1km walk to the bridge. Lovely scenery again. As you can see from the pictures here. Got to the rope bridge which was disappointingly short. Walked across it only to hear an American woman describe the experience like this "That bridge is good craic" It made me shudder a little and then vomit a lot.

We walked back and made our way to the Giants Causeway. It was pretty cool but mainly quite boring. Another thing to check of the list I suppose. £6 for parking though which I thought was a bit on the extreme side. But there was no entry after that so not all bad. After that we went to the Bushmills Distillery. After the night before neither of us were really up for the drink at the end, nor were we really up for the tour so we were glad to hear that the 2 people in front of us got the last two tickets. We were offered a free drink at the bar. In the hope of getting a cool whiskey glass out of it we went to the bar. We got a terribly boring glass and nearly got sick at both the smell and taste of whiskey. So we left to get dinner. The Hip Chip in Bushmills does the best Cod & Chips I have ever had. I would nearly drive all the way back up again for it. The hostel in Bushmills was full and the wench behind the counter wouldnt even let us come into the building to ask her about other places or anything at all. So we decided to drive south in the hope of getting a place a little closer to home.

We ended up in Derry and drove around for about half an hour looking for a hostel to stay in. We found ourselves in Free Derry which looked quite scary and in our efforts to escape we found a hostel. £12 a night and pretty close to some bars and stuff. It was perfect. We went for a nap and then popped down for a few pints. Had one pint an realised it just wasn't happening. Came back to the hostel and watched 2 movies.

Next morning we walked around Derry for an hour where the only activity came from churches or the alcoholics on the footpaths. There was nothing open and nothing to see. We got to see everything on the walking tours brochure and got bored and left after about 45 minutes. We made it home in 2.5 hours and just in time for the All-Ireland. A good road trip all in all. Would have been nicer if we had another body to add a bit of flair to the dynamic.

Jameson Distillery

2009-09-08T17:24:00.003+01:00

For people who are lucky enough to have bought a bottle of Midleton Very Rare Whiskey you will know that with each bottle you get 2 invitations to the Jameson Distillery in Smithfield. My aunt Pauline, has bought 3 such bottles and had some spare freebies.

Willy is the only one who seems to enjoy whiskey so he came along. I got to sign the book in the Gift Shop which says that I have owned one of these rare bottles of whiskey. They are made only once every year and are hand-selected by some master brewer or something along those lines.

The tour itself was fairly rubbish. The girl (Blaithín) was full of desperate jokes which made reference to the Irish and drinking. It takes 7 years to become a Cooper (can't remember what that is) but only 5 years to become a doctor, you can that Ireland has its priorities mixed up. Laugh a minute with Blaithín so it was.

Will volunteered for the taste test and is now qualified as a whiskey taster. As Blaithín pointed out, Ireland is the only place where you can get a"professional" qualification in whiskey drinking.

The highlight of the tour was when Willy started messing with an old fire alarm which he learned still worked fine. Overall it was a good trip and we came away with a diploma in drinking, a few sups of whiskey and a glass, all for free. Can't really go wrong at that price.

All-Ireland Hurling Final 2009

2009-09-07T15:50:00.005+01:00

I was lucky enough to be one of the 82,106 people who attended the All-Ireland Final yesterday. My dad managed to swindle a ticket for himself but was away so he couldn't go, leaving me next in line.

I had a great seat. 5 rows back from the field on the 21 yard line in the Hogan Stand. I had a great view of all the action. Tipperary and Kilkenny put on a mighty display of hurling in a game that was decided on a snap and controversial decision which lead to a penalty.

I took my camera along as company and got some pretty decent photos. None of the game though, as I was too busy watching it.

The Liam McCarthy Cup

The Presidential Wave.

The Beast

2009-09-01T13:52:00.001+01:00

They say its as big as four cats and its got a retractable leg so it can leap up at ye better and do you know what Ted, it lights up at night and eh its got four ears two of them are for listening and the other two are kind of backup ears and its claws are as big as cups and for some reason its got a tremendous fear of stamps. Mrs Doyle was telling me its got magnets on its tail so if ur made out of metal it can attatch itself to you and instead of a mouth its got four arses. And some of his ears are inside his head. And when he yawns it sounds like Liam Nesson chasing a load of hens around inside a barrel and he doesnt have any eyebrows at all, except on Saturdays.

A weekend trip?

2009-09-01T00:27:00.001+01:00

Here is one way that I can try and pass one of the many weekends I will spend in America.

Nike Lacrosse

2009-08-29T14:32:00.001+01:00

Getting Set

2009-08-29T13:34:00.002+01:00

Well my form has finally gone through. The visa is being processed. I have my embassy interview on September 8th. I will probably be booking my flights next week as I don't want them to sky rocket in price. Right now they are €280 which is decent.

Our apartment is reserved and it looks pretty nice. We have a corner unit on the top floor. Which means nobody above us making noise and nobody beside us making noise. Being a corner unit, we also get plenty of windows. The view isn't amazing but it is a lot better than what we had in Philly. The view through our tiny tiny tiny windows was of the building that was 20ft away. So at least this time around there will be something to look at.

The apartment is also quite big at 1400 sq ft. Which will be good should we decide to have a party. The roof has a pool and BBQ grill area with views of Downtown Atlanta. There is loads of seating on the roof and a few day beds for midday naps and the like.

There is also a small gym and a personal trainer in the complex. The common area has a few pool tables and TVs too, so it will be hard to be bored. To top it all off the place is full of young people and every week there are social events for the residents.

Riddle

2009-08-26T14:27:00.001+01:00

Sue, Mary, Joan and Lisa are travelling on a tourist bus. They each have 4 baskets. In every basket there are 4 cats. Each cat has 4 kittens. When the bus stops Sue gets off. How many legs are on the bus?

I Found It

2009-08-25T23:43:00.001+01:00

This is the song I was trying to find. At the quiz in Delgany and it came up in conversation. With only the word Motherfucker to go on, Hats Off to Paul for getting it in one go.

A New Level Of Stupidity

2009-08-25T16:30:00.003+01:00

After a few mishaps with the forms for my visa to America I finally got them filled out properly. I scanned them and sent them back to go4less. As they scanned upside down, I sent them upside down as in the virtual world it isn't that big of a deal.

Within minutes of sending them to go4less I received a reply from the woman in the office to tell me that they were sent the wrong way around and as a result they were not printing off properly. So instead of turning the printed sheet around or rotating the picture the right way around she has requested that I re-send the forms the right way around.

Unreal stupidity.

Look Who I Found

2009-08-24T18:37:00.002+01:00

I was fixing up the clothes in my wardrobe and happened upon a wonderful find. Over 5 years ago on June 2nd 2004 I ventured down the metropolis of Greystones in order to purchase a beverage that would quench my unholy thirst. The thirst I had required more than a simple soft drink and I went into an off-license. I bought a can of Fosters, well two, one for me and one for Peter. We sat on the green and drank them. What made this can of Fosters so special was the fact that it was the last can of beer I ever bought and drank illegally. My birthday is June 3rd, so the following day I was legally able to buy drink. I decided to keep the can in question and I am glad I did.

It will alway remind me of the time I found a can of Fosters that was older than me and still unopened. The can was out of date 21 years before I found it and somehow had never been opened. I forgot to take it home from work with me and it ended up in the bin. Such a waste.

Furious

2009-08-23T23:00:00.002+01:00

I was working out in Barcode last night. The DJ played a song which I recognised. I wracked my brains to figure out where I had heard it before. And BOOM it hit me. I heard it at the Fatboy Slim concert.

Who played it? I do not remember.

Whats the name of the song? I have not got a clue.

How does it go? Well I can hear it play in my head. But the fact I am a man and not an electronic musical instrument makes it very hard to reproduce the music. And as for the lyrics. Well there are two possibly three of four. But they are repeated every so often. All I can remember from them is motherf****r

I am absolutely raging. I have gone through loads of youtube videos and have found nothing. I have almost nothing to go on. I will find the song though. What a glorious day it will be.

Oh My Lanta

2009-08-20T17:58:00.002+01:00

Driving home earlier on and it started to lash rain like I had never seen before. It was unreal. I could not even see the road in front of me. Within seconds there were giant puddles on the road sides. Flash Puddling as I have decided to call it.

I probably nearly crashed the car a few times due to the poor visibility. There was some thunder and lightning thrown in for good measure too.

Atlanta

2009-08-19T11:21:00.001+01:00

Hotlanta - Here I come

2009-08-18T15:15:00.002+01:00

So now that the Celtic Cup is over, I can now concentrate on getting myself to Atlanta. There are a million and one different things that I need to sort out between now and leaving.

1. Get my visa
2. Book my flight
3. Find an apartment
4. Learn how to fight (Apparently this will come in handy in America. Chris has already taught me some choice moves)
5. Figure out what to bring with me
6. Learn how to fend for myself (cooking, cleaning and fighting)
7. Find a lacrosse team
8. Find out a way to make a few thousand € to set myself up over there
9. Have a few going away parties
10. Play in the Conor Walsh Memorial Lacrosse game
11. Figure out how America mobile phones work. I love my meteor and topping up by €20 every month and never having a problem with it. Whats a call plan?
12. Create and elaborate ridiculous tall tales of Ireland so I can fool Americans. Like John Scanlon's story about how we don't have Wednesday in Ireland. Or the Family Boots, or The Beast. The possibilities are endless really.
13. Try to get my head around working 9 - 5 M - F with only a week of holidays. Coming from college when we get two weeks of to celebrate march, the transition will not be easy.

Well maybe not a million and one, but still plenty of things to do. Not excited about it yet, but haven't even thought about it. This time next week, I will be excited and also scared.

Celtic Cup - Edinburgh

2009-08-18T14:29:00.005+01:00

Just back from the Celtic Cup. It was a great tournament and we managed to come in 3rd place, coming home with a bronze medal draped around our necks.

I am exhausted after the trip and am looking forward to relaxing for the next week. We stayed in Fettes College which is reportedly either the inspiration for Hogwarts or where they filmed some of the Harry Potter films. Past Pupils include Tony Blair and former milk men include Sean Connery. The school costs upwards of £21,000 a year so it is only for the rich, and then in the summer the Celtic Cup.

The Fringe Festival was on at the same time and there was a good buzz around the city when we went out on Friday & Saturday nights. Rhys Darby was playing but sadly I didn't make it to one of his shows. Stupid lacrosse got in the way.

Team MVP was a joint award given to Moff-(nasty) and Sweeney (who nobody wanted to share a cab with despite his proclamation of love and Nantucket Red Pants)

Defensive MVP went to John "Flag Down" Frame

Offensive MVP went to Gibby

Rookie of the year went to a very deserving David Lusby who racked up 2 hat-tricks.

Paul Murran gets a special mention for having the worst shot percentage in the history of sports. The team goal in the bronze medal game was to get everyone who had not yet scored a goal, to score. Paul was given ample opportunities and just couldn't get the ball on the net. He eventually did and scored one of the more celebrated goals of the tournament. Well done Paul!

This was the last tournament I will play with Ireland for the forseeable future. My limited holidays in Atlanta mean that next year's World Cup in Manchester is out of the question. My parents will have to wait another few years to see me put on the green jersey.

Celtic Cup

2009-08-08T00:19:00.002+01:00

We just started training for the Celtic Cup. Leaving on Tuesday to play Scotland, Wales and France and defend out title.

Movie Review Time - Transformers 2

2009-07-11T16:52:00.003+01:00

Transformers 2
Well this film was and probably continues to be the biggest film of Summer 09. I really enjoyed the first one, having seen it in Toronto in 2007. I was looking forward to the second installment, however I was bitterly disappointed. I spent a lot of the film texting people to tell them not to waste their money on this headless chicken.
The special effects are amazing which was to be expected. The rest of the film was just rubbish though.

If you still want to see the film don't read on as this will ruin it for you. So magically a piece of the All-Spark has remained hidden in Sam's clothes. He accidentally finds it when he is packing for college. He touches it and all the information gets imprinted on his brain, obviously!
He gives it to his way too good for him girfriend for safe keeping. The only entertaining scene happens around now with Sam's mum going around UPenn high as a kite on drugs.
Sam's roommates are internet nerds who know a lot about mysterious robot aliens, which is very convenient for the story. Anyway the Decepticons bring Megatron back to life after finding the known piece of the All-Spark in an army base, thanks to one of them who turned into a satelite.
Meanwhile on Planet Cybertron The Fallen is waiting to return to earth (having been there 19000 years ago) to take over the world and destroy it. The only thing stopping him is Optimus Prime. So they kill Optimus, don't cry yet kids. As The Fallen can only be defeated by a Prime (there were more of them) he now begins his plan to destroy the sun to use as an energy source for Cybertron.
Sam has a mental break down in class and starts writing all the symbols from the All-Spark down. The internet nerds lead him to NYC to find another internet nerd, who turns out to be Agent Simmons from the last movie. So he has loads of info, which is nice. Turns out Transformers were here for thousands of years. See the pic for an example of one.

So a machine was hidden in a pyramid. Must be pretty small to be hidden in a pyramid and never found right? Wrong. Its almost the same size as the pyramid.The machine is capable of sapping the suns energy and destroying it. The Fallen and his army look unstoppable with Optimus dead.
The Matrix is the key to the machine and Sam gets to it before the bad guys, which is handy. He then realises it can be used to bring Optimus back. He picks it up and it turns to dust. Oh no.
He puts the dust in a sock to bring to Optimus who has been airlifted to Egypt, which is where they are by the way. The American troops are having a tough time keeping off the Decepticons so they call in help from Jordan. They Jordanians arrive to the delight of the soldiers but the 2 helicopters they send get blown up within 3 seconds. Propoganda.
So Sam manages to run to Optimus through the big battle. On the way he meets his parents and they have a painful conversation "I cant let you do this alone" "No dad, just go, you have to trust me, JUST GO" When Sam makes it to Optimus. He dies. And all hope of the world follows with him.
Wrong again. Sam is greeted in death by the fallen Prime brothers. They tell him that his time was not up and he had to fulfill his destiny. Sam is somehow brough back to life. Then the Matrix turns from a pile of dust back into the Matrix. That was lucky.
Sam then uses it to bring Optimus back to life just in time to save the world.

A far fetched story line with lots of action. If the Special Effects werent so good this would be the worst film ever made.

Things to look forward to

2009-06-27T17:06:00.004+01:00

There are few possibilities on the horizon. We have been very bored for the last while with the exception of Slane of course. So to help ourselves escape the boredom of doing nothing all day we have decided to plan for the near future.

We are already geared up to go to see Fatboy Slim, David Guetta, Calvin Harris and Dizzee Rascal in August. We are now planning to go to Electric Picnic in early September. Tickets are €240 for the three days with camping so its reasonable.

We have also discussed going on a Mystery Tour of our own. The plan is to go away for the last week of August to be back just in time for EP. We will go into the travel agents the week before and ask for the cheapest holiday possible. Then we will go on the holiday. If we can keep control over ourselves the plan would be to not look at where we were going until we got to the airport. Would be very hard to do though.

There is also the Celtic Cup in August. So so far July looks like another boring month, but August should be fantastic.

It has been too long

2009-06-21T23:44:00.002+01:00

Hello again Blog. It has been far too long. Even still not a whole lot has happened.

The UCD Ball was an incredible end to the college year. We were basically the first ones there out of our minds drunk. The pre-ball shop meant that we were decked out in the finest festival gear money can buy. Several hats, accessories and back-up sunglasses. The weather had been pinned as the key factor to the success of the day and it was. Although we figured sun was needed, it was in fact the torrential down pour that made the day as sexy as you like. It was unreal. Japanese Popstars blasting out a few beats while the rain fell on everyone was lethal.

Then we did our final exams. I did better than expected in them and am almost sure I will get a 2.1 So now I am currently working on my final project. Its a bit of a pain having to do college stuff during the summer. We have Focus Groups to conduct this week and then we have to put it all together and present to the marketing board at the end of July so not long to go with that.

I applied for and did a phone interview for a marketing internship in Atlanta with a chain of Irish pubs. The interview sounded positive so hopefully in the next few days I get good news.

I tried out for the Irish team. I made it. Hooray for me. We are going to the Celtic Cup in Scotland in August. Never been to Scotland before so that should be nice. Its between Ireland, Scotland, Wales and newcomers France. We are defending champions so pressure is on.

Yesterday was Slane. It was a great gig. The music was top quality. I was very drunk at the start and dont really remember the first two bands. I bought a burger which I do not remember eating and two pints which I dont remember drinking. Kasabian were very good. Prodigy were incredible and then Oasis belted out all their classics with a few newbies thrown in for good measure. We managed to get up to the front of the 80,000 strong crowd. Pretty sure some bruising of the ribs occurred but it was worth it. However the concert finished at 22.30 with a fireworks display and by the time we got to the bus it was midnight. The bus did not leave for another hour. Then spent a good half an hour in a parked bus lane thinking it was traffic. So it took 5.5 hours to get home. Nightmare. Not sure if I would ever go back to Slane as a result.

I bought a new lens for my camera. It was €100 on ebay. Saw it online for €350 elsewhere so got a good deal. Have not got the chance to take it out and try it out yet. Hopefully sometime this week.

Exam Time

2009-05-02T01:21:00.000+01:00

It is exam time at the moment. I will be on this at some stage soon to write about the best day ever - The UCD Ball and also to look forward to what should be an eventful summer.

Dublinfest Champions 2009

2009-04-13T00:44:00.003+01:00

UCD Lacrosse is having its most successful season since its inception in 2005.

Since September 2008 we have won:

The Bock Auf Lacrosse Trophy in Karlsruhe, Germany

The March Madness Tournament in Dublin, Ireland

Came 2nd on Goal difference in The Spring Break Cup, in Amsterdam, Holland

Dublinfest 2009 in Dublin, Ireland

Dublinfest was particularly sweet because the last two years we lost out in the semi-finals. This year we dominated the men's tournament with 6 shut-outs in 8 games. The only close game we played was against Manchester which we won 5 - 4. The fear of losing another semi-final was there, especially when we went into the 4th quarter tied at 4 - 4. It was a great game and we were delighted to come away with a place in the final. We played Dublin for a change. Although the Dublin team had 4 additions from the Swiss National team. The game started close but after the 1st quarter we began to run away with the game, winning by more than 6 goals.

It was a bit of an anti-climax seeing as we only had one challenging game but it was still a victory. We are going to nominate ourselves for UCD club of the year, I reckon we deserve.

Next week we play Dublin to see who will win the year long series which is currently standing at 2.5 - 2.5, so it should be a good game. Dublin will want revenge after the last game we played against them was a shut out.

Dublinfest Week

2009-04-05T18:08:00.002+01:00

The week is upon us again when Dublin becomes the hotbed of lacrosse (and other sports) in Europe. Over 1000 lacrosse players will take part in the 3 day tournamnet this year.

The theme nights this year are not exactly the best Caveman and Mask or something like that. I am not sure where I will get either costume in time, but thats life. UCD Lacrosse are going for the triple this week having already won March Madness and the Bock Auf Lacrosse tournaments this season.

I will not be drinking a lot this week as it is my mum's birthday on wednesday and I had to buy a new charger for my laptop which broke on Friday. I also have a €200 debt on my credit card due soon. So it will be a cheap week. Might sneak a bottle of Jameson out of the house and keep it as cheap as I can.

Only 3 weeks left in college, then its a summer of nothing but more college work with market research needed to be carried for our big thesis style project. Hooray, I cannot wait. First time in years that I have no holidays planned. Its going to be rough. Can't remember what an Irish summer looks like but I have been hearing wet things about it.

Over the weekend some of my childhood memories have been thrown away into a giant skip bag. Number one being Muley, you may remember him from a previous blog. He was my lovely purple, horse-bike. He was a good horse-bike and an even better friend, now he is punctured, rusted and rotting away inside an enormous yellow bag. Its what he would have wanted.

The other possession of mine which carries many memories is the garden shed, which was taken apart by my mother. We used to sit on the roof of the shed and then making "daring" jumps off the roof into a padlding pool or just the garden itself. The shed was at the back of the garden which is beside a nursing home. The nursing home used to be guarded by these mean dogs. So as children of about 10 years of age, we used to taunt the dogs from the safety of the shed roof. After a while we got a brave and would climb over the fence into the nursing home and wait for the dogs to come running after us then pelt it back, climb the fence and continue the taunting. Good times. Although I am sure if I saw Flexo doing the same thing now I would say it was stupid and dangerous of him.

I am sure an update will follow sometime after Dublinfest. Hopefully it will be to announce us as winners of the triple.

Amsterdam 2009

2009-03-20T16:55:00.002Z

It has been quite a while since I have blogged. Not a whole lot was going on in the world of me so I had nothing to write about. Couple of things have been going on recently enough though so here we go.

Topic the First: Amsterdam 2009

We went to Amsterdam last week for our second trip of the 08/09 season. It was a lot of fun, but not the best trip we have had. The lack of team nights out was the main downfall for me. We made up for it on Sunday thanks to my good self and Keith's take over.

Some highlights from Amsterdam include:

Beating the Wisconsin Badgers by 1 goal.
A lot of what Bonagee said but in particular when he realised that he spent €50 on ice cream and pastries.
The training game we played on the Friday night.
The Whistle-Stop tour, which didn't go as well as planned but was still a lot of fun.
Stealing a €3 glass out of the Heineken factory.
The Subway/Ice-Cream combination.
The Chain Reaction at the Science Museum, was actually an anti climax for me. If you have to nudge some things along then its not a real chain reaction. Silly Dutch.
The tie game of vodka pong which sent me well on my way.
The crazed look in Mark's eyes after he had his Space Shake. Hookers watch out!
The fact Mark didn't kill a hooker, or at least he didn't get caught.
Everyone made it over and back alive.
The numerous jokes about Claire's make-up bag/rucksack
Simone being worried about God's forgiveness if she didn't brush her teeth and trying to brush other people's teeth with her shoes and a finger.
The dress-up night was a lot of fun, despite a lot of casulaties and the fact we didn't really make it out properly.
The music in the bar on Sunday night was amazing. Mambo Number 5 and so on.

Topic the Second: What the hell am I going to do?

The recession is gay and should just toss off. The job search is pulling up nothing so far. I will keep on trucking but I need a back up plan. So far I have some hair brained options:

1. Volunteer abroad for a while
2. Do another Masters
3. Try open up my own business
4. Go on the Dole
5. Submit to Accountancy and work for my dad

Not the best of options but they must be looked at.

Topic Three: On a more positive note.

I have recently been shown the musical talents of Girl Talk and suffice as to say I am enjoying it. Some impressive Mash-Ups that I can't stop listening to.

I might attempt a career in comedy if it all goes down the drain and my 5 options don't work out. But chances are that wont work out either.

The Father Ted Roadtrip

2009-02-22T23:05:00.006Z

Somewhat of a pipe dream, I have wanted to do the Father Ted Roadtrip since learning to drive last year. My parents went away for the weekend and left me with the car so I asked the lads if they would be up for the trip. Willy was on board right away, Eoin followed soon after. John took a little bit more convincing but Peter was the toughest sell. At 11am on Friday morning an hour before we were due to leave he decided to come along. So the five of us met up outside the Montrose Hotel and set off on our first roadtrip together (the first of many based on the success of this one)

The plan was to drive to Bridgetown in Clare to see my aunt as it was on the way to the house and then find the house, a quick pint in Vaughans pub and up to Galway for a night out.

We arrived in Bridgetown just before three which was pretty good timing. Pauline had prepared a lovely feast of chicken curry, popadoms and ice cream with fruit salad. Throw in a few whiskeys and coke and we all left very satisfied with ourselves. Thanks again Pauline.

John gave us directions to Ennis as we had directions from there to the house. We drove by Thomond Park on the way. The directions told us to get to Killnaboy and look for a signpost to Boston and to follow that road until we got to the house. However we couldn't find the blessed sign post. Killnaboy is a modest village at best so we were not entirely sure where it began and where it ended. We were half way to Kilfenora when we got out at a castle. As soon as we got out of the car the road which had previously been empty was full of cars. Around 12 cars and a bus passed by. Willy tried to flag down the bus driver to get directions but himself just waved and drove on. A few Germans arrived but of course they didn't know where it was. So we headed back towards Killnaboy. We took the only turn in the village and hoped for the best.

We drove for a few miles and pulled to rethink our decision to take that road when Willy and John decided to get out and ask the nearby farmer for help. He told them we were headed the right way and the house was the next one on the left about 2 miles down the road, which gives an idea of how far out of the way the house is. We arrived just before the sun set and managed to get a few photos of us there. We got out on the way back to Killnaboy to check out the Burren. Lovely spot so it is.

We got to Vaughans handy enough and were immediately recognised as "Ted Heads" We ordered 4 pints of Guinness and were told to expect a surprise in a few minutes. We were curious as to what it would be, a minor character? the fact it wasnt the right pub? public humiliation? Well it was a minor character. The bar man from the racist episode who owns the line "The bar is closed" It was a tremendous surprise.

We finished up the pints and hit the road again in order to get to Galway in time for some drinking. So we headed along some dodgy roads and eventually (after a few near misses and some road rage) found a national primary road and a petrol station. all JIT. The japanese business men would have been proud. So we filled up the car at the cheapest price we had seen all day which was nice. We drove on then to Galway and found the hostel easy enough. Finding the car park which was a 2 minute walk away was not so easy. I couldnt see the entrance for it and ended up driving an extra 5 minutes because I got cut off at a round about. Serious road rage ensued. So we settled in and paid for the hostel just after 9pm. A long old day.

We headed to the home grown foodery of Supermacs and got our dinner and went and got some drink for the night. We ate up then drank up and headed out. Had great fun, dancing around with a hen night and what not. Nearly got in a fight with some travellers some how and went home and chatted away to some people in the hostel. We were meant to be out of the hostel at 10am so I was up just after 9.30 to shower and brush my teeth. We left the hostel around 11am after house keeping came knocking on the door.

So we packed up and headed off to find some breakfast. We found a lovely little spot that did a fantastic fry-up for €8.50. It really hit the spot. So we wandered around Galway for a while until I was ready to drive again. the house voted for a quick trip to Salthill before properly hitting the road. So we did. It ended up being great fun. It was freezing and we all ended up jumping in off the diving board into the very very cold water, what seemed like hundreds of feet below. Any sign of a hangover was scared away by the shock of hitting the water. We had gathered a little crowd watching us jumping in. There were a few gasps when the jumps were made.

We hit the road and made it for Tullamore. We arrived there mid afternoon to drop John home. We were greeted by the Scanlons who cooked up a lovely steak dinner for us on the BBQ. Thank you the Scanlons again. We drove down the road to see the Taoiseach's house and then headed back home to Wicklow. We got home at 7.30 after covering around 600km.

We have decided that we will take a trip once a month in order to keep our lives interesting and fun and seeing as it only cost around €100, they are well worth it for the craic and memories.

All in all it was a TEA-RIFFIC trip.

Family Portait Day

2009-02-20T00:39:00.003Z

I have been accused of not mentioning certain people in The Blog enough so with that in mind I will try to use their names as much as I possibly can in this post. Myself Sean and John were discussing that our apartment didn't have the feeling of a home about it. But we were coming up short as far as ideas were concerned.

John was walking out of the apartment to go to college and was hit with possibly the greatest idea since the internet. He came rushing back in to me and Sean to tell us. "Lets get a family portrait done"

The idea was met warmly by Sean and I. We decided that we would do it on Sunday night with the aim of having the portrait up by Wednesday. Dress code - optional.

Sunday came around and we were all excited. We got in our gear and messed around with the lighting etc to make sure the picture looked professional. Sean went with a suit look with a spiffy tie. John went for the Indiana Jones look with his leather jacket tossed carelessly over his shoulder. I went for the giant douche look opting for shorts, a shirt, a scarf and of course i was barefoot.

The whole process took two sweaty hours. Ciaran wouldnt get out of bed to be part of the photo. So we had a lot of trouble filling the space of a fourth man. But we managed to do it magestically. We got some serious gold. The photo is now up in the hallway for all to see. 16" x 16" of pure magic.

Here are some of the photos that we took during the "shoot"

The Moral Victory - Is it the definitive victory?

2009-02-17T13:43:00.003Z

We all know the taste of defeat. It has been served to us probably on more than one occassion. Defeat can be a terrible thing provided that you deal with it improperly.

A classic example is when you are a child and you challenge your friend to a race to the pole and back. Midway through the race you realise that you are not going to win the race fairly, so you resort to cheating. The lowest common denominator.
"Ok fine, you win, the race is over" You quicken your pace in order to become level with your opponent. Once you get close enough you start running as fast as your legs will take you in attempt to restart the race giving yourself an unfair advantage. Unfortunately though 9 times out of 10 you remain slower than the person you challenged and you lose again. At this stage there is rarely another way out. So you turn the only thing you know in a situation like this, tears. This is a sure way to make defeat a terrible thing.

There is the alternative option which as far as a lot of people are concerned is the only victory worth anything. Even actually winning the event doesn't compare to this. THE MORAL VICTORY.

Taking the moral high ground and creating a miniature victory for yourself can take away all the glory from the actual winner. The moral victory can come in many ways. It does not necessarily mean that there was cheating involved on the part of the victor. The moral victory can come from being the weaker party. For example when playing a game of Pro Evo or Fifa the winner may choose a 5 star team while you choose a 2 star team and lose by a goal. You clearly hold the moral victory.

Being the obvious underdog is pretty much guaranteed moral victory status. You don't have to do much work to get it. Other moral victories require a little more effort. If you try it on with a girl in a club and get rejected. You can take the moral ground based on the fact that you actually tried and she is obviously an idiot. Alternatively if you get with a particularly ugly girl. The moral high ground can be taken with the simple excuse of alcohol. Nobody can really make you out to be a fool when you were really drunk at the time, plus you got some anyway. Once again the moral victory has been achieved.

Is there another victory that can beat the moral victory? I dont think there is. But there might be.

I'm back

2009-02-16T12:40:00.003Z

Well I have been pretty bad at updating this lately. Not much has happened over the last two weeks or so. The whispers of the Snowball 3 can still be heard if you strain your ears hard enough. Unfortunately the Snowball Assasins created a bad name for Snowball throwers everywhere when they were mistaken for a group of teenagers assaulting people with frozen balls of fun.

I have recently joined the 1Lacrosse team. I had debated going to Beijing to work with them last September but decided on a masters instead. I have just been learning the ropes so far and am looking forward to making some sales.

We won our game against Dublin on Friday night. It was a weaker Dublin team with a lot of new players representing the newly formed teams of DCU and Trinity. Hopefully this time next year the DCU and Trinity guys will have full teams of their own and we will be competing in a league or championship.

Amsterdam is getting dangerously close. Only 3 weeks of there aboots left. I am not sure if I will be able to afford it as money is tight. But I will find a way. The credit card will probably have to make an appearance of some sort. Hopefully nothing too hefty though.

The team seem to have disbanded as far as our trip to Australia is concerned. The lure of further education is just too much. I may even have to go back to study some more. The grad programme I had applied for with Microsoft was cancelled two days before my interview and they deemed that I wasn't suitable for the other available role of Operations Specialist. So I am not waiting in the balance for good news from Enterprise Ireland or Jameson about their Grad Programmes.

Snow Day

2009-02-06T19:57:00.002Z

Well this has been an exciting week weather wise. It has snowed and not the usual BS we get in Ireland, actual, real life, powder snow. It came in like a teenagers beard at first, patches here, patches there and finally yesterday it all came together like a good plan.

The day before though the Snowball 3 was formed and they took over the outside of the Arts building in UCD. They picked on the weak and defenseless, mainly girls. They knew that guys might get angry and fight back but not girls. So the cowardly trio of heros spent an hour of their timely bravely facing frost bite in the face for the selflesss glory of hitting innocent, defenseless passers by. The reactions they got were mixed, mainly angry cussing and a few laughs. All in all everyone was happy apart from the people who were hit with snowballs and the lecturer who threatened them with political imprisonment.

I also found my new hero this week. Jon Lajoie. He is a comedian and has a lot of videos on youtube. I recommend you check his stuff out unless of course you easily offended.

I have spent the week preparing for my big interview next Wednesday which is taking place at 8am in Sandyford. It is going to take 5 and half hours. All with the aim of getting a place on the Microsoft MACH Graduate Programme. So if you care or if you don't wish me luck.

Terrible Start To The Day

2009-01-27T13:53:00.002Z

So last night the lads had a poker night in our apartment which I decided to opt out of because I had a lecture at 8.30am this morning. However opting out actually didn't help seeing as I couldn't get to sleep til well after 2am, after the poker night had ended!

My alarm was set for 7am with the hope of waking up, showering, shaving and having a lovely bowl of Corn Flakes. Instead I inadvertently turned off my alarm instead of snoozing it up and eventually woke up with a bolt of fear at 8.20am. I decided that the shower and shave were out the window but I would at least get breakfast.

Instead the bathroom was taken by a showering Sean (who was part of the damn poker night) and my hair was sticking up on one side. In a desperate attempt to save time I put my head under the tap in the kitchen and after some very angry patting my hair was tolerably flat and I rushed out the door with no food in me and not a bit teeth brushing.

I arrived smelly, sweaty and late to my class. But I realised I had a much longer break than I expected so I went home and showered, shaved and brushed my teeth so the day was on the up. Until I came back to college and tried to buy crisps for my sandwich and the machine ate my euro.

Who knows what woe lies around the corner for me, but so far so bad as far as January 27th is concerned.

The Worst Conversation Starter

2009-01-22T18:46:00.002Z

Well over the last week I have been meeting up with people who I haven't seen since before Christmas. Nearly all of them have started the conversation with the dreaded question which can scare away a conversation at the best of times.

"How was the Christmas?" which only recieves a limited supply of responses which are along the lines "Grand, yours?" "Ah yeah it was good, yours?" "It was quiet, yours?"
This can only be met with a single word "Same"

This terribly short, uncomfortable experience is drawn out even longer with the uncomfortable silence as you both search for good things to talk about but none come to mind for a few hours.

Back to College

2009-01-18T23:31:00.003Z

Well the internet at home has been down for the last while so I haven't been able to update the old blog. But I am back in the apartment in Booterstown and there is internet here.

Work has been going fine. Severe lack of hours though. 4 hours a week. Almost completely useless but €1 is better than €0. I have rejoined the gym which is nice. Its good to be back.

The most important bit of news is that the Team have decided to go to Australia in November for 8 months or so, although nothing is definite.

Thats about it really. College is making a come back tomorrow. The plan is to hit up the bar around 5 and to get hammered. Haven't drank since Christmas Day so it will be interesting to see how I handle it.

Sin é

Photography Week 3 or 6 or whatever

2009-01-04T16:24:00.004Z

Well I got lazy with the postings just as I expected I would. But I have been taking photos so its not all bad. So here are some of the photos that I have been taking over the last few weeks.

Christmas and Everything Else I Missed

2008-12-30T23:11:00.005Z

So with the lack of posting I have missed out on some major events mainly Christmas. We had a good Christmas. We got up at about 6.30 in the morning because Flexo was too excited to see what Santa brought him to wait any longer. So down we went bleary eyed one and all except Flexo who was wide awake and buzzing like he was on cocaine.

He managed to hide himself behind a fortress of presents and by 7.30am himself and Lois were rocking out as an electronic band with the new Guitar Hero game. It is tonnes of fun so far. But I fear it will be another Nintendo Wii, great fun for a month and then useless. Only time will tell.

The highlight of the morning was giving my mum her present. We bought her a Rod Stewart CD and inside were two tickets to his concert. Funnily enough she didn't open the box to look at the disc so we told her to put it on, so she handed it to Flexo. "NO put it on yourself" So she did and the screech out of her was unreal. She jumped up and down, it was priceless.

We then headed to Mass to say hello to Jesus. He was good. Then we headed on a little roadtrip to Clare to visit the family and scab free Chritsmas dinner. With no traffic we made it down in 2 hours flat, which was nice. We ate until we couldn't eat no more, went to sleep, woke up and ate some more. A good day had by all.

I then travelled home alone the next day because I was working in my new job as a barman in Barcode a huge nightclub in Clontarf. I think it holds like 4000 people or something. And I would say there was at least that there on Stephen's Night. I was coming down with the flu and it was the longest night of my life. At one stage I thought it was 1a, but it was only 11pm. But the night finally came to an end several weeks later. It just got worse really, i was clamped. €120 fine and 20 minutes later I was finally on my way home. So i got home at around 4.30am.

The sales were on the next day and I was in charge of getting a new TV of which the shop only had 10 so I was out of the house at 7am again with no sleep to queue up to ensure I got the telly. There were people queueing since 5.10am so I was happy enough to have only had half his waiting time. I got the TV after 2 hours of freezing cold and dry conversation. And now its sitting pretty in our sitting room, all 37 inches of its HD ready black body. I am so ready for HD. When it comes to us we will be ready of that there is no doubt.

Tomrrow sees the last day of 2008 and I will ring in 2009 in work. Hooray

Apologies Blog

2008-12-30T22:24:00.002Z

Ok so I haven't written here for quite some time. I didn't technically give up on the photo thing. I have been taking photos just too lazy to post them. In fact I have been very lazy lately. The last year has been a disaster zone of laziness. Possibly my laziest year yet. So I aim to turn it all around. Now in the spirit of avoiding New Year's Resolutioning I start tomorrow the 31st of December 2008. There is really one aspect of my life which needs to be turned around and that my friends is exercise.
Not so long ago I used to go to the gym three times a week, did weights, cycled 60km on the bike machine and went for a swim. Now I am lucky if I walk up the stairs without panting.

Lois is similarly lazy, but not nearly as bad. I saw a picture of myself recently of my graduation from school and its like looking at a different person. It was a bit of a wake-up call, but with exams and Christmas I never got around to trying to fix it. I also bought new tshirts online for Christmas which arrived and ended up being tight where they shouldn'y be which was embarrassing. So now is the time to turn it around hopefully.

Seeing as my main trouble is motivation I have made a bet with my younger brother Robert. We both have until June 20th 2009 to reach a certain weight. If one of us don't achieve the desired weight we must pay the other €200 in cash. Also if another decides to back out of the bet they must pay €300 just to penalise being a loser more. In order to keep us motivated I am creating a side blog where we will keep track of our progress.

Hopefully the prospect of the bet is enough motivation to get me out of my rut. It will benefit me in many ways so it is almost a necessity at this stage. The same can be said for Lois.

Burn

2008-12-14T17:28:00.002Z

Frasier taking a call from a guy called Roger who is talking about how his wife wants to name his new $300,000 machine after her mother while he wants to call it something else:

"Roger, at Cornell University, the have an incredible piece of scientific equipment know as the tunnelling electron microscope. Now this microscope is so powerful that by firing electrons you can actually see the images of the atom. The infinitesimally minute building block of our universe. Roger if I were using that microscope right now I still wouldn't be able to locate my interest in your problem."

Photography Week 2

2008-12-14T13:09:00.003Z

Well I have been pretty much in the same room all week because its exam time. I have ventured out to do exams which went seemingly ok but I can't say for sure. I also took the car for its NCT and it passed so well done to "The Beast" I also went out and bought my Christmas presents. Most of my shopping occured online which worries me seeing as I bought myself clothes. Played it safe with the hoody + 1 tshirt with XL but seeing as 3 t-shirts were coming from America I went with L. Hopefully they fit or I will have a sad sad Christmas.

As I said this week I have been in one room for most of the time so my ability to take good photos is limited. I have been taking photo breaks and taking pictures of things around the house. Here is what I have come up with. Its been a black and white week as you can see. I never said I was going to take good pictures just that I was going to take pictures.

Photography Week 1

2008-12-07T19:41:00.006Z

Well it is Sunday and not too long after making my vow so I better hold up to Photo Week at least once. John, Mallori and Elyse visited the Best Community in the World (FACT - look it up if you don't believe me), Greystones. Hooray! So instead of studying I took them out and showed them around.

We got free tea up in the golf club. The walked along the beach up through the town and up to the woods. Then back home for more tea and some telly watching. Then hit up the chipper on the way to the DART for some dinner. All in all a good day. And most importantly an excuse to take out my camera; who I am now going to call Carl. Carl the camera.

Anyway I took just over 70 photos most of which were rubbish but here are the ones I think turned out somewhat decent (Click on them to view the full size if you're bothered:

Back to Photography

2008-12-06T00:36:00.005Z

So last Christmas I got me a camera with the intention of taking some pretty amazing photos. That dream slipped and faded away with laziness by late January or so, but now that its exam season I think it is time to re-kindle my apparent love of photography.

So I vow to post one good picture a week on my blog from now on. I will start the proceedings by posting some of the pictures I managed to take during my brief stint as a man who considered photography a hobby.

Muley - My Horse Bike RIP

2008-12-05T16:48:00.003Z

We all have imaginary friends and what not when we are children. I had a horse bike. It was the most wonderful contraption ever created. Peter and I decided to attach a piece of orange washing line rope to either end of the handle bars. Thus the transformation was complete.

Our horse bike now had reigns. We could cycle around sterring him by pulling on the reigns. It was so much fun. We named him Muley ("mewlee")The name fit him perfectly. He was such a fun loving horse-bike. He had his own theme song, obviously. Ride On by Christy Moore.

We played a game a charades and the film was "The Horse Whisperer" Poor Muley could hardly keep a straight face when we whispered in his ear. How he laughed. Wasn't as big a fan of sugar lumps as most other horses. Probably due to the fact that he was just a bicycle with shopping line rope tied on the handlebars.

I remember we took him down to the shops one day. A lot of people walked passed and said "What the F is that?" Muley had his feelings hurt and we never took him to the shops ever again. He had a short career as a horse but it was memorable. I heard Ride On on the radio today and it reminded me of the good times myself Peter and Muley had together. I honour his memory with this blog entry.

Christmas Plans

2008-12-04T18:53:00.002Z

Well my Christmas plans are in. I am now going to be spending the entire holiday season stringing sticks in my own personal slave labour work shop. I will provide myself with a 10 minute break for every 14 hours of work I complete. The 10 minutes will be used for eating, drinking, sleeping, washing as well as other necessary bodily functions. As a treat for Christmas Day I am allowing myself 15 minutes for a break. I am excited for it.

Other than that Christmas looks like it will be pretty boring. Here are some pictures from the intial sweat shop training day which lasted 2 hours and was conducted by Mike K. We thank Mike for the opportunities his teachings have opened up for us.

DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE

2008-11-26T13:45:00.002Z

Ok so I decided to hit up the cinema last night. Max Payne seemed to have something the others didn't have. So I was drawn in to buying a ticket for it. I also convinced my friends to go too. So it was not a lonely cinema.

Marky Mark is Max Payne a cop whose wife and baby get killed by 3 junkies, two of whom get killed by Max there and then with no trace of the third guy involved Max goes of trying to find him. He is a troubled man and gets sent to the Cold Case section trying to hunt down leads. After three years he has become the joke of his precinct.

So we join him when he actually starts finding some leads. Hooray for Max! Nothing seems to make sense though. Its all shot really badly. People are taking some blue liquid drug and being chased by giant black bird men. Max's leads seem to lead him nowhere until for some strange reason he goes into a portacabin and opens up his wife's box of old office files. THEY ARE MISSING. NO WAY.

So automatically he knows who is in the know. Its that guy who played Robin in the awful movie Batman & Robin, once again lending his face to a waste of people's time and money. Security gets called when Max rozzles Robin. Security in this office building is more like a SWAT team. Max somehow avoids them and manages to kill some of them.

He then goes to some club and kills a man who spends most of the film shouting, topless and sweaty. He is an awful character. Sweaty topless latino man gets killed by Max's old partner. He turns out to be the guy who killed Michelle Payne and Baby Payne. So Max is about to be sent into the cold abyss of the river but oh wait he escapes the evil clutches of his ex-partner and his black guy sidekick who dies first obviously. Anyway so Max jumps into the icy depths of his own accord. Just before he dies Mrs Payne comes to him in a vision and tells him not yet. So he opens his eyes and swims out, takes some of the blue drug. He goes insane and starts killing people. Him and his new friend Meg from Family Guy kill loads of people in the building where Michelle used to work. The black sidekick blows up a piece of the building to stop Max getting to the roof and to BB his e-partner and murderer of his wife and baby.
Max makes it up anyway and kills BB. Somehow it stops snowing instantly and the sun comes out and everyone suddenly realises Max is not so bad after all and not actually a lunatic, all thanks to Ludacris the rapping detective who I decided not to mention before this because his presence in the film is worthy of laughter and nothing more. Not in a racial way, well maybe a little bit. But he does wear a funny hat which falls off his head when he answers the phone so that was funny in a non-racist way.

DO NOT SEE THIS FILM unless you decide to go to the cinema with someone you hate and you are happy to suffer as long as they do too.

Christmas Presents

2008-11-26T00:11:00.004Z

With Christmas just around the corner I thought I would look forward to what I have asked the fat man in red for. A bicycle!!!! Thats right I am taking a trip down memory lane and am having a childhood Christmas repeat.
I have not yet decided what kind of bicycle I want yet, however it should be bright red and go super fast, somewhat like this:

And to ensure that I don't go back and become a complete child I also want a flight to Amsterdam. Just one, I will be able to fly home of my own accord after a few drugs so I wouldn't want Santa wasting his time giving me a flight I wont use.

I think thats all I need for this Christmas really. Not asking for much. Well I suppose I wouldn't mind Armani Black Code too, because you have to smell well wherever you go. So thats it for my three wishes this Christmas.

I would really want €2000 to pay off my student travel loan but Santa isn't that good I am afraid.

Well it's official now................It's Christmas

2008-11-20T00:11:00.002Z

Watching television there and turns out its Christmas. The Coco-Cola Christmas ad was on. Holidays are coming, holidays are coming.

Peep Show Day

2008-11-18T01:01:00.000Z

Well its 1am on Monday night/Tuesday morning and I am awaiting my Market Research group to email me some stuff so I can finish up our project and get started on my presentation which is at 11am today/tomorrow morning. This is a bust week with many projects and many presentations on.

So with nothing to look forward to the lads and I decided to come up with something. Being major fans of Peep Show, Food and Christmas holidays we decided on a combination act. The rule of the game are as follows:

1. We must watch all 5 seasons of Peep Show in one day
2. We must eat one meal with each different season
3. It must take place during the Christmas holidays

We have also decided on what meals will be consumed.

1. A Fry-up
2. A Hot Chicken Roll
3. Burger and Chips from a proper chipper
4. A pizza
5. A chinese

It promises to be both a glorious and expensive day.

The Lonely Lunch vs The Lonely Cinema

2008-11-11T16:55:00.001Z

There are few things worse than the lonely lunch. The lonely cinema is definitely worse but other than that no examples come to mind.

I have been victim to a couple of lonely lunches over the past few weeks. I tell myself its because I am too busy to lunch with others which is the main reason why the lonely cinema is worse. You are never too busy to go to the cinema alone. You just have no friends, simple as that. The lonely lunch comes with an array of excuses: you're too busy to eat with others, others are too busy to eat with you, you needed to eat then. The lonely cinema is not the same seeing as you don't need to go. You at least need to eat.

The lonely lunch is a much more public loneliness. It is the busiest time of the day in the restaurants and therefore everyone can see you and the empty seats around you. At least in the lonely cinema you can convince yourself that nobody can see you on your own, or you can sit beside people to make it seem like you're with them.

Sleep Logic

2008-11-10T12:07:00.000Z

This terrible beauty as Will Yeats would say has caused me to be late for many events and even sometimes caused me to be a non-attendee.

I am pretty sure everyone experiences sleep logic at some point in their lives. In order to explain what sleep logic is I feel that an example is best

I experienced it this morning. I had wonderful plans to get up and make it to college to get some study done before my class started. My alarm was set with plenty of snooze time at 08.30 with the plan of getting up at 9.00 That cursed beep......beepbeepbeep of my Nokia alarm clock went off. I instinctively fished around the bed with my eyes firmly shut, lest I wake up properly at this ungodly hour. I found my phone and pushed the snooze button. 10 minutes later beep........beepbeepbeep. Snooze. Another 10 minutes beep.......beepbeepbeep. Bang. Snooze. Yet another ten minutes beep.....beepbeepbeep. Snooze. This went on for quite a while until it was at the point of no return. It was either get up now or don't get up at all. Knowing full well I needed to get up, my sleep logic function kicked in.

I began to "logically" tell myself how I needed sleep more than I needed study. I told myself that there was no way a shower would wake me up enough that I could get some good study done. I also told myself that by the time I got to my lecture I would be so tired I would fall asleep. And so I drifted back to sleep and woke up just in time to make it to my class on time.

Sleep logic is a wonderful curse. The sleep you get after using sleep logic is some of the best sleep you will ever get, however you will probably miss out on something important.

This guy used sleep logic and missed his meeting. Poor guy, but he is enjoying a great sleep.

The Reverse Party

2008-11-09T23:46:00.000Z

Thursday night after training saw the first ever Reverse Party take place in Belgrove. The idea behind the party was that Americans had to dress like Irish people and the Irish had to dress like the Americans. Fun in theory and in practise.

Some people didn't really bother making any effort. Other people didn't really look like they tried. But there were some classic efforts out there. Like Aidan's gangsta look. He tooked his hoody into his boxers, it just worked. Mark and his new hairdo teamed up with a leather jacket and some serious aggression (as usual) to give us the loveable Fonz from Happy Days. He even came with a theme song, although he didn't plan that himself.

We were kicked out by the RAs quite promptly but thankfully Paddy offered the services of 133 and we wandered off dressed oddly into the freezinf sideways rain. The party went on til a little after 3 and then we all headed home. Moff and I tried out our traveller pose dressed as Yanks. It doesn't really have the same effect without the clothes on.

Halloween

2008-11-03T15:21:00.001Z

We had a rookies game at UCD before heading out to Springer's house for a fancy dress party. I had trouble deciding what to go as and decided to settle for Mr. Bean but the tie I had wasn't right and instead I put on a hat and transformed myself into a member of the travelling community. Not a great costume but it worked.
Mike Ryan and his mum attended the rookies game. It was good to see Mike again after playing with him in World Indoors in 07 and the PBLA in 08.

Just before heading out the lads pointed out my costume needed something more. So i threw on a pair of black shoes and a woolly jumper. I knew it was a bad idea but went with it anyway. I had too many clothes on and on the contrary Bred had hardly any. He was a 1940s tennis star. He had the worlds smallest shorts on.

Such dedication. We were some of the first to arrive and got straight into beer pong. Such a long game. We lost which I was happy about. Everyone else had arrived and it was time to pretend I was a traveller. Withing 5 minutes I was dehydrated and on the advice of many others I lost the jumper. Myself and moffat spent the rest of the night shouting at people about how we were an ethnic minority and needed to be respected. It was a lot of fun.

4 of my cans were stolen but it was a good thing because if I had drank them I would have been carried home. We left at sometime between 12 and 6. Being the true gentlemen that we are, we took the first taxi and left the girls waiting in the cold.

Let's Get Sentimental Here

2008-10-28T20:01:00.001Z

In the wake of what could be my last UCD Lacrosse trip I have become quite sad about the prospect of life without a UCD Lacrosse. I am in the midst of Mid-Life crisis as a result.

UCD Lacrosse started in 2005 and that is when I took up the sport and the tender age of 18. Within 7 weeks I was on a plane to Frankfurt with a mixture of UCD & Dublin. It was a great trip with a tonne of team bonding. There was a lot of drinking involved. We went to a house party in a penthouse which was raided by the Polizei. Some team members decided to ask the police if their jackets were real leather and others decided to piss on the police cars. Some of us had got so drunk that they were carried home at 11 and had thrown up all over the hostel room. We lost our lacrosse games due to our lack of experience and also due the vast experience of the Black hawk Helicopter pilots we were playing against.

The next trip happened about 4 months after when we headed to Amsterdam. What made this trip extra special was the fact that we had just got our brand new Dublin/UCD Lacrosse combo hoodies. It snowed and we played some snow lax which was fantastic. There was some experimentation with drugs and I had an odd experience. A mix of paranoia, racism and unnecessary laughter lead to 3 of us sleeping in a single bed in a hostel. We played more lacrosse this time around and had to miss the 3rd place playoff to catch our flight. The girls got pipped in the final if I remember correctly. Although memory of the trip is a little hazy.

My next lacrosse related trip was for the Ireland Development Team. Myself, Paddy and Eoin went to Boston for a week to visit some friends from Semester 2 and had a fantastic time. We flew to Buffalo, NY and drove with Frank, the 58 year old college lacrosse player to London, ON. We played everyday for a week and got to hang out with all the pros. We partied with Canada after they became World Champions. It was a great experience, except I didn't know who any of them were, but I am sure they were famous to some people. We didn't win any games as the development team, but the main team finished in 7th place after beating Germany.

UCD Lacrosse became a seperate club to Dublin in 2006 and I became the Captain. We travelled to Berlin in November of 2006. It was the first UCD only lacrosse trip. We went to the most amazing club ever. There was many many different areas. One was a strip club, one was dance area, one was a hard rock area and so on. We played some decent lacrosse games. We beat the Hamburg children's team and didn't win agaisnt B-Lax but gave them a good run for their money.

The next trip was in April 2007 when we went to Prague to play in the biggest European Box Lax tournament the Jimi Dlouhy Cup Alex Hrebesky Memorial. This was our preparation for the World Indoors. There were cheerleaders, fireworks, EuroSport tv coverage, beer, lacrosse, a BBQ beside the field and absinthe in the bar. The sun was out all week. Everything was really cheap. The lacrosse was plentiful and it was one of the best lacrosse weekends I have had.

Less than a month later we headed to Halifax for the World Indoors. We were part of the first Irish Indoor Lacrosse team. It was such a great experience. One of the best weeks of my life. We got to sing the national anthem in front of thousands of people who paid money to be there. We got to play against the best teams in the world and play against the World Champions which was an amazing experience. I had been off drink since march in preparation and midway through the tournament got really drunk. The Deputy mayor of halifax started buying me shots of tequila and in the interest of politeness I drank them. She got touchy feely and I got scared. She gave me her address in case I ever returned to Halifax so I walked away from her. The worst part of the trip was the fact that myself, Paddy and J-rock were doing our college exams while taking part in the tournament. One of my lecturers was a prick. Wouldn't let me sit my exam at a different time. So I had to fly from Halifx to Dublin through London (flights that i didn't sleep on) and then get the aircoach straight to UCD and sit an exam. Needless to say I fell asleep a couple of times during the exam, ended up with a phat B though which was nice.

I took a break from lacrosse trips in my final year of Commerece and missed out on Vienna-Slava which I regretted. I was there in spirit though and the lads took group photos leaving a space for me, which was nice and funny.

EDIT FOR DAVE:

The next trip was to Belfast. The girls went up to play the newly formed Ulster Lacrosse Club and we went to play Dublin for a change and to see if we could get some interest to start a men's team up there. A huge crowd of two managed to make it out for the men's game. The highlight of the trip was the return of Kevin & Dave everyone's favourtie Canadians. We were in the club in the VIP it was Rojo Caliente. Aloisius my pet dolphin became famous during this trip which was quite diappointing for me as he wasn't ready for the fame. Anyway UCD Lax got really drunk and played some terrible hangover lacrosse and we lost to Dublin pretty badly.

Next trip was to Cork and Limerick. In an effort to spread the good word of lacrosse we headed on Flopsy's Fiasco as it was called. We played some lax. The weather sucked and nobody came out to watch us. Well not nobody but not many. We got drunk and got lots of lacrosse training in. Not a total waste of time.

I then went to Philadelphia with Paddy for the summer. Within a week we hated each other and continued to do so until we got home. We played lacrosse 4 days a week. and gained plenty of experience.

Next it was off to Finland to play in the European Championships. My first outing for Ireland in Field Lacrosse. We played plenty of games and finsihed 6th out of 18 teams which was an improvement on the 2004 performance when they finished in 7th.

Most recently was the weekend just past when we went to Karlsruhe and won our first ever trophy for UCD Lacrosse and for lacrosse in general. It was a good trip. So much fun and so much lacrosse.

The running theme between all my trips have been that they have been full of team bonding and full of drinking, full of lacrosse and full of fun. So looking back it depresses me that I wont be experiencing the fun anymore. I have made countless friends over the last few years and travelled many many many thousands of miles all in the name of lacrosse. I spent a small fortune and would love to continue doing so. Sadly though my time is nearly up. I might do another Masters or a PhD or some other crazy thing to get one more year of UCD Lacrosse. Life without it seems bleak. Maybe I will find something else, but I don't to. I owe a lot to UCD Lacrosse and am not ready to move on.

Bock Auf Lacrosse

2008-10-27T21:55:00.001Z

After much deliberation and a lot of money spent on flights, I went to Germany. It cost me a small fortune but it was worth it. We played 7 games of lacrosse and won 5 of them. We took home the goat trophy after Stuttgart were disqualified for not showing up on day 2. So being the first trophy UCD lacrosse has won it made the whole trip worth it.

There was a lot of happenings and what not, but I am too lazy to write about them in any great detail. I will just highlight the best parts of the weekend. In no particular order.

1. Winning the goat trophy
2. Making the ICE train with literally 2 seconds to spare
3. Getting 4 Jagerbombs for €14
4. The club on Saturday night and the amazing music they played
5. Sports Centre Music
6. Buying Santa Claus earmuffs and an orange high-vis vesst with a German flag on it
7. Lying in a fountain with Moffat talking to Uncle Chris about his war days
8. "I like you man, but you're fucking crazy"
9. Ordering food in German but being served in English
10. Teaching people the hidden thumb handshake
11. Moffat using the HTH on the Frankfurt team after we beat them to win the trophy
12. The picture of Mark dancing with his shirt off. Hilarious
13. Getting 4 litres or so of Coke into me on Friday
14. Moffat throwing Paddy's hat off the tower
15. The old man in the clubhouse bar on Saturday night
16. Actually making it to Hahn in time despite everything going wrong at some stage
17. The Bonagee dance
18. Playing D with Moffat in goals talking about the shnakes coming from X
19. All of John's huddle talks. Eg. "Let's go out there and get hard"
20. Bonagee and his theories on the Leaving Cert and Rap Music

Germany Lacrosse Trip

2008-10-22T02:40:00.000+01:00

Ok so all day I have been feeling terrible about not going to Germany. I spent all day in class looking for ways to get there. It all seemed too pricey. So I climb into bed and find a way thats cheap and easy. Fly to Frankfurt with Aer Lingus on Thursday coming back on Monday for €177 in total. I was still worried about it though. So I flipped a coin. Well I didn't have a coin so I flipped my credit card. It told me to go. I wasn't convinced so I asked John what he thought and he said "If you want to go just book it" I asked Chris and he said "Carpe Diem" I looked at videos and photos from our other adventures. All wonderful times. SO I decided to book and I clicked on "Purchase Flight"

After a few minutes I got my confirmation email. Instead of being excited I wanted to vomit. I didn't know why though. It was like I had been kicked somewhere we don't speak of. I couldn't sleep but I had nothing to do. So I went about scouring my emails for some good info.

I got info just bad info. Projects I thought were due in a couple of weeks were pushed forward to next week. While I wouldn't mind so much in 1st or 2nd year, I am in a Masters course now and work is a lot harder. So I can still go along but I am pretty sure I will fail my projects which are worth 20% each.

I kind of want to shoot myself. But the way things have been going I will buy the damn gun and find out there is no trigger, or i would shoot myself and survive but for brain damage and paralysis.

What 3 items would I loot if I had the chance?

2008-10-20T00:20:00.000+01:00

While watching Independence Day, a fantastic film, Sean asked me what three items I would steal if I was looting. Well they are pretty obvious to be honest. In a time of looting what items are most necessary.

Well number one on the list is a super car. Reasons for this choice are that they are super cool and super fast, so I can escape dangerous situations while looking like James Bond at the same time. My choice of super car if I was lucky enough to have a choice during the loot would be an Ferrari F430. I have already decided that I would probably kill someone to get my hands on one and in a situation like looting I might just have to prove myself.

My number two item would have to be a firearm of some sort. I am not exactly sure what kind of firearm I would look for specifically but it would have to be quite sizeable and look menacing. As long as it put the fear of god into the other looters and was able to take their lives if necessary. Something like the weapon below would be enough for me.

And my final item would be a suit. Well basically its every man's dream to be James Bond and I already have the car and the weapon and the potentially lethal situation. So the only item I need, that I can steal (you can't steal a woman) is a really good suit. I would have to be very picky about the suit. I will be able to buy myself some time with the rifle and the fact that I will be there before anyone in my super car. With the suit and rifle in hand I will look something like this (obviously)

Taken

2008-10-19T16:24:00.000+01:00

I have seen many films this year and in my life time. None really compare to Taken. Liam Neeson is such a big man in it. His daughter gets captured by Albanians or one of those Eastern European people while she is on holidays with a friend in Paris. Their goal is to sell her for sex and because she is "pure" they can get a lot of money for her, about half a million to be exact.
So Liam Neeson while on the phone to the kidnappers pulls out one of the coolest pieces of dialogue in the film when he says very calmly and collectedly:

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want.If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career, skills that make me a nightmare for peole like you. If you let my daughter go now that'll be the end of it; I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you.

Liam then goes to France and kills everyone from Albania or wherever they are from. It is better than Bourne for a number of reasons.

1. He is doing it for his daughter and not to find out about his past
2. He doesn't use any gadgets, except a dictaphone, which hardly constitutes as a gadget
3. Liam Neeson is 54 and not whatever age Matt Damon is.
4. There are many people who get their heads smashed off things.
5. Its just better.

In fact the film is good that I am going to see it again this Tuesday. Liam Neeson is my new hero after seeing this film. The things he does, the things he says are just wonderful. I had to hold back my giggles of glee during the film. I cannot wait until Tuesday when I get to go see it again.

How has my weekend progressed thus far?

2008-10-19T15:50:00.000+01:00

Well the weekend started off with great plans. Mrs John was coming up for some loving so I was to make myself scarce. I left the apartment on Friday morning with the intention of going home, catching up on some college work, driving into the lacrosse match and driving home, and naturally popping in to see what John's missus looked like oh and of course working in the golf club on Sunday.

Friday was going according to plan for the most part. I went home. I got a roll with Breff and Peter. I drove back into the apartment to collect my lacrosse gear but mainly to see John's moth. A sleepy Sean came out of hibernation to inform us that John was in Tullamore and there would be no love making happening. This is where the weekend plans started to fall apart. Had I known the apartment was free of mis-deeds I would have not gone home to get the car and drive to the match, I would have instead stayed in the apartment and brought drink to the game so I could go out with the team.

The game was good. We got our new uniforms which are slick as .... Dublin has enlisted the help of professional to beat us. We managed to lose by a single goal in what was described by our coach as the best game we have ever played. Afterwards we went to the Forum for a few drinks. I interviewed Joe Smith for European Lacrosse Magazine. It went grand, but the lack of a dictaphone and the fact that my hands were frozen shut meant that I probably wont be able to quote him on anything.

Breff and I decided to go to Zak's house for a little bit and naturally having a car meant that people wanted a lift. But being smelly and sweaty was the not the way I wanted to arrive to a house party so I went back to the apartmen with Cal and Alex in tow. Alex slipped in the mud and covered the car and everyone in mud. I showered changed and we set off into the night.

We got a little bit lost but my amazing sense of direction kicked in and I found the apartment. It was a pretty solid gathering. To compare it to Paddys house parties, there were actually women at it. Possibly more women than men. So well done Zak. Poor show as usual Paddy.

We left the house party close to 1am. I ran to my car and tried to lock it so nobody could get in. But I ripped my back off the door and didn't lock the door in time. So we ended up driving down the road with 5 people in the back seat, 2 people on the bonnet and 1 hanging out of the passenger window. Thankfully they got off before we were spotted by the po-po. I dropped the 5 in the back off at Doyle's and whipped home for about half 1.

Saturday was typical. Nothing happened, which was wonderful. Spent the day in front of Larry II (laptop) trying to do some college work. It didn't happen. Went for a stroll around by the beach to kill some time. Came back did no work. Had dinner, watched X-factor and then went to get a DVD and a feast. The feast was not what I had in mind. i.e.

The DVD (Pathology) looked good in the trailer but then again most films do. But it was terrible. There was an unnecessary lesbian relationship, extremely unnecessary violence and gore and also some necrophelia which I really did not care for. Overall it was a waste of an hour and a half.

So it is now Sunday afternoon and I have no college work done, I did not go out drinking at any stage (sort of blaming John for that), we lost our lacrosse game and I am also not working in the golf club at all. A wasted weekend? Maybe but I did re-discover the joy of the South Park album and the Street Fighter games.

The Aliens Are Coming

2008-10-14T18:22:00.000+01:00

Batten down the hatches folks. According to a woman called Blossom GoodChild and many more insane people on the interweb a Galactic Light Ship will come into our atmosphere for 3 days as of today. But please do not fret as they are coming in peace. Sure haven't they been secretly pumping messages into our minds for years to prepare us for this glorious day. Messages such as Stargate SG-1 and other sci-fi shows and movies.
Looking back on it, how did we not see this before.

Youtube is riddled with videos of proof that this will happen. The word proof I assume is used very loosely as the "proof" videos were posted over a month ago. There is of course another blog out there keeping us regularly updated on the goings on around the world. Mysterious black-outs across the world and stange electronic noises waking people up. Such proof can be discredited however they have recently updated their website with photos that nobody can argue with. Here they are:

Its quite obvious that it would be pretty much impossible to docter these photos and they are obviously 100% real. I am all for the aliens. It was getting pretty boring here. We need them to help with the recession and global warming. As they keep telling us don't worry they are here in love and don't listen to the media coz they will try and make it seem like an attack.

REMEMBER THIS:

NOT HAPPENING

MORE LIKELY TO HAPPEN

Megan Visits

2008-09-30T11:58:00.000+01:00

Megan and her friend Melinda arrived on Tursday/Friday after their flight was delayed due to technical faults in Heathrow. As I was at home on greystones I gave them directions to the apartment and the lads left the back door open for them as they were out celebrating Peter's birthday.

I arrived out in the apartment at 3 on Friday afternoon. The lads were just ghosting around, stinking playing on the playstation. After many scrapings, mainly of Breff, we left the apartmnet to go get some lunch in Blackrock. We parked down in the DART station and strolled up to the main street. After much debate and hate we decided on a pub for food. A pair of sandwiches for the girls and a pair of burgers for Peter and Breff. I didn't eat.

Once the meal was finished we went back to the car to head back to Wicklow. There was a little bit of a harmless accident which caused some fury driving and severe sweating. So we were facing the worst traffic of all. The Friday evening rush home.

We decided that in order to prevent the day being a complete waste for the girls we went to Kindlestown woods for a stroll. On the way to the woods we turned a corner and there in front of us on the wrong side of the road was a maroon VW passat careering towards us. He barely got out of the way in time offering no apology. Avoiding a situation similar to the one below.

After a heavy beeping, we sped off with very high revs. Eventually the car lost almost all power and fear swept over as I thought I killed it. Luckily the power sort of came back just before we got to the woods.

After the trip to the woods we went home, got dinner, rented a movie and went to bed. The plan of the next day was to go to Glendalough. Next morning I dropped Lois to his match in Blackrock for 10.30am. We left for Glendalough at 1pm.

Myself, Eoin, Melinda and Megan all got rolls and ice-creams which were very good. The rolls remained uneaten until after the walk. It was quite difficult not to eat them straight away but we managed it. We didn't know the way but luckily it was well sign-posted. The first car park was full so went on to the upper lake where we had to pay €4 to get in. Sick.

We headed for the Monastic City first, briefly stopping for stone throwing at the lake. On the way to the Monastic City Melinda managed to fall, which was wonderful to watch. Our interest in the ruins lasted all of 5 minutes and we headed back towards the waterfall.

The waterfall was not quite as impressive as Niagara Falls but it wasn't completely useless. Myself and Breff hopped the fence and down a small hill, across a fallen tree to the other side of the waterfall. Luckily for us Ray Mears was there to help guide us back to a pathway.

On the way home we found some wonderful walking sticks. Good length and good girth. After our rolls it was time to part with our sticks and Glendalough. We managed to get home a lot quicker. It was nap time.

That night we decided to hit up BacBar for a change. We bought a bottle of Vodka and only started drinking after 10pm. We managed to get through half the bottle which was pathetic. Unfortunately the music in BacBar was desperate. Not even one 90s dance song.

Next morning we went for hangover breakfast rolls and got the Dart into the apartment. The girls went off into to town for sightseeing and I went and did some college work.

Various Combinations of my Nickname

2008-09-23T23:27:00.000+01:00

So many people ask me straight out why am I called Flopsy. It often comes with a cheeky grin and a quick glance below the equator. So the story is pretty boring and generally disappoints people.

When I was 14 (now 21) I was at rugby training in school. The team giant of 6' 5" decided that my name was Flopsy because of the flopsy way I was standing. My best friend of the time and now was subsequently called Mopsy. It lasted about 5 minutes. Flopsy on the other has lasted for 7 solid years.

It wasn't really a full scale nickname until we went on our rugby trip to France that November. There were various chants which often went like "Flopsy Flopsy give us a wave" and then I would wave and they would cheer.

My name was then set in stone as Flopsy. It got out of hand after a while. Teachers would call me Flopsy. Other people's parents called me Flopsy. Some still do. It got to the point where if someone said Conor to me it would take a second or two before I realised they were talking to me.

Over the 7 year life span of Flopsy there have been some variations people have thrown at me. Some I like some I despise. Here is the list:

Flopsy
Flops
Flop
Flip-Flop
Flopsamop
Flopsatron
Flopseye
Flashy
Floppy
Fluffy

I am not sure what kind of person I would be if I hadn't been named Flopsy. Maybe I would be cooler. Maybe people wouldn't remember me because of my stupidly common real name Conor. Who knows. I like Flopsy. That is all.

Moved Out

2008-09-11T20:05:00.000+01:00

So I moved out of the house. It was about time too. The college life is not fully experienced until you fly the coop. So after 3 years as an undergraduate student living at home I was sick of the commute and the home life. Although the home life has some serious advantages. Clothes seem to magically make their way from the floor of my bedroom into the closet and on their journey they somehow become clean and ironed. This strange phenomenon does not happen when you move out.

The apartment I am in is very nice. We have a big sitting room/dining room with a big leather couch and singles as well as a big plasma tv. We have a fairly modern kitchen, athough after just one night of use it got pretty filthy and has remained so. The bedrooms are spacious enough. Although once again after the first night, before I had even slept in my bed some unknown assailant got sick on the end of my bed, on the carpet and almost in my shoes. I have spent the rest of the week trying to remove the puke stain from the carpet.

I started my masters in Marketing too. It pretty intense. A presentation and a 10 page report for the first week's work. I am the only one from my year in commerce surprisingly enough. We have people from India, Turkey, Italy, China, Greece, Germany and Ireland in the group of 47. So its pretty diverse and it can be quite difficult to understand some of the accents.

This time next year I will have a Masters in Marketing and have no idea what I will be doing after it. Possibly trying to do some sort of travelling. Speaking of which the drive around the world will be put on hold as I wont be able to afford it. Been thinking about cycling around Europe instead. Could end up doing anything.

Next Year's Travels

2008-08-28T22:49:00.000+01:00

I know I haven't finished writing about this year's travels yet but I am bored and when I am bored my mind begins to wander. In the last few days the wandering has been mainly focused on my travel plans for next year. I will have completed my Masters in Marketing and will hopefully be finished with studying for a while at least. So to celebrate i want to go on a huge trip around the world.

I haven't figured out an exact timeline yet but I am figuring it will take a couple of months to get through the whole trip. I also haven't done any budgeting but I have made some rough guesstimates and it is not looking so good.

The idea I have been most excited about is to buy a car and drive as much of it as possible. I know this will add a huge amount of time onto the journey but it will make it a much bigger and better adventure.

I can drive at least as far as China. Its pretty far though and if I want to get in all the cities and countries on the way then it will be about a 10,000 mile drive from here to Beijing or Shanghai depending on which city I end up in first.

Having just there now done a tiny bit of looking into the logistics of the drive going any further, I think my best option would be to fly somewhere be it Australia or America and buy another car and start driving again.

Basically I want to drive as much as is physically possible and see as much of the world in one trip as I can. Its probably never going to happen but I can still pretend like it might. All I need is someone else to come with me and maybe then it will become more of a reality.

Boston

2008-08-27T22:58:00.001+01:00

After leaving Pa behind in the Bahamas I faced a flight that may very well terrify me. I wasn't yet sure if I was over my fear of flying. To put the fear to the test I decided that no booze would be consumed on the flight.
The flight went by very smoothly. We were even warned of severe turbulence but it never came.
So I landed in North Carolina in a magical place called Charlotte (the US Airways Hub) I quickly found somewhere to charge my laptop, got online and phoned home. While doing so I over heard a woman talking about how all 3 Airports in NYC were closed due to bad weather. I thought that I had a lot more time to spend in Charlotte than I expected. Luckily our flight wasn't expected.
I decided to re-assure myself of how safe I would be on the flight (still not sure if the fear was gone as it had not been tested) I found out the type of plane I would be flying on and did a search for it.

This picture came up in the top 3 pictures. It didn't really help.

Anyway so the plane ended up looking like it came straight out of "A Flight Into Terror" and at take off it shook like crazy. It wasn't very comforting. The important thing is that I made it to Boston alive.

On arrival I had no idea how to get to Bob's house and thought that a taxi would be easy. After some time in the taxi queue I decided that I was being an idiot and that it could cost me a fortune to get there so I went for the T. I ended up arriving at Bob's just before they left to go drinking. I had just enough time to put on a shirt and knock back a can before we left. It was lashing rain. We were drowned by the time we got to the first bar. Paddy didn't get in. This cycle continued until we found an almost empty bar that allowed him in. So we ended up getting pretty drunk. Nicola and Amy met us there. We all went back to Bob's house when the bar closed and went to bed.

Next day was almost the same as the last few times I was in Boston. Saw the same sights etc. That night we met up with Tim and Matt. He lived around the corner from Bob. We had a couple of drinks at his friend's place and then went to find where Cal and Paul lived. It took forever in the taxi. We got there. Their place was pretty impressive. Tonnes of space and tonnes of people. Sort of like an upmarket 133. We played some drinking games and then went home.

Next day was the same again. Shopping etc in the same shops and same sights as before. That night we went and played beer pong in Tim's house. Then we went to a bar that Paddy was allowed into. It was pretty good. Most people were underage like Paddy. We got pretty drunk on the $2 beers. Then the girls came out and we did the phone dance. Afterwards 3 lads bet the shit out of this one lad while everyone watched on. Not trying to sound like a hero but I ran in. Luckily they ran away then because otherwise I was done for. The lad was covered in blood. All the skin was ripped off his nose and he was in the horrors.

We met up with Sugrue around the corner and talked to him while Paddy tried to do some break dancing. He was terrible at it. We went home and were up early the next morning to catch the Fung Wah Bus to New York. I paid for it the night before on my credit card. We had no printer so we just went with the hope they would have our booking. They didn't. So we paid again and got the next bus. I ended up paying $60 to get to New York from Boston. It was rotten.

The Fung Wah bus was ok. Not too bad at all. We even got to stop at a food stop to grab some Mickey d's for the road. We arrived in New York (again!) in a rotten heat far away from Subway stops and a pile of bags on our backs. After listening to Paddy we ended up taking way longer than we should have to get to the Port Authority to leave our bags in for the day. Myself, Nicola and Paddy arrived covered in sweat feeling rotten and smelly with a full day of walking ahead of us. First stop was the cinema once again to get a ticket for Step Brothers. This time Sean Marshall was coming with us.

Back to the travel updates. The Bahamas

2008-08-22T16:29:00.001+01:00

After a hectic day in New York it was off for some down time in The Bahamas. After a lovely night spent in La Guardia airport we were on our way to Nassau. Having not fully gotten over my fear of flying I decided to avail of the onboard beer and knocked back 3 cans of Heineken. I drank them a bit too quickly and felt a little bit sicky, after all it wasn't even 9am at this stage.

The beer did work though, a little too well though. I started wishing for something to go wrong to make the flight more exciting. Anytime there was turbulence instead of being gripped by fear and sweaty palms, in my head I started shouting "YAAAAHHHHOOOOOO"

Anyway so we arrived in Nassau in one piece. The landing was pretty amazing as all around you could see these tiny islands, blue sea and white sandy beaches. We got a taxi from Nassau to the Towne Hotel in downtown Nassau. We were very tired and only wanted to climb into bed, but our room wasn't ready so we had to go for a wander. We went to the famous Straw Market where you can haggle your arse off with the locals. It wasn't nearly as hot as Cuba though, which was nice. There were gigantic cruise ships everywhere and tonnes of cruise goers some were drunk, some were just looking to shop, others were just taking things easy as only one can in The Bahamas.

We went back to the hotel and luckily the room was ready and so we went to sleep for the day. A wasted day you ask? Not at all. The beds were big and comfortable a welcome change from a mattress on the floor with no sheets or the floor of La Guardia airport. By the time we woke up again it was time for dinner. So we went on a wander and submitted ourselves to Mc Donlads. Bad idea. It was terrible. The Coke was flat, The chips were under cooked and the burger was tolerable.

The next day was a day for exploration. So we walked a couple of miles down the road and acrosse the bridge to Paradise Island. Not much going on there if you're not in one of the hotels so we went to explore the Atlantis. A very large and extravagant hotel. Everything there was over-priced. A slice of pizza was $7. That was the good thing about The Bahamas, you can use USD there so we didn't have to change any money. The highlight of The Atlantis was the free section of the aquarium. There were tonnes of fish and 2 sharks and a giganitic manta-ray. It took us a while before we were eventually bored. Comparing it to the aquarium in Washington, Atlantis wins hands down. Its free and better.

So we went to the casino. It was pretty decent. Pa wanted to gamble but didn't want to pay the table minimums and I didn't trust him to front him the money. We tried to explore the hotel more but because we didn't have our rooms keys with us we weren;t allowed go any further. The wandering continued until dinner time and we tried Conch Fritters a local restaurant. The food was ok. Nothing special but better than Mc D's.

The next day was watersports day. We were picked up at the hotel by a mini bus. We arrived at the boat and queued up to pay the balance. Pa was having cash flow trouble so I gave him the cash and he paid with the card. He then worked out all the credit card purchases he had made and was almost positive his card was good until the woman walked over and told him it was being rejected. So I had to use my card to pay for the trip.

We got underway and took a pretty cool boat ride out into the ocean. We were first up for the para-sailing. Neither of us had done it before so we were looking forward to it. We were last out of our group to go up. It was fairly boring, you just float there, looking around expecting something cool to happen. We were kinda hoping the ropes would break and we would fall into the sea to make it more fun. That didn't happen.

Next on the agenda was snorkelling. This was kind of a waste because we were going on a snorkel only trip the next day. But it was good practise in the end because its a lot harder than we thought to just breathe out of your mouth. I kept on getting salt water in my mouth which was awful. The fish were plentiful in parts and pretty cool. So it wasn't a total waste.

Our next activity was banana-boating. We got to go second. The course was 3 miles long so we got plenty of time out there. It was a lot more fun when you tried to bounce. So we bounced a lot and nearly fell off a lot. The driver was making no extra effort to make us fall off. So we tried going one handed. Then no hands. No hands was enough to knock Pa off the boat.

Then it was time for lunch, which was some form of meat and rice. It was better than it looked. Next stop was the private beach for some swimming and jet-skiing. You were able to take a jet-ski on your own and go wherever you like as long as you came back after 15 minutes. Not like Portugal where you share and have a set course and get your engine shut off after 15 minutes.
Pa and I tried to race around one of the islands. I won because Pa's jet-ski wasn't the best of the mark.

All in all it was a good day. We got off the boat and we were very hungry so we went to Burger King. Much better than the Mc D's.

Next day was the Stuart's Cove trip. The weather was awful. It was lashing rain and looked like it would ruin the trip. Luckily by the time we got to our base it was sunny again. After a lot of debating we decided to go splitsies on an under water digital camera. So we went on our way. The fish were cool. There was a lot of them. We went to a plane wreck. Apparently a plane that was sunk for the filming of Jaws. Pa managed to swim down and touch it. I wasn't able to get close to it. The final stop was thw swimming with sharks stop. This was the reason we came on the trip. The professional diver got in to test the water. He got out and ruined everything. He said it was too dangerous because they were in heat and might bite us. Damn horny sharks.

So we were disappointed. But it was still pretty cool. The camera turned out to be a waste of money. We got some cool pics but not enough to make it worth the money.
Next day we went our seperate ways. I went to Boston and Pa went to the West Coast. More on Boston later.

The European Championships - The Final Rundown

2008-08-19T20:25:00.001+01:00

Thats me before warming up for our Finn-al game against the Finns.

So I got a bit bored of trying to update the blog with info of the happenings and what-nots of the tournament in Lahti. But I am home now and exhausted. I managed to come home with a rotten head cold so thank you Finland.

We ended up finishing in 6th place with 4 wins and 4 losses. The games we won, we won well. We beat Wales 10 - 4, We beat the Swiss 11 - 1, We beat the Latvians 13 -1, and we beat the Spanish 16 - 8. We also managed to lose by a lot, to England. 22 - 1. It was the worst performance we had all tournament and luckily it didn't mean we couldn't get through to the second group stages.

The girls came out and supported us whenever possible.

This was where all the heart-break occurred. We lost by a goal to the Dutch, We lost by 2 to the Germans and by one to the home team. We ended up finn-ishing in 6th place out of 18 competing teams.

The girls team managed to come within a stone's throw of a medal losing out to Scotland 13 - 8 in the bronze medal game. So no silverware for the Irish.

Luckily for us we managed to have plenty of fun off the field. The Austrian team in our hotel introduced us to the wonderfully complex game of Werewolf. The Caulfields introduced us to the loud and friendship destroying game of Catchphrase. This was also the game that brought Orla into the limelight with her excessive yelling and also her very first game. While it has become some what of a cliche since it happened Orla managed to confuse Aborigine with Aubergine which lead to many laughs and far too many jokes.

The most enjoyable (only) activity in Lahti is the tour of the ski-jump. Lahti hosted the Winter Olympics way back in 2001 and now tourists can venture up the montrous structure and sample some interesting views of Scandanavian landscape. Luckily for us there was summer training taking place when we visited so were got to see people ski-jump. It is not for the faint of heart.

These are the views from below the ski-jump and the view the jumper has before setting off and the journey below.

There was also a ski-jump simulator and a gun shooting simulator. Both were very enjoyable and we could have spent all day there but there was lacrosse to watch.

It was my second time playing lacrosse for Ireland (first was last year in Indoor World Champs) but my first time playing field lacrosse. I did not get to play as much as I would have liked to, but I learned a lot through training camp and our training sessions in Finland. I was part of the 6th best lacrosse team in Europe, made some new friends, got to visit Finland for the first time and had plenty of squeaky clean fun with catchphrase.

Overall I do not miss Lahti, but I do miss the fun we had and being immersed in a lacrosse only environment for 10 days wasn't so bad either.

The 4th placed Womens Team

The 6th placed Mens Team

European Championships Update 2

2008-08-09T19:01:00.000+01:00

Yesterday morning we played England in some miserable weather with a miserable result. We lost badly, but we improved a lot over the course of the game and our 2nd half was twice as good as our first. Enough about that.

This morning we played Switzerland. The Swiss have so far had a pretty bad tournament without any wins. Its their first time here and while they may not be the most sklled players they never give up and I like that about them.
We wanted to come back from the previous defeat and show everyone that we were still in the running for a medal.

We had a slow start, but eventually the goals started dropping. Joe Caulifield opened the scoring in the first quarter. He even got the next goal. The highlights foe us were having John O'Connor and Paddy O'Leary scoring their first ever international goals.

We won 13 -1. Not as impressive as 40 - 0 but a victory is a victory and still counts for the same points on the board. Tomorrow we play Latvia. They will be very physical but if we play our game properly then we should have little trouble getting our third win.

The Travel Update Gets Postponed Again

2008-08-07T19:34:00.000+01:00

OK so I have been very busy over the last week with training camp for the Irish Lacrosse team. We are currently in Finland playing in the EUropean Lacrosse Championships.

Training camp was tough. We had 3 sessions a day and by the end of each day we were sore and exhausted. Each day was an early rise for myself, Joe and Ed as we were all out in Greystones and had to leave an hour before training started.
While we had plenty of food in the house, by the time we would arrive home from training we would be so tired that the only option was to eat out and it ended up being pizza each time.

The night before travelling to Finland we ventured up to the golf club for a drink and a quick drive around on the buggies. Afterwards we decided to get ice-cream and then afterwards for a treat we got ourselves a 16" pizza.

With a 7.30am flight we had to be on the aircoach at 3.30am so with a satisfying 2 hours sleep we set off on our journey. The aircoach was surprisingly busy as was the airport. I guess its to be expected in the middle of the summer. Our flight was on time-ish and was pretty bumpy for the most part, particularly coming into land. But we landed safely and exhausted. So we got the bus to Lahti from Helsinki which took about an hour. On arrival we had a quick team meeting and were split up into our rooms. As we checked in with only sleep on our minds we were told that in 2 hours we were to have a light training session. It went down like a lead balloon.

The practise was held on a small gravel square and we got loose and worked out the cobwebs. Chris then lead us on a team jog around Lahti. We were given a meeting time, which was close enough that there was no time for sleep. So we went to get food at Rax, which is a decent-ish buffet. For 9 big ones you can eat all you like of pizza, wings, onion rings, salads, spuds etc. Food is crap but plentiful and cheap.

On Wednesday we had a 2 hour session where we worked on clears and a defensive package. The Welsh team looked on to get some pointers for the following day's game. We then worked for an hour with the Austrian team on some half-field stuff. After training it was time for the opening ceremony.

Lahti leaves a lot to be desired as far as entertainment is concerned. They put on a 4 woman dance show. It made me cringe to watch them. The sound system was terrible and their timing was off, but at least they tried.

This morning was game one and probably the biggest game of the group stages for us. We played Wales. They were an athletic team and gave us a run for our money. They made some silly mistakes and so did we. It was a hard fought contest and in the end we managed to pick up the win with a score of 10 - 4.

We are now in a strong position to qualify for the second group stages. Tomorrow we play England who beat Switzerland this morning 40 - 0. I doubt our scoreline will be as on sided. It will hopefully be another hard fought game with a tight score line.

Short Break In Travel Notes

2008-08-01T00:42:00.000+01:00

I just want to take a quick break from writing about our travels to talk about a game which I cannot stop playing. Its called Pandemic II.
You are in control of a disease and to win you must kill everyone in the world. Morbid I know but its addictive.

The first time I played it was when I was on the bus down to Philadelphia from New York to collect some bags and see Joe in hospital. I won on my first go, but since then I can't kill everyone. I played it the other night until 4 am and still nothing. I am about to play it now. I am playing for 15 minutes then sleep because Team Ireland training camp starts at 10am tomorrow morning with a game against Muhlenburg College from America. I need to be out of the house at 8.30am.

The End Of Trip Travels - Part Two

2008-07-31T21:45:00.000+01:00

With seperate travel plans, July the 18th would be the last time the 4 of us (and weirdy) would be together in America. Niall would return home in less than a week, while myself and Paddy had 3 more days and Pa would live on the West Coast for a few years.

Myself and Pa woke up with a mighty 3 hours sleep under our belts and wandered as bleary-eyed as you can be with our giant bags to the Subway station to catch the 7.30am Bolt bus from Philly to New York. What a great bus it is. Half the price of the Greyhound and we had wireless internet. Can't beat that with any kind of a stick.

We arrived to a painfully hot New York City at 9.30am. Carried our bags up 8th Avenue to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and dumped them there for the day. Our first stop would be the Cinema. The Dark Knight was out and we had to see it. So we bought our tickets and the sightseeing tour began. This was my 4th time in New York and Pa's first so I led the tour.

Beardy obviously missed us very much because he kept on calling us for no real reason at all, other than to tell us he missed his bus. The tour began with Time Square and all the ads to take in there. We went into a few shops (Hershey's and M&Ms) We got some good dragons to take home as souvenirs and wandered up to Central Park.

Pa is a great person to bring on a tour. All he wants is to say he has been somewhere or say he has seen something, so everything comes and goes very quickly. We spent about 10 minutes in Central Park and then headed over the Apple Store and FAO Schwarz. There were some good dragons in FAO Schwarz and the best dragon of all. The doorman was hilarious. He had a fake British accent and sang songs about why FAO Schwarz is the best and why we should come back. Pa asked him if he would do "an Irish Dragon" and straight away he put his hands up. Only flaw in his initial dragon was he was smiling; so Pa says "no no, do an angry dragon" and Mr Schwarz says "oh I will just think about my salaray" and he did a great dragon. As we left he went back to singing and dancing about how great his shop is. What a hero.

Our next stop was Battery Park and a view of the tiny Statue of Liberty. At this stage the lack of sleep and all the walking had caught up us. While we both wanted to sleep or jump into an ice bath because of the disgusting heat, the tour had to continue, even though as you can see below Pa clearly did not want to go on any further.

So we wandered up to Wall Street and the famous Bull. Then we saw Ground Zero and the little church beside it, which had a lovely cool fan which we stood in front of for a while. We subwayed it up to the Empire State building and we went into the least Irish looking Irish bar in the world and shared a basket of wings. We then walked up to the Rockafeller Centre and had a bit of a gander at it. Then it was back to Times Square to see when the Greyhound Baggage Centre closed, it was 10pm which meant we would have to bring our bags to the cinema with us.

We bumped in Morgan Freeman outside Madam Tussaud's, he wasn't very chatty and didn't move much either, but I suppose that's celebrities for you. Anyway we got dragons with him and got some funny looks off the woman who took our photo. Not wanting to be thought of as weirdos we explained that the dragon is an Irish symbol of respect and it was the way Saint Patrick scared all the snakes out of Ireland. So when we dragon we are letting the person we dragon with or at that we do not wish any snakes (evil) to come near them.

We then went to a few shops to pick up any presents or whatever we needed to bring home with us. I didn't buy anything but Pa bought a couple of things for his nephew. And then we went to Planet Hollywood for food. My mind told me ESPN Zone but my heart told me Planet Hollwood. Never listen to your heart you will only be given an over-priced burger and crappy service at a terrible table and get rushed out to make way for more unfortunates. After our disappointing meal we trundled over to collect our bags. We then waited in a sweaty line for an hour to get into The Dark Knight. It was amazing. What a film. And unlike back home, Americans love getting involved in their movies, they laugh on queue, the applaud unneccessarily, they shout out things when you clearly do no want to listen to them, etc etc.

The movie was a lot longer than we expected and so we decided to get a cab out the airport and stay there as going to Sean's was pointless. So we got to the airport, paid for some internet to kill time and then got extra security checked because......because we different.

Well that was our day in New York. Coming up whenever I get bored enough to write here again........The Bahamas where life is taken seriously easy.

The End Of Trip Travels - Part One

2008-07-30T13:08:00.001+01:00

I have been very lazy over the past three weeks regarding the blog. There has been so much to be written in here and I just never bothered putting it in. So I will attempt the impossible, I am going to try and remember the last 3 weeks of our trip and type it here.

First off the roadtrip which we had planned and had looked forward to for so long fell through. Some issues with $$$$ set us back a week of travel time and then some venues began to disappear off the already bare itinerary. So I decided to call myself out of the trip and look for an alternative.
Pa was well up for a trip to somewhere down south. We searched the net for hours and hours but couldn't find anywhere in our budget, until we spotted a package deal to the Bahamas including flights and hotel for $500. We thought about for too long and out of nowhere it shot up to $700. So the trip seemed to be almost impossible. The search continued though.

At this stage the lads were all working a painting job, so it was up to myself and weirdy to man the fort. It meant that sleep time went on until sometime in the afternoon. There would be plenty of internet searching for holidays, some book reading and then finally the lads would come home and it would be time to go play a lacrosse game. While the New Jersey Blend never won a game while we were there, the Wilmington Woodpeckers won a couple. So it wasn't all doom and gloom on the lacrosse front.

During the end of the week the lads got their cheques from the painting job they had done before. A whopping $6.10 an hour. Having been a bit worried and disappointed that I didn't take on any painting jobs, this news brought a smile to my face. Pa instantly wanted to quit. Niall didn't know what to think. Paddy was a mix of emotions, he hadn't got the amount of money he expected but he had still got money.

Pa came up with the wonderful excuse that he injured his ankle and couldn't put pressure on it. So he was out of the painting. Paddy looked for more money and was promised it. So himself and Niall were back in the painting business.

That Sunday night a medium sized man in the shape of Sean Marshall graced Philadelphia with his presence. It was a joyous occassion for all, particularly Paddy who had grown to hate spending time with us and even the mention of another human being got him all exicted. Paddy was lucky enough to get a call from his new best friend John Christmas asking him to work a lacorsse camp over the next few days. Bye Bye Painting. Niall was now on his own.

That Wednesday was our going away house party mixed with some other girls going away party. We bought a keg of beer and spent all week cleaning the house and fixing the can wall. It wasn't as impressive as Pa's can wall from Bebo but we did a pretty good job of it.

The night before the party Paddy went to Bon Jovi in New York. He missed his bus and ended up getting home at 5.30am. At 8.30am he was in the car and off to work the lacrosse camp. He didn't even take a nap after work. Instead he just got hammered at the party and made a bit of a fool of himself. It was embarrassing for everyone involved. Other than that the house party went off quite well. The can wall remained upright and we finished off the keg.

Next morning some girls came back to see if their camera was in the house. 8am, BANG opens the door, not a word of warning or any reason why they were in our house. They just came in and started looking through our stuff to find their camera. I wouldn't mind as much if they had said "Oh sorry do you mind if we come in, I think I left my camera here last night" Instead we got "........BANG............"
They finally left after searching through every nook and cranny in our apartment and nearly knocking over the can wall. As soon as they left my mission was to find her camera and take the memory card out of it. That way she would think "oh what a lovely person for finding my camera" and then next time she goes to use it the she would know. But by then it would be too late.

That night was our last lacrosse game in america. We didn't win but we got plenty of time and played against some good competition. Afterwards was the final meal. Adam dropped us off at Outback Steakhouse and we said our goodbyes. The food at Outback was amazing and filling. Nobody was able to finish it all. We blame the executive decision Joe made on more bloomin' onions. Not complaining about the decision just pinpointing it as the reason our burgers were left unfinsihed. Afterwards Lucille once again treated us. We met her, Roscoe and Papa bear at Dairy Queen. We all got ice-cream, no prizes for guessing who got a large. I got medium though so I can't talk much.

We went back home to watch some Boondock Saints. As I said before it was terrible. We were all wrecked and went to bed at 3 or 4. Up at 6.30am to catch the Bolt Bus to New York.

We will take a short commercial break for maybe a day or so and will resume our story with New York - The Bahamas - Boston - New York - Philadelphia - New York Dublin

Washington DC

2008-07-08T21:16:00.000+01:00

We finally went on a bit of travelling. Beardy was off working for a few days and we didn't want to sit around and wait for him to finish before we did anything. During Free Day which ended up costing $13 we booked the bus and the hotel for the following day. We budget $200 for our trip including a $50 bus and $70 each for the hotel.

When we arrived at the bus station we didn't have any idea of the geography of the city and so we decided to get a taxi. There was a man waiting for people to take them off in his taxi so we followed him to the car. Mistake Numero Uno. This so called taxi-man added $5.00 worth of extras before we even got moving. He offered nothing other than painfully forced conversation about traffic and the 4th of july and George Bush.

We finally got to the hotel and the bill came to $17.50. We gave him a 20 and he drove off. Lovely man.

Our hotel was nice. The rooms were pretty huge and the location was perfect. The rest of the day was spent looking at what we could of the sights. Armed with nothing but a sense of adventure we set off around the city. We turned a couple of corners and saw a load of people staring through a fence. We wondered what the hell were they looking at. Turns out it was the White House. We went on to see The Washington Monument, The WWII Memorial, The Lincoln Memorial and countless othr famous memorials. Just like Matt Harding has his dance we had our own personal souvenir to take away with us.............Dragons. We did dragons at every site we went to. Some were pretty awkward like The Freedom Isn't Free Dragon and The Lincoln Memorial Dragon. Others were easy but they were all hilarious and all worth it.

That night we went to the Hard Rock Café for dinner. It was expensive but good and worth the visit. The plan for the next morning was to get up early and do a couple of museums and then make our way to Capitol Hill.

At noon the next day we left the hotel and made our way to The White House Visitor Centre. Waste of time. Onto the Aquarium. Slightly less waste of time but a waste of $7 too. Then onto the Natural Histoty Museum. Free and Brilliant. So many exhibitions and dinosaur skeletons that you could spend all day there. We did numerous dragons mainly at the dinosaurs. From there we headed to the Sculpture Park which was nice and then into the Air & Space Museum. Again it was free and brilliant. We didnt have enough time left to see everything unfortunately but we did get some dragons.
Then it was on to Capitol where we had just enough battery left to take two pictures. One which included dragons, thankfully. We ate in the ESPN Zone restaurant. It was delicious and we got an amazing desert which we got dragons with.

Next day was another late rise. We checked out and walked to Virginia to see The Pentagon. Not so exciting. Then onto Arlington Cemetary and saw JFK's grave and the changing of the guard at the grave of the unknowns. We then rushed to the Iwo Jima memorial. And then walked back along the highway in the dead heat to our hotel. We lost Niall on the way because he is slow.

We eventually met up together at the bus station just in time to catch our late bus and take a well earned rest on the bus. A good time had by all. Voted 9/10 by all 3 who went.

FREE DAY!

2008-07-07T06:23:00.000+01:00

So last Sunday myself and Pa decided to go to Fadó (where I work) to watch a lacrosse game and have a few pints. On the way there we got a phone call about working a painting job for the week (Mon-Thurs) I panicked and told her I wanted to work when I really didn't and neither did Pa. So when we got home we went online to see how we would make our way out to the job site. It required us getting up at 5.30am and spending $20 on transport so we had the perfect excuse not to work. We called her and told her that it wasn't worth our while.
To make up for the lack of work we planned to have a free day. We weren't going to spend any money at all. The next morning we woke up and there was no milk so we needed a plan. Technically change doesn't count as money so we searched the house high and low and managed to gather a grand total of $7.20 Instead of milk we decided on a scrapple, egg and cheese sandwich. Scrapple is scrap meat for those of you who don't know. We made our way to a food cart with our change. When we got there the woman told us that the grill was off and it would be another 15 minutes so we went to find somewhere else. We found a chinese food cart and we would have been able buy a meal each and have changed left over too! We ordered and from what we read on the paper reviews on the side of the cart we were in for a treat. We were wrong. It was awful. The day had got one up on us but we weren't going to be out done by it.
We continued on to the car rental office to see about renting a car to Washington. Turns out we didnt have enough paper work or enough people going to make it cheap enough. So we walked back and booked a bus for $51 each and then a hotel right near the White House for $70 each a night. More on that next time though.
So we were thinking about how we could get one back on the day. Things were already looking up with the trip to Washington the next day. So we decided to try and break a new record with Bally (our newest house guest) We threw him back and forth without dropping him for 46 minutes. Time well spent if you ask me.
We then decided that a movie was in order so we went to Fresh Grocer to buy biscuits for tea with the change from the chinese and other change we found in the house. We had $2.21. We found one packet of biscuits in our budget. We had 90cent left over so we walked around to see if we could get anything else. We stumbled upon a chocolate fudge cake and fell in love. It all went down hill from here. We didnt want the day to beat us. We had made it to 9.30pm without technically spending any money. We went to the pastry section to see if there was a bun we could share instead and on the way walked through the sweets section. The downhill spiral continued as we laid eyes on so many lovely looking sweets.
We decided that we had done so well all day that we could spend a little bit of money. So we had none on us and decided to flip a coin to see who was running home to get some. Pa called tails. Tails. Best of 3. I called heads. Heads. I called heads again. Heads.
So pa went off to get money and i went to the sweets section to pick out our feast. He came back quickly. We bought our sweets and cake and went home $13 poorer but happy with ourselves. We put on a pot of tea and decorated the cake out of all the sweets we bought.
We watched the departed which was good apart from the unnecessary killings and went to bed at about 4am to get up the next day for 8.00am to go to Washington DC.

Six Flags New Jersey

2008-06-20T19:08:00.000+01:00

We got a call on Wednesday night after our lacrosse game from Julie Caulfield to see if we were interested in going to the Six Flags Theme Park with her and her friends the next day. Naturally we jumped at the opportunity, especially when we heard that she had 2-for-1 vouchers.

We were up the earliest we have ever been up together the next morning at 9.30am. We were still a little bleary eyed from the night before but in high spirits with the thoughts of what lay ahead of us that day. Julie told us she would pick us up at around 9.30am. We hit the road at 11.15am and made a "quick" stop off at Wawa. Beardy decided that he wanted to go to a food cart so off he went to find one. He came back some time later without any food. So he ordered a sandwich, after the rest of us had got ours and paid for them. He came out of Wawa about 15 minutes later and we were finally on the way.

I had guestimated that we would be in the queue for our first ride by 1.30pm. I was off by a few minutes. Our first port of call was Batman. It was a good start. Plenty of loops and corkscrews and the first time Beardy had been on a rollercoaster with loops in it, so a momentous occassion for all.

The next rollercoaster promised to be one of the best there. The new edition to the park "The Dark Knight" named after the new batman film. The queue was over an hour and the props and money spent around the coaster suggested it would be worth the wait. When we finally got into the building that housed The Dark Knight we were greeted with a giant TV screen with one of the actors from the movie acting out a scene as a DA talking to the press. The movie ended abruptly and the infamous laugh of the joker rang through the room and graffiti style lighting came up on the wall. The actor kept repeating the word drop.....drop....drop....drop. So i started thinking that there was going to be a sudden drop somewhere in the rollercoaster somewhat like Oblivion in Alton Towers. We eventually got to the actuall rollercoaster itself. The four of us hopped in a single carriage train and off we went into the darkness.

Never in all my life have I been so disappointed with something. Its just the Magic Mouse from Funderland in darkness with a few weird lights and props to make it look like Gotham City.

After getting over that horrific experience we wandered over to the final rollercoaster in Movieland.....Nitro. The queue was long but it moved quickly and before we knew it we were top of the line. We climbed in to the seats and off we went. Up and up and up and up and up. It took so long to finally get to the top but once we got there the drop on the other side made it worthwhile. Its very hard to explain the feeling of dropping at that speed so here is a youtube clip from the front row of Nitro to maybe show it better.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=W2pztntyA-c

Nitro almost made up for the disappointment of the dark knight but not quite. So we headed off for "Superman The Ultimate Flight". We took a detour at Twister and then queued up. U were lying down for Superman and the obvious challenge was to keep one arm out straight like Superman for the duration of the ride. It proved too much for me but Screech and Beardy were able to do it. Here is a youtube clip so you can see what it was like and how impressiveit is that didnt have to hold on. http://youtube.com/watch?v=LBZA8_4Pejk

After Superman we went for the wooden roller coasters. One was an hour wait and didnt look worth it so we went for El Toro. We sourced out where the camera was and decided we would all do dragons when we got there. The drops were pretty extreme and the coaster was pretty fast so it was not going to be easy. But we pulled it off and coz we are cheap we just took a picture of our picture and didnt buy it so here it is. Here is a clip of El Toro.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_GMvlV6H-FQ

After El Toro everyone went on Kingda Ka. I wasn't able to convince myself to actually go on it, which is worthy of regret but I will just have to forget about it. Here is the Kingda Ka clip. The world's tallest, fastest roller coaster.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HN8nv4tVFuA&feature=related

The we headed over to Medusa which had a tiny queue because the park was closing. It was an impressive coaster full of twists and turns. Not many dops which held it back from being the group favourite. Here is the video. http://youtube.com/watch?v=xs0wQrpMOIk

To finish off the day we went on the Log Flume which turned out to be awful. We should have just done Medusa again. We tried El Toro once more but it was closed at that stage.

We got lost on the way home and it took forever in the traffic but overall it was the best day we have had so far.

Arena Football - Philadelphia Soul vs Cleveland Gladiators

2008-06-16T00:53:00.000+01:00

We went to an arena football game last night. The last home game of the Philadelphia Soul. We arrived at the car park and the place was covered with cars and people dressed in Hawaiian Shirts and other beach wear. It turned out there was a Jimmy Buffet concert on across the way in Citizens Bank Park. We all agree that we hate Jimmy Buffet fans.

We wished that it would rain on them and also that there would be lightning so the concert would be cancelled. Some of our wish came true. It did rain and there was lightning but Jimmy Buffet played on anyway.

We got to the stadium and we were told the game was sold out. So we walked around looking for scalpers and once again were greeted by an angry mob. The guy who arrived at us first got muscled out of the way by the angriest man of all who actually slapped the tickets out of his hand. His first price was $30 we refused. Then he went to $20 we refused. Then $15 but we refused. So he went to $13 and we accepted. The face value of the ticket was $23 so we win. We closed the deal just as the police started coming over and shouting at us.

So the game was pretty amazing. It was pretty much neck and neck the whole time. Every time one team had posession they would score a tocuhdown. By the way arena football is basically indoor american football on a smaller pitch.

In the last minute of the game the Soul scored a touchdown to go into the lead by 7 points. With just over 5 Seconds to go the Gladiators scored a touchdown to bring it to a one point game. Instead of going for the extra point and taking it to extra time they went for the 2 points and the win.

The throw went up and with 5 seconds to go it was intercepted. The Soul won the game with just 5 seconds to go thanks to the defensive play of the game.