Shopping....

Well its that time of year again! The joyous occassion that is christmas. It's a time for family, friends, giving, being thankful for the year just past........

It is also a time for teeth grinding, unending pushing and shouldering and having to deal with huge queues just to buy a pair of socks (for your dad).

Now all of this can be as annoying as having your eyelids cut off with a rusty razorblade but is all part of what we now call "getting into the Christmas spirit", I am not a great one for shopping at the best of times but equipped with a list and a stupid sum of money I get on ok. However, of late I have been noticing something which is putting my back up.


The Sales Assistant. Now, I am a retailer myself but am talking from a customer perspective. The problem I have been seeing is not accross the board and there are some fantastic retail stores out there with an excellent calibre of helpful happy staff. The ones that I am trying to avoid are the store where you walk in and find two or three sales assistants standing behind a counter chatting......

Assistant 1: "I was out last night and got feckin wrecked outta me head. It was dem fat frog tings dat done it!"

Assistant 2: "Yeah I know dey are awful yokes. I puked me ring de last time I had dem."

Assistant 1: "Yeah I got off with some bloke and can hardly remember it!!"

Me: "Excuse me....."

Assistant 1: "Yeah?"

Me: "Ahh, I would like to buy this please"

Assistant 1: Grabs my item "And den we went to this shit hole of a club and it was grand though because we were all wrecked"

Me: "Sorry, but how much is that?"

Assistant 1: "*SIGH* 14:99 please"

Me: "There you go" handing over a twenty

Assistant 1: "The queue for de taxi was a feckin disgrace. Had to flash me legs to get one!!!" big belly laughs ensue

Assistant 1: "Deres your change, thanks"

Me: "..................." moves quickly towards the exit.

So what the hell is going on that customers have to put with staff like that. I felt like I was intruding on them. There was no attempt at any customer service, add on selling, nothing!! Amazing!! So I have been thinking of ways to avoid this.



1st: Be a wanker. Just tell them to shut up and serve you now!! You may get bad looks and some snippy comments but you will be out of the store quicker.

2nd: If you see this happening leave the queue, put back your item and buy it elsewhere. This way the sales staff will not hit their targets and it may actually help the management of these stores to improve staff training etc

3rd: Make friends!! Join their conversation with your own little anecdotes! ie: "Well I once threw up in a girls mouth after drinking 47 litres of after shock. It was feckin deadly" or "I got sooooo drunk one time that I woke up sitting in the crows nest of a tall ship in Dublin Bay!!"

Other than that if you are looking to avoid the christmas rush you are too late...but when shopping this time just buy double and you wont have to bother shopping next year!!!

Smoking..........

Ok its been a while since i have had anything at all to say on this blog. Call it a mental block or laziness I don't really care as bugger all people look at this thing anyway.

What I am writing about this evening is the matter of smoking in Ireland.

I am a great believer in freedom of choice whether that be the right to choose to smoke, drink, eat fatty foods or the more important choices like who to put in positions of power, who to bank with, where to head in your career.

I have felt left with little choice in the matter of smoking. Today it was announced that the sale of ten packs of cigarettes is to be banned and that we are to expect a hike in the cost of 20 packs with the next budget. There have been complaints that there have been no price increases in the past three years. Bollox. Either these people are living in lala land or I have been transported to a different dimension......

Firstly there have been consistent increases in the cost of smoking, A 20 pack now sits on €6.35 which is pretty steep in comparison to some of our neighbours. Each time they increase the price people keep buying...Why? Because they choose to. If it means cutting down on the amount of chocolate you buy fair enough.


But consistent increases in price is not the only thing they have done. They introduced the smoking ban. Personally it does not bother me but it is still the government stopping people from making a choice. If it had been left at a division between smoking pubs and non smoking pubs both would have done as well as the other. I have no problem sitting for a while in a non smoking area and my non smoking freinds would have no problem sitting for a time in a smoking area. So instead they have changed the feel of the Irish pub. Now its the stink of toilets, puke and sour beer that permeates around the pub instead of the smoky haziness that was part and parcel of a night out. This ban has also affected peoples ability to carry out full conversations! Half way through chats you now have individuals invariably walking outside to have a puff of a fag. This has lead to a new kind of "Outside the front of the pub" smoking culture. Why did we not fight this ban, because we are to bloody lazy and too bloody laid back for our own good.

So now we have to deal with what we have and make the best of it. I would like to thank the HUGE number of pubs that have introduced special smoking areas, they are heated, spacious and comfortable areas where large groups can sit and pretend that they are inside. Secondly I would like to thank the internet for introducing people to the delights of buying cigarettes online. I myself would of course never go down that road but thankfully I like to travel and so can keep my own stocks up. Instead of increasing prices why don't the government look at introducing cheaper aids for people to give up. Like your nicotine gum and patches etc, they cost a bloody fortune!

Never say that I can not see the good in things. I believe that banning the sale of 10 packs of cigarettes will act as an excellent detterent to the young people out there who are starting to smoke and feeling the pressure of having to smoke. Its a fecking disgusting habit. However please leave those of us without the inclination or will power alone and stop making life difficult for us, if anything reach out a helping hand and spend some of our tax money on eradicating the addiction as opposed to the item that led to it.

Zurich trip!

Ok I am just back from a great trip to Zurich. I have a Friend called Ste living there the past 3 years or so and just haven't bothered my arse going before now. So it was just a brief 4 day visit but as it was so short we tried to fit everything in. 3 of us went over on Thursday and 2 more joined on the Friday so it was a decent crowd. Add to that all the head cases that Ste has met over the past few years it made for a great group of like minded people.

When I say we tried to fit everything in that would be fitting in as much drinking time as possible and as many different kinds of drinking venue as possible. It was probably the worst sightseeing trip I have ever been on but was made up for by 4 excellent nights out.

Advise for anyone who is thinking of ever going....

Don't start drinking too early as the pubs and clubs stay open till 4 or 5 in the morning which leads to long sleep ins the next day hence the lack of sight seeing. We kept forgetting this so kept sleeping late.

A good point is that beer contains little or no chemicals and so you don't seem to suffer as much the next day.

Take a train to Alpamare.

This is an excellent resort with some great water slides, iodine pool, saunas etc etc.

In a previous post i talked about the state of the internal infrastructure of Dublin and I tell you what I have never been more impressed with a public transport system that what I saw in Zurich. When you arrive to the airport just go downstairs to the train station and buy a 3 day tourist ticket. It works on all the innumerable trains, buses trams around the city and is excellent for getting around.

Another bonus is that everyone we met or talked had excellent english so don't worry too much about language barriers. The people themselves are friendly and very willing to help you out. With all the banking over there there is great mix of nationalities and the work culture over there is excellent, staff are treated well so everyone is always pretty happy.

Take a care when drinking in the nightclubs as prices are pretty expensive, but then if you look at Ireland at the moment there is not a huge difference.

All in all an excellent trip and I will be going back as soon as my bank allows me too.......

Loss

Loss is a funny thing. Sometimes its a set of keys which is one of the most frustrating things in the world, the keys are generally where you thought they would be in the first place and thats what makes it so annoying.

Sometimes its a pet, and that brings around some terribly sad emotions and at the same time some beautiful memories and is nearly bitter sweet in its entirety.


However the worst kind of loss is the loss that is caused by your own stupidy. You create the situation and only when its too late do you realise what exactly it is that you have lost. Love is what I am talking about here. When this realisation takes hold it is the deepest kind of loss that can be felt, your chest is fit to burst and your concentration levels waver between you seeming to be an idiot and someone who is half asleep. When you try to counter this loss by trying to retreive it and get nowhere it is then that the fullest ache of true heartbreak hits home.

I would just like to say to anyone that is going through this that they should try to look ahead and try to remember all the joy and happiness that they once had. Apparentely there is a light at the end of the tunnel, I have not found it yet but hope to soon.

I am sorry for posting such a miserable post but maybe in its own way this post can help other people know that this happens to a lot of people at least once in thier lives and people do get through it, I have been told that when you get to the other side of the tunnel there is a huge party and everyone gets naked, pissed and has a mass orgy to send you on your way to new adventures and new happiness.

My company business trip!!

It has finally happened, all my hard work has come to fruition. Like those elite of the fashion world that jetset around europe and the world I was today sent on a business trip.




(Swoon over the exotic curves of the superbly crafted intercity train)







To Cork.


Now I have nothing against Cork in itself but, well, wouldn't it be much better if I was writing about adventures in Paris or Milan, about exotic women and strange sights?

So anyway, my train to Cork leaves Heuston Station at 7:00am, which meant a stupid o'clock start to the morning. Secondly the train fare is a magnificentely overpriced €59 for a return ticket. I am reckoning I could probably fly down for a similar price and will post a brief comment if that is the case at a later date (when I can be arsed checking).

So I am knackered tired, out of pocket and dieing for a cup of coffee. It is at this point that I realise that out of all the inumerable cafes in Heuston Station only Supermacs had bothered thier arses to open for business in line with station opening times. Bravo Supermacs this will not go unrewarded by me, as a fast food connoisseur. The only issue with this state of affairs is that of course they were packed and my train was due to leave in a few minutes and the last thing I wanted was to be left standing for a 3 hour train journey.

I got a nice window seat and sat patiently waiting for 7:00am to arrive and was actually looking forward to seeing some of the countryside etc during the trip. At 7:10 a voice comes over the tannoy. "We apologise for the delay but we are having difficulties closing the doors of the train. Please bear with us for a few more minutes while we look into this". I laid my head against the window and fell asleep. Thankfully.

My day in Cork was uneventful, just work stuff. My return train was at 17:30 which was grand and I got in at 20:10. So all in all not a bad days journey. The weirdest thing about it is this. I basically spent less time working than I normally do everyday, was seated and relaxed for a longer period than I ever get and yet I am absolutely exhausted...

So the moral of the story is this, when you see these high fliers going off all over the place and you think it sounds exciting and suave, I am damn sure it is as tireing for them as my little trip to Cork was, so dont begrudge them. At the same time, when you are offered a similar trip tell your boss to feck off.

Missed a couple of days cos I was lazy....

God damn, when you set out to really try hard at something you inevitably f**k it up. So there I was all well intentioned about posting absolutely everyday without fail.....

So on Friday I went drinking and stayed in a friends house, went watching football the next day, was knackered when I got home so went to bed, and been working all day today.

These are all perfectly viable excuses for not posting. I am going to work on a post for tomorrow....tomorrow and as it is late not going to say much this evening.

However I was listening to the Adrian Kennedy phone show on the way home tonight and they were talking about how people felt about animals in the circus. There were a large number of callers against and a couple for. "Personally am against circus's that avoid animal welfare officers etc, because they are definetely hiding something"

So I sat and listened for a while to a load of idiots talk about stuff they dont really know about but basically want to be heard on the radio, when I suddenly realised that...

"I LISTEN TO THE RADIO TO HEAR MUSIC NOT A LOAD OF TOSSERS TALKING CRAP"

Dublins well crafted infrastructure........ahem

Ok I was listening to the news the other day and was shocked to hear the following report......

Basically it was discussing the state of Dublins transport and build systems. We Irish know that Dublin is in a state with terrible congestion, no underground, bad one way systems etc. What really shocked me was that Dublins infrastructure is being used as a "How not to do something" report for other developing EU nations etc.

It really made me think about what my generation have to go through in Dublin right now. So we can deal with bad traffic and the longer working days because of this traffic. The biggest problem is the house buying market. The average cost of a house in Dublin is €468,273 euros. To break into the housing market you basically need 100% mortgages, help from all and sundry (family, freinds, the mob....)and an extremely long life span through which you can pay it all back...House prices have risen by approx 19% in the past five years. So why is this?? BECAUSE THERE IS NO BLOODY ROOM and we have yet to build up instead of out. Dublin is now spreading like a fungus and commuter areas are now cities and towns in mid north and south Ireland.

I for one am not a home owner and proud of it. I have no kids and dont really intend having any. Why the hell would I buy an over priced property only to be dead before it was paid off. Rents in Dublin have stayed on a level for a few years now and it is no longer the case where people got a mortgage because it worked out cheaper than renting.

Anyway I apologise from meandering away from the main point, which is that through countless errors of judgement by succesive Irish governments we are now as a people in deep shit, with only massive tax bills ahead of us to solve the mistakes of our past. Thats a damn shame.

On a happier note, I am proud to announce that I am the proud new owner of a microwave......less takeaways = more money saved for a massive mortgage.

I own a teapot....

I went down home last weekend to the folks. We had a great time and I was constantly aware of cups of tea springing out of nowhere. So I asked my mum if she had a spare teapot I could take home. It happened that she did and I was thrilled!! No more getting up and down to put the kettle on for coffee and as an added bonus a major cut to my daily coffee intake! Fair enough tea is not great for you but its better than the bucket loads of coffee I consume everyday.

So here is my problem and any help from anyone who happens by this post would be appreciated.

I DON'T HAVE A TEA COSY!!

So now after my first cup of tea the rest are cold. Now fair enough with your mocha frappa lemony creamo zinger deliciouso, but not cold tea.

The second part to this problem is that I want to stay true to my effortless high level of cool *hmmmmm*. How the hell do I do this if I own a bloody tea cosy. So any ideas, throw 'em into the comments please.

The land of the fortune teller

Well its nearly Halloween and strange things are starting to happen in the work place.

The mornings are cold and damp, kids are back to school so traffic is busier, the evenings get dark before you finish work.

What has all this created??

THE IRISH FORTUNE TELLER COMPLEX

Yes it's true this complex is spreading like a rash throughout Ireland as the winter approaches.

The following is an example:

"phone starts ringing"

Me: Hello?
Fortune Teller: Hello Dave? (in a sickly voice) It's me _______.
Me: Hello _______ what can I do for you this evening?
Fortune Teller: Well I don't think I will be in tomorrow because I am feeling really sick...
Me: _______. It is 7:00pm. 13hours before you are due into work. How do you know you will still be sick in 13hours?
Fortune Teller: (Dodges) Well you see its my stomach and my head, I don't know I just feel awful...
Me: When I was chatting to you about an hour ago you were absolutely fine. You sure its not bird flu? (Sarcasm)
Fortune Teller: I really dont know but yeah I felt fine earlier, it just came on me. You know?
Me: No not really, and I would be interested in seeing what came on you to make you feel so bad...
Fortune Teller: (Dodge) So anyway I don't think I'll be in tomorrow.
Me: Ok ________. Ring me in the morning and let me know how you are feeling.
Fortune Teller: Ok.
Me: By the way, can you tell me the lotto numbers for tomorrow night?

"Click"

So there you have it......I wonder if I will receive a call in the morning from the Fortune Teller.

Ireland, Weather, Driving.

Ha! this is just unreal. I spend a lot of my day driving and have gotten used to bad traffic jams, congestion all over the place, grumpy drivers, horns beeping and the general malaise that falls over most of us when not driving for fun.

So anyway, today started out pretty ok as far as the weather was concerned, traffic was slowly moving here and there and all seemed right with the world.

Then 5:00pm arrived and it started raining......It is as if a silent alarm went off in the heads of every motorist in Dublin City. An alarm that cried "GET INTO YOUR CAR AND DRIVE". So leaving a store at 5:30pm and going back into the City Centre usually takes about 30 mins. 1hr 30mins later I am pulling into my car park with a grimace on my face and a strange twitching in my left eyelid.

The whole point of this post is that "THIS IS IRELAND". "IT FECKIN RAINS HERE ALL THE FECKIN TIME!!!" When it snows in Iceland they just get on with it as normal, maybe slap on a couple of chains but otherwise business as normal. Here it just gets crazy. Year after year its the same thing, we just don't learn. 10 minute walks become 30minute drives. "Oh my lordy I cant let my 15year old son get the bus home in this!" Or maybe it is just the stingyness of the Irish coming out.....

What a way to avoid spending money washing your car....

And the award for idiot of the week goes to.........

Ok so there I was last night getting highly frustrated with my blogger template etc etc.... Nothing seemed to be working and so I gave up thinking I had acheived absolutely SFA for a good hours worth of messing.. I ring the brother this evening and he say's "Just refresh the page".

DUH!

Needless to say I felt a bit like this pic....

Trying to work blogger

Great so got the page started and now am having difficulty working with it. So I edited the edit me sections on the right side of the page and my preview looks great! But when I save em and republish etc I get feck all in return..so I am gonna give up on that untill I talk to someone who knows what they are talking about...just adding a random image to see if that works....

Why do this at all..

The answer is I have no idea at all except that it sems like a good idea right now. Whether or not it goes anywhere is another question altogether.

So what am I going to be doing with this blog........I guess I will just be posting some pics and general daily or weekly musings. Perhaps it will develop a life of its own and become something great :). You never know...

So anyways keep an eye open for new postings and hopefully you will find something either interesting or entertaining.