Donncha – Page 3 – Something Odd!

Someone in London loves my luggage

On my way out to San Francisco my luggage was delayed in London and in similar fashion, when I got into Cork Airport it was again delayed in London. For all I knew my luggage was lost! I wouldn’t mind except:

Once per trip is enough, please British Airways, keep track. It’s simply not fair.
My flight from San Francisco arrived at 1pm, flight to Cork was scheduled for 2:15pm. It’s cutting it a bit tight but I’ve been in this situation before and my luggage came through. How close before? Let’s just say we had to sprint from one terminal to another in Heathrow to catch the next flight!
My flight to Cork was delayed for over an hour. First the flight captain fell ill in Cork and had to be replaced, thus bumping the boarding time to 3:15pm, then we actually started boarding at 3:25pm, before waiting on the tarmac for at least 40 minutes because repairs and tests had to be made to the plane. I finally arrived in Cork at 5:20pm.

Don’t you think British Airways could have moved my luggage from one plane to another in 2 hours? Not a chance. Thankfully it was delivered this afternoon, almost 20 hours later by Aer Lingus staff.

I guess someone in British Airways has a fetish for luggage with pink and blue ribbons. Yes, I bet it was the ribbons.

Roaming in America

One of the problems with traveling is the cost of calling home. I enabled roaming on Meteor, but it’s a bit pricey at €1.39/minute or €0.32/sms. I checked roam4free as well but that appears to be more expensive yet at €2.50/min.

Enter Skype where I can buy credits and call an Irish landline for €0.02/min or Irish mobile phone for €0.184. It’s great as everywhere in San Francisco I’ve traveled to has WiFi access. This morning I roamed about the house with my laptop in hand, headset on and spoke to my wife Jacinta for over 18 minutes and it cost me less than €4. That’s pretty cool and it was great to hear her and baby Adam.

It’s not quite the same sort of roaming but WiFi is fairly ubiquitous in the United States, so Skype on my laptop is painless, and very cheap.

Later … Out of curiosity I checked how much it costs to ring a mobile phone from an Irish landline. I use UTV’s service and Skype is cheaper at all times except for the weekend. Crazy stuff!

Congratulations Donal and Celine!

I can finally reveal the good news that totally made my day yesterday. My brother Donal asked his girlfriend Celine to marry him and as he said, “She said yes!”

I want to pass on my congratulations to them both and I’m looking forward to seeing them when I get home, and to the big celebration party!

I'm not the only one to love the Alfa 147

This evening I watched an old Top Gear where Jeremy Clarkson put an Alfa 147 GTA through it’s paces and compared it to a VW Golf and Ford Focus.

Despite the fact that it will break down, something will fall off, and it’s slower than the other two cars, all three presenters would still buy the Alfa. If you’ve ever owned or driven an Alfa 147 you’ll know exactly what they mean. I read a review of the Alfa 147 in a paper and then months later had the opportunity to test drive one. I fell in love immediately. How could I not buy it? It was a love/hate relationship almost from the start.

The famous Alfa build quality made itself known early on:

My Alfa’s dashboard died for absolutely no reason while driving to work one morning. I had to pull over, switch off the engine and start her up again to get things working again.
The ABS or Traction Control kicked in going over small potholes. If you know Irish roads you know there are a lot of potholes.
Three of the bulbs in the headlights went at exactly the same time and had to be replaced while I was away from Cork.
There were other problems with it and I had to bring it back to the garage several times.

I wouldn’t trust it as far as I could throw it but would I buy another Alfa? I’d be awfully tempted..

Here’s what the Top Gear guys think and judge for yourself. Sheer lunacy?

What car have you absolutely adored? What car made your blood boil with passion to drive? What car would make you enjoy a long drive along bumpy roads? Mine’s the Alfa Romeo 147, what’s yours?

What to do this weekend?

This weekend will be a busy one in Cork but I think we’re going to try to take it easy and not stress ourselves too much trying to enjoy it too much!

This weekend a Capoeira festival will be held in the city. On Saturday morning there will be a demonstration at 10:30 in front of Brown Thomas on St. Patrick Street, followed by workshops in Blackrock GAA club. Looks like a latin party on Saturday night and a BBQ will follow the workshop on Sunday! Not sure if I can make it but I’ll try to be there. I must dig up some more of my Capoeira photos next week.

In Blackpool The Festival of the Bulls will be held from 12pm to 6pm, Saturday and Sunday. There’s more info on the Whazon website but I’ll copy it here because they don’t have any archives unfortunately.

THE FESTIVAL OF the BULLS – Community Carnival

Saturday and Sunday 12pm – 6pm

STREET PERFORMANCES
Be Your Own Banana Company, That Man, Amani Acrobats, The Svetlana show, Bui Bolg, Mr.Cro, The Incredible Bull Circus and Cork Circus

MUSICIANS
The spectacular Burundi Drummers, Filipino dancers and drummers chorus, The 40 piece Youghal Ceile House band with dancers, Southern Brigade Army Brass band, The Mayfield Brass band, The Cork City String Quartet The Clubmen Swing band , The award winning Polyphonic Barbershop Chorus, The Christ Restoration Life Ministries Gospel Choir, Traditional musicians doing walkabouts, Blackpool Youth Club song and dance show, Isis Youth band

COMMUNITY EVENTS
Duck races , Blackpool Treasure hunt, Pub Quiz
Food Market, Arts & Crafts Stalls, Massage area, Balloon modellers, Face painters, Penalty Shoot outs Community Art exhibition, Programme of local film documentaries, Programme of Award winning Irish films , Exhibition of original drawings by Seamus Murphy, Amateur Photography exhibition, Re-dedication of the Grotto, Dublin Hill, Planet gym health club demonstration and Children’s games

The Bulls Mart
The market will feature over 40 local producers and slow food promoting traders along with local craft and jewelry stalls.

Sunday 3rd June at 4.30pm
BULL RUN
The climax of the festival will be the inaugural Blackpoll Bull Run. Although the bulls have long since left the streets of Blackpool the Carnival bulls will be out in force, creating havoc, making noise, inciting madness and generating excitement. It will be a riot of Brazilian carnival, freaky metallic bull bikes and puppet bulls, along with dancers, drummers, butchers, witchdoctors and warriors. All of them painted head to toe, shouting, singing and dancing crazy.

The public will be invited to participate in the event which promises to be an incredible sight and a fitting remembrance of what once was, of what built this city, this area, this people and this culture.

Sunday 3rd June
Bull puppet workshops
Dowtcha puppets will be holding puppet making workshops

TICKETS:
BOOKING/INFO:
VENUE: Blackpool Retail Park

I have a feeling you’ll find us at the beach if the weather is nice or even mildly ok. It’s been a while, before Adam was born even, and the pull of the ocean is strong!

I want to break free

Gerry, you’re at peace now.

A day of happy and sad

A year ago today I married the most amazing and wonderful woman I know, Jacinta. She’s the love of my life, beautiful, caring, sensitive and the mother of our son Adam. She is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

We had planned an anniversary lunch and Adam had been changed for the umpteenth time, ready for the trip, but then we found out that Jacinta’s sister Gerarda had passed away peacefully in her sleep during the night. Life has been turned upside down.

Turning Japanese – a song Gerry and Jacinta went mad dancing to in the front garden to annoy a neighbour!

Please type my name

I just had a thought after filling in an anti-spam keyword in a comment form. Sometimes my thoughts are interesting but this isn’t one of them. Justin Mason asks you to type his first name as a means to defeat spam bots. I bet if I did the same, even going so far as writing my name next to the box people would misspell it. “donnacha”, “donacha”, “doncha” and “dunacha” are all variations I’ve seen. You don’t want to know how Sky Digital butchered it!

For extra fun I could have an audio clip saying my name instead. I might not ever receive a comment ever again!

Jacinta and Adam came home from the hospital yesterday, my brain is lightly fried, with chips and tomato sauce. Thank you so much Mairead for making us dinner and minding Adam so we could get a short rest! Aren’t family great?

It's a boy!

Today my life changes with the birth of my son Adam! After a lengthy labour he was born at 5:51am this morning. Jacinta went through a labour from hell for 30 hours but her heart melted when she laid eyes on Adam.

I would write more, but I’ve only had 4 hours sleep over the past 2 days and I need to hit the leaba.

A Dad's scary moment

Kav’s scary moment #1 was the birth of his daughter. Our baby still hasn’t made an appearance and it looks likely we’ll be going to the hospital tomorrow evening. I doubt I could describe the event as well as Kav has, so if you’ve been through the experience, go read his blog post. If you haven’t, go read it anyway, it’s written very well and worth a few minutes of your time!

It’s an emotional bungee jump, is why. Frozen panic masked as calm, driving with jittery, awkward limbs. The rush of the brief heroics when you’re playing the rescuer, flying it down the corridor with a wheelchair containing your bellowing wife and your soon-to-be first-born. The feeling of being absolutely useless to her while she goes through this.

There is nothing you can do, so you mask your uselessness with words of support, while the midwives calmly go through the motions for the tenth time that night.