Ah it's grand.
Sure.

There seems to be a problem with the lang_xx tags when posting from ecto

<lang_ga>Ceapaim go bhfuil fadhb le lang_xx sna HTML nuair a rinne mé úsáid as ecto</lang_ga>

I know Christmas is now over, but I’m sitting in the airport at Zurich (sans wifi access due to a funky access point, will try another location shortly) and it seems like a good time to write up a few bits.

Pleasant enough trip over, via Zurich, with Swiss. Got down home pretty quick thanks to the new toll road. All was quiet, at home, and surprisingly relaxed for Christmas. It was a great chance to just catch up on some chill out time and get some proper sleep. It’s funny that I can sleep well when I’m at my parents house but am plagued by insomnia elsewhere. Guess it’s just all part of being relaxed. Avoided going out while I was at home – staying away from pubs seemed like a good idea as part of the relaxation effort. Just went out the once with Eamonn, to Carrick. Caught up with one of his mates Colm, whose a good laugh and easy to chat with. We went to The Oarsman and as the Guinness was pretty rough, I went for the bottles of Erdinger instead. A good choice and I was sensible enough to place myself. While I was there I met Lynne who I hadn’t seen since school, or thereabouts, and caught up a bit on what has been happening with some of the other people that I went to school with. Went up to Havanna to finish off the conversation and caught some of the tunes of Bog The Donkey. They’re actually very good and so a good night was had, all round.

Living in Singapore is quite different for an Irishman who is used to community – it’s why little things wind me up. Today I ran for the bus and the doors had closed, I knocked but the driver didn’t see me. I turned around, swearing, and as I did an old Chinese man pointed – the same number bus had arrived with space for people. Few people in Singapore take the time to do that and I was impressed. It’s so rare for someone to make the effort for someone else, I could only say ‘thank you very much’. On reflection I wanted to express so much more, to acknowledge the rarity in Singapore of someone being altruistic. It made my day.

C fancied some drinking to soothe her mood and said we’ll got to SODS. Pat had earlier advertised that Guinness was now shipping from Dublin to Singapore – so we indulged. Beautiful. Find an Irish pub and drink real Guinness today – it’s great, Ted.

I’m still trying to sort out my machine that toasted in the old place. So after the unsuccessful run with a new processor over the weekend I got myself a cheap shit motherboard. Fingers crossed.

On the way over to SLS I took the train and as usual there was some tool mad to tramp over me trying to get through me. In fairness, I should probably take it as a compliment to my recent, small, weight loss that the fucker thinks he can walk through me. I wasn’t in great humour so I decided I wasn’t having any of it and held my ground – inertia helps on that. So then he tried to walk over my foot – pulled back and then swept the foot in a la Keano. A dirty look and the message was delivered: rise up ye downtrodden ang mohs :)

Looks like I may finally be able to connect via 3G from my TT!

Visiting AvantGo recently I discovered that they now support RSS feeds. The AvantGo software has always been pretty good as has the service they provide, in general. So, to see RSS feeds go on there is such a joy as it means I can now just sync with one client and get all the web content that I like to read. Once I get things setup here at home I shall be able to sync my Tungsten T before I head off for the bus and enjoy the latest content. If only I could get a seat.

Got back yesterday evening, through the airport very quickly. The doors opened at 7pm and even with getting cash along the way we had our bags off the belt and were in the duty free at 7:15pm. I now have some ‘stock’ on hand so there will be some pleasant evenings on the terrace at the new place. With the apartment move happening while I was away it was quite strange to be leaving one ‘home’ and returning to another. The new place is pretty chaotic with boxes everywhere but at least it’s in much better condition than when we moved into Chancery Court. C’s folks are helping out again and have done a huge amount so it’s a lot less stressful than last time, for me anyway.

Surprisingly, everything went smoothly with Singtel today. The engineer came over and found the phone line was already on and more importantly my ADSL as well. So he spent about 15 minutes here (stopping to use the bathroom) and off I went with my internet connection. Now I just need to sort out how the network is going to be setup here. That does require further unpacking however.

It’s strange that I’m inclined to write more in this blog when I haven’t actually got internet access from this machine! However I heard something interesting and disturbing on the NZ news today. A Kiwi man, called Mark, was telling his story about being asked to swap seats with a woman on a Qantas flight. Mark was seated beside a young boy originally but Qantas (along with Air New Zealand and several other carriers) consider adult men to be paedophiles. There is a specific policy not to seat children beside adult men (travelling separately) because it puts the child at risk. Mark got caught in this humiliating position because this policy wasn’t implemented until everyone was seated and the flight was underway. While protecting children is paramount, why is it that someone must be treated in such a dehumanising manner? Why is a man demonised in this way? If an airline made a similar judgement call for people from certain countries or races what would the reaction be?