First of all I found some very good photos of the marathon at this site if ye want to check them out:

 http://www.thomas-fitzgerald.net/2006/10/31/dublin-city-marathon-2006/

And secondly I have some very exciting news. I got a call out of the blue from the American Embassy on Tuesday. It was in relation to an essay competition that I had almost forgotten I had entered. Turns out I won it. The essay was about my experience in America. It was just a very brief kind of summary in my usual blog style. Anyway do you know what the prize is? Well first I'll be having lunch at the Ambassador's residence next Saturday. Then, that evening, I will be attending the Marine Corp Ball in the Radisson Hotel in Blackrock. Yeah I know that's going to be a bit surreal. Me mingling with US marines!!! What will I talk about? "Yeah so how about that new M-16 model huh?" I'll be having the steak. Apparently the cocktail reception begins at 6:30PM! I've been practicing my James Bond one-liners.

            But the best part of the prize is a return flight to either New York or Atlanta courtesy of Delta Airlines. Let's give it up for Delta Airlines people!!! I'm gonna go with Atlanta cos I've already been to NYC and I was going to go to Atlanta when I was over there but I never made it. Now I will! Isn't that mad altogether? I honestly never thought I'd be going back to America until I was in my thirties but it's funny how things work out sometimes.

            I don't know when this ticket is usable but I will use it no matter what. I think it's just for a week but I'm not really sure. Apparently there will be a Delta representative at the lunch to fill me in on all the details. So exciting times eh?

            In far less consequential news, tonight, the film, Borat, will be out and I'm very much looking forward to seeing it. It promises to be absolutely hilarious. The official title of the film is "Borat – cultural learnings of America for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan." I wonder what they think of it in America or whether it is even showing and if so, whether it'll do well at the box office or go down well with the critics. Should be interesting.

            And finally, this Sunday is the second leg of the International Rules Football clash between Ireland and Australia which will be in Croke Park. My two siblings and three of the lads from Cork are coming up for it so it should be a bit of a laugh even though we're probably going to get our asses soundly kicked. They have to make up for our ladies team beating theirs by a hundred and something to eighteen. Yeah I know, there's a ladies team now! Anyway I'll keep ye posted. But for now…see ya…

 Hey. First of all I just realised that I totally forgot to include a link to a video I took at the Ireland v Czech Republic match and I figure better late than never so even though you probably don't care anymore, I'm going to include it here now for the sake of completion.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8141064804489213017

Now on to more contemporary sporting matters. I did the marathon yesterday. And yes I finished…in 7803^rd place out of about 10.5 thousand with a record time of 6 hours 51 minutes and 5 seconds…but I finished nevertheless. Naturally I walked all but the last half a mile of it and I now have great difficulty in walking but I'll recover. It was totally worth doing although I wouldn't really recommend it. There was a great atmosphere and a great sense of achievement at the end when they call out your name as you approach the finish line. The supporters were amazing. All along the way, at almost every corner, there were a few randomers standing there clapping for each and every person who passed and informing us that we were doing great and there was only another fourteen miles to go. For the last fourteen miles they are all telling us we were nearly there which got really old really fast. By what standards is fourteen miles nearly there when you're travelling on foot? But their encouragement really helped to urge us on through the searing pain in our knees/calves/shins/hips/buttocks/back etc. Little kids got a great kick out of sticking out their hands to give us a high five as we passed by and some of them ran alongside us for a few hundred metres just for the craic. There were the usual weird competitors dressed up as weird things especially since it was Halloween the next day. One guy with a pink mohawk was dressed up as a fairy (check out the photo) and two more were dressed as bottles of Guinness. That must have been very sweaty. Half of the 10.5 thousand competitors were from overseas. Countries represented included Finland, Scotland, Belgium, Wales, England, Ukraine, Russia (the mens and womens categories were both won by Russians, the male setting a new track record of 2 hours and 11 minutes), Kenya, Ethiopia, USA and Canada among others. The number of competitors from the USA and Canada was staggering. All the American runners had their state printed on the back of their purple singlets. I saw one from South Carolina, one from Georgia and several from Florida. About six miles from the end I found myself walking alongside an insanely nice Canadian lady named Carol and I very much enjoyed being able to distinguish the Canadian accent from the American for the first time in real life. When I introduced myself she responded with "Eoooin hey?" which translates as "Eoin is it?". We walked the rest of it (apart from my final half-a-mile gallop) together along with a Kilkenny girl called Bridget. It was our first marathon for all three of us and you could tell.

            We had a perfect day for it. Not a drop of rain but it wasn't too sunny most of the day and there was a nice breeze blowing all the way. The first half really was literally a walk in the park – I would have done the first half just for a Monday bank holiday's recreation. It was literally a walk in the park because we got to go all the way through Phoenix Park. It was worth doing it just to see Dublin. I saw parts of it I would never have seen otherwise. And some of the north side isn't that bad to be honest. It has a grotty old world kind of charm. It kind of feels like lots of little rural towns stuck together rather than the sprawling metropolis I had imagined it to be. The Phoenix Park was naturally the best part of the walk because it was early on and very scenic. All the leaves have turned yellow and brown and were falling all around us. I had to resist the temptation to kick big piles of them because that would really have slowed me down and also made me look like I was ten years old. We got to walk all around Dublin Zoo, past Áras an Uachtaráin [FEN: The Presedential Residence] and Farmleigh House [FEN: big fancy mansion]. Phoenix Park is really really big. It stretches out and out and it's almost entirely devoid of people. You could see a long way in the Phoenix Park and the marathon was like a big snake of people winding its way around.

            I had taken the precaution of bringing loads of chocolate with me and rightly so because I was starving after a few hours and the temptation to quickly pop into a McDonalds we passed was very hard to resist. At several points along the way there were long lines of male athletes urinating against buildings very publicly and one female athlete even dropped trou in the middle of a footpath on a relatively busy street. There were portaloos every three miles but there were always long queues for them and you don't have time to be hanging around in queues when you're trying to run a race.

            As you approached the finish line, your name and nationality was called out and people took photos of you. (The photo of me crossing the finish line will be available in a few days and I'll upload it to My Photos then.) By the time I got there, everyone was hobbling. The runners had long since finished and only the walkers were left. The crowd, who, in fairness to them were still there, were bored and no one else was running over the finish line so when I came tearing around the corner like a bat out of hell everyone got a great kick out of it and started roaring. I made the most of it. I will probably never again cross a finish line having run 26 miles so I was sure to enjoy it. I was roaring along with them and punching the air even though I was exhausted. I was just so happy I had managed to do it that I couldn't wipe the grin off my face. It was nearly worth walking the 26 miles just for that feeling.

            So what have I learned from doing this marathon? Well I've learned that 26 miles is a really long distance. I mean like…really long. Just take a look at the course route. I've included a map in the photos section. Anyone who knows Dublin would have difficulty getting their head around the idea of walking that route.

            I have also learned that there are a lot of good people in Dublin. All the volunteers who stood in the same spot all day, telling everyone exactly the same thing over and over and still managing to sound genuine when they said "well done." The locals who came out of their houses and stood on the pavement encouraging us for no apparent reason. The kids from the St John's Ambulance crew who rubbed Deep Heat into my knees and calves when the going got tough.

            Most importantly, I have learned that the Adidas slogan, "Impossible is nothing" is absolutely true. As daunting a prospect as it may seem, you really don't have to be an athlete to walk 26 miles. I saw a 70 year old hunchbacked man running it and there were plenty of fat middle-aged people too. Admittedly a man in his forties regrettably died at the twelve mile mark attempting to run the marathon but the ironic part is that he may very well have been a seasoned athlete. All you need is just to be a little crazy, a little foolish and reckless with your health and extremely stubborn and uncompromising in the face of logic. So the moral of the story is, if you are a completely unreasonable person who always sticks to his guns no matter how untenable his position, then impossible really is nothing!

Ironing…It's a lot harder than it looks. I mean it must be an acquired skill. I thought you'd just kind of run the iron over whatever a few times and ta-da but no…or at least I think no. The thing is I'm not even sure if I'm doing it right or not. How are you meant to know? My mother never seemed to have any problems with it but I never really scrutinised her technique or anything. I thought it would be rather self-explanatory but it has proved to be utterly baffling so far. I check the label – two spots. That's fine. I set the iron to two spots. I move it back and forth over the garment while trying to avoid my fingers but I'm not really sure whether it's working. I fear that I may actually be ironing wrinkles into it. And how do you know when you're finished? When you've had enough? I hold up the shirt afterwards and to be honest I'm not really sure whether it looks wrinkly or not, whether it was ever actually that wrinkled to begin with or whether it is at least slightly less wrinkled than it was when I started fifteen minutes before. Usually I wouldn't be one for insisting on unwrinkled clothes at all but I do try to keep work-shirts looking presentable and the Tae Kwon-Do uniform should really be ironed as well. Since I didn't really 'do' work until this year, I didn't need to iron because I would quite happily allow the wrinkles to fall out naturally. I think I can now conclude though that ironing totally sucks. Apparently, there are "extreme ironing" competitions where they iron stuff up on top of trees and underwater and stuff. Not going to be entering one of them anytime soon.

            Anyway, enough of the mundanities of household chores. I was out last night with the good folk from Law and Irish and Clinical Law. I suppose you could call it a class party of sorts. My colleague, Nick, was going through an unexpected dry spell so it was nice for once to have someone to laugh with at all the drunk people. At one point in the night a group of "protesters" passed by. Check out the photo of them. They were protesting against the spread of mediocre alcoholic beverages and praising the benefits of Stella Artois, which according to them was a highly crafted premium lager brewed only from the finest quality hops. They were a bunch of unemployed actors who had been paid by Stella Artois to walk around the streets of our nation's capital acting like complete gimps. Fair play to em!

            And in political news, the nation was rocked on Wednesday when Michael Martin, Minister for Trade, Enterprise and Employment, upon concluding his lunch in Leinster House self-service restaurant and returning his tray to the rack, knocked over a huge stack of plates, allegedly breaking some of them. This caused a loud and prolonged crash which in turn caused all the diners in the restaurant at that time to fix their gaze on a rather red-faced Minister Martin. It is difficult to gauge the effects of this incident so soon but one can rest assured that the political fallout will wrench the government apart. His colleague Minister Cowen has defended his actions, reportedly claiming that 'it could happen to any one of us'. However, the Táiniste, Mr McDowell is demanding a full explanation and apology to the people of Ireland as well as extra Dáil time to debate the issue. The Taoiseach, Mr Bertie Aherne, has thus far refused to comment on the matter. This division in the government ranks comes at a most inopportune juncture with the election quickly approaching. This is a time when the government needs to present a united front to the electorate and any vestige of this unity that remained after the coalition's two terms in government has been wiped out by Minister Martin's embarrassing mistake. The Union of Cafeteria Ladies of Ireland is calling for his immediate resignation and three new plates. They refuse to allow a mediator to intervene until they are given unequivocal guarantees that these demands will be met. It's going to be a very interesting week in politics! This is Eoin Ó Muimhneacháin, Blogtext News, Dublin.

I thought it was time for a change. How do you like my new look? Also I've now made it possible to contact me through my blog without signing up to an account if you don't have my email address. Click on the "Contact Me" tab at the top of the page.

Ok I did the coolest thing ever last night. Kind of on a whim, myself and my co-worker, Nick went along to the RTÉ studios [FEN: national television station]. Nick had got a call off one of his Fine Gael [FEN: political party] cronies to tell him that he had a studio audience ticket to the "popular" political debate show, Questions and Answers. The only catch was that Nick had to pretend that his name was Morris Fitzgearld. So Nick convinced me to tag along in the hope that he could get me in. I had to pretend to be in Fine Gael but I used my real name. Luckily there was one spare seat in the auditorium so I got in. It was really cool watching the whole getting ready for TV thing. The camera men messing around with the cameras, the politicians who were on the panel coming in and sitting down at the table and having final make-up touches applied. The biggest name there was Martin Cullen, Minister for Transport which was no big deal cos we had seen him the day before at work!;) Some guy counted down the seconds till we went on air and some guy indicated that we should applaud rapturously. We duly complied. The set was really futuristic but if you could see a few inches to the left or right of the set, everything was old and grotty like it was straight out of the seventies. They probably haven't actually redecorated the facility itself since it was built. Actually scratch that. The problem is that they never decorated it. It's really just like a massive garage with loads of different rooms in it.

            Minister Cullen was under fire about the proposed Dublin metro line, the continuing "carnage" on the nation's roads and Ryanair's take over bid of Aer Lingus. The format of the show is that audience members get to propose questions before the show that they want the politicians to answer. Then someone picks the best ones and the audience members get to ask them live on the air and the politicians try to avoid answering them. Having just landed in the door half an hour before the show started, I didn't bother proposing any questions because I didn't even know what the topics were. A lively discussion was had but actually sitting there in the audience makes you realise something that for some reason, you couldn't pick up on from watching on TV. The politicians don't actually believe what they're saying. They don't necessarily care about whatever they're asked to comment on. They've done a little research on whatever it is the show is going to be about so they can competently present a pre-formulated 'opinion' but we all know that Martin Cullen didn't really care about Madonna's attempted adoption of a child from Malawi despite his spirited and rational defence of Madonna. And similarly, you can bet that Deputy Olivia Mitchell [FEN: opposition politician] doesn't really care as much about the metro line or Martin Cullen's handling of it as she would have you believe, based on her constant butting in, and imploring of Minister Cullen to admit his consistent incompetence.

            After the show we went to the Green Room to hang out with the panel and the rest of the audience. John Bowman, the presenter, was serving the drinks. Martin Cullen made his exit after one drink but the rest hung around until after we left. We wandered around the deserted studios for a bit (it was 11:45PM). Security was fairly lax. We stumbled upon the set of The Afternoon Show. It was so surreal. Nick sat on the couch for a bit and I kept sketch. Then he went rummaging through The Afternoon Show fridge and took two Afternoon Show eggs as souvenirs. I plan on making an Afternoon Show pancake with mine tomorrow and pretending to be Blonade [FEN: presenter of The Afternoon Show – like the Oprah of Ireland only not rich, black or popular] supervising a cookery demonstration.

            Nick got a phone number off some girls at RTÉ who claim to be able to get us into The Podge and Rodge Show next week which would be soooooo daycent. You have to book tickets for that months in advance but apparently people always cancel and stuff so there's often an empty seat or two. Fingers crossed. That's all I got for now. Peace out!

So I had a rather bleak Tuesday night and it looks like all forthcoming Tuesday nights will be equally bleak from now on. I went to join the reserves (transport and logistics battalion) at McKee Barracks which is on Blackhorse Avenue, near the Phoenix Park. This meant, changing into civvies at work, hanging around town in the rain until 7:20 and then getting the number 37. When I got there and joined the other six recruits, we got to see the 3star privates from infantry stripping Bren light machine guns. Then after we'd done a bit of paperwork, we were brought out in the freezing cold where we were taught how to stand to attention for an hour. They broke it down so much you'd swear it was actually difficult. It was almost painful to have to stand through all the same foot drills I'd done last year in Collins Barracks in Cork and have them explained to me as if I were a complete idiot. I have to start from scratch again. I'm probably going to have to retake the medical and hearing tests and everything. It's as if I never did any training at all. God knows how long before they let me strip a gun again. No matter. It must be endured. The only thing is it takes up my whole evening from the end of work right up to 11:30PM when I get home. We finish training around 10:15PM at which point I have to wait at an abandoned bus stop for an indefinite amount of time for a bus to take me into town where I get the Luas back home again. The Sergeant who went through the paperwork with us did make one rather poignant observation which seemed very obvious, but unsettled me nevertheless. He told us we would be working with weapons with live ammunition and they had only purpose – to kill other human beings. We would be trained to use them not just so we know how to use them but in order to prepare us to actually kill someone should we be ordered to do so. It seems so obvious and yet I find it unnerving. I don't know if I could really live with myself if I killed someone in cold blood. Can it really be an acceptable excuse to say it's a war or you're just following orders. I know it will probably never happen, but if I can't accept the idea in theory, then maybe I'm wasting my time here. I mean the commandment: Thou shalt not kill is fairly clear cut. There's not much room for interpretation there. To quote Bill Hicks, it "doesn't have a footnote that says: O unless you really want to."  I think I will have to meditate further on the issue.

            On a more light-hearted note, I had a wonderful night last night. My colleagues and I went straight to the cinema yesterday after work and saw The History Boys which I would highly recommend. It's like a more intelligent, less narcissistic, English version of the Dead Poet Society. Incidentally, my colleague Nick thought it was pure crap, Mary fell asleep after ten minutes and missed the whole thing and we were also joined by a relatively new cohort, Lisa from UCC's Clinical Law course who is on placement in a law firm in Dublin. She thought it was relatively entertaining. After that we went for pints in the nearest pub where we stayed for several hours of engrossing banter. Then we stumbled drunkenly (except for myself who strode soberly) to the Luas stop having to climb up an embankment and climb over two fences in our suits on the way. We went to Mary's flat to hang out for a bit and get even more drunk (except for myself of course) and in the end we all ended up crashing there for the night. We got up the next morning still dressed in our suits from the day before and trudged to work looking somewhat dishevelled. This was not before Mary managed to lock herself out of half her apartment while wearing her pyjamas and Nick had to enlist the help of a nearby builder to tie two ladders together and hold it for him while he climbed up and got in the bedroom window. Over all, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, being sober enough to remember every one of my friends' drunken foibles from the night before. Sláinte!

 Sup? Last week I had the notable displeasure of frequenting the most despicable grotty, dingy public house I have ever seen. It's called the Parnell Mooney and is located on Parnell Street. If you're ever in the area you should check it out. It's well worth seeing. It'll make you appreciate nice pubs. There were old bearded men outside smoking alongside two Nigerian bouncers. Inside, the clientele was hardly encouraging. It was a refuge for the unemployed and the unemployable. Cross-eyed, tracksuit-clad patrons glanced disinterestedly at us as we walked tentatively in. We looked painfully wealthy and very out of place in our business suits. Teenage mothers with hoopy earrings drank pints of stout while ignoring the children in the buggies beside them and a mangy mongrel scratched his ear under a table. We found an unoccupied booth and sat down. We quickly stood up again when a gentleman with a strong northside accent kindly informed us that that particular booth was infested with fleas. We moved to another area where we only had to contend with small slow-moving flies. One of my colleagues ordered a gin and tonic which cost €6 but was unable to bear the sinister ambience long enough to actually drink it and insisted we leave. I couldn't stop laughing the whole time I was in there, partially at just how crap the pub was, partially at the unusual juxtaposition between ourselves and the other patrons but mainly at how uncomfortable my (somewhat sheltered) colleague was in this setting.

           Hey you remember that Irish sumo wrestler I was telling you about? Well he's in Japan now competing in the World Championships and he's been keeping a blog over the past week and it is just so cool. Check it out here: http://www.imagineirelandssumo.blogspot.com/

I've thrown two photos of him up in the photos section just to show how completely insane he is…he's not a very big man but he's a legend. The people he has met over the past week and the way he has been treated are completely at odds with the fact that he's just a chancer from Listowel and you've got to respect a guy who can get away with that.

            I hope he has more luck in his fight than I did yesterday in mine. I competed in the Leinster Tae Kwon-Do Championships yesterday and was soundly beaten by an unknown Asian kickboxer. He used the kind of flashy jumping spinning kicks you usually only see in films but he was able to use them properly and they nearly always hit the target (my head). I managed to get him into the corner once and let loose with some punches to the head and was surprised at the lack of countering. It turns out he couldn't use his hands very well but it was too late in the fight when I figured that out for me to be able to repeat it and a jumping kick to the head is worth four times more points than a punch to the head so his style was always going to beat mine. Because he was the only other fighter in my weight category (-63kgs), I got a second place trophy for losing a fight. He went on to fight in the next highest weight category and I'm not sure where he placed but he was still fighting an hour later so he must have been in the semi-finals at least. I was very relieved to have been placed against the only other fighter in my weight category though because although he totally outclassed me, I could have been given a much larger opponent with less skill who could potentially cause me serious injury because of his size.

            Last night I jammed for the first time with a new band. They're a pub band, or at least they will be when we get a big enough set of covers together. That will take a while. We had a bash off about five songs in that difficult first jam where nobody (especially me) knows what they're doing. They've already been jamming together for a few weeks before I came along so they have some idea of what they're doing. We mostly did cheesy glam rock stuff like Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Guns n Roses etc. It's a kind of fun not serious band that just plays covers of well-known feel-good songs which is fine by me cos they're fun to sing but usually quite difficult. Finding the right key for my voice is the hardest part and then hopefully the rest will fall in place with practice. The other three guys are in their twenties, drums, base and guitar – the guitarist is a Polish dude and he's not bad. The bassist and the drummer are well able too. They jam in the drummer's flat which is hidden away in a back alley off O'Connell's street behind a black metal door. Now it's up to me to learn a bunch of songs by next week. It's easy to sing along in your head to a CD. It's a lot harder to sing along into a mike when everything is turned up so loud that you can't hear a thing. Hopefully, some earplugs and experimentation with monitors and the bass amp will eventually iron this out. I'll stick with it for a few weeks anyway and see how it goes. We jam again next Sunday. That's all I got for now. Ciao!

Hello again. I recently discovered that the kick-ass historic punk rock club I went to in New York, the infamous CBGB's recently closed down. I was very saddened by this news because I thought it was my ideal bar and it had so much prestige behind it. It had spawned bands like The Ramones and Blondie and it was so packed the night I was there, I can't understand how they weren't making enough money to get by. It worries me because if New York City can't support a punk rock bar, what city can? I'm hoping I find somewhere like that in London. If there's a punk scene anywhere, it's in London. I'm just so thankful that I had the opportunity to go to CBGB's before it closed down – I was just in time to taste a little piece of music history.

            Yesterday, the Dáil and the Seanad [FEN: Senate] were debating a controversial "agreement" between the US and the EU whereby the EU would provide the US Department of Homeland Security with exceptionally invasive personal details about all passengers flying from the EU to the US and the US would provide the EU with…nothing. Every EU country except Ireland and another country had passed it so all the politicians gave out about how much they were opposed to the motion and then declined to actually oppose it and unsurprisingly it was passed. It would be very foolish for Ireland to be the little country to stand up and say that this invasion of civil liberties was unnecessary and wrong. The political fallout with both the EU and US would have been very damaging. When I went to the US, I had to submit myself to being fingerprinted like a criminal and had to provide loads of personal information about myself all of which the US Department of Homeland Security still has on file. The problem with this should be obvious – everyone is a suspect. Innocent people are treated like criminals purely because they're not American. If the EU did not submit to the American demands, the fear was that all travel from the EU to the US would be banned. Naturally this is madness. Would the US really seal themselves off from the rest of the world when it fails to meet its demands like the way North Korea has sealed itself in? If so, then the Bush administration is really more paranoid than anyone could have imagined. It's running around like Chicken Little, afraid that the sky is going to fall on all its buildings – blindly ignoring the fact that the planes that were part of the 9/11 tragedy were domestic flights, not evil Un-American flights. One would think that this fact coupled with the fact that far, far more people have been killed in America by automatic weapon-carrying drug dealers than Islamic terrorists, would prompt the Bush administration to clean up its own back yard before glaring suspiciously at the rest of the world. It really annoys me that the American government can't see that terrorism is making them become as fundamentalist as the terrorists themselves and is stripping them of the very liberties they vaguely claim to defend. It really annoys me that there is no question of a reciprocal gesture whereby the US provides the same personal details to the EU about passengers flying from the US to the EU – are the lives of potential European terrorist victims worth less than those of their American counterparts? It really annoys me that the European response to every increasingly unreasonable American security measure is submissive acquiescence. But what annoys me most of all is the undeniably unavoidable implication that anyone who isn't American, is a suspected terrorist. I could give out about this forever but what good will it do, so instead…

            I have much happier news to report. Yesterday at work, I managed to secure a ticket to last night's clash between Ireland and the Czech Republic! I had posted an ad on the Oireachtas [FEN: Government] online discussion board looking for tickets and I finally managed to get one on the day of the match at face value: €38. Going to a soccer match is totally different to going to a GAA [FEN: Gaelic Athletic Association – basically Gaelic Football and hurling] match. First of all, there are way more scumbags at a soccer match. Secondly, it's an international event. Thirdly, nearly all the fans are from Dublin. And finally it's in Lansdowne Road Stadium, which is quite a bit smaller than Croke Park. It's also a lot older and grottier. There are just wooden benches instead of seats. The DART [FEN: Dublin Area Rapid Transport – suburban light rail system] runs literally right under the west stand where I was sitting. It's a great use of space that would otherwise be empty. I suppose the idea was that the local residents wouldn't complain about having a stadium next door if it drowned out the noise of the train…which it does. You can't hear the DART coming – you just feel the stand rumbling under you. The crowd is very loud. I could hear the roars from several streets away because I arrived five minutes late. There was a large Garda presence and announcements on loudspeakers discouraging anti-social behaviour, which is a problem with soccer that you don't really get with GAA. I was sure that if we lost again tonight, there would be riots. Luckily, we drew which was a miracle given that the Czech Republic are a world class team and half of our team was out injured. The Irish fans seemed stunned, and a little surprised, but ultimately as happy as one would expect the fans of a winning team to be. It was my first time in Lansdowne Road and it kicked ass. It's way better than watching on TV. I did miss slow motion replays because if something happened quickly at the other end of the pitch and you missed it…well you missed it. I also missed the usually scathing half-time analysis but commentary was provided by the northsiders sitting behind me who shouted unconstructive criticism at the Irish players and the referee in rather colourful language. They demanded very high standards of the Irish players and put a lot of pressure on them to perform beyond their ability. The only time they cursed the Czech players was when they were fouled and fell to the ground. Our goal really got everyone excited and someone lit a flare and everyone was jumping around. The wind was quickly taken out of our sails when the Czechs responded a minute later with a much classier goal that was just out of the (substitute) goalie's reach. The Irish fans quickly recovered and just revved up the Irish players even more. The final score was 1-1 and my first international soccer game was an immensely enjoyable one.

Yo sup? I'm still keeping it real up here in Dublin. What've I been up to? Well I went to see that film World Trade Centre last week. Needless to say, Nicholas Cage looks ridiculous with a moustache but apart from that, it was a very intense film purely because of the subject matter. Unsurprisingly, it was a very emotive dramatization with some little nuggets of pro-war propaganda stuck in there. There was a marine who believed he had support from God himself to "avenge" the atrocity by serving two tours of duty in Iraq. Naturally no explanation was forthcoming as to the connection between 9/11 and Iraq. It was frustrating to have to tolerate political undertones such as these in a film that should have been about the personal struggle of some ordinary people in the face of an overwhelming and unprecedented act of terrorism. It did leave quite an impression on everyone though. Usually when the credits start to roll, a hum of conversation fills the auditorium but after this film there was only a really uncomfortable silence and nobody made any move to stand up and leave. It was very strange. When I did come out, I stood outside the door and watched people literally shaking themselves. The expressions on their faces were empty and glum, not unlike that of a sedated psychiatric patient, such was the effect of this film. In a way I felt like it was a bit of a cheap shot making  a film about such a tragedy and making money out of it but on the other hand I think it also served an important function by reminding us all about what happened and ensuring that it will never be forgotten. That terrible moustache has certainly scarred us all.

            I also read in the paper over the weekend about this guy Colin Carroll who's a bit of a legend. In fact I want to be him. He's a solicitor in his early thirties who only recently qualified. When he was in Blackhall [FEN: Institution that qualifies people as lawyers], he was being paid so little for his apprenticeship, that he couldn't afford rent so he lived in a van that he parked across the street from Blackhall as a protest. What a legend! And he spent the decade between college and Blackhall travelling around the world doing all sorts of crazy things. He worked for a massive sports network in Brazil where he got paid €250,000 for a few months work and instead of buying a house with it like a boring person would do, he blew it all on travel. What a legend! But that's not even the coolest part – it's his attitude to life. He has a policy towards life where he picks a place in the world he's never been, he picks a crazy thing to do there that he's never done before and then goes there and pretends he's been doing this thing his whole life and competes with all the experts in this field, usually getting his ass kicked and really experiencing life at the same time. For example he's bobsledded against the Sweedish team and played ice hockey with Czechs but the only thing he's ever won is the World Elephant Polo Championships in Nepal. What a legend! And guess what he's doing now? Sumo wrestling for Ireland at the World Championships in Japan! And he's a skinny little fella like me! And he's actually serious about it – he's training properly and lifting weights and everything! What a legend! Here's hoping I turn out like him!

            I also think it needs to be mentioned that the 5-2 defeat of Ireland's soccer team by that of Cyprus was a travesty and the worst result ever in Irish soccer history. It was a sad day to be Irish and a very sad day indeed to be Steve Staunton [FEN: manager]. Thinking about it just makes me feel sick, as does the prospect of tomorrow's match against the Czech Republic who defeated San Marino on Saturday 7-0. They will chew us up and spit us out unless Shay Given [FEN: goalkeeper] magically recovers from his injury and we can get some players on the pitch who have actually played competitive international soccer before. The future looks bleak for Irish soccer.

            Speaking of sport, I'm very much looking forward to the International Rules match in November, when a few friends and my sisters will be coming up to see it in Croke Park, the most glorious of Irish stadia. Naturally the Australians will kick our ass again but it should be a fun day out anyway. One day, we'll find a sport that we're good at!

            I'm also looking forward to a long weekend in London starting on the 23^rd of November with a few lads from Cork the week after my birthday. I've never actually been outside the airport in London so it's probably about time I had a look at the place.

            What else have I got for ye…well I was at a martial arts party last night where I had a very interesting conversation with a Nigerian girl. Nigeria has this image of being a poor country that everyone is trying to get away from. However, I knew that it was actually really rich but was fraught with corruption. I thought there was an unequal distribution of wealth whereby a few people had all the money and everyone else was poor but it turns out it's the other way around. Nigeria is the fifth largest producer of oil in the world and also has diamond mines so most people are actually rich and apparently only a minority, mainly rural dwellers, are poor. Apparently, some parents pick their kids up from school in helicopters! It is true that Nigeria is a horrendously corrupt country. I am reminded of our friend, Stev, who is travelling around the world on a British Petroleum oil tanker which docked in Lagos, Nigeria fairly recently and the customs officials just commandeered most of their cigarettes because they could! That made me wonder how you can smoke on an oil tanker or indeed how you can cook food on it but I quickly lost interest in this train of thought. Anyway, I thought it was interesting to find out what Nigeria was really like and I thought you might too.

            Finally…after eating our lunch today, we had an hour to kill so myself and my colleague, Nicky visited the National Gallery. It is a rather large place which I imagine will keep us entertained for many weeks to come. We saw lots of crusty ole paintings including the famous Caravaggio depicting Judas kissing Jesus. We scoped the place out for security and are convinced we could pull off a heist with the right equipment. When it was time to go back to work, we realised we had no idea how to get out so Nicky asked a bored-looking security guard "How do you get out of here?" He replied laconically in an old school Dublin accent, "I've been trying to figure that out for twelve years."  I'll leave you with that! Good luck!

Well where do I start? Why not with all the famous people I have recently brushed shoulders with. Yesterday I bumped into Trevor Sergeant, leader of the Green Party, Enda Kenny, leader of Fine Gael [FEN: main opposition party], and Senator David Norris – the flamboyant gay senator who infamously sued the State in the early nineties in a bid to decriminalise homosexuality, was defeated in the high court and the supreme court and subsequently succeeded in the European Court of Justice. You never know who you'll bump into in the Dáil restaurant – and the food is cheap and really good too. Since I've been here I've had roast potatoes every day accompanied variously by salmon, trout, pork and venison – all for only €5.75! Today, on our morning tea break, we went over to the public gallery to see some debate and got to see among others, Pat Rabitte, leader of the Labour Party, Caoimhín Ó Caoláin, leader of Sinn Féin, Míchael Martin, Minister for Enterprise and best of all…Bertie himself! They were after calming down a bit from yesterday and actually debating real issues. Yesterday was madness – the house was full again and they were all still giving out about himself and them 'loans'. He surprised everyone by publicly apologising for his behaviour which he admitted may have been interpreted as being inappropriate. This was rather embarrassingly, taking place in front of a visiting delegation from the Polish parliament. Outside the gates were a motley crew of protesters protesting about everything from workers' rights to marriage rights for gays. It's a regular Tuesday thing! One old man was even holding a placard, protesting against the persecution of the Taoiseach by the media!!!

            In other news, I saw a guy getting off the Luas yesterday wearing a Carolina Panthers NFL jersey so I was very excited to discover that I wasn't the only Irish person who owned one! Also, yesterday at Tae Kwon Do, I was given a beginner to warm up and I was teaching her stretches and such when I noticed her American accent and it turns out she was from North Carolina! Weirder still, she had even applied to study in Western Carolina University, where I had been hanging out for a few days and several of whose students I had come to know, but then decided against it because it was too remote. So now she's studying in UCD for a year! Isn't it a crazy world? Isn't it? Yes, it is. And I have some more American connections to report. I had lunch today in Trinity College with one of the Irish girls who had been working with me in Johnny Rockets and on the way, I bumped into another Trinity student who I had also been working with in Johnny Rockets and had been living next door to in Myrtle Beach!!! Bumping into him (Damien, if any of you happen to know who I'm talking about) was a pure accident although my lunch with the other girl had been planned. That was the first time I ever bumped into someone I knew in Dublin. It was a very cathartic moment for me. It had also been years since I was on the Trinity campus. They have lots of old buildings in there – they're keeping it old school. I apologise for that unforgivable pun. It's only freshers week there now and their lectures don't even start till next week! The courtyard was full of club and society stands handing out free lollipops. There was quite a buzz around the place but it still wasn't UCC.

            And finally I have the pleasure of hosting a German guest by the name of Julian at my house at the moment. He's from this online club that I'm also a member of called the Hospitality Club whereby you get to stay at people's gaffs around the world for free instead of having to crash at a hostel and in return you put up other backpackers at your gaff. (The website address is: www.hospitalityclub.org in case you're interested.) We took him out to a pub last night and I had the opportunity to have a few interesting discussions with him on subjects as diverse as the changing socio-economic face of Ireland, Germany and Europe, the separation of church and state, the long term effects of immigration on the education system and how soccer has united people in national patriotism without the inconvenient side-effects of war. I love conversations like those. He very observantly pointed out that Irish people at the moment were making loads of money and spending it all simultaneously. Eddie Hobbs and David McWilliams would love this guy! He just landed yesterday and he's setting off on a big two week tour of Ireland tomorrow. Well I guess that's all my news for now but you know I'll keep you posted. Good luck!