My name catches the world attention....yet again!

It's amazing what comes out of blogs. A while back my blog ALMOST got me a mention on CNN This time, something just as weird. Within the last week, I have got 2 e-mails as a result of my blog asking questions about my name. The first one was someone who had seen some actor who's first name was Ciaran, and she wanted to know how it is pronounced. But last night, I got another email from a couple who are expecting a son and want to call him Ciaran, but were unsure of how to pronounce it. They're from the USA and so didn't want to call their son Ciaran, if they didn't know how a "real Irish person" pronounces Ciaran!

I e-mailed them back, and it kind of feels they're naming him after me, but they're not at all. It just happens to be the same name as mine. But Ciaran is a rare name so I feel some attachement! If you type"Ciaran" in Google, my blog comes up as the 9th result, which is kind of cool!

I just looked at my blog stats on StatCounter.com and turns out the couple searched for "pronouce Ciaran", which came up as the second result (because of the CNN post, see above link) The funny thing is, that that actor dude comes up as the first result (see here) with this quote included

"Does anyone know how to pronounce Ciaran?"

and

"Anyone for a Ciaran fan club? No, seriously. He's so tremendously cool."

Unfortunately, it refers to Ciaran Hinds the actor, not me :( But I could have a fan club....somewhere!

On a side note, I'm up to 8,844 hits on my blog. Cool!

Gaelic Football for the PS2

I normally hate getting e-mail forwards because usually they are just stupid chain letters, but this one I just have to share. It was a link to an ad for a new Playstation 2 game; "Gaelic Football" I find it hilarious that they're making a GAA game for the PS2.

Anyway, the ad is a classic and can be seen here If you're Irish, then you'll totally understand the ad, but if you don't know about the GAA, then it might be lost on you a bit, but you should appreciate the genius of it!

There's quite a bit of stuff about the game online too, on ElectricNews.net and Irish Abroad. Turns out, the software company, IR Gurus Interactive that made it, based it on an Aussie rules game made previously. Still good to see the game being made though.

Cricket is actually fun!

Last night I went playing indoor cricket with some people from work. There is a company wide tournament on next week in Lords so we went down last night for some practice on how to to play the game and actually allow me hit a cricket ball, something I've never done before! The rules are a little different too, so it was good to try it out.

So, myself and another guy went batting first. I could try explaining the rules, but they're all here But basically, 8 people on a team. 4 sets of 2 batters and each set of batters face 4 overs (6 or 8 balls in an over) Lee and I scored 30 runs which we thought was quite good. So everyone else went to bat, and our total score was 26! So the next 6 batters managed to score a total of -4! Quite funny really, but I enjoyed it. The real thing happens on Tuesday.

We also got challenged to a a match by another team at work, so that should be fun! I'm not sure is it because England won the Ashes recently that there are loads of people playing cricket now, but all 5 courts last night at the venue were all cricket. Last time I was there, it was all soccer. Typical of the English to jump on the bandwagon!

Story behind the story

We get bombarded by the media everyday about different stories, the biggest of which recently was Hurricane Katrina. While it's good to read stories of the

actual news, I always love reading stories behind the news. Today on BBC News there was an excellent article about the clean up of the Superdome in New Orleans after the people took refuge in it.

I would like to point out one particularly beautiful and descriptive piece of the article: "The toilets had faeces three inches above the seat. The bowl was full and it was sitting atop that like ice cream" In fairness, the journalist must have witnessed this because I don't think there's any other way to say that, without seeing it. It's not an expression you dream up!

So on that wonderful image, I will finish up!

Good News

Its good to hear that the IRA have finally decommissioned their arms. Hopefully it will help move things along in Northern Ireland, but not anytime soon I reckon if the Unionists have something to do with it.

I was looking around for the actual report that they released for most of today, but couldnt find it until now. The report which was much shorter than I expected can be found here.

Is it worth it?

Seriously, is drinking actually worth it? I went out Saturday night on a pub crawl with my new hockey club and ended up going to a house party afterwards. I ended up getting home for about 7.30am, so you could say it was a fairly crazy night!

Thing is, I woke up Sunday morning, or rather afternoon and had a pretty nasty headache. Nothing terrible, but still annoying. I dont usually get hangovers, but considering what I drank, then its not surprising. I dont usually go out drinking very heavily very often and get bad hangovers, but I did this weekend. The headache went away soon after, but my questions, is one night out worth losing an entire day of my life? I pretty much slept all day Sunday, and only woke up at about 8pm for a few hours before going back to bed for the night. Admittedly, I was awake until 7.30am, but I think all the drinking make things much worse.

While I can say now I'm never going to drink as much again, chances are I will, but I can tell you that I won't be doing it anytime soon. I had a great night, and didn't expect/want to go on a really heavy night, it turned out that way.

Plastic Bags

Ok, so things are a little slow here these days. I've no major news so I've been forced to talk about plastic bags. You accumulate a HUGE amount of them. It's something I've noticed about living in the UK. In Ireland the government put a 15c tax on plastic shopping bags to reduce the number ending up on landfill sites. It's been a huge success, but it's a shame it hasn't started over here yet. They give you bags for everything, even if its just one small item. In our apartment we gathered loads of them, just for them to be thrown out again.

So in my bid to help out, I don't bother with them anymore and just say no thanks. Some people find it a little strange, but I guess they're used to just putting everything in bags. Hopefully they'll catch on here soon enough as it really is a terrible waste.

Thank You!

Just a quick one to thank readers of my blog who still have faith! I didn't expect anyone to be still checking back, but I can assure you, I'm back and reporting for duty! I actually missed it when I wasn't blogging, but it was outside my control. I was living in turbulent times (without internet)

I'm in London now, so I'll be giving my perspective of life in the big city! Stay tuned!

It really annoys me when....

.... people ask for a drink of water! Weird you might say, but let me explain. I was at hockey (of the field variety) last Saturday for a match. I've recently joined Wapping Hockey Club and am really enjoying it. For the last few weeks, its been really hot and humid while playing hockey, so much so, everyone is sweating and getting dehydrated pretty fast.

So to offset this, I always bring a bottle of water for during and after the match. While I was standing around after the game recovering and drinking water, the goalkeeper asked me for a drink. I'm like, tough job you got with all the gear, so have a drink. He was in the middle of taking off the gear, so its fair enough not to make him get his own water. He only took a small drink which was fine. I know the goalkeeper so thats cool, he can have some water. But then this other guy who I've never met before walks up and asks for a drink. I can hardly say no, so I give him a drink. The langer just drank and drank. In fact he finished it. He must have drunk about 1/3 of my water. He was drinking and drinking while I just stood there as he drank my water, that I had carried all the way from my apartment!

When he finished, he just handed it back to me and walked away! I was soooo annoyed. I mean, fair enough, I sometimes ask for a drink to wet my mouth, but I don't gulp down and finish someone's water!

It was weird that this happened, because while I was off during the game on the bench, another guy mentioned that he always notices his 1 litre of water disappears and he hardly gets any himself.

So, basically my question is this: why do people playing sports in hot weather and have suffered the effects of this, still insist on not brining their own? I guess you could talk about similar things in other parts of life, but this one recently affected me and it really annoyed me!

End of rant!

Guess Who's Back?

So, I've decided after quite a long wait to actually update my blog. God knows how many visitors I've actually lost by my lack of discipline in updating this, but what the hell.

Things have been really busy here in London. I started work here on July 18th and have been kept busy every since. I only got internet access about 2/3 weeks ago, so even if I wanted to, it would have been really difficult to update this blog. But anyway, I'm not going to make excuses, merely update you on my goings on.

I've started back playing hockey with Wapping Hockey club and have been going once a week for the past 3 weeks. I had trials last Saturday with them, which absolutely wrecked me. It was about 25C at 10am with no breeze. Running around for about 3 hours in this, isnt good for you. Not surprisingly, I passed out asleep when I got home at 4pm. It didn't help that I was out until about 1am the previous night and played a hockey match the previous evening.

The other big news is that I bought some inline skates. I splashed out abotu 2 weeks ago and have been getting back into it slowly but surely. The first few times were a little wobbly, but the more I do it, the better I become (funninly enough!) I've been using them going to and from hockey training. What takes about 30 minutes walking, takes only about 10 on skates. Well the last time I timed myself it took 13 minutes, but last night I shaved off 2 minutes (even if I did fall, only for my 2nd time!) Its such a great way to travel. If you have a good head of speed and on a good flat surface, then you just whizz by lowly pedestrians!

But alas, I won't be using them much in the winter. If it rains, then they become lethal. So I'm in the market for a bike. I'm thinking about this one but its expensive enough - £300. But before I hang up the skates for the winter season, I'm going to try out some skating around London. There a number of groups that go around the streets of London every week just for the fun of it. I reckon I might try either the Rollerstroll or Easy Peasy Skate or London Skate this week.

Well, that it from me. I'll be updating it as often as I can, which will hopefully be about once a week, if not more.