Dear Diary

I woke up briefly around 12 noon today with the sound of roadworks outside my window. Right outside. I was a little confused about the time and day for a while and thought how inconsiderate it was to have roadworks this early on a Sunday morning when people may be wanting to have a lie in. After a while it dawned on me that it was Saturday not Sunday, that it wasn’t that early and that it wasn’t that noisy either so I turned on the heating put in my ear plugs and went back to sleep for a while.

When I woke up again around 3pm the flat had warmed up and the roadworks had stopped.

I had to go into town today to do a few small things. I needed to get some keys cut. I wanted to buy a new book and also a pair of gloves. Most of all I wanted an excuse to go into town to buy KFC. I’m a slave to the three-piece Colonels meal.

For a change I walked into town. I’m only 15-20 minutes walk from the city centre and the bus would take about 10 plus the wait at the stop so there’s not much difference but the lazy streak in me usually wins. Anyway today it didn’t and I walked.

Actually before I set out I hadn’t even thought about buying gloves. It was only as I walked and started to realise how cold it was that the idea of the gloves occurred to me. I was already wrapped up in a fleece jacket and a monkey hat but as I walked I started to see how useful a pair of gloves could be to me.

I haven’t been into the city centre much recently but I was impressed today by how busy it was. It seems that the Christmas shoppers have finally arrived.

All the news about recession and global economic downturns, coupled with how quiet it’s been in the taxi business lately has made me pessimistic about my employment prospects for the moment so it was kind of encouraging to see all the shoppers in town this afternoon and the almost empty taxi ranks.

I didn’t do much shopping myself. I find that the best time to do your Christmas shopping is around 10am on a Monday morning. The shops are all open but the crowds haven’t arrived yet.

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Say Hello To Rod

This is Rod, my second surviving bonsai tree. I bought it yesterday on impulse when I went into the Bonsai Shop to buy some soil. The soil was in order to repot my Serissa Foetida and Orange saplings which were starting to outgrow their existing pots.

As usual though, it wasn't possible for me to enter the shop without checking out all of the trees on display. Most of the indoor trees on sale were either ficus or serissas and since I already have a healthy ficus bonsai tree I wasn't too interested. In any case I thought my own ficus, which I bought from the same shop last year, was a better specimen than the ones on display yesterday.

I'm willing to admit though that that may be purely through the eyes of love. One ficus might look much the same as another to someone else but I'd recognise my one anywhere!

I wasn't interested in buying a serissa no matter how good they looked because I'd already bought one of those and I know how fussy they are to keep. A serissa is not a good tree for a beginner. Mine died slowly over several months. Luckily I took a cutting from it before it died because that cutting is all I now have of the €50 tree that I bought!

The one tree that caught my eye was this Pepper Tree (Zanthoxylum Piperitum). I haven't been able to find out much information about the tree so far. None of my bonsai books mention pepper trees and I haven't been able to find much on the web either. Even the shop assistant, who claims to have 300 bonsai in his home country, didn't know anything about it.

Hopefully I'll do better with it than the Serissa!

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Let It Rain

One of the things I could never understand was how, in a country famous for its rain, all it takes is for a few weeks of dry weather before we start hearing about water shortages.

I still don't fully understand it but this picture illustrates the problem. This is a lake in Donegal called Lough Keel after about six weeks of mostly dry weather. It's normal level is almost up to the top of the platform. On the second pillar from the left you'll see a red and white bar which is measuring how far the water level has dropped. So far it's about 85 inches.

Part of the problem is that we take our water supply from lakes. These are not just reservoirs. They also have their own ecology which is damaged if the water level drops too much. That is where the panic comes in. While there may still be plenty of water in the lake we can't completely drain it or allow it to drop below a certain level or the lake dies.

After finding out a bit about this I'm now torn between hoping for more nice weather and realising the need for rain.

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Let the Sun Shine

Summer is just around the corner now and the last couple of weeks of mainly good weather has given us a taste of what it should be like. Hopefully we will have a good summer this year. Everyone's mood is lifted in good weather and there is nothing to beat the feeling of stepping out on your day off in a light t-shirt and a nice pair of sunglasses.

There are many styles and brands but one of the all-time classics is Ray Ban Sunglasses. It's a brand name that I've always associated with quality. I found a large selection of them on OpticsPlanet.com.

In addition there were all other types of optics available there too, from goggles and binoculars to night vision scopes. I can't imagine what I'd want a night vision scope for but there is something very appealing to the boy inside me to have one!

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The Mobile Phone Killed The Sit Com

I'm a big fan of Seinfeld. I’m currently rewatching the entire show. So far I'm about half-way through series eight.

Not everybody likes Seinfeld and even I have to admit that his stand-up routine isn't so great but I do love the show.

It occurred to me last night that many of the gags in the show wouldn’t work if they were tried today. It's not that peoples sense of humour has changed that much but rather that many of the situations were dependent on the characters making arrangements with each other and then not being able to contact each other. That just wouldn’t work anymore in the mobile phone age.

It's hard to remember now what it used to be like before mobile phones. How you would make arrangements to meet somebody somewhere and then you would have to meet them there at the pre-arranged time or else miss them. Nowadays we can just make the "I'm running late" or the "I can't see you, where are you" call.

That's why they really had to cancel Seinfeld: Nokia.

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Protective Cover for a Apple iPhone

I remember when mobile phones started to become widely available around ten years ago. The biggest accessory for mobiles at the time was a leather case. Indeed, for the first couple of years of mobile ownership I felt that my phone was almost naked if I didn't have it in a leather case.

The fashion trend for leather cases is just about finished at this stage and now you hardly ever see one. Todays mobiles are designed to be attractive and are shown off rather than being encased in leather.

The most attractive phone today is definitely the iPhone. I'm still holding off on buying one but it is tempting to own one before most other people.

Obviously people want to protect their iPhone and keep it looking as good as new but the idea of covering it up in a leather case would really take away much of the show-off value of owning one.

A solution to this is see-through iphone cases which protect the phone from scratches but also continues to show it off to all your jealous friends and work colleagues.

The see-through covers are made from the same material that the military use to protect helicopter blades. That sounds pretty tough for something that’s only .2 milliemeters thick!

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Europe, I Hardly Know Ye

The great musical farce of the Eurovision is over again for another year. I didn't see the song contest but in the course of random flicking I came upon the scoring at the end of the contest. As a child I usually didn't watch the songs either although I couldn't avoid some of them as my mother did watch it. Even then I used to enjoy watching the scoring and even then it was mainly for jingoistic reasons.

I don't think the Eurovision Song Contest ever was about the music. In the end the scoring came down to one country's list of its favourite European states. The main difference in the old days though was that some consideration to artistic taste would be allowed and so it would sometimes be possible for a song that was actually quite good to win.

The other difference was that in the old days you would know something of the history and geography of the other countries in the contest. The thing that struck me as I watched the scores coming in the other night was that I hadn’t even heard of some of the countries taking part in the contest, let alone know where they were or anything about them.

I remember in the past reading sneering articles which poked fun at Americans and how many of them couldn’t name all 50 states or place them on a map. This seemed to be information of vital importance to the health of a nation. It was also a good way for Europeans to feel superior even though we only had 12 names to remember.

It occurred to me watching the Eurovision last night that not only do I not know where many of these countries are on a map, I don’t know how many of them are members or candidate members of the EU. I’m not even sure how many countries are in the EU.

With a referendum on another Treaty coming up shortly which I don't know anything about, these are greater worries for me than whether or not a western European country will ever again win the Eurovision.

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