petra & claudius masuch

Back in July the Best Company of All put me in a plane to the lovely island of Sri Lanka, formerly know as Ceylon, to spend a couple of days in Colombo, its capital city.

To be honest, I wasn’t too impressed to go there but nevertheless excited. Not impressed mainly due to yet another 12 hours or so flight, and excited as the city saw several bomb explosions over the last year, with many people killed and even more injured.

Anyway, that shouldn’t keep me from flying there, as I haven’t been to this part of the world before (well, I have been to South EAST Asia - but not South Asia), and I was keen to see how a democracy under civil war like conditions can survive. (Hm, living in Ireland now, this should be known picture, but luckily it has calmed down here quite well).

Given it was a work trip there wasn’t “of course” too much time visit tourist places - but also  given the local contact was incredible friendly and caring, we had a Sunday to make a trip to visit a Elephant sanctuary and some very impressive temples. Check out some pictures here.

Colombo, the capital, is probably one of the more depressive places I have ever had the challenge to spend a week and a half. Checkpoints every couple of hundred meters, more scam artists than in an Austrian ski-resort, and the general impression that a foreigner is only seen is a walking bag of money ready to get emptied.

The country itself clearly suffers from the civil war - although the “real” fighting is in some areas in the north of the country only. Places give the general impression of being run-down, there is hardly any investments visible. The government - although democratic - has tight control of media and newspapers.

People are very friendly (even those who don’t try to scam you), and the nature and landscape is stunning once you get out of the city.

Would I go there for a holiday? No.

On Saturday, Schpotzl and I went into town to join the crowd for the Maritime Festival. As I was slighlty confused that day, I forgot to bring a camera so unfortunately no pictures.

Anyway, we took the Dart into town and went straight into the beergarden (or do I have to say winegarden?) of Ely’s Wine Bar at Dublin’s chq. The weather was great, so we thought it is the best point to start a afternoon in the city, especially as we both were slightly hungry and a getting a cold drink was really necessary. In addition, I have never been there before so I was eager to see what’s on the menu, and to also to take a look at the extensive wine menu.

Well, to make it short: it is a perfect location (if there is a festival in the Docklands or you work in the IFSC), the place itself is very nice, the menu of a manageable size. The prices are at the upper end of the comfort zone, but the food at least is ok (ok’ish). The wine menu is extensive but again you can get better cheaper. The most disappointing, however, was the extremly friendly but utterly useless staff exhibition. Well, I do understand why prices are 30% higher than appropriate - the total mismanagement of the place requires high prices as you definitely cannot work with quantity. As mentioned above, the quality is nothing you want to wait for so I think it was my first and last visit of that place. I assume the owner still make loads of money, but if they cared just that little bit more about staff training and quality, they could actually make shitloads.

But we were looking forward to the festival so after just over an hour (during which we have been able order a salad, a sandwich, two apple juice and some water, but no chance for more) we left the lovely place, heading towards the docks.

The festical itself was the quite usual mixture of loads of different food places, a Weissbier place, arts and stuff - but the big difference was the professional buskers, comedians, bands, etc. And of course: loads of ships, all to visit for free. We had great fun looking around, grabbing some beer and some snacks, listening to a great sould/blues band and in general walking around with open ears and eyes.

Good day in the city. Good place to live.

I was very unhappy back in December. As I did not get any tickets. For The Boss. Life in Dublin. In Mai 2008.

However - in the week of the three(!) concerts there were of course loads of 2nd hand tickets available.

So I bought and we (that is, Schpotzl, I, and 30.000 others) went to one of the three shows in the RDS - a very nice location in the heart of Dublin’s posh D4 district. It was a great crowd, gorgeous weather and an absolutely brilliant show. No fancy change-your-costume-every-song stuff, just 2 and a half hours of rock. Absolutely great. The E-Street-Band as good as ever. You could see and feel how much fun the guys had.

Worth the 80 quid? Absolutely. The Boss might get older but the music and show is as young as ever. I will be there if he comes back.

The last two month were too busy to care about the blog. Busy with work (whatever), busy with visting friends (All the best, Felix!) and busy with: yesss - house hunting!

Although we didn’t win in the lottery we decided to go the whole hog and finally get to rest for some time - which means stop whacking out a fortune on rents and start spending even more on repaying a mortgage.

The typical Austrian way would be to buy an acre of land and plan and build your home with your own hands. However, it is sort of different here: I’d say pretty much the same amount of sweat and tear plus a hell of a lot of annoyance about property prices and real estate agent attitude. Anyway - I won’t comment on the “property boom” in Ireland (just google for it and you will see and hear more than enought to be scared for a lifetime).

So what we did is

• Spent a couple of weekends driving and walking around almost every part of Greater Dublin to see which areas are nice enough to actually
• spent evenings and weekends looking for houses in the nice enough areas that are actually effordable without applying for a mortgage fire-arm style
• wasted some time on visiting the totally wrong properties until we slowly started to get behind the real-estate-advertisement gibberish
• prepared the paperworkto apply for a mortgage.

To make it short: we have put one offer in which was turned down (to low) and currently thinking about raising the offer or not whilst continuing to visit nice places. Whatever happens - we are looking forward to finally have our own place (owned by The Bank).

As already mentioned earlier we spent a couple of days “back” in Austria. And what’s the coolest thing todo whilest there in Winter? Skiing, of course:

We spent a week in Austria, staying at the house of my in-laws. We planned to do some serious skiing but (unfortunately) visiting relatives and friends took more time then expected. Anyway it was good fun, good food and we even had time for some beer. Unlike last year there was at least enough snow to do some proper skiing. Some pictures can be found here.

I haven’t been back there for pretty much one year and it was interesting to see how things change - or how they don’t change. It was, indeed, good to see the family and friends. Irritating enough, though, was the fact that I do care less and less about Austria in general. Two indicators: First, I actually realise how amazing some of the geography there is (the Alps are fascinating after all). Second, I get less and less annoyed (can’t be explained). Both tells me that I see my former homeland more as a sight-seeing destination, with the excited interested of a tourist and less as a place assigned with memories and personal history. This subsequently leads to the answer to the second-most answered question during the trip (don’t you think it is a great country after all and when do you return to live here?): No plans to go “back” in the foreseeable future.

All that CO²-carbon-emission discussions of the last years finally started to have some impact on me. I am not going to put my opinion down whether I am with Al Gore on his crusade to save the world from climate change, but at least I sat down and took a look how much CO² I “produced” last year just by flying around - Especially as it says on climateprotect:

“Scientists estimate that aircraft already cause about 3.5% of human-caused global warming.”

(Well, I do wonder which scientists, and how they estimate 3.5% of a value that - as far as I am able to understand - cannot be pinned down? It certainly makes a good headline, though.)

Anyway, I took a look at my notes and itineraries for 2007 and - I was quite suprised. Finally it is clear why sometimes I couldn’t be arsed to leave the house at weekends. I was, indeed, travelling a lot - 26 roundtrips or 56 individual take-offs. 60,860 kilometres travel by air (that makes around a complete week of hanging around at airports). But I have the chance to “offset” the 8.18 tons of CO² that I apparently created for the bargain of just around 85 Euro. Isn’t that cool? I fork out 85 quid to have a clear conscience! That really gives you a warm feeling, doesn’t it?

So - I don’t have plans to REALLY pay the 85 Euro (this is not really surprising, isn’t it?). Or should I? Would it REALLY make a difference? Especially as I am quite confident that they wouldn’t have cancelled one single of those flights if I wouldn’t have been on it. Although this of course is the default argument for not accepting any responibility because there is always a reason one can find not to do anything. But honestly - what is going to happen or better what difference will it make if I do offset my 8 tons of CO²? Isn’t it all just bullshit maths to buy you a that warm feeling of “Yes! Take a look at me! I really do care!”. Did I mention that you will get a very nice certificate stating how much tons of carbon you paid for? Put it in a frame a behind your desk so that EVERYONE can see what a good boy you are.

Let’s take a look at the other side: How many of those flights could have been avoided? Let’s see. 40 of the individual flights where for work, 34 of them trips to Gatwick. Avoidable? Maybe. Not sure. The other 16 where private trips: A holiday trip to Spain in May. We could have spent another week at the Irish westcoast. Ok. A trip to Salzburg in Jan for the in-law’s 60th birthday. Not really a way around it. A trip with the lads to Budapest for the weekend. It was good craic. A trip to Vienna to visit my Pa and wife. Avoidable? (Absolutely!). A trip to Barcelona to celebrate a friend’s 30th Birthday and have a really good weekend. Again - good craic. A trip to Northampton for a post-wedding party. No way around it.

There you go. The Power of One? Indeed. I think I am going to change all the light bulbs for CFL’s and walk more often…

My VirusScanner subscription run off at sometime back in February. Not an ideal situation but - as I take care where to browser and what to click - I felt comfortable enough with this situation. Especially, as a renewal for a year was around 80 Euro or so (and there is always the possibility on going for www.freeav.com). Anyway, a couple of days ago a letter to the editor of the Irish Times was reporting intersting pricing differences in exactly this area with exactly the software I am using as well. So I checked prices again.

Going to www.symantec.ie the price for a subscription renewal is: € 59.90 (most likely plus VAT).
Going to www.symantec.com the same renewal comes for $49.90 plus 7.50 VAT. With the current $ exchange rate this sums up to €39.99 plus some change for the foreign currency credit card payment.
Savings: around €20.00 or a whopping 30%.

Fair enough - the Dollar is at an all-time low so no wonder. But: even with 1:1 parity the price would still be less! This is even more annoying thinking about distribution costs (nil), shop maintenance (the UK/Ireland shop runs within the .com page), and the delivery nature: one email with a 20-or-so digit number.

I would prefer to buy a the Irish store as at least the VAT stays in the local economy - but 50% more for the exact same service? Sorry, next time maybe.

Two weeks now since I arrived in Metro Manila. Haven’t seen as much as one could, but maybe enough to be utterly impressed by the experience. Anyone ever speakin’ about diversity? Maybe this is the place to go to see what it means to have a diverse society. People living (or maybe only just not yet dying) in places and huts you wouldn’t even bother to knock down but just burn - if a fire could actually find enough stuff to keep running. Three, four, five year old kids on street corners all day and night trying to sell stuff or to beg some money out of any passerby.

This is one part of Metro Manila, an area being home for almost 10 million people.

On the other hand the World’s third largest shopping mall, busier on a regular Sunday than Times Square on New Year’s Eve. A skyline that would be good enough for any US East Coast city. Traffic from Hell with a higher rate of SUV’s than in Dublin. More security for any building than one would find useful for Heathrow Airport. An air quality like an active Vulcano. 30 degrees centigrade with 85% humidity and no wind. Did I mention the air quality? I have sore eyes since I arrived.

Also a terrific landscape and some sunsets (ok, I only have really seen one). I put some pictures on the web, just some from the city and a couple more from a one day trip to the Taal Volcano south of Metro Manila - it was about time to get out of the city, for some fresh air and a nice walk. First time for me to see how Pineapples are grown (right out of the soil).

Just about another week to go - maybe I find time to some more sightseeing in the city, there should be good places to visit. It is/was my first trip to South-East Asia and a more than worthwhile experience.

Or actually, from ABOVE Russia, cruising @33.000ft sipping a GT. Life is always good but sometimes it is just BRILLIANT… Cheers!