Mmmm pizza and beer

I was invited along with a few other bloggers to a “Budweiser ‘Behind The Scenes’ Blogger Evening” by the lovely Cliodhna of WHPR, which took place last night in the salubrious surrounds of their office on Ely Place.

We were promised pizza, beer and a preview of the new Budweiser advert, first airing of which will be on Saturday afternoon on Sky. There were funky aluminium Budweiser beer bottles a-plenty, a truckload of pizza, and finally the watching of the video. We made them play it three times in a row. It’s a cool and funky ad, the kind that you hope will come on in the next ad break just so you can fill in the bits you missed on the last ad break. I’ve seen it now six or seven times and I’m still noticing bits I’ve missed up to now!

Take a look:

In conjunction with the release of the ad there will also be a competition for people to record their own bit of the ad and upload it to the site Alltogethernow.ie (to be launched 4 July 2009) for a chance to, first off, win a case of Budweiser for the first 100 entrants – woo! – and also to be in a second version of the advert to be made up of snippets of videos and photos uploaded by people around the country after they’ve seen the ad (depending on the quality of entries of course!)

Thanks to the lovely ladies at WHPR for hosting an informative, fun and lovely evening last night- I’m looking forward to seeing the uploads of people’s own versions of the ad in it’s various parts

You can read some more comprehensive reports on the night from Christian and Darragh.

Date for your Dublin diaries

Folks, particularly Dubliners…Monday July 27…stick it in your diary, put a reminder on your phone, circle it on your calendar…for this is the day that Ikea will open in Ballymun.

The M50 will be a disaster for at least a month…you have been warned!

RENT, the musical

Thanks to Culch.ie I was able to go see the DCU Drama society’s production of RENT in the Olympia on 15th June last – thanks Culch.ie

I had seen Rent before in the Olympia several years before with my younger sister so the story itself was not new to me. I had forgotten lots of it though, especially that it had a few numbers that had stuck with me afterwards. As others have said, the lighting was not good on the night and neither were the ’special effects’ if that’s what they are called-at one point the two characters on stage were almost swallowed in a cloud of dry ice.

The story itself – who knew someone could have so much fun with AIDS, drug addiction and homelessness? I found it fairly easy to follow, the actors were quite good, their singing was brilliant but I was asked on my way out what the hell it had all been about? So maybe my prior knowledge had been of some help. Although an enjoyable evening, I felt that the whole thinkg went on a little too long.

There were some fab numbers though, such as the Tango Maureen, La Vie Boheme and my personal favourite Seasons of Love:

Well!

Well Father, it’s been almost a month since my last post

I have been incredibly busy with life over the past few weeks. In fact I have not spent a full weekend at home since probably some time in May! There was the brilliant Carlsberg Cat Laughs weekend in Kilkenny over the bank holiday weekend with DarraghChute in the middle too, followed by a trip to Spain the following weekend for a wedding, a trip to Cork for the Street Performance World Championship the following weekend and the Dublin leg of the Street Performance World Championship the weekend after that (last weekend). Of course I was ‘home’ for that but out of the house all day over the whole weekend.

Whoah, I am tired all over again just thinking about it. My body is tired, my skin is in bits, my hair needs looking after as does the rest of me really. So I’ll be taking it easy this weekend I think. Unless I get the call to go help out a friend in Carlingford with her visiting family…which from the text I just got is distinctly possible!

Oh well I can sleep when I’m dead.

What’s that Father? At least two blog posts a week?

I’ll see what I can do.

Take a parachute and jump

Or a ‘darraghchute’ as all the cool kids are saying this week

Ever had Darragh help you out with something? At an event? On Twitter? A kindly comment on your blog? A bit of advice about your online presence? A phone call made or received?

Think how much that was worth to you and donate it to the charity, Carelocal, for whom he is jumping out of a plane.

Considering he only started fundraising this week, it is amazing that he has crossed the €800 mark but I think we can do better than that!

Plenty of his friends have blogged it already (as well as the man himself) and hopefully he can hit €1000 before Saturday – that’s just €170 more.

Go on, give him the price of a pint for the pair of you and watch him attempt to tweet, livestream and podcast his descent

Presidential poop

So. Our usual weekly trip the visit The Granny this week left me with at least three blog posts. If she knew I blogged about her on the internet she’d be none too pleased but secretly a little delighted I reckon.

Anyway, my favourite story of the evening went a little something like this.

The Granny: “I have an appointment at the Áras at 6 o’clock on Friday”

Really? She’s been there a couple of times before with the ICA and the likes, so this was not big news.

TG: ” At the back gate” Interesting…“with a Garda” Excuse me? What? Secret rendezvous with a Garda at the back gate of the President’s home?

She’d been in a local petrol station recently and a Garda had come in. She asked him if he was with the ‘animals’ outside – a pair of Garda horses, one of which still had the other Garda sitting on it. “I am”.

“And are you from Blanchardstown Garda station?”

“No we’re from the Áras”

“I see. I’d love to know how could I get my hands on some of your horse’s manure for my garden?”

Garda tells her no problem at all, that she should come to the gate of Áras an Uachtaráin at 6pm on Friday evening for a bag of his horse’s finest poop. Writes her name and number in his little black book and promises to call her beforehand. So fingers crossed for her that the young Garda makes the call today and she gets her poop. Apparently she added in ‘the back gate’ for special effect, he only told her to come to ‘the gate’.

Like that story needed any embellishment

I hope the people going to Bloom nearby, or indeed Mr. Donegan, don’t all hear about this or everyone will be queuing up for their bags of presidential poop!

Double vision?

Recently Darren blogged about some photos defying explanation. This one has a very simple explanation but there is still sooo much about it, I don’t know where to start!

The shell suits, the hair, the chokers, the chaps…I can only shake my head in wonder. As one commenter on the website said:

They all woke up in the morning, got dressed, did their hair and said to themselves in the mirror “I look GREAT today”

Managing Your Career in A Difficult Economy

Recently Krishna De tweeted that she had 10 free tickets for bloggers for something called ‘Managing Your Career In A Difficult Economy’. Intrigued I followed the link to her blog where there was some more information on the event.

The event is taking place on April 22nd at 5.30pm in the Ballsbridge Court Hotel and is being hosted by Osborne Recruitment and PA Assist.

As a result of attending this evening seminar you will:

• Learn practical strategies for boosting your motivation and self confidence at a time when we need it most
• Discover ways of coping with fear when we are pushed outside our comfort zones
• Get clear as to how you can ‘fuel’ your positivity and become a source of inspiration for yourself and others
• Know how to move from reactive to proactive by taking ownership of what is within your control
• Discover practical tips to manage your career through networking online and making the most of new media to recession proof your career.

Speakers were James Sweetman, Brendan Murphy and Krishna De herself.

So I signed myself up with Krishna and made my way to the Ballsbridge Court Hotel on Wednesday 22nd April.

After some teas, coffees, biscuits and mingling we got underway. First up was James Sweetman, a business and personal life coach with “Staying ‘Up’ In Down Times”. James gave some simple but sensible tips on how to keep your mood elevated during these times of doom, gloom and unemployment.

Simple things such as don’t be a bad news junkie-be aware of what’s going on but don’t let it swallow you up!

- Acknowledge your fears, are they real fears or fear of something that doesn’t even exist? If they are real, what is the worst that can happen?

- Acknowledge your own strengths, push yourself out of your comfort zone, take control of things that are within your control.

Next up was Brendan Murphy from Osborne Recruitment with the assurance that even he was not sure how long he’d have a job for (a good long while I hope, Brendan). However he did give some guidance as to which industries were still hiring at this time – apparently education, health, insurance, ICT (information and communication technology), languages, bio-sciences and pharmaceuticals are all still working away and hiring.

Lastly up was Krishna with a talk on what she called ‘The Online Personal Branding Revolution’

Krishna gave us all some very clear and helpful advice on how to brand yourself online to be found, how to protect yourself and your name, how to make contacts and be noticed on the likes of LinkedIn and develop your profile organically, keeping on top of Google Alerts for your own name, your company and your competitor’s.

Overall this was a very helpful and encouraging seminar.

I found James to be a very uplifting and motivational speaker with Krishna then coming on to give practical advice on how to apply all of the motivation and energy he had generated.

I think a few more seminars like this would be beneficial to many people out there at the moment who are either job seeking or looking to start their own business. However I will point out that with the type of people likely to be looking to attend these seminars, I think whoever decides to run the events should consider a discounted rate for those not in paid employment or offer a certain percentage of places to unemployed people free of charge or in exchange for them talking about the event, much as I am doing here

Cash flow

So, last night myself and my sister went to pay a visit to The Granny. We hadn’t phoned beforehand so there was a bit of a lull between our two rings of the doorbell and actually being verified, identified and allowed in the front door. Luckily it wasn’t raining!

The Granny had had a bit of a shock yesterday and proceeded to tell us the whole story. Her being her, she can’t tell the short version of the story and even though it all occurred on Tuesday, the story began with a bag of spuds bought last Saturday. Don’t ask.

The short(ish) version of the story is this…new (shorter) opening hours at the post office meant that she had missed collecting her pension for the past few weeks and so collected a big wad of cash there yesterday.

Wad of cash

The lovely lady in the post office wrapped it up in a money bag for her and she popped it into her coat pocket which buttons shut and off she went to the supermarket a few doors down to buy a few groceries.

When she got to the till she put her hand in her pocket – no money :O She had a small amount of cash elsewhere to pay for her few little things and then went to the information desk to ask if the money had been handed in. No such luck. At this point the lovely lady at the information desk calmed her down while helping her search through her things again, then whisked her off for a cup of tea – “a beautiful cup, you’d think they’d boil all the oxygen out of the water in that kind of a place but it was lovely!” – and went off searching several times for the money along the aisles etc. while checking back with The Granny to see how she was doing.

Eventually she was ready to leave and decided to head back to the post office one more time since it was now re-opened after lunch (must have been a long cup of tea!). She queued up again, got to the counter and explained her predicament to a different lady behind the counter, not sure if she had been pick-pocketed or dropped it or what. The lady leaned over to her co-worker, said something to him and he turned to The Granny and said “Oh it was YOURS was it?”

Apparently some young lad had picked up the packet of money in the post office and handed it in. The Granny reckons she thought she had slipped it into her pocket but may in fact have just dropped it on the floor. The pity is that nobody noticed while she was there and that they never took the name of the guy who handed it in either…she really wants to find out who he was so she can give him ‘a few bob’.

Moral of the story – be very careful what you do with big bundles of money and there are still honest, decent people out there

Of course she wants to get rid of the coat and it’s matching scarf now because they are ‘evil’….

Steamy…

Yeah I’ve already posted this over here but I love it, so it’s going here too for your entertainment

This was shown last night before a movie in Cineworld and elicited a huge laugh from the audience, myself included.

Love the punchline!