Merry Christmas

Finally got some snow on the ground today...2 days late, but better late than never. I've been spending time with the family and catching up with old friends (many of who have sworn to visit me in dublin...we'll see).

Merry Christmas everyone!

Just little more to the right...

I like two kinds of photographs...beautiful ones and funny ones...check out what happens when you take a picture from just the right angle.

History of Religion

High level view of how the various religions of the world spread.

CN Tower

It's coming to the end of a year and like usual, it is a time for joy and celebration...but just in a couple years, for all my dear Torontonians, it will be a time of great sorrow. I always knew this day would come, i hoped it would always be the same, but finally the end is in sight. Two years from now, our beloved CN Tower, which has put Toronto on the map for so many years as being "the world's highest free standing structure" will be surpassed by the Burj Dubai! How can this be? When someone foreign asks me what's special about Toronto...what will i say? My line about canada was always "Montreal's got the culture, Vancouver's got the beauty, Calgary's got the oil and the mountains...but TO's got the CN Tower". No one cares about the second tallest free standing structure in the world. All you torontonians out there...enjoy it while it lasts, milk it for all it's worth, because it will never be the same again. Sorry for this depressing post.

Here's a list of all the tallest free standing structures throughout history.

London

A couple weekends ago i visited London to meet up with a few old friends from seattle. Mukkul (who you remember from a previous post, or my europe trip) flew in from copenhagen and we stayed at Nick's place in central london. We partied both nights, very expensive, but a change from the dublin scene so it was all good. During the day on saturday i went shopping at a designer sale that was recommended to me by a Finnish friend. This is the type of place you'd never in your life find unless someone told you about it: in a residential area, down an alleyway, through a small door with a piece of paper above it labeled "Sale". Once inside, a different world...everything you have on you must be checked...only allowed to have one layer of clothing on...huge rooms filled with this years designer clothing (prada, boss, armani, diesel, blah, blah, blah) and people going through it like it's their job. The sale only happens 8 times a year, 4 weekends for women and 4 weekends for men...i was lucky to just happen to be in london during one of the men's sales. Discounts range from 50-80%, so some of these clothes are actually affordable...i ended up buying 2 jackets and a tie. Anyway, if you're into shopping and in the london area...may be worth a look...it's been labeled "one of the top ten reasons to live in london".

Tiss the Season 2

The numbers are in and we beat last year's amount, grand total €2700.

Tiss the Season

In most nations, christmas is a time for family, friends and loved ones. Ireland is a bit of an exception, where the entire month of december is dedicated to heavy drinking (with family, friends and loved ones). Last night we had our first (of two) christmas parties. Again, the irish do things a little different here. Back in good old north america, a small company such as ours would organize a dinner at a nice restaurant, kriss kingle, speech from the CEO, a few drinks and call it a night. In ireland, the employees get a huge wad of cash, reserve their own room at a bar and drink all night. We even had a "beerometer", a big thermometer type thing that we used to measure how much money we've spent on alcohol. Last year, roughly €2500 was downed, so the goal was to beat that...not sure if we succeeded...the beerometer got destroyed halfway through the night. Anyway, if you're ever travelling the world and find yourself trying to figure out what to do during christmas "cause everything is quite during the holidays", head over to ireland for a good craic.