If you ever wonder what An Post does with items that were lost in the postal system, due to either incorrect address, or failure to deliver but can’t be returned to sender, or simply an unnotified change of address, think no more of it. The items are auctioned off, twice a year, with the proceeds going back to An Post.

One such auction is taking place this evening and if you’re interested, head to Herman and Wilkinson Auction House in Rathmines. The auction will begin at 6.30pm.

Some of the stuff on the block today include 6 bottles of champagne, 6 bottles of Canadian whisky, a Rolex watch, Gucci and Burberry handbags, a model train set, 4 large Tom Tom drums, a wetsuit, a signed print of The Titanic, an electric floorwasher and a set of fish hooks.

St Paddy or St Nick?

My (French) friends are adamant that this is St Nicholas since Christmas is coming along soon and all, but I still think this is St Patrick. So whose chocolate sculpture do you think this is?

And whoever this sculpture is has got to eat less sweet stuff – the teeth are falling out! :p

Here’s something a bit random that I wonder from time to time, but never really took the time to clarify with the locals. Afterall, having live here for years, I’m quite sure I’m past the stage where I can ask without being embarassed about it.

Never mind, I’m asking anyway.

Foggy and a tad confused - St Stephen's Green is at the top of Grafton St?

So there are street names with “Upper” and “Lower” attach to them. “Lower” would means it’s at the stretch closer to the city centre, while “Upper” would be the stretch further away from the city centre. Is this correct?

And talking to people sometimes bring forward something along the line, say, “the top of Grafton Street” or “the bottom of O’Connell Street”. I’m going out on a limb here and deduce “top of” is somewhat equivalent to “Upper”, and therefore is farther away from the city centre. Hence “bottom of” would be similar to “Lower”, and would be closer to city centre?

In terms of parallel streets, e.g. Upper Mount Street and Lower Mount Street, the street closer to the city centre is again indicated as “Lower” and the other as “Upper”.

Am I right? Please someone tell me that I’m right, or else please help educate me in this matter. I would really appreciate it. There’s no place for embarassment in learning. ;)

In case you wonder how I’ve coped so far with people who use these terms, especially the “top of” and “bottom of” designation, I usually double check by means of landmark(s) near it. E.g. top of Grafton St – that’s near St Stephen’s Green, right? Otherwise, if I’m giving a meeting point to people, I usually use landmark(s). Just to keep everything clear and straight forward, you know.

Good day folks.

July came and went, started with some crazy overnight downpour which ended up with flooding in Dublin and quickly deteriorated into puddles of rain throughout the month. The supposed summer heatwave must have ended before we noticed it had actually came round. Oh well.

We apologised though, for the lack of news on Dublin Metblogs. It had been a crazy period of time with work, work-related travel, moving, and all sorts of randomness. We will try to restore some news regularity here the best we could.

A headline that caught our attention last month was re the use of Visa Electron. Or should we say, the lack of. Visa Electron is a debit/credit card system that somehow never quite arrived in Ireland (along with Australia, Canada and USA). Bummer really, because if you’ve been booking for flights online and look around a bit, you would have noticed, if you were paying using Visa Electron, those pesky card handling charges go away!

According to this article in Irish Independent, you can now circumvent this little issue by signing up on Entropay and get yourself a functioning (virtual) Visa Electron. Mind, there is a fee attached to using this service (4.9%) but it is still cheaper than that of charges you otherwise will have to fork out to buy your cheap flights to escape the Irish summer rain.

Giving it a try?

Directed by Derek O’Connor and Ian Whelan for the Leviathan Political Cabaret.

Seen on TheBubble.ie

Zefrank (of the Zefrank Show) and Jonah Peretti (co-founder of  Huffington Post) are in Dublin giving talks as part of “GO VIRAL WORKSHOP” in Science Gallery (18/19 April), Trinity College about viral media and how they spread across the web. Tonight they organised, more or less, thru’ twitter and facebook a flash mob sorta event, where one needed to write an A or an O on their hand and meet up at Stag’s Head on dame street and follow more instructions from there on. Once people were there, they needed to write the first letter of their first name on a sheet of paper and then try to make up words or 2/3 words poems or if you being very v. creative, with more letters. Check out the video, it was short but great fun:

Will update when they post the official video.

Cliffs of Moher

After the new 7 wonders of the world, the new7wonders organization is running a campaign to find the New 7 Wonders of Nature. A total of 261 qualified national and multinational nominees from 222 countries are participating and your votes will decide which of these 261 nominees make it to the top 77 by group categories. Cliffs of Moher, in County Clare is in the running under the seascape category and it currently stands at No. 10 in that group.

I have been getting a lot of message for Cliffs of Moher pics on flickr by Moher Man, who is on a mission to get as many vote as possible for the Cliffs. Go Vote for the Cliffs of Moher:

Photo Courtesy (with permission): dElay Flickr Profile

This is one of the most interesting (’ness flickr measure for being on top) and also one of most favourited shot when you search for the term ‘Dublin’ or ‘Ireland’ on flickr, by Dominik Banasik. Among others, personally, this one particularly strikes me, bit rainy, flip flops, beer included (holding a bottle), not very apparent, n great composition. Rightly titled ‘After Party’ by Dominik, the shot was taken in a Dublin park near temple bar (guessing st. stephen’s green, the bench is pretty cool too).

St. Patricks' Day Parade

It was a beautiful spring day for this year’s St. Patricks Day parade and thanks to pix.ie (@pixie) for providing the passes for the vetting viewing area and a wonderful photo taking opportunity. Also, thanks to the St. Patricks Festival guys (@stpatricksfest) for their good work. Have a look at some of the great shots over at the St. Patrick’s Group at pix.ie, there are some awesome shots. Also if you have photos from the parade, do share them with the group.

OK, something a little light-hearted for a change. This video has been making its mark on the cyberspace for a while now, and it doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. Since it features Dublin in the course of this video, why not share it here?

Out of curiosity, I did a count and there were 68 cities visited throughout the course of the video, from 42 countries. To travel all these places within 14 months is very impressive. Of course it helps to have a sponsor that pays for the travel.

Considering my travels are all self-funded, I’m proud to say I’ve been to 13 of the 68 cities featured in this clip. Yay! Of course there are places that I’ve been which Matt hasn’t, and vice versa. I’m hoping to be able to hit the road in reasonably near future and who knows where my next travel adventure will bring me to… ;-)