Today is the first day this year that I left my house without a coat, in my tank top and putting my sunglasses on. How glorious to feel the warmth of sunshine and just basking in the joy of a beautiful day like this. En route to work, wanting to maximise my time out in the sun, I even strolled over to St Stephen’s Green park and sat there for a wee bit.

I’m still smiling at the memory of such little pleasure.

Perhaps this is how Mother Earth is trying to gently remind me that today is Earth Day and we really should be more proactive in looking at this planet that we’re living in. Just being aware is not quite enough anymore.

Wicklow mountains in spring

Ireland in general has been very good in staying green, with various initiative over the years including free recycling facilities (although we could do with more, at convenient locations), “green transportations” namely the Luas, and plastic bag levy (it does encourage more people to bring reusable bags with them).

However, are they sufficient?

We still have a long way to go in educating people to be more involved with green initiatives. There is still too much traffic on the road, often with just single occupants within the vehicle. Why not encourage car-pooling between colleagues and neighbours? There is still too much paper waste in the city, particularly with the free Metro or Morning Herald distribution, not to mention a whole lot of flyers and leaflets. Why not provide green bins in around the city that people can leave these paper waste in, instead of throwing them in the regular bin or worse, just leaving them anywhere.

It is easy to think that a small effort to go green has little overall effect. That could not be more wrong! Every little contribution goes a long way accummulatively. Moreover, that also means one less person who thinks his/her effort is going to naught. That should be viewed as a very positive move.

Happy Earth Day folks!

A friend of mine forwarded this link to me, and at the first glance, my thought was “surely this can’t be true - a property in Mars?”… Of course you would be curious too as to what they are offering. So go on, click on the image and have a peek at it yourself!

I have to say, this is a well thought out marketing strategy. Intriguing idea, fresh look. The website is sleek and simple yet beautifully designed, deigned to capture one’s imagination. I wish I can do some web designs that are this sophiscated. Well maybe one day, when I finally take the time to learn how-to properly.

And no, I am not paid to promote this site. It’s just the whole idea that appeals to my geeky side that I couldn’t resist bringing this to your attention. ;-)

Last weekend, I went to céilí (Irish dance) with friends of mine. We went, which I believe looked like a community center in Monks-town, don’t know the name. Until after we payed and enter the hall, I had no idea that we would actually be dancing, I thought it was more of a show like “little Riverdance”. But no.

In the beginning, there were just too many people and everyone was just bumping into each other. It looked like a Intro to Irish Culture sort of thing, as there were lot European students from Germany n France etc. in there, as you see below.

One of really cool thing and a bit funny too, had a tea & scone break from organizers in between all the drinking we were doing :). The best part, after the break, half of people left and the dance part became lot more fun and by the end of we are enjoying it a lot.

The pic below shows the dance routine called The Siege of Ennis (if i am correct) and i liked it a lot.. very cool :D. It was great fun by the end of the night.

I can highly recommend you to try céilí, its a lot of fun and lot of moves :)

In next few days, i’ll write (read: rant) about different queues, that i have noticed in/around dublin, which are not going anywhere.

Stay tuned (post ideas/comments in the meanwhile).

Continuing my last post, in addition to nice things I also noticed few not too nice changes.

One of them is very obvious insanely large queues and not sufficient space in check-in areas. With every visit, it seems that either the space is shrinking or the people are on travel spree, I hope something will be done in near future.

The other not too obvious change is around immigration process for non-eu citizens; til last year, it was just a matter of showing GNIB card and passport only. I understand that there’s a great influx of non Europeans for work or leisure reasons, but the recent two trips left a bad taste i.e. after being here in Ireland for seven years. In my last trip, on arriving to immigration counter, the guy just took a look at my passport, not even opened it or checked the GNIB card and asked me to go to adjacent counter. This other counter was closed and there was no way to return thru my original queue, anyhow, after I showed up to other counter, had to wait for a while for somebody to appear. The guy asked me straight away, without checking passport or GNIB card, “what is the reason to enter Ireland?”, for a split second I thought I am in states, “I live here”, I replied. Then a series of question, “What do you do?”, “How long you are here?”, “What kind of work?”, “What is the name of the company?”, etc etc, finally he opened the passport and took a brief look at visa and stamped the entry as if he is granting a personal favour to me. Now, he didn’t scan/read the registration card…? and I was wondering is he a moron psychic or psychic moron?

I wonder if and how this immigration madness will continue…?

Needless (and most probably useless too) to say, the Schengen countries has far more smoother process when it comes to enter the country; and that’s a total different debate that what make the Irish immigration so special that its not possible to enter Schengen zone. It will be interesting to see in 2009 when UK will introduce electronic border control system and CTA (Common Travel Area) will end.

While coming back from my recent trips abroad, i noticed few nice changes.

One of them is very obviously new areas for departure gates, very well lit and neat. Some work is already under construction, hopefully we’ll see more improvements.

As a non-eu citizen, but long term resident, it’s usually not a problem entering the country i.e. returning. Wait for the turn, show the passport and green card and in you go, in some cases it was extremely smooth, no questions asked, i assume the immigration officials can get most of the info by scanning/reading the green card (GNIB card) and basically there’s no need to verify this information if you are long term resident. This smooth process had (yeah “had” not has, wait for the next post) feel to it especially when i compare to immigration process in USA.

Hopefully the immigration process will be improved even better.

Let us know any of the nice experiences you had on Dublin Airport.

Metroblogging Dublin would like wish all its readers a very happy and prosperous new year 2008.

2007 saw a lot of our main authors for the website move on to different things in their life, we wish them good luck in all their endeavors. And we wish this year we would be able to provide much better information about the wonderful city of Dublin to all of you from all aspects of it. If you have questions, please drop us a line.

And once more, have a prosperous 2008.

Last year i posted a news about guys who were planning to sell Irish Dirt

Don’t know how popular it got but to top that a New York based artist is selling Real Irish Garbage for ONLY €30.