Too much time

May be I've spend too much time in Ireland.
Let me explain, last night i find myself watching the "Rose of Tralee", laughing at Ray D'Arcy silly dancing, wondering about Dubliner, at the end Aoife won the tiara.
The Rose is so different from, let's say "miss France", there is for example no swimsuit walk ( which is a bit hypocritical, when one of the requirement is not to have posed partially or completely stripped), somewhat refreshing in term of innocence, at the same time the women competing seems more outspoken than there french counterpart (or is it due to Genevieve overall control ).

In 3 years, I've seen a "brilliant" Taoiseach disappear. Bertie Ahern has been pure candy for any Irish Comic, how can they survive without him ? Just an example: as a finance minister in the 80's he did not have a bank account ....


Talking about watching stuff on TV, a series of excellent documentary can be seen at the moment on the BCC, it's called "Pacific Abyss". It follows the adventure of deep diver (-100m) in the pacific in search of new species of fishes using rebreathers.

Scubadiving Photographer

And yes even underwater, you can see some starlet and other paparazzi...


See the starlet in all her splendor:

Traffic

As the oil crisis worsen, and the price of petrol continue to raise, more and more Americans are reconsidering their use of their cars, more and more decide to commute using bicycles with some unexpected results.
As more and more people take their bike in the streets of New York, more and more agressive behaviour can be seen between the different users of the roads: car driver versus bicycle user, and biker versus pedestrians. Car driver are not used to share their space with bicycle, unlike what is happening in Netherlands (where more than 15% of the population is using bicycles ), American car driver does not seem to know how to behave nor the cyclists as most of them are newbies in the bike commuter comunity.

And this highlight the weakest link of the car based transportation system: the human factor.
As explained in the book Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt, it seems we are behaving like total nonsensical idiots when we sit down behind the wheel of a car.

An interesting fact to think about next time you're driving:
- the safer a driver feels ( because he's driving a SUV, or he's on a straight road... ), the more dangeroulsy (fast, or careless) is going to drive.
As a result roundabouts, are probably safer than red-lights intersection as it forces us to take more attention to our surroundings.
Our perception of danger in a car is false, and falsed.


Trafic movie by J.Tati

Back Diving....

Back diving (seriously) after a couple of week-end were i was not very actively diving (interrupted by work travel, and my previous dive was only in 10 meters with a trainee).

Dive Site: Pinnacle in Kilkee.


I had a lovely siren/buddy to accompagn me :

USA - First Trip

For the first week of august 2008, I had my first trip to the USA, work related, no tourism, so no pictures.

Results:

• USA - checked.
• Portland (Oregon) - checked

A very long trip ( Shannon - Atlanta - Portland ), for a very busy and interesting working week.
Portland seems an interesting place, one hour from the sea, one hour from the moutain.
Just checked for the moment....

Off course even that far away from the rainy emerald Island, we found comforting ourselves with a pint of guinness.

Childhood Dreams ?

A moving lecture:


So what have you done with your childhood dreams ?