Category: Ireland

Ireland Blog, Circa 2002

I finally got around to importing my old Ireland trip blog into WordPress. It documents the month long trip my wife and I took to Ireland in 2002, and which was taken to fulfill a research component of the M.A. program in Hawaiian Language and Literature program that I graduated from in 2003.  It is written in Hawaiian.

Memories of Musicians Institute

In spring 1985 I moved to Hollywood to attend Musicians Institute. On the first day of instruction all of us students (@500) gathered in the school’s performance auditorium for orientation. As a “getting to know you” exercise they had all of us in odd number rows (I was in row 1) turn around and introduce ourselves to the person directly behind us, then stand up and introduce that person to the rest of the class. Yes it took a while. The fellow sitting behind me was a guitar student named Nick Nolan, about 19 years old. He was also the…

Curbing The Clutter

view original Originally uploaded by lylamerle I thought we did a really good job of cleaning house and getting rid of a lot of things that we’d likely never use again before taking off for Aotearoa in January. We sold a lot of things in a garage sale, some went to the Salvation Army, and anything left over was taken to the dump. Our perspective on clutter changed a bit after our experience in New Zealand. We only brought those things that we felt we needed to survive, and likewise we bought few things that would need to be sold…

Pixenate: Photo Editing On The Web

One of the reasons I had neglected to use pictures in posts here for so long was the fact that in order to do any kind of editing (other than simple resizes) of the pics I needed to fire up Photoshop. Let’s face it – I’m not that into photography to take the extra steps required. When Scott came onboard and began to use pictures in every post I decided I needed to get with the program. A few weeks ago Walter Higgins posted a Jaiku asking for people with WordPress 2.5.1 sites who were willing to test his Pixenate…

Paddy Tax

Pat Phelan has been on the warpath since O2 announced its pricing scheme for the iPhone deployment in Ireland on March 14. Alexia and Conor find a few more Paddy Taxes that O2 hoists upon its customers. If you look deep enough it is in much of the telecom industry, though there are a few exceptions like Pat’s own ventures and (for a particular kind of user) MobiPCS back in Hawai‘i. But by and large the major players all treat customers like potential prey instead of valued customers – it’s death by a thousand razors, or Paddy Taxes. My wife…

Here’s To You, Ronnie Drew

Irish musician Ronnie Drew is battling cancer and a host of Irish musicians decided to honour him with a song. The song “The Ballad of Ronnie Drew”, is a collaboration, written by the Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, with Bono, the Edge and the former Golden Horde singer and songwriter Simon Carmody. (With a tip o’ the hat to Pat Phelan)

Countdown To Liftoff Has Begun

My wife, daughter and I have begun to make final preparations for our trip to Aotearoa. We head to Honolulu on Saturday and from there leave for Auckland on Sunday. Our travel arrangements were finalized over a month ago, and we’re now simply preparing our final checklists and making sure nothing is forgotten. I spent some time this evening going through my computer bag, and found a manila folder full of documents from our aborted trip to Ireland. Contained within it were the refusal letters we were handed after being turned back from the Dublin airport, a faxed copy of…

More Immigration Lunacy In Eire

I would not wish upon my worst enemy the experience that my wife, daughter and I had in Ireland. While James Britton’s situation is a bit different than ours, it is no less pathetic. The GNIB wants to deport his 4-year old son! I wish it was possible to sue the country and force them to abandon their “Land of a Thousand Welcomes” motto – it was anything but for us and certainly is not for James. I wish I could offer him some advice, however, as we received no joy by involving the press and politicians (as well meaning…

Final Thoughts On Our Dublin Disaster

We stopped in Las Vegas for a few days of R&R before heading back to Hawai’i. Flights were cheap and hotel prices reasonable in mid-week. Doing any gaming was out of the question with the string of bad luck we’ve been on, so we’ve just wandered the town, tried a few rides, saw Blue Man Group last night, and will perhaps catch a movie on this, our last day here. There has been continuing interest in our case back in Ireland. I’ve received calls and emails from various newspapers, some of whom have written about our ordeal and are following…

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