I guess I never really thought about how long I would keep it on for but time went on and one day I realised I had been wearing the thing for a year. I decided at this time that it was now a challenge to keep the armband on for as long as possible. Soon after the one year anniversary, however, the armband began to go downhill. The colour rapidly faded and the whole thing in general went into a state of decay. Friends and family began to moan about how unhygienic it was but they just didn’t understand. This was my trusty armband that had stuck by me for an entire seven month round-the-world trip.

I remember one particular occasion when I was in hospital having an operation. I was about to go under general anaesthetic when the nurse advised me that no loose jewellery or accessories were allowed in the operating theatre and I would have to remove my armband. I stared at her in disbelief and protested that once the armband was off, it would remain off.
“Well”, she retorted. “It will just have to come off then.”
“Over my dead body”, I thought. I argued with her for about ten minutes and when she realised that I would literally rather not have the operation than to part with my beloved armband, she compromised. I was allowed to keep it on as long as it was taped up with about six layers of masking tape.

However, I was conscious of the fact that the armband was gradually becoming more and more flimsy and so a few months ago I made the decision to cut it off on the second anniversary of the day I was shackled to it. I would like to have seen how long I could keep it on for but I fear that it might get ripped off some day when I wouldn’t notice. What an unfitting end to our journey together that would be! And so, today, the first day of September 2008, the second anniversary of Electric Picnic ’06, I am removing my best friend from my wrist. Below is a list of some of the more memorable moments we’ve shared as well as a couple of pics from the detachment ceremony. May the armband rest in peace in Electric Picnic memorabilia heaven.

Memorable moments shared with the armband
A holiday with 5 friends to Bodrum, Turkey where I took my first scuba dive and danced in drag on a stage in front of several hundred English holidaymakers

The aforementioned operation to have pilo nidal sinus removed from my lower back under general anaesthetic

Riding a horse up a dormant volcano in Banos, Ecuador

Trekking the four day Inca Trail through the cloud forests in Peru to the ancient city of Machu Picchu

Journeying three layers deep into the Cerro Rico mountainside to visit the silver ore mines, the walls of which were thick with asbestos

Exploring the tropical wetlands of Brazil known as The Pantanal

A trip to Ushuaia, Argentina – the southernmost city in the world

A visit to the weird Moai statues of Easter Island, one of the world’s most isolated inhabited islands

Diving to a depth of 18 metres to explore the underwater life of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia

Hiking along a portion of the Great Wall of China

Taking the famous Star Ferry in Hong Kong

Investigating the ancient Temples of Angkor in Cambodia

Struggling to reach the top of highest peak in Indochina – Mt Fansipan, Vietnam

Tubing down Nam Song River in Vang Vieng while enjoying a bottle of refreshing Beer Lao

Partying at the world famous Full Moon party on Haad Rin beach, Ko Phangan, Thailand

Travelling an approximate total distance of 88,975 km (55,287 miles) around the world in seven months

Being part of the great sporting moment that was the Heineken Cup Final 2008 - Munster 16, Toulouse 13

The many trips I took to London in ’07/’08 to visit my girlfriend Aileen

Cruising the River Shannon for three nights with my housemates

Countless booze-fuelled nights out on the town with a variety of very agreeable people

So here’s the deal: Ali went away to Portugal last week on a family holiday. Usually we take opportunities like this when he’s not around for an extended period of time to play a trick on him, say wrapping random items in his room in clingfilm, general bog-rolling of his room, eating all his food…ok thats lame but you get the picture. Anyway, this time round I wanted us to do something pretty decent, something that would take a while to achieve, something that we could be proud of. Dan and I threw a few ideas around but we didnt settle on anything. Cue last Wednesday - I decided it was time to start something or we’d end up doing a rush job 2 hours before he came home on Saturday. Armed with an armful of newspapers, a large bag of maltesers and a cold six pack of Corona (courtesy of Mike), Dan and I set about covering everything in Ali’s room in newspaper. Grum and Aily shortly followed and we spent the next few hours morphing the room and its possesions into an art piece. Everything got covered or “papered” if you will - chests of drawers, bin, chair, some clothes, wardrobe, radiators, bathmat, shower thing that holds gel + shampoo, toilet seat… the list goes on. Over the course of the next three days we completed the room. Anything that couldnt be covered (plant, guitar stand, dumbells) was moved away into a different room for effect.

Anyway, enough… here’s the short video that Dan put together from all the footage we took along the way. Check it out, and enjoy!

(or you can view the video on YouTube.com HERE!)

- wig -

I finally got around to edting a video together for our 4th of july party we had a couple of weeks ago!! Check it out on youtube!

Howdy all! Thanks so much to the people who came to the party, especially all those who gave us some kitchen towel Hats off to Ian who supplied us with some great tunes and entertainment too! Great news was that it wasnt actually too hard to clean up the next day incase you were worrying about me and the lads :p

Wig went around for a bit with my camera, so when I get some time I’ll put something together and I’ll post it.

Here’s a little video Clem took during the strobe rave You can hear Grum begging in the background for “One More Time” along with some random screaming!

I’ve noticed over the past few days that there’s a bunch of photo’s floating around FaceBook from the party. I put a bunch of them in the photos section so check them out!

America…
America…
America, FUCK YEAH!
Coming again, to save the mother fucking day yeah,
America, FUCK YEAH!
Freedom is the only way yeah,
Terrorist your game is through cause now you have to answer too,
America, FUCK YEAH!
So lick my butt, and suck on my balls,
America, FUCK YEAH!
What you going to do when we come for you now,
it’s the dream that we all share; it’s the hope for tomorrow

FUCK YEAH!

McDonalds, FUCK YEAH!
Wal-Mart, FUCK YEAH!
The Gap, FUCK YEAH!
Baseball, FUCK YEAH!
NFL, FUCK, YEAH!
Rock and roll, FUCK YEAH!
The Internet, FUCK YEAH!
Slavery, FUCK YEAH!

FUCK YEAH!

Starbucks, FUCK YEAH!
Disney world, FUCK YEAH!
Porno, FUCK YEAH!
Valium, FUCK YEAH!
Reeboks, FUCK YEAH!
Fake Tits, FUCK YEAH!
Sushi, FUCK YEAH!
Taco Bell, FUCK YEAH!
Rodeos, FUCK YEAH!
Bed bath and beyond (Fuck yeah, Fuck yeah)

Liberty, FUCK YEAH!
White Slips, FUCK YEAH!
The Alamo, FUCK YEAH!
Band-aids, FUCK YEAH!
Las Vegas, FUCK YEAH!
Christmas, FUCK YEAH!
Immigrants, FUCK YEAH!
Popeye, FUCK YEAH!
Democrats, FUCK YEAH!
Republicans (republicans)
(fuck yeah, fuck yeah)
Sportsmanship
Books

- artwork by Dan

First you’ll need 1×300g pork steak, 6 streaky rashers, a few slices of bread, an onion, a stick of celery, an apple, some fresh thyme and 4oz butter.

First, cut two of the rashers into small pieces and fry until crispy. Set to one side.

Next, chop the celery and onion into small pieces and fry in the same pan as the rashersfor about 10 mins until they are soft.

Next, make breadcrumbs out of the bread and mix in with the fried rasher bits, the celery, the onion, the butter melted and some thyme to make stuffing

Next, cover the pork steak in a sheet of cling film and use a rolling pin (or like me, a beer bottle) and stretch out the pork steak. This will tenderize the meat as well as making it easier to stuff.

Then place the stuffing inside the steak, roll it back to its original shape and cover with the remaining rashers. It is a good idea at this point to leave the steak sitting in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Finally, heat the oven to 190 degrees and bake the steak for about an hour. Just before it is done, peel and slice the apple and cook in a tablespoon of water in the microwave until soft. Then mash with a fork and serve with the steak. I also decided to have some stir-fried broccoli with it too.

Jack of Speed on BalconyTV!

Here’s a fantastic short of some breakdancing ninjas directed by the one and only Aiden Gibson. Breakdancers are P Kean and Horse Henderson! The song is Europa by the James Taylor Quartet.

In case you were not aware, Alastair “not so cross” Cross turned the brand spanking new age of 24 (who’d ‘ave thought it?!) on Sunday. We celebrated it in the usual style - romantica with pink, blue and yellow birthday candles, 2 flavours of jelly, party rings and bucks fizz. A joyous occasion all round!

As is the usual way with birthdays, we got him a present. Here it is…

WOW!!! What a game! I can honestly say that I havn’t laughed as hard as I did when we played this in a LONG long time. Here’s a tip for Buckaroo fans - remove the base of “Roo”, play normal rules and se what happens - absolute genius! Heh

Ended the day with “play time” in the basketball courts near the gaff. Amused ourselves with a combination of football, bike, skateboard and a belt. Fun!

I noticed when Ali was sitting down having a rest that there was something amusing on the wall behind him, so couldnt resist a piccy. Can you see it? Heh…

Well thats all from me for the moment. Happy Birthday dude! Cheery-bye, until next time…

Saturday was one of those days that any radiohead fan would have had trouble sleeping the night before. I can’t include myself in that list, primarily due to a healthy concoction of pints baby guiness’ (guini?) and silver bullets (Thanks Paddy!) the night before, and so it was with a heavy lids and even heavier head that i was roused by a scorching sun blasting though my so-called curtains.

So as we all know now, it was the perfect day for an outdoor gig! In our case, a fairly complex plan of action was called for to ensure that all guilty parties were assembled in or around the right time and place for some pre-gig fun. There was a theoretical group of 8 of us who were to head up to a mate Roisin’s not-so humble abode in Malahide for a BBQ and drinks. Kudos goes out to Roisin at this point, who very graciously permitted myself and Dan to show up with 6 of our smelly friends without so much as asking what area code they resided in or whether they would be bringing anything to the table other than their hungry, thirsty selves.

Eventually a troupe consisting of myself, Dan, Wigs, Clem and Amel was assembled and we piled onto a dart at about 1pm. Along the way we picked up Fi and Ignazio-a friend of mine from work. Mike, the supposed 8th member of the group was, as usual, not to be heard from. I still amaze myself that I find this surprising even after 6 or 7 years…

Malahide was a hive of activity, choc full of sullen shoe-gazing kiddies, mental foreigners who’d travelled half way round the world in that morning alone probably, sweaty hippies and even sweatier Gardai (although, the Gards were noticeably less euphoric than the hippies..). We cracked open a few tinnies for the walk to Roisins, no doubt to the shock of the well-spoken residents of Malahide, who probably haven’t seen a tin can since rationing was around.

After about 15 minutes and due in no small part to my superior navigational skills (Grum, take heed) we

arrived at Roisins. We were some of the first to arrive (apparently I wasn’t the only one hungover). The next few hours were spent basking in the rare but hot Irish sun, eating barbecued chicken, sausages, burgers,

pasta salads, fresh rolls, topped off nicely with fresh strawberries and mini meringues, all prepared by Roisins very obliging mother - nice one! All this was nicely washed down with some tuborgasms and general banter. To top it off, we could hear the sound check from her garden too which only added to the anticipation of what was to come!

Eventually we collected out things and meandered over to Malahide castle. I have to say the whole thing was very well organised. They even had the foresight to cater for those people who just couldn’t neck a whole can 30 seconds before the entrance; after entering the main gates, we could hear someone announcing over a megaphone “If you’re drinking, please stay to the right” - needless to say, most people were heading right but we kept going to the main area. Overpriced pints in hand, we met Mike and his brother who drove in (I’m gonna be telling Thom Yorke about that!). We wandered down to the stage where the support act Bat for Lashes was playing. She sounded very Bjork-y and was entertaining for a time, but all the songs started to sound very similar after a while.

All this time the sun was blazing overhead, and we were convinced that Radiohead were waiting until it went down before coming on stage, which would have suited them really…all this time we spent cheering at the riggers who deftly scaled the rope ladders to the top of the stage, and the techies who just couldn’t seem to tune those guitars enough. However, just before the sun dipped below the tree line they came out to a roar of applause.

Now, perhaps I’m not the most qualified Radiohead critic, mainly as I am fairly unfamiliar with Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief, but most of their set was clearly taken from their later and/or more experimental array of songs. That’s not to say they didn’t play some oldies (The names elude me now, please understand we had been drinking for most of the day..) but either way, they put on a brilliant show, Thom living up to his image as someone so out of place that he’s come a full 360 and belonged so much that he didn’t really seem aware of it.. that sounds kinda bullshitty, but you get my drift.

Its funny that Radiohead made a point of telling their fans to try and reduce their carbon footprint when coming to the gig, ie, by cycling or taking public transport. Funny for two reasons, one because their light show alone probably opened up a hole in the ozone layer the size of a small African nation, and two, because some dude in front of us had a sign that said “Is your light show solar powered?” - A fair question you might say, but we saw him throttled and punched before the gig was over by people, who, clearly upset by this snide remark (perhaps their fathers work for Esso..), took it upon themselves to deliver their own personal form of justice. Either way, the sign didn’t last too long..

The show over, a few thousand people about turn and start walking ( I say walking, but it was mostly staggering) to find an exit in the warren of trees and hedges. Most punters had come by dart, which ensured a mass pile up at the station, resembling something from a farmers market on a Saturday morning. The trains too were even a seasoned rush-hour commuters nightmare, and I had some

idea as to what it must have felt like to be packed into a freight train on its way to Auschwitz…only we all had the relative luxury of thick booze jackets and spent the time encouraging the petty theft of advertisements, making the whole journey that bit more bearable.

After this it was on to Doyles where the night continued to the wee hours, as every Saturday night should…

Many Thanks to Ignazio for the photos (more in the gallery)

Here’s their setlist from the night

1. 15 Step
2. Bodysnatchers
3. Airbag
4. Bangers and Mash
5. Nude
6. Pyramid Song
7. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
8. The Gloaming
9. National Anthem
10. Faust Arp
11. Videotape
12. Optimistic
13. Where I End and You Begin
14. Reckoner
15. Everything In Its Right Place
16. All I Need
17. There There
18. Exit Music (for a film)
19. Jigsaw Falling Into Place
20. Climbing Up The Walls
21. Planet Telex
22. How To Disappear Completely
23. Supercollider
24. You And Whose Army?
25. Idioteque

Every morning, I am woken up by my alarm at 7am. I turn over, hit the snooze button and grab an extra 15 minutes of sleep. Once my 7.15 alarm goes off, I’m out of bed and into my dressing gown. I walk downstairs and prepare my morning juice. With my juice in my hand, I head back upstairs and on the way, I turn on the pump for the shower. I spend the next twenty minutes beautifying myself with a shower and a shave and a scuab of the old fiacla. Following this, I quickly get dressed and head to the dart station. This is when I start to get annoyed.

As I approach Glenageary dart station, I am confronted by two young foreigners – one male one female - but both with the same agenda. They both want to burden me with a copy of the daily rag that they are paid to hand out. Yes I’m talking about the Herald AM and the Metro “newspapers” – the scourge of the morning. Actually, the girl who hands out the Metro is fairly cute and I enjoy smiling at her every morning but my mood quickly changes to irritation when she forms a barrier to the entrance of the station with her Herald AM counterpart. The idea is that they make it difficult to enter the station without acquiring one of these rags however I pointedly refuse to accept one – even if the cute girl smiles at me.But that’s not all! My journey to work from here takes 30 minutes and over the course of that half hour I am presented with the same problem three more times. Once at the exit of Grand Canal Dock station, once at Baggot St Bridge and yet again outside my place of work – Bank of Ireland Head Office. When I board the dart, I am frequently required to move copies of the “newspapers” off a seat in order to sit down. As the dart fills up, the rags are moved to the floor and by the time the train arrives in town, a massive amount of litter has accumulated throughout the carriages. Some people elect to take the rag with them off the dart however this only defers the problem do a different time and place. The rubbish bin at the exit to Grand Canal Dock station is constantly overflowing with the rags. As people walk by and see that the bin is full, they simply toss the paper on the ground. I’ve even seen one guy discard his papers on the ground surrounding the bin only to acquire new ones five seconds later from the distributors standing outside the station!

Aside from the massively unnecessary number of these rags floating around the city each morning, I have a problem with the content. I mean it would be one thing handing out all these papers if something substantial and good was contained inside but nothing could be further from the truth. The level of reporting in the Metro and Herald AM is absolute bottom of the ladder journalism. In fact, I don’t think it even qualifies as journalism. www.iclasses.org defines journalism as ‘a style of writing for presenting bare facts to describe news events’. Bare facts?! That’s a laugh! I think if anyone were to read any of the “articles” in the morning rags with any kind of scrutiny, they will find that bare facts have been replaced with sensationalised nonsense and silly captions that would be more at home in a children’s book. These papers are nothing but a collection of short words in large font with some bright pictures for people to look at. Very often, sentences don’t even make sense. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t hold the Sun or the Star in any higher regard. But at least the people who read these are paying for their own rubbish. In the case of the Metro and Herald AM, the papers are forced on us for free each morning and we read them because we have nothing else to do on the way to work.

Well a long time ago I decided I wasn’t going to be subjected to this crap. I always bring a book with me to read on the dart and if I ever want to find out what’s happening in the news, I buy an Irish Times which is on sale just inside the door of Glenageary dart station. I am shocked at how many people read the tripe contained in the pages of these rags. People who otherwise command respect in society lower themselves each morning to a level beyond comprehension. And what about the kids? Every morning dart contains large numbers of school kids, most of who are also reading one of these papers. What are these kids going to grow up to be like if they keep reading this stuff? My old Leaving Cert English teacher, Ms. Duff had a way of dealing with it. Whenever she caught someone in the year reading a rag like the Sun or the Star or the Mirror, she would grab it off them, tear it to shreds and tell the student they would be in big trouble if she caught them reading that rubbish again. That was before the days of the Metro and the Herald AM but I have no doubt that Ms. Duff is equally as appalled by this scourge as I am.

In addition to the litter caused by these papers and the complete crap inside that they call news, I can only imagine the energy wasted on producing them. In an age where we are supposed to be as green as possible and reduce our carbon footprint, here we have two companies printing out tens of thousands of sheets of paper a day. And for what? So we can have our news dumbed down for us and be spoon fed it like children? So that tomorrow’s generation think that short words in big font together with a bright picture and a “clever” caption is news? For the four week period between 31/3/08 and 27/4/08, the Metro produced twenty issues averaging 75,805 individual papers a day. If each paper contains 30 pages that’s over 2.25 million pages produced every working day. If ever there was a contributor to global warming…

I urge people to do everything they can to stop this madness. There is no good at all that can come from the production of the Herald AM and the Metro. If enough people boycott them, maybe finally they will be shut down. Let’s all work towards a city where trying to catch a train or bus doesn’t mean being accosted from either side by rag pushing fiends. Or where people’s knowledge of current affairs does not stem from sensational claptrap. Let’s purge the scourge!

If you know us, you know that we love Guitar Hero and just over a week ago a new game called Rockband was released and was delivered straight in the loving arms of Gaffbhala. The game is exactly the same as the GH series only that RB comes with a mini drumkit and microphone enabling 4 people to play at the same time on drums, bass, guitar and vocals! A perfect game for me and my fellow housemates!

I’ve been playing it quite heavily over the past week or so and the other day I managed to complete the solo tour on the drums on hard mode. I sat my self down for a few hours every evening after work and ploughed my way through it.

My next step is to step it up a notch and try and complete it on expert difficulty Which should be fine for half of the songs but there are some pretty tough ones once you get into the tour! What I’m looking to though is that after I complete the drum solo tour I have the whole guitar tour to look forward to!

I left work at the usual time of 5pm on Friday 23rd May 2008. Except this time I had a bit more of the Friday feeling than usual. I was finally on my way to Cardiff for the European Rugby Cup Final between Munster and Toulouse. I had bought tickets way back before the season began and Munster had come a long way, fighting to come top of the pool of death and beating both Gloucester and Saracens in away quarter and semi finals respectively. Now they faced the giants of European rugby, Toulouse, in a very fitting end to their European Cup campaign.

My excitement heightened as I passed through security and noted that the vast majority of travellers that evening were dressed in red Munster jerseys sporting the familiar white Toyota text. As I approached my gate, it became clear to me that supporters were trying to get to anywhere at all in the UK that they could, regardless of distance from Cardiff. I presumed they would later worry about getting to Cardiff from Glasgow, Newcastle or Manchester or wherever they were flying to. It never ceases to amaze me how determined Munster fans are to get to a match.
In my case, I was flying to London. I had purchased plane tickets back in March when it was definite that Munster had topped the pool stages. At that point, air tickets to Cardiff were already sold out and tickets to nearby Bristol were averaging over €200 each way. There was no way I could afford that and so I opted for a set of €20 each way tickets to London Gatwick. I planned to stay with Aileen on the Friday night and head to Cardiff on a coach on the Saturday morning. Even with the added cost of getting to Aileen’s place in Blackheath by train and the return coach ticket to Cardiff, the total cost of travel was nowhere near what it would have been if I’d flown to Cardiff or Bristol.

So off I went and arrived at Aileen’s later that night with no problems other than the usual one hour flight delay. The only task of importance that needed to be performed that night was to wash my Munster jersey and a few other clothes. I had failed to dry my washed clothes for the weekend and so I brought my bag of laundry to work on Friday with the intention to get it tumble dried at a laundrette during the day. Unfortunately the laundrette was too busy to do it and I was forced to bring the clothes to the UK with me. By the time I arrived at Aileen’s, the washed clothes were smelly from a day and a half of being in a plastic bag and so I had to wash the whole lot again. However, as you will soon find out, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

At 7.30 in the morning, Aileen and I woke up and set off on the journey to Cardiff with my bag of freshly washed clothes! First we took a train from Westcombe Park to London Bridge. From there we were able to get the tube to Victoria Coach Station where we grabbed a connecting coach to Cardiff. By the time we arrived at Victoria Station, we were running slightly late and couldn’t find our coach. After a few seconds glancing around the bus station however, it was obvious which coach was ours. It was the one with a massive line of people waiting to get into it – all wearing red Munster jerseys. Great stuff! I even bumped into Thom, a bloke Fi and I met while travelling around Bolivia last year.

The coach ride was fun with a great atmosphere inside it albeit a lack of air conditioning. There was even the odd French person on the bus although they weren’t wearing Toulouse jerseys. The journey was scheduled to take 3 hours and 15 minutes and we were only thirty minutes late arriving in Cardiff due to a massive queue for the toll bridge just outside the city. As soon as we arrived we were treated to a spectacle like none other. The sun was blazing down on a glorious day in Wales. The streets were jam-packed with Munster supporters and plenty more were spilling out of the pubs. It was only 1pm and everybody seemed to be drunk already!

I got in touch with a friend of my cousin Richard who we were renting an apartment from and we grabbed a cab to meet him. Once he had given us the key and showed us around we swiftly freshened up by having a shower only to discover there were no towels! It seemed we were destined for an intense drip-dry session when I suddenly remembered that the random bag of laundry I’d been carrying around included a towel! Not a big one mind you but enough to do the job. One quick bottle of champagne later and we were in a cab again, travelling back towards the stadium. By this stage, the inner city streets had been closed off to traffic and the taxi driver dropped us as close to the stadium as he could. This suited us fine as it gave us an opportunity to do a bit of walking around and soak up the atmosphere.

The scene on the streets was even better than two hours previously. The crowds were bigger, redder and rowdier. A crowd had a rugby ball and were kicking it as high as they could into the air. It was the responsibility of the person who caught it to kick it back up again for somebody else to catch – that’s if it didn’t land on your head! At one stage, the ball went to ground and about 6 people dived on it. It looked messy but eventually one guy came up tops and hoofed the ball over a building. There was a large noisy groan from the crowd who were disappointed their game had been cut short. However, several seconds later the ball appeared from the other side of the building and landed in the middle of the crowd. Of course this was immediately followed by a loud Irish cheer.

I’d been texting my Uncle Mike a bit that morning as he was also travelling up from London on the train with two of my cousins. Although it was approaching an hour before kick off, we headed to a bar to meet up with them briefly. Soon after that we were on our way inside the stadium. We were in section U34 which is fairly high up about halfway between one of the try lines and the 22-metre line. We climbed up and up and up and all the way we could hear the booming crowds from inside the stadium. Eventually we got to U34 and as we stepped out we were awed by an incredible sight. The stadium was only half full at this stage but already the noise and colour were breath-taking. I was also pleased to note that our seats were actually at the front of section U34 and not as far back as I thought. The only disappointment was that the stadium roof was closed despite the fact that it was a glorious day outside.

Aileen wanted to queue for a couple of drinks so I left her to it and headed for my seat to soak up the pre-match atmos. As I took a better look around the stadium, I realised I could not see a single Toulouse supporter. Of course, this was made difficult by the fact that the Toulouse jersey is also red however I still expected to see a few. I couldn’t even hear any Toulouse chants. The lack of opposition supporters was further emphasised when the MC announced each Munster and Toulouse player one by one. At one point, the MC called out Ronan O’Gara’s name which was greeted by a deafening roar. Immediately following this, O’Gara’s Toulouse counterpart was announced - Jean-Baptiste Elissalde. Although Elissalde would be a highly respected and experienced French rugby player, there was a barely audible murmur in response to his name.

Aileen arrived back with the drinks just in time for kick-off and things got going. In retrospect, the game panned out pretty much as it was always going to. The first 20-30 minutes, Toulouse appeared to have the edge. They had all the possession and were making all the attacks. However, they never really threatened the Munster line and it became clear that Munster were trying to wear Toulouse down – and it was working. Once they had lowered the French team’s confidence to the desired level, Munster turned things up a notch and moved into attack mode. From this point on, Toulouse never really had a chance.

The try came shortly enough before half time. Toulouse had a scrum on their own line however such was the standard of Munster’s scrummaging that day that the Toulouse number 8 picked the ball out of the scrum, only to be immediately greeted by Tomas O’Leary and Alan Quinlan. The Toulouse player was buried and the scrum awarded to Munster. Several passages of pick and play followed Munster’s resulting scrum and a short while later, Denis Leamy was being driven over the line by Donncha O’Callaghan and Alan Quinlan. The score would have been 10-3 to Munster at half time had it not been for a Toulouse penalty late in the first half.

The second half continued with Munster busy locking the game down. They were ahead and they were going to make it stay that way with a little help from the supporters who were by now launching into the umpteenth rendition of ‘The Fields of Athenry’. About half way through the second half, Cedric Heymans threw a small spanner in Munster’s works when he performed a beautiful double chip and chase to get past Munster’s otherwise impenetrable defence which resulted in a Toulouse try. It was the only piece of play of note from Toulouse and it came down to a tricky manoeuvre that it takes a player of Heymans’ stature to pull off. The last ten minutes were as nail biting as ever for a Munster game but finally, Munster were awarded a penalty and the final whistle sounded. Full time. Munster were champions of Europe again with a score of 16-13.

At this point, the reason for the closed roof became clear. Once the Toulouse players had accepted their medals and quietly slipped off to the dressing room, the main floodlights were turned off and an atmosphere of suspense was created by blue and red spotlights. The medals and cup were awarded to the sound of screaming fans and some fireworks but unfortunately we were on the wrong side of the stadium to see properly. The players did however do a lap of honour, pausing at each section for the fans to get a good look and take some photos.

After a while, Aileen and I slipped off to do some celebrating with the 60,000 estimated other Munster supporters in the city. Alas, the celebrations were not to turn out as expected. I had been off the booze for four weeks at this stage and I severely underestimated my lack of tolerance for alcohol. That’s not to say that I drank a particularly large amount, but it meant that a few hours later, I was far too lethargic to be doing anything and we headed home at around midnight. Slightly disappointing but it didn’t at all take away from the magnificence of the day.

Thanks to my newfound lack of tolerance for alcohol, I awoke the next day with an unusually heavy hangover. Thankfully, I had little to do other than travel that day. Once we’d settled up with Richard’s friend for the apartment, we headed into the city for an onwards journey to London and then on to Dublin for me. One of the main things I noticed about the city the next morning was the cleanliness. As you can see in some of the photos below, the streets were utter carnage by the time we left them after the match. By the next morning, the place was spotless. The officials have obviously got the clean-up operation down to a tee.

It was a great weekend, one of the best of my life and certainly not one I’ll ever forget. Talk about something to tell the Grandkids! Tickets are already on sale for the Heineken Cup Final 2009 but I’m not sure if buying them this early would be tempting fate! See below for some photos from my phone and Aileen’s camera.

I’ve made a couple more songs the past few months in my boredom. So if you liked my post a couple of months back you might as well have a listen Check them out below or download if you fancy!

Belts

Download

Twelfth

Download

I have decided to get into game development as a hobby and what better way to start than try and get into Microsoft XNA. The nerdy rundown speil: “Microsoft XNA is a set of tools, complete with a managed runtime environment, provided by Microsoft, that facilitates computer game design, development, and management. XNA does this by freeing game designers from writing “repetitive boilerplate code”, and brings all aspects of game production into a single system.”

I’ll start by downloading the XNA development platform and I’ll try and look through some of the examples, tweaking around with some of the code. I have never programmed in .NET before so it might take me a while to get into it. But if its as simple as microsoft say it is I might be able to get my head around it. My housemate Ali also shares an interest in this so we’re going to try and combine both our efforts and design a game over the summer.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and I hope we’ll stick with it. Hopefully,we’ll have a simple game up and running that we can deploy on my Xbox 360 at the end of the summer

Let the nerding commence

For those of you who don’t know him, he is an electric guitar user, abuser and maestro. There are few people in the world who can actually extract juices from an instrument, but he is one of them and he’s playing in Vicar Street tonight at 7:30pm.I’m heading in with a few lads from work to view this guitar orgy first hand.

Suffice to say, ill probably come home and break my guitar into pieces because Ill never be that good.

Check out his myspace here for tracks etc.

A long long time ago I was sitting in a bar (how many stories start with this sentence?!) with Ali and his mate Dave from college amongst others. I noticed that Dave would regularly say “chat to you” whenever he was saying goodbye to somebody. However he didn’t pronounce it quite that eloquently. He kind of said it so fast that is came out as “chacha”. I thought this was hilarious and I took it on myself, saying chacha to people as a farewell.

Fast forward several years to gaffbhala where the phrase ‘chacha’ was adopted by Ali, Dan and Wig too. Its use was even expanded and the word chacha began to be uttered as an exclamation. For example, if Dan were to mess up a really easy section on Guitar Hero, I might say “Oh! Chacha!”. So anyway, as with most slang, the more we said the phrase, the more it morphed into other phrases. Some of the changes it went through were Chechnya, Chechnyan Jazz, Chechnens and finally ended up at simply ‘Chechens’.

So imagine my surprised last night when I was around at Emsy and her mum’s house and I noticed an article lying on the kitchen table about Chechens! I could hardly believe my eyes! So of course I took a quick snap with my phone and here it is. For everybody to enjoy in all its glory. Whatever next?!

On Friday morning a bunch of us (Ali, Lap, Lex, Mick, Róisín and Myself) are heading over to Minehead over in the UK for the music festival, All Tomorrows Parties! The festival is curated by the fantastic band, Explosions in the Sky! All Tomorrows Parties happens many times a year all over the world, and each time a different band takes on the role of inviting their favourite bands to come and play! So if you really like the band hosting, you’re bound to like the rest of them. Some highlights are: Battles, Broken Social Scene, Dinosaur Jr, Mono, Four Tet and De La Soul!

The festival is held in Butlins Holiday Centre over in Minehead and apparently all the activities will be available to us! So we better make sure we pack our swimming gear as there is a huge water park there! We’re sleeping in a six bed self catering apartment in the resort too which will feel very odd at a festival! So tent fun for us!

We’ve got an early flight on Friday and a mid afternoon flight back on Monday so we’ll all be getting two four day weeks in a row Hate that people in employment!

A goof friend of Gaffbhala was in Japan and came across this in the street. Grioch is big news over there!