“€150 or a broken nose”. Just one, of very few quotes I remember from last night! We decided at around 8pm to try find an Irish pub. I don’t know what it is about the Irish and our tendency to gravitate towards overpriced pubs whose claim to be Irish is just an excuse to charge us more! Thankfully we ran into a few Irish people who were only too happy to buy us drinks all night! That’s about as good as my night got though!

Fast forward a few hours and we were stumbling out of this all you can drink bar. Well, the lads stumbled out, I had some black bouncer drag me out after he jumped in over a toilet cubicle to get me while going for a piss… or get sick, I can’t really remember! Apparently you can only stay an hour but I think I managed to drink back my €45 in that time.

Only one more day to go. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, or a bad thing!

Having all be up for in excess of 24 hours, we decided to have a quick snooze before heading out to sample the delights of Amsterdam, but to be more specific, the delights of the infamous Red Light District!

One of our first destinations was a coffee shop but somehow we managed to walk into probably the only coffee shop in Amsterdam that only sells coffee and doesn’t allow smoking! At least coffee is cheap here… but at the same time ridiculously overpriced given how much it costs them to make!

We eventually found a genuine coffee shop and found ourselves being led down a basement which is where the magic happens. Even though the place was a legit as such a place can be, I couldn’t help but fear we had stumbled upon some strange sex club and were about to be given the Pulp Fiction treatment!

Afterwards, we went from alley to alley and no matter what street we were on, we found ourselves in a giftshop of some sort. I think we’ve stocked up on enough novelty t-shirts, keyrings and mugs to not give to our own families, but pass on to further generations as well! We met a lovely couple from Cork who were telling us their story… then they tried to sell us drugs! After we declined their kind offer, they warned us not to buy anything off of the blacks as they’ll only try to rip us off! I think that’s called sour grapes rather than actually caring!

We’ve only seen the real Amsterdam on one or two occassions, when we unwittingly wandered outside of the Red Light District! I’m hoping that tomorrow I’ll go explore. The weather will have to be better though as it’s done nothing but rain since we got here. The only sun we saw was at 30,000ft… and I don’t think I can get that high…

It could only happen to us! We arrived at Belfast International Airport 5 hours before check in having somehow missed the clearly sign posted bypass and made our own way to the airport by driving through village after village. Despite the fact that at one point we thought we were the only people on the Amsterdam flight, we still managed to find ourselves at the back of a long queue!

Thankfully we weren’t kept waiting for long and the check-in ladies were hot enough to pass the time. We were somewhat late for check-in because we found a bar serving at 4am. We must’ve been on our 4th pint by time we stumbled upon the check-in area! We boarded the flight and waited eagerly for the drinks trolley to come along! Even though we were flying through the air at 570mph, we still drank away, oblivious to the fact that it was still only 7am!

Needless to say, we were absolutely hammered landing in Schipol Airport and asked every single person in a high-vis jacket for directions, even the builders! What struck me straight away was that almost everyone has great English, and to think that I was going to bring a dictionary! While most people were happy to help, some people wanted money in exchange for the directions. It may have only been €2, but I didn’t want to pay for the privilege of being sent 5 miles in the wrong direction!

So you’ve probably guessed that I’ve arrived safely, which is always a good start to a holiday. No matter what way we leave the hotel, we have sex shows and coffee shops waiting to take our money… I can’t wait!

During the week I decided it would be great to go to Amsterdam, y’know, to see the tulips and what not. Aer Arann now do flights out of Waterford airport direct to Amsterdam… but we’re flying from Belfast instead because the got them for dirt cheap and I didn’t complain because I wasn’t the one driving!

We left at 9pm and made it up to Belfast for 1am, in plenty time for our flight. Unfortunately we have a bit too much time on our hands and we find ourselves in an empty airport 5 hours before check in opens! It was beginning to seem a bit like Dawn of the Dead until people started showing up! The first sign of life was watching two porters having a wheelchair fight!

I spotted a Bank of Ireland ATM up here so I decided to take out some money here as I’m not sure my card works abroad. Here is where fatique becomes apparent because I simply assumed that because I was at a Bank of Ireland ATM, I was in Ireland! A naive assumption it was because I soon realised that I had just selected £200 in sterling!

In the middle of an empty airport with nothing to keep me occupied, I took my new found wad of crisp £20 notes and went straight into an arcade to try spin it up. I won £5, but that was after putting £20 into it! I’m such a degen!

Thankfully I’ve found Wifi which should keep me entertained until check in opens in a few hours. The only minor gripe I have about it is that I have to keep searching for signal by walking around holding my laptop open. This isn’t a problem now, because the place is empty and I could probably take off my clothes and start thinking about what’s going to happen in Amsterdam!

I’ll keep you updated!

In order to let the dust settle and allow myself to settle my nerves… and ensure I didn’t go to jail, I decided on delaying this post for a while, because there’d be nothing worse than sharing this story of jubilation only to find a Garda at my doorstep the following day…

First I think I’d better clarify what I mean by the title. You’ll be glad to know (or perhaps you aren’t) that I’m not calling you a fudge packer and I don’t want you to suck my cock but instead I’m alluding to a little altercation I found myself caught up in when I was out last week that involved myself, my friends and some random drunk who whipped his lad out in front of me in the middle of town at 4am! What happened next was a fusion of homophobia and double vodkas!

We first met Mr X on our way back into town from the Forum, the alternative nightclub in Waterford. We were a little bit later than usual because I insisted on us waiting behind for a girl I had met that night only to discover that she had actually left in a taxi to only God knows where about a half an hour before the place closed! I didn’t even get her first name which goes to show how good I am at pulling!!! Mr X made the assumption that because one of the guys I was with on the way back had long hair, that we were all gay. I’m not quite certain whether or not he was gay himself, but he did demand that we all suck his cock!

I managed to ignore him for the best part of twenty minutes as he followed us all the way shouting at us like the prick he was, in part I’d like to say that I have great self-control, but in actual fact it was because I was eating chicken and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let HillBilly’s finest chicken go to waste over some fucktard. Finding out that I had ate all my chicken in record time pissed me off enough, but then I look over and find this guy coming over, pulling down his pants!

Now I’m not sure if it’s because I was annoyed that I had ran out of chicken, or because I didn’t want some guy whipping his cock out in front of us but I dropped what little food I had left onto the ground, put my head down and speared him to the ground! That’ll teach that knob not to whip it out in public! Unfortunately for me, as I was doing it, I remember that I’m in the middle of town and look up to see a squad car speeding towards me, and around 7 Gardaí sprinting up to us! I attempt to flee – well, walk away – but I’m called back by one of them!

I look across and tardo is being bundled into a Paddy Wagon and driven off into the distance and I’m almost certain that I’ll suffer a similar fate! To my surprise, I’m merely quizzed for a few minutes about what happened before being told that I was lucky that they saw what was happening and was asked to give my name and number… not even an address! I’m given a warning and am send on my way. My friends can’t believe what just happened – I attack someone to the ground, in what would have looked like an unprovoked attack to anyone else and instead it’s the guy who found himself on the wrong end of a shoulder charge that’s taken away to the station! Of course I’m not complaining!

I got home only to find myself locked out so I had to resort to sleeping in the garden. I then woke up a few hours later with my head spinning and puked up an entire chicken fillet burger with a lovely garnish of bile and vodka! If that wasn’t bad enough, I woke up a few hours after that with rain pissing down on me! Karma works in strange ways though!

For the past three years, I’ve been employed in industries which have been fairly reliant on people having money floating about! I’ve worked in a hotel since 2005 and have slowly seen its trade deteriorate! As of the beginning of this year, I’ve joined an industry that’s been very reliant on the Celtic Tiger, the poker industry! I have seen drastic changes to both industries in a short period of time and as the country starts to tighten their belts, I’m forced to follow!

Last year I’d be lucky to go a day without a bus load of medicated Americans pulling up at the door of the hotel. I don’t use the term medicated lightly, because I swear to God they each have one suitcase for nothing but medicine! If the fat bastards exercised every once in a while then they wouldn’t need as much…. just a thought! Anyway, rant aside, this year the hotel is dead. Barmen are scratching their balls instead of pulling pints, porters do nothing but fluff pillows and receptionists invent phone calls to keep themselves occupied. Last year the average wedding size was in the 200s, now we’re lucky to see weddings of a 100 grace the premises! I think a situation last week is the best example of how bad things are getting, I was in the bar for a function of 50 people for a Wedding Anniversary. After 6 hours, the total drinks bill came to under €100. That’s an average spend of 33c per person per hour! You could argue that they weren’t heavy drinkers, but I alone would have spent €100 quid in 6 hours!

The poker industry in Ireland is something that on one hand can be said to be flourishing, but on the other can be said to be floundering. While record numbers of players are reportedly making a living from it, it’s clear that these are all established players. The amount of casual players is dwindling as they realise that it’s not just a bit of fun anymore as they lose their bollocks every week! Numbers are falling in all the major events and the recently announced IPO will be a real test of the feasibility of poker events in this country. Last year it attracted over 1000 players and with more significant marketing power behind it this year, they expect numbers to rise. Whether it will or not is the million dollar question.

I’m a bit worried that the only two industries that I’ve been involved in, are heavily reliant on a strong economy. Considering that seems to be going to shit, I wonder is a career change in order! Perhaps I’ll become an undertaker, I hear people are just dying to use their services…

At the moment I’m trying to obtain a few copies of Microsoft Office from my cousins in America… who told me to piss off using them as an alibi for downloading crap online! The latest version of Office 2007 is proving quite difficult to find. A working copy that is. I have absolutely no problem finding “REALLL GENUINE NO KEYS NEEDED” copies of it which sounds great, but unfortunately the only thing genuine about them is the viruses just waiting to get into your system and fuck it up!

Anyway, I got home tonight from work at about 1am and I was a bit stressed out. Not in the sense of having done so much work, or being under pressure, but in the sense that I wanted to do some belly boxing, so to speak. I turned on my laptop and entered in my password only to be told it was invalid! I couldn’t believe it! Here I was, ready to fire off some knuckle children before going to bed and instead found myself pouring through system files looking for a virus.

Needless to say, .DLLs and pages of code do nothing for my libido and I’m now heading to bed in the certainty that I’ll wake up tomorrow even more frustrated than when I went to bed! Fecking viruses!

PS: I think I need a girlfriend. Any takers?

For someone with a spend it all mentality, I was quite surprised to learn that I had managed to save over €2000 in the past few months… a tidy sum for someone who’s working part time! Rather than leave it sit in an account with 0% interest, I decided I’d transfer it over an account that earned 5% interest, because otherwise I’d simply be losing out. I got up early and went into town and asked to withdraw all the money, which was fine but the flaw in my well crafted plan was walking past GameStop on my way to the other bank! That’s where things fell apart!

Straight away I bought a new PS3 for €500 (it was the entertainment bundle) but made sure to get at least some value for money by buying a few Blurays as part of a Buy One Get One Free offer. I went home and set it up but found out my surround system didn’t work! The room lit up as I got a great idea… buy a new one! So off I went into the Sony Centre and bought a new amp with plenty of bells and whistles, that was €379.

I’d usually consider myself to be quite intuitive when it comes to technology and can figure most things out quickly, but surround sound systems are something else. It seemed as if there was a 100 page instruction manual for every port on the back of the thing… and it’s certainly not short on them! It was all worth it though, because I got it all up and running and was blown away by the sound and quality from the Bluray movies!

The inadvertent spending spree didn’t end there though, some people in the house were complaining about there being so many remotes (I counted 6), so I decided to get rid of some by simply buying a new TV! So I now have a 42″ Sony Bravia sitting in my living room. Turns out that it didn’t quite get rid of remotes so it looks like I have to buy a fancy universal remote which will set me back €70!

I’m a great saver!