Pick your poison

I’ve always been a bit of a tea freak. I drink about four or five cups of Lyons a day! That may seem like a lot , but apparently its average in Ireland. After all, we have the highest number of tea drinkers per capita!

Ireland has always been thought of as a tea drinking nation – but as the Celtic Tiger hit the country’s economy, coffee became a hip alternative to the cuppa cha. Words like “grande”, “frapaccino” and “skinny latte” seeped into our lexicon and there’s no going back. Or is there?

This is what my radio documentary is all about. What is Ireland’s national drink? Are we all still drinking tea like our grannies, and their grannies before them? Are people more hooked on an Americano? and the big question is: why? What kind of image is associated with the beverages?

So – please help me out! Take my poll – its only one question afterall.

Tell your friends. Tell your friends’ friends. I need to know the answer!

Please and thank you

Do you believe in Love?

I am super excited about this movie!

Thanks to LeLove for posting the trailer

Masters Mania!

I officially have less than a month to finish my Master’s degree in Broadcast Production. Luckily enough, all of my stuffy academic essays are done, dusted and handed in! Now, all that’s left are my practical assessments.

One of my major projects is a short video documentary on abandoned dogs in Ireland (hence the doggie on the laptop above). So, I’ll be shooting that over the next couple of days and editing away! It’s really hard to be objective and journalist-like on such a heartbreaking topic.

Yesterday, my friend James and I headed up to the local SPCA to get some general dog footage, ya know, tails wagging, tongues panting, paws moving etc. But I just wanted to save them all! We ended up staying for a good couple of hours and taking a few dogs out for a walk. My dog was this eight year old Basset Hound who had a really tough time keeping up with James’ spritely young pup! The poor guy just kept lying down by cars to get shade from the sun and a bit of a rest!

A younger version of the dog I took for a walk yesterday!

As we were walking our dogs in the sun and chatting – I thought, what a great way to spend a day with a friend or other half! In fact, they could market “dog walking” as a type of date – as long as both people were animal lovers! Plus, you’re doing a good thing for the poor dogs involved.

Today, I’m off to the new pound and vet’s in Enniscorthy – and tomorrow I’m visiting the WSPCA, so I’m sure to be in for more very sad cuteness.

I suppose this post is an apology for the lack of posts to come over the next few weeks. I shall be out and about camera/digital recorder attached to my hand!

PS. I’ll have much more on my documentary once its finished!

If your skin had tastebuds..

they’d be watering.

My roomie got one of these Radox Shower Smoothies and put it in our bathroom. He told me to try it. Dear god – it smelled like heaven in a squeezie bottle! Now…I smell it each time I’m in the shower…just for the smell! I’d highly recommend the “Natural Balance” one.

Warning: even if you REALLY REALLY want to – do not drink the shower smoothie. I repeat, do not drink the shower smoothie!

There’s only now, there’s only this

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a HUGE fan of the hit Broadway musical, Rent (and who isn’t?!). I’ve seen the show three times in NYC and countless times on DVD. I suppose it isn’t hard to be swept up in Rent madness – the music is rockin’ and the message is a solemn one: live each day as if it’s your last and make it count. It’s also very attractive to us 90′s kids – as the show is set in the once bohemian Alphabet City, Manhattan during that decade.

A couple of weeks ago I went to see Rent for the fourth time – this time on the Helix stage. It may not have been Broadway – but it was just as exciting and twice as special because performing were my old drama group: DCU Drama. The leading roles were played by people who I consider to be my best friends! Plus – I was there to support my boyfriend, Conor who played drums in the fantastic band that accompanied the show!

Now, I may be biased, but the DCU Drama version of Rent blew. me. away. There was so much energy, heart and complete dedication to the show.  I spent the last half an hour crying at how amazing it was (am I a sap? yes). And I’m very proud to report that the show won Best Event at the DCU Clubs and Socs Awards the other night!

As part of a radio programme I was producing, I did some interviews with the cast and recorded some musical numbers. Alan McHale (who plays Mark) produced a video using some of his own footage and my radio stuff – to be submitted to the Board of Irish College Societies!

Here it is:

100 Books

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? Share with your fellow reader friends.

So far, I’ve read 37 out of 100 – but this list is a really good go-to collection of stuff I still want to read!

Copy, edit and paste into a note of your own.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen – yes
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien- no
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte- yes
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling – yes
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee- yes
6 The Bible – yes
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte- no
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell- yes (MY FAVE)
9 His Dark Materials – yes
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens- yes
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott- yes
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy- no
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller – no
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare- not all of it!
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier- no
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien- no
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk- no
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger- yes
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger-  yes
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot- no
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell- no
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald- no
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens- no
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy- no
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – yes
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh- no
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky- no
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck- no
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll- yes
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame- yes
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy- no
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens- no
33 Chronicles of Narnia Series – CS Lewis- some of them
34 Emma – Jane Austen- no
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen- no
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis- yes
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini- yes
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres Mais- no
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden- no
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne- yes
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell- yes
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown- yes
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez- no
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving- no
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins- no
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery- yes
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy- no
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood- no
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding- no
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan- no
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel- yes
52 Dune – Frank Herbert- no
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons- no
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen- yes
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth- no
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon- no
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens- no
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley- yes
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time- yes
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez- no
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck- yes
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov- no
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt- yes
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold- yes
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas- no
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac- no
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy- no
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding- no
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie- no
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville- no
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens-no
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker- yes
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett- yes
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson- no
75 Ulysses – James Joyce- no
76 The Inferno – Dante- no
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome- no
78 Germinal – Emile Zola- no
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray- no
80 Possession – AS Byatt- no
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens- yes
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell- no
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker- no
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro- no
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert- no
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry- no
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White- yes
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom- yes
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle- yes
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton- no
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad- no
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery- yes
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks- no
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams- yes
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole- no
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute- no
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas- no
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare- yes
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl- yes
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo- no

Youtube users

So true!

Thanks to Dave for sending me the link
Check out the other comics here!

Is Love Blind?

That very question was asked on Monday when two people met for the very first time at the altar! South East radio station, Beat 102-103 launched a competition entitled “Two Strangers and a Wedding” in which brides and grooms were shortlisted by listeners and had contact only over the airwaves. The chosen bride, known only as “Lady” and her groom called, “Batman” were part of what the radio station called, a social experiment and “possibly the greatest love story ever told”.

The wedding itself was completely sponsored and held in a Hotel in Kilkenny. The couple were promised a two week honeymoon in Portugal and a year of rent-free living, should they decide to fully legitimize the wedding by June 6th.

Bebhinn O’Keeffe and Alan Healy are as ‘newlyweds’ as it gets

As crazy as this whole concept sounds – it isn’t the first time Two Strangers and a Wedding has been attempted. In fact, it was done on 95.5 WPLJ (where I worked last Summer) in 2006, when the couple stayed together for just 6 months before divorcing. It was also done on Dublin’s 98fm and the couple is still together and has a child!

All through Beat’s competiton the word “genuine” has been used a million times. I’m sure the couple involved are totally up for meeting this new person and giving love a go – but it seems like an elaborate PR scheme on the part of Beat 102-103 to me!

Is love blind? I guess only time will tell!

Cardboard Love (in a digital world)

Do You Know the Way…

to Cirque du Soleil?

My week of amazing-ness was brought to a fantastic close with a performance of Quidam (translated as, an anonymous passer-by living lost in the crowd) by French-Canadian troop, Cirque du Soleil. The show took place at Dublin’s new O2 arena, which is such a lovely venue! I had never been to the Point, but the O2 is a brilliant place to see a performance – the amphitheatre seating means that wherever you are, you have a great view of the action and no one is blocking your way! There were also ample toilet facilities, and I wasn’t in a queue for more than 5 minutes (which in female standards is teensy!).

The show itself left me in complete and utter awe. The story followed a little girl on a boring rainy day – who slips into this fantasy world of acrobats, clowns and a mysterious headless man with an umbrella! The choreography was such that although your eyes were drawn to a piece of circus performance in the centre of the stage, there were no shortage of other acts appearing in other parts of the set. The characters reminded me of something from Pan’s Labyrinth, except not quite so scary!

When you go to a circus, what do you expect to see? Why clowns, of course! And boy did Cirque deliver! It’s two main clown pieces involved bringing audience members onto the stage and placing them in physically awkward situations. It was side-splitting kind of funny – and what a rush for those people on stage to have the entire venue applauding their efforts!

There were no shortage of amazing feats. My favourites included a troupe of Asian girls with Diablos – they were able to do things with them that I’d never seen (and I did a thesis on Irish circuses last June!). I also loved the acrobats that came out suspended on large rings – it was both beautiful and exciting to watch. The entire show was so graceful and daring! I loved every minute.

I also have to give a mention to the wonderful live band and vocalists that provided the sometimes eerie backdrop to the performance! They were so polished that you’d never have known the music was live.

If you missed Cirque du Soleil this time around – make sure you catch them whenever they come back! I for one will be first in line for the next show!