Saturday, May 30, 2015

I want to look after you


          Cuban notices (Greek ones are better)
                          First communion dresses on sale a while ago
            This guy is about to demonstrate how to roll a cigar.
                         It is not rolled on the thigh of a dusky maiden !


Today I went over and had my meter sealed, the rates changed up and down but they say we are better off.
I won,t go into it but the guy changing the rate got around €75 and the guy sealing the meter got around € 80, I will be a long time getting it back for sure.

So I picked up this guy from Las Vegas who told me his life's story.
He only had 20 Sterling so I gave him €8 extra on the exchange rate (Too much) and I gave him his change.
I did myself around €5 in the transaction.
"Gee John you have been so helpful that I would like to look after you "
So I helped him out, even chased after him with his hat.
I went back to the car expecting to see a note on the arm rest.

NOTHING was my reward.

So what do you do?
Well he is going to play poker tonight, I showed him where the casino was.
He will will be wondering around now where his luck went.

You make your own good luck my friend.

What do you do?
Do you become nasty? silent or do you just not help them at all?

Tipping is the hardest thing to fathom for sure.

I had a 6 seater taxi once and brought some people around, I gave them maps and "welcome to Dublin" leaflets that I once had printed on my computer,
The trip cost around €21 and at journeys end they gave me €20.
Later on that night when the rush was on they were at the rank at number 2
They tried to push past the guy who was first in the queue,"But we are 6"
I stopped them and told the first person to get in. "When you short change people and don't tip you can't expect good service"
They would have had to wait quite a while for another 6 seater to come along,

Its hard to fathom people.

On Sundays I often pick up a girl on East wall Rd. Her journey into a branch of Dunnes stores is around €20 she gives me €25 and thanks me for picking her up so quickly.
She is on basic minimum wage, but at that time of day there is only one way of getting to work.

I once had a woman going to a €5 million house wait for 20p

But you know I will just leave Karma to take care of them all

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Back to work


 A 6 wheel buggy at home on land and water, my son says that you can also operate it by remote control.
 This is Davids rainbow HailO car.
                                       Lucy's tiny hand
 This is a photograph of Lucy which by the miracle of modern science was printed on to the icing on her cake.

 I was going down the Malahide Rd the other day when I stopped beside the dog grooming shop.
A friend has a dog with a skin condition and she needs attention. so I went in and got her number for him.
When I came out there was a car in front of me so I backed up to let her out.(she was facing the other way) Then when she got the chance she took off like a rocket and did a 360 turn nearly ramming an oncoming car head on. The poor driver must have shit himself.
If I had had it on dash cam it would be a hit for sure.
Then later on the quays beside the convention center a car rear ended another car.
The driver at fault said "I only got this car 2 weeks ago" !
I said expensive text message for sure.


 There was a big convention on Endocrinology, (Hormones!)
When it ended hundreds of people wanted to go to the airport at the same time.
We used to have a button on the HailO system "Jobs burst" Our leaders took it off the system so now we can't spread the news. Progress it seems is steps forwards and backwards.
I got 3 people going to the airport. They had come here just for that convention.
It can not be far away when we will link up on some secure system and have our conventions without leaving home but I know that a lot of the time it is the networking after the event that is most important .

There is a magic event which when you pay you get 10 lectures, notes and videos to keep, its quite an annual event.


Riverdance is 20 years old a show which has captivated the world after Irish dancing was shown during the interval of the Eurovision song contest. I was driving a taxi for Metro cabs who had the RTE contract at the time. Michael Flatley has made an absolute fortune from it as have many of the people involved.The show has many troupes which work all over the world all the time because the act is so big they cannot preform to groups of less than 2,000. It would not pay.




And the rest is history, Flatley has pots of money and Mya Doherty lives like a queen, fair play to them all.

Back on the taxi front I had 2 Israeli people to the airport. During the journey I explained that all the roadworks are to put in a tram system through the whole city.
She said that in Bethlehem they put in such a system, chaos for years, now it works so well.
I told her that I imagined it as a small town with people riding donkeys, "A bit like we expected  for here"  Big laugh..
Then thy asked if I knew anything else about Israel and I mentioned the wonderful voice of Ofra Haza. (I think she won Eurovision)
I spoke about her fantastic voice and when I found out  that that she had died from aids I was so shocked.
the lady spoke "A wonderful beautiful lady with a voice from the Gods, when she found out she was sick she told no one, she was ashamed. If she had looked for help she could be alive today.
Different times."

When we got there the €22 fare got a €8 tip! Happy days


Sunday, May 24, 2015

First in the world

 Last the night it became clear that the Irish people have crawled out from under the foot of the Irish Catholic church by voting for full marriage rights for same sex couples.Not just civil partnership but full marriage rights.
The church has done themselves no favors in recent years in the manner that they conducted themselves.

Last night the Gay community went wild celebrating into the dawn.
Taxis out of town could not be found until around 6 am.

Well the whole debate was interesting to say the least.
One barrister said there were 400 differences between full marriage and civil partnership !
One guy told of how his partner had been injured and the hospital said that as he was not next of kin he could not be allowed in, even though they had a civil partnership.

The church said that every child should have a mother and a father at a time when one father was sentenced to 17 years for raping and sexually abusing his daughters Click here if you dare.
So he was found guilty on 75 charges
His wife Mother of the children is standing by him.
God bless us all.

I remember back when the divorce referendum was going on.
A friend of mine was canvassing outside the church in Rathmines and the priest came out and started pushing her around. Luckily Shela found an ally in a passing man who punched him on the shoulder and nearly sent him to the promised land.
"Fuck off father back into your chapel and if I see you back out here again I will kill you"
No more problems for the duration of the campaign. (Which was carried)

So it is a special time for people who are gay and for their parents as well.



And a few words from an openly gay man on what it is to be gay in Ireland


Saturday, May 16, 2015

Born to run


 A huge cruise liner leaves Dublin port, 50 other liners are expected to come this Summer with thousands of people aboard each one.
   I don't know how this photo got in but it is a Mustang for sure.
 Once upon a time my friends this was real money..

There was 12 pennys to the shilling
20 shillings to the £
there was a 1/2 penny coin a thrupence,a sixpence.
Then a 2 shilling coin (24 pennys)
A half crown (30 pennys or 8 to the £)
A 10 shilling note then a £ note.

Click here for images.


Well I will give you a quotation.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter"
Martin Luther King.

We are spending loads of money on a referendum equal status for same sex marriage and the minimum age for our president to be lowered.
How someone of 19 would have the experience for the job of president is beyond me.

Anyhoo it is costing millions at a time when hospitals are being sued for bad practice resulting in many deaths and no one is sacked. 
Staff in a nursing home were filmed by an undercover TV team beating poor blind and handicapped patients. (Summonses have been issued)
A baby was found abandoned in a plastic bag on a remote lane way at deaths door this week.
Hundreds of families are facing eviction because they cannot afford to pay for their homes bought in the boom years.
A 14 year old girl has given birth to a baby for the second time in a year.
 Junkies ans beggars line the streets of our capital city
Someone somewhere has to start to work out what is really important and start dealing with things.

Someone needs to speak up

As my present birthday comes up I have to say that growing older is compulsory growing up is your choice.

I am younger than Bruce!





So I guess I was born to run as well.



My youngest son said 

"Dad you went to work at 6am. and you are only home for breakfast now,then you will be off again at 4Pm and you won't be back until late,you never take a day off.
You are working too hard"

So I said that if he washed up the dishes and put the clothes wash out on the line it would be a big help to me..

They were still lying there when I came home.

I have to get my meter sealed after they have verified that the settings are correct..€68 on top of the €60 odd fee for changing the setting, its all a racket.

Still you have to keep on going.

Work wise things are magic, I got 4 return jobs while dropping off people, that is very very rare and back to back it is mad altogether.
One guy was a Cancer research guy from Oxford university, his expertise was controlling the blood flow to the tumors, by starving them they could kill them.
I told him about a radio programe on the BBC radio 4 about P53 a gene which destroys abnormal cells but is absent in cancer cells. 
Cancer is not just one thing, it takes on many forms, a cure is 20 years away he told me.
Perhaps if real funding came in, like the cash pumped into wars.
Then we would have Cancer beaten in 5 years.  
A good bloke €12 tip. 

Sunday, May 10, 2015

VE day

I have been trying to updte this 4 times, lets hope it works this time,
It did !


70 years since the second world war ended in Europe.

Germany invaded Poland and Europe went to war.

Then when the war was over the victors settled things between themselves and gave Poland to Russia, not  very just result for the Polish people.
I really didn't know that until a Polish customer filled me in.

Strange to say it took me a long time to realize the significance when my hairdresser told me that she was Armenian,
Then only after cutting my hair a few times she told me how more than one million of her people were exterminated by the Turkish people,
So most Armenians now live all over the wold and hope one day to find justice..

The killing began on 24th of April 1915 100 years ago.

At least I know now.

Denial was a big thing back in Germany after the war for many long years,

It is really big in Turkey today.

Kim Kerdashian is Armenian.

Have a look



On Friday I popped down to the Shipping port and got a Londoner heading to the Airport.
He was chatty enough, one thing that was a little odd about him and it still rattles around in my brain.
As we approached the airport I asked if he was heading to one of the car parks.
 "No mate Air France"
So it turnrd out that he is going to Cairo Egypt with no ticket booked.
Now if you are in the UK you have 3 or 4 airports in London and others in Manchester Etc.
Why would you come to Dublin?
Though if you were an English passport holder and were heading to a terrorist training camp in Egypt you might want to depart from an airport which might be a  less security conscious just like Dublin.
He also had no ticket booked which was very strange.

I looked at him heading to the desk when a guy came up to me and asked me if  I would take a Brazilian girl into Parnell St.
I said sure and she hopped in. "Here's €25, take to this place" saying the name 4 times..Her English was good enough,  my mind started thinking what was wrong in this situation?

Foreign language students come mostly  in small groups,

She was around 26  a bit too old.

They often stay with host families.

The man who handed her over didn't come with her as well.

.My logical and wisest thought was that he was a pimp overseeing a change of shift and he had a lot more girls to meet.

Dublin is full of "Working girls"their morality is not for me to question.

In Amsterdam everything is regulated.
Here in Dublin the girls really suffer badly at the hands of their criminal pimps.

Ruhama are a small group where the help the girls instead trying to put them into prison.

One scumbag lowlife I once met had worked out a plan to give his girls heroin to keep them in line.
As addicts they never complained about how many clients they had to serve, they never ran away and he even had some to sell and he had free samples which he used to recruit new girls.
All very well worked out very well for him.
The drug dealers loved to party at his places and all in the garden was rosy for him,

I hope he dies in a lot of pain.

I would like that the Police would do a lot better, but they are so bad that I can only conclude that they are involved in the business in a big way.

Imagine Operation Quest not being able to find St Johns Rd in Sandymount a few years ago?


YES It really happened.

If you don't think this is going on try to Google "Dublin escorts"

I will let Karen Carpenter say Goodbye to Love

Do you get the significance?

If you are going to become a call girl it is goodbye ti love





Then another thing I saw in Old  Havana was a guy with a beer crate with tools he was putting in new flints into Bic disposable lighters and re filling them, he can't have been making much..

Real poverty there

Saturday, May 09, 2015

Darkness into light.


There was a marathon running event held last night.
The purpose of the event is to shine a light of hope on people who are depressed and to point them towards the light to get help.
A lot of taxi drivers have killed themselves over the last 10 years.
We cannot undo the past but we can change the future

Click here

And here

There are plenty of contacts where help can be found, The Samaritans will listen.

Friday, May 08, 2015

The first swallow of Summer

I was only back from holiday when I heard the "Zing" sound that I love.
The first swallow of Summer.
Instantly that sound brings me back to long summer days playing with my friends into the night never thinking of coming inside to go to bed..Happy days.These remarkable tiny birds fly 1/2 way around the world to live among us for one summer, then they go back to Africa and further .
The next season their offspring will come back to Ireland. Without ever being shown a map.

Remarkable.

Anyhoo back to Cuba.
It a very poor country. Communist rule, not the place to step out of line.
But they have a really good health system and a great education system.
Wonderful red rich  soil, very fertile.
But I saw plenty of poverty and mentally ill people walking the streets.
The people I met there were happy and well educated.

We went 5 star all the way as it didn't cost much more and we were well looked after.
The National hotel (Click it !) in Havana is where Frank Sinatra and all his Mafia buddies used to rub shoulders with the likes of Winston Churchill.
A fantastic place to stay in.




                                           Lobby of the National Hotel

Every night there was 2 shows and music was played for free out the back.

As I said there was hard poverty there. Plenty of crazy guys walking about blind and handicapped people begging.
One woman of about 50 was in a wheelchair. Her right leg had been amputated below the knee. Her daughter aged around 15 was pushing the chair.
I was waiting for my wife to come back to me.
The woman in the wheelchair pushed something into the hands of a stall holder. The woman just opened the package out, 2 T shirts and a dress.
The bitch of a trader just threw the clothes back into her face and shouted at her to go away.
I was totally shocked, I had not expected such a  reaction, no empathy  with with  the woman's situation. I still cannot understand the woman's mindset.
In Gods honest truth I owe the woman in the wheelchair €10, but I was so stunned I couldn't move.

Still I did one big gesture for Cuba.
Some things are scarce, Sunglasses for example.
We bought 6 pairs from Lidl and the went down a treat as tips.
I also had an old laptop cleaned and we gave it to our waitress.
To her it was as good to her as a new car.

I hope it all works out for her.

Tuesday, May 05, 2015

Havana

Here we are on the 5th of May and no word from me for weeks.



Well it was the chance of a lifetime to go to Cuba so I went.

To see the cars



And most of all the Music.





Well that was two weeks of my life I will not regret.