Yesterday my friend Pascal sent me a song he had written and recorded. It is based on the song "Mister President" from Boudewijn de Groot, about which I wrote before (http://belfastchild.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!72BE419617406AE6!832.entry) but this is directly aimed to the Dutch Prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende and is more about the current situation in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The song is in Dutch and will stay in Dutch only, but if anyone wants a translation of the lyrics just leave a comment for that.

Pascal will get in touch with the management of Boudewijn de Groot to find out if he can get the rights to officialy release the song.

 

Last year when the last 16 teams in the Champions League went into the draw Celtic drew the later winner AC Milan.

They first played at home, where the result was 0-0 after an exiting match.
The away game was at least as exiting, and again 0-0. So into overtime and then it went wrong. Milan scored and qualified for the quarter finals.

This year Celtic was in the poule with Milan, so they couldn't get each other the next round. Today was the draw and Celtic gets another very tough opponent, FC Barcelona, with the first match being played in Paradise, just like last year.

It wouldn't surprise me that if Barcelona gets the same or a better result against Celtic as Milan did last year that they wil be in the final this year and win the cup.
But  if Celtic manages to do better and go to the quarter finals big things will happen for the bhoys, that will give them such a boost that they will have a good chance to qualify for the final.
If this would happen there is a chance for a similar situation as what we have seen in the 1995 Champions League, when two teams who played in the same poule played each other again in the final. Then it were Ajax and Milan, will we see another match between Celtic and Milan this year?

For now nobody can tell, but I will keep on dreaming as long as the games have not been played.

 

The rest of the draw brings the following teams together:

Olympique Lyon - Manchester Utd
Schalke 04 - FC Porto

Liverpool - Internazionale
AS Roma - Real Madrid
Arsenal - AC Milan
Olympiakos Piraeus - Chelsea

Fenerbahce - Sevilla

Every now and then when you read the news there are some news items that are at least to be called weird or remarkable.

Here are a few I found today:

Screaming during sex is better

 

Male monkeys orgasm faster when the female screams and yells a lot during the sex. That is found out after research by LifeScience with Berber monkeys in Gibraltar.

During 86 percent of the times they had sex the females were very loud. 59 percent of those times that lead to an orgasm for the males.
The times they were making love quietly, the males reached an orgasm in only 2 percent of the cases. The females scream hardest at the time they are fertile.
The researchers do not link this behaviour to similar human impulses.


American goats are not allowed to have sex
A woman form the American village Dibble, Oklahoma, has been fined because her goats were misbehaving badly.
Her animals were having sex and leaving their droppings in the backyard, which is illegal in a populated area, according to the local law.
The woman thinks this is nonsense and goes to court.

World Orgasm Day for Peace
Prepare the romantic candles, put clean sheets on your bed and find a sexy partner.
Tomorrow it's World Orgasm Day.
People all over the world are asked to have an orgasm during the longest winternight, so the night from friday to saturday.
The people who came up with this idea hope that the combined force of mental, biological and spiritual energy decreases the hate, fear and violence in the world.
It is the second time this day is "organized".
The organizers want to combine the energy around the turning of the sun, so aim your orgasm at 6.08 am GMT sharp.

More info can be found on http://www.globalorgasm.org/

Glittering poo as pregnancy test
The zookeepers of the Irish Dublin Zoo have come up with a very special way to check the physical situation of their rhinoceroses. To find out if the two females are pregnant they have been placed on a glitter diet.
It is not easy to spot if a rhinoceros is pregnant. The easiest way is to test the poo. But how do you keep the poo from all these animals apart?
The ladies are getting silver and blue glitters in their food from now on. They are not harmfull and due to the nice colors it is easy to keep the poo from each other.

In the first week of december a holiday was planned, Christel would come to visit me from 1 until 7 december.
So on the morning of 1 december I stood up early and departed to Dublin to pick her up from the airport.
I arrived at the airport at about half twelve, an hour before her arrival. Celtic was playing that day at noon and I hoped to see a part of the game at the airport.
Unfortunately the airport had no Setanta channel, so they could not show the game there, so it was just watching the English game that was on, I can't remember which one it was anymore, until Christel would arrive.
About 15 minutes before the estimated arrival I went to the Skyview bar so I could see her plane landing and take some pictures of her arrival.
Right after the plane had taxied out of sight I went back downstairs to wait for Christel to come out.

That took a while of course, but when she came it was a pleasant surprise to see she had coloured her hair dark and she was wearing a beautifull black dress underneath her long coat.

We went to one of the bars at the airport to have a few drinks before heading back to Belfast.

In Belfast we first went home and than visited the Continental Christmas market before continuing to my favorite pub in town, Fitzgerald's, to have a few drinks and celabrate the start of the holiday.

That concluded the first day.

 

For the sunday I had two plans. One for good weather, and one for less good weather. We decided to go for the second option, because the weather looked like it would get better the next few days. This option was to go to town, see a bit of the city on the way and from City Center taking the City Sightseeing tour.
After first passing the Albert Clock and crossing the river Lagan we drove by the Harland & Wolff shipyard, famous for building the Titanic in the early 20th century.

From there the bus drove on to a new part in the tour that wasn't part of it when I did the tour before, Stormont, where the Northern Ireland government is located.

If it was up to me that would not have become a part of the tour, although the building looks ok, but the government should be in Dublin.

After a couple of minutes to get back to the city centre the tour continued along the same route as before, past St Anne's cathedral, Carlisle Circus, Crumlin Road courthouse and jail to the Shankhill.

For me this is without being on the tourbus or in a taxi a no go area, and again the hate and mistrust people in that area have for others was easy to feel, even Christel could feel it while she was there only for the first time. Many murals there show the aggression of the people there by showing support to the forbidden paramilitary organisations. Some other murals are about the queen, some woman that got control over a country by just being born from particular parents and is paid for that by taxpayers money.
After the Shankhill the peaceline between the Shankhill and the Falls is shown and the tourbus goes into the Falls. A much more calm area, although the Falls are known to have seen a lot of violence throughout the years of the troubles it looks like they have actually learned from the history and they are trying to make their area a nice place to live where people feel they are judged for who they are and not just for being not part of them.
The murals in the Falls do show respect for the people that have fallen during the troubles, a lot of them are about the 1981 Hunger strike which killed 10 people, including MP Bobby Sands. There are also a number of murals showing support to other areas which are occupied by other countries, like Palestine and Iraq.

From the Falls the bus makes a turn into Broadway and drives towards Queens university. One of the most beautifull buildings in Belfast. After that it heads back to city center where we got off the bus at the Crown Bar. A very beautifull bar although the atmosphere often is a bit boring, but for it's interior it is a must see for anyone visiting Belfast.
After having a drink in the Crown Bar we also visited Belfast's oldest pub, White's Tavern, which is nearly 400 years old, and Kelly's Cellar. Both pubs are in the center and very nice places for people who come to visit Belfast.
In the evening we were going to see Andrea Rice singing in a bar called The Beehive, which is on the Falls Road, or so we thought. When we arrived at the bar there was some band setting up it's gear, which meant that Andrea was not there. We asked the bar staff and he told us the performance of Andrea had been moved to a bar in Ardoyne. Since I didn't get the name and don't know the Ardoyne area very well yet the barman offered to call a cab for us, which we of course accepted. He instructed the cabdriver where we had to be and not too long after that we arrived at the wee bar where Andrea was already playing. We saw Fee already outside having a smoke, and heard that they only were informed the day before that their show had been relocated. We enjoyed the show a lot, Christel seemed to have become a fan of Andrea straight away as well, and a little fight right next to us didn't affect having a nice evening there.
At the end of the show Fee and Andrea gave us a ride to Carlisle Circus from where we walked to Fitzgerald's for a bit of fun and from there we went home and to bed.

On monday morning after another good night of sleep we went for a walk to Cave Hill. I knew this would be tough for Christel because it is at some points a very steep climb, so we left quite early so we would have plenty of time for the walk, and I brought my foldable chair so we could have a break at any time it was necessary. After the first part up to the castle we already had a short break on the bench at the top of the large field. A squirrel was gathering food on the field, that was the first of wild life apart from the common birds we saw that day. Unfortunately the weather was not very good, but Christel agreed to walk on and see the beauty of the hill.

After the first part of the climb, which is a quite heavy part, Christel was not sure if she would make it further, so we had a break, she sat down on the chair for a couple of minutes and when I told that it would be less heavy further on she decided to try and go on anyway.
With a few more short breaks on the way we came to the place shortly before the cave where you can chose to walk further up or start going back down towards the zoo. We chose to the the last, because that part of the hill is also very beautifull, and further up is nearly only grass and rocks. Also for Christel going down was the best option, because it had been quite a walk already.

Alongside the zoo we have seen and heard some of the zoo-animals, and I pointed out a couple of places that I had earlier showed to Christel on photo or video.

After getting down to the road again we took the bus into town to arrange the trip for the next day and after that we had a nice well-deserved drink in Kelly's Cellar.
Shortly after 5pm we had to leave there again, because we had to go to the Suffolk Inn in West Belfast to see another show of Andrea Rice. There Christel got a signed cd from Andrea as well, and they gave us a ride home afterwards.

Than it was tuesday. We had to get up early in order to get the bus for a tour along the North Antrim coastal route. We arrived in town at the Belfast Welcome Center at 9.10, which was 5 minutes before the expected departure time.
After waiting for a while someone from the Welcome Centre came to us and told there were only 5 people for the tour and the organisation wanted to wait to see if more people would come. It was suggested that we would go to have some coffee and come back at 10. We decided that this would be better than waiting all the time outside and went for a nice cup of coffee to Starbucks.
After the coffee when we came back there was still no sign of the bus that would take us on the tour until quarter past 11.
Then finally the bus arrived, we got on and drove out of town. Then the busdriver said it was the bus straight to the Giant's Causeway, the £12 Causeway Express and not the £16 Coastal tour.
When I asked the driver about this the other people on the bus said they also thought they were on the coastal tour which they paid for so the driver called the office to ask what he should do. Because with the late departure he could not do the full coastal route anymore, so he probably agreed with the people at the office that he would just make a few short photo stops at the main attractions of the coastal route, being Carrick a Rede, and Dunluce Castle to compensate this.
But whatever it was or if this was normal at the Express we never found out, because he didn't say anything about it. The bridge at Carrick a Rede was out, so there we only missed the nice walk towards the bridge, but missing the whole coastal route and the explanation about things that are to be seen there was not compensated at all by these two short photo stops.

When we arrived at the Giant's causeway we had plenty of time to walk and look around there though, and that was still a very nice thing with the sea being rougher than I've ever seen it before we enjoyed ourselves quite well for the time there. After walking around we bought some souvenirs and had a cup of coffee before getting back on the bus. In the bus back again nothing was said about taking out the part of the tour that we had paid for. We decided to go to the office after arriving back in Belfast and ask for a refund of the difference between the price of the two tours.
When we arrived back in Belfast we were told there was nobody anymore from Minicoach travels, and that if we wanted to see someone we would have to come back in the morning. But the next morning we would leave Belfast already way before they would come in, so there was no chance of being there than.
This means Minicoach has stolen £8 from us just because they didn't have a bus full of people. I have done the trip four times before and also know there is another company which does the same tours, which we have also seen departing that morning, so from now on when I do the tour again I will take that other company and will tell my contacts as well. Minicoach gets a big 0 from me.

 

In the evening we went back to Fitzgerald's bar, because Celtic would be playing for the Champions League in San Siro against AC Milan, and it would be the game that would decide if Celtic would qualify with the last 16, so a very important game. Kick off was at 7.45 and although it was not as crowded in the bar as I hoped we saw a very exciting game of football and even though Celtic didn't get the necessary draw the 1-0 loss was still good enough to qualify because Benfica won in the Ukraine from Shaktar Donetsk. After the match we talked with some people about our plans for the remaining two days before we went to another bar with Margaret and Gerard. After a few more drinks there we went back home to watch a dvd and go to bed.

 
On wednesday morning we had to get up at 5.30 because we were going on a daytrip to Glasgow. We would have the ferry at approximately 7.00 with a bustrip from Stranraer to Glasgow and back. When we arrived at the Stena Line dock we were already told that there was an hour delay because of the windy weather and the rough sea, and that we would get free coffee if we wanted to. With that coffee it was not too hard to wait that hour and that hour went by quite quickly.
After we got on the ferry it was quite easy to find a nice place to sit in the front. With drinks nearby and the knowledge that it would be a "bumpy ride" we knew we would have a nice crossing of the Irish Sea. Shortly before getting into open sea we went to the back of the ferry so Christel could have a smoke and she could see the immense power of the HSS Stena once the engines start running at full power. We stayed there for a while enjoying the view before getting back to our seats at the front. After the just over 2 hour trip we arrived in Stranraer where the bus was already waiting for us. During the bus trip we enjoyed the view, mainly the first part of the tour showed us some very nice places of Schotland.
When we arrived in Glasgow the first thing we had to do was almost run to the toilet, we both had not gone before leaving the ferry, and I had a short stop during the bustrip but for Christel this was not possible, so she was under some high pressure to get into the toilet.
When this was done we had to look for a bank, because I needed to get some money and Christel needed to change some more euros to pounds.
A bank was not so hard to find in the center of Glasgow, so that was arranged pretty fast, but than we wanted to see Paradise, also known as Park Head or Celtic Park, and how do you get there when you don't really know the city?
A bus? Than you have to find information on which bus to take and where to find that bus and hope that bus would go soon enough. So we decided to look for a taxi. But it was not so easy to find a taxi there as I am used to in other cities. So at some point we asked two policemen that walked by if they could give us information on where to get a taxi. They told us the best option was behind the bus station, which was were we had just come from. So we went back there, and found taxis there.
The taxi took us to paradise and we went in for the stadium tour.

We were the only two people at that time so it was a private tour, which gives better opportunities to have questions answered and get a better view at things, so that was quite an enjoyable tour.
After the tour we bought some souvenirs there, Christel bought me a Celtic Whiskey glass with a small bottle of Celtic Whiskey and I bought for myself 3 dvd's and a larger bottle of Celtic Whiskey.
And then it was time for a drink, we walked to the bars where I had gone on the days when I went to a match, but they seemed to be closed so we walked on a bit and found another bar that was open. We went in there and it looked bad. We did have a drink anyway, but it really was like a bar in the suburbs of a suburb of one of the worst areas of the city. The woman behind the bar was very friendly though and the drink tasted good enough, but after the drink I was happy to be out of there anyway, and although Christel hasn't said it it wouldn't surprise me if she was as well.
From there on we had to get back to town, because at 4.30 we would have to be in the bus back to Stranraer. After we had asked someone where we could find the bus into town we walked to the busstop and waited for a bus. The first bus that stopped was not the one that would take us to the bus station, but the driver told us which bus we needed and just a few minutes later that bus arrived.
When we arrived at the bus station we first went to the toilets again, just to make sure we wouldn't have the same problem as we had in the morning, and then we went into the bus that would take us back to Stranraer.
During the ride to Stranraer we saw less of the country because it was already getting dark, so we were happy that we had taken some photos in the morning.
After arriving at the Stena Line dock in Stranraer we were told there was still about 45 minutes delay. We more or less had expected that, but we didn't expect that there were absolutely no facilities at the waiting area apart from a couple of machines with sweets and drinks, so it was a very uncomfortable waiting time there.
When the ferry finally arrived and we were back on we first went for something to eat, which we would have preferred while we were waiting, but we were glad that we finally got the chance on board. On the way back the sea was rougher than it was in the morning, we had a lot of fun seeing people trying to walk and walking ourselves.
After arriving back in Belfast we went to Fitzgerald's again and participated in the wednesday night quiz. We won the music round which gave us a free drink. After the quiz it was time to get home and get some sleep, it was a long but good day.

On thursday we wanted to go and see Long Kesh, the prison where the Blanket protests and the 1981 hungerstrike had taken place. Unfortunately when we woke up that morning Christel her knee was still hurting pretty badly, and she thought if we had to do more walking that day it might turn out to become worse and might even cause serious damage. So we decided to skip that trip, although we both wanted to go there very much.
We stayed the day at home, watched some movies, and for the first time this holiday Christel got her chance to cook diner for us.

 

On friday the holiday was coming to an end, after making sure everything was packed again we had to go back to Dublin for Christel to get the plane back home. This time it was nice for her that we made the trip at daylight, because the week before it was already getting dark on the way, but now Christel could see a bit more of the country.

At the airport we still have had some time together to finish a good week, and when it was time to leave we said good bye and Christel moved on to security.
I stayed at the airport to see the plane depart and then made my way back to Belfast again.
This way a good week came to an end, and the next day I had to get to work again.