Moving Day - Some Facts about MacDara

As today is the last day on this site and the first day on my  here are some things to know about MacDara.

 Macdara is from The North side of Dublin. More specifically he was born in a Nursing home just opposite where the Big Tree pub is on North Circular road. The nursing home is no longer there but there is still a plaque.

He was saved from a possible death at a young age by a picture of Eamon De Valera

The picture was hanging in a hallway of the house he lived in, the picture fell from the wall this one day and the glass shattered making enough noise to make the people in the house go to see what happened, while in the hall they decided to check on baby Macdara who was sleeping in his cot, it was fortunate that they did as they found him hanging form the cot with his head stuck between the bars choking. Some may call it propitious co-incidence but MacDara knows better.

He Went to School in Glassnevin and has had a fascination with graveyards ever since but has no wish to be buried in one yet. He especially likes old Graveyards and will walk through them while on holiday. He played Football and hurling up until his peers told him he was not good enough and still blames his 4^th class teacher for hindering what could have been a promising career playing for Dublin. That same teacher spent every Friday afternoon reading MacDara’s class the Hobbit which did instil a love of reading in MacDara for which he is still grateful. He had his first pint of beer in Slattery’s on Capel Street when he was 17.

MacDara new what his choice of Career was going to be from when he started Secondary School; it was all down to a good looking woman and a flashy car. On leaving school he went to a private institute for training, during this time he also fell in love for the fist time, it happened on Aran Island off the coast of Donegal. Up until then MacDara was a drinker of Furstenberg , but that first night on the Island with the wind blowing from the Atlantic and snow lightly falling on the beach side pub windows he had his first Guinness.

After two years of training MacDara ventured into the real world where he gained experience in Mining, Construction, making things stick and lots of travel and of course he found his own beautiful woman.

In 1998 on one of his many travels he went to Lebanon and was immediately fascinated by the country the people and the history. His time there was short but it left a big impression on him.

Back in Ireland he was happily progressing along in his career and in the evenings was happy drinking in some of his favourite pubs, The Palace Bar , The Half penny Bridge and O Neills to name a few. But world events contrived to upset his career path and what started in September 2001 ended with MacDara moving to the Middle East a year later.

Since moving to Lebanon he was enjoyed life to the full and travelled to many wonderful countries. Jordan, Dubai, Syria, Cyprus, Palestine, Serbia to name a few.

At the moment MacDara is at a crossroads and the next few weeks will see what road he takes.

 Seeing as today is the first Day of the New Blog if there is anything else you want to know ask.

Yesterday there were two events reported in Lebanon that caught my attention, one was an earthquake in the Bekaa valley and the second was a brand new bridge collapsing. The two events were not connected although someone that had their hand in the cookie jar may try to suggest otherwise.  

The Earthquake occurred in near the town of Zahle in the Eastern Bekaa and registered 3.1 on the richter scale which is barely a shake really. However while these shakes are common enough in the past they have sometimes been seen as warnings of a larger quake. Back in 1997 some though Beirut could witness a sizeable earth quake like it had done in the past including 551, 1170 and more recently in 1956. I guess its another thing to worry about.  

The second story was about a new bridge collapsing , the bridge is being built in the Dahiyeh area and is replacing one that was bombed last year by the Israeli’s. What seems to have happened is that the construction company had just finished putting in place one section of the bridge then the section just snapped. Kind of like a twig snapping when too mush pressure is put on it. Now as usual in Lebanon everyone is pointing fingers and there are promises of an investigation into what happened.  

But MacDara would like to help every one to under stand what happened and who’s to blame as he used to work in construction and knows a little about a little. So here are the facts:  

*If you don’t use cement or steel when building a bridge it will break

*The reason you didn’t put in enough cement or steel in was someone was taking the      money assigned to the bridge for his back pocket.

*If you take too much money for your self then there’s going to be an investigation so make sure you have enough to bribe the investigator.

*If you really want to find out whose fault it is then look at who in the area has the new Land Rover and which people have gone to France to lodge their money.  

Now the investigator and the company will say that it was merely an accident and that the section fell and its not a problem, but if you look at the picture below you will plainly see that the section snapped in two near the centre and did not merely fall form the pier as claimed. 

So that’s two more things in Lebanon that could kill you an earthquake or a official stealing reconstruction money.  

Yes it had taken Macdara a few days to recover form last Thursday’s Irish reception, that is because it was probably the best embassy reception to occur in Lebanon for some time.

On behalf the guests not all of whom were actually Irish a big Thanks to Irish ambassador Gerard Corr and his very good Staff. Not only did they organize a great evening but they did it at a time when other embassies are shying away from public gatherings. If there was ever a time for the community to get together to let their collective hair down then it was now.  

To top it all off the hosts stayed long into the evening entertaining and being entertained by some of the more colorful characters living here. The evening was very enjoyable and welcome break from the more mundane worry of avoiding being blown up. The feed back for everyone that attended was good and if it wasn’t we have told them they left too early.  

One of the reasons for the night which was very important was trying to ensure that all Irish passport holders were registered with the Consulate in Lebanon. MacDara emphatically denies that he had a second registration book on the night so that he would not face the same problems as last year requested assistance from the Consulate

When organizing the Paddy’s Day ball but if there happened to be one left lying around what was he to do?  

The rest of the weekend was the usual partying, sun tanning and drinking but hey it beats the rain back home.

More pictures on Flickr:

As mentioned previously MacDara will be having Ferrero Rocher tonight and as a result he is off tomorrow so thankfully the blog should be quiet for the next few days.

He also won at the poker table last night and on one hand was a Queen of clubs away from turning a straight into a royal flush.

Today the Gods (Be they Greek, Roman or whatever ones your having yourself) also seem to be with MacDara and it is a currently an above average day. On the 5^th of July this Blog will have been on the go for Two years and it that time I have enjoyed using MSN but it has also been frustrating, a while back lot of other blogers switched to wordpress and at the time I considered doing likewise. I have always been easily led, especially that time my friends decided to rob weights out of this guys garage, on top of stealing being a completely idiotic and criminal thing to do trying to steal weights must rank in the top ten worst ideas ever thought up.

The sight of four weedy fourteen year olds running (crawling actually) down the road carrying two barbells that they can hardly lift was comical. As you can imagine they did not get far.  

So MacDara set up a wordpress blog and it sat unused for a few weeks until slowly he started playing around and now he is almost happy that he can post a blog and add pictures but not much else, There is much copying to be done and adding of links etc but I am going to ask you to have a look and sure well see what happens. I will keep blogging on MSN untill I have the other one finished , and will shut it down again to finish it after the weekend before fully switching by the 5^th.  

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