Youtube Videos

 

For this update I thought I’d share some of my favourite photo montage videos that I’ve created over the past few years on youtube.

This is basically the crunched down collection of photos from the 3 months I spent volunteering in East Africa in 2009. With over 8000 photos from the trip, these are the ones that stick out for me.

 

Just a few months ago in Oct 2011, the town of Boyle lost a very special lady, Betty Meyler, who lost her battle with Cancer. She was a very close family friend as well as a neighbour. This was my tribute to Betty from all of us who had the honour of knowing her. R.I.P

This is a short collection from my 4th trip to the holy land of Las Vegas. People ask me why do I like it so much. Well if you love poker, blistering heat and endless amounts of crazy things to do then you’d fully understand the attraction Vegas holds for me.

This was a Stag weekend in Newcastle, that I’d arranged as best man for my mate Darren Suffin 2 years ago. Quality of photos isn’t the best as I only had a pocket camera, very shaky hands and a mouth full of vodka!

This video shows all the places we visited from Feb 2008 – April 2009 and the idea came from the well known youtube video “Where the hell is Matt” - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

I used free software on the internet to make this little poker sketch about poker in Boyle.

A short collection of photos I took of Beirnie Murphy and her daughter Kayla back in 2008.

As I was always interested in the Holocaust, I got to visit Auschwitz in Poland on two separate occasions in 2008. This is a look at the first visit.

Prior to visiting Auschwitz, I visited Sachsensausen concentration camp located about an hour outside of Berlin. This was my first time seeing a death camp and personally for me had a bigger impact than Auschwitz did, even though Auschwitz was the grand daddy of them all.

A look at a Christmas morning, through the eyes of my lovely God daughter Porcia!

A few photos I took of my sister Claudia, on the day of her debs a few years ago.

 

Ciao!

The bucket list!

 

A bucket list is best described as a list of all the things you want to do, places to see, experience or accomplish before you expire from this earth.

It gets its name from a deviation of the term “kick the bucket” and can also be called a “life to-do list”.

There is also a hollywood film called – wait for it - “The Bucket List”! which stars Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. In the film they leap from planes, drive race cars, eat caviar, motorcycle on the Great Wall of China, and trot by other wonders of the world before they "kick the bucket."

Now, while I have no intention of jumping out of planes, I do have some other ambitions/challenges which for me, form my own personal “do before I reach 101 years of age” list! Some of my list has already been achieved, so I’ll only include the ones which I haven’t yet completed.

In no particular order:

1. Travel to South America

2. Learn enough Italian to be able to hold a conversation and get by

3. Climb to Everest base camp

4. Travel on the trans-Siberian express train

5. Learn how to swim properly

6. Visit Asia (will do this year)

7. Bench press 150kg for 6 reps (currently on 110kg)

8. Win a 6 figure score in an online poker tournament (still only in the 4 figures)

9. Eat the bugs/insects found in street stalls in Asia

10. Write a book

11. Visit Machu Picchu

12. Visit Christ the Redeemer (the statue of Jesus Christ in Rio, Brazil)

13. Visit the Amazon rainforest

14. Visit the outback in Australia

15. Complete a 24 hour Sleep out for homeless charity

16. Train in the gym for 60 consecutive days (best so far is 26 days)

17. Visit the Great wall of China

18. Attend an Oktoberfest, Munich, Germany

19. Visit all 7 continents

20. Travel to at least 50 different countries (currently on 19)

21. Invent something

22. Make a documentary short film

23. Live in Las Vegas for 3 months and survive by playing poker

24. Have a class re-union with my degree year mates from Sligo

25. Increase my patience and lower my tilt factor with online poker

26. Visit Dallas

27. Run a marathon

28. Leg press 500kg for 5 reps (personal best is 450kg for 5 reps)

29. Meet Maradona

30. Attend a full moon party

 

I plan to be able to tick off 4 or 5 items from that list by the end of 2011. I’ll also add to the list along the way.

Ciao!

Asia 2011 - 27 weeks - 7 countries - 2 pairs of jocks!

 

Its been a year to the day since I made my last post here and with good reason. As I've not done much travel in 2010 there was no need for any update. I did get to Berlin(stag weekend), Manchester(godfather duties),Vilamoura(a wedding) and to visit my Dads hometown, Cassino in Italy for a week - which I hadn't visited in 22 years eek!!

Myself and Florence have been master planning for literally a year now about our next trip. It started off with the intentions of going back to Vegas and living it up there for the three months your allowed to on the tourist visa. The plan was to play a good bit of poker there and just enjoy the desert heat that we both love so much.

However, our agenda changed then during the Summer and we decided that we wanted to see more of the world and especially somewhere we had never been to. In pops Asia.

Why Asia? Well apart from been relatively cheaper than most places in the world it also allowed us to dust off the backpacks once again. After getting the taste of backpacking in Europe and then in Africa two years ago, we really wanted to experience a long term backpacking adventure. Europe was only a 12 day trip and while Africa was a 3 month journey, we were there as volunteers so we were kinda limited in a way as to what we could do and where we could go.

So our flights are booked! We flight into Bangkok on June 6th and back home on Dec 6th.

We are flying from Bangkok to Singapore on the 9th June to attend the wedding reception of Sinead O Donnell and Sheng Oon, which promises to be a very amazing few days in Singapore.

On the 12th June we fly down to Bali in Indonesia where our trip kicks into gear. A good friend, namely Aileen O Donnell will be coming with us after the wedding in Singapore to travel for 6 weeks before she hits Australia.

The plan once we hit Bali is to spend a few days there then head to the gili islands which are frequently referred to as "paradise islands"!

And thats as far as the planning goes until we actually get there. The flights are booked up until Bali so after that its where ever and when ever we please.

The countries we intend on visiting will be Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. Depending on how the money is going we probably will either fly to either India or Australia for a 3 week visit, but this all depends on where we are after 3 months and how our budget is holding up.

So, like the blog I did for Africa I'm going to be doing the same again, which will hopefully be worth reading for anyone that decides to subscribe to it.

Ciao!