I just went on a brief blog hiatus. Days have been quite full recently and frankly the last thing I felt like doing after a day's work was get back on the computer and write. I've started reading loads and watching the odd movie instead of spending time online.

Last week I was reading a post by Simply Geeky about Peanut Butter Sandwiches and Jelly. Yeah, peanut butter and jelly as if anything can get more disgusting than that. I was so confused with the post that I kept reading most of the comments to figure out what's the story with peanut butter and jelly. It was after wikipedia came to the rescue that I realised that jelly in the US means jam for us Europeans. The equivalent for (European) jelly in the US is jello (thanks geeky). In the US jam is jelly (US jelly) with the fruit pieces in it.

Yesterday was quite a crazy day. Milan lost to Manchester United 3-2 at Old Trafford but that was hardly the main event of the day.

This morning I woke up in a particularly good mood. Yesterday had to stay at work late and I ended going on a holiday shopping spree. Got a ticket for Latvia for the first weekend of May, two weeks later back to the dot, three weeks later off to Budapest and big holiday planned for beginning of September. Guess the good mood is self explanatory isn't it? I've also got a calendar printed with all the holidays highlighted in bright red just in case I need to be reminded.

Since 9am this morning I played two telephone jokes - a mild one and a nasty one. Pity I couldn't phone with my new phone and record the nasty one because it was in English and it worked out beautifully. A friend of mine pulled a sickie and she got a phone call from the human resource department. I could almost feel her trembling over the phone. All good fun in the end, apart from the fact that I got threatened that she's gonna kill me :)

Tonight going to watch a standup comedy show by Rich Hall. If it's as good as this (20 words that should exist) then I'm sure I'll have a good time.

I've uploaded what probably will be the penultimate episode of the Venezuela trip. The rest of the trip is probably all pictures of people having fun which really doesn't mean much to other people who are not in the pictures.

Anyway check out the post about the Orinoco Delta in the travel section. This weekend I got tickets for a weekend break in Hungary in June. Got a guidebook on Budapest and started doing some initial reading. This should be interesting.

After waiting for about a whole month I got my new HP iPAQ hw6945 at last. I knew Friday the 13th was going to be a lucky day for me, sort of felt it when I woke up from bed this morning. I only need to meet a black cat now for the sake of completing the lucky charm thing. So lemme boast a bit about this new thing I got. These are the features:

• Quad Band GSM
• Full QWERTY Keyboard
• Touch screen
• Windows Mobile 5.0 OS
• 1.3MP Camera
• GPS Navigation
• Wi-Fi
• Blue Tooth
• Integration with MS Outlook

What more could I need (apart from the automated washing and cooking facilities).

New experiments in the travelogue section. I've added my first youtube travel video to the second Canaima post. There are also more pictures of Canaima village in the gallery.

Short blogging break due to the long Easter weekend break. Went to the Ring Of Kerry tour with Paddy Wagon this weekend. The driver was great craic as they say here in Ireland and we had a really had a good (or should I say mad) time. I'm not going into much detail cause I don't feel like :)

The weekend break which lasts till Monday here gave me a good excuse to avoid having to upload a new episode of the Venezuela travelogue but today is Wednesday again so there's supposed to be an update if I manage to overcome my flu induced lethargy and upload it before the champions league match between Milan and Bayern just in case I'd be severely disappointed with the result.

I'm not a big fan of Bond movies but I must say that I enjoyed Casino Royale (review). Despite the length of the film the movie keeps flowing and doesn't drag and isn't full of long action sequences. The only longish chase in fact is at the start of the film in Madagascar. This scene opens with a cock-style-fight between a cobra and a mongoose an idea I found amusing, even though somebody forgot that there are no Cobras living in Madagascar. Poetical licence granted anyway.

I think Daniel Craig managed to play a great Bond. In this first bond book by Fleming bond is just promoted to a double-0 and his fineness hasn't yet developed to its full glory. I liked the way Craig played his arrogant egocentric character which still managed to melt the bond girls. Actually this time Bond almost built a relationship with Vesper (Eva Green).

The only pity with the bond girls was that there weren't any blonds. You can barely see the face of the only blond in the movie. Catarina Murino then just appears for about 5 minutes and dies and the rest is all Eva Green. I admit I didn’t quite fancy Green from the magazine pictures but in the movie she develops quite a likeable character.

Rating 3.5/5

The Wednesday instalment of the Venezuela trip is in. Canaima - Angel Falls

Ever wondered what this list of icon is? I've wrote a non-geeky explanation of how to use the icons. Read More.

I decided to buy If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino, after my literally-encyclopaedia pal at work asked me read the first paragraph of this book at the local bookshop. It starts like this:-

Having come out of a reading mode for a while I thought that a weird book would get me into reading mode again. Boy was I right; this book is one of the strangest books I’ve ever read. And what’s more it’s all about reading. In one of the reviews I read about the book somebody described it as a love letter to a reader. I think it’s a good analogy.

Each odd number chapter is written in the second person and the following chapter is from a book the reader is trying to read. You, as the reader of "If on a winter night a traveller" are reading the same book the reader (you) in the story is reading. This suggests that you are being referenced in the book and the book sometimes even references itself.

The main story develops only in the odd numbered chapters where the reader and the other reader start uncovering a series of book fakers who are causing all the confusion in the same book. Scattered along these chapters are observations on reading, writing and the relationship between the author and the reader. The even number chapters on the other hand are like a series of short stories which don’t relate to one another (or at least I didn’t manage to find any relation between them). Each time the reader gets to the most interesting part of the story the story is cut abruptly and something mysterious happens to the book the reader is reading.

I still cannot decide what rating I’m going to give this book. Parts of it are great (4/5) parts and parts of it I just couldn’t get (2/5). If you liked the first paragraph and like weird books then give this book a go. Don’t expect a simple storyline with a clear plot because there isn’t any. Overall (3.5/5)

You can find the first short account and pics of the Venezuela trip in the travel section of the blog

For the Venezuela trip travelogue I'm going to keep the amount of bla bla to a minimum and use more photos and some video to document the salient points of the holiday. Hopefully this will give a general idea about Venezuela in a simple clear way without having to spend an hour reading detailed accounts of everything I've done in these two weeks.

If anybody is planning a trip to Venezuela or is interested in more information just e-mail me and I'll be more than happy to help.

The main articles are going to be posted only to the travel section of mindspill. I'll post a link to the each new post in the main blog as a notification that new content has been added. The target is to post a new update every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

It's been a while since I posted a word. Today I came across the word erudite in the ever-hilarious Twenty Major blog's post.

Word: erudite
Meaning: characterized by great knowledge; learned or scholarly (Dictionary.com)
Usage: I hate the way I’m portrayed as this odorous retard instead of the erudite and quite fragrant person I really am.
Synonyms: knowledgeable, scholastic, intellectual