I have provided some tips here to prevent people from getting charged for excess baggage on flights.  Your airline’s website will always tell you how much you are permitted.  I have acquired this knowledge over the past 2 years.

1. Buy a Luggage Scale: This will be a wise, once off investment. I have seen both digital and scale models.  Click here for a google product search.  If you shop around, one shouldn’t cost you much.  It will save you alot of money in the long run.

2. Check-In Online and Print your Boarding Pass At Home: This will prevent you from ever presenting your luggage at a desk to be weighed.  I have used this method successfully on a number of occasions.  I just pack a sports gear bag with as much as I can inside.  Be careful here because your bag will need to be able to fit through airport security machines and into the overhead lockers on the plane.  This only works if you’re not putting in luggage in the hold and used most commonly on short-term flights.

3. Be First At The Check In Desk: As the plane fills up with luggage and gets heavier, the more it costs the airline in fuel.  I have heard of cases where airlines have ignored charges for excess baggage for the folk who check in first and leave the charges for people who come later.

4. Wear a few layers of clothes and take them off when you get on the plane:  Believe it or not, I have heard of people using this method to bypass excess charges.  It might cause a bit of a problem going through security so be careful.  Your flight might take off when you are undressing for a strip search ;).

5. Pack Carefully: Do you really need a ski jacket for The Bahamas?  Scrutinize everything you are including in your luggage.  A little bit of preparation could save you alot of cash.

6. Take all your heavy luggage in your hand luggage: This is an obvious one.  I usually put my shoes, gifts etc. in my hand luggage because they are generally the heaviest items I have.

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I would consider myself to be quite callous with a caustic sense of humour but last night someone made a joke about suicide which really angered me.  I draw the line somewhere.  You always need to draw a line somewhere.  Luckily, I have never been directly affected by someone’s suicide and I hope I never will but the topic for me is and never will be a laughing matter.

I recently found out about someone’s death (who I knew to see but never personally) and had to enquire as to the nature of the death although I had guessed it was suicide due to the cloaked way I was informed about it.  The person whom I asked never knew the person and only knew him through someone else.  It was him who made the really callous remark toward the young man who had died.  The comment was homophobic, but internally homophobic as both parties were gay.  I can only assume he meant it to be funny.  How can anyone joke about suicide especially when it’s just happened?  If he didn’t like the man who had died he could have made that remark and I would have understood somehow in the back of my mind or been able to justify it but he NEVER knew him.  He made a reference to what the guy was like but only through what he had heard, not what he had witnessed.

I’m very wary about giving people second chances (because rarely people ever change) and I was willing to give this guy a second chance. I had the inconvenience of his company for a weekend and he didn’t annoy me at all (on a previous weekend he had.)  Now, I have no time for the guy and I hope he rots in hell for the comment he made.  He’s the kind of person whose life I gauge against mine as in I say to myself, “I’m so glad I’m not as deluded as that fool there, and I’m so glad I’m more mature, confident, intelligent, self aware than that person will ever be and he’s 6 years older than me.”  I know it’s wrong to derive self esteem from things like that but with this guy, it’s imperative that I do so.   It’s also important I never turn out like that.

Nobody knows whether Heath Ledger’s death was accidental or suicide but it has brought depression / suicide into the public arena.  Hopefully with the success of ‘The Dark Knight’ young people will waken up to the pain and horror of suicide.  I haven’t heard any jokes about Ledger’s death because it would be beyond the realm of taste and I would seriously question anyone who would do so.

All taxi drivers are knobs in my opinion.  They are money grabbing bastards who will try every trick in the book to extort as much money as possible from you.  While they suck all the change from your wallet, most of them will also offer lousy, boring conversation to pass the time.  This pain should require a reduction in the fare.  – €2 if the Taxi Driver speaks to you on other matters apart from your destination.

Although taxis are now regulated and everything is run on meters, there are still ways they can trick you out of your money.  Today, I had a guy who drove really, really slowly (although the meter is charged to do with distance, it’s charged by speed if it drops under 20km/h I believe) and drove us to the wrong destination.  It seemed to me that he wanted to push his political agenda on top of us, as passengers and stay with us for as long as possible.  The end charge for the taxi was €23.50.  For the same journey to the airport last week I paid €15.  It’s totally ridiculous.

To make matters worse the taxi driver pushed his Progressive Democrat agenda on us.  He gave me a quick summary of what’s wrong with Ireland and told me all the ways the PDs were going to help the country.  He also ranted on about the legalization of prostitution in Ireland which is on the PD agenda apparently.  I couldn’t really tell if his interest in this topic was to do with controlling the Irish black economy or his own personal interests.  He drove slowly so he could convey his message and so that the metre would increase.

Three of us lads were in the car and chatting amongst ourselves about our weekend away in England and we were discussing hostels and he interrupted us by saying, “Hostels, ye stayed in one of dem?  They’re great these days, aren’t they?”  Then the conversation went from hostels > one he had slept in in Galway > a PD politican in Galway within the space of a few minutes.

I informed the driver that I had a degree in Economics and a postgraduate diploma so I know a few things about the Irish Economy, although I majored in Microeconomics but he was right on all the economics issues and my input wasn’t valid.  It was always his agenda and “I’m right now there, aren’t I?”

I fucking hate them.  I really do.  They are way too overpriced and the service is appalling.  I wish Cork had a decent public transport system which could get me from the airport to my house without having to donate my kidneys to fund it.  Die, taxi drivers, die.