And the autumn leaves were turning to the coulour of her hair.

Slovakia shop on Capel St




Everyone is cashing in as the GAA finals draw near.

There is a definite change coming in nature. The trees really are starting to turn, there was no Summer again this year. Though the farmers in Ireland are laughing, bumper harvests and prices are high. On the horn of Africa 12 million starve, while we in the civalised world worry about the balance of payments.

As I pass through this life driving a taxi I have a wonderful opportunity to observe the human condition. From cradle to grave and loads of times in between I observe and make no comment.
As I pass a building or a junction I recall a journey taken long ago.

When I pass the taxi regulators office I think of the Greek girl who was going for a job interview. She got into the taxi on Parnell St.,so I had to go around Parnell Sq she was going to the Conrad Hilton for a job interview, a truck decided to turn as we came up to the taxi regulators office and this Greek volcano let fly.
"Good God I will be late"
"Why did you come this way you MORON ?"
"Look at the cost on the meter as well?"
"If this was in Greece it would be less than half of that"

So she had pressed on a few sore spots there, "Will you be getting Greek or Irish wages in your new job?" I asked."Irish" she said of course.
"Then let me tell you that you will pay every penny that is on that meter, If you don't I will bring a Garda into the hotel to have you taken out for underpayment to me, further to that, if I had a job interview I wouldn't be getting into a taxi on the other side of the city 20 minutes before I was due in the Conrad hotel."

"What is the job anyway" She said "Event planner"

I had to say to her that she couldn't plan a piss up in a brewery.

Some people never tip.

There is a guy 4 doors up from me. He was the biggest event planner in the country, he is not very busy at the moment as I write today.

On the Joe Duffy show(Thurs) a few taxi drivers had their say.
They spoke about how bad things are, but no one is listening.
But just let me say there is no living to be made in driving a taxi in Dublin!
How could there be, a city of 2 million with more taxis than New York ?
Illegal taxi drivers (by that I mean drivers with forged papers)have become a large section of the taxi community. If one ot these drivers has a crash then they run away leaving the injured parties to sort out their problems.
The other day in the Evening Herald there was advertisements for 22 taxis or taxi plates to rent!
Who will be driving these cars ?
The Garda have been hard on the drivers who are legal, you get tickets for overhanging a rank at Heuston station for example, yet there was, up until now very little attention being paid to cars who drove away or turned around until now to avoid the checkpoint.
My local community Garda told me she had seized 2 cars the other night. These cars had avoided the checkpoint, she was the back up.

So perhaps like the seasons there is a change in attitude,I hope so.

I try to find other projects which I can incorporate into my life. This year I hope to go back to finish a course in web design. I started one before and the "Teacher" spent the class talking to a French girl who worked for Google. While our work for4 the night was on a web page that was displayed on the screen.
Now we have "Flash" and "Dream weaver" to add to the wonderful box of tricks that is web design.
The main problem at that time was that my Mother was dying and so I missed a few sessions.

Now that I am a bit older and a lot more assertive I will give it another bash.

One guy who was really high up in IT told me that things are moving so fast in that business that everything he knows today will be different in 3 years. Now this guy was going to his private jet! So I reckon he knew a thing or two, a really nice person to talk to as well. Some people think that the CEO of a huge corporation will be very hard to talk to. I spoke to some of them, the best ones are approachable and friendly. They really need to know what is going on like the rest of us.The CEO of Cisco Systems rang my oldest son to find out how the course he had just completed had helped him, or if it could be improved in any way?.

Warren Buffet starts at the bottom, talks to the cleaners, the lift operators, the supervisors etc. When he meets the directors he knows whats what about the company.

A girl told me that a company from Icenland had come over to buy another company she had worked for. They asked all kinds of questions and were snowed under by forecasts and projections.
It turned out that they spoke to the taxi drivers while they went from venue to venue.The information they were given was 100% accurate in every respect, they didn't buy her company in the end.
I guess they didn't see that their own economy would collapse in the near future.