Published on November 29, 2007
in Ireland.
No, I’m actually not kidding! The title is not as ironic as one might think - the truth is I was very well impressed by the Irish Revenue Commissioners Office.
The quality of service they provide makes paying tax (and especially claiming relief on it 
) seem a bliss compared to other systems in other countries I’ve been to. From the very polite, patient and efficient personnel at the Department of Social Welfare, down to the automated voice recognition on their help line, I found it a very painless experience. To me, as an expat living here, the whole system seems very well organized, and the user experience while dealing with the tax office was such that the taxpayer is being treated truly like a customer. You get the feeling of getting “your money’s worth”, instead of feeling ripped-off.
If this sounds a bit like over-praising to you, or you had a different experience, do let me know your opinion. It should be added here that Ireland has a two tier tax system: 20% up to ~34K/year income, and 41% on everything above that (as of 2007 - this can vary slightly every year). A tax calculator (useful if you’re planning to get a job here) can be found here.
The tax level is thus pretty dear, so that the least the government can do is provide seamless service to the taxpayer. I don’t think anybody is enthusiastic about paying tax - however, the Irish seem to have managed to make the process more bearable!
Published on November 24, 2007
in Ireland.
What about them?
Well, I just thought this is one of the things I like about Ireland. A small detail, however the car registration plates here give you a very good idea about the age of the car. Their format is [YY]-[CountyCode]-[SequenceNumber], so that for example the one-hundredth-second car registered in Dublin in 1998 would have the following registration number: “98-D-102″ (the number was chosen in a purely random fashion ). [YY] are the last two digits of the manufacture year of the car - for example even if a 1998 car was imported to Ireland only in 2005, it will still have a “98″ stamp on the plates.
This can be of tremendous value when buying a second-hand car, you can spot the age of the car immediately, so you’ll have a start point for estimating the price. I also like it as it’s a very neat, organized and transparent way of registering cars.
In my case, it has also helped to get familiar with all the car’s models lifecycles. I know for example now that Audi have facelifted their A3 model starting 2003 without even reading a magazine on the subject 
Time and again I realize that laziness is every man’s greatest enemy. Especially when you start setting higher goals for yourself, that require regular sustained activity/effort, laziness will be the little voice in your head telling you that you can postpone things - “I can do this later…”
Obviously the more motivated you are towards your goals, the smaller the chance of such thoughts popping up in your head 
I do think though that even the most motivated people encounter laziness at least once on their path to their goals.
Have you ever promised yourself to start going to the gym regularly? Perhaps to run 10km a day? Learn a new language, lose weight, prepare for an exam, write something in your blog(!), you name it! Sooner or later there will always be that little voice telling you “I will do this tomorrow”, “I’m too tired now, perhaps later”. The question is, did you listen to it? Ok, we all know the answer to that one. The real question is “how many times did you listen to it?”. Everybody has their moments of weakness - it’s only human. To keep giving in though - is not. So I guess the only right answer here is “less and less times as I went”.
There’s always a threshold. If you pass it, you’re set. No more lazy thoughts from there on.
I find that for me the best example is running on the treadmill at the gym. About half way through, I feel like I’m not going to make it. I think “OK, maybe just this time I’ll stop here and go relax in the jacuzzi”. The way I get past that moment is to beat the lazy thoughts with motivating thoughts. Find them right there and then, or you’re done. “What if I was running to save the life of my brother/wife/mother/<insert-beloved-person-of-choice-here>?” usually works for me
With writing in the blog, it’s a whole different story. As with other things though, if you manage to get past that pesky little threshold, it will become second nature.
For a while now I’ve been thinking about creating a collection of the lyrics that I feel defined me at a certain moment in my life. I imagined this would be some kind of dedicated section of my site, but having them as tagged/categorized posts in a blog should do just as nice.
I should probably set up a disclaimer for this. Obviously, I am only reproducing the lyrics for informational purposes, all rights are property of their respective owners. I could probably just post links to sites such as lyricwiki.org - it’s just that I much better like to be able to see the text at once
Below is one of my long-time favorites:
The road’s still long
by Cinderella
Growing up as a young boy
Sometimes can be rough
At six years old I was thinkin’
Seven would be just enough
But I was wrong
Ooo I was wrong yeah…
Ten years old and I’m growin’
Thinkin’ I got it sussed
Mama said you’ll be a fine young man
I thought I already was
But I was wrong
Ooo I was wrong
Cause when you get where you’re going
The road’s still long
Eighteen years I’m a rebel
Thinkin’ I’m pretty tough
Daddy said you got a lot to learn
I thought that I’d learned enough
But I was wrong
Ooo I was wrong yeah…
Twenty-five was a good time
Comin’ into my own
Climbed the mountain
And I reached for the sky
I thought that I had it all
But I was wrong
Ooo I was wrong
Cause when you get where you’re going
The road’s still long When you get where you’re going
The road’s still long
They all try to tell you
But who are they to say
Cause the best things that you learn
You find out on your way
No time for feelin’ sorry
Just time for being strong
When you get where your going
The road’s still long
Now I see where I come from
Now I see where I am
Now I see that you never really know
So you just gotta do the best you can
And that ain’t wrong
Ooo that ain’t wrong no
Cause when you get where you’re going
The road’s still long
When you get where you’re going
The road’s still long
When you get where you’re going yeah…
I am a passenger.
This is my journal.
This was going to be it. My first post - done. But as I wrote the words, spinning red alarms started in my head. I thought a bit. Looked up “passenger¹” in the dictionary. Then wrote the following.
I often thought about the meaning of the saying “Life is a journey, not a destination”…
It somehow feels true, and self-comforting in rough times. It can be very misleading though: I mean, surely, life is a journey you start when you’re born. There are several milestones, and then the destination is pretty much the same for all people. Obviously, life cannot be a destination.
The question is whether you control the journey, or does the journey control you? If the destination is the same for all, what matters is the path each takes. And I think this is the essence of the problem: are you in control of the path of the journey, or are you just relaxing in the back seat? Are you the driver, or just a passenger?
Starting from scratch then:
Life is a journey.
I have the ambition to be the driver.
This is my journal.
¹ - The definition from Wikipedia says: “A passenger is a term broadly used to describe any person who travels in a vehicle, but bears little or no responsibility for the tasks required for that vehicle to arrive at its destination”
