We went to Alcudia on a family holiday this year, and spent a lot of the time around the pool watching Aimee enjoy her swimming. One day, we decided we would take a boat trip from the ones at the harbour. There was only one that appealed - which was essentially a glass bottom boat. We took it because we thought Aimee would enjoy seeing the fish, and it was relatively short. It was around €42 for the three of us. Not a huge amount, but not that cheap for a two hour trip.

The boat was a catamaran, and both sides of each hull had rather short windows in them. There wasn't a lot of space considering the number of people on board. We had a quick look downstairs, and there wasn't anything to see. We spent around 30 minutes picking people up from other piers along the coast and then headed off. Periodically we would check downstairs; nothing to see. Never mind, plenty of time yet. We went out around the coast for quite some time, travelling at a fair lick so there again, was nothing to see. Finally we stopped briefly (a minute or two at a time in a few coves). I saw one fish, and the seaweed on the bottom. Aimee, who you will recall was the reason for the trip saw no fish at all. The whole journey was just viewing a blue rectangle. The only life visible most of the time were people in the other hull also looking for something. Well that was it. and back to port.

Now Karen and I have been on a submarine, and I think "submarine vision" was kind of pushing it, so Karen went to complain at the desk. The girl explained the manager was not available, and another man in the booth laughingly said "you didn't pay for the fish". Uh, but we did, and I think from the poster, it's clear we did. I'm a diver, and have spent many hours on boats, I'm not that excited about them to pay for a two hour round trip.

The next day Karen got the hotel reception to call the manager, one "Toni Capllonch Alenyar". He wouldn't speak to her at all, referring conversation through his receptionist. After lots of nonsense including putting the phone down on us (causing our angry receptionist to phone him straight back), he eventually relayed through his receptionist "If you want fish, go the Caribbean". Another hang up, after which they no longer answered the phone.

So we saw more fish at the beach than we did on the "Submarine Vision" trip, and given the reply, it looks a bit like a deliberate deception, but hey, take his advice, I've been to the Caribbean, and they know how to do trips to see fish. For that matter I'd avoid his other trips too, maybe they aren't quite as they are advertised either. I've at least had the pleasure of depriving them of some more business.

I'm back from Chicago for a while now. On the last day (which was a Sunday (13th June)) I walked with some colleagues from our hotel to the Magnificent Mile where, underneath the John Hancock building, we had brunch at the Cheesecake Factory; food was good but the service was quite slow and consequently two of our number were tight for their flights. I walked back with them to the hotel, at a slowish pace for me, but probably rather two fast for them (on my own, I walk at quite a speed). Once I said my farewell's to them at the hotel, I had some more time to kill on what was a sunny, windy day in downtown Chicago. Incidentally, there are rival theories behind the nick name "Windy City".

I walked in the opposite direction from the hotel towards Sears Tower and, after taking a little time to find the entrance that was actually open for the sky deck, I found the queue to be 45 minutes. While I was mildly interested in going up, I felt this might be a bit tight if it got any longer as I was heading for my own flight, and anyway, I'd previously made it up the John Hancock Centre as I mentioned previously. So I wandered around the streets for a while, but rapidly found that everything on that side of the city was closed for Sunday, and I didn't particularly feel any desire to walk back to the magnificent mile again. So I thought I'd head to the airport a little early, and get sorted out, and look around anything they had there.

Now, O'Hare, like Heathrow is one of the busiest airports in the world. Plenty of people complain about Heathrow, but I must confess, I kind of like it, you're as likely to have transport problems in any airport in the world. Like my previously mentioned problems in Dublin, but at least in Dublin there were a few shops, and restaurants, and in Heathrow I can browse around for a long time without getting bored.

O'Hare is just plain dull. I got there in good time, checked in, declined the offer of 700 USD to upgrade to first class and saw an aisle leading to the security section, on either side there were around two shops / diners or whatever. I bought a few souvenirs in one of the shops while I watched the huge queue, and by the time I'd come out there was a much shorter queue. There seemed to be very little to do on that side, so I figured, that like many airports, it had more on the "air-side". I waited to get through security, and on the other side located my gate. I saw a modest sort of news stand, it sold some magazines, duty free cigarettes, wine and some travel adapters, along with a small selection of drinks and snacks. There was an identical one on the other side of security. I walked all the way around the gates and back, and realised this was it... absolutely all there was. I would have bought a Coke, but they only sold Pepsi, so I opted for a Gatorade Fruit Punch which proudly declared on the label the lack of any past association with any fruit. Then I sat down and was just plain bored. I had been kind of hoping to buy a Samsung T10 mp3 player on my travels, I'd bought one for Karen for her birthday (yes, it works with Linux), but this was one of the few airports in the world I've been to, where they had nothing like that on sale.

So, shop somewhere else, and be prepared to be bored.

Yesterday I set off from Banbridge around 9 am to get the aircoach to Dublin airport, since I'd been advised to arrive 3.5 hours before departure at 2:30 pm. I went through security pretty quickly, and shortly therafter I cleared US immigration in the airport, which was great, and I must say more friendly than my experience of US immigration in the past. At just after 2 pm they told us all to get out and go back up, so we had to have our passports unstamped and our visas uninspected. Fun.

Turned out the radar was down in the airport and lots of flights were being cancelled. The delay was a minor irritation for me, I was travelling alone and without an ongoing connection, but it did mean around 3 hours of standing around (there were no seats left) waiting to find out if my flight would be cancelled. In the end, the flight want ahead albeit with another delay on the tarmac. There was nothing reassuring about taking off in a fog bound airport where the radar still was at "limited" capacity, whatever that meant.

The flight itself was pretty good. I hadn't flown Aer Lingus before, it was an A330 with individual media on demand screens, so, especially as I was on my own I was able to kill the time watching video content the whole journey. The only considerable irritation was the staff on PA had a Columbo like capacity to come back on-line with "another thing", frequently to repeat the same information about shopping or such like over and over again. Likewise they had a capacity to interrupt the video with text on the screen, which could not be dismissed until it timed out. They did this all too frequently, to repeat what had already been said on the PA, and often riddled with spelling and grammatical errors.

So I arrived late in Chicago, but not before flying in with a great view of the city on the left; and when I got to the hotel, the view from the front door was equally impressive.

This morning I tried hard to get myself into the new timezone, so I stayed up till around midnight local time, and got up around 6:30 am, sorted out the papers from the case and so on. The hotel has good, easy wireless access, so that's great. I left the hotel around 7:30 am to go on a shopping trip for Karen, but also to see the sights along the way navigating with the usual woeful faded black and white photocopy of a colour map. Many of the shops didn't open to 10 am which was a bit of a pain, but I was the first up the John Hancock centre observatory this morning at 9 am. It does offer stunning panaromas of the city, and you go up in what is proclaimed to be the fastest elevator in North America - it certainly is fast. I think the observatory is in the 94th floor or something similar.

On the way down the lift tells me that the John Hancock centre is "the world's most recognised building". Now steady on... I find that very unlikely. I didn't even know it existed until yesterday (though I knew about Sears, and I know who John Hancock was). I would doubt the building could even claim to be in the top 10 most recognised buildings. Perhaps this is a limited definition of "world".

I don't have talks to go to today, just to register and go to a reception, so I'm taking advantage of the time to see the city a bit, and then I'll go back to the hotel for a swim. It's hot here...

I am neither particularly strongly "pro" or "anti" Europe. Nor do I live in the Republic of Ireland, and so I didn't vote in any referendum; but I am increasingly astounded at the fact that when the EU puts a matter to the public, and it is defeated, they take absolutely no cognisance of it at all. They just, rather cynically, accuse the voters of voting on local issues, or not understanding the treaty in front of them, and keep asking the question till they get the answer they want.

Even for strong proponents of the Union, there are a number of rather awkward issues about its future. Its lack of appropriately audited accounts, its apparent lack of basic democratic accountability and so on. It must not be seen to routinely ignore its citizens. From what I've heard so far, and in this situation in the past, there seems to be no basic realisation or admission, that the underlying treaty needs to be reworked to be acceptable to its citizens. It's about time the commission listened to rather than lectured, its citizenry. It may only be that small changes need to be made, but some recognition of this would be good.

Speaking of catching up with old friends, I went to see Mark Kerr in Belfast last Saturday night. Mark and I know each other well from the old fidonet days, and I guess we haven't had much contact since I moved to Banbridge, but it was great to see him and his family again. Part of the motivation for that specific timing was another old friend visiting, JoHo, another veteran of fidonet (in case you didn't know), who was over visiting Ireland (some kind of pilgrimage to Bushmills probably ) with his friend Goran.

Mark had a BBQ on, that we briefly left for a surprising, but really fun diversion (I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you), then we got back, ate a few burgers, drank some wine/coke/whiskey and chattered our way into the small hours. It was really nice to meet up with old friends and meet new people too. I think it's nice that there are some people you can go for years between seeing, but it still feels like old times when you see them again. So I guess it's my turn to come to Sweden again now, Jack.