Merry Christmas!
These photographs were taken at the back of our family home in Omagh, Northern Ireland. On a frosty moonlit night in early December I set up my tripod, found a small LED torch and set the exposure on my camera to 30 seconds. The twelve pictures show successive attempts at trying to get the message correct. After twelve attempts not only was I freezing but the physical demands of running back and forth combined with the mental challenge of writing back to front within the exposure time was enough to make me settle for something that was legible enough to get my message across!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
David
Hillary Clinton’s Speech at Titanic Belfast
Through my participation on the US-NI Mentorship Program I was fortunate enough to be invited to a special lunch hosted by The Worldwide Ireland Funds to present US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with a Lifetime Achievement Award for her services to Northern Ireland.
The event was held on Friday 7th December 2012 at the Titanic Suite in Titanic Belfast.
Kieran McLoughlin, President of The Worldwide Ireland Funds introduces Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton’s Speech after receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award
Transcript of Hillary Clinton’s Speech
The Menu
Save up to 78% on postage to the USA
I was surprised to find out that you could make substantial savings by sending post to the USA from across the border using An Post:
Exchange rate used: 1 EUR = 0.80 GBP
Summary
- An Post Standard Post is substantially cheaper than Royal Mail Airmail for all scenarios above
- It is 75% cheaper on average for the Letter scenarios above
- A 100g letter is 78% (£2.58) cheaper to send via An Post
- It is 38% cheaper on average for the Packet scenarios above
- Both services aim to delivery within 5-7 days so it is a fair like for like comparison
- Royal Mail do offer a Surface Mail option which is only cheaper in the 100g Packet scenario above, however it is only 20 pence cheaper and by choosing the surface mail option it adds almost 5 weeks to the delivery time.
Obviously you can only take advantage of these savings if you live in Northern Ireland and either live close to the border or have reason to travel across the border. In many cases it probably would not be worth driving a significant distance to avail of this saving unless you had many items to post. Savings may also be possible to other international destinations.
Sources
- An Post Standard Post – refer to ‘Zone 4 – Rest of World’
- Royal Mail Airmail Prices – refer to ‘World Zone 1’
- Royal Mail Surface Mail Prices
Transatlantic Post
Did you know that it costs eleven pence more to send a postcard from the UK to the US than it does to send from the US to the UK, despite it travelling the exact same distance?
As interesting (or not) as that may be to you (and please feel free to discuss below), the purpose of this post is primarily to test the Google Chart API.
NB: USD prices were converted to GBP using an exchange rate of 0.6279 as retrieved from Google on 2nd March 2012. USPS pricing for letters is by ounces not grams and these were converted to equivalent grams for the purposes of the above comparison. All prices were retrieved from the official websites for each organisation.