Stranger In A Strange Land: Carbon Footprints on Giants Causeway

So recently I've been thinking about how my company could be more ecologically-minded and, more importantly, how I could be personally. Last week in a taxi in Paris I started talking to a colleague about it (Eugenio, who claims to be too boring to make a blog appearance - HA!) and found he was interested in the subject as well. He's also interested in lots of other things, like movies, music, literature... not very boring after all, eh?

But I digress. The point is that on Friday, when I was back from Paris, I decided to try one of those online carbon footprint calculators. Wow. I'm a pretty eco-friendly person overall: small apartment, no A/C, no car, minimal electrical appliance use... except for the air travel. Um, my air travel alone just for the first three months of the year brought me to 15 tons of CO2. Whoops!

Okay but hey, that's not gonna stop me from going to Ireland for Joanne's birthday. It was the perfect opportunity to catch up with some old IESE pals, see a lot of rain, check out the Giants Causeway, and drink Guinness. So off we went. Anyway, this was two weeks before I knew about my enormous feet of carbon.

Joanne's party had a 1920s theme and was held in a big old wacky house near Derry, way up north. Never one to shy away from a theme, I did the best I could with limited time to make a costume work. Anyway, that was Saturday night, following Friday night in a Derry pub and Saturday at the incredible Giants Causeway. I think it may officially qualify as one of the longest weekends of my life simply because I slept so little. But it was totally worth it to see everyone and dress up silly.

Getting some pre-party fresh air on Giants Causeway. (If you've never seen this, you really should. Incredible!)

The IESE crew at the beginning of the night, before we started doing the usual clothing swapping.... Ahem. David, Lindy, Francis, Moi, Juha, Birthday Girl Joanne, Diego, Ryan, Frenchy, and Alex.