Faoiseamh

Mad Tourists

2008-08-20T15:20:00.002+02:00

County Clare is probably most famous for the Cliffs of Moher which is on every tourist's itinerary. There are however many other cliffs that one can admire along the Clare coast and none more so than those at Loop Head which is right at the tip of the county. The cliffs are vertigo-inducing and you cannot help but be aware of your own mortality as you look down at the Atlantic crashing against the cliff walls.

Some tourists seem to be totally indifferent to the danger of being swept off the cliffs by a gust of wind to meet a certain death down below and insist on going right to the edge off the cliffs. There were two tourists there when we visited a couple of days ago and I could not bear to look at them as they preened over the side to take photos of the cliffs. I am amazed how idiotic people can be when they are travelling.

Rain stops play

2008-08-16T10:53:00.001+02:00

We arrived back in West Clare on Tuesday after spending two very nice days in Germany. We stayed in a small town called Wesel where the people were extremely friendly and which had a very fine park. We went to Movie Park Germany on Monday and enjoyed the attractions there under a very warm sun.
Since we arrived in Kilrush there has been nothing but rain, it is pretty depressing as holiday weather goes. We got wellies for the girls yesterday so that they might at least enjoy splashing about in the puddles. We are thinking about heading up to Mayo in the week but with severe weather warnings we may not end up going anywhere. I must remember this the next time I complain about the Dutch weather.

New Year's Resolutions

2008-08-08T10:22:00.000+02:00

For many people the new year begins in January and that's the time when they make resolutions on how they are going to change their life. I am normally so depressed in January that I pass over that particular ritual. For me the new year really begins in September and my list of resolutions gets made in August at the time the brochures for evening courses are posted through my door.
So I have already made a few plans:
1) Italian for Beginners
I am going to take the language course that inspired a Danish movie and a Maeve Binchy novel. The local 'volksuniveriteit' (~ adult education centre) is running a course about five minutes cycle from my abode thus it would be rude not to. I am looking forward to being able to listen to Laura Pausini and understand everything and to judge Miss Italia contestants on more than their looks.
2) That French Book
I have been reading "Le Resquilleur du Louvre" for months at a rate of a page a fortnight. Must finish book, just must.
3) Speech Recognition
I plan to purchase Dragon Naturally so that I can start spouting my thoughts into a microphone rather than annoying my poor fingers.
4) DELE Intermedio
I did the DELE Inicíal Spanish exam last year and I wanted to do the next level this year. Me has the study materials but life has gotten in the way but this academic year I want that to happen.
5) Irish Dancing
The eldest of my progeny will start doing her Jean Butler thang from September.
6) Polish School
My two eldest will start attending fortnightly Polish school from September. Commitments don't you just love them.
7) No more Mr. Fat Boy
The last few months has seen less training (only 2 or 3 times per week) and more eating and drinking than is good for me. In September we are going on a down cycle with training 7 times a week and no rubbish food.
8) Love and Romance
Now that baby is three months I must start getting out more with the love of my life. Life can't be all work, study and children now can it?

Holiday

2008-08-06T10:51:00.001+02:00

As I reported last week my RSI symptoms were quite bad so I have been staying away from computers as much as I can. I will be off work after this week until the end of August so I hope to be refreshed and blogging again after the rest.

RSI

2008-08-01T08:00:00.001+02:00

Today my arm feels like it's about to fall off. For months I have had the tell-tale tingling and sharp pains. I cured it a while back by swimming regularly but I haven't had the chance to swim for the last few months. I know that I should go to the doctor but I don't want to be told that I cannot use a keyboard. My job is impossible without a computer but I don't exactly think I would be told to sit at home until I recover. My working days would be insufferable without a computer. I'll be on holidays in a couple of weeks so the pain should clear up and I'll start swimming regularly again. If my arm is as painful as this in the longer term I can see myself hanging up my keyboard for good. Anybody looking for a hunter-gather with no experience but very much enthusiasm to get back out to the wild?

Changing Paths

2008-07-31T08:00:00.000+02:00

I often read in the media that we are living in a world in which people will enjoy several careers and where the ability to change your life path will be a critical capability. I can see something in this because I have always been in jobs where change is constant and I mostly work on projects so by nature my work is dynamic. However, I have not been called upon to make a step change in my career since I decided that I never wanted to work in a factory again and I left my job as a clean room besuited manufacturing engineer to join the massed ranks of IT consultants plying their wares internationally.
I do know of many people who have made step changes out of IT. Most of these were married women who went back to college to train into teachers, psychologists and other more social professions. I do know a couple of men who went into retail businesses. However, as a rule, men seem to be stuck more fast in their professions because of the fact that the traditional role as the chief bread winner has not gone away. In Holland the normal model is for women to move from full-time to part-time work on having children. In this country the 1.5 income family is the norm. If you have two thirds of the financial responsibility for the family your choices are restricted.
I graduated from Webster University in 2006 with a Master of Business Administration degree which I had studied for via a combination of evening class modules and on-line. It was a very hard thing to combine with having a job and a family as well as my language studies so I was very proud of the achievement. My goal was to use this degree as a springboard for another step change. However, things have not worked out the way I had hoped.
An essential part of me seems to have gone, I no longer have the will or energy to take risks. I moan about my situation but I do nothing about it. My enemy is within me. I am 36 so I am still far too young to be coasting but that's what I seem to be doing. Being married and having three young children does make a difference to the whole equation because any decision I make has a direct effect on them. It's more than that though, I seem to have lost confidence in my ability to do things well.
I find myself wishing for externalities. If I were forced to take action then I would have to fly again. But I know that I should not be looking for answers without but within. Is this why so many Americans have therapists?

An Independent Scotland

2008-07-28T21:02:00.001+02:00

There was a very interesting article in the London Times about the consequences of the SNP victory in the Glasgow East by-election with the columnist Simon Jenkins predicting an end to the United Kingdom. There is a long way to go yet but the SNP has now surpassed its 1974 high tide mark and there would seem to be an inexorable movement towards increased Scottish devolution and eventually independence.
Ironically at the same time the Ulster Unionists are embarking on some kind of alliance with the Conservative Party. This is ostrich syndrome at its very worst. The Ulster Unionists will pretend once again that Northern Ireland is 'as British as Finchley' and jump in to bed with the party likely to win the next UK general election.
Why aren't unionists asking about which union is desirable going forward? Is it with the Irish Republic, Scotland or England/Wales? Of course they want the United Kingdom to stay as it is but, unfortunately for them, there are several other parties in the union including the not unsubstantial Irish nationalist and Ulster nationalist minorities in their own province.
When I was growing up I could never for the life of me understand why Scotland wanted to stay joined to England. Call it an Irish nationalist upbringing but basically nobody in the Irish Republic I grew up in would have voted to rejoin the union despite the country almost going bankrupt. Of course I realize now that the story was not quite so straightforward but I think that most Irish people would see the Scottish as a kindred folk and would welcome an independent Scotland as a country Ireland could work very closely together with.
The question is what will the unionists do in this situation? Will they clutch at the England/Wales combination and force them to remain united with a province they would gladly be rid of? Why are they not thinking outside of the box? Surely Scotland is their natural partner for historical, geographical and cultural reasons.
Unionists could be ahead of the game by exploring ways of fastening the link with Scotland. Would Irish people accept some kind of confederation between Scotland and Ireland?
Jenkins also makes a point that many unionist will find hard to accept but that I think is more and more relevant. The days of 'Britishness' are numbered.
It should also liberate England to consider its localism, its neglected Anglo-Saxon history and culture, without having to “take into account” the Scottish (or Irish or Welsh) ingredients of that curious vacuity, Britishness.
Long after the last 'British' people have been signalled on the island of Great Britain there may well still be one million British people in Ireland demanding a union with countries who may well have amicably separated while refusing any union with their fellow Irelanders no matter how beneficial such a union would be.

The Knowledge Economy

2008-07-28T08:11:00.001+02:00

Whenever politicians want to sound with-it they start bleating on about the knowledge economy. This normally involves promises to invest time and money into getting young people to study science and engineering. After all the 'knowledge' economy has something to with that geeky stuff, doesn't it? After convincing an army of young people to study science subjects the economy will miraculously evolve into a breeding ground for 'knowledge' industries and before you know it the tax revenues are rolling in.
The thing they seem to be missing is that the economics of the situation means that their fantasy will never work out. Studying science and engineering is much harder than studying business type degrees. You attend lectures and labs every day, there are always assignments and reading to be done. It is not a stroll in the park by any means and there are no decent paying jobs at the end of the road.
I studied Materials Science and Engineering. If there is any 'knowledge' subject this must be it, covering as it does the discovery and development of new materials to make more possible. So what happened to my classmates? Most of them found out that you can earn far more money becoming an accountant, going into IT or having a go at sales.
The advantage of having a degree in engineering is that it is hard to get. That means that companies in non-related industries are quite happy to retrain proven brains to do other jobs. Why is anybody going to stay in Materials Science and Engineering or any other engineering discipline if they can earn much more elsewhere?
The way that most western economies is structured is irrational. Doing a PhD should be the route the most intelligent and innovative follow to develop their ideas and add value to the economy. Instead many people are put off by the fact that having a PhD can lead you up a cul de sac of relative poverty. We are put off doing the thing that can add the most benefit to the economy and we are encouraged to join the army of parasitic industries feeding off past glories and old ideas repackaged.
Politicians talk, quite correctly, about harnessing the brain power of the people to generate new industries. However, the reality is that most of us are using a tiny fraction of our brain power because we choose the path that leads us to the most economic reward. Intellectual development and stimulation is something we do not associate with our daily work.
I had a dream the other night where I was in a lecture about the Fracture Analysis of Glass. When I woke up I thought about all of the things I learned about Crystal Chemistry, Polymerization, Phase Diagrams, Dislocations, Buckminsterfullerenes, Metallic Glasses.... I feel bad about throwing that all away. I feel guilty about the utter waste of it all.

Iceland Eyes

2008-07-25T08:15:00.002+02:00

I am most pleased with Google Reader for continually directing me to new blogs. The latest greatest is Iceland Eyes which has some stunning photos. I was particularly touched by this post which showed the following beautiful photo called 'Care':

Home accents

2008-07-25T08:00:00.001+02:00

I was watching a really interesting program called 'The Making of Me' on the BBC last night where the actor John Barrowman went out to determine what makes him gay. Something that I found very unusual was the fact that his normal accent is an indeterminate American one but that he has a Scottish accent when speaking to his parents. He was born in Scotland but they moved to the USA when he was very young so you would expect the Scottish accent to have disappeared.
I think that many people who move around have accent shifts. My accent when I am at home in Clare is more akin to the accents around me while my normal accent is very neutral to the point that many people have asked me if I am Canadian or something. However, I don't think my accent shifts so dramatically at home that anybody could mistake me for a different person but John Barrowman has two quite distinct accents.
Many Dutch people I know speak a dialect at home but they speak standard Dutch at work. You can hear the difference when they are speaking to family on the phone. Dialects are sticky though, words are pronounced differently and dialect-specific words are used. With different accents you are basically saying the same thing but with a slightly different pronunciation and intonation. That is why you would not expect the same person to have such a bipolar accent range.
One explanation might be that he was trying to 'keep the accent'. Some people are quite determined to retain their original accent when they go to another country. It could be that he kept his original accent around the family but adopted an American accent to fit in to his new environment. The surprise is not that somebody would do this but that there is so little mixing. He has no instantly recognizable Scottish accent in his American accent or vice versa. My own accent has traces of everywhere I have lived, I certainly don't have a set of accents to call on.

Milo and Tom (Global Warming)

2008-07-24T08:00:00.002+02:00

- Milo, do ya know what I read about dat global warming?
- Go wan.
- De planet’s stopped warming up ten bleedin’ years ago.
- And I guess dat yar surprised?
- Well, didn’t I only see dat Al Gore film a few months back and all de politicians goin’on about it.
- Two words. Acid rain.
- What’s dat?
- Yar a bit young but dis isn’t de firsht time dat de planet was going to end.
- So is it all bull or wha’?
- Naw, I’d say dere’s sometin in de line of sometin goin on alright but I am pretty sure ‘tis not myself or yourshelf dat’s causing de problem.
- But, sure why are de politicians going crazy about it den?
- ‘Cause ‘tis easier to say sometin about tings ya can’t do a ting about dan tings dat ya can. Like all dem fish dat are nearly gone but we like ating or letting greedy feckers build deir ugly eshtates along de coashtline.
- Ya wouldn’t know who to believe dough any more. De world is full of bullshitters dese days.
- Yeah, but ‘twas never any different Tom.

To The Last City

2008-07-22T19:10:00.000+02:00

This was a book I had not heard of previously but I saw it at the library and it looked interesting. It is a short novel about a group of travellers trekking to the last Inca city of Vilcabamba. Evidently Colin Thubron is also a travel writer and this shows in the almost photographic imagery he employs to bring alive the isolation of the jungle. The form of the novel is interesting as each of the travellers voices their perspective on the unfolding journey. The author makes no allowance for readers who may not speak French or Spanish as he writes what each of the characters says with no translation. I found that rewarding and it made the book feel more real and documentary-like but I am sure that it would irritate readers who do not understand those languages. The author poses some interesting questions as to the value of culture tourism, the folly of soft westerners who automatically think that they can go into any foreign environment and he even questions the role of writing in recording history.

This book is a great achievement for what it manages to contain in less than two hundred pages. I will be looking out for more work by Colin Thubron with interest.

Friends

2008-07-21T08:30:00.001+02:00

I thought that this was a very poignant post on the Girl Who Does Yoga blog about losing friends. I think that anybody reading the post will relate to the pain and confusion of losing friends through all kinds of different circumstances. My wife and I have standing jokes about a few people that we knew who suddenly disappeared off the radar screen though we know that they are still alive and kicking.
One of the realizations that comes with age is that many friendships are based on expedience. We may not want to admit it when we are younger but sometimes we befriend people purely because they have something to offer us and vice versa. When the circumstances change those friendships rarely last. What trips us up is when we invest in a friendship that we regard as a 'pure' friendship without realizing that it is a friendship of convenience for the other person.
In my own life I have noticed that I have less and less time to have friends in the traditional sense of things. My primary focus is my family and I do not often meet up with the few friends I have around these parts. My main contact outside of home life is with my work colleagues. My wife has a very different situation whereby she seems to make new friends at the bus stop and before long that person is around ours for a cup of coffee. That is great because otherwise she would have no diversion from looking after the kids. I do hope that there will come a time in the next few years when we will have more time for going out and meeting people like we used to. Having young children and having an active social life is a pretty hard mix to combine. Life might well begin (again) at 40 dreadful as that sounds.

Inoffensive Language

2008-07-21T08:00:00.000+02:00

I remembered something yesterday about the time I was doing my masters in Belfast. Our class consisted of several Malayians, one African and a small majority from Ireland (north and south of the border). The people from the island of Ireland did not call each other Irish for risk of offending the unionist/British classmates. We also did not call our grouping the 'British and Irish' students as that was a mouthful and already introduced the idea that we were somehow divided.
We all got along together swimmingly though everybody knew which person 'kicked with the other foot' (I am not sure if that has become an offensive way of putting it). So we ended up calling each other the Europeans. I always had to laugh about this because we were all from this small island on the fringes of Europe but the only inoffensive term we could use involved us labelling the group after our continental origins. I wonder if there isn't room for creating a new inoffensive term for the people originating from the island of Ireland. Maybe we could be Irelanders? Westlanders? Greenish? Hibernians? Any suggestions?

Language Holidays

2008-07-20T11:52:00.002+02:00

When I was younger I went off on a number of trips on my own. Sometimes I quite liked travelling on my own, this was especially the case in Iceland where I was on a kind of spiritual journey. On other occasions it was not quite so pleasing and I would have much preferred some company. Solo travelling was not really my thing all in all.
The only type of holidays that I really enjoyed on my own were language holidays. In 1997 I went enrolled on a month long course in Dutch via the Amsterdam Summer University. The university organized a flat to stay for a very reasonable price and there were a whole host of cultural activities available during the four weeks. It is a perfect environment in which to meet like-minded people so making friends is no problem. You generally find a good mix of ages too so it is not just the exclusive domain of young people. I am still in touch with people I met during that course.
In 2002 I went on a Spanish course for two weeks in Madrid at the Don Quijote language school. Again that was a very special time. The course itself was excellent with a great international mix of students. We had classes in the morning and I normally went to a swimming pool in the Barrio del Pilar in the afternoons. In the evening there were optional cultural classes which I really enjoyed as they covered really fascinating topics from the history of bullfighting to the architecture of Gaudí. Later on we normally hit the town and it was really easy to find very willing victims on which to practice our Spanish.
The language course format just has everything I like. I have been looking longingly for the last few years at the month long Icelandic course at the Institute of Icelandic Studies in Reykjavík but family commitments make it impossible. Both my wife and I have been thinking about finding an opportunity to take another Don Quijote course on Tenerife. Basically I am sure that my future will include more language holidays.
The only downside I found to language holidays is that it is so painful to leave the little bubble you have lived in at the end of the course. Normally I want to come home by the end of a holiday but in the case of language learning the job is never done so leaving is that much harder.

Ice, Books, Love, Women

2008-07-18T08:00:00.001+02:00

As I have mentioned more than once before I am a big fan of the Iceland Review, it might well be the reason why I regularly get a pang of longing to emigrate there. Anyway today's Daily Life post about the The Viking Wives’ Book Club was very timely combining something about book clubs (as posted about by Women Rule Writer and being virtually run by English Mum), mixed marriages (something that was referred to in the comments on my Polish Girls post ), my favourite country (Ice, Ice Baby) and those ever endearing subjects - women and love. Anyway, the part of the post that stood out (besides that yummy looking rhubarb pie) was this:
Vikings didn’t even ask. They just grabbed the women they fancied, planted them on their ships, set sail for Iceland and then kept them at their farms as slaves and lovers.
I hope modern Icelanders are a little more polite. But what is it about Icelandic men that is persuasive enough to make women want to follow them to Iceland, struggle to adapt to a foreign community and learn a new difficult language? Why didn’t they persuade their partners to stay?
I don't know how many times I have had the discussion with various people about how attractive Irish men seem to be to foreign women but not to their own. How many Irish guys go off on their travels and come back with a beautiful foreigner? But it's obviously not just the Irish. The Icelanders are at it too.
My own theory on this is that Irish people just have this in-built device that thinks that everything foreign is more attractive. Irish guys go abroad coming from a very talkative culture where Dutch courage fuels a lot of bravado. Go to Finland or some quieter country and all of a sudden Paddy on tour goes from zero to hero. I wonder if Icelanders have the same experience?

Milo and Tom (Out in Dublin (ii))

2008-07-18T07:00:00.000+02:00

- Well Milo, what’s de craic with ya?
- No craic boy, what about yarshelf? How’d ya get on up in de shmoke?
- Ah now, not too bad like.
- Like what like?
- Sure we had a good old drink in a few pubs like. Jaysus, dere’s some amount of posers up dere dese days.
- Ah, don’t mind dem tossers.
- And de price of drink?
- Don’t I know it but cut to de chase boy, did ya shcore or not?
- Well now, dat’d be tellin.
- Don’t be pulling my wire. After all my coachin’ did ya shift or not?
- Well, we were out on de Sahurday in dis place called Coppers.
- Ah man, you don’t mane Slapperface Jacks, is dat shtill going?
- I tink dat’s it all right. I never saw so many people shifting in my life.
- And what about yarself?
- Well, I met a really nice wan all right and I was chatting to her a good while like. De boys were with other burds so I bought her a couple of drinks like.
- And did you mill in?
- Well, dat’s not what happened no. I went off to de jacks and dere was a big queue. By de time I got back to her she was shifting another bloke.
- Jaysus, yar kidding me boy. Ya were in like Flynn but ya screwed it up. What will we do wit ya at all?
- But d’ya know Milo, I only really want her ya know.
- Merciful virginity give me patience boy. What will we do wit ya at all?

Music Therapy

2008-07-17T08:00:00.001+02:00

Love it, love it, love it.....

Lost and Found?

2008-07-16T20:58:00.002+02:00

The BBC has done some great things to promote poetry over the years, exemplifying the worth of public service broadcasting. I remember listening to the winner of a children's poetry competition on Blue Peter, it was a poem called 'The Animals', I think. It was about how human beings are gradually auctioning away their own future on this planet and it was a very powerful verse indeed. I still remember the delivery of the lines 'and soon just like the animals they'll be going, going, gone'. I cannot find this poem on the internet but if anybody should know of it I would love to read it.
Anyway, this post is not about that particular poem but about another poem that touched me greatly but I have no idea where it has gone. The BBC ran a very successful television program in the 1990s called The Nation's Favourite Poem. As part of the promotion of the series famous people were asked to recite their own favourite poem and these were broadcast in short clips. There were many memorable clips but the one that I would love to see again was recited by a black man who was a television presenter I think, I did not recognize him by name at the time. His poem was accompanied by images in sepia and the poem went something like this "I remember Spain, I remember the two of us dancing in the rain, how I loved you!".
Unfortunately the clip was over before I had noted the author and so I am left with those words and the memory of the rich delivery by the unknown television presenter.
I tried googling every word I could remember and what I came up with is actually an Al Jarreau song. He may have recited this as a poem. If so it was a touch of genius because I have watched the clip of this song on youtube and it is an up-temp jazz number, not at all like the poem I remember. Is there anybody out there, anywhere who can tell me if this is the lost poem? Does anybody know who the reader might have been?

"Spain"
Yesterday
Just a photograph of yesterday
and all it's edges folded
and the corners faded sepia brown

And yet it's all I have
of our past love
a post script to it's ending

Brighter days
I can see such brighter days
when every song we sang is sung again
and now we know
we know this time it's for good
and we're lovers once again
and you're near me

I can remember
the rain in December
the leaves are brown
on the ground

In Spain I did love and adore you
the nights filled with joy
were our yesterdays
and tomorrow will bring you near me

I can recall my desire
every reverie is on fire
and I get a picture
of all our yesterdays

Yes, today
I can say, "I get a kick every time
they play that 'Spain' again"

I can remember
the rain in December
the leaves of brown
on the ground

Our love was a Spanish fiesta
The bright lights and songs
were our joy each day
and the nights
were the heat of yearning

I can recall my desire
every reverie
is on fire and I get a picture
of all our yesterdays

Yes, today
I can say, "I get a kick every time
I see you gaze at me."

I see moments of history
your eyes meet mine and
they dance to the melody
and we live again
as if dreaming

The sound of our
hearts beat like castanets
and forever we'll know their meaning.

Bodysurfing

2008-07-16T08:00:00.000+02:00

Last year I spent a few months working my way through the back catalogues of both Anne Tyler and Anita Shreve. I often get these two writers mixed up because of the fact that they have quite similar styles and both deal with the emotional rollercoaster of real lives in a very empathic way. I remember at the time that my sister mentioned that I was really getting into 'women's' books. It is unfortunate that these writers, especially Anita Shreve, get typecast in this way as I certainly think they have much to offer to male or female readers.
"Light on Snow" was the last novel I had read by Anita Shreve before "Bodysurfing". That novel is a work of art that made me think of the very best novels I have read by Scandinavian authors such as "Under the Snow" by Kerstin Ekman or "Prince" by Ib Michael. Her novels are often set in the forest or by the sea in New England so the comparison is perhaps not so surprising. In any case "Light on Snow" is hard to equal as a complete, perfectly written novel.

Given what I have just said I approached "Bodysurfing" with some trepidation. The novel is enjoyable and once again she creates a main character that you cannot help but fall in love with. However, the novel is a mish-mash of storylines which do not come together as successfully as I had hoped. There are also a couple of premises on which the plot is based which do not really ring true.
If it were another writer "Bodysurfing" might not have been a disappointment but given my admiration for Anita Shreve I was left unsatisfied and I just hope that she will return to the heights of "Light on Snow" with her next novel "Redemption" which will be released in October.

Things I miss about Ireland

2008-07-15T07:00:00.000+02:00

After living in Holland for the best part of ten years I am pretty much used to life in the polders. We have a good life here. We live in a peaceful, family-friendly town with all of the facilities you could ask for (schools, library, park, sports clubs, swimming pool) within walking distance. If we want a bit more excitement the beautiful university town of Leiden is a short cycle away and Amsterdam is 30 minutes away by train. Our neighbours are very friendly and we know more and more people locally because of the children going to Dutch (play)schools. All in all I am quite happy with my lot.
However, there are some things that I really miss about Ireland which will never go away no matter how long I live here.
Sport - Irish people generally love sport in a way that I just have not found anywhere else. I don't mean playing sport, I mean watching it. It is not unusual for an Irish man to read every section of the sports pages of the newspaper, even reading about minority sports like cricket. When you meet an Irish man and ask 'Were you watching the match/ the golf/ the tennis/ the cycling?' they do not ask 'What match?' because they already know what you are talking about. I love sport so I love this attitude which also means that you always have something to talk about with strangers.
National Conversations - Ireland is a talk radio country. People love listening to Joe Duffy or Marian Finnucane or Matt Cooper or whoever discussing the latest issues. It is not unusual to hear the same issue being dissected on numerous talk shows. This feeds into the discussions that everyday people have and the issues are chewed over in turn by the average man on the street. Everybody tends to have an opinion on the latest issues. In Holland the media is so splintered that you just do not have the same chance that everybody will have listened to the same talks show. I am often the only person who has watched a television program I want to talk about during the lunch.
Shallow Friendliness - Holland is a crowded country where we live as sardines in a tin constantly moving around each other according to unwritten protocols. The average stranger is not particularly friendly because they are in their own zone finding their own space. We share the same spaces out of necessity not out of generosity. In Ireland, outside Dublin, everything is just a little bit more relaxed. People have time for each other and are often curious about outsiders so that you see a lot more shallow friendliness.
I like this easy banter and chit-chat. It used to disturb me somewhat that people could be so friendly without that necessarily translating into a friendship. When Dutch people are friendly it often signifies that they are opening the door to friendship so it has more sincerity to a certain extent. The Irish way makes life easier though. You always have company in a bar, you can always start chatting with a random stranger. It just doesn't have to mean anything
Family - The older you get the more it hurts to be away from your family and missing out on the time you would have spent with them had you not gone away. Modern communications and cheap transport make it easier to bridge the gap but there really is no substitute for being close by. My children are missing out on seeing their grandparents regularly which saddens me.
I guess that the common thread here is the Irish people. I miss being around the type of people I grew up with. I miss not being a foreigner and enjoying a pint of cider while watching the hurling or gaelic football in a friendly bar. Thank God I'm going home in a few weeks, anybody would think I'm homesick.

Milo and Tom (Out in Dublin (i))

2008-07-14T15:03:00.000+02:00

- Milo, do ya tink I’ll shcore on Sahurday up in Dublin.
- I dunno boy, ‘tis different in de shmoke like, dere’s no shlow sets at all.
- Ya’re jokin me.
- No kiddin boy, ya’ve got to chat to the burds like and go in for the kill like if ya tink yer in like Flynn.
- I never knew dat at all. But sure how d’ya pick a burd out?
- Well now, dere are different ways like. Ya’d often scan the caper for one that looks back at ya like and then ya know.
- But how do ya know?
- Jaysus, ya know if ya know.
- I don’t know boy.
- Well, here’s anuder one for ya.
- Go on, tell me like.
- Well, see if there’s two burds standing in de dishco and one of dem is fine and de uder’s not too pretty like, yeah.
- Right so, go on.
- Well, ya should always go for de dog and let yer mate chat up de ride.
- Why would ya do dat?
- Well while yer mate’s still chatting to de ride you can be outside shifting de udder wan. A boy told me dat one before and ‘twas de besht advice I ever got.
- Jaysus boy, I’ll have to remember dat one so, so I will.

Style over Content

2008-07-13T17:19:00.002+02:00

Anybody who has been looking at the blog this weekend will have noticed that the layout has been changing more regularly than a teenager's mind. This is because I have discovered the amazing Blogger Buster site on my travels.
For the last few weeks I have been complaining that the whole blog format is too linear and too based on the chronology of posts. That is well and good if you have a personal diary type blog but my blog is unashamedly generalist and so I post on various themes from politics to poetry. Obviously some posts appeal to very specific audiences while others may have a broader appeal. My goal is to have a blog that looks like a magazine.
Well, lo and behold, I came across this post on Blogger Buster about setting up your blog in magazine format. In the next while I am going to try to redesign this blog so that the various themes will be represented in their own windows as some of the content (e.g. on multilingual issues) will not age quickly.
Basically the style of the blog should improve over the next few week so maybe there will be somewhat less content but I am sure that the blog will improve dramatically overall.

As straight as a die

2008-07-11T08:00:00.009+02:00

Darragh has a really great post on his blog about having pride in who you are. He tells the story of his childhood where he got a really hard time for not conforming to the masculine norms of those around him. One paragraph he wrote struck a real chord with me:
I was definitely gay. Not homosexual gay, but different gay. Gay because I liked to read and I didn't know who the captain of Man Utd was. Gay because I didn't go to the local discos. Gay because I couldn't catch a sliotar or kick a ball in a straight line or because I didn't know about the offside rule. A gay pansy cissy.
I cannot relate to what he experienced as a young child given that I loved sport and got on fine at the local primary school. However the 'gay' discrimination without actually being gay is something that I began to encounter from the time I went away to boarding school. In Ireland calling somebody 'a gay' is certainly something of an all-encompassing pejorative.
It was always difficult fitting in back in my home town once I had started at the posh boarding school. My accent began to change as I have mentioned before and my school played rugby and not gaelic football so I lost touch with a sport I had been passionately involved in. Looking back I also had the annoyingly arrogant habit of using the wrong words at the wrong time. English is known for its quite defined registers and playing the intellectual card might have worked in school debates but it was the wrong strategy to fit in back home. To my face I heard a number of insults like 'the queer with the big words' or 'the gay boy'. Behind my back I know that I was the subject of some ridicule.
When I went to university in England I have to say that the gay thing stopped. Nobody assumed I was gay because of how I spoke or acted. I had friends from all kinds of backgrounds and the issue of sexuality was just not relevant. More to the point I had a couple of longer term girlfriends so it was not as though I was trying to hide anything.
However, when I returned to Ireland to study in Belfast the same thing started again. With certain groups of people I started to get accused of being gay again because of the way I spoke, because I was too effeminate, because it could not be possible to be like me and not be gay. I remember one guy pleading with me to get out of the closet - 'Aidan, you are gay, just stop the pretense. How could you not be?'
I really don't know why it was such a problem but I put up with these kind of incidental accusations of homosexuality for years. Naturally the accusations were coming from men and not women. One of the classic examples of the kind of 'gay' thing I did was crossing my legs. What a liberation it is to live in Holland. I have been at all male meetings here and looking around I notice that everybody has their legs crossed, what sweet liberty!
I am not sure whether Ireland has changed in this way in the last ten years, I would hope so. Of course it is abhorrent to discriminate against anybody based on their sexuality but I have to say that 'gay' discrimination when you are not actually gay is quite a lonely place. It's not like there is a straight 'gay' community to fall back on. I am just glad that I live a life now where I don't have to put up with anybody casting aspersions upon my sexuality.

Milo and Tom (d'All Ireland)

2008-07-10T20:00:00.003+02:00

- Milo, do ya tink we’ll do it dis year like?
- Do what boy?
- Win d’All Ireland like.
- Bogball or shticks?
- Ah now, don’t be shlagging, sure we’re already out in de football, ‘tis only the hurling left.
- Ah, I know, I’m shtill remembering ’92, dat was a great day out in de shmoke against Dublin. I was up dere with me da like.
- Dat was just a semi-final dough and we lost.
- Don’t be getting technical on me.
- But what about dis year?
- Well, dat would depend like. De ref might blow up early like dat time against Offaly or we might get shkinned by dose Cats like.
- ‘Twould be grand dough wouldn’t it. Like ’95 and ’97.
- Dem were great days boy, de Clare shout and all.
- Dey might be back yet, firsht we’ll have to bate dem Tipp boys on Sunday.
- Aye, we’ll bate dem into next week. Up the Banner!