One lesson I’ve learnt is that it is very easy to get lost. Particularly if you think you know what you’re doing but actually don’t. And especially if you don’t want to ask for help. Obviously, I know what I’m talking about. In my defence, you really don’t want to ask for help in non-English [...]
Travel
The most exciting thing that’s happening is my upcoming trip to Eastern Europe. I leave very early tomorrow morning! The original plans have changed and I’m now going further east. The itinerary is something like this: Sept 4 – Fly Dublin to Frankfurt Train Frankfurt to Berlin Hang out in Berlin for about 4 days [...]
[12/10/2002 1:38:42 PM | One day I noticed that there was a woman about my age that came to the traffic lights at the same time as me, and waited as I did for the lights to go our way. She wore a backpack and looked interesting enough. She was there again the next day. [...]
Irish people are rather keen on bacon, piggies in general to be sure, but particularly sweet smoky bacon. I think a lot of people eat bacon everyday. Popular sandwiches for lunch are BLTs, breakfast rolls and my favourite, chicken and bacon. Breakfast rolls are eaten at any time of the day and consist of sausage, [...]
For such a small country there is an overwhelming amount of media — television, radio and print. Of course England is so close, geographically and culturally, that it’s not all Irish. The newspapers aren’t monopolised here as they are in Australia. There are at least five Irish national dailies — three broadsheets, and two tabloids. [...]
One of the most interesting things that differentiate countries from each other is what colours they use to signify different flavours of chips! Chicken isn’t really a popular flavour of crisps here but it is generally coloured yellowy orange, salt and vinegar is blue (or green for Walkers), cheese and onion is green (or blue [...]
Apparently we’re in the middle of summer at the moment. My first summer birthday was overcast unfortunately but the days surrounding it were quite pleasant. However on July 1 in the middle of the day it hailed, and the last few days have been really really cold. Urgh. I’m starting to understand the national obsession [...]
On my four day trip to Glasgow last year I buggered things up a bit. I forgot that my pocket-knife was in my bag and I had to stop at security and ask what to do. He said to take my hand luggage back and check it in. Fine. So I went back to do [...]
Dublin is a dirty city. There is litter strewn all around the streets even though there are plenty of rubbish bins along the pavement. What I saw the other day goes some way to explaining why. A young boy, perhaps 5, placed his empty McDonalds drink cup on the pavement at the bus stop. This [...]
The language in Ireland is rather colourful, as the following examples may show: Skanger – general pejorative for so-called ‘lower’ class people implying lazy, dirty, and rough. Knacker – as above but has connotations of Travellers (Ireland’s ‘gypsies’) Mingin’ – ugly, dirty, “When I moved into my new flat it was totally mingin’” Spar, eejit [...]
Image by Jacobo TarrÃo. Everyone walks across roads here with very little regard as to whether a car is actually coming their way. And I mean everybody. Even frail old people with walkers. It’s truly scary at times. I saw my first jaywalking casualty the other day. A woman stupidly ran onto the road and [...]
Image by Michal Fabry. I was also warned about the food here and they were right. It really is a shocking state of affairs. You Aussies really should appreciate what a good wicket you’re on. Fresh, tasty, diverse, affordable. These are not words that spring to mind when considering the food options here. I’m sure [...]
Dia dhuit (pron. ‘dee-a gwitch’)/ hello! For the last few weeks I’ve been working at a solicitor’s office doing data entry. It was the same thing day after day. The only interesting thing about it was that I had to read the case files to extract the information. Tell ya what; people sue for some [...]
Blimey. I had been warned that the public transport in Dublin was pretty bad but I wasn’t really prepared for how bad it is. Buses don’t run regularly – so there might be a bus at 11.10, then 11.40 then the next one might not be till 1.20. The timetables at the bus stops tell [...]
Ali and I did a 3.5 week tour from Vancouver to Vegas and this is what happened. Our first stop was Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It’s a beautiful city to fly into, over mountains, islands, ocean and forest. It’s very much like the US in that we couldn’t really tell we were in a different [...]