September 28, 2001
06:30 AM dublin time
oops, i think aonghus may have offended our only australian friend. we were discussing a bit in bill bryson's 'down under' - a book we both read before arriving in australia - where he describes the unsuitable flora and fauna that were at various stages brought into australia to the detriment of native species - cane toads, rabbits, camels, brambles and other weeds. and aonghus, giggling, pointed out that the species that has most thrived as it's native counterpart declined is homo sapiens.
apologies australians - i certainly do not consider you an invasive species in community ecology
[link]September 27, 2001
07:27 AM dublin time
i've taken to having the same sandwich everyday at lunch - not only coz it's tasty, but coz it's such a fun order to make. try saying 'chicken schnitzel sandwich with cheese' five times quickly.
[link]06:50 AM dublin time
in the five weeks i've been working in this job the company has gone through five different secretaries. one only lasted half a day, and she was one of the permenant ones. and there seem to be an unending amount of off-site manager type boss people who turn up on a weekly basis and introduce themselves to me as the 'vice chairman' and 'director of productions' and such like - i've counted at least eight bosses based both in and out of the office. and my main on-site boss was introducing a new guy round this week saying things like 'this is john he works on the multi-dextor-output-circuit' and when he got to me, not only did he totally mispronounce my name [cat-ree-oh i think it was] but he described me as working on something totally unrelated to anything i've actually done since arriving here. inefficiency in the extreme.
but hey, there's a barbeque at lunchtime tomorrow. and it's only two weeks to payday.
[link]September 26, 2001
12:41 AM dublin time
according to this [via here] i'm "Angry *and* arrogant! What a combination. You have just enough knowledge of the world to really resent it properly."
i think frustrated might've been a better word, but it wasn't that far off the mark. for an 'am i a goth, trendy or alternative' quiz
[link]September 25, 2001
05:13 AM dublin time
on my walk to and from work i pass an office called 'the victorian nurses bureau'. it stuck me as a little odd that there would be many victorian nurses about. my history is a little hazy, but wasn't queen victoria reigning around the nineteen hundreds?
and while i'd be willing to accept that there could be a gallery dedicated to victorian art, there's no way the wire mesh barriers labelled 'victorian temporary fencing' had been around since the turn of the previous century
i eventually figured it out when i realised what australian state melbourne is in.
[link]September 24, 2001
05:50 AM dublin time
i had the worst dream where my old boss and my old p.e teacher from school merged into one person and said i could only keep my job if i excelled at playing aussie rules football for the company. what i nightmare.
though the wierdest thing is that i was getting quite good at it.
[link]September 21, 2001
02:49 AM dublin time
girl's night out last night:
yay for gay bars playing deadly eighties music where you can dance without hinderance of attempted chatting up.
boo for gay bars playing deadly eighties music where you can dance without hinderance of attempted chatting up and drink much too much beer until half past two am and have work the next morning.
groan. my insides are acting like a hyperactive reverse coffee percolator.
[link]September 20, 2001
07:14 AM dublin time
at long last - after much scanning and much fiddly html editing - there's some more [forty six] photographs of asia. this time ones taken in thailand. enjoy.
[link]September 19, 2001
01:13 AM dublin time
there isn't a large muslim community in ireland. there was a girl who wore a veil in my year in engineering - i presume she was muslim - but there were three hundred of us in the year and i don't think i ever spoke to her.
when we visited malaysia last month the things that struck me were the lack of alcohol [and expense when it was available] and that i had to dress conservatively - annoying long skirts and sleeves in the stiffling heat - the last thing i wanted. unfortunately when i get annoyed i get stubborn. and belligerent. why did muslim women and not men have to cover their heads? it roused the feminist in me and combined with fuzzy information i'd heard from somewhere - probably about the taliban - [i'm not a good newspaper reader/news watcher] i surmised that islam was anti-women. not that i felt too strongly about it - i'd just never had any reason to really think about it, or properly try to understand it.
but now there is a reason, and over the past week i've been absorbing infromation like a sponge and know that my previous assumptions were wrong. it's ironic that a disaster that has spurred anti-muslim feelings has had the opposite effect on me.
it's 'understanding islam week' at lake effect. please let yourself be educated.
[link]September 18, 2001
12:34 AM dublin time
last night we saw an australian film which has be a runner for having one of the best titles ever - 'he died with a felafel in his hand'. the film was quite good too - even if i did overcompensate for sitting too far back at 'planet of the apes' and ended up at the front feeling like we were at a tennis match.
[link]12:26 AM dublin time
the comments are still working, they just don't say how many there are for each blog entry - i took it out coz it was taking too blummin long to load the page. now it emails me instead.
[link]September 17, 2001
05:44 AM dublin time
we went for a walk along the beach yesterday - to clear our heads and aonghus sinuses [residual dust mite effects] - and realised that the next land mass to us is antarctica. it didn't seem too cold though, so we had some icecreams. there's a definite feel of summer now on some of the warmer days - a bit like a nice april day at home.
[link]September 14, 2001
12:38 AM dublin time
and now i think it's about time for my 'ten things i miss about not being in asia' list. [thailand photos are on they're way, for now if you haven't already, check out the feet across asia pictures]
1. upon ordering a pineapple juice, seeing them take half a fresh pineapple from the fridge.
2. being consistently amused by the variety and amount of things and people carried by motorbike.
3. thunderless lightning.
4. having excuses to constantly write lists.
5. relearning 'hello' and 'thank you' every other week.
6. going weeks without washing my hair.
7. the ever-so-tight thai policemen's uniforms.
8. being able to avoid squashed toes and blisters by never wearing shoes.
9. omlette sandwich for breakfast - and the fact that it was usually listed in english menus as 'bread and egg'.
10. buying excessive amounts of anklets.
12:26 AM dublin time
read this article : they can't see why they're hated
[link]September 13, 2001
07:58 AM dublin time
i think my flags are still flying at half mast.
[link]04:25 AM dublin time
this morning i saw some white and red geraniums growing wild. i've never seen that before.
[link]September 12, 2001
01:36 AM dublin time
i'm finding it very difficult to do my usual browse through people's blogs this morning - espeically newyorkers/statesiders. everyone just seems stunned. though what's even more disturbing is those that haven't yet updated [come in tinman]. from here it seems so remote and surreal but reading about it i'm finding it hard not to start sobbing into my keyboard. must pull self together and do some work. no one else here seems too bothered.
[link]September 11, 2001
05:16 AM dublin time
at last i'm finished trying to fix the comments problems and the stats script errors and can get back to some proper blogging about the traumatic apartment dilemmas we've been having.
have i told you about our new apartment? and the fact that it's ever-so-tiny but ever-so-handily in the very centre of melbourne. i was a bit dubious about it's size at first, but as it's turned out it's given us another but more urgent difficulty - aonghus is alergic to it!
now we're not sure whether it's the aging bed, the elderly carpet, the ancient sofa or the dust impregnated ceiling [which has a convenient jagged stalactite type surface for maximum dust collection] but one or all of them has been exuding dust mite droppings putting aonghus in a state of sneezing, sniffling and wheezing.
so we went out and bought a full set of alergy covers, dust mite and bed bug sprays [did i mention the bed also has bed bugs - but they only bite aonghus] and gave everything a thorough hoover, but still aonghus was waking up during the night wheezing and short of breath, and now also suffering from lack of sleep, it was decided that we had to move out.
so down we nervously trooped to our agent's office to tell him the bad news, to be greeted by a brusque 'i haven't time now, come back on monday, but if you move out you'll lose your bond'.
i think aonghus would happily have forfeited our eight hundred dollar bond, but suddenly his allergy abated and now we feel really silly - we're not sure if it's a temporary break, but either way it's no longer urgent enough to lose eight hundred dollars - and two weeks rent - by moving out immediately. but we can hardly go back to the agent and say we'd changed our minds. what if he has a relapse?
i think we've come to a decision though - we're going to try to get a replacement bed and maybe get the carpet industrially cleaned - and attempt to wean aonghus off the antihystamines in the hope that his wheezing has stopped permenantly. i reckon he's been cured by overexposure - after all he did manage to cure himself of a chocolate allergy by stuffing himself with the stuff one easter!
[link]01:27 AM dublin time
yay for shiney new comments sitting happily [hopefully] on my own server. try them out everybody please!
[link]September 10, 2001
07:53 AM dublin time
everything's buggered - blogger, comments, stats - so i'm doing this the old fashioned way and it'll be all messed up when blogger starts working again! oh woe. [republished as it was messed up when blogger started working again]
[link]September 06, 2001
04:59 AM dublin time
here's an idea of a thing someone could do.
but first i'll retrace my train of thought to the beginning.
i think it was in galway, about five years ago, and grace and me were singing the 'chicken in a basket' song for the first time:
'chicken in a basket,
chicken in a basket,
chicken in a basket.
cow in a currach,
cow in a currach,
cow in a currach
bollix in a blue plastic bucket,
bollix in a blue plastic bucket,
bollix in a blue plastic bucket.'
then in vietnam [thinking of the song] i managed to snap a picture of a chicken in a basket. and also photographed some other stuff that inspired extra song verses...
fish in a bottle,
fish in a bottle,
fish in a bottle.
and
dogs in a cage,
dogs in a cage,
dogs in a cage.
and now back to the thing that someone could do - somewhat vaguely along the lines of the fojm mirror project - it could be called the foaic project [friends of animals in containers] or something.
[link]September 04, 2001
11:57 PM dublin time
oops. it was my fault after all - have just figured out how to use the scanner properly.
and yes, the 'trail of feet' was intended purely to exacerbate grace's foot phobia!!!
[link]08:42 AM dublin time
right, they're up. well, the first taster anyway... the trail of feet across south east asia! the quality of the digital images is, however, absolutely apalling but its the scanner's fault, not mine.
[link]06:33 AM dublin time
blogging has temporarily suspended as i'm devoting all my few spare moments to scanning in some of my south-east-asian photos that i eventually got developed.
[link]