"Accio Inspiration!"

For the second time in two days I've sat down in front of the computer to write this blog and my inspiration seems to have vapourised. Therefore I have decided I will share with you some of the things I love about Dublin and some of the things I don't love quite so much about Dublin. But first a little lowdown on my weekend.

I had a fabulous time - another non-stop party weekend after which I needed another weekend to recover. The highlight was the house party I went to in Blanchardstown on Saturday night, where I spent most of the night deeply engrossed in conversation with Pim, a totally awesome guy from Holland. Dutch people are so incredibly cool. They are generally more liberal, more relaxed, and more knowledgeable than any other nationality I have encountered so far. Of course that is a huge generalisation, and should be taken with an enourmous hunk of salt, but that's the impression that I get. Dutch and Scandinavian people have no idea how cool they are - and Dutch people are even cooler into the bargain because they aren't so reserved as the Scandinavians, so they are much easier to get to know. Before you ask though (you know who you are) no, I am not interested in Pim, he's not my type (a right-wing voter...eeeek!). True to my idiotic nature I didn't think to get his phone number or email address or anything before I left, so I will probably never see him again. The flames of another potential friendship doused before the blaze had even got going.

Moving right along to the next most exciting thing to happen last weekend - the moment I have been waiting for for over a year. Yes, the release of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". Originally the plan was to wait one week until the price of the book had halved, which is what usually happens, but guess how long it was till I caved? About 24 hours. And it was so totally worth it. I read it cover to cover on Sunday, and am currently re-reading it because, well partly because it was so incredible (the second best I think in the series after "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban") and partly because I don't have anything else to read. I am bursting to talk all about it, but if I ruin another Harry Potter ending for someone I think I'll just have to ban myself from reading books ever again, and nobody wants that. (By the way Bri and Tim, I still feel bad about that. SORRY!)

Well, it turns out I had a little more inspiration than I thought I did. Anway, onto my little lists. Some of these will be directly related to Dublin as a city, some of them will be more about me and how I am in Dublin, and don't reflect of the city at all. Firstly, things I don't love about Dublin and the life here:

1) I know I've brought this up before, but it's so expensive. The worst thing is everything looks like it's a reasonable price, until you convert it. Today for example, I went to buy a coffee, and it was 1.80, which looks cheap, until you do the mental calculation and in Aussies that's about three dollars. Which, actually, now I think about it, is about the price of a coffee in Australia now, at least at Flinders St. Station, so I should shut up and stop whingeing. Trust me though, other stuff is expensive.

2) There's no rubbish bins. Strange but true. You put all your rubbish in big black bags and you put a sticker on them and put them out for collection. You have to pay for the stickers (2.50 each!) too. Anyway the part I really don't like is the fact that as we don't have bins or skips or anything for the apartment block, you have to keep your rubbish in your apartment all week until collection day. Thankfully we have a tiny balcony so we can at least have it outside, but it still stinks, literally and figuratively.

3) Addresses here are weird. Some areas have postcodes, some don't. Some have no street numbers. Some have two different streets on them. Some have a county on them, some don't. Lord knows how the mail gets from A to B in this country but it seems to work. The Irish seem to understand the system but I sure don't.

4) Again I've mentioned this but I feel compelled to go into more detail because anyone that knows me well knows how much this irritates me. The traffic lights here are completely insane. Whoever came up with the traffic light system in this city was either totally crackbrained or completely drunk. I hate, hate, hate, crossing against the lights. But here it is a necessity as the traffic lights will halt all traffic so that there's not a car going through the intersection, yet the little red man prevents you from setting foot on the bitumen. You stand on the sidewalk like an idiot with a perfectly clear path in front of you for about a minute. Of course the second you decide, "stuff it - I'm crossing", the lights change and there's cars all over the shop. After the lights have allowed every car in Dublin ample time to make it through the intersection, including all the grannies and grandpas, you finally get the green man. Of course by this time you could have designed and built a scale model of the Eiffel tower out of matchsticks, but at least you've made it over the road. To cut a long story short I've gotten over my phobia and now I don't bother to even look at the lights, I just walk onto the street if I think I can scurry across in time. Incidentally that's a key indicator of a tourist in this city - all the stunned mullets lined up at the kerb while all the locals stroll nonchalantly across the road (on which there are no cars of course, since all the lights are red, but the pedestrian lights are not green for some reason).

5) Internet coverage. Look, I'm not being unreasonable here. I don't live in the sticks. I don't expect anyone to unroll miles and miles of cable solely for my benefit. But (as the Marias would say) COME ON! I live smack bang in the middle of the city. My postcode is "Dublin 1" for crissakes. You'd think I'd be able to get connected! What is the deal??

Well, I'm running out of time here. I'll leave the list of things I love about Dublin for the next post (trust me, there's lots more of those). Now it's time for sleeping, ready to attack another workday tomorrow (Thursday, almost Friday, then Saturday, the most magical day of the week!). Till then, good luck, have fun!