Irish times

How was my first day at work you ask? Pretty damn great. I got there at 8:45 to find the place locked and nobody there. I waited till half past nine when someone finally came to let me in. The boss came in at 10 or 10:30 and gave me the grand tour (the whole office is the size of a small flat, so it didn't take long) and something to do. Invoicing is a breeze, and I imagine doing the payroll won't be very difficult either. They've just moved into this new office, so everything is straight out of the box - new computer, printer, photocopier, fax, shredder, you name it. There's even a state-of-the-art phone system that nobody really knows how to use properly. I'm gonna have to do training in it. Other than that I started on a Friday so it was pretty quiet, and Monday is going to be an interesting proposition. Despite that, I'm sure soon I'm going to be able to do this job blindfolded with my hands tied behind my back. It makes me a bit angry actually as I feel like I'm probably overqualified for this job, but there's no way I could get something more challenging, because of my lack of experience. I guess that's what they mean when they say you have to work your way up.

On the way home after work I was walking along Grafton Street, and this woman asks me, "Do you drink gin and tonic?" and I was like, of course! She explained they were doing market research into gin and tonic, and if I wanted to I could try four different gins, give my opinions on each, and at the end they'd give me €10. I was like, where do I sign up? So I was full of gin and €10 richer when I found out the bad news of the day...it's going to cost a minimum of €180 to get my camera fixed. I figure for that price I'll just get a new one. Honestly, I know capitalism creates a "disposable society" where planned obsolescence makes you constantly have to buy new items, but this is ridiculous. Nobody knows how to fix things any more, you just throw it away and buy a new one. If you do find someone who can fix it, it costs as much as a new one anyway, or more. When I first got to Dublin and was going for interviews, I only had the one shirt with me. I wanted to get it cleaned, but it would have cost €7.50. I went to Penneys and bought a new one for €3, a 60% saving. Unbelievable.

Yesterday one of my flatmates, Diana, went home to Holland. We went to the airport to say goodbye, and it was quite sad, but the doleful mood was soon shattered by blind panic when we weighed Diana's luggage and it was 24 kilos. On Ryanair they only let you take 15, not a gram more, or you have to pay. Anyway, to cut a very long story short, Maria and I went home with 11 kilos of Diana's stuff in a big bag. Our new flatmate, Shelley, moved in in the afternoon. She's pretty nice, and she's Chinese, so we should be having some yummy stir fries in the near future. She's going to show me where you can get chinese dumplings for 50c each! She's also got heaps of illegally ripped movies but hopefully I won't turn into too much of a couch potato.

Then last night, the moment I've been waiting for...I finally met some Irish people! Hurrah! Again, they're friends of Maria. We had a quiet pint in a great pub next to the Liffey called The Bachelor, and watched Live Aid. There was Maria and I, "Clarkey" (who's first name I can't remember...Carl or something), Allan, an interesting guy born and bred in Dublin, Owen, another city boy (an intellectual, yay!) who has spent a lot of time in Spain and speaks great Spanish, and Miguel, a photographer from Argentina who now lives in Barcelona. He's having an exibition of his photographs on Monday (political photographs from Communist countries...how fascinating) so that's going to be awesome. After the pub we went back to Allan's place (he lives in a huge Georgian house about five minutes from my flat. But his place is really lovely) and had some 10 year old single malt scotch whisky. I'm never going to be able to look at a bottle of Jameson the same way again. It's just not going to cut the mustard next to this stuff, it was delicious! But way out of my price range, so Jameson it will have to be until I'm rich and famous. We had great conversations about politics, ecology, rock festivals, drugs, reggae vs hip hop, you name it, until about 2am when Maria and I decided we'd go home. All in all I had a pretty great day. Today is shaping up to be pretty good too, I'm going out for lunch, then tonight we're going to see a movie, "We Don't Live Here Anymore" with Mark Ruffalo (I looove him). Tomorrow is the beginning of my first week of full time work. Scary, but I think I'll be able to handle it.