Halloween

Well, I finally did it. After enduring four months of misery (to be honest, it wasn't that bad, but the last month has been) I quit my job. Hurrah! Not too many people would be overjoyed at the prospect of unemployment, but I feel like I'm in a better position to find a job now than when I first got to Ireland, and that time it only took me 3 weeks, so I should be laughing. Plus there's always temping. In fact I'm quite tempted to temp permanently (no alliteration or oxymoron intended) when I get back from BA as I really don't want to make the same mistake twice with this job thing. I think the problem was I took the first job offer that came along without a second thought, and I really need to take more time to figure out if a job is really right for me before I commit myself. Or, there's the other route of temping, in which you take any job that comes along, but at least you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Plus you get to change jobs a lot, which means you can meet a bunch of people. Working with three middle aged married men does not do wonders for your social life. The thing that sucks about temping is that it's always your first day! As soon as you settle into a job you have to leave. Enough about work stuff, like any of you need to know about that boring crap. Even I'm bored by it most of the time and I have to live it. Anyway only four weeks to go!

Not much has really happened since I got back from Paris. Work has worn me out during the week and the weekends have been spent recovering and doing laundry (ooh, hang on, I just realised I have to put a load in the washing machine. Be right back). Plus there was this thing with this guy...it got kind of strange, and he didn't talk to me for three weeks. He's the one that usually throws the raging parties so my social life naturally took a bit of a nosedive for a while. Thankfully this weekend is turning out to be quite different, thanks to a pagan tradition supposedly born right here in the Emerald Isle, but the Irish are quite like the Greeks in that they claim that everything was invented in Ireland or by an Irishman/woman. Yes, this weekend is Halloween.

So on Friday I came home still buzzed from the nerves of my resignation, and prepared to make myself resemble, as closely as I could manage, Faith, the renegade vampire slayer from the television series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". I had originally wanted to go as Wednesday Addams, but couldn't find a suitable dress at the op shop (by the way, they have great op shops here, while I was out looking for a costume I picked up some bargains including a preloved Marks and Spencers skivvy made of pure wool for about six euro) so I figured with black pants, boots, a white tee shirt and my badass (fake) leather jacket I could be Faith. Anyway, what else is a Whedonverse freak like me to do? I even got my flatmate Shelly to draw Faith's tattoo on my arm with eyeliner. Add one cross and one chopstick...er...stake, and the outfit was complete. Pity no-one at the party had the remotest idea who Faith was - but if they're not cool enough to love Buffy, that's their problem, hehe.

The party totally rocked, I met some awesome people including Dave, aka random seventies disco master, the gregarious life of the party; Simon, aka random French guy, the laid back, generous photographer extraordinaire; Rhiannon, aka fairy princess, the young Buffy fan who nevertheless didn't recognise me until I told her who I was supposed to be; Peter, aka Big Hairy Gorilla, the cute guy whos earliest memory is of crashing his dad's car into the garage at three years old; Nick, aka cowboy sherriff, the guy from Kildare who spent five years living in Hong Kong and going to a fundamentalist Baptist school where they told him Satan was speaking through him because he said "fuck"; and George aka George (he didn't have a costume), the cool Portuguese guy who wants to go to Australia (everybody here does - it's exotic to them or something, why, I have no idea). I find it’s always the people you meet that make the party.

Dave invited me to his party in Wexford last night, and I was all set to go, I rang him at midday as requested, he said he’d get back to me with the details...and nothing. Didn’t even reply to the text message I sent a few hours later. To be honest I’m a little miffed – I was quite certain something was going to happen that night with Peter (aka Big Hairy Gorilla) and now I’m not sure if I’ll ever see him again. Not to mention missing a good party, which I never like. But there will be other men, and other parties.

In fact tonight I’ll be going out on the town with my flatmates Sabrina and Shelly. Normally this shouldn’t be a big deal but Sabrina works every Friday and Saturday night, all night, from say, 20:00 to 05:30. And the only nights I can go out are Friday and Saturday. But because this weekend is a Bank Holiday weekend, I have Monday off, and we can party all night Sunday! We’re so exited, I haven’t been out with Sabrina before, but she’s so sweet I know we’re going to have a fabulous time!

Because it’s been so long since I last blogged, I’m going to reward you with some pictures. My apologies for the large files, I don’t have any software to make them smaller, if anyone can recommend some that I can get for free for a Mac I would be forever grateful. I should probably “just f***ing Google it” but I’m too lazy.

This is something I’ve wanted to do for some time – it’s a picture diary of a day in my life in Dublin. I’ve also put some Halloween photos at the end. Here goes!

Here is the living room of my (tiny) flat. You’ll notice it is absurdly neat and tidy. I wish to assure you that it almost never looks like this and no-one in this flat has OCD. Of note is the horrid clashing furniture (a staple of student digs).



Here is our (incredibly tiny) kitchen. That little bar fridge has to fit food for four people! And try making gnocci from scratch with that bench space. Everything works though (aside from the grill) and I love the artwork on the wall. Good to have some abstract art to stare at while you’re washing the dishes.



This is my street, Bolton Street. Nothing much of note here. Just thought you might want to see where I lived.



This is Lower Dominick Street, around the corner from where I live and not so affectionately dubbed “Knackertown”. Basically this is government-funded housing where all the poorest people in Dublin live. Actually looking at it now this is quite upmarket council housing in Dublin – one day I’ll take pictures along the dodgy end of Parnell Street and you’ll see what the “real” Dublin is like. It looks a bit deserted at the moment because it’s 07:00 and I’m on my way to work, but usually there’s kids playing around and people chatting outside and all that jazz.



Here is a picture looking down O’Connell Street, featuring, you guessed it, The Spire, aka “The stiffy by the Liffey”. You can’t really tell the magnitude of the thing from this picture, but let me assure you it is bloody huge. Absolutely the stupidest, most useless pointy sticky uppy thing ever in the history of useless sticky uppy things. It cost three million euro and was built for the millennium celebrations, but in true Irish style wasn’t finished until 2003. Hehe.



I walked past a garda car and thought you might like to see what they look like, in case you’ve never seen Ballykissangel.



This is the GPO on O’Connell Street. It’s even more impressive from the inside but I was on my way to work and couldn’t really stop. It’s also the place at which the independence of the Republic of Ireland was declared. Actually it’s a pretty politically significant place, and some say the holes in the columns are bullet holes from the uprisings at the time. The Irish government maintains they’re caused by erosion, so thanks again to governments taking all of the magic and romance out of a story for politically motivated reasons.



The statue of Molly Malone at the top of Grafton Street. Apparently she sold fish by day, and “entertained” the men of Dublin at night, for a fee. They wrote a song about her and now she has a (totally overrated) statue in her honour. This is supposed to be a tourist attraction?



Grafton Street at about 07:30. Just people going to work and vans delivering stock for the day. Totally different from the afternoons on the way home.



Brown Thomas - the Harrods of Dublin, i.e. totally pretentious and horrendously overpriced department store stocking such brands as Gucci, Armani, Parker, and Alessi. They don’t have the cool part of Harrods (the antiques and silver) but they do have a guy standing at the door wearing a tux and (get this) a top hat, to greet people as they come in. The store’s still not open at this stage so I didn’t get a photo of Top Hat Man, but he cracks me up.



St. Stephen’s Green, a great little park, seen from the bottom of Grafton Street. That arch is the main entrance.



The Luas, which is the tram I take to and from work. Imagine my chagrin when I found that it was operated by Connex, but to my surprise they’re actually quite reliable most of the time. Expensive though – every day a round trip costs me three euro.



This is the main shopping strip in Windy Arbour, where I work (currently, and not for too much longer, hurrah!).



My desk at work. Again, never that neat.



Street performers on Grafton Street after work. You don’t need a license to busk on Grafton Street, so you get all sorts, from rocking string quartets to your soft-rock band wannabes to comedians to five year olds murdering Mozart on the violin and playing on their cuteness factor to raise funds.



The crowds on Grafton Street after work. Quite different from the morning, huh?



The Spire, this time seen from the bottom of O’Connell Street.



These are everywhere in England and Ireland. Most of Europe drives on the right (crazy buggers), so foreigners have to be warned from which direction to expect oncoming traffic. I know in Scandinavia and Berlin I almost got flattened a bunch of times when I looked the wrong way.



These are of the Liffey, taken from O’Connell Bridge.





My favourite store! Practically all of Dublin shops here. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Brown Thomas is on the south side (the posh part of Dublin) while on the north side (the dodgy part) there’s two Penneys within a five minute walk of each other. Three cheers for reasonably priced clothing, homewares and cosmetics!



Back to the Liffey for some reason.



The Moore Street fruit and vegie market. This one is actually cheating a little bit. I took it on a Saturday morning, since by the time I get there in the afternoons they’ve all pretty much packed up and gone home. The produce here is the best value around (eight grapefruit for two euro? Hell yeah!) but it’s not self service so you have to take whichever ones they pick out for you, so sometimes it doesn’t work out. If you get there early it’s ok, but at the end of the day there’s only the shrivelled up, bruised and rotten stuff left. I love the colours in this picture.



Here’s a couple of St. Stephen’s Green. They’re not very interesting but my camera batteries ran out before I could take any more so you’re stuck with these ones.





My wall in my room at home – it’s a work in progress. For any AFL fans, yes, that is Max Hudgton on the wall, kindly sent to me from my mother. By the way mother, what were you doing reading the Herald Sun? Shame.



My (tiny) room, which I share with Antonia.



Me as Faith for Halloween. The hair thing didn’t work out so well, but Shelly did quite a good job with Faith’s tattoo. I spent forever making my face as white as possible, but all the powder came off in like five minutes.



Me as Faith complete with badass (fake) leather jacket and chopstick...er...stake.



Clarkey dressed up as a geek. It’s a bit scary how well he managed it!



Damian and a random French girl (don’t know her) being, well, French.



Alan dressed as a gladiator.



Maria (the cowgirl) and Emma (the zombie tennis player), with some chicks I don’t know.



At this point my camera ran out of batteries, so no more pictures sorry. I’ll take some more next time. That should be plenty to keep you going for now anyway!

Paris, je t'aime

It's been a while since I last blogged, so this'll be a long one. There's a lot to cover. I'd better start with Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. It was a totally awesome show, they're a rocking band, Jon has amazing stage presence (though I only got a couple of glimpses of him since I'm so short I had to stand on tippytoes/jump to get a look at him). They were totally tight and rocked the place from top to bottom. There wasn't any moshing (not allowed) but to be honest I prefer it that way (yes call me a wimp if you like but I don't particularly like being elbowed in the face while I'm trying to listen to music). The crowd was into it though and we had a great time. I met a girl there, Ceri (friend of a friend of a friend) who's really cool and we had some good chats - we'd only met each other for ten minutes before we were discussing the "alternative lifestyles" of our friends (I'm not trying to be PC, it's just the only term that covers all the possibilities) and also all the details of our own love lives! I love people who are open like that. She told me she might be able to get hold of a ticket for me for Arthur Miller's "View From A Bridge", which was sold out at the time (that Saturday was closing night). She ended up coming through for me (go Ceri) and the play was totally awesome.

The play was Saturday morning, then Saturday night I met up with my friend Kyle who I met on the Scandi/Russia tour. Actually we met up in the afternoon for a couple of pints before the play, and they (Kyle and his mate Aaron who actually is Kyle's sister Amy's boyfriend - did that make any sense?) introduced me to Martin, this guy they met in the hostel when Kyle and Aaron flicked on the light switch in the morning to find Martin relieving himself in the corner of the room. Exactly how that led to him coming to have a drink with us I don't know, but in the end it worked out well as Martin promised us a free bottle of wine at the restaurant he was working at that night. We dutifully turned up at the restaurant at about half eight and Martin seated us and was very professional (must have been difficult thanks to previous events). We ordered dinner and the promised bottle of wine was produced (cheers Martin). Before we'd even finished that bottle, Martin appeared with a second one. Then a round of shots. Then another round of shots. Needless to say before we'd left the restaurant I was a little tipsy. Add a couple of whiskys at some random Temple Bar pubs and that was the end of me. Though I did manage, in my slightly inebriated state, to have an intelligent conversation about the US education and political system with this American chick we ran into. She was studying education and intended to teach at special needs schools, which she reckons are badly underfunded. No surprises there, special needs are badly underfunded everywhere, not just the US. Anyway we had a great night, and poor Kyle had to be up at dead o'clock in the morning to catch his plane home. How he made it I don't know. Needless to say, Sunday was a quiet day, full of bed rest and such.

Tuesday night Ceri invited me to go see "Lady Salsa" with her and her mates. We were to meet at a bar called Traffic at seven. I was there at seven on the dot but no Ceri. No worries, I just went to the bar to order a drink and got chatting to the barman, Connor. This is what I love about Ireland. I've never had so many conversations with random strangers as here. Irish people are just so friendly, and are always up for a chat. I know barmen are supposed to be friendly and chatty, but they've never actually lived up to the stereotype except in Ireland. Anyway Connor had spent some time in Sydney and so we chatted about that, and working in the hospitality industry, and so on, until about half seven when Ceri showed up. We hung out a bit with her mates and then went on to the show. Long story short the show was pretty crap, so we left in the interval to grab some tapas and a drink. Somewhere between sitting down at the pub and getting up to get the tapas, I was separated from my wallet, never to be reunited. Unfortunately that meant the next day was blind panic trying to cancel my credit and bank cards and get new ones sent out. Thankfully Visa was totally awesome and had my replacement card and emergency cash to me by Wednesday. The people at the call centre were totally hilarious though - they work off a script, which is pretty standard for a call centre, but they stick to it to an extreme level. For instance, one of them asked me, perfectly politely, "What is your name?", before he caught himself and corrected it to, "I mean, can I have your name please Ma'am?". Then another time I asked a girl if she could tell me whether or not any purchases had been made with my card in the last 24 hours, and no kidding, this is what she said, verbatim: "Let me explain this to you Ma'am. All the records relating to your bank account are kept by your financial institution, and we have no access to those records. Therefore unfortunately I am unable to inform you whether or not any transactions have been made with your card". I nearly laughed down the phone at her only I was in such an awkward situation at the time (standing at a payphone in the middle of Grafton street at peak hour while all the people on their way to work were walking by, holding about a million pieces of paper, my mobile, my handbag, and god knows what else) that I was too anxious to laugh. I'd prefer to talk to an automated system than a person that sounds like an automated system! They were very helpful though, I have absolutely nothing bad to say about the Visa service and would recommend them to anyone (and no they didn't give me any money to say that!).

The reason I was so crazy worried about my credit card and money (thank god there wasn't any money in the wallet when I lost it) was that I was slated to go to Paris that weekend - and there was no getting out of it as the tickets were already booked. I could have changed them but to be honest I couldn't be bothered with the hassle (does that sound like me or what?). Friday finally came around and I went to the airport armed with clothes for the weekend, a little money, and my passport and confirmation number for my flight booking. I was convinced the Ryanair staff were going to laugh in my face and demand my ticket (since when can you fly without a ticket?) but they just asked for the number and issued me with my boarding pass. Weird.

Then came about two hours of intense boredom waiting to board the aeroplane. Well, that's not strictly true. It would be more accurate to say two hours of intense boredom punctuated by moments of blind panic that I had nowhere to sleep in Paris that night. See the friend I was going with, Maria, was supposed to book accommodation for herself and I for the weekend. She didn't, and didn't tell me. By the time I found out I had nothing booked, it was Thursday and the hostel I had in mind was already full. Long story short I arrived in Paris at about half ten local time, not having a clue where I was going to sleep. I had originally planned to find a somewhat comfortable spot in the airport lounge and sleep there, but the second I stepped off the plane I realised that was not going to be a viable option. Paris Beauvais is one of those dodgy Ryanair airports that are basically a couple of tin sheds with some chairs and a little kiosk inside. There was no way I was spending the night there. So after some deliberation and a little more panic I caught the bus into the city centre.

Thirteen euro and a little over an hour later, we were dropped off in the city centre, right in front of the Hotel Concorde de Lafayette, probably the most expensive hotel in Paris. No way I was sleeping there, either. By now it's about midnight and I'm wondering the streets of Paris looking for a hotel I don't have to sell my body and soul to stay in. In amongst the panic I'm actually quite taken with Paris; even though it's night, and scary, and I'm worried about stuff, I can't help noticing how cute and French everything is. From the first I knew that Paris wasn't going to be just another European city. Paris lives up to its reputation as something special.

After I'd checked out the prices in a couple of hotels, I found one that had rooms for 60 euro a night, which was probably the best I was going to get for the middle of Paris. Unfortunately they didn't have any 60 euro rooms available, but they had one for 75. This didn't sound too bad at half twelve at night so I handed over my credit card (cheers Visa) without demur. This also marked my first conversation in French (I didn't do too badly, especially given the late hour and the snooty receptionist, who, to be fair to the Parisians, was one of only two snooty people I encountered there). It was exciting to actually use some of the knowledge I learned in high school. I had a long hot shower and finally made it to bed at half one.

I'd set my alarm for 7:00 am but like that was going to happen. I think I got up at eight and left the hotel at about nine. I then encountered my next hurdle - in my rush to pack everything on Thursday night/Friday morning I forgot my Lonely Planet guide, so I didn't have a clue

a) what I wanted to do or
b) where the hell anything (including I) was.

I decided to wander aimlessly for a while and hope to stumble co-incidentally upon the Champs-Elysées. Needless to say that didn't work but I did find a cute café in which I had a typical French breakfast of croissant, tartine, café au lait and jus d'orange. However, across the road from the café was my saviour. I saw a big M and I don't mean McDonald's. What would we do without the Metro? It gets you from anywhere in the city to anywhere else with no muss or fuss. When I took a look at the Metro map I thought, "There's no way I'm going to be able to figure this out", but really it's not that complicated. I picked a station that said "Champs Elysées", and went there. I got out of the metro and there it was at the end of the road - L'Arc de Triomphe. So I strolled down the Champs Elysées - which is reeealy reeealy long I found out - and along the way I managed to find a map, hurrah! - until I made it to the Arc. It was pretty cool, and I took loads of pictures. Then I consulted my map (yay) and made my way to the Louvre. On the way I found the Seine, and at one point I turned around and there it was - the Eiffel Tower. It just came out of the blue. I didn't have time to check it out at that time, I was on a mission to see some famous art. The Louvre was amazing (once I found it). The Mona Lisa was totally underwhelming, what a disappointment! I don't pretend to be an expert on art, but I don't understand why people go on about it so much. It's a fairly dull picture of an ugly lady. Yes the perspectives are all screwy, but why does that make it amazing? Anyway, lots of the other paintings made much more of an impression on me than Lisa. The Venus de Milo was stunning though. It was really moving, but the impact was dulled by the tourists that were jostling to get a picture in front of it. They were practically committing GBH to push each other out of the way. That kind of ruined the whole atmosphere of the art. You can't really contemplate and appreciate a great sculpture while there's five or six grinning Asians in front of it with flash bulbs constantly exploding. The rest of the Louvre was great, but to be honest it doesn't really compare to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. That was crammed chock full of incredible artworks, including two Leonardos which knocked the Mona Lisa out of the park. That said, I only spent two and a half hours or so in the Louvre, which is a crime, but I only had two days in the city!

Next up I made my way to Notre Dame, where I met up with Maria and her brother Mike. We stopped for lunch and then checked out the cathedral. From the outside it's a really old gothic cathedral complete with mad pidgeon guy out the front (no kidding - he had a bright orange wig on, and all this birdseed so he was like the "feed the birds" lady from Mary Poppins). But on the inside the place has succumbed to the ravages of crass commercialisation - confessionals that resemble seminar rooms complete with glass doors and computer screens with multimedia presentations, not to mention flashing lights and souvenir stands and such. That took away from the power of the place, but I just tried to imagine what it would have been like hundreds of years ago and tried to block out all the other rubbish.

That night we strolled down the Seine and saw it all lit up, which was incredibly romantic. One day I have to return to Paris with Mr. Right, because Paris lives up to its reputation as a totally romantic city. Before I got to Paris I thought the idea that a city could be "romantic" was complete rubbish, but Paris has infected me. We went to the Eiffel Tower which looks totally incredible at night, and to the Arc de Triomphe which is less spectacularly lit up. By this stage it was past midnight so we went back to the room to sleep as we were all wrecked. That night I slept on the floor in Maria and Mike's room, so in the end I spent an average of 37.50 a night on accommodation in Paris, since I didn't pay a cent the second night! Still expensive but not so bad for Paris (which by the way is not expensive compared to Dublin standards).

Sunday morning was a little wasted as Maria only woke up at 11:00. We went to the Eiffel Tower (again) but this time we went up and took loads of panoramic pictures of Paris. Unfortunately the queueing and all took all morning and by the time we got down again I had to make my way to the bus to get to the airport (they leave three hours before your flight). Again lots of time spent wasting time at the airport but there was one highlight, which was the conversation I had with the customs official, which was the longest conversation I had with someone in French. It went something like this:

*I hand over my passport, which is my Portuguese one since that's what I'm travelling on in Europe*
Him: *something I don't understand*
Me: "Er, sorry?"
Him: *repeats*
Me: *confused face*
Him: "What's 'Hello' in Spanish?"
Me: "Hola."
Him: "What about Portuguese?"
Me: "Er, I don't know."
Him: "But aren't you Portuguese?"
Me: "No, my grandmother and grandfather are."
Him: "So, where do you live?"
Me: "Well at the moment I live in Dublin, but I really live in Melbourne, Australia."
Him: "So you don't speak any Portuguese."
Me: "No."
Him: "But you speak good French."
Me: "Not really."
Him: "But you understand what I'm saying, and you can reply."
Me: "Yes, of course."
Him: *confused look* "Well, goodbye"
Me: "Bye."

This was all in French of course. Reading over that it doesn't seem that exciting, but the feeling that I could hold a conversation in French outside a classroom was elating. The flight back seemed looong, and I found out something when I got to Dublin airport again - arriving home and getting off the plane when there's no-one to meet you is totally depressing. When you're going somewhere it's elating to be on your own, an adventure. But arriving home you want to see a familiar face and talk crap for a while. I went to catch the bus home, and got talking to two aussies, Warwick and Amy (to anyone from Contiki reading this, I KNOW!! Weird). It was refreshing to talk to people who appreciate JJJ. I got home and all I wanted to do was fall into bed, but my lovely flatmates all said "we missed you", and they were dying to hear about my trip, so we got into a big conversation, and by the time I got to bed it was almost midnight.

Drumroll please...I'm actually going to post some pictures! These are ones I took in Paris, not all of them, but some anyway. I tried to compress them a little for those of you with slow connections, but the files are still quite large, so I'm sorry, but you'll have to be patient! Here goes!


One of the coolest things in Paris is the Metro. At its most basic, it's a public transport system that actually works, and doesn't cost a fortune. But some of the time, it's actually a beautiful marriage of form and function. Much like an Alessi kettle or a Cadillac, the Paris Metro is both functional and aesthetically pleasing. This isn't even the coolest Metro station I saw, but it was the first to catch my eye and therefore deserved a photo.

Hehe. I couldn't resist taking a picture of this as I strolled down the Champs Elysées. I saw lots of Quicksilver and Ripcurl and such in Paris and not all of it was sported by Aussies. I just thought it was hilarious to find an Aussie surf store in the capital of haute couture.

The postcard shot. Pity about the terrible weather. Although the traffic looks crazy in this shot it's pretty amazing how quiet the city is. I had no problems crossing the Champs Elysées even against the lights, and all the stories I heard about traffic insanity in Paris seemed to be unfounded. In fact, all in all Paris didn't seem to have all that many people in it. I was expecting it to be teeming with humanity much like London, but comparatively it was almost deserted! Strange.

Here's a closeup shot.

French windows! Eeeek! How cute!

I was just walking along and it popped up out of nowhere. I mean, I know it's in Paris, but I just wasn't expecting it at that particular moment, so this is my first sighting of it from across the Seine.

How's the serenity. This is my favourite shot of Paris, taken early Saturday morning by the Seine. Looking back on it I can't believe there aren't any people in the photograph. Where the hell is everyone? Anway it worked out well for me.

The Louvre. Very old and pretty as you can see.

This is Maria, the Polish girl I explored Paris with, and I poring over a map of Paris at a dinky crêperie. Not my most flattering picture, but well.

The colossal Gothic masterpiece that is Notre Dame, complete with threatening looking raincloud. How pertinent.

Big front doors of the cathedral. The one place I saw that was literally swarming with tourists.

A terrible picture of Maria and I in front of the pyramid thingy at the Louvre. What is that thing for anyway?

Postcard shot No. 2 and Mum's favourite. The Eiffel Tower is amazing at night. In fact Paris is even more beautiful at night than during the day. In fact most cities are...I'm always amazed when I look out over the Yarra from Princes Bridge, how gorgeous Melbourne is.

A not-as-good picture of La Tour Eiffel with traffic and such. I shouldn't have bought such a cheap camera. Though to be fair I haven't a clue how to use it properly. Perhaps I should read the manual?

The Seine from the top of the tower. Pretty breathtaking picture, but what you don't realise is that the experience was literally breathtaking - it's soooo windy up there, you can hardly breathe! And look how HUGE Paris is!

I don't like to swear, but look how f****** HUGE Paris is!!

Do I need to say it one more time? HUUUUGE!!

Anyway that's it for now. I'm going to post some pics of Dublin soon now that I've figured out how to get them off my camera (turns out my other memory card is corrupted, which is fantastic because I have no idea what pictures are on there so there could be some really good ones and I'll never know. Damn technology!!

By the way, I've been listening to the Corrs almost non stop for the past three days, and I must say they are very good music to work to. "Old Town" is my favourite, and they also do a good cover of R.E.M's "Everybody Hurts", which is not a patch on the original but quite moving anyway. Anyway it's past six and time for me to toddle off home...I'm still at work, though I only blog after five! Take care all.