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!