Well? I'm grand anyway. Remember that day of the Taoiseach [FEN: Prime Minister] scandal? I forgot to mention that there were protests held outside the Dáil that day and the Garda [FEN: police] presence was higher than usual. You see the Taoiseach only comes to the Dáil once a week and apparently everyone gets really excited that day and starts protesting about something. They all just drown out each others vague causes. One crazy old lady was walking around with a sign claiming that there was some conspiracy of lies involving the minister for agriculture. Others angrily brandished placards with forgettable slogans and shouted "What do we want? We want democracy. When do we want it? Now." Needless to say, with a chant as ambiguous and pointless as that, no one really knew what they wanted. The minister that their chants seemed to be directed at actually came out with a few guards to find out what they wanted. He went and shook their hands and tried to talk to them but once they had overcome their initial surprise, they merely renewed their ridiculous chants and refused to engage in rational dialogue. It's idiots like these that give intelligent protesters a bad name. The Taoiseach is due in again on Tuesday so I'm looking forward to another circus, particularly as there appears to be a split in the Government now with the Taoiseach being publicly criticised by the new Táiniste [FEN: Vice Prime Minister]. Exciting times! I wonder whether the government will manage to limp along to the general election next year or whether it will all fall apart in the coming weeks. It's a great time to be working on Kildare Street!

            In other news, yesterday I saw a bunch of Harry Krishnas dressed in bed sheets walking along O Connell's Street with a big speaker blasting out weird music and singing. That was weird! Also Wei, the Chinese girl I'm living with is a Tom

Waits fan! Finally my dream of living with someone who appreciates the genius of Waits has come true. Ok I never really had such a dream but I always though it would be nice to live with someone who didn't think that Waits was an aural assault as was the case in Myrtle Beach.

            So I went on a big adventure today. I got up early, got the Luas into town and joined a group of intrepid mountaineers on a big trip to Co. Louth for a hike in the Cooley Mountains. Our destination was the small sheltered coastal town of Carlingford, not too far from the Northen Ireland border. It was the closest I'd ever been to Northern Ireland – it was so close that my phone thought I was roaming. We started in the bay and started climbing up through the forest. I got to see some lovely sights but once we got beyond the forest, into the wasteland, the fog enveloped us and we could no longer see where we had come from. It got really steep and after a while I realised that it went up way higher than you could see from the bottom because it went right up into the cloud. When we finally reached the top after several hours we were freezing and the frost was gathering on our clothes. We didn't bask in our success but quickly began our descent. Going down was a lot harder on my knees than going up. It was eight o' clock that night by the time I got home. That's another accomplishment I can tick off my to do list. I think climbing mountains would be lovely in summer but in autumn/winter/spring it's just cold, wet and you can't see very far. So now I need to think of some more challenges for myself. Any ideas anyone? If so, leave a comment on this entry and I'll consider it. Keep em realistic and affordable. I met an old guy on this climb who said he started climbing mountains all around Europe after he had a car crash, nearly died and suddenly realised he'd nearly wasted his life. I feel so thankful that I didn't need a wake-up call like that to convince me to live life to the full. I also met a girl who, upon hearing of my unfortunate marathon tragedy, reminded me that a marathon could be walked. I always thought, walking it would be like copping out but I suppose walking a marathon is better than not doing it at all. I've already paid the entrance fee so I suppose I might as well. I'll think about it. Anyway, that's about all I have to report at the moment so I'll bid you adieu for now. Keep it real!

  I continue to serve the people of Ireland diligently here in Kildare House, Dublin. Translating documents that no one ever wants to read into a language that on one whatsoever wants to read is a very important responsibility that I take very seriously. Of course, I haven't got to translate any actual bills yet because I've been too busy translating fake practise bills. One of these days we'll be given a real bill and then we'll have fun! The work is slow and laborious but we have lots of breaks. On these breaks, we lean casually against the railings outside our building and laugh at the passing taxpayers who are paying us to lean against those railings. We finally got our ID tags yesterday which means we can open doors now. This was given me unprecedented freedom. I can now go to the toilet without having to ask for permission!!! More interestingly, it means I can now walk in and out of Leinster House [FEN: where the parliament actually assembles] unaccompanied. Therefore, my UCC colleagues and I took the opportunity to do so yesterday. We went to the restaurant in there where you get good food for way less than you'd get crap food outside. Afterwards, we went to watch some TDs [FEN: politicians like congressmen or something] give speeches in the Dáil [FEN: parliament]. Only about five TDs had bothered to show up to work that day and one of them was making a rather vague and uninteresting speech about how terrible crime was and how someone should do something about it. The other four TDs did paperwork while he orated. It seemed like a waste of breath to me. This was completely unlike the day before when Bertie [FEN: Prime Minister of Ireland] was being grilled. This is definitely the biggest scandal he has ever had to face. The leaders of Fine Gael, Labour and The Socialist Party were merciless and sarcastic in their condemnation of his alleged activities regarding accepting monetary gifts/loans. I was actually impressed by Bertie's restraint in not taking their bait and getting all flustered. I was also very amused by the snide but articulate accusations from the aforementioned opposition leaders. Every office in here has a TV with a direct link to the cameras in the Dáil chamber so when this came on we were all glued to it.

            So it looks like my life will be totally consumed by work while I'm here. I have little time for anything else except training and sleeping. My flatmates are a lot worse off though. Both girls work mostly twelve hour shifts, many of those being night shifts. Therefore I hardly ever see them and when I do, it's usually when one of us is just passing through briefly. They really don't have a life at all. At least I have training and I go out the odd time. Also, my lunch breaks are always full. I try to eat as quickly as possible and then spend the remainder of the hour and a half either in the public gallery of the Dáil or in the National Library, which is right beside Leinster House, or in one of the three excellent museums nearby and there's also an art gallery which I have to check out. I know that by Christmas time, I still won't have seen all the exhibits and artworks. Yesterday, I saw some bogmen – prehistoric bodies which were buried or drowned in bogs and naturally mummified by the preserving juices of these bogs. They were totally cool. One of them was just a torso with arms but didn't have a head or legs because they had accidentally been chopped off by a turf-cutter. Another one had a flat head because a tractor had driven over it. It was so daycent. When I die I want to be buried in a bog. Then hundreds of years from now, archaeologists will find me and marvel at how remarkably handsome the human race was back then, even in a mummified state. Then I'll be put in a glass case and preserved for posterity. How bad eh? Well I'll leave you with that appealing image. Until next time…

  This morning on the bus in to work, I saw and old woman standing on a balcony of a block of council flats throwing rubbish out onto the car park below. I found this a little odd and wondered why she was opposed to the conventional waste disposal systems. It seemed rather untidy to be throwing all that rubbish there. No sooner had I thought this, when a flock of pigeons descended on the spoils and devoured them. Obviously, the old woman found this entertaining. Whatever floats your boat! Having loads of pigeons is a sign of a big city. Cork doesn't have loads of pigeons. I mean you'll see the odd one pecking around here and there but they don't travel around in intimidating gangs like they do here. Also there are way more joggers here than in Cork. Still nowhere near Washington DC or New York though. I guess they're all preparing for the Dublin City Marathon. I get a bit bitter when I see them running by.

            Guess who I saw today? Charlie Byrd! [FEN: well-known news reporter] He was sitting in a café down the street from where I work. I was totally cool about it but Mary, one of my colleagues wanted to go in and go to the toilet just to walk past him and stare.

            Work today began with us getting an official guided tour of Leinster House in rather broken Irish. We saw the office of the Ceann-Comhairle [Parliamentary Chairperson] and everything. The inside of the building is so plush – it is way posher than the poshest hotel imaginable. It's a whole other level of poshness. You sank into the royal blue carpets and everywhere you looked was polished marble and rich mahogany adorned with portraits of former and current politicians and patriots. We saw the Senate room and the Dáil room. They are so impressive, particularly the latter which is huge and really posh. There was a team of polishers in there when we arrived. They had to polish every reachable inch of wood, leather, glass and brass you could see. The place was immaculate and had a real sense of grandeur that isn't conveyed by the TV. It made you want to run for office. I hope to go see a parliamentary debate some lunchtime. The Taoiseach [FEN: Prime Minister of Ireland] will be answering questions there tomorrow regarding the nature of the controversial payments he admits receiving over ten years ago. Unfortunately, this will be before my lunchtime so I won't get to see it. I'm sure I'll catch up with Bertie another time. After our tour, we started actually working and that's when it got seriously boring. We just kept typing all day. There are three others in my office and they're really sound but we don't talk at all while we work. We get half an hour off in the morning for a tea break, then an hour and a half for lunch and then another half hour tea break at four. By the time it's four o' clock I was literally falling asleep and really need that tea break. It's just hours of silence punctuated only by sporadic bursts of typing. Having said that, it is an extremely easy and unchallenging job for which I am well paid so I can't complain – if I was out on a building site getting my fingers chopped off in the pouring rain then I'd have something to be complaining about. And I have had my fair share of more boring jobs which have also been more poorly paid and more stressful – counting screws in a hardware shop (somebody has to keep an inventory!), packing hundreds of identical letters into hundreds of identical envelopes and sticking address labels to them – those letters don't put themselves in envelopes – someone has to be poorly paid to do it! Eventually the day ended and I rushed out to get the Luas so that I would only be an hour late for Tae Kwon-Do training in UCD! I didn't get to come home and relax till about 8:30PM having been out since 9:15AM. I'm starting to nod off so I better sign off and get in some sleep before tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get a chance to post some photos of Dublin stuff tomorrow. Good luck for now.

  Well, as you probably know, I am writing to you from Dublin as planned which means I have a lot to talk about.

            I went into Cork on Friday night to spend one last night out there with a few friends. I got a little nostalgic towards the end of the night because usually on previous Friday nights out in Cork, myself and a few friends would return to my apartment having concluded the night's revelry and I would serve tea and biscuits while engaging in very highbrow conversation on topics such as the factors to take into account when rating the comfortability of couches. Of course, on this occasion, I quickly remembered that I no longer had an apartment and neither did any of my cohorts as these particular friends lived at home. Therefore, sadly, we had little choice but to go home and go to bed.

            Much of the following day was spent thinking about how much I didn't want to start packing and then a few hours were spent actually packing. I also spent a bit of time thinking about studying for my Tae Kwon-Do grading the following day but didn't actually do any study for it. As it turns out, this was a good idea because we weren't even asked theory at all at the grading strangely enough. I regretted having spent the three previous days studying it diligently. The grading was exhausting. It was preceded by three hours of gruelling training and by the time that had concluded, I was just about ready to hit the sack. The training had been cruel and merciless with quite a bit of it spent actually sparring. Perhaps for that reason, the grading itself wasn't as insanely difficult as usual. I didn't make any screw-ups and I passed so it's full steam ahead!

            Then my father drove me and my considerable luggage to Listowel where my cousin took me and the aforementioned luggage to Dublin. We made great time – the traffic was fairly fast-moving until we actually hit the suburbs of Dublin and we made it in three and a half hours, arriving at about 9:30PM. That gave me quite a bit of time to buy a map and take a quick tour of the neighbourhood with my other cousin, Cathal, who I'm living with now. My other housemates are a Chinese girl whose name I can't spell but it's pronounced Way, a nurse called Leanna and a lad from Kerry called Donal who I haven't met yet because he's travelling around Europe at the moment. They all seem lovely so far anyway although I haven't seen much of them because they're all working and have a range of unsociable hours to work. However, I fear that the females may be the dominant force in the house although the only evidence I am basing this proposition on is the fact that the toilet seat will not stay up and I suspect that it may have been tampered with to achieve this end. I will monitor the situation closely and investigate meticulously until I find the culprit of this travesty. Anyway, having returned from my brief tour of Milltown (the area I'm living in) I began the formidable task of unpacking and a mere four hours later I was ready to get to sleep. The house is grand out and in a nice safe area and the rent is surprisingly low. There's a bus stop right outside the door which got me to work in the morning and there's a Luas stop [FEN: tram] ten minutes down the road which got me back in the evening.

            I have seen very little of Dublin so far but the first thing I noticed was that a lot of people cycle here. They actually use their cycle lanes. Imagine 'bicycle traffic' in the cycle lanes as opposed to the odd cyclist every few kilometres like we have in Cork cycle lanes. Most of the cyclists were college students, school students and blue-collar workers although I did see one cyclist in a business suit with a briefcase balancing on the handlebars. I suppose it has just become impractical or at least unduly stressful to drive to work in Dublin City. The buses are fairly regular but a little unreliable and confusing if you don't know the number of the one you need. The Luas is far more straightforward but apparently out of the question in the morning as it is packed beyond capacity during the morning rush hour. The rest of the time it's great because it's so regular, so easy to understand, so reliable and punctual and so clean and comfortable.

            So work…Well I started on Monday at 10AM but they just kind of showed us around and introduced us to everyone and gave us the grand tour and a cup of a tea and then after only two hours, we were given the rest of the day off! On first impression, it looks like a really nice place to work although I imagine that the work itself will be mind-numblingly boring. The translation department where I'm working is in Kildare House on Kildare Street, across the street from the parliament where we went for a cup of tea. We were given visitor passes. Everyone who works in either of these buildings has a security ID tag that you have to show going through security and you also need it to swipe open pretty much any door. We should be getting one of those on Tuesday. It's totally cool! What's even cooler is that we had to sign tons of documents as soon as we got in in the morning – the main one being a secrecy agreement whereby we agree not to leak any sensitive information we come across in the course of our work. Apparently there's a lot of that. This means that I'm going to have to be extremely careful about what I write about work here – defamation is no longer the only thing I have to worry about. I'm not even sure what I'm allowed to talk about and what I'm not so I think that perhaps the best thing would be just to avoid detail entirely. This is so cool isn't it! You'd swear I was a bloody secret agent or something! It's just the civil service like! What I do is I translate bills which then become law – from English to Irish (probably after being triple checked by someone else). AND THAT'S ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW!!! Ah no I can probably talk about what I eat for lunch and stuff but who wants to hear about that! They showed us the booths where simultaneous translation of parliamentary debates is carried out. It's so class. It's across the street from where the debates are actually taking place but they have TV screens up with different angles of the parliament floor and the speaker and they listen to what they're saying on headphones and simultaneously translate into a microphone and all the TDs [FEN: public representatives] or senators can listen on headphones that are in front of them if they are willing to swallow their pride and admit to the country that they are unable to understand Irish. When we went over to Leinster House [FEN: parliamentary building] for a cup of tea, we were brought into a really posh café which was formerly part of an art college years ago. There are still paintings and sculptures all over the place. There's also a beautiful Japanese garden with water features right outside the glass wall which is enclosed an all sides by the high walls of the building. I wanted to take some photos for ye but I was advised that photography wasn't allowed unless I had acquired a licence to do it. So it looks like the only photos ye'll be seeing of my workplace will be of the outside of the building.

            On first impressions, the civil service looks like a really cushy career. There seems to be a nice enough work atmosphere with people from all over the country working together. They're well looked after with great facilities and benefits like crèche, gym etc. and there seems to be a good social aspect to it too with talk of inter-office soccer tournaments and Christmas parties already. The pay isn't too shabby either. We're not even out of college yet and we're on the lowest pay scale and we're still earning more than a trainee solicitor with a degree would be. The only downside is that you have to live in Dublin. Of course with decentralisation now, you can request a transfer to a different department that's based down the country somewhere but if you have your heart set on a particular department (such as Foreign Affairs) which is located in Dublin then…well that would be a bit of a dose. I'm sure I'll have lots more to tell ye about my job when I actually start doing actual work on my second day.

            Getting off work early allowed me to attend Tae Kwon-Do training at UCD. UCD itself is very spread out compared to UCC. Incidentally, my house is only a fifteen minute walk from UCD. UCD is so different to UCC as it has roads, roundabouts and bus stops on the actual campus itself. Obviously, it goes without saying that UCC kicks way more ass than UCD but I have sadly been somewhat persecuted by jealous UCD students purely for being from such a way cooler college. I have been accused of being a spy trying to glean some secrets from the UCD club to take back to my own club so that we can learn how to beat them. As if we have anything to learn from UCD!!!;) Nevertheless, there is a good atmosphere in the club and I like a lot of the people in it on first impression. The club can boast some fine conversationalists from all over the country as well as some locals with their endlessly intriguing dialects. I went to hang out with them at a little gathering they had after training where there were free sweets which I graciously relieved them of. This was followed by a trip into town on a double-decker bus to a pub called The Capitol on Camden Street. It was a very nice establishment indeed and I enjoyed some entertaining banter in there. I do hope I'll have the opportunity to train with them once a week and that work won't get in the way. If this proves to be possible, then I may already have established a viable social outlet on my first day in the city which would be great altogether. We (my three Law and Irish colleagues and I) also bumped into a UCC Clinical Law student this morning. Apparently himself and the other four clinical law students are on similar placements to ourselves in Dublin this year and although I don't know any of them , we will probably hang out at some point. Ok I need to get to bed now. It's 2AM and I have work tomorrow from 9:45AM to 5:30PM followed by Tae Kwon-Do from 6PM to 8PM. I'll update again whenever I get the chance. I imagine my entries will increase in regularity now for a while as I have plenty to write about…the only problem is I have no free time to write it in! Good luck!

I realise it's very early to be updating again give that I did so yesterday but I have some rather disappointing news to report. I have just come out of the doctor's surgery and he has advised me that running a marathon could do permament damage to my knees. Unfortunately, I suffer from a deficiency of sinovial fluid in the knees. This is a lubricant which reduces the friction between the various bones in the knees. Therefore the bones in my knees have more friction and consequently pain. According to the doctor, roadrunning is the worst thing I could do to my knees. Naturally I'm gutted. I was really looking forward to crossing that finish line next month. I just want to say one thing though. It is possible to run a marathon after only two months training - it may be extremely difficult but it is possible...it just isn't possible for me to do it...aaaaaah!!!!! That makes me so mad!!! Everyone said I was crazy to try and do it as if this information would somehow surprise me. But this isn't a matter of mind over body - my body just can't do it. The doctor said that if I had six months of really slowly building up training that I might be able to build up the knees enough to do it but that it would still be bad for me. I'm just going to have to come up with some other pointless personal goal. I have no doubt that one will present itself - they invariably do.

In other news, I was chatting to an English gentleman who stayed with us last night. He was a rather smooth debonair fellow with silver hair swept back behind his ears in a rather classy way. I think he was in his early fifties. We got talking about travel and it turns out he had done his fair share of it. In his lifetime, he had been on every continent except Africa. He spends three months a year travelling. Of all the places he had visited, he was particularly taken by India. He once took a year off to travel around the US and he visited every single state. That was pretty impressive. He seemed to have a similarly mixed view of America although perhaps slightly more critical than my own. This was partially because he had been in Vegas which is probably like Myrtle Beach squared. He said that at the time, he could have overlooked the materialistic American 'dream' and settled down there. In fact he came pretty close to doing just that because he had fallen in love with some girl over there and applied for a green card but it 'didn't work out'. I assume he's still single because he had an aura of batchelorness about him and I figure there's no way he could have seen all those countries if he had a wife. Pretty much any country I mentioned he'd been there and he had stories about it. I could totally see myself being him in thirty years time. He was quite witty too and had the whole breakfast table enthralled with his amusing anecdotes. He seemed a little bit lonely though - kind of adrift.

College continues to fill up with wide-eyed firstyears being led around from building to building. I wish I was back here for the year. Today we're setting up a stand to encourage them to join Kickboxing. I'll catch up later. Peace out.

   It's that time again! Time for another blog entry! Psyched?

         So anyway, I've been sporadically 'working' over the past week. I'm sure you recall from my last entry what that means. Last week, I went to the village of Kilnamartyra where I spent the first eight years of my education. I was shocked by how long it had been since I was last up there. I hadn't realised that I hadn't been up there in several years. Since I finished primary school, I really had little reason to go up there. Memories of endless days of being driven along the same windy road to school came flooding back in a tidal wave of nostalgia. It was so weird because this place is only three miles from my house. There have been some changes since I left. There are so many new houses along the road and more being built – the same in the village itself. It was nice to see it all again though. Then another evening, I went cycling back to a place called Leac Beag which is beyond Reanaree. I'd never been there before. There was a slight upward gradient for most of the way, which meant that it took an hour and a half to cycle there. I probably would have made it faster walking. On the way back though, I made up the time by travelling at break-neck speeds with the slight gradient in my favour. It was very surreal cycling along these narrow unmarked roads as dusk turned to night. I couldn't see the road in front of me and if a car came round the bend quickly I would probably have died. O yes, quite the thrill-seeker am I on my bicycle. I didn't even wear a helmet – I like to live life on the edge! I did however, have a reflective jacket because once I got back on the main road, I really would have been killed by big lorries and stuff.

            I have been going in and out to UCC over the past week and life is slowly beginning to flow back into the campus. Last week was conferrings week so there were loads of people walking in around in robes and silly hats having their picture taken. I took a few photos of the above for you all to peruse. I'm in the student centre of UCC right now and today is the first day of orientation and enrolment for freshmen so there are a lot of scared, lost kids walking around. There's a bit of a buzz about the place that I won't get to be part of! Everyone will be back here next Monday, and by then I'll be starting my job in Dublin. I leave on Saturday. I am ready to go now but I feel like I'll never be ready to arrive in Dublin. We have been given very little background information on what will happen when we get there apart from what I have discovered myself from asking last year's third years. We have had virtually no contact from either our employer or the college. I think the four of us (there are four people in my class and we all have to go to Dublin) will be very isolated this year.

            I enjoyed a nice gathering and trad session in the Mills Inn in Ballyvourney last Friday. Myself and my two Tae Kwon-Do training cohorts went down after training and after playing some proper music, the session degenerated to a far more enjoyable experiment to discover how many System of a Down songs could be played on an accordion. I also caused much merriment by figuring out how to play the Imperial March from Star Wars on the accordion. It sounds far less ominous than it was intended when played on as light hearted an instrument as an accordion.

            Next Sunday, I have a preliminary grading for my 2^nd degree black belt. I will have to do four of these to earn a 2^nd Dan. This will be my first. I am being very characteristically hasty in going for this one as I've only had a few weeks of training, having done nothing all summer. I haven't forgotten the important stuff although my standard has dropped. I have totally forgotten all the theory, and the technical terminology in English and Korean. I have a week to brush up on this and I haven't started yet but I'm hoping it will all come back quickly. The logistics of how I'm going to make it to this grading have yet to be determined as I will be arriving in Dublin the night beforehand and the grading is in Kanturk, Co. Cork at 10AM the following morning. It will finish around 6PM when I will somehow have to get back to Dublin to be ready for work the following morning at 9AM. No matter. Hopefully everything will sort itself out!!!

            I feel I cannot close this entry without mentioning the travesty that occurred yesterday in Croke Park. [FEN: Stadium in which Gaelic Games – Hurling and Gaelic Football are played]. Yes Mayo v. Kerry. It was painful to watch. It was actually embarrassing. I would not like to be a Mayo man right now or at any point in the next year. They were lucky to get away with a scoreline of Kerry 4-15 Mayo 3-5. Two of Mayo's goals were pure fluke. It was a sad day for Gaelic football and for pretty much anyone who isn't from Kerry. I always want the underdog to win and although nobody really expected Mayo to win, they didn't expect them to get their asses quite so resoundingly kicked either. I really wanted Mayo to win because Kerry always win and naturally being from Cork, that is really annoying!!! Particularly as it should have been us! Kerry weren't even supposed to be there! We beat them and then they snuck in through the back door like a thief in the night to steal the title. I'm not going to dwell on this anymore because I'll only get more and more bitter. Like they say, there's always next year. It's so true.   

How do you do? I do ok. Here are those Cape Clear videos I promised you:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1789292615202327397&q=%27Cape+Clear%27

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2485202499503522247

 I've just spent the past hour flicking through the printouts my family have accumulated from my blog. Seeing the whole journey on paper really made me realise how much I had written. It's very long. In the space of an hour I was only able to flick through it. Some if it is quite funny and some of it seems embarrassingly self-absorbed in hindsight. There are also a shocking amount of typos because I rarely had time to read over it before I published it! I'm very glad I wrote it though. I have no recollection of most of my life – if it happened more than two years ago, then I probably can't remember it with any degree of accuracy. I have a very short memory. I think keeping a journal or a blog is a very constructive thing to do because you need to cherish the good times and the great people from the past and learn from the bad times and the bad people from the past. Writing a public blog means that you can share the benefit of your experience with others but it also means that you can't just write whatever you want. Perhaps this restriction was healthy though. It will be interesting to see how I can apply what I have learned from my blog this year and it will be very interesting indeed to see what I learn from my future blog-writing. I just hope I don't screw up and write something stupid. I don't mind writing something that I might totally disagree with myself next year – being a man of reason, my opinions change as I learn more things. I just hope I don't let myself down by publishing entries with an inappropriate tone or content. Having a blog means that more people hear my opinions and therefore I have to think very carefully about whether I can actually back up those opinions. This is made more difficult by the fact that I often have limits on the amount of time I have to write these entries.

            Anyway, if you're reading this, it's probably because you want to find out what I've been up to recently. I'm flattered! Or perhaps you are a lost internet surfer who was unwittingly sent here by a maverick search engine. Congratulations on reading down this far! Or perhaps you are an opposing presidential campaign researcher from the future who's looking for dirt on my past in order to blemish my squeaky-clean public image and thwart part 1 of my plan for world domination. Good luck! You think I'm stupid enough to publish material which would compromise my chances of becoming the supreme ruler of the world? Whoever you are, I should probably go ahead and deliver some substantive news of my activities.

            Well the big news right now is that I successfully ran the Cork half-marathon today and probably still satisfy the clinical definition of being alive…just about. I donned my Chicago Bulls jersey and WCU shorts for the event and conditions were ideal – cloudy with an occasional drop of refreshing rain. Also running were my dentist and my Italian teacher from the six weeks I spent studying Italian five years ago. Naturally I came in ahead of both of them (as I glamorously toss my hair). I came in the 223^rd place but there were hundreds more behind me. Given that I only had two weeks of training, my time of 1hr 48mins was reasonably respectable. My cardiovascular fitness wasn't an issue at all and I kept up a medium pace for most of the race. The only problem was my knees. I never really had a problem with my knees before but after 10miles of running on a hard road, even with proper running shoes, my knees were really feeling a lot of pressure on the outside. The last mile was very painful. As I write my knees are still quite sore despite stretching out and warming down afterwards and I walk very stiffly. I'm not sure what this means. It may mean that I should stop running long distances because my knees are not physically capable of doing what my mind insists they must. Or it may mean that I'm a big sissy and that I should just punish my knees over and over until they get with the program and build themselves up enough to withstand the pressure that I demand of them. Of course if I'm wrong about that then I could do irreversible damage to my knees. I'm not sure what to do so I think I'll just compromise and run a long distance about once a week and just around five miles every other day. The big question now is will I be able for the Dublin City marathon on the 30^th of October? The honest answer is I don't know. I certainly couldn't have done it today but I've been assured that given my time today, with another seven weeks training, I should be able for it. I would be psychologically capable of doing it even though I might have to walk some of it. I think I will have to get a doctor's opinion on whether it's a good idea though. I'll keep you posted on further developments in this field.

            In other news, I finally started 'working' a few days ago. Work, if you'll recall, involves cycling around some treacherous local roads in order to visit old men in the hope that they will disclose the names of some of their fields in the course of our conversation. I am perfectly happy to listen to their irrelevant stories as I am paid by the hour, and in any case, it's not like there's any way for me to get them to rattle off the names of their fields without the accompanying gossip. So far I have only visited a few people. One of them remembered me from when his wife used to babysit me years ago. He had some very interesting stories as well as seven field names. Another house I visited was way down the end of a tiny twisty lane with grass growing in the middle. As I cycled into the farmyard, free range chickens ran for their lives and an old sheepdog eyed me suspiciously but took no action. The old couple came out and I spread my map on the bonnet of their car. They were able to supply me with fourteen names which I hungrily scribbled into my map. I have spent more time looking through phone books and making phone calls than I have actually interviewing people. I have hit a lot of dead ends and have had to cross a lot of names of my short list. However, some very helpful contributors have supplied me with more names and I hope to have enough names to keep me going for my remaining two weeks here. Man it's kinda scary to think I'm moving on again in only two weeks. I also have a 2^nd Dan Tae Kwon-Do preliminary grading in two weeks which I have to get ready for. I have too much to do! What am I doing writing this? I gotta go! Bye!

Well I'm doing a lot better than I expected with the ole running. The day after my last update, I had planned to try running eight miles. I ended up running thirteen miles. That's a half marathon so hopefully I'll be able to repeat that next Sunday at the Cork half marathon. It was a lot harder than three miles. I did it in two and a half hours. I'm running three miles most days now. It was sheer will power that kept me going. My body was saying 'Eoin, you gotta be kidding! Come on man, be reasonable!' I did really hurt the next day but now three mile runs are nothing. It was raining most of the time I was running which helped keep me relatively cool and ensured I kept that cold. Yesterday, we actually got a blue sky and a bit of sun so my three mile run was far more enjoyable. It's that time of year when the swallows are loitering on the telephone wires, dreaming of sunnier shores, with that glazed look of longing in their eyes. Yes I was having a staring competition with them and their eyes certainly had a certain je ne sais quoi about em. You can't stare down a swallow. They're a fairly tenacious bird. After all, they're marathon flyers – they're preparing to fly all the way to Africa, although sitting on a power line seems like a strange way of training for that. I doubt it would work for me. As I was running down the botharín (FEN: narrow country road, often with grass growing in middle), I was accompanied by a swallow guard of honour who would wait on the power lines for me to approach, and then as I huffed and puffed below them, they careened across he botharín in a criss-cross fashion, not unlike a squadron of tiny fighter planes putting on an air show. On my thirteen mile run, I was accompanied along the length of one field by a group of inquisitive horses who trotted beside me for a while. They didn't have to trot very fast as I had run eight miles at this point. Whether I will be able to run twenty six miles is still uncertain, but being able to run thirteen miles after only one day of training, is fairly encouraging if perhaps a little foolish.

            This weekend, I went back to Cape Clear with two friends of mine, Diarmuid and Ruth, for a night out. Cape Clear was the island I worked on last summer. Not much has changed. It was raining heavily for most of the night, which rather limited what we could do. Mostly we just rotated between the three pubs. We did this for a good seven hours. It was pretty hard to keep going for seven hours given the absence of any alcoholic fuel but I stuck it out. The last two hours were actually the best. There was a very competent duo of musicians who were adept at traditional Irish music, jazz and bluegrass and all styles were showcased equally. As the night went on and people became drunker, behaviour became a little more spontaneous and people took to the floor to dance as if no one was watching. There was one middle aged gentleman in particular who displayed a complete lack of insecurity on the dance floor. I managed to capture two videos of the proceedings, one of a drunken attempt at traditional Irish dancing and another of dancing to 'Mustang Sally's', an old Johnny Rockets favourite. It was rather surreal to hear it in these far less sterile surroundings and to see a far less inhibited response to it from the clientele. I hope to post these videos to the blog in a few days. In the mean time, I do have several photos of the night to keep you amused as well as some photos of our recording session last week.

            Eventually we retired to the cliff-side house where we were crashing that night. We got about four hours of sleep before stumbling on to the ferry again at 9AM that morning and quietly making our way home.

            Yesterday, I noticed a shop in Macroom that has been there forever. I had never really looked at it before but this time, for one reason or another, it struck me just what a weird shop it was. It was a real old-timer's shop called A. Golden's. It was tiny and unassuming and the entire stock was displayed in the window. It wasn't really trying to capture a niche market – it kind of just sold anything and everything, and at the same time, really had nothing worth buying. It is the last place you would think of going to buy anything because its inventory is just too unpredictable. There was some rather ironic juxtaposition in the window display. Perhaps you might like to purchase an original copy of Hitler's Mien Kampf along with one of them Jewish candlesticks that hold loads of candles (undoubtedly aiming for the large Jewish community in Macroom [FEN: Sarcasm…there are no jews in Macroom]). The window display also featured a ceramic Buddha sitting in a wooden lighthouse, a picture of Jesus (artist's impression), a model of the Columbia Space Shuttle, a hurley, a Yasser Arafat babushka, a walking stick and fish bait. The weirdest part was that this shop was also a pub!!! It was tiny – just a corridor really with the shop counter on one side and the bar counter on the other. The weirdest thing of all was that this pub, whose décor would suggest that it was the preserve of old tweed-clad men, was actually playing Dire Straits on the PA and was being occupied by a gaggle of trendy, fashionable twenty-somethings! In Macroom! Wonders will never cease!

            Today I had the dubious pleasure of revisiting my wonderful dentist who I had been attending once a week before leaving Ireland. She spent several hours doing some rather painful things to my mouth and I'm not sure how much better off my mouth is as a result but to be perfectly honest, I think it feels slightly violated. I know it will recover though. It has a habit of going right back to consuming unspeakable quantities of sugary foods right after spending hours bleeding profusely in the dentist's chair. Yes I know, charming imagery isn't it.

            I've seen some of the emails that Noride's Japanese friends have sent her and they're so funny. They're virtually incomprehensible! Their command of the English language is rudimentary at best and it was surprising to see that the emails consisted entirely of very advanced vocabulary that even a native English speaker might not have at his disposal, but that the words were strung together in a manner that made it entirely nonsensical. This was because these emails were the result of painstaking use of electronic dictionaries which are far from infallible. It reminded me of that excellent Bill Murray film, 'Lost in Translation'. This film really highlighted the cultural rift between east and west and showed what it is like for a lone westerner in Japan. It seems that Japanese is a language that really doesn't suit English and that a lot is lost in any translation from the former to the latter, and probably vice versa too.

           This morning I was very saddened to hear on the radio that Steve Irwin, popularly known as 'The Crocodile Hunter', had passed away at the age of forty-four. Apparently, his chest was punctured by a stingray barb while scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef. His penchant for foolhardiness finally caught up with this larger than life nature lover. I know most people will probably think this is a bit silly but Steve was a personal hero and role model of mine. Many people thought he was a bit silly himself but what I saw in him was a man of ambition, a man who had a real purpose to his life – to share his love and knowledge of animals with the world and dispel irrational hatred toward, and ignorance of reptiles in general. Now, many would say that there are more worthy causes but at least he spent every day of his life working towards a cause that he really believed in and was clearly very passionate about. That's a lot more than most people do. Most people end up as builders, accountants, butchers, lawyers, grocers, publicans etc. not exactly vocations – more like a means to and end, that end being survival. Steve, on the other hand, never planned a career. He just instinctively did what he loved and he did it with every ounce of his natural charisma, enthusiasm, ebullience and cheerful optimism. His survival and later, his success, were mere side-effects of his genuine passion, untainted by ulterior motives. I think he lived a fuller life and achieved more in his forty-four years than most of us could ever hope to do in eighty-four. I mean the man has a species of turtle named after him for crying out loud! Do you have a species of turtle named after you? I don't. I think we need to start asking ourselves why not! But that's not what he'll be remembered most for. He'll be remembered as a bold explorer who managed to retain, and inspire in others, the wide-eyed wonder of a child seeing something for the first time. If he saw some animal droppings, he would behave like a prospector who'd just struck gold. I mean, imagine how fantastic your life would be if you could get insanely excited about a pile of crap! I think he would have preferred to go out with a bang rather than as an insipid old man in a hospital somewhere many years from now. His untimely death will ensure the immortality of the youthful image of him that he became famous for. More importantly, based on what I've seen in documentaries about his personal life, he seemed like a guy who had it all and didn't take it for granted – a wife, two children, a dog and a job, nay a vocation, that not only allowed him to live comfortably but gave his life a purpose. What more could a man want? The most important legacy he leaves to us is this: we should not be content with passively watching life go by. We should grab life by the jaws and wrestle it to the ground. To quote The Shawshank Redemption, "Get busy living or get busy dying." Steve chose to get very busy indeed with the former and that is what he should be remembered for. So you see now why I admire and respect him so much? He was a great man who taught me as much about living as he did about reptiles. So, for anyone reading this now, take a moment to remember this man and for you own sakes, promise yourselves that you will attack life with the same gusto he exhibited every day. If you can do that, then Steve will have succeeded in leaving the world a better place than he found it.

Steve Irwin – Crocodile Hunter – 22/2/1962-4/9/2006 - R.I.P.           

  Hey. I know it took me nearly a week to update, but until I move to Dublin on 23^rd/24^th of September, I imagine this will be the standard regularity of my updates because the pace of life out here in Kilnamartyra is a lot slower, than either Dublin or America – well maybe it's not really the pace of life that's the issue, but rather the likelihood of something happening that's worth 'writing home about' is significantly reduced by being in Kilnamartyra. Nevertheless, I will strive to find the extraordinary in the mundane as I always have. I think that in the course of a week, I should see enough to justify writing an entry. So what have I got for you this time?

            Well the big news around these parts this week is that our priest quit. On Sunday, after mass, the curate came up on the altar and announced that after ten years in the priesthood (which was preceded by seven years in seminary), he felt that this wasn't the life for him and he had to do something else. He didn't really elaborate on what provoked this totally unexpected decision or what he was going to do now or where he was going to go. He just said it was the hardest decision he ever made and that he had been thinking about it for a long time. I felt really bad for him. He's around 34 years old, which is young for a priest but old for anyone else to be starting out on life with no money or direction. I wondered whether he did it because he had religious doubts or simply because he was lonely and needed the kind of human companionship he was not allowed to have as a priest. Being a priest must be very lonely, as soon as you've made loads of friends in your parish, you're moved on to another one so you can never get attached. I fail to see any justification for not allowing priests to marry. I think the Catholic Church is really going to have to give in on this one or there just won't be any priests left. Lousy on him anyway. Everyone thought he was a bit of a legend so he'll be missed.

            But enough about that. This morning, that song 'Why Don't You Build Me Up Buttercup' came on the radio and despite my 'just got out of bed hoarseness', I couldn't help but sing along and Johnny Rockets came flooding back. I had heard that song so many times before I ever went near Johnny Rockets but I suppose I just heard it SOOOOOO many times there, that now I can't associate it with anything else but busy days of running around a red and white tiled diner carrying food and singing to myself and trying not to knock over some pretty cool people who I was lucky enough to have as co-workers. Yesterday, I downloaded 'She's a Bad Mama Jama' and I'm listening to it right now. It's all I can do to keep my hands on the keyboard and the rest of me is 'doin ma thang!' As you can imagine, this makes typing exceptionally difficult. Did you know that Stevie Wonder and Carl Carlton sing this song? I didn't. Music can conjure up memories like nothing else can. I can visualise the view of the restaurant from the top of the counter so vividly now with all the other Rocket employees dancing below and curious people gathering outside the windows wondering "what kind of a crazy place is this Johnny Rockets, perhaps we should go in there and pay $7 for a burger?" Dancing to 'She's a Bad Mama Jama' was the best part of the day and therefore was usually repeated about three times. It's probably the only thing I really miss about Johnny Rockets, apart, of course, from those exceptionally kick-ass aforementioned co-workers.  The song just finished there and I was confused for a few seconds when 'Lean On Me' didn't come on and then I rememberd 'Oh yeah! This is my computer, not the Johnny Rockers Jukebox!'

            Today I was inside in Cork on Paul St and who did I see only Eddie Hobbs himself with a camera crew. (Foreigner Explanatory Note [FEN]: Eddie Hobbs is kind of like your mam…mother…only he's a man and he's a television presenter and an economist. He is renowned for his overdramatic socio-economic commentaries on the Irish economy and the fact that he has the voice and demeanour of your mother – or indeed any given stereotypical mother.) Naturally, seeing this man in the flesh was a very life-changing experience for me (sarcasm). It was kinda cool though. Little moshers (FEN: Paul St is the favoured haunt for the local disillusioned youth and adolescent Goths) were going up to him and telling him how much they had enjoyed his controversial television series 'Rip-off Ireland' and expressing their disappointment at the fact that there would be no second series.

            My sister came home and had all sorts of strange stories and photos of Japan which overall, appears to be a very strange country with a very strange people. There's never any physical contact, they're all ridiculously polite all the time and humble to the point of self-degradation as well as being insanely punctual – that really wouldn't suit Irish people at all. If you compliment them on something, they will strenuously disagree with your compliment and be very embarrassed.
They will never criticise something but will say that it is merely 'difficult', which means that they hate it with every fibre of their being. They tend to smile and laugh a lot despite not having a sense of humour. Globalisation has resulted in an obsession with western pop culture and much of the domestic pop culture is a blatant shallow imitation of Americanism. They love Disney and have a Disney World. However, they seem to disapprove of Americans in general and frown on them in terms of current world politics as well as the way they carry themselves. There's a lot of protocol in Japan and apparently, some Americans are oblivious to it. There was a school group from Michigan over there that Noride hung out with for a bit, just to have someone to talk English to and the Japanese were telling her how shocking their behaviour was: they put their feet up in the presence of the mayor. Apparently you can't relax when he's there, you have to be very subservient and uncomfortable. They all thought Noride was so cool anyway. What wide-eyed naiveté! She had to do a press conference and everything just for being Irish. I've seen the newspaper clippings of her photo and articles in Japanese about her! That's just crazy! I can't understand why Myrtle Beach didn't roll out the red carpet for me. I was expecting the full five star treatment from Rainbow Court!;) Anyway, looks like Japan was pretty cool. I'm thinking of spending a year there after college. Most of the country is totally sheltered from the rest of the world but in Tokyo, all the signs are bilingual and apparently there's a strong little Irish community over there (but only in Tokyo – my sister was out in a small city). Tokyo has a GAA team (probably not an all-star line up but a team nevertheless) [FEN: GAA=Gaelic Athletic Association: an organization not unlike the NFL who are in charge of domestic amateur Irish sports – mainly Gaelic football and hurling] and a Comhaltas branch. [FEN: Traditional Irish music association.]

            Anyway, in other news, my band, The Undertrads, have spent the past two days in BPM studios in Douglas, recording three of our songs. Surprisingly, it's gone off without a hitch so far. Everything ran smoothly, we got lots done in a short space of time and mixing is pencilled in for next Thursday. I may not have the time to attend the mixing and give my input, and a lot can go wrong at this stage. It's difficult to resist the temptation to add little extra layers of sound that are unnecessary and clutter up the finished product, making it sound untidy. Two of the songs sounded really good in the studio today without any modification and I think they should be left as they are – they already bear the polished hallmark of a studio recording. I know that if I am absent for mixing, they will be fiddled with too much and we will end up with a finished product that sounds nothing like it was initially envisaged. The proof of the pudding will be in the hearing next week, and I can only cross my fingers and hope that it still sounds as pure and energetic then as it did today. If any of you want a copy, send me an email or leave a comment on here.

            And finally today, I made a very drastic decision. I'm going to run the Dublin City Marathon on the 30^th of October. Yes, having no running experience whatsoever, and with two months to go until the big day, I have decided, for no discernible reason, to take upon myself the gruelling task of training for a marathon. Why? I don't really know to be honest. I think I may just be inexplicably drawn to the unpleasantness in life. I will have to run for miles, five days of the week for the next two months. I think I just want to be able to tick 'running a marathon' of my life's to do list. I think having run twenty six miles with tens of thousands of other runners from all over the world would leave me with a great sense of satisfaction as I stumble across the finish line. Of course, everyone else has been training for this since the start of the summer – I don't know if I'm physically capable of doing this but what's the worst that can happen? I drop dead? I'll take my chances. I feel a lot like Declan Moffat from Glenamady, Tommy Tiernan's [FEN: controversial Irish comedian] presumably fictional subject of a comedy routine featuring a happy-go-lucky ruffian who with no training whatsoever, thinks he can give the runners from Kenya and Ethiopia a run for their money in the Dublin City Marathon. (Incidentally, he fails to do so.) I made my decision, having run three miles yesterday with no trouble. Of course a marathon is twenty six miles long, which is a bit more than three miles. Given that I had never run three miles before in my life, I was fairly happy with myself. I'm not as unfit as I expected to be and am suffering from no cramps or aches whatsoever, following yesterday's run, despite my three month hiatus of inactivity from the world of exercise. I have no idea whether I'll be capable of running twenty six miles, but the Cork mini marathon is on a week from Sunday. It's thirteen miles long (unlucky?) and would be a good test. I will enter and finish. Tomorrow, I will try to find somewhere to run eight miles without having to resort to going back and forth over the same stretch of road. The road I am on is extremely dangerous for running as it is very busy, narrow and twisty. It has many blind corners, no verge to run on and people drive very fast on it. I only have to run about half a mile on that road to get to a deserted back road where I can run for a mile and then back home again. I went for my run yesterday at dusk. It was really weird and extremely surreal, running along this tree-covered road that I had been driven down a trillion times before as it was getting dark. I can't remember ever being on that road outside of a car except maybe a few times very long ago. Then when I got on the backroad I was safe from the cars. I think I might finally understand what it is runners like so much about running. Running out there, entirely on your own, without a soul in sight, the sounds of traffic in the distance and a dog barking far away. Just running and running and not stopping until I got back home. Nobody with you but the voices in your head telling you to keep going. Yes there were voices in my head – nothing to worry about I'm sure. Then again, all those runners in DC and NYC were surrounded by other runners so they definitely weren't doing it for alone time. Maybe twas a bit of company they were after.

            I always said I'd do a marathon some day and I just thought, "Hey. I'm going to be in Dublin when there's one on so I might as well do it." I guess what took that idea of someday and made it someday soon was seeing this guy Andrew, in Myrtle Beach, training everyday for a marathon and then staying in that apartment in New York and seeing all the NYC marathon medals hanging there, and photos of the guy who owned the apartment at the finish line. Well hopefully I'll manage to go through with this whole thing without dying. We'll see how I get on at the mini marathon next week after virtually no training whatsoever.

            Still haven't started working. Hopefully on Monday. Not looking forward to that job. Anyone who knows the names of the few remaining undocumented fields is pretty much dead or else really good at staying under the radar. Whenever anything of interest happens here, I'll be sure to report back. I don't know when that will but it will definitely be within the next week. Until then, whenever then may be, take it easy.

   Hey. I've adapted back to the old way of life again. I'm back at training and am surprised by how much I'm not entirely out of shape after a whole summer of no exercise and eating crap. I'm starting to think in euro again. I said dollars a number of times instead of euro but it rarely happens now. I'm getting used to spending change too. In America, change is worth NOTHING! You just throw it away or give it to bums or something. But here a 2euro coin is worth two and a half of those dollar bills. It took me a while to get used to using change for small purchases – I always went for the wallet and paid with a 10 or a 5 and the next thing I knew I had about 10euro of change in my back pocket.

            I walked outside two nights ago and nearly fell over with the shock of seeing stars again. I hadn't realised that I hadn't seen any stars in three months. They may have been visible some of the time in North Carolina but any time the floodlights were on in the nearby WCU football stadium, the whole area was lit up and you couldn't even see the sky. Two nights ago was a very clear night so you could see tons and tons of stars and it made me feel dizzy. It was strange being able to look at things in Ireland with fresh eyes having been away for only three months, and appreciate things I didn't really pay much attention to before.

            I went to a session last night in the Mills Inn in Ballyvourney, not having played accordion in over three months. I've got very rusty and really need to brush up. I've practised a little bit of piano and guitar since I've come back and they don't seem to be quite as bad.

            The night before last, I was sitting outside a nice pub on Patrick's Street in Cork with my cousin, in front of the gas heaters. (In Ireland, it's actually colder OUTSIDE than it is INSIDE, so we have to have artificial heat instead of artificial cold…I know I didn't have to explain that I just wanted to.) At the table beside us were a group of five middle aged men, discussing something animatedly. Their, discussion grew louder and I couldn't help but overhear. They noticed me looking on with interest and invited me over to partake in their discussion. I gladly pulled my chair over because I was intrigued by their conversation. In the group was a large Irishman who was clearly on the way to becoming drunk and probably violent later on. There was another smaller Irishman who was also on the way to being drunk but looked more laid back. Neither of them looked too trustworthy and I resolved not to stay for more than another two rounds. With them were two Americans, probably recent arrivals, and a Mexican who had lived in Michigan and now lives here. It was clear that the Americans had only recently met the Irishmen and didn't know them very well. The smaller Irishman had spent eight years in New York and an undisclosed portion of that time, incarcerated in a prison there. One of the Americans had been in the US Navy. They were talking about politics, religion, war and whether Ireland or America was better. You can see why I was intrigued, and the participants in this discussion seemed fairly well qualified, given their experiences, to comment on these matters. I explained that I had just returned from America three days previously, thereby qualifying me to engage in an intelligent discussion on this topic. The problem was, that most of the intelligence was coming from the American side of the patio as the two Irishmen had clearly started drinking much earlier than the Americans and spent most of their time either being really serious and trying to get everyone to be quiet and listen to something really important that they thought they were about to say or laughing and back-slapping and shaking everyone's hand repeatedly for no apparent reason. The Americans thought that America had more religious diversity than Ireland (true) and that this was an indication of more religious freedom (questionable). One of the Irishmen had the presence of mind to cite the American attitude towards Islam as a rebuttal to this point. The Americans replied, that if a Christian child and a Muslim child grew up side by side, that religion would not be a problem. I assured them that, the way these two cultures were drifting further and further apart, that this would never happen and that religion was the main cause of this division and it precluded the possibility of ever securing peace. In terms of politics, we were all able to agree, rather cynically, that politicians all over the world were not to be trusted, often had other than altruistic motivations and in reality had a limited impact on the day to day lives of ordinary people. In terms of which country was better, the pivotal criteria on which this was determined, was which had more freedom and this necessarily involved discussing law enforcement. After some heated discussion, we eventually came to the conclusion that the heavy-handed approach, adopted by American law enforcement when dealing with petty crime was necessitated by the high levels of serious crime in that country and that the lenient approach utilized by the Gárda Síochána when dealing with minor altercations was more appropriate here. During the course of this discussion, the dodgy Irishmen remarked that the Irish system was more humanitarian because it was based on the unspoken ideal that small-timers should be 'given a chance'. When pushed for what would constitute an overlookable misdemeanour, the Irishman suggested 'a youngfella just forging a signature on a cheque or something like'. The Americans reacted with shock and horror, insisting that forging signatures on cheques was 'fundamentally wrong'. I hastened to distance myself and the rest of the Irish nation from the remark that had just been made by this Irishman, whose opinion was beginning to carry less and less weight. Another example he posited was 'a drunk fella just giving another lad a belt like'. Again, everyone else protested, that an innocent bypasser shouldn't have to bear the brunt of even one blow from a 'drunk fella'. As the conversation became more heated, I decided to retreat to the Mexican, who had said little thus far. I asked him whether he found more freedom in Mexico or America. Many American would simply assume, that a Mexican was lucky to be allowed into the 'land of the free', but having spent three months being an immigrant, I knew better. I was unsurprised by his reply: there was more freedom in Mexico. However, he raised the point himself, before I could, that the line between freedom and anarchy was a thin one, and that being allowed to get away with drinking and driving and running red lights wasn't necessarily a good thing. I think Ireland is a fairly happy medium right now. When I asked if it was difficult for a Mexican to move to a place like Michigan, he replied in the affirmative, and I was awestruck to discover that winter temperatures in Michigan had been known to drop to -30celsius and that they often had several feet of snow cover. That would have been difficult for an Irishman, never mind a Mexican. I asked what he missed most about Mexico and he told me that most Mexicans miss the exact same things: the food and the family…in that order! Whatever about American attempts to imitate Mexican food (according to this guy, it just wasn't the same), we're not even trying in Ireland so he must really miss it here. Tellingly, while Mexico has most of the same fast food chains that America does, they don't have Taco Bell!;) The conversation had been very stimulating, but I was careful to leave before the Irish lads became a bit too stimulated!

            Last night I had a much shorter, but equally stimulating conversation in the Mills Inn with a Ballyvourney man who had apparently, painted our house a few months ago. When he discovered that I had spent the summer in America, he got interested and asked what part. I said South Carolina and he said 'what part?' So I repeated South Carolina but he said 'no what part of South Carolina'. This surprised me because usually people ask 'where IS South Carolina' rather than 'where IN South Carolina'. When I said Myrtle Beach, he said 'Oh a lovely spot altogether!' I looked at him with a bemused expression for a few minutes, wondering if there was more than one Myrtle Beach. It turned out that he had been to the same Myrtle Beach, but he had spent his days in the Shady Pines Golf Club and his nights in the Grand Strand Hotel instead of cautiously crossing 5^th and Chester. I explained to him that he had actually obliviously been leading a charmed existence that only an elect few were privy to in Myrtle Beach. He did have one glance at the real Myrtle Beach on his first day there, when he stopped to pick up what he thought to be an innocent hitch hiker, probably somewhere down around my area. She claimed to be going up about 20 blocks north so he told her to 'hop away in there girleen!' He quickly booted her out of the car a few blocks down upon discovering that she was in fact a prostitute attempting to solicit some business. This story amused me no end, particularly as it was delivered in an exceptionally strong country accent that I imagine any American would be entirely incapable of understanding.

            I start work on Monday. It's not the cushy office job I was expecting. I thought I'd be looking up stuff in books and writing down and stuff but no. I'll be cycling around from house to house mainly within a five mile radius of here, collecting hard previously unrecorded information the hard way – taking it down as old people say it to me. I'm my own boss as such, because I can work whenever I want and then I just send in a timesheet with the results of my research but because I don't drive, I can't work when it's raining. And there usually isn't anyone home until evening time which means I'll probably have to be cycling around these country roads at night, and given that I'm living on an extremely busy but narrow road, I may have to die for the cause of collecting the names of all the fields in my locality. I went to the library today to check which ones are still undocumented. There's plenty of them but unfortunately there aren't many people left who would know them. Only old people would really know the names of fields and most of them are either dead, or according to the records I looked over, have already been interviewed and had all their information harvested. So now I have to try to figure out whether there are any more old people left, whether they live in an area where the names of the fields are still unrecorded and how exactly to find where they live. As you can imagine, this is really not an easy or fun task and I have to get results.  I'll give it a week and see what I come up with but if I'm coming up with nothing after that, I'll have to give it up. It better not rain constantly!

            That's all the stories I have for ye now but as soon as I have some more, ye can be sure that ye'll be the first to hear them!