Yo! Word up? On Friday, the Department of Foreign Affairs' Legal Division found out I existed and called me. They want to requisition me from Irish Aid Division because apparently they actually have loads of work for me to do. Hopefully that will work out because it would be very cool to actually get some experience in International Law which was really why I asked to be sent here. They brought me over to their building on Friday and introduced me to everyone to make sure they all knew I existed and the general consensus was that my days of endlessly trawling through Wikipedia to keep busy were over. If I get the consent of my boss in Irish Aid, they will start inundating me with legal work as of tomorrow which would be totally cool! Yeah it's got that bad…I actually want some work to do! There's also talk of me moving over to the Legal Division offices but I'm less concerned about that because I have a pretty sweet setup right here and they can send my work over here to me – I don't actually need to be in their building to do their work. However, if I do move over there, I would probably be put in what's called the Crisis Room cos they're short on office space. The Crisis Room is this really cool massive room where the nation's best and brightest convene in the event of a national emergency or natural disaster. Like in movies where there's a supervillain stroking a white cat and taking over the world and he delivers his ultimatum to the nations leaders, it would be delivered on the big massive screen in this room. When there aren't evil geniuses trying to take over the world, this massive screen shows a world map divided up into all the time zones. There are also clocks all around the walls showing the times in different cities. There are also loads of phones with headsets such as Britney Spears might have used before she lost the plot…because in a national emergency, you'll have to multitask and you'll need both hands free to rectify the situation! They've thought of everything! There are also loads of little TV screens all over the place with lots of complicated data on the screens. Of course most of the time this room is totally deserted because Ireland is rarely in the throes of a natural disaster (we're still waiting for the Brits to mess up with the Sellafield Nuclear Power Plant). So imagine how cool it would be for this daycent room to be my office!!!! I could sit in a high-backed swivel chair and spin thoughtfully in it while steepling my fingers pensively. However, the Crisis Room has been known to attract nomadic in-house IT specialists who are drawn to the unprecedented high-tech specifications of the facility and they sometimes nest there in small unpenetratable clusters. If this room were to become my office, the security measures would clearly have to be upgraded to prevent these squatters from gaining entry and establishing a right of residence.

            And yesterday I was fighting in a Tae Kwon-Do tournament in Kilarney – the Munster Championships – and I'll have you know I ruled! I owned that ring! It was the first time I came first in a division that actually had more than two people in it. It can be difficult to find adult black belt fighters of my weight cos I'm about as small as they get. However, this time there were four of us and I came out on top after breaking one guy's nose. I felt bad about that because he had to be pulled out of the fight before the end and his nose swelled up like a balloon. It's not the best way to win a fight. The final was harder because this time the guy was a bit heavier and he was a smart fighter who knew what he was doing tactically so I had to respond with a combination of strategy and controlled aggression. The UCC squad was very successful, in particular the female competitors who really dominated…and the Dublin contingent were OK too. The whole day made me really want to go back to the UCC club again though. Good times. But next weekend I'm going to the seaside resort and surfing Mecca of Bundoran, Co. Donegal with the UCD Tae Kwon-Do club for a weekend of joviality, outdoor adventure sports, and a bit of training. They'll just have to do for now.

Welcome true believers and newcomers alike! I'm Eoin Ó Muimhneacháin, creator of furrowed brows and confused facial expressions. Last Thursday night I went down to Cork for the UCC Law Ball. Not because I had nothing better to do...no…but out of moral support for some poor hapless friends who had nothing better to do. Unsurprisingly, the night was a big oompa-loopma-fest of glow-in-the-dark floozies barely able to stand on their stilettos with the amount of alcohol in their blood and their handbags…and that was just the lads. Of course throughout this entire charade of respectability, the law students were painfully aware of their own superiority to the rest of the student body. Overall I can confirm that it was as shallow a spectacle and as contemptible a social gathering as we all expected. Yes I do enjoy my scathing derisions of law students. They're such an easy target. Of course any such derision must be qualified by the admission that about 10% of law students are alright – and you can take that statistic to the bank! The night was made bearable by that 10% and by a host of non-law students who very charitably gave their time to attend the scene of the crime and offer their company to the victims. Among these was a lad I worked with in Johnny Rockets so it was cool to bump into him again! Without these people, the Law Ball would be a complete no-go zone where I wouldn't dare venture even for the sake of my unlucky friends who somehow got dragged along.

            I took Friday off work which allowed me to train at my home Tae Kwon-Do club for the first time since September…which was very nice. This was in preparation for a preliminary Tae Kwon-Do grading on Sunday. You have to do four gradings to get your 2^nd degree black belt. This was my second. It involved a lot of blood and sweat. It is unnecessary to specify whose blood was involved. However, see the photos section for one example. That's it. Now stop wasting time on the internet and go do something with your life!

Last week I did something a little bit weird. I joined the Dublin Gospel Choir. I'm perfectly well aware that I am a Caucasian but the choir is helping me bury my whiteness deep in the darkest corner of my psyche and to unleash my flamboyant loud side – which incidentally has a sense of rhythm. Unsurprisingly, there isn't a single African-American person in the whole choir but you would never even know if you only bought the album and never saw a photo because they really sound black! You may recall that I saw the Dublin Gospel Choir back in November and I then urged you all to rush out and purchase their genuinely wonderful album, 'Moving Up'. I reiterate that suggestion at this point. I auditioned to join the choir about a month ago and naturally enough, I was accepted – I am fantabulous after all! The first practise was last week and it was totally sweet. I discovered that there would be choreography involved as well as singing and I will no doubt be busting many a move, as well as at least one of my hips, over the weeks to come. I can say with total conviction after only one practise, that this is definitely the most fun choir I have ever been in. All the songs so far have felt really great to sing, especially when the harmonies come in, and are in my range without having to resort to falsetto. Apparently, when we sing with the full band, it will feel even better. I say praisin the Lawd has never been so invigorating! You can hear sample clips from the album or actually splash out and buy it here: http://www.dublingospelchoir.com/html/music.shtml

            And in other news it was recently brought to my attention that my flatmate, Wei has been fraternising with celebrities for years without telling me. It recently came to light that she saw Bono himself only yesterday! I'm perfectly serious. She works in a rather exclusive, expensive and well-known Dublin restaurant which apparently, is regularly frequented by all manner of rich and famous people. Her customers also include Michael Jordan who was over to see the Ryder Cup, Hillary Swank, yer wan Phoebe in Friends, Bishop Brennan from Father Ted [FEN: popular Irish ecclesiastical sitcom], John Hume -  Nobel laureate and former leader of the SDLP [FEN: Northern Irish moderate Republican political party] and a bevy of other more forgettable politicians. So they're the kind of people my acquaintances do be swanning around with! That will be all for now. Cheerio!

The reason I haven't written in over a week is not because I have been inundated with work but because nothing at all has happened and I therefore have nothing to say for myself. I've been passing the time here in the Department of Foreign Affairs by ordering any academic articles from law journals and international relations journals that took my fancy up from the legal division library in Steven's Green. I'm determined to learn something from my time here and if that means giving myself a crash course in international law (which I have thus far not had the opportunity to study) then I suppose I could be doing worse things with my time.

            But this weekend was slightly more interesting…I attended a soiree in Cork in celebration of my friend, Michael's, 21^st birthday and it was everything I expected. An informal concert where all his friends got up over the course of the night and played mostly folksy Irishy kinda music together. It couldn't have been more stereotypically Irish unless you skipped around lilting [FEN: nonsensical Irish noisemaking such as toora loora lah], decking the halls with sprigs of shamrocks and stopping to dig the occasional potato and contract a nice clichéd "famine." I was just happy to hear some real Cork accents again and play our old gimpy blend of punk and folk just like our band used to do in the old days (like…last year). Had I been any further afield than Dublin for the past month, I may quite happily have festooned the whole place with giant plastic shamrocks and not felt even a tinge of cynicism. Yesterday we had a seminar here on going to work abroad and the symptoms of ex-pat homesickness. Exaggerated patriotism is one of those symptoms.

            I decided that last Saturday would be my personal Boxing Day. I went to see the Boxing Intervarsities and I saw lots of men with bloody faces swinging wildly at each other. No knock outs though. I followed this with a trip to the cinema to see Rocky Balboa, which is predictably cheesy but you can't help loving it. I think every day should have a thematic basis. I have decided that every Saturday from now on will have a theme. It will not be chosen at random but rather I will go through the dictionary in order and select appropriate themes as they come up. I will start tomorrow with Aardvark. I have a program of events planned for the day. I will begin by looking up Aardvark on Wikipedia. Then I will make an Aardvark costume and walk around the streets of Dublin raising awareness about Aardvark abuse. This shall conclude with a protest outside Dáil Éireann to campaign for Aardvark rights. A similar schedule of events is envisaged for the day after in relation to the Aardwolf. Unorthodoxitivity is pencilled in for sometime in late August, 2746. A program of events has yet to be compiled but I am now accepting submissions.

            Last night, myself and my flatmates went on a "house night out" to Chinatown. Yeah I think it's finally realistic to start calling Parnell St Chinatown. It's a small but concentrated pocket of Chinese. The vast majority of establishments along this particular stretch of Parnell St are Asian owned and operated. Wei (my Chinese flatmate – you should know this by now) said that when she moved to Ireland in 2000, Parnell St was a dodgy area full of local scumbags who used to throw stones at the few Chinese people who worked there. Now white faces are a small minority on this part of Parnell St. It's really weird – I never thought Ireland could feel like China.

            Wei picked out a restaurant and then she picked out our food for us. We were getting a bit apprehensive because some of the things on the menu looked fair dodgy. There was a lot of talk of various animals' flanks, which Wei confirmed was merely a euphemism for ass. Having gone through the menu, I concluded that Chinese people will eat pretty much anything that moves or looks like it was thinking about moving. We ended up getting four or five big plates of various different meats and a very weird tasting tea. Wei ordered in Chinese (which took about five minutes of animated debate) while we sat there and smiled dopily. Later the waitress popped back and said something quickly to Wei who replied equally quickly. I gathered this meant "Is everything alright?" and "Yeah everything's fine" although Wei assured me that the waitress had actually said she liked my tie. I'm sceptical.

            Today I met Conor Lenihan, the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs. He shook my hand twice because he forgot he shook it the first time. I wasn't very impressed. I also met Dr Peter Piot, the Executive Director of UNAIDS. They were there to sign an agreement whereby Irish Aid will donate €30m to the UNAIDS programme. Big photo op! That's my big news for today. Later.

Well my first week in Foreign Affairs has been relatively uneventful. Turns out I'm "working on my own" means I'm working on a project on my own independent of any of the department's sections, not I'm working in a room on my own. In fact I am working in a communal work area shared with the other six interns, who it turns out are totally sound despite being ancient (mid to late twenties). They've all been all over the world – one guy is just back from Mexico – he's been twice in the last three months! They've all done volunteer work in Africa and the Balkans and backpacked in South East Asia and everything. Well I guess I'll probably be doing all that in the next five years anyway – in the next year in the case of South East Asia. They're all seriously into travel and plan to spend the rest of their lives rambling and roving and it's great to talk to people like that because sometimes it's very discouraging when most people you know don't really get why you would want to do that.

            As for the work itself it's been fairly boring so far – it's mostly just been reading and getting myself educated on what I'll be dealing with for the next eleven weeks rather than actual output of tangible work. I've been skimming over a lot of very similar looking contracts between Ireland and African governments, NGOs and multilateral organizations such as the UN and making mental notes as to slight differences between them. I'm not sure quite yet why I'm doing this but I know this information will probably be applied in the course of my work. Yesterday I saw a contract signed by Bertie Aherne [FEN: Taoiseach – like prime minister] and Bill
Clinton. Bertie's signature is much nicer – kind of curly – whereas Bill' is very angular and scrawly. I'm now going to get chequebooks in their names and start forging cheques. I've been benefiting from all the perks of civil service life – ie. free stationary and office supplies. I've got notepads, post-its, pens, highlighters, staplers, sellotape dispensers, letter openers, punchers. I even got one of them cool red pencil holding thingys that look like miniature church organs. I asked for one of them things with the metal balls hanging off them that you bang off each other and they swing back and forth going click-clack…but they didn't have any.

            Yeah so that's about all the news from Dublin at the moment. Except that there seems to be a hurricane a brewing up here – nearly got blown right off the pavement a few days ago – it's absolutely miserable and not a good time to be a seagull or a fisherman – thankfully I have no intention of becoming either. Good day!

Sorry for not writing in over a week but well…nothing really happened. I moved back to Dublin last Friday, hoping to start work in the Department of Foreign Affairs on Monday but no such luck. They rang and told me to come in on Thursday instead and I've just come back from there now but haven't started working there yet. My boss-to-be was sick today so someone else ran over very briefly in little detail what I would be doing when I did start. I will probably be starting on Monday now. Apparently there are five other interns coming in on Monday but they will be working on something else entirely and I will be working on my own because I'm a Law student and I was hired to do a specific job - I have to examine Irish Aid's contractual arrangements with everyone…ever. Then after I've inventoried thousands of very long contracts and gone through them all, they expect me to make recommendations as to how they could tighten up their contractual procedures and standardise them across the department. All this in only twelve weeks…after two years of legal education and no real legal experience! It's a bit daunting especially as it looks like I'm going to have very little legal advice from co-workers because apparently they don't know anything about law – I am the legal advice! They have a legal department but they have found some very creative reason as to why they're not required to carry out this exercise in semantics. On the other hand it's kind of cool to be hired to do this kind of a job when I don't even have a degree yet. Lots of law students do internships in law firms but they have experienced lawyers to show them the ropes whereas it looks like I'll just have to try and figure things out myself. I think I'm well up to the task. Apparently the job will involve contacting all the Irish embassies in Africa and getting them to send over copies of all the contracts they've ever made! I don't think there's a filing cabinet big enough to store all the paper I'll have to deal with! Anyway I have a lot of study to do before Monday I'm going to look like I know what I'm doing. No other news really except that the cat we adopted here before Christmas has now turned into four cats – no not kittens – the cat seems to have cloned itself into three other full-sized and extremely similar cats. A more plausible explanation would be that the cat explained to three of his buddies who just happen to look a lot like him, that my flatmate, Wei, was feeding him perfectly good leftover steak from the restaurant where she works, and that they should get a piece of the action. So now they've taken up residence on the kitchen windowsill and sit there like they own the place, with an impatient expression on their feline faces. They are indignant at the thought of actually having to wait to be fed. Photos of those expressions are provided for your enjoyment in the photos section.

You know what I think is a bit strange. In the lead up to Christmas everyone you meet asks "So are ye all set for Christmas?" The most vague and pointless of questions…what kind of a reply do they expect? "Christmas? That's on soon is it? Oh God I totally forgot! I'm screwed now!" And then you run screaming into the nearest wall. No we all invariably reply "Oh I'm soooo busy! With the shopping and the stress and the yadda yadda."…Or something to that effect. What is our obsession with being busy? Why does society seem to encourage unhealthy, hectic, stress-inducing behavioural patterns? Why should we feel guilty if, like me, the truth is that you're really not worried about Christmas and don't have an endless to do list that needs to be crossed out before the 25^th? After all, right after Christmas when everyone asks disinterestedly "So how was your Christmas?" we reply by saying apathetically, "Oh sure you know now…quiet enough." As if we should have been base jumping off skyscrapers or something! The truth is we really don't have a socially acceptable answer to that question because for almost everyone, the truthful answer would be based on an elaborate description of vegging out on the couch for a few days. What's so wrong with having a time of year – just a few little days out of that 365 – when it's acceptable – nay, commendable – to spend some quality time with the TV and a mountain of chocolate…and I suppose the family as well. Absolutely nothing that's what. So let's drink to healthy lethargy if to nothing else because it's so easy in this fast-paced modern world to fall into the trap of filling your life up with activity for activity's sake. I'm guiltier than anyone else in this regard. 2007 is quickly approaching and if we can learn anything from 2006 that we can carry on into next year, it should be the value of stopping to smell the roses and to watch the rest of the world fly by. We should all have designated vegging out slots in our daily schedule, regardless of how action-packed that schedule may be.

            However, the nature of the holidays leaves me with quite a dilemma. You see I have spent most of the last week lying on a couch and now I have to write a blog about it and try to make it seem interesting and engaging. Well I suppose there was some purpose even to my couch potatoedness. I wanted to see all the old famous movies on TV this Christmas so I watched Cassablanca, It's a Wonderful Life and Gone With The Wind. I was pleasantly surprised overall. Cassablanca may very well be the most enduringly quotable film of all time and most people quote it all the time quite inadvertently. Cassablance gave us lines like "Play it again Sam", "We'll always have Paris" and of course "Here's lookin' at you kid!" It's a Wonderful Life was a lovely little story that the Muppets basically stole for their "It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas". (Yeah I watched that too – I can't be highbrow all the time!) I wasn't that gone on Gone With The Wind though. Too long and pointless. Really not worth sitting through three and a half hours just to hear your man say "Quite frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." I didn't think it was that dramatic a line but apparently hearing the word 'damn' in a film back then was very shocking! I also had a few trad sessions over Christmas, one of them in our own house. A load of people came over last night and we played music in the conservatory into the early hours of the morning. One of them brought a harp and I had a go at trying to figure it out. It's pretty cool. It's chromatic so it's pretty easy to figure out but a lot harder to actually pluck the strings properly. It's strange that you never see a harp in a session. I think it's probably because they're just too quiet to be heard when there's other instruments playing unless it was amped up which of course is a big no-no in trad. I also went to a Fred concert the night before last which kicked ass. [FEN: Fred are an extremely talented local band] If you ever get the chance to see them live then go! It's amazing how they manage to play the material that they always play over and over so enthusiastically. They really enjoy it and so does everyone else. They're really comfortable on stage so they goof around all the time. They started off the concert with a rocked up version of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen". Then they pretended it was New Year's Eve and made us all do a pretend countdown just to induce a feeling of jubilation when they kicked off the next song. Then they got a crappy keyboard and put on one of those stupid automatic demos and played and sang along to it – it was that song I really hate – Last Christmas I gave you my heart…they nearly made me like it. If you see their last album anywhere – "Making Music so You Don't Have To" – get it because it's totally sweet. It's extremely original and catchy and unlike anything else that's being played at the moment.

            But of course Christmas is about much more than just chewing all day with a distant glassy-eyed gaze. It's about more than listening to music and watching TV. I know this is going to annoy a lot of people but Christmas is essentially about a child being born who subsequently saved the world and when we all rush around buying crap and not thinking about why we're doing all this, then there's no point to Christmas at all. Of course everyone deserves a holiday - time to appreciate the good things in life and celebrate that whether they're Hindu, Muslim or unconcerned. But the problem with non-Christians using Christmas to do that is that the reason for Christians having Christmas becomes hijacked, corrupted and obscured by commercialism thereby making it more difficult for Christians to focus on what Christmas is about. Jews have a celebration at this time of year and they don't feel the need to hijack Christmas to lend validity to their celebration. Muslims go on their annual pilgrimage to Mecca at this time of year without the need to call it Christmas. Why do atheists want to steal Christmas? Why don't they make up their own feast day - they could call it Atheismas – and have it on December 28^th or something.

            My flatmate Wei is atheist and she quite rightly refuses to acknowledge Christmas. She doesn't decorate or buy presents or pretend that Christmas has anything to do with her but she doesn't mind us decorating the house. That's perfectly logical. I read recently that commercial interests in China are spending a lot of money on promoting Christmas as a shopping celebration and that the Chinese people are lapping it up. The overwhelming majority or Chinese people are not Christian and know or care very little about Christianity. A group of Chinese PhD students have started a petition to boycott Christmas in China because they think they're selling out to Western capitalism and insulting their own traditions as well as Christianity in general. I salute them! Besides it's a bit random to choose Christmas as the religious feast to hijack. If you think about it, it makes more sense to use Hanukah because there are eight days in Hanukah and kids get a different present on every single day. That's eight times more shopping people!!! Happy Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! 

It's nearly Christmas!!! Are ye getting all excited? Bah humbug! Don't bother cos I shot Santa in the eye with my pellet gun last week in a local shopping centre so he won't be able to make it this year. (Hey, I'm just kidding! Relax!)

            Anyway so I went to this party that my colleague Mary Toher was having in her gaff up in Rochestown. I brought a few of the lads along for moral support just in case it sucked but it didn't. You should've seen the place though! There are monarchs of small countries living in more modest housing! They have a big mad fountain out the front and a rockery out the back with a pond and statues and stuff. They have a pony! They had EIGHT Christmas trees (I counted)! At one point there were four of them in a direct line of sight! They had three bathrooms, with carpets, full-length mirrors and bidets (ass washers). They had hired a butler and a full team of catering staff for the party as well as getting a few kegs. They had an actual bar in the house and the Guinness quality control crowd had come out for it and all! Then there was the helicopter on the roof and the landing strip with the private jet out the back. To even get into the compound you have to submit yourself to a biometrics reading. They take a blood sample and your fingerprints. Then they take an imprint of your iris and a voice sample. Two hours and a few phone calls later and your visa to Maryland is issued. Then the garden slides back and there's a hangar under it and whenever they need to get to somewhere REALLY fast they initiate a launch sequence and the Toherbirds are go! A big rocket blasts off out of their back garden and whisks them away to their holiday home on a private satellite orbiting the earth at an altitude of five miles. OK I may have embellished a little and engaged in the use of hyperbole (it's been ages since I've had the opportunity to use that word in a sentence) there towards the end but I swear it was all true right up until the bit with the chopper. But seriously the amount of free food and drink was staggering – in fact several people were staggering afterwards. I filled up on cake and had an excellent night.

            Then last night was the Christmas play of the primary school I went to and where my Dad still teaches. It's always great to get four year olds up on a stage and watch them behave as if they're actually in school. The wolf in little red riding hood got a little bit disorientated and didn't know where he was for a few seconds. Then the local lumberjack (who shockingly turns out to be red riding hood's father even though he's only five) doesn't actually kill the wolf but rather explains quite mysteriously that we won't be 'seeing' him again. We weren't mollycoddled like that in our day. We'd be expected to take a few belts for the sake of theatricals. My Dad's play was a take on the Nativity from the shepherds' point of view. Although I suspect the baby Jesus was in fact a doll of some kind, it did look curiously like a peat briquette from where I was sitting…a very convincing peat briquette nevertheless. The night also featured a rather charismatic young Scrooge with a very drole Kilnamartyra accent. Naturally the plays were followed by a parish raffle and rice crispy buns, without which no community hall event is complete.

            Well I suppose this is the last post from me before the big night (Christmas like) so all that remains for me to do is to wish you all a very happy and peaceful Christmas and a prosperous new year. Go mbeirimid beo ag an am seo arís!

Well I'm back home in Coolavokig for Christmas. My brief stint in the Translation Deparment of the Houses of the Oireachtas has come to an end. Before we left, we were sure to distribute several hundred euros worth of alcohol to our co-workers so that they could drown their sorrows following our untimely departure from their company. I left the hallowed halls of Leinster House behind me on Friday evening with many a teary-eyed well-wisher standing at the front gates to wave goodbye to me as my lone silhouette was slowly but surely swallowed up by an indigo horizon. I didn't look back. It was just…too painful. So many memories; the gay laughter of Progressive Democrats echoing lightly along the corridors and the many unforgettable translations. Damn it I'd give everything for another chance – just one more chance to do another translation. I soaked in the history of the front lobby one more time before I left it forever – breathed in the smell of fine leather and rich mahogany, gazed up at the portrait of my beloved President McAleese as my chest swelled with patriotic pride and then listened to the resounding echoes of my hard shoes clacking with undeterred resolve on the marble floor. I felt as if my legs were forcing me to leave against my will as I pushed my way sadly out the revolving door for the last time, pausing only to turn and slowly salute the tricolour flapping proudly in the free Irish breeze, clinging tenaciously to the flagpole with the determination and iron will of so many freedom fighters who had died clinging to a hazy vision of a free Ireland as they were buffeted by the winds of British imperialism and brutal oppression. As I walked through the security checkpoint, I could have sworn I saw a tear glistening in the corner of Tony the security guard's eye. As I walked down Kildare Street, I heard Brian Cowen's sob-choked voice calling out almost pathetically, "Don't forget to write Eoin!" And then, as suddenly as it began, my adventure in the ranks of the Irish government was over.

            Before going home, I stopped off in Cork to go to a céilí [FEN: pretty sure I explained this already but it's a big organized Irish dance partay where prescribed Irish dances are executed in synchronisation, usually with the aid of a live band, an MC of questionable mental health and disgraceful quantities of alcohol.] I figured it would help take my mind off the end of my work contract. I was quickly in high spirits after constructing a small but precarious heap of women who were unfortunate enough to have been my partners in the course of my enthusiastic and accident-prone Irish dancing. Now I am home and slowly settling into the steady festive decay of lethargy and sloth for which the Christmas season is so celebrated and cherished. I am very busy lying around trying to ignore the looming threat of the two massive essays that I had hoped to coerce myself into doing sometime over the next three weeks. On the eighth of January, I will return to Dublin to begin the second of my two work placements. This will be with Irish Aid, a branch of the Department of Foreign Affairs dealing with Aid to third-world countries. Apparently this will involve brushing up on my contract law from first year but I'm hoping it won't come to that. I predict that Dublin in 2007 will be a little more reserved than it was up to now as three of my legal cohorts from UCC will be moving to Cork and Wexford for their second placements in the New Year, leaving a much smaller group to engage in jovial merry-making up in Dublin. No matter! I'll just have to be extra ebullient to make up for their absence. Ok I'm finished now so go away and…look at my new photos or something.

Saturday saw me getting up early and heading up to what the disembodied female voice on the Red Line Luas refers to in that intolerably smug tone as "Ard-Mhúseam". The national museum at Collins' Barracks. I was to meet up with UCC's Reserve Defence Forces Society who were coming all the way up from Cork just to visit the war exhibitions in the museum that had once been an army barracks. I had never met them before but had wanted to visit this museum for a while and never got around to it so I agreed to meet up with them when they were coming up to see it. They turned out to be a lovely bunch altogether as well as a mine of information regarding Irish military history and the Irish military in general. The exhibitions went all the way back to 1798 when our arsenal was comprised entirely of pikes. [FEN: 3metre long wooden poles with a big metal sharp thingy on the end.] They came all the way up to nearly present day – the nineties. There were all kinds of antique muskets, ancient war helmets and other fascinating war memorabilia, but definitely the best part was the most modern bit with all the almost modern armoured cars, almost modern uniforms, almost modern guns and almost modern fighter planes.

            Then after spending several hours in there, I noticed another temporary exhibition that was on – "Rock Chic – The History of The Electric Guitar". Let me just say now that it was totally daycent. I knew it would be fairly cool but I didn't think I was going to see what I saw. Basically there were two parts to the exhibition; a collection of guitars that were used/owned/signed by famous musicians and a collection of novelty guitars that were customised to look very strange and/or colourful (guitar art if you will), some of which were designed by famous people such as Bono, Christina Agueliera, Jennifer Lopez, Dave Fanning, Bryan Adams and Dave LaChapelle. There was also a whole section on Cork's own hero, Rory Gallagher, possibly the best guitarist the world has ever seen – well he's always in the top five anyway. They had Rory's entire collection of guitars on display…the man had quite a few guitars – about two dozen – even though on stage he usually only used the battered old Strat he was so famous for. And that one was the centrepiece of the whole collection, mounted on it's own pedestal surrounded with plexiglass, and a big light shining down on it from above. It truly was a sight to behold. It was amazing to think that his fingers had flown up and down that very fretboard not much more than a decade ago. There was also a poster of "The Macroom Festival" which Rory headlined many years ago. To think that such a legend played in my humble little unworthy hometown is almost incredible now but I imagine they probably took him for granted at the time. But his guitars weren't the only legendary ones in the house. There were far more names than I could possibly remember but here are a few of the ones that stood out in my memory for one reason or another: John Lee Hooker, Bo Diddley, The Kinks, The Velvet Underground (also signed by Andy Warhol), Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, Oasis, Black Sabbath, Crazy Horse, Ash, The Edge, Bono, The Horslips, The Undertones, Stiff Little Fingers, The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton and many many more.:)

            Then there were the "designer" guitars, decorated with all kinds of innovative materials such as snakeskin, or coloured rhinestones composing the pattern of the Union Jack. Others had photographs airbrushed onto the bodies and others had intricate inlays of things like dragons on the fretboard. Others were made of metal forged into strange shapes. Another was carved into the shape of writhing cobras. Another had a HP laptop inside the body of the guitar. There were more psychedelic shapes and colours than I can recall.

            I would highly recommend this exhibition for anyone with a passing interest in guitars. If you know nothing whatsoever about guitars, spending longer than half an hour in there would probably bore you, but any music enthusiast who has even a passing interest in guitars could easily while away an hour and a half in there, as I did. If you live in Dublin, you really have no excuse – get your ass in there! If you're from "out the country", I would still urge you to come up if you're a guitarist with a keen interest in the instrument because you won't be disappointed. Make a day out of it. All the guitars that were designed by celebrities will be auctioned off for the charities of their choice. The exhibition closes on 21^st January 2007.

            On the way home I was accosted by a gang of leather-clad, bald, burly, bearded bikers. They were collecting money for some children's hospital God bless 'em. They had a rather attractive motortrike on show to draw attention to themselves. I thought it was rather surreal to have tough looking bikers asking the public for money for a charitable cause. The rather attractive trike is featured in the photos section. Keep up the good work lads! Good luck!