Well the Kiss Coffeehouse isn’t hiring so I need to find somewhere else. This will probably take a while but the search begins now. There are so many places but I want somewhere that pays at least $8 an hour with no tips or else a fairly high end restaurant where the tips would be high. It will probably take a fair while to find something that’s guaranteed to pay better than Johnny Rockets and that is my main concern at the moment. I’ve stopped taking taxis and instead walk to work (50mins) in the sweltering heat. Some of the American girls who work there though said they’ll give me a lift every morning if I want but they only work mornings so that’s no good if I’m working nights. Even without taxi costs it’s still impossible to have any fun here without withdrawing money and when you withdraw you have to take a minimum of $150 or else the charges make it uneconomical. I’ve only got about another five withdrawals left and I have to make at least one a week to survive. I want to save two of those for New York which gives me less than three weeks to have a found a new job and got my first paycheck. It shouldn’t be that hard. Just finding the time to do the footwork is the hard part. I’ll let you know how it goes.

In more interesting news, I had an excellent night last night and it didn’t cost me a cent. I went to see the opening of the Kiss Coffeehouse. Gene and Paul were there and I got to meet them!!!! Furthermore I got their autographs!!! And yes I got one for Donal too! (For those of you who don’t know him, he is Ireland’s biggest Kiss fan.) I think I would have been exiled from the Gill homestead had I not. The interior of the Kiss Coffeehouse is really cool and has memorabilia such as authentic Kiss guitars in it. I haven’t got any photos of the interior yet but I’ll hopefully take some of them before the end of the week. It was a major event. Had I not asked for the night off for this I probably would have made quite a big of tips. Every Tuesday night is busy cos they have fireworks every Tuesday. If you look at them they fire you!:( I was chatting to the lads in the tribute band and they’re all really cool. It take a lot of guts to dress up like that I tell ye! They put on a great show as well. ‘Gene’ set a sword on fire and then proceeded to spit flame! Their set included such Kiss Klassiks as Christine Sixteen. The crowd knew all of them and sang along to everything. The actual Gene and Paul look nothing like you would expect as you can see from the photo I managed to get. They weren’t wearing the make up and they’re really tanned. They look like sleazy rich old men…ooh maybe that’s because they are!;) Anyway all the hype was very enjoyable. On the walk home I saw a cockroach EATING a cigarette butt which was also really cool. I didn’t know they ate fags. What else do I have to report... O yeah, yesterday I was mistaken for a Russian and some girl started blathering away to me in Russian. That was weird. Another random observation on American society: They don’t text here at all they only call. It’s very expensive. I don’t know why it hasn’t caught on here. It’s hard to imagine life without txting these days. I spose that’s all the news for now really. You should check out my comment on the Blarney Stone Interior photo which I was very impressed with. I was cut early today again - had to stop working at 2PM but I made $22 in the three hours we were open which is very good. Still not as good as an $8 an hour job. I’m assuming my crappy paycheck of $2.15 will be negligible after the price of the uniform and tax is deducted from it. Anyway enough of this chatter. Live long and prosper!

PS. In case you haven't figured it out yet, I do post more photos than those that come up under 'latest photos'. You can see all my photos by clicking on the album name, which in this case is 'Myrtle Beach'.

So it has become rather urgent that I find a new job having made the grand total of $2.83 in tips yesterday and having only four days of work this week. Kiss coffeehouse won’t have time to call me for interview this week but I’m going to go in there every day from Saturday onwards and nag them until they turn me down or give me a job. It’s $8 an hour in there so if I got a 40hour week in there I’d be sorted. I could make rent in two days, food in one and have two days of wages left over to cover transportation, internet and entertainment. That would be ideal. In the meantime I will try to live frugally.

On Sunday night at work I had a visit from a little squirrel. The restaurant in Barefoot Landing (miles away) is surrounded by trees so the squirrel come right up to the restaurant to poke around in the bins and eat leftover food off tables. They’re very cheeky and this little fella came right up to me and sniffed my hand and then disgusted at the absence of food in it hopped back onto the bin. They move kind of like skinny rabbits with long tails. They tend to hop around the place in a zigzag fashion.

You’ll never guess who I bumped into yesterday…well if you don’t know her, which most of you don’t, the significance of this will be lost on you. Mary Toher – she’s in my class – that’s significant cos there’s only three other people in my class and we’re all moving to Dublin next year to work so that’s a major coincidence. She’s living in Rainbow Court aswell! I’m telling you this place is too small. You just can’t get away from home – where do I have to go Peru?!!! There’s probably a crap Irish pub there too. The Irish pubs here have nothing whatsoever to do with Ireland but are merely gimmicks, exploiting Ireland’s stereotypical image as a fun-loving, raucous and alcohol-purchasing environment. Michael Collins’ Bar here even has a sticker on the window saying ‘All-American owned and Operated’ basically apologizing for resorting to an un-American gimmick in order to make money and purging itself of any vestige of authenticity an unwary patron might mistakenly attribute to the place.

Having now written three very random and unlinked paragraphs I will now continue on from yesterday’s theme of religion. Last night, I went to a mass/party thing – I’m not entirely sure how to define it. Imagine mass, meets summer camp meets religion class where the students are the teacher. Yeah I know that’s hard to imagine but to help imagine it the building in which it was held was appropriate to the event because the outside was like a church but the inside was like a parish hall or something with little moveable basketball nets and corridors and rooms and normal chairs instead of pews and no altar. The only way you’d know you were in a church when you got in there was by the big crucifix on the wall. Have I described the scene vividly enough? Anyway I went in the spirit of trying new things and it was a lot more interesting than other masses I’d been to. The preachers were actually laypeople and everyone there seemed to be in their twenties. They used powerpoint presentations and it kind of took the form of a religion class but unlike the ones we had in school, it was well-organised and there was a ‘lesson-plan’ as such. There was a theme (hardship) which was discussed and illustrated using powerpoint and unlike other masses – there was a focus on actually trying to take something away from it. All this, incidentally was preceded by a basketball shootout and a dance-off! Very surreal…but ultimately, unlike other masses, I’d been to, it was easy to listen and I didn’t nearly fall asleep and that can only be a good thing. I went with some people from Johnny Rockets who overheard me asking Ms Lucy for advice on finding a church with gospel music (she gave me two addresses). Afterwards we went to McDonalds. I realized that I hadn’t been to McDonalds since I came here and was shocked. I can happily report that the food is exactly the same as in Ireland but cheaper. Burger is 93c! Drink refills are free!!!!! I had one of those profound discussions (with the lads who gave me a lift to mass and McDonalds) that I love having about the role of religion in the lives of Americans. Apparently the bible belt runs all along the south but all belts have holes and apparently Myrtle Beach is a hole. No surprise there! It’s like the Amsterdam of America (not because it's a hole but because it's meant to be fairly 'liberal') although I think anyone who has been to Amsterdam would find this place run-down, softcore and uptight in comparison. The cops are way too strict here. There were six of them outside Rainbow Court last night persecuting some poor stoned guy. Meanwhile gunshots go off around here regularly and the cops show up ten minutes too late. Anyway enough whining for today. I hope to see Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley tonight. Kiss are way bigger over here - everyone’s at least heard of them and more people than you’d think are into them, not just Donal!;) I’ll try to get some photos and let you know how it goes tomorrow. Until then, look after youselves...yyyand each other.

Today after mass I went to sit in the park for a while. It was full of bums sleeping on the tables. I sat down some distance away from the main sleeping area. It was just after midday and the cops were doing the rounds, waking up bums and taking their names and getting them to move on. A little boy came over to me and offered me lunch. Naturally I accepted. His mother had loads of food and she was feeding all the bums. She gave me a roll and some fruit punch and left a bible on one of the benches. She thought I was a godless bum. I didn't dispute her assumption but ate the food and hung out with the bums for a few minutes. I can't see any of them actually reading that bible although they might use it to start a fire or something when winter comes. That's the first time I saw anything being given out free in this country.

So anyway I've been experimenting with various different religions since I've come here. I've been here three weeks and each Sunday I tried a different mass. First I went to the Methodist Church, then Baptist and today I was a Presbyterian. They all seem to be exactly the same except with different window dressing. Interestingly, both the Methodist and Presbyterian churches claim to believe in 'the holy Catholic church' which is strange. They're all about being good and loving Jesus and stuff so I don't really see what the difference is. The window dressings are bit different though. First of all, they're all totally different to mass at home. They all last an hour and none of them have kneely thingys. Instead they have nice soft cushions on all the pews so you can fall asleep easier. They're not really into the whole suffering thing which is cool. The best thing about going to mass here is that it's a nice, clean, cool, comfortable place with nice people who won't talk to you. It's a welcome relief from the appartment. With the exception of the pews, they all look more like hotel conference rooms rather than churches inside. In the Methodist church, they had four priests and three of them were women. They all wore white robes. It was the only one of the three churches that had communion but to get communion you had to go up to the top, kneel down at the altar and put money on the rail. None of the three churches really had proper altars although the Presbyterian one had a pulpit alright. The rest of them just stood behind nothing and talked out of their heads. Everything they said was kind of fluffy general love everybody stuff - nothing we hadn't heard before. However, the Baptist church had a semon about fathers cos it was fathers day and it was a bit sexist. It was all about men being the spiritual leader of the family and of a mariage and stuff. Isn't marriage meant to be an equal partnership these days? Apart from that, the Baptist church was by far the most progressive when it came to window dressing. Instead of an altar they had what appeared to be the set of some play. It was a hunting lodge of some kind with a fireplace with a moose's head over it and some skis and a snowboard in the corner...in June! Nobody seemed the least bit put out by this and no explanation was offered at any point (at least while I was conscious). All three masses really revolved around singing. There was more singing than talking. Twas more like a show than a mass. The Baptist church had a kind of a Karaoke thing where the words to the hymn came up on a powerpoint presentation on a big screen above the 'altar'. They also had a drum kit. The priests (there were three of them), wore business suits and one of them played guitar and sang a few songs about God and the like. Very surreal. All three churches had (crap) choirs who wore brightly coloured robes and stood in an area behind the altar. People still dress up properly to go to mass here. All the men wore suits and the women wore summer dresses - all the kids were done up aswell. I felt rather out of place on the first Sunday in my recently purchased Panthers NFL jersey. The Presbyterian priests (three of them) dressed like barristers and were about as boring as same. One of them also played guitar which was so weird. It sounded suspiciously like a U2 song with the words changed to something to the effect of 'Jesus is really cool'. They had a baptism in front of everybody. Then the priest paraded 'Parker Grace' (that's the kid's name in case you were wondering) around in front of the whole church like a trophy and guilted the parents into promising they'd make the kid read the Bible as soon as he/she/it could read. I'd prefer a good half-hour non-denominational mass in the Honan Chapel any day over any of these. I've started to run out of churches to go to. I've been to all the ones within walking distance. Apparently the place is crawling with Synagogues but I haven't seen any. I did see a Greek Orthodox church but it's miles away. There wasn't a single black person in any of the masses I've been to. I'm going to find a black church and go there. Apparently there's tons of them around but they're out a bit. Apparently there is plenty of gospel music in this area. I have been directed to 'Miss Lucy', one of our managers who is a regular attendee. I will ask her to give me the address of her church when I get a chance. Apparently their masses go on for about three hours but I'd go once to see what it was like.

Outside of the churches I have seen very little evidence of religion. There is a shop in Broadway on the Beach called Witness Wear which sells all kinds of trendy holy t-shirts and key rings and other religious merchandise but I haven't seen people going around saying how much they love Jesus or anything. I did see a girl wearing a tshirt with a biblical quote though come to think of it. According to a taxi-driver though this is the bible belt. That's a watertight source if ever I've hear one. I've gotta eat and go to work now so bye bye!

So I’ve decided to come home earlier. I will now go to New York on the 15^th of August and will be back in Ireland on the 21^st. Why? Well originally I made the stay as long as possible because I thought I would need all that time to make back the money I spent. Now however, it is clear that the longer I stay, the more money I spend. Furthermore, there isn’t that much to see in Myrtle Beach and I’ve seen most of what there is to see or I certainly will have by August 15th. Finally, everyone else seems to be leaving around then so by late August, the Irish will be like rats deserting a sinking ship. I’ll just have to take a job in Cork for a few weeks when I get home to make back some of the money.

However, I have now resolved to start looking for a better job. I’ll start with the Kiss Coffeehouse. And I’ll keep changing until I find something that’s capable of supporting me. That way even if I fail to find such a job, I will at least have had a more varied experience here and will avoid slipping into the monotony of repetition. Obviously, I will continue to work at Johnny Rockets for the foreseeable future until I have a definite job offer.

Well last night I had a very special experience. I got to see BB King live in the House of Blues. This for me was a once in a lifetime opportunity because it was his 80^th Birthday celebration tour. I isn’t going to be around that much longer so I consider myself blessed to have had the opportunity to see this legend while he’s still alive. When the curtain opened there were eight fat, bald, black, old, tuxedo-clad gentlemen on stage and they unleashed a powerful tirade of jazz with solos from everyone. Then, with much ado, they introduced the King himself. He lumbered slowly onto the stage. I must tell you, this man is extremely fat but it is hard to believe that he is eighty years old. He was wearing a gold jacket over his tuxedo and he did a little dance when he came on stage where he shook his enormous behind a bit. Then he was provided with a simple fold-up chair, a humble throne hardly fit for the King. On his left was his beautiful shiny black Les Paul and on his right was a stand with a white towel draped over it so that he could wipe his head when he got sweaty (which he did.) This snow capped mountain of a man sat down and picked up the guitar which looked like a toy resting on his giant belly. He spent a lot of time talking about what it meant to be old and to be a ‘bluesman’. Every word that came out of his mouth was received with enthusiastic cheering by the crowd. He could do no wrong. The first song was ‘People Always Ask Me Why I Sing the Blues’. He blew the roof off. He doesn’t use any pedals or effects. It’s just pure and simple blues. His guitar sounds like lightning striking sugar. His hand moves like an enormous black epileptic spider break-dancing when he bends a note. And when he sings….Well there’s no doubt about it but the man has still got it. When he sings, you’d swear he was a young man. His voice is so filled with vibrancy and excitement. At its most passionate, it is like hot honey erupting from a chocolate volcano and at its most tender, it slowly slides down the sides like lazy lava. Then he did a speeded up version of ‘When Love Comes to Town’. And so the night went on. He danced all the way through while sitting down. His shoulders would gyrate and his legs would fly here and there erratically. When playing solos, his face would scrunch up at times and at other times it would widen and his mouth would make a big circle. He was hilarious to watch. And the music itself was even more vibrant than it sounded on the CDs. It sent wave after wave of chills along the hairs on my arms and legs and made them stand up. It was all over too soon. He’s only allowed play an hour and a half at his age. We’re lucky that he’s able to play at all – at eighty years of age it’s just amazing. For some reason the older a rocker gets, the more he becomes a subject of ridicule whereas the older a bluesman gets, the more prestige he gains. This may have been the highlight of this holiday so far. It’s definitely one of those things that I’ll be proud to say I have done. I saw BB King, live in concert!!!  

The weather has kicked itself up another gear. Apparently now the real summer begins. We don’t have a thermometer so I don’t know what temperature it is but it’s after getting even hotter and now the humidity is starting to increase aswell. We had a couple of cockroaches in the apartment last week. Charming guests really. They’re unimaginably massive. I had never seen an insect this big till I came here. They’re really black and shiny and they run around like they’re trying to wait on three different tables simultaneously. I feel I can relate to them. Except girls don’t usually scream in terror and jump on to furniture when I scuttle by…usually. Apparently the female cockroaches can fly which is a very reassuring thought that I decided not to share with my female flatmates. Last week, some lad who lives near us had his flat broken into (well the intruder had a key to the place somehow – there were no signs of a forced entry) and his passport and tickets and everything were taken so now I’ve taken to keeping all such important documents in the fridge where no sane person would ever think to look. I’d keep my money there too except…o yeah…I don’t have any!!! I have photocopies of all the important documents and they are stored separately. Somehow I have managed to lose my return tickets (I think I may have left them in Dulles International airport at the security checkpoint and I only noticed yesterday) and it’s going to cost me 50euro to replace them if I can get through to an actual human being on the United Airlines hotline. Last night two gunshots were fired in the car park beside us while everyone was sitting out on the porch and the law and some ambulances came. It was very exciting. I don’t know if your man is dead or what’s the story. Yesterday, my flatmate had to go to the doctor cos she had an abcess on her leg and she had to wait four hours to be seen. Then she had to pay $205 for the consultation and take two days off work. You really don’t want to get sick in this country. Like Maximus said, if you break your leg here you might as well shoot yourself in the head because you won’t be able to work and will starve. This is why you need a spare couple of grand if you’re planning on coming here. Insurance is a must. It cost 189 euro and now they will refund that $205. If you had to go to hospital you just wouldn’t be allowed in the door without insurance. But the insurance doesn’t cover loss of earnings so you really really can’t afford to have an accident here. Despite having to pay tax here, you still have no rights and there’s no PRSI compensation or whatever. Bearing that in mind, I decided to jump off a 100foot tower yesterday. I did have a big elastic band attached to my feet which was a little reassuring but what wasn’t reassuring was the liability disclaimer I had to sign waiving all my rights to sue in the event of death or injury. Incidentally I just love signing things like that because I know they’re not worth the paper they’re written on. Accidents happen and if one does happen for no apparent reason you won’t be able to sue anyway but if it does happen due to the negligence of the bungee firm, (eg. Failure to check ropes properly etc.) then you are entitled to sue despite that piece of paper. Therefore it serves very little purpose except to trick people into believing that they have no legal recourse so that they won’t even bother consulting an attorney. It does inform you that what you are doing is risky though so that they will be able to defend themselves by arguing that you voluntarily chose to participate in an activity that you knew was dangerous. This will still be no defence if they actually behaved negligently. These were the thoughts that were clambering through my mind as I alighted the eight flights of steps to the top of the tower. It looked a lot higher up from the top and the wind was blowing in my eyes and the ground looked very far away. I had been messing and joking with some Americans on the way up. They thought my accent was so cool. They would jump up and down with excitement when I pronounced their names (Miles and Katelyn) in my Cork accent (as opposed to Maahles and Kaiylin or something). Easily entertained. But when I had the cord strapped to me all the messing stopped. I listened carefully to the instructions of the bungee dude and stared into space not making eye contact. I went into Tae Kwon-Do mode and actually found myself replying ‘yes sir’ to his commands. In hindsight I think this was because sometimes in Tae Kwon-Do you are asked to do scary things that you feel may be unwise or result in pain but you have complete trust in your instructor and know that he would not ask you to do something he didn’t think you were capable of doing safely and my subconscious recreated this scenario because I wanted to believe that although this felt like a really bad idea, I wouldn’t be doing it unless it was totally safe. So I just leaned forward and let go of the rails and that fall was one of the scariest two seconds of my life. When I felt the cord bounce, my stomach was filled with the most delicious sensation I have ever felt. I was so insanely relieved to be alive that I was filled with an indescribable euphoria that made me literally shout out with joy (this tower is right on the side of the street so passers by can watch). I had a big smile plastered on my face the whole way home and I couldn’t stop giggling. People walking by probably thought I was a psycho or something. On the way back some lad pointed at my chest and said “Hey dude, sweet t-shirt!” (I was wearing a Rancid [Radio, Radio, Radio] t-shirt I had purchased a few days previously.) I replied ‘hee hee hee, I know’. I hope I have explained how much fun this was. I’m scared of heights incidentally. Life is all about doing things that scare you (which is probably why I came all the way over here on my own) and when you subsequently overcome them it’s the greatest feeling in the world. I’ll leave you with that uplifting thought for the day and I hope it makes up for yesterday’s more gloomy sentiments.

Guess what – that $97 I made yesterday was only $72 because I counted it wrong and I owed the restaurant $25 of that. (I really hope you are all clicking furiously on the google ads on the side of the page to make me money.) It is clear now that these kind of tip jobs are incapable of supporting a person. I don’t know how people who drink are surviving. Everyone here is using up funds that they already have. Maximus (internet café owner) was right about one thing. This is a completely money orientated society. Everything here revolves around squeezing as much money out of every person on the planet as possible by any means necessary. The capitalist laws here facilitate that by giving workers no rights whatsoever. I could be fired tomorrow without any reason whatsoever other than my employer’s whim and I would have no case for unfair dismissal. The minimum wage here is not geared towards allowing people to survive but rather towards keeping employers’ labour costs as low as possible. For me this is a short three month lesson in how lucky we are to live in a country like Ireland. For many others, this is life – a life from which there is no escape. Myrtle Beach in particular is just a machine, built with the purpose of making money. I watched a documentary on the founding of Myrtle Beach in the late nineteenth century. It was founded by a New York business tycoon as a way to exploit local forestry and iron ore reserves. It was founded to make money. Now it has merely changed its source from natural resources to human resources – tourism. And foreign workers like us are the fuel for the money making machine. We are a cheap, renewable and easily replaceable fuel. Like Bukowski put it, we are ‘perishable’. The machine gets turned on in late May and turned off in late September. Then it is dormant until next year. It is like a bear that eats whatever it can get its paws on so it can survive through the winter hibernation. In winter, the place is deserted. We passed a closed down shopping mall in the bus one day. Imagine a shopping centre, twice the size of Wilton with a massive car park stretching out and the gates all padlocked. Empty car parks with weeds growing in them, rusting metal and rotting wooden signs advertising shops and restaurants, long shut down. It was extremely depressing to see. It would be too expensive to demolish it. As soon as we leave, the ‘Pavilion’ funfair in the centre of the town will be closed down forever and will serve as another tombstone to the economy. The bear is starving and so its appetite is becoming increasingly voracious. This is a superficial town of flashing lights and ringing bells with no substance behind it. Shops selling beach balls and sandals are decked up with neon as if they were a Las Vegas transplant. Why? All they do is sell cheap crap. It’s nothing to get excited about. And as soon as we leave in September the lights are turned off for eight months and if you could be bothered to ring Myrtle Beach there wouldn’t be anyone home.

The town is surrounded on all sides by golf courses, country clubs and shopping malls where rich people go. I’ve included a few photos of the outside of shopping malls and a food court in one of them but to get a real idea of what it’s like just imagine a slightly bigger Wilton with wider corridors and more shops, with carpet and marble on the floor instead of tiles and with lots of pretty teenagers lounging around in Starbucks and the like in sandals and baseball caps with shopping bags full of clothes. The only real difference is that this money driven machine has managed to convince its subjects that shopping is a hobby rather than a sometimes necessary series of transactions. Spending money in itself can be an enjoyable way to pass the time. And the youth have taken their parents SUVs and credit cards and wholeheartedly embraced this novel concept. I think its is this obsession with materialism that makes the place feel so hollow and souless and it is this 'money culture', if you'll excuse the oxymoron, that makes Muslims and other religious groups hate America. I'm just going to leave that controversial statement hanging for you all to think about and I'm going to allow myself to marinate in it until tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll talk to you then if I get time. Good luck.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAh! I’m so sick of this job already. Everything I said before still stands but the soundtrack in Johnny Rockets is getting so old now. You see I worked a 12hour shift yesterday from 10AM to 10PM so I’m exhausted and sick of those songs going around in my head. Furthermore, I’m getting sent out to this other Jrockets restaurant miles away half the time and you make no money in that one and the kitchen staff and managers there are particularly ignorant and unhelpful. The vast majority of the waiters are absolutely lovely people who are in exactly the same situation as me but the kitchen staff (understandably) hate their jobs and resent us waiters stealing all the limelight and tips and so either ignore or snap at us. Most of the managers (with a few notable exceptions) have a superiority complex. It’s Americans like these who give the rest of them a bad name for being rude and ignorant. Yet almost every customer I’ve had and every American waiter I work with are very polite. Working in the kitchen is very stressful though. And hazardous too. I don’t know how I haven’t had an accident yet. The tiles behind the counter and in the kitchen are like a skating rink and you can’t walk on them - you have to actually slide as if you were skating. Sometimes while carrying heavy trays with ten drinks in pint glasses on them. I was shocked at the complete apathy of the management to the compo culture they live in. As a law student obviously I’m a bit paranoid about these kind of things and see potential lawsuits everywhere I look but when I noticed a slippy patch of tiling in the public area, I asked where the ‘caution wet floor’ signs were kept, thinking that it was very strange we hadn’t been drilled on the correct procedure for monitoring and clearing up spills. They looked at me like I was asking for a bicycle with my fries and said they didn’t have any. Every other job I’ve been in, we were given little books to read about how not to get out employers sued and were given regular chats on the same topic. In the colaisti samhraidh they were always on edge, looking out for child abuse lawsuit possibilities. It’s amazing to me, how in this day and age after the amount of people who successfully sue every day for falling on wet floors, that this place has done nothing to cover its ass. It’s only a matter of time before there’s a lawsuit here and frankly, if you’re going to be this stupid about it, then you deserve a lawsuit. If I was a manager here, I would be a safety psycho and there would be a very different regime in force. But I’m not so all I can do is sit back and watch this car crash in slow motion.

In my 12hours yesterday I made $97 in tips which sucks. I should make that much in one shift to break even. I made $64 in the morning which was nearly OK but only $33 at night out in the smaller restaurant which sucks. I’m out there again now in two hours. I wasn’t meant to be working at all yesterday but I needed the money so offered to take over a girl’s shift because she was wrecked and wanted a day off. I got the times wrong though so showed up in the morning instead of the evening so I had to do the morning because I happened to be there and then the evening as well to cover for her!!! I found a really cynical, bitter Bukowski poem about crap jobs which I will now share with you.

begging

like most of you, I’ve had so many jobs that

I feel as if I were gutted and my insides

thrown to the winds.

I’ve met some good people along the

way and also the

other kind.

Yet when I think of all those

I have worked with-

even though decades have passed-

Karl

comes to mind

first.

I remember Karl: our jobs required we

both wear aprons

tied from behind and around

the neck with string.

I was Karl’s underling.

"We got an easy job," he

told me.

Each day as one by one our superiors arrived

Karl would make a slight bend at the waist,

smile, and with a nod of the head

greet each: "good morning Dr. Stein,"

or, "good morning Mr. Day" or

Mrs. Knight or if the lady was unattached

"good morning, Lilly" or Betty or Fran.

I never

spoke.

Karl seemed concerned at this and

one day he took me aside: "hey,

where the fuck else you going to get a

two hour lunch like we

do?"

"Nowhere, I guess..."

"Well, o.k., look, for guys like you and me,

this is as good as it can get, this is all

there is."

I waited.

"So look, it’s hard to suck up to them at first, it

didn’t come easy for me

but after a while I realized that it

didn’t matter.

I just grew a shell.

Now I’ve got my shell, got

it?"

I looked at him and sure enough he did look like he had

a shell, there was a mask-like look to his

face and the eyes were null, void and

undisturbed; I was looking at a weathered and

beaten conch.

Some weeks went by.

Nothing changed: Karl bowed and scraped and smiled

undaunted, perfect in his

role.

That we were perishable, perhaps didn’t occur to

him

or

that greater gods might be

watching.

I did my

work.

Then, one day, Karl took me

aside again.

"Listen, Dr. Morely spoke to me

about you."

"Yes?"

"He asked me what was wrong with

you."

"What did you tell

him?"

"I told him that you were

young."

"Thanks."

Upon recieving my next check, I

quit

but

still

had to

eventually settle for another similar

job

and

viewing the

new Karls

I finally forgave them all

but not myself:

being perishable sometimes make a

man

strange

almost

unemployable

most

obnoxious-

no servant of

free

enterprise.

Rather stark isn’t it? You can see why I relate to it. I love it. I’m off tomorrow and the day after unless something comes up and I’ve got BB King on Friday night so hopefully I can write again tomorrow or the day after. Until then...take it easy...

I’m very tired so please excuse me if this entry rambles. You see I’ve been working very hard for the past few days. I worked Saturday, Sunday and Monday and by the time most of you read this I will probably have worked Tuesday and maybe even Wednesday too. The worst part is that I didn’t get paid for Sat and Sun because I was being trained. This is exactly the same as normal work except that you’re not very good at it yet and have to have a babysitter to watch you. My babysitter gave me a $3 pity tip on Sunday and that was it for the weekend. Today was my first paid work day and I made a rather pitiful $44.40 for the day. The shifts are meant to be 10AM-4PM and 4PM to midnight and I had the early shift today but had to stay on till 5:30. I would have been screwed were it not for two very nice $10 tips. It’s not like it was a slow day either. I was going going going all day. They started me off with one table and then gave me a second one and I was running between them all day. My actual wages of $2.15 an hour can just be ignored because they will almost all be taken in taxes on my tips all of which are declared. They have a foolproof system.

But I like the job all the same. Despite being exhausted every day/morning (depending on which shift I had) and despite the day being quite long and despite being on your feet all day long and not getting to eat anything for 8 hours straight it’s actually a nice place to work. No honestly. I’m actually being serious. Almost everyone who works there is really nice and I get on well with everyone. You’ve got a delicious mix of nationalities and races here. Predictably there’s a fair few Irish. But refreshingly, there’s also a lot of black and white Americans some of whom are local and many of whom are out of state students trying to make some money to pay for next year’s college. We also have two Mexicans, one Columbian (dead sound), one Brazilian (she’s the one dancing in the photos), one Bulgarian, two Russians (this town is crammed with Russians so I’m surprised there aren’t more) and one of the managers is Romanian. This is great because I didn’t pay all this money and travel all this way just to be surrounded by a crowd of stuttering gobshites I would have crossed the road to avoid at home. Travel is about exchanging ideas with people who have vastly different influences to yourself due to their native environment so the Johnny Rockets melting pot is really conducive to that because work is one of the few environments in which one has the opportunity to get to know the locals. The Mexican guy speaks very little English so he works in the kitchen yet we’re somehow able to communicate perfectly. My knowledge of Spanish extends only to catchphrases used by Speedy Gonzales and when I shared this fact with the Mexican dude he thought that was very funny. He was also amused by me wanting to know how to say ‘I want to ride a little pony’ in Spanish. Some people here have some very amusing names. Otis calls himself Da Big O. There’s another woman called Cookie, another guy nicknamed Fatso and best of all, a girl who’s actual name is actually Yum Yum. I’m dead serious. And yet they think my name is weird! Eoin. It isn’t that hard like. Anna, the Russian girl claims it’s a Russian name. I just raise my skeptical eyebrow and smile. You may wonder, where we get all this time to chat when we’re busy running around. Well if you get put on the patio, that’s very quiet and you might only have a few people all day which means you’ll be broke for that day but it also means you’ll get to relax and chat a bit. I’ve had a chance to discuss the American education system and other interesting topics with some of my co-workers. They’re all really friendly and have names like Krista and Miranda. I find even the Irish are more friendly to each other here. It’s infectious. You kinda have to be friendly here to make money. But even the customers on average seem quite nice. I haven’t really encountered many obnoxious customers. And they all tip. It’s not just the people that make this a nice place to work. The music policy is like a dream come true for me. It’s all fifties stuff with a bit of 70s disco thrown in for entertainment value. You can’t help but enjoy yourself when you’re doing stupid goofy dances for no apparent reason. I know the soundtrack is bound to get old after a while but for now, songs like RESPECT and Splish Splash I was taking a Bath help to keep me perky through most of the day. The customers really love it when we dance for them. We usually get a big clap. A few adventurous children even join in ocassionally. And then the song ends and we all go back to work like nothing happened at all. When someone walks in you the door you have to do what is called the Johnny Rockets echo which is essentially a mexican wave welcome. One person says "Hey! Welcome to Johnny Rockets!" and then whoever else is in the vicinty repeats it so that the customer is inundated with what is a fair attempt at a Cead Mile Failte. It’s hard not to enjoy that and interacting with different customers every day helps keep it fresh. This is why, even though the work is hard, I’m usually left with an exhausted sense of satisfaction afterwords. Contact with the public is what I lacked in every other job I had. In other jobs I felt guilty when I wasn’t doing anything even if there wasn’t anything to do and had to find somewhere to hide so I wouldn’t be seen doing nothing. Here, there’s nearly always work to be done and it feels much better to actually be busy. Then when there isn’t something to do I don’t feel so guilty and can relax comfortably. This is a wonderful discovery to me. I always thought I hated work. It turns out I just dislike boring repetitive work or a lack of actual useful work. This job will probably get repetitive after a while but the sporadic dancing helps keep it real.

Interestingly, my co-workers held the opposite view to the conventional one I had heard in Ireland - the Americans in the north are rude and aloof and the ones in the south are friendly and outgoing. They didn’t believe me when I offered my anecdotal experience of Washington DC to refute their claims so I guess they may have a point and I will leave the matter open for debate until the end of my stay in New York.

Ooh and guess what? You know what I’d heard about people in fast food being stupid? Sooooo not true!!! In fact for the first two days I thought they were geniuses because the computer system was so complicated looking at first. Although some of them hadn’t heard of Columbia (much to the Columbian guy’s disgust) those girls were Irish!!! Shame on them. How could you miss Columbia, you can’t look at a map of South America without noticing it - it’s pretty big! Plus that whole thing in the news about the IRA hanging out there.

Anyway, that’s all I have the energy for today. I have to go home and go to sleep. Luckily I have the late shift tomorrow so I can have a lie in tomorrow and then stuff myself with food for two hours before I go to work so that I won’t get hungry for the first four hours. I’ll write back whenever I get the chance - probably two or three days.

PS - Amn’t I so purty in my lovely apron. Yes I thought you’d agree! ;)

Good afternoon gentlefolk. I hope I find you well this fine June day. As for me I’m rather jolly chuffed old boy as I just got my results back and am absolutely ecstatic to report that I have obtained first class honours in my exams this year. While second year exams are of minimal practical significance (unless of course you fail them), it is very nice all the same to do well in them. I think I shall treat myself to an entire tub of Ben and Jerry’s today. Today is the day when I must report for my Johnny Rockets orientation. Presumably here, I will be taught to master American charm and the correct use of words such as y’all. I imagine Irish idiosyncrasies such as ‘chips and batter burgers’ will be quickly beat out of me until I am a beaming, insanely happy puppet who says ‘how y’all doin today?’ when you pull his string. You know how they answer the phone there? ‘Hey there! We’re having a great day at Johnny Rockets. My name is Kirsten. How can I help you today?’ I’m going to find it difficult to adapt to being called Kirsten. We have to learn the Johnny Rockets dance which apparently we all perform on tables on the hour every hour for no apparent reason. I just can’t wait to be part of the Johnny Rockets team!! How’s my fake enthusiasm? I’ve been working real hard on it so that I can be the best Johnny Rockets employee I can be!

Last night who did I bump into but the Sarah and Katie crew from Colaiste Choilm! There’s about half a dozen of em livin here in Rainbow Court the whole time and they never said a bit! It is insane how local this place is. Anyway they got involved in a big food fight with some D4 Trinity Rugger Boys and I’d like to say they kicked their ass cos they’re all so rich and stuck up with their infuriating accents. But it was probably fairly even. In typical Irish style, I sat on the fence and allowed the girls’ planes to land on my porch and provided moral support while watching the war from a safe distance. And despite my contempt for our shared enemy, I definitely did the right thing because not only did I not get my clothes all covered in dairy and skincare products but when the cops pulled in I was safely out of the picture while the combatants were justly forced to clean up the mess they had created. I very much enjoyed all the drama.

You know when I first got here I was actually depressed by the speed at which the cars travelled. They snail along and it’s infuriating even as a pedestrian, particularly after my experiences on the I-95 in DC. I reach the curb and wait for a car to pass by but they grind to a halt and wave me across. I wave them on but they insist and confusingly, they don’t even get annoyed by my reluctance to cross and let them be on their way. It was depressing because it made my think that the reason for this sloth was a lack of urgency in living - like that they weren’t in any rush cos there was nowhere to go and nothing to do after me coming all the way over here to have a bit of craic! Then I thought maybe they just feel too lethargic to step on the gas because it’s so damn hot. That thought was equally depressing. Turns out that there’s a 25mph speed limit on some streets so it’s all good. Far from there being nothing to do, I have done tons of fun stuff since I got here and have not had to resort to lounging around the pool. There’s a theme park on either side of me and I have thus far only find time to go to one of them and I’ve been on three rollercoasters. There are three waterparks in this city and I’ve only been to one of them. It was just tons of slides and no pool. Two of the slides are ‘speed slides’ which just means that it’s a near vertical drop with water flowing down it so that you reach the bottom with a super-wedgie. The waterpark was right on the beach so I went for a jog on the beach for a bit and came to a hut that contained people who organise parasailing. There was a group of people gathered outside and I approached curiously, just in time to hear an operator say to a group of ‘just graduated’ kids ‘...if you had one more person I could give it to you for $40'. Not even 100% sure what exactly I was volunteering for, I stuck my hand up and said ‘I’ll do it.’ $40 and a hastily-scribbled liability waiver signature later, I was putting on a life jacket and exchanging pleasantries with these young Americans. Apparently, parasailing is when you are attached to a parachute which is attached to a boat and dragged around the sky by it for a quarter of an hour. We got brought out to the speedboat via a banana boat pulled by jet-ski. That rocked. A banana boat is an inflatable sausage that you straddle. Being on the speedboat really gave you a chance to see how big the city was. It’s just high rise beachfront hotels stretching out into infinity. It’s probably actually smaller than Cork but all rolled out into a skinny little string and shoved up against a beach. Imagine Ballybunion meets Grand Theft Auto Vice City and you’ve got this place in a nutshell. When we finally got up in the air (they put you up two at a time) I sparked up a conversation with Ryan, the other young gentleman floating beside me because it was extremely quiet up there. He surprised me by saying, ‘so how long have you lived in Oklahoma?’ When I explained that I was Irish (‘No way dude, you’re Aahrish? That’s so cool man. If I was Aahrish, I’d use that all the time to get like free beer and stuff.’) I asked how he hadn’t noticed my accent. It turns out that nobody automatically knows I’m Irish like we’d be able to pick out Americans at home. I was very surprised that my ruddy-cheeked countenance didn’t give it away. And when they hear a different accent they just think you’re from out of state somewhere. I had to Americanise the accent a bit because at first they just couldn’t understand the lilting tones of my native Cork. I could have passed for a southerner if I wanted cos I can do the accent perfectly when I want to but I thought it would be like lying or betraying my country so I just modified enough to be easily comprehensible. During our parasailing trip I discovered that Ryan was an avid golfer and would love to visit Ireland to check out our courses. He asked how Irish people viewed America and was unsurprised to discover that they weren’t exactly held in high regard because of their aggressive foreign policy and the whole Iraq thing. He explained that Americans didn’t define themselves by their government’s foreign policy and that most Americans were completely apathetic towards it. Of course apathy towards the rest of the world is another reason why Americans are unpopular in the rest of the world. I remarked that I was surprised that there were so many men here with rippling physiques and lithe young fillies and that this completely disproved the American obese stereotype. I was surprised to hear him reply that there was a lot of pressure on young men like himself not only to be slim but to work out regularly in the gym and acquire the ideal masculine body. I think in Ireland, we don’t really have that same pressure that women have to look flawless as long as we’re not like Jabba the Hut. Does this a symptom of American superficiality or equality. I don’t know...is it a good thing or a bad thing...Ryan obviously felt that it made his life far less enjoyable but he probably wouldn’t enjoy being obese either.

I enjoy opportunities to converse with Americans like this because we spend so much time with other Irish people over here. Apart from three young Americans who joined our gathering for a while last night (see photos of James, Brian and Kirsten) I haven’t really had that much interaction with the natives. Some of the best conversations I’ve had have been with taxi drivers. I’ve discussed topics as diverse as tax reform, conservatism vs liberalism, war, the IRA, crime and gun control with various taxi drivers and while I strongly disagreed with some of their views, they were (for the most part) able to articulate them eloquently and I have yet to meet the stereotypical ‘stupid American’. Another myth disproved? I’ll reserve judgement on this for a while. Maximus, (internet café owner) has lived here for three years and has visited 48 states and maintains that most Americans are stupid, particularly black Americans as they are subjected to an inferior education. Apparently, most Americans working in fast food are stupid. It is remarkable then that I have yet to meet one. There are stupid people in every country. I’ve met tons of them in Ireland and none here yet. I’ll wait and see. So far, no evidence to support Maximus’ contention except that yesterday when I went to Ripley’s museum. There was a elementary school tour being brought in there and every single child and teacher was black. That struck me as strange. When there are two races living in such close proximity to each other how do you draw such an artificial line as to have a black school and a white school (obviously they don’t call em that). As long as this kind of blatant self-imposed apartheid continues in America, it will always be far to easy to point the finger of blame at the black man as the root of all crime. If they had the same education as white children, maybe we would start seeing some changes in the prison racial demographics. I don’t know whether the black school is actually inferior to the white school - it seems hard to believe that it would receive less funding anyway. Nevertheless, separating children on the basis of their skin colour serves no purpose except to create artificial barriers in American society. I haven’t been here long enough to establish a comprehensive conclusion on this matter but I will review it when I’ve spoken to more Americans and heard their opinions.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll get back to y’all tomorrow with news of how my job orientation was. Ciao!

Yo sup? No analysis of a society would be complete without a review of its TV scheduling. We have around 30channels. One of them is just a picture of a guy holding a golf club and the name of some golf shop written under it the whole time. When you flick through all the channels about half of them will be on ads. They have way more ads here. They’ll throw them in randomly everywhere. They’ll start a half hour programme and 2minutes into it they’ll play five minutes of ads. Halfway through they’ll play more and then when it’s nearly over they’ll play more. Then when they come back they just show the credits from that programme and show more ads before the next programme. Sometimes they don’t even bother showing the credits or else show ads while the credits run in twinchy writing at the bottom of the screen. Most of the ads are a lot funnier than the ones at home though. Then again a lot of them are unbelievably cheesy and American. One channel is just constant advertising – kinda stupid – who’s gonna watch that like? With thirty channels, you never know whats on so you spend most of the time flicking through them all too quickly to actually see what’s on. They’re way ahead of us with the whole retro thing. We think we’re so throwback with the A-Team on RTE2. They show great shows we all forgot about here like Saved By the Bell, Home Improvements and The Cosby Show. They’re still as funny as they were ten to fifteen years ago, partially because of the hairstyles. Naturally they also show old episodes of Friends and Seinfeld. And they’re way more progressive here with advanced cartoons such as The Simpsons, Southpark, King of the Hill and Family Guy. They also have this really weird cartonn about talking fast food that have special powers. Some of you may have heard of it on the internet. The main characters are a milkshake, box of fries and what appears to be some kind of really emotional meatball. You have to be in the mood for it. Verdict – we’re better off in four channel land – you could rot away indefinitely in front of 30 channels and actually not enjoy it. You just hate the TV for putting on ads as soon as you find something good.

So anyway I should probably briefly tell you about my flatmates. They’re all grand. There’s Brenda, Ciara, Jen and Leanne. The latter two have an unbearably mid musical taste though. They keep playing shitty rap and hip hop and stuff. He have established a mid-ground though with predictable bands such as Green Day, U2, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Counting Crows, Oasis and Coldplay to a certain extent. It’s frustrating though cos you know they like them for all the wrong reasons – mainly because the radio tells them to.

Speaking of music there’s a lot to talk about here. You notice a lot of musical references here that you kinda took for granted before – like I saw a sign for Nat King Cole’s Route 66 and there were flood warnings in Springsteen’s Darlington County. There certainly isn’t much punk rock down here – it’s all country and crap. However, my cousin Kate played me this James Taylor song called Carolina in my Mind when I got here and decided it would be my theme song for the summer. At first I was put off by the unashamed cheesiness of it but then she played it a second time and I didn’t mind it. Then they played it on the radio down here and I fell in love with it. Strange. It’s a really kinda sad, depressing song that’s beautiful at the same time. But it’s just boring the first time you hear it and it is essentially a country song so it’s not like Tom Waits or anything. Here are the lyrics if you happen to care:

Guess what? BB King is playing here in the House of Blues on Friday week and I got a ticket!!! I better not be working - it was $50 which isn’t bad at all. Also appearing in the House of Blues while I’m here are Ted Nugent and Bowling for Soup. I’ll hopefully go see the former anyway. Also Kiss are making an appearance!!! They’re opening a ‘Kiss Café’ in two weeks near where I’ll be working and a they’ll be cutting ribbons and stuff and there will be a Kiss tribute band playing so I really hope I can get off work for that. I have no idea what my working hours are yet cos I don’t start till Saturday. So I have lot’s of cool music to look forward to. Also on the music topic, the night before last I went to ‘Tha Bar’ which is the local Irish pub and it was Kareoke night. It was mostly atrocious mid fare apart from the odd rendition of Mettalica’s Enter Snadman, that song NOFX covered - I Want You to Want Me and an entertaining Incubus song. There was even a little mosh pit at around 3AM. Pubs don’t close here till 8AM!!! I put up some photos of it.

And guess where I was yesterday? A firing range! O yes siree bob and it kicked ass. I’m a natural by the way, check out the target - I took a photo of it. That was from 25yards so it’s not bad at all for the first time I ever fired a gun. The lads who worked there were really nice and really into guns. They were eager to share their enthusiasm for their hobby with everyone who came in and boasted of all the guns one could legally acquire hassle-free and bemoaned how difficult it was to get automatic weapons. Technically they’re illegal to the ordinary public but there are loopholes. You can be registered as an automatic weapons collector but it takes 3months cos the FBI has to do a background check. They were very sympathetic towards my plight - ie the illegality of all the coolest guns in Ireland. They all seemed really sensible and not fanaticy and they took safety very seriously. However, given how easy it obviously is to buy practically any gun you want including sniper rifles and silencers, it’s a miracle more people aren’t killed everyday by crazy people with guns. I know there are a lot but the US are lucky there aren’t more cos any idiot can buy a gun. I’m mad about guns and I think I should be allowed have one but not everyone should.

Okay I think that’s enough for today. I still have to cover religion, shopping (arguably the same thing over here!!!) and other cool stuff I have done since I got here. Peace out!