weeks four and five, a review

dear friends,

the weeks are blending together, literally. since my last update i have been to london, my house was robbed, and i have done considerably more work than usual. i don't have so many london pictures, when with friends who are taking lots of the photos i tend to forget. when katie sends them i will share for those of you not on the f'book. it was great being back in london. the maple leaf is a fun spot and i don't regret missing small man roberts performance. i didn't do anything particularly noteable other than the canada day festivities, prefering to just wander around. although, i did go to the tate modern which is my favourite museum. oh, and i decided i am too old to stay at hostels. the generator was just a little too full of the 18 year old contiki set. as colleen put it-- the young gentlemen in towels make me feel like a cougar.

while in london, i got a text from my housemate sara letting me know we'd been robbed. for a few terrifying minutes i worried that my blackberry and laptop were gone. fortunately, my cute laptop purse must have fooled them and sara found my ordinator safe and sound in the second pocket. my housemates all lost their digital cameras and one lost her laptop. we think someone hopped the fence into the backgarden and came in through the french doors. gritty. another thing i am too old for is these random multi-person households. i came home last week to find our toilet seat on the floor. that day i invented the fun game- frat house or haunted house?

and since we have been talking about things that make me old, i should say i have become quite the fan of reading non-school related books and of daily newspaper reading. thus far, i have read ryanland which although is a tad laddish is a good read for anyone who has ever flown ryanair. i also read my first non-shortstory piece of fiction in three years and i am not even ashamed to say it was chic-lit. clearly all the magazines i buy at spar because they come up as grocery and therefore can be expensed are getting to me. that and i have taken to going to the big mall quite often. there is a marks and spencer and tesco inside for groceries and it means a bus ride of 15 minutes and then hopping on the luas and then a little longer walk. i still hate commuting and would like to never be on a bus again.

that said, i will be forgoing a repeat of last sunday's enjoyable hollyoak's/enagaged and underage/super sweet 16/the chase while eating mashed potatoes from m and s marathon by going on an organized "paddywagon" tour of the cliffs of mohr.

and now it's off to the mall,
cam

week three in review

dear friends,

the third week went by much faster than the first two and it feels like the end of the fourth week already, which means i will be home in just over a month. wacko. especially given that i am here to complete a project and i have been doing very little to achieve that aim. [ i know, blogging is surely helping in that regard].

have checked out a few more of dublin's finer restos with colleen (and now katie who is visiting) and got a hair cut at the massive american style dundrum shopping centre which i pass on my to and from work. but, by far the biggest adventure was the trip to aberythswyth to see montreal-era friend carla.

who needs a large carbon footprint and an unnecessary flight when there is a cheap and convenient ferry. aber was gonna be a multiple-transfers type destination anyway about it so ferry seemed logical. and on the way there it was brilliant, three hours on the ferry reading the guardian and sipping tea, a short train ride to bangor, and then an interesting bus ride from bangor to aber. picture a city bus that drives half way across the country for 5 quid. four hours on that bus and i was in aber. there were bday parties, an introduction to the baby guiness (baileys and tia maria), academic-town music festivals [confession: i think i secretly want to be the volvo marxist academic who brings their kids to these type of things, see also wolfe island music festival], hiking the devil's bridge [pics on the facebook], seeing the beautiful aber coast, hanging out with the wardens in the flat, discovering the fabulous tv show "the chase" [a drama/soap set in a vetrenarian's office].

and then it was time to go home. i had gotten an email that said that my 5pm fast-ferry had been cancelled due to expected bad weather but that i had been moved to the 2pm cruise-ferry that can travel in worse conditions. the only way for me to arrive on time was to take the 7 am train from aber to shrewsberry and then go from shrewsberry to holyhead [the port]. well, a delay meant i missed the shrewsberry connection so i needed to go to crewe. at crewe i got on the train and all appeared to be fine. but then flooding had blocked the line so our whole train had to disembark at barrington quay and get on another train. this is when word started to spread that all ferries had been cancelled. i had been warned by friends that this happens and holyhead has like 2 b and bs so there is no place to stay. i started looking at the departures board and considered going to manchester or liverpool which were short train rides away but the weather was nasty and i decided i should instead try to get as close to holyhead as possible. since the rail was blocked the normal course of action was to charter a coach... but all had been sent to glastonbury to deal with overflow there. after about an hour of limbo the line cleared and i was instructed to take the train to chester where i could connect to holyhead. that i did, arriving around 4pm to discover that indeed my ferry had been cancelled and that i was not getting out of there until 2am. but, things are what you make of them, so i wandered into town and bought raspberries at the grocery store and a stack of magazines from woolworths [ihave never longed for a book so much in my life but since this was stupid o'clock in terms of numbers of hours on the road, i had run out of reading material], had dinner at a pub and headed back to the station cafe for the night ahead. i kissed the ground in dublin around 6 am the next morning after broken sleep that featured walking up to an arcade game repeating "you're going to hell" over and over [ferry tip: pick a couch to sleep on far away from the arcade]. shared a taxi with a fellow canadian and spent the day watching telly.

here are some words i plan to make use of when i get back to n'america: cuppa, growler, tosser, bingo wings

back to recoding variables.
cam

the week two review (revue?)

dear friends,

well, it has been another whirlwind week. i can't believe i am 1/4th of my way through my time here. since last week i have had many adventures. first, i learned that shows are actually called gigs here, this has made my internet searches for things to do/see much more productive.

last thursday i said good-bye to roomate caitlin who has returned to canadia. we did so in style at a local wine bar with some of her canadian friends, all of whom happen to be in med-school here. there was one american, but he was so nice he may as well have been from the homeland. on friday had another great spend-the-gni-euro dinner with colleen. this was a good end to a day where i had the horrible experience of trying to recover from a hangover with some aspirin-like product that i did not know until post-purchase needed to be disolved in water and tasted terrible. friday was also the day that i got powered up, and started actually working on my project thanks to the nice folks at dolphin's barn electrical who hooked me up with a working adaptor.

on saturday i did bloomsday in style by having a glass of burgandy and a gorgonzola cheese sandwich at davy byrnes. as you do. and then i found my new favourite spot, a record store called road records. i also purchased the following. orla kiley may be known around the world, but she got her start in dublin so i feel it is an appropriate irish souvenier.

on sunday, we headed out to howth a beautiful little seaside village/suburb of dublin that is at the end of the dart. there was a fabulous farmer's market, a sketchy ferry ride and lots of good times had.

monday i learned what hurling was from simon, the irish boyfriend of my norweigan roomate. on tuesday i helped said norwegian with her survey-- a sociologists work is never done. also of note on tuesday was my irish baptism wherein i got caught in a torrential downpour.

and there you have it, apparently, adventures abroad just like history-- is the story of one damned thing after another.

will try and spice it up for you (yes, all three of you) next time.

to the bus!

cam

week one, in review

dear friends,

well, i have been here just over one week and i realize if i don't start to document some of my day-to-day life i am liable to forget it. i did not actually take the above picture, but i did learn that unruly children are often referred to as fanta-filled-fuckers [etymology: children at pubs being served fanta]. i will try to post actual photos in future, but my dilemma is that my wristlet [my prefered purse] will fit either my moleskin guidebook or my camera but not both. for the timebeing i feel i must continue to make use of the guidebook. there is no use of my taking pictures if i am going to fall in the liffey and never make it back to my cubicle at ucd to post them.

perhaps appropriately, given that's what i am getting paid for, i have been spending the majority of my monday-friday at work. this is an adventure that begins when i catch the bus in dolphin's barn [etymology unknown]. i have grand plans to document my daily journey, so stay tuned for that. it takes well over an hour each way, and so most nights i end up making dinner, eating too many jaffa cakes, chatting with my housemates, and crashing. i am sorry that i only have one good pub story [below]. after thinking about inequality all day, it is nice to come home to the assorted bunch i live with and our beautiful courtyard/garden. caitlin is a friend from undergrad who i am really just getting to know. we've bonded over different friends done-wrong by the same boys, and caught each other up on various members of our class that we have respectively stayed in touch with. sara is an adorable gothy gal from norway who inspead of the love of black and hatred of rom-coms also has an affinity for puppies and flowers. david is doing a phd in molecular bio and richard is an architect from the west of ireland.

my other friend in dublin also went to queen's, but now she is an conservator at the irish museum. apparently this involves vacuuming a lot of zebras and i am looking forward to my behind the scenes tour of the museum of stuffed things that hasn't been changed or improved since the 1800s. colleen and i went out last thursday for an astonishingly delicious dinner at this place and then for a pint at a pub close to trinity. it was there that we encountered two irish dudes in a heated debate about what spooning was. dude #1 did not know, and dude #2 was trying to educate him using a diagram (fortunately of spoons) on the back of a receipt. eventually dude #1 learned the word (he swore he knew about the phenomenon) and dude #2 seemed relieved and was a fan of high-fives. in the end, there was no question that these two would be left to spoon each other.

on the way to dinner, we past a memorable place from my last visit to ireland a set of stone steps in temple bar, where i made friends with a nice irish boy and a friend who shall not be named made better friends with someonelse in the ally. that incident which i will tell you about if you ask [even though said friend would kill me] involved me saying "listen, i don't care if you are regretting playing the skin flute in the streets of ireland, i am tired of this, i need alone time", abandoning those i came on the trip with, making new friends and seeing U2 perform for free. i have not been afraid to do my own thing ever since. although, walking past i realized a lot has happened in the 7 years since i have been here.

finally, i had lunch today with a fellow ra of the sfips (our book, yes i say our even though my name won't be on the cover has been optioned by simon and schuster and is projected to sell better than the book that made sfips a public intellectual). this completed my meeting up with all 3 people i know here on the emerald isle. he introduced me to the wife of this guy, although i am irish politics retarded so i had to google him when i got back. hilariously, the sfips also mentioned the tea-shock [i am now into phonetic spelling] is a good buddy, so perhaps i will get to have jaffa cakes with him sometime. it is a strange life i live.

i did manage to spend most of the weekend in dublin-proper enjoying the shops on grafton street (especially marks and spencer, yes i am an old lady) and looking for some antique jewlery for a friend of a friend. expect next week's newsletter to be filled with such exciting topics as "bloomsday", "how to live it up on your elite university's dime", "old people who make the sign of the cross while passing churches on their bicycles" and "yep, i still miss having water pressure"

if you are taking the time to read this, it probably means i miss you.
cam

programming announcement

dear friends,

just a quick note to say that i have arrived safely in dublin and between (or more likely during)working hours i suspect i will be blogging about my adventures.

holla if you want a postcard. send to my princeton email addy. and, i really like mail so if you want to send me some i will give you my address. oh, and i adore drunken text messages, so if you want my mobile number you can have that too.

ok, off to find the ucd student's union to buy a bus pass. i live close to the action but FAR from work.

cam

girl visiting new york city

dear friends,

met up with ms. hannah friday evening to catch ciaran flynn's set at piano's in preparation for upcoming dublin summer. check out a few songs here or here.

afterwards we concluded our evening of irish music in a logical manner with a feast of pototoes from the jewish deli around the corner.





i promise i don't wear that necklace everyday, even though photos posted online suggest otherwise.

cam

you can buy everything you need and lots you don't online

dear friends,

i have been particularly busy of late. and when i get too busy to spend my $ having actual out and about fun, i buy things on the internets. here are some things i have recently purchased:

1) moleskin dublin city guide. 58 days until i am there!

2) via an etsy seller, this is my most favourite thing in the world right now.


3) the doll not the child. and not for me. for hope, who is very into dora the explorer. swiper no swiping!


4) for easter, under cute cardigan... because yellow is awesome
5) for work, aka the war against the pile of reading

6) because i have a deep and abiding love of dots that will not disappear with trend. i am now on the hunt for a super hot vintage red slip to wear underneath this




i also bought a vacuum. true story.

cam