January 31, 2002
10:22 PM dublin time
exploring the yarra valley - healesville animal sanctuary and domaine chandon - photographed.
04:57 AM dublin time
christine was the first person to spot [or mention spotting] my secret background image message - for people lucky [or sharp sighted] enough to have super high monitor resolution [of width >1300px ish].
if, like me, you have super crappy monitor resolution, you can see the secret message by looking at the picture here. see? over there on the right? yeah, you'll have to scroll a bit [bloody 1024x768 resolution. grrr.].
[link]
January 30, 2002
11:59 PM dublin time
sorry 'bout all the work rants but i've just remembered there's a third one about coffee here. damn, i wish i knew i'd be here this long - i would have started that coffee machine campaign. too late now though i guess - only twenty-six working days left here [not that i'm counting]. which reminds me, i should hand in my notice...
[link]11:46 PM dublin time
the office where i work is air-conditioned.
this in itself isn't a major problem - though air conditioning is practically unheard of in ireland, my time spent in new york soon taught me that even if it's warm when you're heading out for the night, bring a jumper coz in all likelihood the pub will be air-conditioned and you'll freeze when you get there. so now i dress every morning in direct contradiction with the apparent external ambient temperature - the hotter it is out, the more layers i put on.
the problem starts because my desk is situated directly under an air-conditioning vent and the frigid air blows directly down on my already chilly 'mouse hand', making it a permanently bloodless white colour and pretty frozen. even when a room is at a reasonable temperature, one's mouse hand gets cold quickly as it does very little moving - especially for me as i'm both cold blooded and lazy and have the 'movement setting' on my mouse up really high - so my right hand now needs total resuscitation every half an hour. my nose suffers too, though slightly less so.
this problem is further aggravated by our boss who sits in a separate office on the same air-conditioning system but has cool air supplied through only one vent. unfortunately this hot-blooded, overheated dictator insists on needing the air-con turned up to a continuously freezing blast to cool his temperate office.
we, the external office plebs, have numerous temperature revolutions daily - the thermostat lives on our side of the wall and when the icy gale gets too much for us we'll brave mr. boss-man's wrath and turn the coolth down, but after a couple of minutes of delicious balminess he'll come tut-tutting [but not visibly heated looking] out to turn it back up muttering things like 'how can you work in this heat' or 'you'll all be asleep if i put it higher than 18C'.
[link]05:17 AM dublin time
somehow or other the phones in work can play the radio over their speaker systems, leading to barely audible repeatedly re-churned top forty pop shite mumbling at me from all directions in imperfect stereo [everyone in front of me and to my left has it on].
they're at quite a low volume but the semi-surround sound means i can still figure out what song it is [after the twentieth rendition] and somehow not being able to hear it properly is even more annoying - especially when the dj, in his best daytime pop radio dj voice, segues into the next set of musical tripe or the current 'fantastic radio giveaway' [with matching irritating jingle] where a line up of callers-in, in their best trying not to sound nervous on daytime pop radio voice give the answer to a mind numbingly simple question about the 'fantastic radio giveaway's sponsers.
uurrghhhh. somebody shoot me. or them. or better still the phones. or better again the radio djs.
[link]January 29, 2002
02:18 AM dublin time
it's after one o'clock but i think i'm just waking up properly. a three day weekend is just long enough to totally mess up my sleeping cycle while three days of getting up at noon hasn't left me much more rested. saturday was australia day which was why we had monday off work for a delicious long weekend which is also why i didn't blog yesterday.
to celebrate australia day, aonghus and me booked some flights to new zealand. we're leaving melbourne for christchurch on the 13th march and coming back the 3rd april to set off on a whirlwind figure-of-eight tour of australia.
i can't wait.
[link]January 25, 2002
05:23 AM dublin time
i am a list fiend. i love making lists.
working, shopping, packing, ...
addresses, phone numbers, names, ...
name an occasion and i'll make a list for it.
an ideal list-making time is before one goes on holidays, however i don't just sit down and start writing one off the top of my head - no, no, no that certainly won't do! - i get my old holiday lists - now about seven years worth - and compare their contents and try to remember what things i should have brought and didn't and what things i needn't have bothered with. and every time the list gets better as it's been distilled, honed, refined and improved on the last. in a couple of years i'm going to have the perfect holiday list. maybe i'll publish it and make a fortune.
when traveling in asia i annoyed the hell out of aonghus by insisting on writing down the cost of everything we bought. absolutely everything. it's coming in handy now. i have exact figures of how much it cost us daily in each country so we know how much we need to budget for on the return trip. i love having that record of how much a room cost in bangkok or how much internet access was in kuala lumpur or how much the journey from koh samui to bangkok cost [about thirteen us dollars - how cheap was that for a twenty four hour, four hundred mile journey by taxi, bus, boat and train?].
currently in my carry-everywhere-notebook i have lists of 'books to read', 'places to go in melbourne before we leave', 'things to photograph in melbourne before we leave', 'places in new zealand and australia that people have recommended'.
these sit alongside old lists of 'things to see in the melbourne fringe festival', 'ten things i'll miss about leaving south east asia', 'australian employment agencies', 'pubs in hanoi', ...
ah, sweet, sweet lists.
[link]January 24, 2002
12:55 AM dublin time
photographs from our christmas in melbourne [warning : photos may contain traces of blue skies, barbeques and people in t-shirts].
January 23, 2002
02:18 AM dublin time
it seems that my time spent thus far in australia has been regularly interrupted by news of the government's latest inhumane policies and unfair treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.
it was first brought to my attention in august with the tampa crisis: an unsafely overcrowded norwegian ship that had rescued more than four hundred asylum seekers from their sinking vessel was boarded by australian SAS troops in an attempt to force it out of australian waters. this resulted in the john howard government's refusal to let any of these 'boat people' land on australian shores, sending them instead to new zealand and the island of nauru to have their asylum claims assessed.
later, in november, in the wake of september 11th and the run up to an australian general election, mr. howard attempted to gain support for his border protection policy of "pacific solution" [in which the navy forcibly dispatches unauthorised boat arrivals to nauru and papua new guinea to have their claims processed] by fear-mongering with claims that asylum seekers could have links to terrorism.
Prime minister John Howard, "stoking post-September 11 fears of foreigners, built his candidacy for re-election - around his summary expulsion, in blatant violation of international refugee law, of asylum seekers"
- guardian article: "Human Rights Watch: how other nations have reacted"
meanwhile illegal asylum seekers that arrived before the "pacific solution" are held in detention centres situated in isolated locations across australia. australia is the only developed country to lock up those who apply for asylum. right now the situation is worst for afghan refugees;
"After last month's collapse of the Taliban, Canberra abruptly stopped processing asylum applications from Afghans, arguing that it needed to assess the new situation in Afghanistan to determine if refugee claims were valid.Amnesty International condemned the freeze, which has left in limbo 447 Afghans detained behind barbed wire in Australia's six detention centres which are currently housing 2,143 detainees.
"It is totally inappropriate to keep someone in detention when you are not processing their claim. They should be granted temporary visas," Amnesty spokesman Graham Thom said yesterday."
- guardian article: "Boys' lips were sewn together in refugee protest "
reacting to this, 186 of the detainees have gone on hunger strike. about seventy, including some children, have sewn their lips together.
how can one not be appalled by this news and the news that these demonstrations will not affect the policy to detain all illegal immigrants in secure camps to assess cases? even its own supporters are turning their back on the government and its policies.
[rant inspired by link discovered originally via loobylu]
[link]January 22, 2002
05:55 AM dublin time
aonghus is working tonight which means i'll be having macaroni-cheese for dinner - i can't summon up cooking energy when it's just myself eating. maybe if i'm feeling particularly energetic i'll add in some bacon or i might even manage an omelette.
omlettes are great. y'know the secret to a good omelette? stacks and stacks of cheese and a generous grinding of pepper.
though i've just remembered the secret to a good macaroni-cheese: stacks and stacks of cheese, a little grated nutmeg and a generous grinding of pepper.
i think stacks and stacks of cheese and a generous grinding of pepper is probably the secret to most things. that and half a pound of butter.
would ya guess i'm a chef's daughter?
[link]January 21, 2002
02:53 AM dublin time
getting on with the photos [i want to show you the christmas ones at least before easter] here's four from the johnston street festival from way back in november.
January 17, 2002
10:38 PM dublin time
as i got off the train this morning, from the under-track-tunnel, i could hear a busker singing "i can see clearly now", the disembodied words "it's gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day" wafted up to me as i crossed the road. a look at the sky proved he was right - it was nice to be reminded of it though.
[link]04:04 AM dublin time
too much junk food, too much beer and too many late nights have taken their toll and i am awash with zits. it's awful. my neck and back especially. it's never been this bad before. it calls for some serious action - early nights, healthy food [y'hear that aonghus?] and lots and lots of water.
i usually drink plenty of water when i'm at work - the trips to the water cooler give me something to do and drinking so much has the added bonus of making you need to pee a lot, which gives me something else to do.
so that i don't look like a total freak running up to the kitchen every two minutes to fill those tiny white plastic cups, i invested in a bottle of expensive sports drink in a voluminous 800ml bottle. so far today i've filled it three times. i think i've had three toilet trips too - does that mean my bladder has an 800ml capacity? hmm. i wonder if that's big or small.
[link]January 16, 2002
04:00 AM dublin time
for anyone who's currently landlocked, at work or in the middle of winter, sit back and think of the beach...
01:18 AM dublin time
so we're thinking of buying a van.
infact we're definitely buying a van, but right now we're thinking of buying a specific van.
the van in question currently belongs to our building manager, gary, who aonghus has been doing occasional [actually increasing less occasional - i.e. more regular] jobs for. he seems like a nice guy and more importantly we think we can trust him.
see the thing is neither aonghus nor i know anything about cars. when planning to buy one we knew it was going to be a matter of luck as to whether we ended up with a working machine or a piece of junk. there exist far too many unscrupulous people who are willing [indeed trying] to sell on a car that they know is going to die after a hundred miles. this is why it's important that we can trust the person we're buying from.
gary has agreed to sell us the van for a thousand dollars plus whatever it costs for a couple of fixes [new shock absorbers or something], a roadworthy certificate [in australia, it's a good idea to buy a vehicle that has a recent roadworthy cert - this costs about a hundred dollars and ensures that the automobile is at least safe to drive.] and registration, which should come to nearly two thousand dollars.
it's hard to check whether this is a good deal or not - i've looked at what seem to be equivalent vans for sale online and prices range from five hundred dollars to twenty thousand dollars.
we'll probably end up trusting our luck and going for it. if it breaks down in the middle of the australian outback? well that will just be all part of the adventure.
[link]January 15, 2002
04:38 AM dublin time
i took lots and lots of photos over christmas and a fair few before that too. i've somehow managed to scan them all aswell, but before i start the uploading process, there's a couple of pictures that have been sitting gathering dust on my computer for a while that i would now like to share with you:
"miscellaneous melbourne photos" or "these are the people [buildings, gardens] in my neighbourhood"
January 14, 2002
12:34 AM dublin time
i was photographing frantically all weekend in an attempt to finish the black and white roll of film that was in my camera before we went to the botanic gardens where there would undoubtedly be lot of pretty coloured flowers that i would want to load a colour film for.
i thought i'd managed it too but it turned out to be a roll of thirty six. not twenty four.
[link]January 12, 2002
02:46 AM dublin time
some guy, finding himself with a heap of air miles, has decided that rather than cash them in himeslf, he's going to open it up to the public.
he's offering a return ticket to anywhere in the world to the person who submits the most persuasive description of their proposed trip. the winner must act as a sort of a travel correspondent - publishing a website to document their travels.
i'm not sure if i'm entitled, seeing as i'm already really on a trip, but i think i might give it a go! [in which case i probably shouldn't be telling y'all about it and opening up the field to competitors - forget everything i just said!].
[link via elly]
[link]January 11, 2002
05:50 AM dublin time
um, yeah, so i should probably blog....
it's friday, that's good.
we're going to a 'goodbye and have fun travelling' party tonight which is nice. though last night and the night before were both late ones and aonghus is working in the morning, so we might take it a little bit easy.
it was really bright earlier, now it's really dark. and yet still hot - i think there's a storm on the way. i hope i don't get rained on on the way home.
will that do? i think so.
[link]January 10, 2002
04:53 AM dublin time
our taxi was stopped at a traffic light on the way home last night and a car pulled up alongside, and the driver, a guy in his early twenties, started making these 'roll down the window' gestures to us sitting in the back seat.
so aonghus rolls down the window and the guy, with a big, smug, greasy grin on his face, referring to our taxi driver, says 'make sure he doesn't drive into any tall buildings'.
em. what the f*ck??
our taxi driver had relatively dark hair and skin and was probably vaguely arab looking, though not in a particularly obvious way - he could've been greek or turkish.
and yet some moron who happens to be driving past spots him and... and what? tries to insult him? tries to win our friendship by insulting him? tries to act cool in front of his friends [he was driving a carfull of his peers] by insulting him? [it might even have worked - they all looked highly amused].
goddamit. so aonghus and me are sitting embarrassedly in the back of the taxi for the rest of the trip afraid the taxi driver thinks the idiot insulter was a friend of ours or something.
imbecile.
[aside:
in writing the above blog i was unsuccessfully trying to think up another word for moron. i'm exceptionally bad at thinking up synonyms off the top of my head and tend to lazily resort to msword's thesaurus (when writing my final year project in college, the thesaurus shortcut shift+f7 keys were my bestest friends).
i typed m.o.r.o.n.shift+f7. nothing. i.d.i.o.t.shift+f7 nothing, while f.o.o.l.shift+f7 got me a set of verbs, but no nouns.
curious as ever i did a quick google and found out that apparently msword 2000 has left out these words so as not to hurt anyone's feelings. now if only they could successfully impart this wisdom to a certain cretin (dolt, dunderhead, fool, goose, idiot, ignoramus, imbecile, jackass, jerk, mooncalf, moron, nincompoop, ninny, nitwit, simpleton, tomfool, twit...)]
[link]January 08, 2002
11:52 PM dublin time
well i be mightily chuffed...
i've been designing and maintaining our family restaurant's website dwyersrestaurant.com since 1999. i update it weekly with the recipes that my dad airs every tuesday on waterford local radio [recipes have been added from such exotic places as 'pac beng' in northern thailand and 'luang prabang' in laos] and about once a month a new menu gets posted [the old ones from as far back as june 1999 are still there - this is how i know how long i've been doing it]. when we completely redecorated the restaurant the website even got a new look to match [the old look can still be seen at www.dwyersrestaurant.com/oldpage].
and today dad scanned and emailed me an article from the irish sunday business post in which the restaurant gets a mention as one of the top ten restaurants in ireland [wow!] and the website is particularly lauded [double wow!!] with the praise "the excellence of the establishment spills over to the website".
how nice. that's made my wednesday.
hell, maybe now they'll start paying me for it.
[kidding, kidding].
[link]04:12 AM dublin time
my feet are itchy and i'm dreaming of new zealand. due to time/money [mostly money] constraints i'm reckoning we can manage about two to three weeks there and are thinking of limiting ourselves to the south island - it seems to have everything the north island has except the volcanic bits and the cities [and i've had enough of cities].
we won't be heading there for at least another two months, but to get the best airfares one must plan ahead. it's making me restless now though. i need more sky.
[link]03:06 AM dublin time
for lunch today i had two kinds of potato and corrected people who thought that the irish famine happened because the farmers were growing only potatoes. [incase you're curious, they were also growing wheat and other 'cash crops' which they sold for rent money - most farmers didn't own their farms but were tenants to (often absentee) english landlords].
[link]January 07, 2002
03:47 AM dublin time
and for the people who were wanting to see/get a copy of the photo used above.... click, pop:
as taken on bells beach, by colleen, starring [l-r] aonghus, me, danni and paul.
[link]03:19 AM dublin time
i'm sure it was as annoying for you all as for me that this page was taking an eternity to load [due to it's waiting until it had run a script on every entry for #comments], so i messed around with it a bit and while it should look the same, it should also start to appear a little faster.
if not, let me know and i'll change it back.
[link]12:48 AM dublin time
back to work. back to daily blogging about nothing.
this last weekend must've been our driest ever - together we consumed five pints of beer - this is what christmas does - makes the liver send one subliminal "no more alcohol pretty please" messages.
my new favourite non-alcoholic drink? lime and soda.
[link]January 06, 2002
12:08 AM dublin time
the forecast yesterday predicted a top temperature of 37C for today. i remembered this as i slumbered towards consciousness at tenish this morning and the expectation was enough to rouse me completely, but i was disappointed to feel a mild breeze and no hot wall of air when i opened the balcony door.
we haven't felt as hot at 37C since laos, when i sweated from places i didn't know could sweat - eyelids, the backs of my hands, my teeth!
it's eleven now and on checking the balcony door again i was greeted by a satisfyingly higher temperature. i need to bake. let my teeth sweat in anticipation.
[link]January 04, 2002
06:59 AM dublin time
apparently, on these pages, there are no pix of me or [my] significant other. ah but there are! there's a couple of me with various hair colours/lengths, they might be a bit tricky to find, but they're there. and i distinctly remember posting a picture of me showing off the henna tattoo i got in thailand - it might have been a while ago but it's still there.
y'see as mostly all of the photos shown on these pages are taken by me, it's kinda hard for me to be in them. aonghus puts up some on his page when he's arsed. he's not arsed too often though.
so today, for one day only, there follows a photo of me and aonghus. it was taken today, by long armed aonghus, in the grounds of 'domain chandon' - a vineyard in the yarra valley where they make some yummy sparkling wine using the methode champagnoise [which involves some crazy riddling and neck freezing and a heap of time - as we learnt today].
this instantness [we were in the vineyard only two hours ago] is the best thing about our new digital camera. the colours are a bit washed out and it does get very grainy when the light is low [yep, no flash row], but c'mon, it's the size of a snickers. [well, maybe a little bit skinnier than a snickers, say as big as three biros stuck together, or if you flattened out a reasonably sized carrot, or squared up a half used tube of toothpaste... ah, you get the idea].
[link]January 02, 2002
02:05 AM dublin time
it's half past twelve and we've just hauled ourselves out of bed and are eating breakfast. having kindly nipped out to the shop for butter for the toast, aonghus is instead eating his favourite breakfast - chicken noodles - he blows on a forkful to cool them down, making the steam fog up his glasses. he only wears glasses once a month when his 24-hour monthly lenses need to be changed - i have my own harry potter for the morning.
we've been filming it up for the past week, taking in;
'the lord of the rings' [ten out of ten!! maybe because i haven't read the book recently meant i didn't notice any slight plot changes - though they were slight and didn't detract from my enjoyment. the only hollywood one-liner i spotted: when saruman has just revealed his true nature to gandalf and says 'you didn't seriously think that you could entrust the ring to a hobbit' (or something)],
'amelie' [nine and a half out of ten - losing half a point because it wasn't 'lord of the rings'. feelgoodarama],
'the man who wasn't there' [six out of ten - a bit bleak and depressing for me - especially after the other two. though billy bob thornton was wonderful in a dead pan, film noir monotone.],
'monsters, inc' [seven out of ten - a good afternoon gigglefest].
we've also been admiring the local wildlife - on a trip to an animal sanctuary and more locally seeing some [real, wild] possums in a park en route to the new year's eve celebrations.
there's been a lot of sleeping in too.
now it's ten past one [i've been writing this on and off for forty minutes] and i must go dress and shower and maybe teach the irish national anthem to a canadian.
[link]