Various Random Impressions or Encounters with the Irish

Various Random Impressions or Encounters with the Irish

You know this is The Country of Rain (Reign) when along the rocky borders of the railway tracks ferns abound! They absolutely, unbelievably flourish! Can you believe this? In other more temperate, or even tropical countries the only plants that rear their poor pathetic heads between the rocks are various themes on thistle.

The sun, I am told, has come out today for the first time this summer. My hotel decided to celebrate the momentous occasion by pumping up their air conditioning to top load. It’s only 20 degree C outdoors, guys; there is no reason to install sub-artic conditions to the hotel lobby bar. Thank heavens the MacPro has a problem with over-heating. I am using it as a heat shield. Imagine a car seat heater upside-down.

Since the sun came out, there were all sorts of pasty bodies populating the beaches and waters. Now, I don’t know if you can grasp this concept: rocky beaches, North Sea (approximately glacier temperatures), brisk wind, (admittedly) sunny blue skies, and radioactive-waste-enriched (think Sheffield nuclear breakdown) waters. What are these people thinking? Are they absolutely mad?

The first person I heard speaking with an Irish accent was sitting on a train going out of Dublin down the south coast. And he was shouting into his cell phone to his ex-wife that he would get her the f*****g money, when he gets f******g paid and he f******g doesn’t know when that will be does he? It was out of a film.

Mind you, the next Irish person I met was friend, Margaret, and we had the most enlightening, entertaining, wonderful time together.

I have heard every European and East European (e.g. Bulgarian, Polish, and Romanian) accent in my first 24 hours in Dublin. Does any Irish live or work in Dublin in positions that have contact with the general public?

Tomorrow is the first day of the mobile learning conference. I went to Trinity College this evening, on my way back from Margaret’s, to search out the location. Met up with a fellow presenter, from Israel. He is giving a talk about ethical issues concerning e-commerce. Turns out that not only do young people these days not concern themselves overly with ethical issues on the Internet (to buy or not to buy (pirate)?), it is questionable whether the creators of the e-commerce sites are even interested in these issues. Or, this is what I thought he said as we meandered over the campus in search of our building.

I saw some university students playing lawn crochet this afternoon. But the mallets were over-dimensionally large. They even had a picnic and one or two bottles of opened (empty) champagne bottles lying on the side of the course. Another film moment.

Did you know that, even up to twenty years ago, you would be excommunicated from the Catholic Church if you studied at Trinity College (Protestant)? Oh, maybe you had to be an Irish Catholic to be excommunicated. Anyways, sounds so bizarre. I know from having lived in Quebec that the Church was mixed up in domestic and sexual and even political issues (the priests told their congregations who to vote for in government elections), but it hadn’t occurred to me (sillily) that the Church mixed themselves in education to the degree it did here.

Margaret and I came to the conclusion that the basis for most Christian faiths in the past was to conquer rather than spread peace. The question is whether this has changed at all.

Practiced my presentation today and, boy, am I farfar away from being reading to give it. Update tomorrow.