In the end expectations are only a guideline

Every so often my thought process pauses, and conciously our subconciously I withdraw and view things objectively. The process leads to a reflection often transmitted here in these posts. This ability to dis-attach is useful in many situations, be they academic, professional or everyday (hell Ive taken some of my favourite photographs which seem beautiful and emotive when in reality they are just excercises) ; and beyond crippling in others, arguments over the most trivial things can spiral into rows that lead to hurt so easily because I shut off and turn to some sort of robot. However, sometimes the calmed, calculating instinct is called for, maybe just maybe.

I justify this now because something very odd happened last Tuesday, I was driving down my road first thing in the morning on my way to work, the van in front of me braked rather suddenly. Nothing odd about that, until it then didn't move, and the driver got out holding his head in his hands. He looked back at me and I could see he was in tears. Not being able to see past the van I didn't see her until I got to the driver. Her was an eight year old girl. I don't know the exact details of what had just happened, but she was still and on the ground.

The driver was in shock, as in medical shock. He was sitting at the side of the road tears streaming down his face. No movement,not a word.

I don't remember thinking but I remember speaking to the 999 operator. She said five minutes, that figure stuck in my head. It took closer to 40 for the ambulance to arrive, I know because the Gardaí told me. For me it was the blink of an eye, she stopped breathing and she had to keep breathing. I am not the most athletic of individuals, but this kid was broken, and anything had to be done to fix her. When the ambulance came, I went home, changed showered and went to work. That day passed in a daze.

Her name is Aislinn. She is eight as of two weeks ago, and despite broken bones and a lot of healing to do she is going to be fine. Aislinn's parents rang me the following day. I plan on visiting her in hospital this week before she goes home.

So my life is not perfect, but I have a fulfilling career, a great home and some amazing friends. That Tuesday morning caught me off guard. In the end expectations are only a guideline.

a bedroom to tidy, projects to review and shirts to iron

In some ways I still feel I am in college, I feel the need to live in the city centre partially because thats where I did live while in college, I in some ways feel an attachment to Trinity College.

I really shouldn't. It is a place that took a lot from me, even though it gave me a lot. Friendships made and some lost, eventually a degree and a hell of a lot of memories, not all of them happy ones. I seem to care still for the organisations I was involved in, I still enjoy being in some way attached, but the social umbilical chord is almost entirely gone away.

It is passing; slowly but surely I am building a life away from what was the centre of my world. I have a job which is hard but rewarding, I have a lovely little house (with two disparate housemates - one a very old friend, one a new one) and I have a healthy disregard for the things that have passed, or so I keep telling myself anyway. My attitude has changed as well, in some ways much closer to an idea of selfishness that I do despair for, but in the real world nobody else has your back and there are those who would piggyback on it if they thought it would get them somewhere. Those people are shaken off, despite how much I wanted to help some of them, I have to focus on my career for a while yet.

The Summer brought real world events to the world in my head, a dose of reality I think was needed but it was a shock in its severity. There are people forever closed off now, because of circumstances and events far beyond the control of the everyday. One fried of mine has lost more than I can conceive of, others lose it still as their sadness and powerlessness goes on. Still; we, at time, are of such little consequence that the wider world doesn't even blink when things fall around us. The jigsaw puzzle only gets bigger the more pieces an individual manages to attach.

Shot through the peephole of my wonderful new abode, come visit sometime.



On politics and the big bad world, Henry handled the ball, we saw, you saw it, everybody saw it. But it is the nature of the beast that nothing will come of the calls for a replay. Frankly we would lose that match now, the big stage is something the Irish team seems only able to step up to when fervour is peaking and a replay will simply not have the emotive intensity required, but hey I can hope. Someone in work had the excellent suggestion of simply bringing both teams to Wembley and having a penalty shoot out behind closed doors, at this stage it wouldn't be beyond the realm of reality after the farcical manner the play offs were organised to ensure the big teams play in South Africa.

The all out strike for the 24th of this month is short sighted and as I dig my heels further into the private sector where performance is the only way to progress I feel little more than indifference to the cuts coming. Ridiculous as they are, this country consistently elected the morons in charge. When that changes and the particular generation of fools who believed that pints/pubs and building more houses pass from power then I will re-engage. I am sick of the short sighted and reactionary so called politics of this country. In some ways I am so happy to have stayed here after being offered a placement in the UK, but this is only for professional reasons, Irishness is no longer something I am proud of. Too many small minds have ruined the country that had such a big voice on the world stage, only now to fall quiet as we rush to plug holes in a collapsing dyke that only barely holds back economic meltdown.

But for now on a quiet Sunday evening after a thoroughly up and down weekend the real world calls away from such musings and reminds me I have a bedroom to tidy, projects to review for work and shirts to iron.

Impossible hapenings

The events of the last week are very difficult to explain.There are no words that can explain,justify or describe what occurred. As much as I know the facts and the actual happenings of last Saturday night/Sunday morning in Bray they make no sense in my head.
Understanding of the situation and acceptance of it are very much removed from the current reality.

At no stage in the future do I expect things from that night to make sense.

The over zealous coverage and ignorant commentary provided by so many provides an insight into the mis-understanding and mis-representation of so many situations that we see in the media. The cheap hackery that at times is present instead of journalism is saddening, and the paradox of me being furious about an article or published photo after I have supported the publication of such rubbish by purchasing it annoyed me on both the intellectual and academic level as well as the emotive one.

Even writing this is feeble, I will never provide myself or my friends or anyone with answers to the many, many questions that continue to present themselves as the reality of the world now sinks in.

Last Saturday night one friend of mine met another; tragic pain, misguided intentions, innocence and coincidence, combined with anguish and a horrific rage. In the end two young people I knew as friends of mine lay dead, with two other innocents hurt in ways that most will never understand. In those actions neither lost their innocence.

The only thing even approaching a silver lining is that the pain is over for those two. As a committed anti-theistic person I have no belief in another existence, or any sense of judgment at a time of passing, all I can possibly take from this is that the pain and anguish is over for those who will not wake up. For those left behind, from family and friends to those who survived that evening, they have so many things to forget and to come to terms with.

The cathartic effect of remembering good times and good people is definite. For our friends it is important that it is that that is recalled. Other than that, there are no words.

I found something odd on my laptop the other night. I was cleaning out doubles of image files and came across a folder of images that I didn't recognise and it was labeled oddly. The reason quickly became clear, I use a program called ialertu which locks your laptop and sets off an alarm if it is touched or moved or interfered with in any way. It also takes a photo with the isight camera the macbook and can be set up to forward that photo to an email address. Smart as a security feature and odd when it malfunctions. The malfunction is caused by that fact I do not use the Mail program on my mac usually, and haven't used it in months. So for the last few months my laptop has had a folder of images from where someone touched my laptop usually when it was on my desk in my rooms in Trinity. The malfunction also mean that the alarm wasn't being set off and I didn't notice. Essentially I discovered a set of images that I didn't know was being taken and neither did anyone else. The funniest ones are the ones where it isn't me in the image.

So it has an odd collection of images,mainly of me and some hilarious ones. Some thoughts turn to misuse of the funnier photos but to be frank the hilarity would be shortlived and the consequences fairly long term. The conundrum I face is now one of whether my usual standards of "if its funny-it is acceptable" can stand up to a promise I made. Once again I am rambling.

It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.


—Alfred Adler



I read this quote a few months ago. I was reminded of it today for some reason. Brevity is the tone of today.

Reading it again today reminded me of this

Those are my principles. If you don’t like them I have others.
—Groucho Marx

It has been a weird day.





From another weird day.

Old Electric Picnic Post

Found this today, about the Electric Picnic 3 years ago. Made me smile. Good times.



I will not let this feeling die, no matter what. I am so alive with ambition, ability, love, affection and contentness after that weekend. I now just have to keep that going. I work too hard but I can use this feeling there. I can finish this. I have one more month before college is again upon me, I can't wait.

From the drive down and pushing signs to the windows and waiting for sexy back to be on the bloody radio, to walking for miles and miles to the campsite. to being told to move because a gazebo was going there, to the first glimpse of everything. to the rain tht held off for a while and then called in the debt that night, to inflatable church weddings, to seeing a band id never heard before, to dancing like fools to brass music trip-hop, to the falafel and noodles, to massive attack, to the man in the mask dancing with devandra banhart, to leon who wrote a song about patty hirst, to being able to wander, to organic pear juice, to seeing people I thought i would never see again, to FESTIVAL, to the trees and the flags, to the raving security guard and the beangarda in the o2 tent (check her out on youtube.com), to the feeling, to the cinema tent and ferris bueller at 8 in the morning, to herbal pills making other people's eyes look amazing, to surface water in the tent, to a man auctioning the last of the proper ponchos, to conway who i hadnt seen in a year and his friend shane dancing in the mud, to a postmodern windmill, to the gigs, to the folk, the trance, the ska, funk, acid jazz, and all in between. to the lampshades, to wristbands, to madagascar and amnesty international not toasting right, to the big tree and the knitting tent. to the drunk dude crying at anthony and the johnsons and his two mates hugging him, to the teddy on a stick to sparklers to graffitti allowed, and messages left in chalk, to the feeling that pervaded and allowed everybody to talk to everybody. to body and soul, to regina and the message altar, to the body and soul, to being silly and it being fine, to english girls in high heels and little else to pete the 48year old from newcastle who was telling us the kids couldnt keep up with him as he burnt his runners, to the civil defence who sewed my jeans, to the grass that would never stay dry, to the chairs in the nokia tent, to the idea of lost vagueness, to the frames and the human pyramid, to seeing those faces i will forever see at these things, to the johnsons for being around anthony, and to the music just the music everywhere, to the hippy kids and the comedy. to broken social scene, to kevin then singing with bloc party, to the idea that it didnt matter just for one weekend, for the guy too busy drinking to go to the atm, and the bacardi bar girl who went for him, to the conversations, to the aero and jaffa cake milkshakes, to the sunshine burning my neck and ears on sunday, to the cds in the trees that split the light this way and that.to the fact marketja was so small i couldnt see her over the piano, to skylarkin, to mic, to the feeling standing there for an hour afterwards singing at the top of my voice to music that was not just pretend anymore, to the whole feeling, to the acceptance that this was not real.

to the electric picnic.

My crummy record with Tickets

Let me begin with saying I love music festivals, they make me feel more excited than almost anything. I think I have an odd experience with festivals having experienced them from the point of laying at them, going as a youngster, going sober, going definitively not sober and many other combinations in between.

I don't however want to write about music festivals, I've done it before and always enjoy writing about them after the events, and seeing as I haven't had the chance to enjoy a festival in a while there is little point.

I instead just wanted to share something about my odd relationship with tickets for festivals. It seems odd but I think there are enough incidents to make it noteworthy. It probably started the year I went to Witnness (back when it wasn't Oxegen) and was getting a lift with my friend who lives on the top of (literally) the mountains.To get to her house I had to get one bus from Greystones to Bray and then one from there half way up a mountain. I distinctly remember that the jeans I was wearing had pockets which weren't quite deep enough for my ticket which was in them. I remember checking before I got on the first bus, and on the second as well that the ticket was safe and sound.A third check when I got off the bus up the mountain also made sure I still had my ticket. I didnt however check as I was getting into the car to drive down. It was only when we got to Punchestown that I discovered my ticket was missing, ulp. So mission "find my ticket" swung into effect with my friends uncle and sister combing the hedgerows of a long Wicklow road to find it, which they did. The start of an epic weekend.

Not so epic is my record with Electric Picnic tickets. There was a case where I lost a ticket I had promised to someone, and tickets I forgot to sell. Worse is that twice in two years I have bought tickets (note the plural) and then suddenly not needed more than one. Last year I ended up tossing €500 worth of ticket in the river after a particularly nasty incident/argument with someone, and this year I bought tickets (again not plural) only to find that in no uncertain terms I would not be needing the second one. Last year my skin was saved by the fact a friend of mine was working in a pr company and couldn't go, and swapped me her ticket in exchange for some advice on a client, this year I am not so sure I'm getting out so easily.

Well I almost got a little too personal at the end of that, but cryptic is the way I'll leave it. Also if you are the person keeping semi-regular eye on this blog from Brooklyn drop me a line, I'm trying to work out who you might be but my initial theory is incorrect. I'm curious.



A weird sky on a weird day a few weeks ago.

Terry Pratchett in Trinity College Dublin

Terry Pratchett visited Trinity last December to receive an honorary doctorate, the Saturday of his visit he spoke in the exam hall. The reason I am remembering this is on Sunday I found out a friend of mine reads Discworld books to his girlfriend, over the phone, this particular little bit of news caused much laughter and slagging at the time. But back to Pratchett, news had come out a few weeks previous of his diagnosis with a form of alzheimer's disease so the chance to see him speak was an opportunity not to be missed. The hall itself was packed and the talk itself was interesting, excluding the extreme fan questions, which exposed more nerdiness than should be exposed in a public setting.

What stuck with me was something Pratchett said about religion and the power of humanity. He, as a devout atheist, broke from the question and answer format of the interview/audience for the longest time when he spoke on this issue. He remarked that we should have more fascination with streetlights then with stars. Stars, are simply huge formations of gas revolving millions of kilometers away fusing helium. They are a natural phenomenon that have been around longer than the human species and probably will be around far after we wipe ourselves out. Streetlights, however, are the culmination of many many fortunate and wonderful coincidences. Streetlights mean that a few billion generations ago one cell became two, and a few million generations later something slipperry and gooey crawled out of the primordial ooze and onto dry land. Millions of generations later an earlier version of us came out of the trees and walked on two legs. A few thousand generations hence humans really came into being. Fast forward a few thousand more generations and someone though to light the dark streets. A tall metal pole, ornate or functional, is built; the magic of human ingenuity then facilitated the lighting of a wick, or nowadays an electric element. Then there was light and the streets were dark no more. Putting faith in human achievement and the potential brilliance of us as a species seems so simple and yet night after night people the world over gaze at stars. Pratchett's point is that all the genius of the world is right there in front of our eyes, yet we keep looking to things very very unimaginably far away.

Pros and Cons

Tomorrow, well really later today, I have to decide whether to take my initial job placement in the UK (no it doesn't get any more specific than UK until Tuesday) or stay and take the placement in Dublin.

3 months ago, there wouldn't have been a split second worth of thinking to be done, I would have given anything to be able to stay. If I knew where I was to be placed in the UK I could do a proper side by side comparison, but I cant.

Essentially I am choosing Dublin or an envelope marked UK which could have a magical prize or a boobie prize.

I have huge, huge lists of pros and cons. No decision has been made yet. I don't know what will swing my decision.

Had the offer never been made I would have been all set for the UK. Now I am not so sure.

I am getting quite lost, in confused ramblings that HAVE to lead to a decision, by later on today.

As usual I leave this with a photo, this is of my rented room 3 years ago,

Poladroid

Playing with Poladroid.

Another day, another dollar.

So after some incredible boredom and being asked to do some things that were downright illegal I quit my job last Tuesday,and I panicked as I re-entered the world of the the funemployed, albeit without much of the fun.

It was 1.59 when I quit officially and after the adrenalin and enjoyment of the experience of telling a thoroughly mediocre little person that they and their job can go jump a quick dose of reality set in,after a weird conversation with an old friend about their job at the moment. Luckily for me and my bank balance, less than 5 hours later I had me a new job. Granted it is back in the grand old world of market research again, but it is only temporary. It is odd to think that in about two months I am emigrating, possibly forever. Bittersweet thoughts really. But back to the real temporal existence that is now, Wednesday dawned with my first day of work, and apparently my birthday. I tend to forget about my birthday but an absolute avalanche of facebook messages forced the aging reality upon me. Yes, I know facebook reminds people, but it was the most birthday greetings I have had wished to me in , well ever. Despite the fact I dont really believe in celebrating my own birthday it was pleasant in the extreme to hear it from so many people.

As usual I am rambling, as I tend to do, but this is for my benefit not yours so I'm okay with it.

In other news an old employer of mine Venture Photography seems to be on the ropes and looking at losing their Franchise, that place was hard work but hell it was fun, but it was always going to be amongst the first kind of companies to lose out in this recession of ours.

Rambling done, I have finally cleaned my room. 6 weeks after moving home, I finally have reclaimed my space.

In technology, I found a wonderful little program that turns your average photos into a polaroid effect. Simple but attractive.

So, for an old memory this was shot out the window of a van we were travelling in between New York and Virginia in the Autumn of 2007.

It has been quite a while since I updated this. Quite a few things have changed in the interim period.

College is over, which is an odd feeling. Many of my friends are sticking around the fine walls of Trinity, either going into Masters courses or finishing their degrees. At times I envy the security that offers them and wish I was doing the same, at other times I'm glad to be leaving and removing myself from that very same security. I'll miss it though.

My job with P&G is starting October 5th, and I'm excited as hell about that. My location is yet to be finalised but I have fingers and toes crossed for the North London placement. Amongst the newstarters it seems to be the most popular but I think its the place that would suit me best so hopefully it'll work out. To be frank after the last while I need the lucky break.

The last few weeks have been annoying mainly because of my outlook. I am incredibly bored, be it at work or at home. Coupled with a bit of a kerfuffle over my degree and some personal things I haven't focused properly in work or while having fun, and as such end up half-doing anything I try to do. At times it has been pretty demoralising. I feel I have marginalised myself from the things I was supposed to keep myself involved in.

So, in my usual fashion, I am looking for an epiphany moment. Trying to find the "first day of...." phenomenon I seem to keep needing. The stagnation that comes from living in Gstones and the absolute mediocrity of my job (and the fact that a new job doesn't look to close to the horizon) doesn't seem to be pointing towards progress. I've been told this is not exactly an ideal way of dealing with things and it certainly doesn't appeal to everybody's sensibilities, so its not something I'm trying to consciously foster. In writing this it helps put structure to an odd mental world-view that doesn't sort itself out on its own. In some ways its therapeutic.

For old times.
I took the original photo some stage last summer and the editing work I did in December.




Anyway, onwards.