Sunday, October 24, 2004

Bring out your dead 'I ain't dead'

okay so it has been nearly four months since i last blogged and i suppose i have done a wee bit since then. Worked in a summer camp in what was possibly the most stressful and tiring month ever but i still had a cool laugh i almost killed the kids at one point and nearly quit a few times, still i was the best leader there. i have kid pheromone, young kid!

i also had my 21st which was cool. i managed to get all my friends (bar those bums that did not come cough*laina*cough) to come which was fun. it was a wee bit slow starting and the music had to end an hour and a half before it was supposed to but it still was a laugh. got me cul presents including a sweet little camera and enough funds to afford a plane to New York

Then went on holidays to West Cork for two weeks. While i was abandoned by my so-called peers who went down before me and came up the night before i headed down i still had a really good laugh. The weather was not as good as last year it twas a good laugh. I usually stay with my friends family in a house they have been renting for years. it is a huge old house more than a hundred years old that is right on the coast. fun and frolics i did have.

Then i was off here to the US of A, i was meant to fly off with Liam and the girls but cruel fate conspired against me and i had to fly out the next day all on my lonesome. i had a good laugh though, i flew solo and got to find my way into Manhatten which was a wee bit intimidating. My friends aunt met me at the bus station though and so i managed to get to the college without much problems.

That about brings me up to getting here. Of the college i will write about in a post tomorrow. so long

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Things that give me a headache and make me feel sick

There have been a whole lot of things pissing me off lately and they are all someway serious and nearly all have to do with money.

1)Having to work up my hours before i leave work.
I am 42 hours down on the clock but my days off for Jury duty have not been taken away yet but even when they do i will still be down. I got a message there saying that i need a letter from the courts for the days i was missing, that is grand for Wednesday and Thursday but since i just took Friday off i cannot get a note for that. So i will still be down 20 hours which may be taken out of my pay-check. This extra time is a mixture of several things. For the three weeks before my Jury duty there was no work and i mean no.work.whatsoever. i was bored senseless and so came in late and left early. that built up a few negative marks but when there was no need to be here i saw no need to stay. My hours have also been in the negative since March so i think there may be a few cock-ups on there part, between going away to Vienna, having to go home to check my marks, sick days, i have lost count of what should be right. Sometimes it takes a day for changes to go through while sometimes it is a week or two. Also i thingk there have been several times when I may have been entitled to half days or a few hours because of conferences or such that i did not claim. I have just found out that i am entitles to another 3/4s of a days holidays so i will claim that one for the Friday but it will still look shady on the claims page.

2) Getting rid of my house
This is another thing that sux. We have been relying on students from the university that are taking over our jobs to take over our house when we finish. I can think of no logical reason for them not to. The house is really close to all the departments they will work in, it is a really really nice house and although the rent is pretty high by UL standards it is normal for up here. Anyway a few of them texted us when we told them about the house and one of them even came up to look at the place. He then called and said that he has found somewhere else and we have heard nothing back from the rest of them. I know it was a bit presumtious of us but i am very surprised to be honest. I wonder are they just being lazy student bums or am i just being a bit too demanding. Anyway we got onto our estate agent and she said that if we dont get anyone to take the place by next friday we will lose 42% of our deposit (200 euros) and another 30 per week until the place is filled. While this is better than using the entire deposit it is still money that is completely wasted. I have put the house up on Daft.ie to try and get rid of it but my supervisor said i would be very lucky if we managed to get rid of it. more money down the drain.

3) i also have to organise my shit for the States. Tis includes having to book plane tickets which means i have to ask my parents for money which i really hate doing and we also have to organise a visa with the Embassy. They are already making this complicated by saying we have to ring them (on a 1580 number, 1.90 euros a minute) to book an appointment and we also have stuff to organise and get together and all that shit.

4) One thing i cant do anything about is that the Chernobyl child we have taken every year for the past eight years is having visa problems this year. He was supposed ot come in May on a student Visa that would have allowed him to study English and work here for the summer but for no appearant reason his Visa was refused. Apparently the Department of Justice did not bother to check his history and see that he has been given a visa every summer and several Christmas in the last ten years and there has never been a problem. He finally got in with the group on 10 year olds that come to my village every year and we had the Visa appeal waiting. Yesterday the Department of Justice got back to my mother and said that the appeal had gone through and he was to be given the student visa. He did not need this at this stage as he was too late for the English classes and to start his job but there is a question on a VISA form saying 'have you ever been refused a visa' if you did then it is very difficult to get another one. To cut a long story short he was deemed eligable for a visa yesterday but when they found out that he was in the contry they rang back and told my mother that there was no way he could be given a VISA now and it was refused again. he is now in the country illegally and my mother is in a terrible state as she does not know what is happening to him now. As he is 17 he can no longer be called a 'chernobyle child' and so his future visits may be put in jepoerdy and this is really upsetting my mother. like i said there is just mounds and mounds of beurocracy and faceless people and uncontactable departments that all can decide on a whim whether or not to give him the visa so it is very hard to do anything about it. it sux

5)another thing that is completly my fault but that still sux is that technially i owe the department 180 euros. They give you a certain amount of money when you go abroad as a kind of living expence but the conference in vienna was cut short and so they wanted some of it back. this was back in march and i was hoping they would just forget about it. they have not said anything about it but they will probably take it out of my pay next week. I also have to try and find out about getting my tax back which is not really a bad thing as it is around 2 grand and also some tax allowence thich is around 245 euros which will cancel out the dept i owe the department.

*EDIT* 6) Thank you Liam for reminding me....faggot. I am also trying to organise my 21st birthday party.. i am trying to find out the rough amount of people that are coming so to be able to tell the bar staff how much food we need. I have a big list that started at 84 but now it is down to 77. hmmmmmm

This is all icky and requires me to do stuff, someting i am not fond of. It is one of the reasons why i cancelled my last month of work up here and am moving home. before i head off to the states i will be living at home, working in a no tax under-the-table pay job and going on easy to organise holidays with my family and friends, so there will be little hassle. i cannot wait to go

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

5 things i like

1) somewhere other than here
2)being at home
3)that really tired feeling you get after going to the gym and after a hard cycle home then having two rolls and milk
4) Dereenatra, nuff said
5) swimming in the canal where you are 40 foot down and looking up at the sun coming u through the water, then doing a 15th foot back flip to hang on a suspended bar before launching off that to jump to the surface......carrying Liams naked scooter ride.

I Am a fucking Happy camper

pissed off i am, stuck here in work while it is PISSING rain outside, but then it is also all hot and my chair is all uncomfortable and i got shit to summarise but it is boring shit that has lots of figures and bullshit. really bored too i am cuz i have nothing to do that i want to do and it is icky icky icky, bla bla bla. let me go home, for some incomprehensible reason we only took half an hour break which s nothing and i am bored. fuck off grrr i am pissed.

How the Little People try to get me Down

Yet again the proles have been casting aspersions on my good name so i am forceds to yet again to crush their petty arguments and flimsy accusations into the proverbial dust of lies that they are.
After i was not selected for the Jury of crazy plane-chop-chop woman the judge informed us (the panel) that we were required to return the following day to be selected for another trial, the Jury were also asked to return at half ten asnd after a jury had been chosen for the other trial, theirs could get underway. While i endevoured to be at the courtroom for half ten the next day, i was unavoidably detained my roadworks and traffic congestion in the towns of Clarecastle and also on the way into Ennis town. i arrived at the court at twenty to ten and sat there for more than half an hour before the judge said the trial had been dropped and we were free to go for the day, i thought it unusual that there had been no roll-call and when i was talking to a fellow clonlarian he said tha ti had missed it, luckily it was all sorted out in the end. As for Friday, well i did spend a lot of time at the bottem of the canal but then, i did the same every other day of the week, fuckin fagggot

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

A Clarification of Issues

It has come to my attention that certain slanderous accusations are being circulated as to my whereabouts of last week. I feel that i must put the electronic pen to paper and refute these viperish insinuations

On Wednesday of last week i was called to serve my country and practise my constitutional responsibility to serve on a jury panel. After a long and arduous journey from this fair nations capital i arrived in Ennis Circit Court (give or take a few days)Here i was told that the case was that of mary kelly, a crazy woman who attacked an american army plane in shannon airport.The way the sytem works is that 20 people are called and if they can give no valid reason not to do it then the prosecution and defence have 7 vetoes each. In the end they went through around 35 people before they managed to get a jury. unfortunately i was not picked but the judge told me to come back the day after.....so i did

Monday, June 21, 2004

Where to begin?

Aright alright alright, since my adoring fans have been begging me to update i shall do so. Where will i start. Last week i was getting sick of work and decided to take a long weekend. Since i had Jury duty on Wednesday i decided that i might take Thursday and Friday off but my supervisor soundly pointed out that if i had to do Jury duty on those days as well then i would wast my holidays so she suggested taking Monday and Tuesday off. Since i had two and a half days off i also took a halfday friday. so off i went on Friday to vote. After a getting the half four bus i barely managed to scrape in to vote before the place closed at nine.

Wy weekend went pretty sweet with a multitude of swims in the canal under a really sunny sky and lots of laying around and doing nothing which i found quite enjoyable

Monday: DAY OF DEATH!!!! Yes on monday i managed to lose my seeing machines otherwise known as spectacles or glasses. There i was innocently gazing into the canal thinking of a haichu dedicated to horses and hyacinthes when this thuggish brute leapt from the undergrowth and brutally tore my "Life-Windows" from my eyes cackling madly, Through my visually impaired squint i could see him dangling them over the water, "change into your swimming togs, bitch" he gruffly ordered. In my myoptic haze i dumbly consented, suppressing the tiny tingle of excitment i felt at being ordered so. "Good little fishy", he hoarsly purred, "now go swim with your fishy friends!!!" with that he carelessly tossed my glasses into the darkened snot-green depths. "NOOOOOOOOOOooooo" i cried as i vainly threw my blind shamboling body into the water, but it was too late. When i surfaced the diabolical spectecle-snatching spectre has dissapeared and i saw conal and his girlfriend Claire come walking towards me laughing. 'did you dive in with your glasses, Paul?' they chortled and no matter how much i protested my innocence they would not believe my admittingly fantastic tale. To this day i will hunt him......the two armed Man!!!!!

i spent the rest of the day looking at all the pretty blobs that had once been my family and friends. That skinny blob over there is my father, the one wearing a blue blob is my brother, the black and blond one must be conal and claire doing.......something. Oh how sorrowful was i, not a happy camper indeed. In the end i managed to find a pair of glasses that my mother had stolen from the lost & found of UL, they were not my perscription but were close enough for me to see blessed facial features again. For the rest of the week i would go diving several times a day to try and find my brown glasses in the brown water on the brown floor. One day i will find those glasses and it will be my crowning achievment.

I am bored for now so i will finish this exciting tale later, stay tuned my installment two of PAUL's WEEK OF WORK!!!!!!!!!!

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

My Weekend of Sea, Sand & Toil

This weekend i decided to treat myself and get the train home, i had taken Friday of to show some langer our house so i had to clean the place from top to bottom, when i finally finished i then had to wait several hours before he blessed us with his presence. Anyway to cut a long story short i did not get home until after 9 that night and that was even after i had taken the train, which was full of people smoking dope in the gaps between carriages and giggling, still it helped me sleep.

Saturday was bargain-basement day. i went into town to meet my friend who is going away for several months so she might miss by 21st birthday. anyhow unfortunately she had to work so i went and bought a rip-curl hoodie, a long-sleeve quiksilver t-shirt, animal shorts and an Eddies for less than 100 euros which i thought was pretty cool considering that i had spent 110 euros on a single pair of shoes several weeks ago. i alos met a friend of mine that i had not seen in ages and since they were ages taking my order in Eddies they gave me super-size everything, soo bloated.

I then headed of to the seaside with Stevie, a friend of mine, and the family. the weather was not as good as i thought i would be but we still got to chillax on the beach, go for a swim and play a lot of frizbee. there was also a bit of work to be done so i spent yet another weekend breaking rocks with a sledgehammer. It is surprisingly therapeutic, i kind of felt sorry for steve cuz i did not know that work would be involved and he got roped into it, it happened before as well and he ended up helping us lug two tonnes of top-soil around. still it is good for the heart.

I got the six o'clock direct train up so i was home around nine. It seemed like an uneventful night with everyone going to bed but i was really bored so i asked Liam to entertain me. We decided to open up his bottle of champagne and one thing led to another until we were down in the sitting room........cutting each others hair!!!!!!!! I got around two or three inches taken off and i just kind of hacked at liams. It looks quite good to be honest, i can now wear my hair down in work.

Back in this so-called work today, and Liam has just informed me that our contracts are actually for six months!! this i will not put up with, i am out of here at the end of June. You never know it might be so disorganised that i might just be able to slip away.

Thursday, June 03, 2004

WHO AM I?????????!!!!!!!!

I'm a Philosopher/Scientist!



Which Enemy of the Christian Church Are You?


Take More of Robert & Tim's Quizzes
Watch Robert & Tim's Cartoons




is this me? perhaps, who am I?

I'm Olivia!




Which Robert & Tim Show Character Are You?


by bastard_king & evil_mr_tim




while not really me, cuz i am not a girl
grr so mad, i have spent the last ages, wracking my brain doing these IQ tests and finally when i finish one i get 'Page cannot be found' they are too intimidated by my brilliance is what it is

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

goodness gracious, i am in work experience in the Foreigh Affairs, i work 35 hours a week and make good money from it, thing is...i do sweet fuck all. I have done no work whatsoever since last Monday week and i am going out of my mind with boredom, if anyone can recommend a good site for me to spend a few meager minutes in i will of so glad.

I make do by doing tons of stuff completely unrelated to work, i have now sorted out my application for study abroad, written an invitation list for my 21st which is in 2 months, nearly finished my co-op report and am trying to get people to move into my flat. i am also sending e-mails to all and sundry. only two hours before hometime

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

Saying work is boring is an understatement

i have currently no work to do whatsoever so i am trying to sort out my college choices for next term. I am studying in New York and so i am allowed to pick any subjects i wish, so far i have chosen

Introduction to International Politics
Cultural Anthropology
Contemporary American Foreign Policy
Terrorism in World Politics
Journalism
Social Inequality in the United States.

I also am trying to pick one of the following:
Introduction To Comparative Politics
American Government and Politics
Media and Society

i am still completely undecided. I want to take advantage of being in an american college and seeing things from their perspective.

Weak as milk-water am I

The best time to mug a person is just after they come out of a gym, i was doing weights last night and today i can hardly lift my hands to the keyboard, no pain just ugghhh cant move.
we cleaned our house last night, it still needs a bit more cuz stuff is growing on the floor, literally, we have life. We are trying to sub-let the apartment so we have to make it all nice and shiney

Monday, May 31, 2004

i am nice and refreshed after an enjoyable weekend breaking rocks with a sledgehammer, strangely therapeutic and then a nice snack of bread and water afterwards. My kind of weekend!
I met a friend of mine from school on the train up, he is in the Cadets and his job is a complete world away from mine. I then found myself sitting beside a fella from my home village on the bus into town. Ireland is really a small country.

Thursday, May 27, 2004

1st Post

i am bored i said, entertain me i said. Fuck off and start your own blog then he said, so i did. I am not sure about all this blogging business i will give it a try though. You would think that working in the International Terrorism & Illicit Drugs section in Foreign Affairs would be interesting now would'nt you? well to be honest it is not really. the only thing keeping me going is that i am heading home for the weekend, i am not sure why i am looking forward to that but at least it will not be here