Is it these fleeting connections with humbling personalities that life is about?

Isn't it strange that when writing about matters of one’s interactions with unique members of the opposite sex that it naturally leads itself to the use of poetic language...

I'm reluctant to even publish this blog post and still may not but I simply had to write it down because I'm literally losing sleep over it and there's also the danger of "outing" something that may need mutual personalities to develop or dissolve if that's how things pan out. Or how much detail I should go in to.

So here it is. On the Thursday of my train journey home. I was aimlessly browsing facebook on a coin operated computer in the train station (my phone was dead and the wifi was an insult to the concept of itself), when I was reminded of an Atheist's in the Pub social meetup (run by Atheist Ireland, a group I have a lot of time for) was on that evening at half 7. It was about 5.20 at this stage and so getting home and back into the city would have been a tall order (try to imagine the two long lines of a triangle and you will get an idea of what I was attempting to do). I travelled home, dumped my bags in the hall (quite literally), showered, changed and then headed out again without any pause for a bite to eat.


I ended up arriving at about half 8, but as these events have open ended arrival times hardly any notice was given. I naturally had thought to procure a pint of Smithwicks (I fancied it that night for some reason) before heading upstairs to where the meetup was being held. Now there was a comedic  act by Abie Philbin Bowman that I walked in about half way through (sorry man) and two speakers talking about how and why they left their religions: Vahid Bokharaie who was raised as a Muslim in Iran, and Victor Diac who studied to be an Eastern Orthodox priest in Romania. All 3 were entertaining and informative.


Afterwards I found myself craving another pint so downstairs I went with the general flow of a few others who had the same idea. Upon opening the door into the bar I noticed this cute red head who looked over at me as I entered the bar part of the establishment. I smiled and either waved or nodded a greeting in her direction as I walked past to order another pint and I remember thinking "cute girl, must be one of the patrons just out for the night". As I was waiting for my drink I noticed she was talking to Vahid and was drinking an Irish Ale that I'd not heard of as it seemed to be a micro or small batch production brew. I was a bit surprised (albeit pleasantly) to find out that she was "one of us" or at least interested enough to strike up a conversion with one of us. At this stage I was just being pleasant as I just met the girl, let's call her Xena mainly as it has no correlation to her real name, and didn't know anything about her. We returned upstairs with our fresh pints and sat down at what seemed to be a freshly vacated table. This core 3 pretty much stayed in conversation for the rest of the night and we got into an unspoken rounds arrangement. 

The more I talked to this girl the more I found that our personalities and sense of humour just seemed to click she was an incredibly easy girl to talk to. Now not once did I bring up the subject of relationships or dating so I've no idea if she was single or not or even if she was interested in me but I got an unspoken vibe off her despite totally unrelated subjects that we were getting closer. Eventually bar staff told us to vacate the upstairs so we headed downstairs and, as I said before, the core 3 of us seemed to form in a corner and strike up a conversion again. I'm pretty sure I'd switched to Guinness at this stage and the conversations and mingling seemed to continue with various people sometimes coming over to us for a bit. I found that on more than one occasion she put her arm up on my shoulder as if to lean on it or to get comfortable. I'm not sure who started it, It may have well been me as I do it to my female friends or guy friends sometimes when out drinking as a kind of "you're all right, I get along with you" subtle affectionate move. But I remember at one stage we both had our arms on each other’s shoulder while talking to Vahid, which was strange considering I'd only met the girl a few hours beforehand. Now I do admit there was some subtle flirting and teasing going on on my part just to see how she would react but I didn't want to push it too far too soon. I also remember at one stage her telling me her age, 30, and that honestly threw me a wobblier and I nearly had to compose myself again. Not only had I assumed she was my age (she didn't look her age and I wasn't the only one to tell her that), but it had me doubting myself. 30? I can't date a 30 year old, can I? Why would a 30 year old even be interested in me? Am I mature both mentally and relationship experience wise to successfully enter a relationship with a 30 year old? Would she get bored or call me immature? All these and more were racing around my head.

Now in hindsight I probably should have made my feelings more clearly known but the truth is I didn't even know them to a full extent at the time and I still wasn't sure how she was handling it (I'm terrible at reading signs from girls). Sure we were getting on fine but in the back of my head I was thinking "you only just met this girl and there's people all around, you can't just give her a peck on the cheek". I also knew that I wanted to get in touch with this girl so I asked her to add me on facebook. My phone was at home charging due to the train journey and I suppose I subconsciously compartmentalised that in my head because the thought of asking for her phone number genuinely didn't occur to me, nor did giving mine. Not even with the potential tried and trusted solution of asking the bar man for a pen and paper. Nothing, Zilch. Facebook was the one trick pony I had.

As we were all departing and she was walking in the direction of what I presume was a taxi rank I called her back for a hug and I attempted to give her a kiss on the cheek but I'm pretty sure I mostly got hair. Now I'm left with the grim and paranoid realisation that the next Atheist Ireland event is in mid to late September and, although I'd love to meet up with her beforehand, I've no way of communicating with her, despite frantic searches on Facebook. So all I can do is wait till then and hope she turns up and not pissed off with me. Occasional searches of the Atheist Ireland group on Facebook may also help. 

You never know.

Train Journey

Well, todays events went quite interestingly. I persuaded myself that skipping sleeping last night was a good idea in order to gain time to pack and clean the house which wasn't going to take much time anyway and to be honest while I did the general bulk of the tasks I needed to do I forgo the hovering and a few minor things like that because “meh, it'll be only a week and I'll be the first one back by a long shot .... right?” well in all likelyhood that is indeed going to be true but there's always the niggling doubt that one of my parents has to rush back to Dublin during the week and to find the house not quite in a heep but still in a slightly “lived in” state, depite the lack of occupants.

I was assured that there'd be free wifi and a socket convenient to every seat for the modern “IT centric” passenger (paraphasing). So I packed for the jounery with this in mind with two freshly downloaded movies if the vast array of internet entertainment options didn't hold my attention for the sum 4 hour train journey. There is indeed wifi but it's worse then dial up and I'm having a lot more success connecting to the hive mind with my phone and it's 3g connection. Then that brings me to the power outlet. They exist but only at the two ends of the carrage. I could turn my phone into a wifi hotspot but I'm getting by fine writing this up in Libre Office and then I'll upload it when I can get a reliable internet connection which could be my return to Dublin..... the joys of rural Ireland.

Anyway I was soon overcome with the desire to sleep and by my estimates (entirely subjective and nowhere near reliable) I got a good hours powernap in. The whole time I was concious of another booked but strangely vacent seat beside me and I cetainly didn't want to impeed on that space in my sleep just in case the guy (guessing from the name although it wasn't irish and sounded eastern european) got on at a later station. Thankfully this didn't happen and I suppose in a way thankfully he didn't get on. I've now transferred to the last bit of the Journey which is on a smaller but still comfortable train which does have conventient power because both my laptop and my phone were on their last legs battery wise. The intercity train fleet have come on leaps and bounds in the past 5 years as before they were barely maintaining an aging fleet that were bought in the 80s by the looks of things and were a hidious orange and black colour skeem.

I'm looking forward to this trip with optimism as I'll be meeting up with family with a handful I would nearly consider pseudo-siblings.

I will try and keep the discipline of a regular account of the goings on even if I end up writting them up as word files and then uploading them en mass when I return to Dublin which I'm sure will not be an information over load at all :P It'll all depend on how reliable the 3g signal is on my phone down at the summer house. My parents use a 3G dongle from the same company and that seems to be working for them fine so in theory it should work but real life rarely works like that. For example they could have more powerful 3g modems in the dongles then Samsung as put in my Galaxy S2, which is entirely plausable....

Edit: the 3G signal seems fine in my room upstairs and I'm able to convert the phone to a portable hotspot for my laptop. Battery life shouldn't be a concern as I've a double socket in my room. I'll try and make posts when some eventful things happen or I'll meld a few (or more) days together in one post if not much is happening.

Dating and other stuff

So this past while I've been making an effort to get out of the rut that is the life on social welfare and get out and try new things/ socialise with my friends more aaaand probably spending alot more then I should in the process.

In terms of the online dating scene I've been semi active out of part boredom and part desire to expand my social circle and go out and meet up with girls I would never have considered meeting up with before. There was one girl who was quite cute, she was a month "off the boat" from Japan and when I sent out a message asking if she wanted to meet up she replied with "Hi, I'm new to the city and I don't know where to hand in a tax form" paraphrasing but that was the gist of it. I was thinking "a bit unusual but sure if we actually sit down for something to eat for a chat after", nothing really became of it like with most of these encounters but that was one of the more unique suggestion for an activity to do.

A more recent one (only last night) was an Irish girl, who is training to be a midwife and so has a very busy work schedule. So we meet up at a pub that I know does good food and beer. I was quite tired as I had significantly less sleep then I'm used to the night before, I don't think it was that detectable but maybe that in combination with the beer may have given the impression I was drunker/creepier then I was, or maybe this is my paranoia.... Anyway, I found myself doing a lot of the talking, not out of nerves but because my lady friend didn't seem to be that enthused about any subject much. I tried a lot of subjects and tactics and some of them would work and she'd be talking for a about 4-5 sentences but then would stop and didn't seem to ask me questions back much. This was weird, because we seemed to get along fine when sending messages on the site. Anyway it was what it was and I'm in no way ruling out meeting up again and hopefully that would go better or maybe she only does one date "trials" and if it kinna goes a bit flat (which it did, I'm sorry to say) then that's it she moves on to the next guy... if that's the case then I respect that and it's understandable. I've not given up looking just because I wouldn't mind another meeting with this girl, so at least I'm keeping my options open if she's not interested in meeting again.

Anyway on a totally unrelated note, tomorrow I'm off to my annual week long trip down to my parents summer house in Dingle, Co. Kerry. It's kind of a traditional family thing as a lot of my aunts and uncles on my dad's side will be down there and hopefully quite a few of my first cousins also as I would consider some of them almost like additional siblings. It's incredibly picturesque down there and there's a beach within a half mile walk from the house. It's quite large and although wouldn't be considered private, on a normal day you might only see a few locals walking their dogs and that's it. Of course on sunny days it tends to fill up with people on beach towels. A lot of my uncles/aunts/significant others of them/ cousins would be major golfers and there's a links course that's about a half mile in the other direction to the beach, this tends to fill up the mundane/ slightly cloudy days down there but on a nice day sometimes a road walk or a hike up one of the hills or mountains that surround the area. It's very remote down there, the night life consists of going around to one of the houses with the cousins for drink/ sing-a-long with the cousins (and I mean proper songs not camp-fire bull shit) or an occasional trip out to the village which is a mile or two away. It consists of a shop (used to be two, don't know if it re opened as I've not been down there in about 2 years) 3 pubs and one pub that became a hotel with new owners and a complete knock and re-build but still keeps the lower floor as a pub, a post office, a cafe and a primary school. You'd want to go to Dingle (we're about 6 kms away) if you want something more commercial with a DJ or jukebox. There's a ton of pubs there (some late-bars) and one nightclub. I'll have significantly less to spend then usual, as I'm not working and the return train ticket cost me 55 euro, so I think I'll limit myself to going over to one of the houses if there's something on on any given night.

I'll bring my camera and tripod in case just by some chance we get decent weather down there. Also the views from the top of the mountains can be quite beautiful if the weather breaks for a sec (which chances are it'll be fine if it's "walking weather").

Skeprechauns Podcast

Well last night I listened to their first episode of the podcast and I must say overall I am quite impressed. There were a few things I feel they could've done better but I put it down to their first podcast. They seemed a little disorganised at the start and seemed to look at each other as if to say "Right will we just press record and bite the bullet? and if we fuck up it'll be edited out" In some ways I commend them with just getting on with it but I would've at least liked them to take a 10 min discussion on how to do the opening ie: settle on the name (not sure if that was ment to be them kidding around) and more importantly  a quick  2-3 min intro from all the people in the studio, and weather they bring their professional opinion into it like the skeptics guide or if it's ordinary people discussing news topics. I was left wondering "wait, who is this guy?", "how many people are involved in this?" I feel it was important to at least determine the names and the number of people speaking. Anyway, they soldiered on and I actually find I quite entertaining if a little slower paced then other podcasts I listen to (for clarification this isn't a direct comparison with the skeptics guide, as that would be unfair, I mean in general as I listen to at least 4-5 in total).

I felt myself being drawn into the atmosphere, it was a homely "we're regular people who meet in the pub and we're gonna forget the mics are here" atmosphere. This adds to the uniqueness to the podcast and I suppose would help the speakers get over their nerves but I feel they shouldn't completely forget that this is a podcast and to explain things that mightn't be 100% apparent to the listener. Like say something like "I'm reading off this guys website and he says X" or "this was in an article in Y newspaper and I've printed it off and highlighted it". There seemed to be a tad of "I was reading this guys website x.com and you guys all know it" *cue agreement from the other panelists* and then they go on and read the lasted post from it without explaining the general feel or genre the website falls in. Now to be fair they may indeed have imparted the needed information to the listener but this is the lasting impression I have from listening to it last night.

I have yet to listen to episode 2 and I have no doubt these niggles will eventually be ironed out. As I said, overall this has given me a good impression and I am willing to put the small niggles down to it being the first episode.

My Thoughts on the 7 Candidates in the upcoming Irish Presidential Election

Mary Davis (Independent)

She came out of the gates strong and as a well rounded candidate in the first televised debate on RTE's Late Late Show. She's an Irish social entrepreneur and long-term campaigner for the rights and inclusion of children and adults with intellectual disabilities. She's currently the Managing Director of Special Olympics Europe and is the Chairperson for Special Olympics Ireland. She's certainly a strong contender but has been hit in the polls of late, possibly the fact that she'd be the 3rd Mary to hold the post in a row if elected. I'm not really that taken with her to be honest she creates a non reaction from me. Maybe my number 3 or 4.

Sean Gallagher (Independent)

His background is as an entrepreneur and seems to have a strong agricultural background from what I've gathered watching his televised debates. He's most famous for appearing on RTE's stab at Dragon's Den. He's well spoken and certainly knows how to make a pitch and a persuasive argument (this coming from his business background). He vows to use this "gift of the gab" to sell Ireland and the unique Irish skills to foreign investors and potential trade partners, what the president can do is quite limited but I believe he has the drive to succeed despite these constraints. He's in my top two potentials. And is overtaken Micheal D (longstanding poll leader) in the latest poll.

Michael D. Higgins (Labour Party)

A renowned supporter of the Irish Language, Heritage and Culture, he has a long and decorated political career behind him. He also has friends in high places as apparently much respected Hollywood actor Martin Sheen signed his nomination papers and described him as a "dear friend". He also helped secure the nomination of rival David Norris by urging Dublin City Council not to block his last ditch efforts to secure nomination. I have no doubts in his ability but considering his age of 70 I'm wondering considering the constraints on the position of President, would he think of it as retirement?. Possibly a 3rd or 4th choice.

David Norris (Independent)

A noted intellect having been elected a Foundation Scholar in English Literature and Language in this prestigious Trinity College Dublin. He is also the first openly gay Irish politician and currently holds a place in the Irish Senate. He is also a noted defender of human rights and minorities. His campaign initially got off to a fine start, even receiving an endorsement from the wonderful Stephen Fry. But after word spread about him using Irish Senate headed paper to provide a character reference for a trial in which a man was convicted of abusing an underage boy in 1992 many of his campaign team resigned and his nomination looked hopeless. There was a mass Facebook campaign and on street signatures urging him to re-enter the election. The final nationwide figure was apparently 10,000. He secured a nomination, due in part by the steps made by rival Micheal D. He's in my top two with Sean Gallagher as I respect his track record on human rights and the arts. Also I think having an openly gay president would reflect well on Ireland internationally and an Intellectual one at that.

Martin McGuinness (Sinn Fein)

A former leader of the Provisional IRA and a current MP in Northern Ireland and the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. His genuine motives nobody's sure of really. He's said if elected he will take the average industrial wage of 30,000 a year but what he hasn't said is that Sinn Fein will take his full Presidential wage from the Government and then only give him 30,000 of it as per his wishes. He's also said in the past that he didn't recognise our court system so I donno why he is now changing his heart and recognising our country when he wants to be President of it. I'll be giving him a 6.

Gay Mitchell (Fine Gael)

A current MEP or Member of the European Parliament. He's another one with a long and quite decorated political career. He seems to be well capable at European level and I have to say I've voted him in there in the past. But in the string of televised presidential debates he's developed the nickname of "Grey" Mitchell both referring to his hair colour and the monotone and lack of substance of his delivery. He's of late resorted to a mud slinging match with Martin McGuinness. I'll be giving him a 5.

Dana Rosemary Scallon (Independent)

A former MEP and Eurovision Song Contest winner. Ah yes Dana, a Catholic Conservative and this would normally be enough to automatically give the person a number 7, but Dana is a special case. She's softly spoken and gives off the impression a frail woman could push her over. She's based her entire campaign on protecting the Irish Constitution from being wiped out by an EU one. While I agree I don't necessarily want to abolish our constitution it's BADLY in need of reform and should be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, the references to the Roman Catholic faith are abundant and that's not surprising considering it was written under the watchful eye of a clergyman in the 1930s. She has also apparently being quoted as wanting God to be put in the EU constitution and that she doesn't see how this would offend people. She nearly broke down when asked about the recent legislation that wouldn't exclude priests (it wouldn't exclude anybody in general, but members of the RCC think it's a personal attack on priests, it also applies to doctors, nurses etc) from mandatory reporting if they find evidence of child sex abuse. She emotionally proclaimed "why me? why not ask any of the other candidates? I'm not the voice of the Roman Catholic Church" live on tv, in one of the televised debates, as if she was being punished.

Well those are my thought as of yet on the candidates. I'm off to waste time on youtube or to watch a movie on my laptop.

 (Image Credits: Wikipedia, The Irish Independent)