Inside every older person is a younger person — wondering what
the hell happened.
>> >-Cora Harvey Armstrong-
>>
>> >Inside me lives a skinny woman crying to get out. But I can
>>usually shut
>> >her up with cookies.
>> >(Unknown)
>> >
>
>> >The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.
>> >-Helen Hayes (at 73)-
>> >
>>> >I refuse to think of them as chin hairs. I think of them as
>>>stray eyebrows.
>> >
>> >-Janette Barber-
>> >
>
>> >Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse.
>> >-Lily Tomlin-
>> >
>
>> >My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first one being
>>– hitting
>> >my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.
>> >-Erma Bombeck-
>
>> >
>> >Old age ain’t no place for sissies.
>> >-Bette Davis-
>> >
>
>> >A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. A woman must do what he
>>can’t.
>> >
>> >-Rhonda Hansome-
>
>> >
>> >The phrase “working mother” is redundant.
>> >-Jane Sellman-
>> >
>
>> >Every time I close the door on reality, it comes in throu gh the
>>windows.
>> >
>> >-Jennifer Unlimited-
>> >
>
>> >Whatever women must do they must do twice as well as men to be
>>thought half
>> >a s good. Luckily, this is not difficult.
>> >-Charlotte Whitton-
>> >
>
>> >Thirty-five is when you finally get your head together and your
>>body starts
>> >falling apart.
>> >-Caryn Leschen-
>> >
>
>> >I try to take one day at a time — but sometimes several days
>>attack me
>>at
>> >once.
>> >-Jennifer Unlimited-
>> >
>> >If you can’t be a good example — then you’ll just have to be a
>>horrible
>> >warning.
>> >-Catherine-
>> >
>> >I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m
>>not dumb
>> >– and I’m also not blonde.
>> >-Dolly Parton-
>> >
>> >If high heels were so wonderful, men would still be wearing them.
>> >-Sue Grafton-
>> >
>> >I’m not going to vacuum ’til Sears makes one you can ride on.
>> >-Roseanne Barr-
>> >
>> >When women are depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men
>>invade another
>> >country.
>> >-Elayne Boosler-
>
>> >Behind every successful man is a surprised woman.
>> >-Maryon Pearson-
>> >
>> >In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want
>>anything
>>done,
>> >ask a woman.
>> >-Margaret Thatcher-
>> >
>> >I have yet to hear a man ask for advic e on how to combine
>>marriage and a career.
>> >-Gloria Steinem-
>
>> >I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man, I keep
>>his house.
>> >-Zsa Zsa Gabor-
>> >
>> >Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission.
>> >-Eleanor Roosevelt-

This is so ridiculous it’s funny. It discusses the Irish prime Minister’s costly make-up services which he regularly avails of. Read here.

God bless the lovely little first years. Oh God, how lovely they are. Even though it`s starting to get hot, and the entire staff is supposedly indisposed with mid-may depression (don`t know how they can specify months to be depressed in Japan-if i were an actual teacher in japan I`d have the blues every month of the year) anyway…my little first years are lovely. Truely.
They`re so full of energy and bless their cottom-mix socks they get so excited when Aine pops in for her weekly class with them. You gotta love a bit of hero worship, it wears off far too soon. The giddier they get, the giddier I get and before you know it, it`s a competition to see who can act the bigger goat. My team teachers hate me for it, but feck them! A girl has to get her energy from somewhere.
We were learning “nice to meet you” today.
Teacher was drilling (a hole in their hearts to be soon filled with an undeniable hatred of the english language) “nice”. Repeat after me, “nice”.
Next thing you know there`s a yelp.
“AHHHH sensei, nice body!”.
Funny.
a 4 foot high, 6 year old cleverly disguised in the body of a 12 year old, proclaiming to a teacher who`d surely win the ultimate prize in the coveted biggest head-to- small body ratio and for a bonus trophy, greenest teeth competition.
He looked around bewildered.
What on earth was the foreinger laughing at?
“What does it mean miss?”

Teacher wasn`t amused. Some issues there perhaps.
She told him.
He cowered.
His classmates got a good 2-minutes pointing and gaffawing before the teacher`s screams to “shut-up” became too great to ignore.
Poor lad.

I met him in the coridoor at lunch time and said to him, “nice body”.
He pleaded.
“Ah Teacher, PLEAAAAASSSSEEEEE forget that i ever said it, PLEASEEEEE!”

(I just realised that i`m not sure I can get away with retelling the story without looking like a fabuluosly dirty paedophile. )

I`ll risk it.

So busy was I celebrating good old Rogation Sunday that I completely forgot to prepare an entry. Still though, it`s a grand excuse isn`t it, this feast of all feasts. The wonder of it.
The whole idea of it being the start of the three day countdown to the Ascension, makes me dizzy with excitement. Thursdsay! Well there`s no knowing how gleefully I`ll spend that day, the joy of knowing that jesus has finally made it home, to see his Pops. People dancing in the streets, fairy lights everywhere, illuminated giant plastic Saint Peter`s with plastic pen in hand to stroke off Jesus` name as “arrived”, people dressed in angels, bobbing through the streets.
I`m marking in a rogation day for August. In the same manner,`twill be the countdown to aine`s return home, to the isle of Saints.
There`d better be a good long mass that day, and no dodgey chalice work PURREEEEZE!

Went heavy on the sauce last night. I had no plans, so my neighbour’s solution was to have a few. Don’t know what it is , but we were both feeling good and fed-up. Strange to feel like that on pay-day but there you go. I haven’t been drunk in a good while, can’t actually remember when…think it was the new teachers welcome party which was the second week of April. Goodness Aine, letting the side down a bit there.
Oh Lord was I feeling the pain this morning.
seriously.
Came to the conclusion though, that it’s just not worth it anymore, this whole drinking melarky.
What on earth is the point to it really? Last night was so void of a point. Needless, stupid drinking.
The weather was forecasted to be rainy, but alas no, twas a beautiful day, the kind of day picnics were made for. I was so mad with myself, for wasting this day because my head was planted in my arse, or at least it felt as though it was.
Decided to go for a swim. Saturday afternoon. Children, fucking children everywhere and the wonderful bonus of being the only westerner there, as per, ( usually i ignore the gapping but today i was not in the mood to have have my every move scrutinised.
“Have a good olde gawk for yourself now Sir. Yes, I am a white woman, and Christ, could they be round eyes in my head? Good Lord! And look at that, a foreigner swimming…I thought foreginers were all too busy training to be terrorists to learn a sport.)
Lordy, the noise.Why must they be so noisy, these children? Isn’t it enough that they’re bounding off the balls, without the sound effects?

It made me wonder though, how parents become alcoholics. Aren’t children annoying enough on a good day with a decent night’s kip nevermind, on a torturous morning after the night before, when you feel like you’ve just licked piss off a nettle and there they are your wee kiddies, screaming and yelping, fifty times louder than any decently loud American you know.
if you wanna be able to wallow in a good honnest hangover, then don’t bother with children.

What do I get for my pa-eeeee-aaaaaaa-e-ain, as a hungover father-of-twenty-three Billy Corgan once beseeched .
Nothing Billy. Not a solid thing.
just an even bigger headache.

Feeling the sun on a sunny day alone; Standing, warm in the breeze, alone; thinking to yourself of the glory of the day, a thought which is never said aloud because there is no one is your company to acknowledge it. Is it the sun which makes the absence even more apparent, its illuminations highlight the empty shadows, rays soaking the vacuity? Or is it your mind?
It’s often said that you think too much about feeling lonely. If you’re thinking about feeling lonely, surely that means that you have thinking time, because you’re alone. If you weren’t alone you’d perhaps have something else to ponder. With all this thinking time, there’s plenty of room for maneuver. You start by considering the unplanned day before you. You wonder how this day will unfold. The sunshine opens up a whole wealth of possibilities. What all could you do on this fine day? What kind of a day would it be had someone wished to share it with you? That you’ll never know because in this abyss you can’t see that you didn’t ask for this day to be shared. You sat and waited, waited to be rescued from the isolation, hanging off a cliff but refusing to give your hand to be pulled to safety. Why do you do this? Fall into this languid trap? Or are you choosing to jump into this black hole? You don’t think you are, but in truth you don’t know.
Is there something toxic that others immediately sense, something glaringly wrong? You fear there might be, but you don’t know what. It used to be enough to just be you, but now that’s not so. Each time you take that step into peopled circles, you forget to be careful, neglect to watch for what it is that makes you seem sour to those who hazard a taste. Then when you return to your den, to the nothingness, the nothingness which extends long and wide, you’re left to wonder why nothing changed as a result of your voyage, in this nothingness; why no one wants to see more of the you. You’ve gone stale perhaps, from all this thinking, and it’s taking you over. It spills over a little when you finally find ears that will listen, albeit momentarily. It has to stop though, because no one wants to hear it.
Is that it, is your loneliness making you lonelier?
You’re turning and turning in this isolated vacuum looking for a way out, the spinning and the dizziness it causes are inhibiting your view of the escape route.
Something has to change.
Someone has to change.
And that must be you.
You are your thoughts.

A lot has been happening these past few weeks. I applied to a ball of secondary schools in the greater Dublin area to take me on as a student teacher. Twenty-four sparkley lickey-arsey glowing letters accompanied by grand reference letters were flown off to the mother isle, each with a nice wee disclaimer at the end:
“( and if you like what you`ve just read and want to see me) I will go to Bangaldesh for 2 weeks to act Godly and selfless before returning to Japan where I presently reside. I am available for telephone interview from such-and-such a date”.
And would you believe it (?), I got feck all replies. Amongst the three who were prepared to participate in my game of hard-to-get, was Ardscoil Ris. Seeminly very decent folks there. Hurrah.
So, I`ll be deposited there, to go through that horrid transition from almost idyllic japanese classroom to it`s Irish counter, albeit less idyllic,part. They`re going to feed me to the first year boys whom I`ll be teaching french lightly diluted with Japanese, in a Leitrim accent.
And there in the afternoons twill be to the UCD campuses in D4 (that`s Dublin 4-Noice area of Dublin, loike) I`ll wander, perhaps by dort, loike. I don`t know why, but the whole idea of UCD isn`t going down well. I`m seeing Ralph Lauren jumpers, rugby idiots and manicure inspection officiers at every entrance.
Best foot forward, even if it isn`t snugly surrounded by UCD worthy footwear!

Loike.

The photos below are from Bangladesh. And believe me there`s plenty more where they came from. I took almost four hundred photos, and yet, feel like I could have taken more. There was so much to take in. So much.

I still haven`t decided what I think of the place. It wasn`t a holiday, by any means. I will say though that it was a tremenduous experience, a kind I don`t know if I`ll see again such was it`s purity. I think for those in the group whose first trip it was to Asia it was shocking. I was shocked and I felt that I was somewhat prepared having frollicked a bit through Asia already. The capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka, made Bangkok seem western, developed and almost Singaporian. We stayed in the wealthy area. Apparently. The area where all the embassies are (by the way, what is it about embassies always being in the nice areas? must think some more about that). It was stark to say the least.
The peering of the muslim men at our bare forearms and nude ankles was disconcerting. Us ladies decided to keep count of the number of women we saw during our day there-we counted ten. Ten.
If you consider Dhaka to have a population of over 12 million people, and everywhere we went there were faces, that`s a poor ratio. I think it was a shock to me because I hadn`t been to a muslim country before. I like my liberties. I dislike the idea that a man in bygone times decided that women were lesser. That`s true not just for Islam but good old Catholicism too, albeit to a lesser extent. Naturally the men in the group didn`t have this to think about. I was followed by someone on my way to a restaurant to meet the others. I arrived frazzled, and frightened. It was the men of the group I met. Their reaction made me realise that men will never know the extent of fear a woman knows. The threat of violation, the perpetual idea that physically we aren`t designed to equal men. They will never know the shivvers a certain look from a stranger can send through your being, the look which funnels thoughts that you don`t want to acknowledge. You feel like meat, a slap of bacon. Eyes roave and size. No matter how much you try to, you can`t stop it. It`s only a look after all. But it`s too much. That shook me.

I imagine that Bangleadesh is how many of the now-popular South-east asian hotspots were twenty years ago. It was raw. It was undiluated with tour companies, western bars, and overly-tanned Swedes in bikini tops. There was no denying the desperation of this place as it struggled to stand. I almost had to argue with a clerk in the dutyfree to have my change returned to me.
I had a conversaiotn with one of the ladies who works for Habitat, which is the NGO through which we volunteered. Being from Ireland usually renders two reactions, “OH! Irish drink a lot and My Granny once owned an Irish Greyhound” or, as was the case in the Bang ” huh? Where`s that?” followed by a lenthy pause as they attempt to decipher if it`s a wealthy country or not. To this lady I explained Ireland. She deducted that I was rich. Because you`re either poor and can barely afford a home or you have cash to burn, no inbetweens. I am so very lucky compared to a most of the people who live in developing countries. However, as I explained to this lady, it`s not a case that I can buy everything I see. She was startled when she heard that we each saved for a certain number of months before we embarked on this trip, that each month you have to make choices, and sacrifices. We have money but it`s not without limits. I have little to complain about, but the idea that I`m a king, with a bucket of gold at his disposal, makes me uncomfortable. There were hard times in the Flynn household, many of them.
Having no money in a country where few have money is gruelling. I wonder though for those who live in wealthier nations and who struggle, is it harder, to have constant reminders of all that you don`t have?

Got sick too. For about three days. It took a chunk out of me. I wanted to go back to Japan and lie in my apartment far from it all. I felt frayed afterwards and not at my best. It`s hard when you feel underpar around people who don`t know you all that well. You`re trying to fit in, but the fatigue, the discomfort, and a certain lonliness of being surrounded by people but by no one who truely knows you, drag you down a little. People walk away. “She`s alright” they say to themselves… “just not my kind of person. ” Although, having taken the time to flick through a few olde diaries, I see that I often convince myself of this feeling. The power of the mind dum-dum-dum!

I would do it all over again. It was a fine team. The place where we worked was far and beyond the somewhat griping paws of internationalisation. It was five miles from the Indian border. The people we built the house for were of a hilltribe called Garo from which Japanese descended apparently. Their warmth was astounding. A Japanese friend was confused when I showed her the pictures. “But they look so happy?”
It was true. The children milling around, children with empty bellies and raggedy shorts, were bundles of energy. They were the kick in the arse that jumpstarts the notion there`s good to be found in all situations. You just have to look. And in the hills deep in the North of Bangladesh, they smiled.

Go on the Bang!

Go on, accuse me of neglect! Just say it. Three weeks, almost four in fact. If this blog were a child it`d surely be decomposing by now.
Thank God the blog is not an offspring. I`m even more grateful for the distinct lack of immaculate conceptions of late. It seems as though turning twenty-six has mellowed me none.

Flies…are everywhere. I see my mother in me every time I spy a door ajar.
“Would you not just close that door? There`ll be flies on the chicken. ” I will say though that there`s no roast chickens laid out on any of the desks here in the staff room, but that doesn`t disqualify how ridiculuously annoying the flies are.
Needless to say that they love me. Am I shit-like? I prefer not to think so, but I always remember an English teacher telling us in 2nd year of secondary school that the fly who now squats on your half-eaten apple was probably licking cow-dung moments earlier.
He remarked how flies like to land on humans and went on to equate us to shite. I refused to think of it like this. We are afterall the kings of the foodchain, how could you possibly correlate us to excretion?
I am not smelly and brown, and I most certainly have not come out of someone`s behind.
or…
actually I have.
You gorge be it on food or on another`s naked body. The result?

UUUUGGGGG!

You`re crap, you are.

All you can say is God love the poor folks who call this home.

from our steamboat Bill boat window.

It wouldn’t be my site, if there weren’t at least 27 photos of a sunset, and here it is, in all it’s Bangali glory!

How long before we catch this English disease?

Monday May 15th 2006

Last week saw two interesting examples of just how wretched a society England is becoming - and certainly offered a worrying vision of where we as a country are going if we’re not careful.

The first instance came with the airing on the BBC of a documentary by journalist Carole Malone called The Trouble With Young People.

And, following on from a recent Channel 4 exposé of what the head of Greater Manchester police referred to as “feral children”, the average viewer wouldn’t be blamed for locking their doors and never coming out again in case they were attacked and eaten by marauding bands of hoodie-wearing teenagers.

But behind the inevitable hype and hysteria of both programmes an obvious truth began to emerge: it’s not necessarily young people who are the problem - their parents and their schooling have failed them.

Malone looked on with increasingly theatrical horror as a succession of spoiled, stupid and thoroughly horrid children paraded past the camera. But with a few exceptions, it was impossible not to feel sympathy for the kids and loathing for the parents who had not only allowed their charges to become as stupid and vapid as they now are but who positively encouraged it.

The fact that the assembled parents seemed to veer between extremes of either neglect or indulgence was applauded by one psychologist, Bret Carr, who openly admitted that he believed ‘discipline’ was a bad word. He also thought that kids should never be punished because “the child will already feel shame for knowing that it has done wrong, and by punishing that child you are only reinforcing these unhealthy feelings of guilt and shame”.

I was reminded of this ridiculous notion late last week while reading the tragic story of one teenager who was before the Children’s Court for the third time. And for the third time, he was on his own.

His mother’s excuses ranged from the fact that she had her own court date to attend to on one occasion to the rather improbable argument that she was attending a parenting skills class which clashed with one of her son’s appearances.

Having covered the Children’s Court in the past, I know how routinely depressing the place can be, as generation after generation of neglected, confused and potentially dangerous apprentice criminals get an early taste of what awaits them later in life.

And in my experience, and the experience of professionals who work there full-time, there is one constant in most of the cases: appalling parents.

While we must all take responsibility for our actions from the age of majority onwards, it is infuriating to see so many dysfunctional parents refusing to accept any blame for the actions of their kids.

In fact, after filing a report on one particularly active young criminal, his mother rang me to gloat that she was going to sue for what I had written and that nobody had the right to judge her - he was her kid, she sneered, and she’d bring him up whatever way she wanted.

And you only have to walk down virtually any street in this country to see the same attitude, if not as extreme, being displayed every day.

The other instance is something which seems an absurd example of British political correctness but is something which could easily happen here if certain special-interest groups had their way.

Last week the nine Afghan men who hijacked a flight from Kabul and forced the crew to fly to Britain were granted asylum - because it wouldn’t be safe for them to return to Afghanistan.

It’s yet another example of the ridiculous Human Rights Act, which makes it virtually impossible to deport anyone in case they might face persecution in their country of origin regardless of what crimes they are guilty of here in the West.

The Afghan decision comes hot on the heels of the news that the main suspect in the shooting of PC Sharon Beshenivsky was a violent Somalian criminal who has already been through the prison system but couldn’t be deported because his life would be in danger if he was returned to his own country. This begs the obvious question: are we meant to care?

But Irish groups like Residents Against Racism care.

In fact, they care so much that they wouldn’t deport these people from Ireland.

According to Rosanna Flynn: “We believe criminals should be sentenced and given an appropriate sentence - we don’t think they should be deported.”

Last week was a bad one for Britain.

Let’s hope we’re smart and honest enough not to allow ourselves to end up in the same mess.

© Irish Independent