We lived in Ireland for about two years. While there, we had plenty of guests come and visit us. We usually met them at the airport and took a cab into town. The guests and Julie would pile into the back seat, and I’d sit up front with the driver. I’d chat with the driver about football or traffic or whatever.
On more than one occasion, our newly-arrived guests would be baffled by the conversation. They couldn’t understand a single thing the taxi driver was saying. They were inevitably from the north side of Dublin, and had a particularly thick accent. Having lived in the city for a year, our ears had become familiar with the accent, so we could usually have a conversation.
It’s about two kids from the north side of Dublin who run away from home.
Despite the fact that the kids are speaking English, the trailer is subtitled. And, amusingly, the (I assume) American distributor got a word in the trailer wrong. At about the 56-second mark, according to the subtitles, one of the leads says (in response to Stephen Rea, apparently channeling Bob Dylan) “we’re actually running away”. In truth, what she says is “we’re after running away”. ‘After’ here is used to indicate the immediate past, in place of, according to Wikipedia, the usual pluperfect usage.
The movie was released in Ireland about a year and a half ago. I suspect that the film’s distributors are hoping that this movie will be another Once. It’s interesting to compare the original Irish trailer to the North American one:
It feels a little more sinister, doesn’t it? A little rougher around the edges. You can also hear some other dialogue without subtitles.
I was also amused to see an open-air ice rink featured in the movie:
These synthetic ice rinks have popped up around Christmas time in Dublin over the last decade. When we lived in Dublin’s IFC neighbourhood, they laid one directly outside our apartment’s door. When we lived there, Ireland had zero ice arenas, so it was amusing to watch the kids try to figure out this new thing called ‘skating’, and on the less-forgiving fake ice as well.
Film-making is such a marathon. It must be a chore for the director and performers to return to promoting the movie more than two years after finishing it.
“If Enterprise Ireland was to make 200 or 300 grants available every year at €50,000 a pop for entrepreneurs to build an online product and go to market. For €50,000, you can get three or four guys in a room for three or four months and they will build a product and go to market. If we had 300 of these groups every year, you would create a digital ecosystem.
“In the US, groups like Y Combinator are funding businesses at low levels and, in Europe, The Founders Fund is doing this.
“There are venture capitalists in the US waiting to bet on young businesses. It’s remarkable this hasn’t happened in Ireland yet. We should be supporting our young right now, instead of scaring them to death.
“For €10m a year, you could have 200 companies a year and 5% of them could emerge as Ireland’s answer to Microsoft or Nokia,” says Collins.
I’d say ‘Microsoft or Nokia’ might be a bit optimistic, but I applaud the philosophy.
On an unrelated note, I’m not a fan of the way the Irish Independent uses links. Like a few other newspaper sites, they link certain keywords such as ‘TechCrunch’ or ‘Wall Street Journal’ not to the sites, but to ‘topic pages’ on the Independent’s site.
John recently wrote a post and made a video demonstrating a specialized power strip that can eliminate standby or ‘vampire power’. This refers to electricity consumed by appliances and electronics which are apparently off, but are actually in an energy-leeching sleep mode.
John is Irish, so bonus points for the (Waterford? Wexford? I can never remember) accent.
In 2006, John’s neighbours in the UK banned standby power, which allegedly accounts for 8% of all domestic usage. I went looking for similar news from Canada, but all I could dig up was this FAQ about toothless ‘standards’.
Here’s a chart that shows the worst culprits–plasma TVs, computers and game consoles.
Ever since I lived in Ireland, I’ve hung up my clothes to dry. In Dublin we had this ridiculous combination washer-dryer in one machine. The washing part worked okay, but the drying cycle only seemed to warm up my wet clothes. I’d have had better luck trying to dry them in the microwave.
I brought the habit back to Canada. Since a pre-teen growth spurt, I’ve also had a pathological fear of trousers and sleeves that are too short. Not using the dryer also means my clothes rarely shrink. Clothes dryers use a lot of power, so I get some bonus eco-smugness out of the deal.
However, we’ve always had crappy drying racks. They’ve been spindly, fragile affairs that are prone to finger-squeezing collapses. They’ve been awkward to set up, and so dainty that they can blow over in a stiff wind. Our drying rack in Malta ended up in the pool on more than one occasion.
I want a robust drying rack that will last a decade. It should be collapsible and ideally made of wood (though I’ll take plastic or aluminum).
Do you own such a rack? Where’d you get it? This is a long shot, but maybe somebody out there among you, my dear readers, has a drying rack that they love and can recommend
UPDATE – May, 2010: I was recently at a sustainability expo and spotted the drying rack I eventually purchased (it’s the Fold-away dryer on this page). It, among others, was being sold by Sundog Clothines Company. They may be able to fulfill your clothes drying needs.
My Irish friend Sarah recently wrote a post about a trip to the USA, and the stark difference between customer service in Ireland and stateside:
In Ireland, no matter what shop you go into, the main purpose of the assistants is to make clear that you needn’t think you are any better than them just because they are on the other side of the counter. Refusal to make eye contact, flinging change on the counter (or managing to put it in your hand without looking at you which takes considerable effort) grumpily announcing that all sizes are on display and consciously avoiding one’s attempt to attract attention.
The Irish folks in the comment thread unilaterally agree. All of my Irish friends would regularly complain about the service in Ireland. They sometimes found the service in North America a little ingenuine, but they preferred too much help to not enough.
There’s tangible evidence of this attitude implicit in the way Irish clerks greet you in many shops. They say “are you okay, there?” I never really knew what the correct answer to that question was. If I needed assistance, I think I was supposed to say “no”, as in “I’m not okay, I need your help finding hot pants”, or whatever.
The subtext of “are you okay, there?” is, of course, “do I actually have to deign to do my job and help you?”
I asked several Irish people why there’s such a lousy attitude in the service industry. Nobody gave me a satisfactory answer.
These are a bit old, but I just got around to uploading them. As I mentioned, Vancouver seaplane company Harbour Air has launched a new service, flying from Mgarr Harbour on Gozo to Valetta’s Grand Harbour on Malta.
When Julie and I were heading to Edinburgh and Vancouver respectively, we gave Harbour Air Malta a try. Julie took some great photos en route. This is my favourite:
This one is uninteresting, but I took it because I’d never seen fish farms on the Mediterranean before.
Lastly, Julie went with our Irish friends to a Irish-Scotland rugby game in Edinburgh. I quite like this photo of the game:
Our hotel is right next to the Royal Dublin Society, commonly known around these parts as the RDS. The RDS is pretty much like Vancouver’s PNE, or any large exhibition grounds. Yesterday we saw a sign advertising a Supreme Cat Show at the RDS, and had to pop by to watch the feline strangeness.
In truth, it was less strange than I hoped. I did manage to get a few photos (as always, click for larger versions).
These cats just shouldn’t be:
I like the alarmed look on this cat’s face (and the creepy-looking kid at right):
This isn’t a cat photo, but what do you suppose this woman has in her Coke bottle?
