Strange being back in Dublin for the first time in more than a year. Though it's not actually that long, it has been my longest stint without being back home and it was a shock to the senses to feel just how cold it was. Of course complaining about sub 10 degrees weather just makes those I'm talking to scrunch their faces in a "what the f*** are you talking about" manner. The skin is peeling off the soles of my feet as I'm getting used to being back in shoes full time, and the faintest tan that I was cherishing on my toes will soon have vanished to be replaced by my usual year round pasty white. I'm dreading having to contact recruitment agencies over the next couple of weeks, trying to negotiate an interview for a job in London. As well as meeting up with family and the few remaining friends in Dublin, I've already watched the Royal Family Christmas special, dodged crowds of rowdy students on their way to Funderland, glimpsed rain-drenched Christmas lights through car windows and been abandoned by public transport in the freezing cold. Just like I never left.

I remember the Smithfield Horse show with less than fondness. Once a month we'd be woken on Sunday mornings to the noise of hundreds of horses out in the square below our apartment. And then all the crap (literally) left over after they went. I really liked living there but it was always such a crazy situation to have this in the middle of a huge apartment complex and two hotels. So it was a little embarrassing to hear about the recent shooting there during the Horse market and not the kind of thing I want to show my wife to persuade her to visit her old home again. As is fitting for a classy newspaper like the Dail Mail, they labelled it a "Big fat gypsy shoot-out". It was of course on the local news. I think I'll skip mentioning it to the guys at work.

Seeing how there's a tenuous Aussie connection, I just have to mention this story from last week where a wallaby of all things was taken out at a disco party in a hotel in Dublin last week and died as a result of ingesting ecstacy and alcohol. Obviously the deep, deep recession hasn't knocked any sense into some people back there.

Seems we might just catch our flight tomorrow. Planes are now taking off and landing regularly and today's version of our flight took off (8 hours late though). And Etihad were nice enough to publish a full page ad in the newspaper apologising for the situation..

This is pretty bizarre now. Almost all flights out of Europe have been cancelled. And as each day passes, the next days flights get cancelled. We only just managed to get through to our airline yesterday. We'd already re-booked (i.e. bought new) tickets twice. First to Saturday night, and when that was cancelled I followed the airline's website instructions to book again; the earliest we could get was next Thursday! With frustration growing and no word from the airline on how we were going to get refunds for our cancelled flights we went out to the airport yesterday just to try and talk to someone. The airport was mostly deserted, bar a long snaking line around ticket desks for Aer Lingus and Ryanair. The food court upstairs was deserted except for stranded passengers asleep on couches and overpriced sandwiches and snacks going bad on the shelves. When we found the desk for our airline the guy we talked to wasn't even from the airline - he was the public face for a number of them - and offered little sympathy. Instead he told us that we shouldn't have re-booked our flights, that we should have come to the airport or called the airline because now we've multiple different tickets instead of one booking that could be re-scheduled. This made my blood boil, not least because the website suggested just re-booking the ticket there, and trying to call the airline only left us on hold for 20 minutes before disconnecting. But mostly because had we waited to go to the airport before trying to get a ticket, all the flights would've been sold out and we'd have never got a seat! And they keep saying on the news not to go to the airport! Thankfully, we got a call from the airline yesterday and they agreed to clean up our little ticketing mess and confirm our booking out of here on Thursday. But is that too early? Every few hours they seem to extend the flight ban and they're already talking about all of next week being cancelled. What to do then?

What are the chances that a volcano would erupt grounding most flights through Europe one day before I'm due to fly back to Sydney? Higher than I thought it seems. Everything had been going *grand* since we came back the other week. The sun came out for the first time this year in Ireland, we did our whole getting-married thing for the last time, I passed!! my driving test just yesterday, and I'm even an uncle again (and one month early!). Alas, but now it looks like we're stuck here indefinitely. The airport is closed until at least tomorrow morning, so even if it opens then all the people who've had their flights cancelled today will have to get flights first and we might not even get a flight tomorrow. Not to mention any connection from Abu Dabi. Of course not a peep out of the airline beyond the usual automated message on the phone. I'm told the last time this volcano erupted it was over 100 years ago, before flight, and that it kept erupting for a couple of months. I really don't want to take a boat back to Australia.

Through a lot of hassle it looks like I may just be finally able to do my driving test and, fingers crossed, finally get my license (only 10 years overdue!) Having a car in Australia is pretty much essential for getting around the city, never mind actually seeing any of the country outside of Sydney. I thought when I arrived I'd be able to do a test immediately but it turns out you need 120 hours practice in a car with a fully licensed driver next to you. I have no car, or car parking space, or fully licensed driver who's going to sit with me for 120 hours. This has been a huge pain the backside for me. We're heading back to Ireland tomorrow for the last leg of our matrimonial duties, and I've had it in mind for ages to try and arrange to do my test while I was back. Considering there's a waiting list of at least a month, and that my old license had expired, and that (technically) you have to be a resident in the country to get a license, this was going to be quite a feat. After checking all the details on line, I tried to apply for a new license (having to post passport photos and the application back home so that someone from my family could post it locally) only to find out that I needed proof that I'd already applied for a test before I could renew it. So I tried to apply online for the test itself only to find that I needed to have a valid license already to apply online. Feckin' typical kafkaesque bureaucracy.. I was just about to give up completely when, after emailing the transport agency they told me to enter my first and middle name in the box reserved for my first name and, voila, it worked. And just the other day I received a mail saying I'd been given an appointment for my test for a day while I'll actually be in the country! What are the chances of that! Hopefully less than the chances of passing the test...

Flicking through the channels tonight I was surprised when I stopped at the state broadcaster, ABC, and heard a slightly familiar Irish accent doing some sort of narration. Turns out it was none other than McWilliams himself Seems to be a joint production with Aussie and Irish tv but I wonder what the locals here would make of all the Dublin centric commentary. Not that it matters since they're all watching Australian Idol. ABC program link

Continuing my perverse interest in subway ideas for Dublin (well, metros and undergrounds are pretty cool anyway), this presentation was released recently showing the most recent CGI rendering of a Dublin metro. Nicer link to the agency's full presentation video on their website here The bare minimum concrete walls of all the stations aren't exactly inspiring but at least they seem to have decided to finally build the thing, amazing despite the recession. I would have thought a valuable and permanent piece of infrastructure desperately needed by the city would be the first thing to get axed by the not so far seeing politicians.

Interesting reference to a gallery of Irish Handball alleys from architecture (and generally interesting site) Pruned.com. I remember seeing a few of these in rural towns but it never occurred to me to think of them as: "a Brutalist void-sculpture commemorating the lost generation and a nostalgic reminder of a mythic happier time before the diaspora." link

Back a few days now, and while I wouldn't quite say its been roasting hot, I'm embarassed to say I've come all the way from Sydney and got sunburned in a usually raining and miserable Dublin. Listening to everyone these past couple of days in shock and awe at the run of sunny days just confirms how absolutely starved of sunshine people are. I did my godfatherly duties for the Christening on Sunday and got to try and figure out the controls to my new camera - yaaay new camera! It weights a tonne and makes a loud ka-chung! sound when you take a photo, but its fun to just hold your finger down on the button and take 10 photos at once, or zoom up close and take a snap of someones nostril hair. Went into Dublin city centre to see if much had changed and whether the recession has really shown itself. True some places were filthy and boarded up, but you could put that down to the bank holiday weekend as much as anything. There's a new bridge, some fancy new buildings in the docklands, a half built new football stadium and still a few other cranes on the skyline. Smithfield and the area around my old apartment was looking a little run down though, despite the fancy new arty cinema. There was certainly no feeling of getting used to the country again, or a sense of reverse-culture shock. Actually it feels like I was here just a few weeks ago. But I'll be out of here again in less than a week.

Man alive that was a long flight... Due to fly out from Sydney at 6.45pm, I was naively confident of actually falling asleep on the plane. That idea was trashed when I saw on the airport tv screens that my flight would be making an extra - scheduled - stop, even though nothing was said on my reservation or ticket. Now I'd have to get off the plane in the middle of the night and there would be no chance of sleep. I tried to complain about this to the security people while I was being swabbed for explosives, but they said it happens quite often and people landing in Sydney always complain to them first. Great. For the next 16 hours I was squeezed in at the window next to an Indian couple who annoyingly fell asleep as soon as we took off and whom I had to wake anytime I wanted to stand up. 9 Hours into the flight we landed in Bangkok, but instead of getting out we had to stay onboard while a whole load of Thai cleaners got on through the rear door and started vacuuming around our feet and cleaning up the rubbish - there was soo much rubbish. We landed in Dubai 6 hours later; 6am outside the window and 40 degrees. Took off an hour and a half later on a fancy new A380 double-decker, but its kind of hard to notice its anything special when you can't see the stairs upstairs. Still, Emirates airlines has nice big tv screens with a bazillion movies to watch. I watched the first 10 minutes of a load of them and tried to sleep. Landed in Heathrow 7 hours later, not sure of the time or whether I should be eating breakfast or dinner. Had a panini and a crap coffee in a Nero's cafe - I think they must quarantine panini in Sydney Border Security for some reason as it was the first one I'd seen in a year and a half. A few hours later I was on a plane again, this time to Dublin, half empty because of the recession and the football on tv.. landed in Ireland only 30 hours after I took off. I am not stepping back on a plane again without pills! Now that that's off my chest, its nice to be back :)

Finally going back to Dublin for a couple of weeks tonight. Its been over a year and, apart from anything else, I'm curious to see just how much the place has changed given the crash. I'm not curious to find out just how sore the 16 hours + 7 hours flights will be. I checked in yesterday online, immediately after I was notified that it was open, and already all the exit row seats had been chosen! How does that happen? Memories of a bad Qantas flight coming out here have me crossing my fingers for a good seat tonight.

Seems like I'm referencing the NYTimes a lot recently but.. Pretty surprised to find my old neighbourhood featuring in their travel section. Smithfield was a real handy place to live for a while - by Dublin standards the apartment was great, nice supermarket downstairs, a tram stop and a ten minute walk to the city centre. Add to that a 10 minute walk to work and it was pretty sweet. However, the whole place was supposed to become a big cultural centre and tourist draw, but it just never materialised. Apart from those living in the apartments heading off to work the whole area always felt very empty. Lots of scangers at night time, the strange sight of the Traveller's monthly horse market, far too many empty shop and office units on street level; I knew the place was going nowhere after a dodgy Paddy Power opened. Still, the NYTimes seems more optimistic about the area, despite the recession.. link

Another New York Times article (this time by Paul feckin Krugman of all people!) detailing the miserable state of the Irish economy. Straight from the beginning it's bleak: “What,” asked my interlocutor, “is the worst-case outlook for the world economy?” It wasn’t until the next day that I came up with the right answer: America could turn Irish. Ouch. Cue all the replies in Irish newspapers complaining about the unfair picture foreign governments and journalists are giving about Ireland.. via NY Times

Another article in an international newspaper popped up featuring Ireland's economic woes the other day - this time in the LA Times. They nicely fitted it in with the delay/cancellation of the U2 tower in Dublin (design below). I guess it was a fitting symbol of the hubris of the past few years.. From the same source mentioning the LA Times article, someone suggested googling "next iceland". Of course Ireland showed up in the top results many times.

Surprised to see this video on Aussie tv yesterday. I guess the content kind of applies to Sydney as well as Dublin. Minus the miserable waiting for buses in the rain thing. And the "Luas". I guess with the recession there's not much chance of an improvement in things..

Anytime I read the paper from back home its more doom and gloom - how many more ,000 people have lost their jobs. Ireland's economy is being compared to that of Iceland, who's economic and banking collapse could have happened back home if it weren't for the Euro. Even Japan is shedding thousands of jobs from big brand companies like Sony and Toyota and the economy is as bad as anywhere. So I guess I should feel extra thankful at this stage to be working at all. Just a couple of months ago I was facing no extension of my visa and the prospect of job hunting anywhere else would now seem to be impossible. Australia is facing ,000 of job losses and recession. And with so many Australians abroad returning home from the UK and other countries whose economies are in trouble, it's almost a miracle I have a job at all! So it's probably time to temper my complaints about a long commute and less than inspiring work with the thought that I'm not thinking about paying for a mortgage when I've just lost my job.

Even the New York Times has noticed the burst bubble of the Irish economy, and in their lengthy article they've even noticed the whole pajama thing.. "..Social workers in Moyross refer to the “pajama index”: the more men and women one sees who do not take the time and care to dress for the day, the worse the economic situation tends to be." Alas, the pajama thing was never just confined to Moyross. link

Guess I`ve been kind of kept busy on the run up to Chirstmas searching for an apartment (man what a pain that was) and busy busy at shitty shitty work. So this past month I`ve been trying to help my new flatmate settle in..to school and to Ireland. If the former had been nicer, the latter would have been much easier. As it is though, the school has been crap about a lot of stuff..wrong or no info on Visa`s and bank accounts. No organisation whatsoever. I knew beforehand that our lack of robotic toilets and functional public transport would put a dampner on things, but the weather has been fairly shit too and it feels like I`m fighting a losing battle trying to give a good impression about this place. So I really hope Spring comes soon, that the sun decides to show itself, and maybe I can find something about this town I can show off.