This entry does not mention the Oscars

Tap tap tap goes my sexy little keyboard. I never mentioned my new laptop. Not properly. I wrote my last entry on it and this one is courtesy of it too. I can write entries on my phone and post them but in all honesty, it’s painful. So I went out and bought a minuscule piece of Korean micro-engineering called the Samsung NC10.

It’s got a 10 inch screen, a big keyboard and the most outrageous battery since Chris Brown went to town on poor Rihanna; anything up to 8 hours. Plus it boots up in one minute flat, it has a ridiculously-clear screen and it makes our old Dell look like a piece of nostalgia, like an old VCR.

It comes from China, of course. Our old laptop was built in Ireland but now that’s all over. I wander around the city centre wondering what will ever become of us. One thing’s for sure; we’re trapped. No matter what happens with our jobs, no matter how much more tax we have to pay or cuts we endure, a mortgage is a sure-fire chain around the neck.

But then where the feck would one go in this world financial “clusterfuck to the poorhouse”, as The Daily Show describes it. Some saw Australia; others say “sure Oz is fucked too”. Some say Canada, others say “hmmmm…..Canada”. All I know is a friend of mine went to Calgary to “emigrate” and left after 10 months, having secured precisely zero employment and living off the sale of their house since leaving Ireland.

So let’s all sit tight, there’s pretty much nothing else to do.

In personal news, I went to a housewarming in the Cabra-ish area of Dublin on Saturday night. It was our friends Eimear and Joe’s housewarming, having fled the East Wall area after too many, y’know, shootings and stuff. Irish ODers might recall a man being shot by a kid in East Wall a few months ago; well that kid lived next to Eimear and Joe. So they broke their lease and their landlord was cool about it so they got their deposit back.

Anyway, housewarming was fun. First it was just us two, Aidan & Becky (other OD couple – although Eimear & Joe don’t know this nor do they know that Catherine and I met here for that matter) and Eimear & Joe. Eimear made a few crepes in honour of Pancake Tuesday – the only time Irish & Brits ever eat pancakes ever. That was fine and dandy til Becky made proper American pancakes. I had cooked some bacon beforehand as I’m strictly in the savoury pancake side of the ledger. A few slices of bacon, a dollop of maple syrup and twas damn tayshty. If I had the patience to make the damn things, I could get used to them.

Anyway, I wasn’t drinking that night. As a taxi to Ashbourne would’ve been pricey in this, the week before payday, I stayed sober by drinking some fairly self-explanatory Stella Artois 0.5%. I hope I got my maths right; I figured I could drink ten and it wouldn’t give me any more alcohol than one pint of proper Stella. Combine this with a 3-4 hour drinking period and plenty food for soakage and I reckon I was fine for driving. Catherine did us proud, polishing off a bottle of Oxford Landing, a bit of punch and some Cap’n Morgan’s, which makes her say “arghh!” a lot (even whilst sober).

I don’t encounter much racism in my daily life, both because a) I’m not from a minority and b) no-one I know is that racist. However one of the girls at the party, Sarah, took the bisqwit. She had a thing against “the Poles”. They’re rude, they’re lazy and they don’t make any effort with anyone. And they complain back home about their treatment in Ireland so much that there’s now bars in Poland with those infamous “no blacks, no dogs, no Irish” signs that once greeted us in New York. I was a little taken aback by that; there were never more than 100,000 Poles here at any one time and Poland is a country of 38m. So are you saying that the (admittedly uneven) treatment of around one quarter of 1% of the Polish population has provoked the widespread erection of anti-Irish signs across the 33rd most populated country on the planet? Or are you exaggerating, Sarah? Of course, I said nowt beyond “are you sure/are there really any Irish in Poland though?” as I was sober. If I wasn’t, I’d have pissed her off.

And to top it all of, Sarah is immune from racism. She has this immunity since childhood. It’s called “my Dad is black”. So that’s it then, how can a black girl be racist? End of. It’s a pity because the last time I met her, she tore into me over a misunderstanding and spent most of Saturday night apologising to me and I was genuinely interested when she spoke about her job (property management – I’m an easy audience). But she’s blissfully unaware of what she sounds like.

My “pleshently pished” wife and I then drove to Griffith Avenue to pick up my parents, who were at a retirement do. Not Dad’s, of course. That could be tomorrow if he were offered it but An Post valiantly refuse him that sweet release. Drove home, fell asleep and dreamt of writing this entry.

Oh, and I renewed my OD Plus subscription. For OD rocks. I’ll soon be 9 years here. Wow.