I felt very foolish this morning. Having some errands that have been waiting since early in the month, I set out on the first post-Christmas, post-Bank Holiday weekday that has come around in quite some time. Our kitchen is being overtaken by a rapidly growing pile of recyclables––I can no longer ignore the need to go to city hall and get some 'official' recycling bags––and I have some letters to mail. I felt foolish because, you see, I was assuming that places like the post office, city hall, and banks would be open. I probably should have known that today is the traditional, um, Holiday Following the Bank Holiday That Comes After Christmas; or, St. Jimmy's Day; or, The Feast of the Holy Virgin of Whitsuntide Boxing Day...whatever, the point is nothing is open and I walked through 33º-farenheit horizontal rain for nothing.
In the wake of this snafu I decided to do something useful, so I surfed Irish news sites. I have provided the highlights of this cyber-adventure below complete with pictures, saving you, the reader, the time of slogging through mundane and confusing headlines such as, "Rise in Number of Calls to Embassies," "Jurys Inns Expects Profits to Fall by 30%," and "Cheika Chops and Changes" (a piece about 'sport,' I think Gaelic Football or some similarly primitive game).
This could easily be an allegorical representation of Ireland in 2009. Unusual weather leaving Irish folks upside-down in a ditch of debt, unemployment, and losing their World Cup qualifying match to a bunch of cheaters (the French). But in fact, it is the picture being carried by the Irish Independent for their lead article on the recent foul weather. The country has been ravaged by an rare winter bout with––yes––below-freezing temperatures. Couple this with the country's average of two inches of precipitation per day, and you get slick roads and even snow. I don't know the exact number, but I think Ireland has around three plowing/salt-spreading trucks for the entire country.
The dearth of snow equipment helps explain the coverage from the Independent: "Freezing fog and ice left many roads in Co Cork and Co Kerry treacherous yesterday..." Wait...freezing fog?! What the hell is that? I've heard many mentions of this apocalyptic weather condition, and I hope to God I never see it. Sounds like something from a bad horror movie.
The reader of the Independent is also confronted with this image today. Without an explanatory article accompanying it (this is part of the "Best Images of 2009" slideshow), I am forced to rely on educated guesses as to what is going on. My more cultured readers will recognize that the vegetable (fungus?) on the velvety pillow is a massive truffle. The truffle is either standing trial or being auctioned. I think the latter, as the best way to judge a truffle's value is to test its texture on the nose and face, which is obviously what this woman is engaged in.
In entertainment news, Ireland is closely following the Christmas domestic disturbance story that saw Charlie Sheen (seen above in a recent photograph) spending the day in jail. The conflicting accounts of the fight between the Sheens are intriguing. Consider the discrepancies:
According to the Independent, Mrs. Sheen reported that Charlie "straddled her on a bed with one hand grasping her neck and the other holding the knife. She said Sheen told her: 'You better be in fear. If you tell anybody, I'll kill you.' He also told her 'Your mother's money means nothing, I have ex-police I can hire who know how to get the job done and they won't leave any trace,' according to the affidavit."
Wow, serious stuff. But there must be some misunderstanding, because "Charlie Sheen, who is listed in the affidavit as Carlos Irwin Estevez, told police....they had slapped each other on the arms and that he had snapped two pairs of her glasses in front of her." Oh, Carlos.
Who do you believe? I believe that it's a slow news day.
***
As you can probably gather from what I wrote at the beginning of the entry, the country is still in Christmas Holiday mode. The job search was especially dry today, as no new listings have been posted since before Christmas. Next week will give me a better sense of where things stands.
For now, a disturbing development is that Ireland's Training and Employment Authority, FÁS (an acronym standing for some Irish words), had nearly four hundred jobs listed for Counties Cork and Kerry about a month ago, and now there are under three hundred. Many of the listings in that dwindling total are essentially reserved for Irish nationals as part of an employment scheme, wherein jobs are open only to those who have been out of work for six months or more. Aye, the job databases are dry at the moment. Hopefully January brings a spike (and not the trough many are predicting)!
For now, a disturbing development is that Ireland's Training and Employment Authority, FÁS (an acronym standing for some Irish words), had nearly four hundred jobs listed for Counties Cork and Kerry about a month ago, and now there are under three hundred. Many of the listings in that dwindling total are essentially reserved for Irish nationals as part of an employment scheme, wherein jobs are open only to those who have been out of work for six months or more. Aye, the job databases are dry at the moment. Hopefully January brings a spike (and not the trough many are predicting)!
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