SkyTV for the Masses

Hustling boxes at the warehouse has me off of the job market for the next few months, but the gig has put a dent in my store of Ireland anecdotes. Luckily there have been a few developments outside of jobs and the job-hunt theme: we have found a way to do some volunteer work and some hill walking (i.e., hiking).

As you may remember from earlier entries, our pre-Christmas efforts to volunteer in Cork were unsuccessful for the ironic reason that charities were so busy they didn't have time to train any new volunteers. Now that things have settled down for the winter doldrums, one outfit we were interested in––Society of St. Vincent de Paul (SVP)––is taking on new people. SVP works exclusively with the poor, and volunteers do home visits to try to figure out ways that the organization can help. Training is going well so far, it's a very good group of people. More on this to come.

Regarding hill walking, I stumbled upon the Cork Backpackers Club a few weeks ago. They do mountain excursions every two weeks, and the best part is the club organizes a car pool to get to the trail. This little detail has been the biggest hurdle for us, since Bus Éireann doesn't exactly have routes to the trail heads. I had a short to-do list for Ireland when this whole adventure started: (1) Find work; (2) Travel to the Continent a few times; (3) Hike the Irish countryside. With the help of the Backpackers Club maybe I can check off all of these.

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The Irish––and this might be hard to understand for Americans––are addicted to television (spoiler: that comment about Americans was sarcastic). The reaction we get from people when they find out that we don't have a television has almost become a source of entertainment for Katherine and me. "What?! No telly? How do ye get on?" is a common response. And it's not just TV that we're missing: anybody who's anybody has something called SkyTV, which is, I guess, an analog of DirecTV or Dish Network. It gives you a few hundred channels and also cooks rashers and chips for you while you watch Celebrity Big Brother. We are intensely lame for not having SkyTV. Even in some of the poorer sections of the city you see this:


In fact, one of our trainers at St. Vincent de Paul warned the group about the ubiquity of SkyTV––she told us to not be surprised when you do home visits to the impoverished and find that they have a nice telly with a satellite connection (again, a regrettable phenomenon that you also see in the U.S.).

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And to conclude, a couple of photos that Katherine has been bugging me to post:


Here you can see several examples of the Elderly Irish Man. Notice the obligatory uniform of tweed, khaki, and derby cap. Rarely are they seen in such a large group.

And here's a pic I forgot to post a couple of weeks back, in my entry about music (among other things). I took a covert shot of some of the trad musicians––trying too hard and too obviously to get a good photo would, of course, immediately have me labeled as a dumb tourist.