Work Abroad Expo at the RDS

Admission is ten bucks, that's pretty cheap for a ticket out of here.
 I give my money to the Avon Lady at the door, and she hands me a plastic bag filled with leaflets on cheap travel insurance and fake magazines about how great life is on the other side of the world.
I came for the seminars, and I'm late.
The chairs are all filled, the boat is full, and people line the edges of the room.
A Canadian woman with a clip-on microphone is very quickly explaining the process.
She's a government official, she knows what's up and is here to help.
It's a points system, she explains.

You get points for age.
Under 35, you get full points. After that, it all goes downhill.
-No kidding.
You get points for education.
-You had damn better. It's all I got.
You get points for skills, but only if they're on the list.
If you're a plumber, carpenter or electrician, welcome to Canada, come on in and make yourself at home.
Plasterer? Sorry, you're SOL, son.
You get points for fluency in English, and bonus points for French.
-I took German. Fuck. So long, Quebec.
You can buy your way in if you have eighty big ones.You're not allowed in if you, or your husband, or your kid has diabetes, or cancer, or anything else that's going to make you a burden on the government.
Be careful who you love.

A hand goes up.“What if you're over 55?”
It's the saddest question I have ever heard.
“You still might get in, if you can make the points up elsewhere,” she says.
I can only see the guy from the back. His hair is greying. His sweater is grey too, and worn. I hope he's a glazier. Canada is crying out for glaziers.
Another hand.“What is the minimum acceptable score on the English fluency test?”
“A seven across the board”.
The guy has a thick Indian accent. But he'll be okay. He just used the word
minimum.

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There are thirty minutes to kill between each show. I walk around and collect free pens. I enter raffles for things I don't want. I listen to a girl's long rehearsed spiel about why I need to spend half a grand on a TEFL course this weekend and how if I mention her nameI'll get a discount. Some of the stalls don't apply to me. There are a lot for healthcare workers. I want one of their pens, and I don't want to look like a scab, so I pretend to read one of their leaflets for a minute. A Filipino man and woman visiting the same stall give me a big smile and the guy says “Hi, nurse!” They're being nice to me just because they think I'm one of them. That blows me away, and for a second, I wish I was a nurse so I could chat about our respective hospitals and specialties, but I hate needles, so I just smile and walk away like the fraud I am, clutching my pen

_________________________


I check out a seminar on New Zealand. I've never really thought about going down under.Going to Australia means hanging out with a bunch of sunburnt and dehydrated Irish people in crappy Irish bars and getting really excited about GAA matches and Tayto crisps. You have to wear string tops and cargo shorts and slave away picking fruit or collecting glasses for six months just to save enough money to blow on one week in Thailand with the same sunburnt and dehydrated Irish people.But New Zealand could be Australia's cooler older cousin, you know, a graphic designer with a great apartment and an even better record collection who only drinks craft beer and plays the ukulele. The guy is selling it. NZ sounds awesome. Great weather, great schools, great healthcare,great tax rates, great
Quality of Life.
This is the phrase of the day.


But then he shows us a video. It looks like it cost a lot of money. There is an awful soundtrack that combines indigenous Kiwi music with upbeat drums. People are skydiving, and parasailing, and horse-riding, and surfing, and they're all smiling, there's lots of smiling. It's like any tourism commercial on TV, I guess. Except we're two minues in... four minutes in and still going.
Now people are walking on beaches at sunset, eating fresh fruit in fields, drinking wine in flattering lighting with attractive people, dancing at a nightclub. It's never going to end.I'm waiting for the images to morph into some kind of vortex that sucks us all into the screen and traps us in a New Zealand tourist video forever which might not be so bad 'cos we'll get to get drunk and go bungee jumping with tanned hotties, but now I'm laughing at this ridiculously long video which promises that life in New Zealand is one long adventure weekend and nobody ever has to go to the dentist or get divorced or live on cups of instant noodles for weeks on end, but I'm still the only one laughing, what is wrong
with these people?

You can walk your dog in New Zealand. You can join a rugby team in New Zealand. Your kid can jump on a trampoline in New Zealand. Your boyfriend can draw a heart on a sandy beach with a big stick in New Zealand. In slow motion.The video finally ends and I'm out of there.

_____________________



The place has filled up now. It was quieter this morning, only the people who had been considering making the move for a long time, who are committed enough to make the10.30am seminar. Now everyone else is here, the ones who have panicked, who are desperate.You go to one of these Work Abroad Expos, and you expect it to be full of kids. Kids looking for a gap year after finishing their Leaving Certs and before starting college, or after finishing college and before starting a Real Job. I did. I expected wrong. At least half the attendants are over forty. Some pushing sixty. Some with worried wives looking around, holding tightly onto lots of leaflets they've been handed. Lots with their kids in tow. Babies, in strollers, or toddlers -one hand in dad's hand, the other in a bag of Starmix. A young family sits on the bench next to me. Dad stares at the wall ahead. Baby wriggles around in stroller reaching its hands out for attention. Mom's on her phone to her sister or best friend or someone talking about how they were just talking to someone about some little town in Nova Scotia that's letting people in, and how the lady at the table said they have really good childcare and low crime rates. She's excited about their new life, or trying to be excited, it sounds more like, and all I can think is that it sounds like a shitty town with nothing to do, and how lonely she will be and how much she'll miss whoever she is on the phone to.

_____________________


I've always wanted to go. Before the recession, before college, I've wanted to go since I was 7 years old, and then I did go and I loved it so much I want to go again, for good. For me, the prospect has only ever filled me with excitement. These people don't want to go. You can tell. And it's fucking depressing.

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The longest queue is for a stall called Skill Shortage Solutions. This company helps you with your application when you don't meet the standard requirements. No degree? No trade? No English? No problem!  As far as the Department of Immigration is concerned, the lepers but this crowd offers free consultations. You fill out a form, and they call you in a week, and arrange fee payment to secure their services. I'm guessing there is no money back guarantee.

____________________

Last seminar of the day. An immigration lawyer, this guy is ridiculous. Shiny suit, hair that's way too maintained, a smile like a orthodontist's kid. He's just a car salesman with some letters after his name.The crowd pours out the door, people shoving to get nearer the front, women using their kids as strategic weapons.
“Excuuuuse me, can I get through?” -waving her sticky child in your face. I was never a fan of that 'women and children first' bullshit.

Everyone's staring at the guy on the pulpit, hanging on his every word.“Hands up who wants to go to Canada!! You, sir in the green shirt, why do you wanna go?”
Faceless man in the audience mumbles something.
“More opportunities, that's right! Lady in the third row, why do you want to go? Good place to raise your kids? Sure is! And you? Ah, better Quality of Life, that's what I'm talking about!”

Is this for real? Who IS this guy? And what's with this southern Baptist church pep rally bullshit? I feel like I'm at a Tony Robbins gig. More talk about points systems and provincial nominee options and free consultations and nominal fees. I look around, weigh up people's odds in my head. You, you, you, maybe you, definitely not you, you, maybe you. Eyeing competition. There's not much competition. Half these people are just lost.They lack the get up and go. They're not as desperate as their numbers would lead you to believe.

____________________

I swore I wouldn't make any tired, melodramatic, or downright insulting analogies to thefamine or coffin ships, and I won't, I swear.

_____________________


I took the number seven bus from Nassau street to get there. A Chinese girl got on after me, asked to go to Shelbourne street, and dropped her coins in the slot.
“Where?” The busdriver barked.
“Shelbourne street?” she repeated. Okay, her pronunciation wasn't perfect, but I was halfway down the bus and I could fucking understand her.

“Shebon Street? Never heard of it. How am I supposed to take you somewhere you don't even know the name of?”
Prick. He knows right well.
A girl behind her, South American, says “She said Shelbourne Street.”
“Is that what you said?” he barks again. The Chinese girl, kind of confused now just nodded.
“Then why didn't you say Shelbourne Street?”
Fucking prick.
“I'm sorry my pronunciation is not great...” She's embarrassed.
He just grunts. I kind of hope his kids have to emigrate and he never sees his grandkids again.