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.

_________________________



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.

______________________



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.

edam emoh

I smiled when I saw this on PostSecret.com six days ago, and thought it was a pity I owned nothing with your handwriting to draw a comparison, and forgot about it. 

And just now, a week later, I was about to fall asleep and suddenly remembered I do have something with your handwriting, and got up from my bed and shuffled through a pile of CDs and found it. They look identical to me. A coincidence, I guess, but they really looked identical.

manic street preacher

 I was waiting to meet someone outside the Eaton Centre in the pouring rain, and there was this man. He was pacing through puddles in his barefeet and had some police crime scene tape wrapped around his head. He was yelling at a bunch of strangers in Dundas Square so my first impression of him was that he was crazy, a Jesus freak or a panhandler at least. The kind you usually avoid making eye contact with. But I did make eye contact with him, and then I couldn't look away.

"I got kicked out of my apartment last night...my landlord didn't pay the hydro... I didn't do anything wrong but I ended up getting kicked out into the street..in this freezing cold and rain, and i had to go to the poorhouse... I'm supposed to have too much dignity to admit that I spent a night at a poorhouse...people judged me, people saw me sitting on the street today and think i'm this or that but they don't know nothing about me...

"God loves you, jesus loves you...that doesn't mean nothing. Who cares if god loves you or not? It's not important. I LOVE YOU. that's what matters...I LOVE YOU. I was on the streets all day and these kids man, these kids came up and gave me their change... "

"It's like this [pulls out these two small curved pieces of cardboard from his pocket, one blue one red and holds them up]. You're looking at these and you're trying to figure out which one is bigger. look up around you at all these signs and bilboards and advertisements... They can sell you an alarm clock in Futureshop for 70 dollars by putting its picture on a bilboard, and you can get the same thing in chinatown for eight bucks..where does all that extra profit go? Yhey're the same thing. It's an illusion. [holds up the pieces of cardboard again and places one over the other]. the red one appreared bigger but they're the same size. You were trusting your eyes instead of what was really there.. but the kids man.... they came up to me and gave me their change. i love the children. have a great day"
and walked off.

the Irish Study of Sexual Health and Relationships

I was browsing in Limerick City Library last week when I came across a hardcopy of The Irish Study of Sexual Health and Relationships, published in 2006 by the Department of Health and Children. It's the biggest ever study to be conducted in Ireland on the topic and I'm surprised I hadn't seen or heard about this before considering I have a thing for statistics [reading them, not remembering them] and also because I'm just plain nosey when it comes to other people's sexual habits.

Anyway, pleased to discover that the whole thing is available online, including a summary here. Stats on how much people know about contraception and STI's, attitudes to casual sex and abortion, ages of first sexual experiences, and how many partners people have had and all that jazz. Interesting stuff, and tells us a lot about the areas in which we need to increase awareness and how important sexual education is! Take a scroll through!

monogamy by the hour

Her head on a pillow and she can smell the shampoo of ten other girls. Her head on a chest and all she can smell is him, him, him. She has learned to love in a way that does not require ownership of another, that is happy to merely exist with another for short periods of time, and it does not matter who he lay with last or who she will lie with next. Only the current moment matters, and for the moment it's just them and she is safe.

A shot in the dark

Old photography books
Maybe two dozen, maybe more
Held together by their collective sense of redundancy
And a bookcase.

A number of years ago
Maybe three dozen, maybe more
These tomes were revered for the knowledge they housed.
Amidst their pages were the tools for mastery
Of a science, of a skill, of an art.
A means to understand and use
Light and lens, f-stops, filters
The importance of duster
Some pages stained with
Hypo-eliminator
And patience.
They knew it all and more.

Memories of weddings, christenings , communions of all sorts
Pornographic shots of dishes for the menu
Snapshots from the picnic, the first day of school, the new puppy
Textbook close ups of cells
Graduation, Light and Shadow 101, her..So many of her.
Flesh and bones, legs spread, hair
You don’t have to be the taker of the photograph
To own it.

They’re useless now,
Out of date.
Kitsch. 
The college library won’t even take them for free.
Soon the old photography books will be retired
To rest in a dark room
And under a film of dust
Their black and white print will yellow.

the one that got away

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