Tonight, former president of Ireland Mary Robinson spoke on campus about her life and her career.
NIUG is set to receive her archives, minus the reproductive rights hate mail she received in the 70s, which her husband destroyed.
She made a very good point about Ireland’s status in developing countries, how having the Great Famine in the cultural DNA helps the Irish empathize with those who are still suffering today.
It’s all going to be okay. I can feel it. And I have now written 100 posts for this blog!
So guess what? On Christmas Day, Galway broke the world record for most people swimming in the ocean whilst wearing Santa hats. A total of 1,066 brave souls went into the water at Blackrock in Salthill. I was not one of them.
I did, however, carry a collection bucket for COPE, the charity that organized the event. COPE Galway works with the homeless, provides assistance for those suffering domestic violence, and runs the community catering programme in Galway County (sort of like Meals on Wheels).
COPE raised €34,000 at the Christmas Day event! I’m certain about half of that sum was in my bucket, in the form of heavy €2 coins. I couldn’t bend my elbows the next day.
Seriously, though… well done, Galway!
There was a point to this grad school thing, wasn’t there?
Okay, now it’s possible that I won’t be able to take the class because it’s open to so many MA programmes that they may have to cap enrollment. Trying to stay positive…
Today I was supposed to have my first class of the new semester at 10am. I arrived five minutes early – no one there. Room was locked.
I waited five minutes, frantically checking my iPhone to make sure I had the right room. One other dude shows up. He’s a History MA, so the course must be cross-listed. He checks his phone, and the History MAs have posted to their Facebook group that the class doesn’t start until next week. At this point I’m thinking I’m the only Publishing MA registered for this course.
Throughout the rest of the day, it transpires that there are seven of us in the course, but we arrived at the classroom in shifts all the way through half ten. No one knew anything about the class not starting until next week. We get an email later in the day saying the course is run by a different department and to direct our queries that way. Also, it doesn’t start until next week and, oh yeah, it’s going to be on Wednesday afternoons now.
So it turns out I have four-day weekends this semester. Which is awesome, except I really need a job.
Been a while.
School started today, but I don’t have class on Mondays this semester, so back to the grind tomorrow.
Tonight, a new night-time soap opera set in Galway, Deception, premiered on the telly. I read about it in the Advertiser (which had a cameo on the show itself!) and made risotto (a recipe also from the Advertiser) and sat down to watch.
Neither one was great. There’s definitely room for improvement [insert joke about one lacking cheese and the other having too much].
Favorite Five Films
1. The Artist
2. What Richard Did
3. Bernie
4. Looper
5. Shadow Dancer
Five Best Film Events
1. Grace Kelly Film Festival
2. Breakfast at Tiffany’s at the Paramount
3. Gremlins at London IMAX
4. The Dead on Culture Night
5. French Film Festival at IFI
Top Five Films I Missed
1. The Revisionaries
2. The Eye Has to Travel
3. Rust and Bone
4. Dollhouse
5. Cloud Atlas
Five Favorite Plays
1. Tromluí Pinocchio at An Taibhdhearc
2. Jason and the Argonauts at Baboró
3. Who Needs Enemies? at Town Hall Theatre
4. Sanctuary at Blue Teapot
5. The Poor Mouth at Project Arts Centre
Five Best Nonfiction Pieces
1. “The Innocent Man” by Pamela Colloff, Texas Monthly
2. “Punk’d” by Harriet Charity Verney, Vogue
3. “A Swing and a Miss” by B.R. Myers, The Atlantic
4. “NW London Blues” by Zadie Smith, The New York Review
5. “Irish Studios Have a Moment in Clover” by John Anderson, The New York Times
Five Best Short Stories
1. “An Abduction” by Tessa Hadley, The New Yorker
2. “Supper Club” by Kevin Barry, Silver Threads of Hope
3. “Thank You for the Light” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The New Yorker
4. “I’ve Hardly Slept at All” by Trevor Byrne, Silver Threads of Hope
5. “Enclosure” by Jim Crace, Granta
Five Best Books
1. Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed
2. Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian by Eoin Colfer
3. Wild by Cheryl Strayed
4. The Night Swimmer by Matt Bondurant
5. Eat and Run by Scott Jurek
Five Books I Should Have Read
1. The China Factory by Mary Costello
2. This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz
3. Coming to My Senses by Alyssa Harad
4. NW by Zadie Smith
5. This is How it Ends by Kathleen MacMahon
Five Top Book Stories
1. Rue and Trayvon: Reading Comprehension
2. Jonah Lehrer’s Self-Plagiarism
3. Dalkey Archive’s Job Listing
4. Nonprofits and the Fictional World
5. Mr. Morris Lessmore’s Oscar
Five Favorite Book Events
1. Dublin Book Festival
2. Doing Writing with Kevin Barry
3. Scott Jurek’s Book-Signing 5K
4. Bookpeople’s Cheryl Strayed Giveaway
5. MALP’s Publishers on Publishing Series
…from Galway Bay.
Back in Galway again, after two weeks of traveling the British Isles. Feels good to be… home?
A decade ago, when I was on my London semester abroad, I took a course called Traveling and Writing. It was more or less a writing workshop where we shared personal essays about our experiences in a new culture.
I didn’t have a laptop at the time, so I would always type my papers in the computer lab of the study abroad office. We were in central London, so all the computers were set to British English, not American English. Spellcheck behaved a bit differently:
American English = Traveling
British English = Travelling
For an entire semester, I turned in essays for my Traveling and Writing class with a heading that included my name, the date, and the name of the course: Travelling and Writing. I actually became convinced that was how traveling was spelled, which took a while to unlearn once I got back home.
I have been thinking about that combination a lot over the past two weeks: Traveling and Writing or even Travelling and Writing. We’re in the middle of finals at school right now, but because all my finals are 5,000-word essays, and the appeal of a writing career is that one can do it anywhere, I decided to take this show on the road and write one of my essays whilst travelling (“whilst travelling” – doubly British).
It worked. I missed out on some stuff, but we planned the trip accordingly and with my writing habits in mind (performs best under a deadline). I really wouldn’t mind a life of Traveling and Writing.
The plan is to get my long-dormant Flickr account up and running again so I have somewhere to put all the photos I’ve been taking during my postgrad year abroad (and I have been taking them – I promise).
For now, though, I just want to share a few photos of the Antrim coast. I have long held the belief that the Glenns of Antrim are home to the most beautiful scenery on the planet. Some people like rocks and desert; some people love the sun and sandy beaches. Me, I like trees and the ocean, so the pretty coast of Northern Ireland is my idea of heaven. I first visited eight years ago, and immediately fell for the Glenns of Antrim, nine valleys that run along the northeastern coast of the island. I was almost scared to come back, because I’ve built it up so much in my mind, but nope – still beautiful.
These photos will not do justice to the scenery because 1) I have little-to-no photography skills and 2) the bus never actually stopped in the Glenns, which are the best part of the coastline, in my humble opinion. But here are a few shots of the more touristy destinations, just as a taster.
Look at that orb! So cool, and such an accident!
The Galway Train 