Sandymount House - Dublin

It's interesting to think about how time flies when you are busy discovering new things in life. I'm in my mid-30's and I'm still blessed with a life that affords me the luxury of learning new things, experiencing new events and also the ability to constantly re-invent myself. A couple of years ago I was feeling down in the dumps after the whole Glasgow City Council episode. I didn't feel up to much in life.
Now I feel as though I am moving on and there are so many projects to launch into and so many things to prepare for.
And it time to say goodbye to my job of the last 19-and-a-half months.
I don't regret leaving, especially since the salary at the new job represents a 30% increase and the job is much closer to home - just a seven-minute journey on the low-level trains from the city centre. It's ideal - I can take the metro in to St Enoch, work out in the pool for a half hour every morning, then hop on any of the trains which run every 10 minutes and I am there. The job itself is not exciting, a debt recovery agent for a small outsourcing call centre firm but the role requires the use of French and Spanish and God knows my Spanish language skills need re-sharpening. I'm told there'll be a fair amount of translation and this is good news for me because the experience is good. I'd been toying with the idea of enrolling in a master's programme of languages and translation at one of the universities in Dublin. This would always help and count as experience. MOreoever, when I went for the interview, the two assistant team leaders who hired me seemed really nice: a catalana named Carmen, hailing from Barcelona and a gallego whose name escapes me who's from Orense.What are the odds? It's a small team - very small in comparison to where I am working now. I'll be working in an old converted church, the office is on an upper floor and it's nice and new and friendly and relaxed.
I'm not worried about the "stress" of meeting targets or getting things done as quickly as possible. I've been in the game long enough to know that I can work fast and under pressure.
Ken's amazed at my track record. In essence, every single job I've interviewed for I've gotten, he thinks, which is not necessarily true since I didn't get the technical support job at IBM when I went in. Nor did I get the undergraduate advisor job at Concordia when I applied for it even though I'd been unofficially *doing* the job for a year as programme assistant. But in essence, he is correct, the last four jobs I got were jobs where I applied for the first new likely-looking job I came across (or was recommended for) and was interviewed, I got. I don't have a whole lot of rejection letters, only ones for jobs I'd applied for and immediately received rejection letters.
But now I am leaving Greenock and the whole community surrounding it. When I originally took on the job, I didn't think I'd last longer than six months - for no other reason than that I would have learned everything I needed to know and would want to get the hell out of there once I was at that stage. But the truth is once I got over the initial shock of getting used to a McJob (and let's not kid ourselves, here, the paltry salary reflects the low-level of skills and training required for the work - trained monkeys with language skills can do the job), I started to really enjoy myself. I'd even gained a close friend, and a few close acquaintances, who I intend to keep in touch with after I leave. That's the best part of any job: the contacts you make, the memories that make you laugh. Who would have thought that I would have met and flirted outrageously with a handsome Flemish boy who's the spitting image of one of my first lovers from a past life? And who would have thought that I would have met and partied with and learned so much from such an unlikely bunch as CF? The Scots-Israeli who's a KITH fan, the dour and yet funny Scotswoman who speaks fluent Russian and French, the manic and hysterically funny Austrian nymphomanic nightclubber, the too-sexy French baby-faced playboy, the the frizzy-haired blonde version of Dilbert's Alice, the seven-foot-tall blond Polish sexgod, the short, five-foot tall blonde Polish girlie doll, the head-banging bald Italian metalhead, the gaggle of gallegas, the cool, oh-so-JAP Jewish girl, the loud, mile-a-minute-Greekspeak-motormouth from Montpellier.... the list goes on and on, I could be here all day recounting them all. Greenock is a bit of a nuthouse but my God what fun the last twenty months have been. And now I know more than I did about my career before I took on the job. I know that wherever I work, that languages will have to figure prominently in my job. I know that I'll never be rich at the job or have snooty, posh friends but I couldn't care less. This is what I am going for in the next little while. And as long as we have a European Union and a global village, we will always need people with language skills.
So I'm back at Rose's house in Sandymount and we've spent a long weekend here. We flew on St. Patrick's Day rather late at night and got in around midnight. But we didn't miss out totally on the fun. Saturday night Ken and I trounced off to Temple Bar. I was so tired from travel on the day before that I didn't get up until about three in the afternoon and was in the city centre by four-ish - too late for shopping but great for pubs. We planted ourselves inside this huge pub converted from an old warehouse. It was half empty so we ordered drinks and what we thought was going to be "light snacks" - just an assortment of starter platters: Spanish cheeses, a plate of patatas bravas, a mixed green salad, some bread and olives. The portions were tremendous and we spent all afternoon trying to finish it all washing it down with pints of weissenbier and coke. I opted for a Bailey's cheesecake at the end, coffee and we each had a glass of manzanilla sherry. The place was packed by the time we left (around 10 or 11 or so).
We spent a sedate day at home on Sunday - I slept through mass again (grr - I didn't mean for that - Ken didn't wake me up!) and yesterday we went out shopping. I hit the motherlode of footwear: the Dublin branch of Evans ALWAYS has a lot more selection and range of shoes than the Glasgow outlet and I came back nearly 200 euro poorer but I am now the very proud owner of 2 pair of extremely comfortable black low, rubber-heeled short boots, one pair of long, tall, suede brown wedge heel boots and one pair of the cutest black and gold sandals. And more cotton underwear. Not a bad haul at all! We had drinks at the old Greek Orthodox converted church-now-bar resto and sipped rum n cokes under a memorial plaque sitting in an old confessional box. We then walked about 50 m and into another pub and drank some more - I was on my second or third double-rum and coke by then. We staggered over to the Porterhouse for a final drink, giggling and watching French tourists yakking it up over pints of ale and stout and then off to a sumptuous Lebanese meal next door at the aptly-named Sinners. Ken wanted to split a mezze plate but my eye was drawn toward the tiger prawns, which ended up being the juiciest, freshest, fattest prawn that I have had in ages. They were divine. The music was the best and most eclectic mix of middle eastern pop, rap, hip hop and disco - I had to ask the owner for the CD - which I am going to look for today at HMV. We finished off our meal at another pub where we ordered some very unsatisfactory Irish coffees and then off home!
What a weekend. What a life!