Random Scribbling
The Mind Of A Child
After working at Eircom for a while now a certain point has been repeatedly brought home to me... and it is that adults are nothing more than children. The only differences I can see are different priorities (but ultimately coming down to one, that of advancing the self, whether greedily or otherwise) and a moral compass (but not one that necessarily points in the same direction as everyone else's). I've been so shocked by the people I've had to deal with that I feel I can pretty definitively describe our adult selves as the above.
Take, for example, a three year-old child in a shop. He or she sees something, a toy perhaps, that appeals to them. They play with it a little but they are told by their parents that they cannot have it, and they are taken away from the shop. Perhaps they then throw a tantrum because they cannot get what they want. This merely seems to be a more basic version of what happens to the adult in a similar situation... it seems to be a lesson that constantly needs repeating. Do we ever really learn it? We can choose to placate ourselves by applying logic (object of desire > too expensive > frivolous > stop thinking about it), or, as seems to be more commonplace on so many levels, we can bitch and moan about it.
When I get a call at work for a number that is not there, the caller will react the same way every time, without fail, and then will choose to take one of two options. When I tell them the number isn't there, they will inevitably reply with -
"That's very strange."
That's my cue to roll my eyes in exasperated silence. They may embellish it further with -
"But it's been there for x amount of years! You
have to have it!"
Then comes the decision. Either they will accept the fact that I've tried my best to find the number for them and it's just not there (25% of callers do this), or they will continue to bitch for another few minutes, tying up the line and driving me crazy with questions about how I searched, cast aspersions on my ability to do the search (if they want to learn how to use Eircom's archaic software where only 70% of the entries are standardised, good luck to them), and then insist on getting a refund (75% of callers do this). Then, when I try to explain that they're charged every time they call - yes, even if they don't get their number, because they're paying for the labour (I'm not going to look up a number for them if I don't get paid to, am I?), that's when the shit really hits the proverbial fan.
It's all the same thing, isn't it? Deny a person what they want and, in my experience at least, 75% of the time will see them reacting in much the same way their three year-old counterpart does when they are denied their shiny toy. And the adult will laugh at the child's arrogance and ignorance. The mind boggles!
Otherwise, work is okay. I sometimes get people crying on the phone, because either their husband has just died, or they are in serious mental anguish and need help, or what happened just today when someone rang up and explained that a family member has gone missing and they missed a call from a public payphone, and could we tell them where it is? I went to one of the team leaders who told me that there is no such available service and their only option is to call the Gardaí. When they broke down crying I went the extra little bit to help by suggesting if they call Eircom's Nuisance Calls hotline they may be able to trace it that way... a long shot but better than telling them I can do nothing at all, and could they please hang up their phone so we can get a few more calls in today?
No wonder I do my best to forget about my day by burying myself in fantasy.
Hungary - The First Two Days
The first thing that hit me when we left the airport was the
heat. It's twenty-eight degrees here, and it goes up to 49 in the middle of July. I'm finding this tough as it is, so I can only be thankful that we're not currently in July. We took a taxi from Ferihegy airport to the Feher Hotel, which is actually a hostel. I've only ever been in one hostel before, and this is much nicer. In our room, we have six beds, and there's only four of us. The girl's room doesn't have a kitchen like we do, but it's not like we have a fridge and cooker or anything... it's just a few cupboards. The girls are still jealous, though *L*
We met Andrea at the airport, then she joined us for lunch at the hostel. She's a nice person, but definitely a teacher! She gave us a good grounding on how to get around the city, showing us how to use the metro system and such. We were only checked for our monthly tickets once - every time we used the metro, trams or buses since, we were never asked... public transport seems to be mostly free, which is great. She took us to some mall, then she left us and we had a drink at some kind of er... thing. There were a lot of kids, booths, and some act called Blikk Nok, which was excruciatingly bad. After this we went to a pub for another drink, before heading back. That evening Andrea took us out to an act that was showing at a festival. They were Hungarian dancers that were somewhat inspired by Riverdance to do their own native dances in a more contemporary fashion. They were interesting... not really my style, though. I was completely exhausted at this point, having had no sleep for two days. After this, the others convinced Andrea to go to the nearby funfair. She left us after a while, and we headed back to the hostel. I was coming down with 'flu, I could feel it, so I stayed behind and slept while the others went out to some club.
The next morning I was feeling much better, and we met Ger and one of the Hungarian students, Daniel, outside our room. He took us for a walk up a mountain in Buda, which has at the top a series of statues, and an incredible view of Pest. We took some pictures and Daniel spoke to us about the history of the statues and their meaning. I took a photograph of everyone but me and Ger, declining Daniel's offer to take it, seeing as there'll be plenty of others where I can be in the picture. He then took us to Margaret Island, which is a really nice place, and we ate bread, ice-cream and some of us drank as we sat in the shade for an hour. After that, Daniel took us back to near our street (Kalvin Ter), and said he'd meet us later at the Old Man's Pub for a session of the Cotton Singers. After all the walking we'd done, and the heat, we went into our rooms and collapsed on our beds, and slept for an hour. I could feel the 'flu coming on again, and so I didn't join them, because I wanted to gain some strength for tomorrow so I won't come down with it again. I slept for a bit, read Declan's book on Budapest he had picked up in Cork airport, and watched a few episodes of South Park. For the second time I connected to the only unlocked wi-fi network in range, and it works! Woohoo ^_^
We're moving into the apartment on Tuesday, which is when Ger heads home to Ireland. Tomorrow we're heading to the Heroes' Square, which is a massive square filled with the past heroes and rulers of Hungary. We're also going to the museum to see an exhibition on the "father of media", Kempelen. We have the afternoon free, which is when I suspect we'll either go on a river tour, or go shopping... the prices here are insane. I hope to pick up a processor or something as well as presents for people back home. Budapest is absolutely
beautiful. There are so many beautiful buildings, from the incredible Parliament to the Royal Palace, to the Basilica, to just many of the hotels around. Many buildings are very old and seem to be going derelict, but they're still amazing to look at. People here are generally very nice and warm, and some of them know English.
I don't know what my 'net access will be like at the apartment, so I don't know if I'll be able to update for a while. But for now, enjoy some pictures ^_^

Blikk Nok... the "experience".

Declan and Angela watch Blikk Nok.

While Rob and I laugh at their shittiness.

At the funfair! That ride looked so innocent, too...

From left to right - Aoife, Miriam, Angela, Rob, Ian, Declan and Daniel. The statue represents the fight between good and evil.

This is the room in which we're staying.

This is one of the statues at the Liberty monument.

The statue of liberty itself.

The same statue itself silhoutted.

The incredible Parliament building, seen from across the river.

The parliament building again, a little closer, from the bridge that connects to Margaret Island.
Right, the others have just returned from the pub and are having a good old chinwag downstairs, so I'm off to join them... peace out ^_^
Music - David Bowie - Life On Mars
P.S - Right now my 'net access is precarious, so I don't care to fix the sizes of the images here >_>
An Update!
Okay, I realise it's been some time since I last posted here. But I've also been neglecting my LJ, so it's not as if I've made the move at long last, as some people would like me to ^_~
Recently XP has been decidedly unstable, for some reason. Mike is constantly getting Generic Host Processes errors on his, Kev's desktop refuses to load any more (despite having only installed XP a few months back) and a host of small annoyances convinced me to give Vista at least a go. So, I went ahead and popped in the disc... I remember when XP first arrived, and all the technicians at PC Superstore were scorning the Fisher Price look of of the GUI, preferring to revert to the Classic Windows theme. At first, I agreed with them, but I liked the idea of having my most used programs on the start bar, as I'd dropped the practise of having many icons and links to programs on my desktop. With every install I'd always change the colour scheme to silver, to make it look less... well, Fisher Price.
I wonder what those guys would make of Vista now. It holds your hand in a manner that Windows never has before, asking only what drive you want to install onto before going onto copy all the files over and start the installation. One reset later, and you're booting into the OS, which at least is an improvement on XP. At first, it's just a tad overwhelming. The first thing you see after the boot sequence is the Welcome Center, which gives you information on your pc in the top half, with links to file transfers and connecting to the 'net on the bottom half. The odd idea of having a slideshow of the pictures in the My Documents folder on the Sidebar is something I didn't exactly warm to, and the same could be said of the huge clock. I mean, the original clock is still there on the task bar just a few pixels down... I removed all the Gadgets (as the Widgets are known, heh) and downloaded one from the Microsoft site which monitors my dual core processor and ram usage. Quite handy. I've also spotted some other handy Gadgets for the Sidebar, such as a calculator, but it's early days yet and not every category can even claim to have one Gadget. One thing that annoyed me much was the "Do you want to do this?" message upon installing a program or changing something... anything. It can be turned off, but damn, it's several layers deep and really annoying at first.
The task bar is much the same as it was in XP, though it first presents you with a list of shortcuts that Vista thinks you need to be aware of, such as Media Player, Media Center, Photo Gallery, Live Messenger Download, DVD Maker, and so on. Clicking on all programs brings up the typical list from XP. On the right side is a number of buttons, starting with Documents and going down the list - Pictures, Music, Games, Search, Recent Items, Computer, Network, Connect To, Control Panel, Default Programs, and Help & Support. Much the same as XP, then, but it's very nicely presented. In fact, all of Vista is. Transparent windows with a theme consisting of soft, pastel hues abound, and it's all very pretty. In fact... well, it's all very Mac-like. Now there's something nobody thought to say about a Microsoft OS >_>
Upon installation, everything in the laptop was recognised correctly but for the SD Card reader on the side. It connected to the 'net immediately without me having to go through any network settings, which is a definite improvement on XP. But it's not all roses on the network side, as I found that XP users have to download an update before it'll even speak with a Vista machine. Vista's network setup is both frustrating and infuriatingly limited, with some very odd choices - instead of listing your computer's network name, description and what network it is a part of, as well as the ability to change all this, in the Network & Sharing Center, it's in the System window, which you access by right-clicking on Computer, then choosing properties. That took me a while to track down. Wth, Microsoft? Anyway, the more I use Vista the more I realise that it's no big update. Basically, it's XP prettied up to a high degree, with a lot of the installation work done for you. Performance in games hasn't been great so far, but then I can't really test that on my laptop. I have yet to test World of Warcraft, but Rome - Total War has seen a definite reduction in the frame rate department. I don't know if this'll be happening when all the drivers are sorted out and all, but right now just sitting on the desktop with the Welcome Center, the little Gadget I downloaded tells me that 42% of my 1GB memory is in use. Hm.
Will I stick with it? Actually... yes, I will for a while, until I'm given a reason to not continue with it. And I think I'll install it on my desktop whenever the current installation of XP gets antsy. I wonder how long a typical Vista installation will last on my desktop?
Music: Celtic Woman - Scarborough Fair
"Dance"
The above is the title of the second film made by the group of people who made "Revenge/It's My Turn" last year. We joked about it but are seriously giving thought to giving ourselves a name. Cool.
We were made aware that the
Karnival people were organising their ninth contest last week, and also spotted it in the Cork Film Festival guide while attending said festival. The four of us said yeah, we'd definitely enter again. Unfortunately, Steven couldn't attend as he was working up in Clare, so it was just Aoife, Maria and myself that showed up at the Triskel Arts Centre at 11:45am on Saturday morning. The registrations began, and I went up and fished my hand in the envelope to pick us a theme - and wasn't very happy with the one I'd picked. I went over to Maria and Aoife, wondering how they'd react. Unsurprisingly, they weren't particularly happy, either. Our theme was, "Muslim".
Oh, dear. We went up to Maria's house and tossed ideas at each other. Would we take the easier route, make a documentary film about a Muslim living in Ireland? Or would we make a fictional piece, something with a story? We all preferred making a story-oriented film as opposed to an unoriginal documentary, so we thought about what we should make. The problem was, as we saw it, how do we make anything without offending someone? It's a particularly touchy subject, these days. So we had a look on the 'net about their culture, traditions and customs, and thought how interesting it was that they were very closed in public, but in the privacy of their own homes, they are perhaps more open than we are. So, we decided to do a story about a Muslim woman who is very private in public, but secretly loves to dance. So we decided to do shoot some footage of her public persona - walking down the street, averting her gaze, staying to herself, never meeting the eyes of men for long. Then we would shoot her more private, personal side.
At one o'clock the three of us took to the streets to start shooting some POV footage, then Aoife went off to view a house while Maria and I went back to her flat to sort out an actress. Turned out that one of her flatmates has a friend from Senegal, Elisabeth, whose mother is Catholic, but she had lived in a Muslim culture. We rang her, and she was a little shy about doing the dance, but agreed to star for us. She came to the flat and we went out to the city again, capturing footage of her walking down the same street we'd shot the POV stuff with. Then we added more of her walking home, and we returned to the apartment to film the dance.
After that was finished, the three of us left left for an hour or so to enjoy a nice drink. We then headed back and, at ten o'clock or so, we captured the footage to my laptop and started editing. This time we again used Movie Maker as it is just easier to have it divide the footage into little clips, then choose which clips to use, shorten and lengthen as need dictated. We left the apartment yet again at one o'clock in the morning, to get some Red Bull to keep us awake. Then we went back and resumed editing. We didn't finish until six AM, sitting in the kitchen on the hardwood chairs instead of the couch in the living room, to keep us awake. For a film that came in at 2m 58s, just under the three minute restriction, we had spent seventeen hours filming and editing. As a film, it was, we agreed, in a league of it's own compared to "Revenge/It's My Turn". Though it is so small, it's complexity is mind-boggling, as we became aware when editing. We were, unlike last year, extremely happy with it. We shared a group hug (yay for group hugs!) and burned it to DVD - one for the Karnival crowd, one for Elisabeth. I will burn copies for myself, Maria and Aoife tonight.
Maria then went to bed while Aoife and I sat down and watched a few video clips to pass the time. An hour later I packed up the laptop and headed over to the train station. My mind was fully awake and alert, but my body was bone tired. Y'know, the kind of exhaustion that won't let you sleep? Sharon was down and she, Mam and Breda watched the film. They liked it. I went to bed, setting an alarm on the laptop. And here's the kicker - the alarm never went off. Sharon went back to Waterford, Breda to Douglas, and Mam to work. I woke up at 7:00pm - the film was due to be shown at the Kino cinema at 6:30pm.
For the following half hour, I have to say I have never felt so wretched. Last year I also missed seeing our film on the cinema screen, and it had happened again. I was totally gutted. I sent Maria a text, and I felt a lot better when I put things in perspective - watching it in the cinema is nothing...
making the film was the biggest joy. Maria called and said she'd give details tomorrow in class, but she also said to bring up a copy on DVD, because some other students in our class made films that didn't make it into the final list to be screened on the cinema - tomorrow, we're watching theirs and ours in the Lecture Theatre.
I'm looking forward to seeing the two of them tomorrow and hearing about how well our film did, the quality of the other films, all that jazz. I'll write a little more about it here tomorrow night. Until then... all I have to say is that I love our film.
Music: Enigma - The Alchemist
Serenity 3
Phew... what a weekend. Exhausting, gruelling, draining... the heat that wouldn't let us sleep. But other than that - fuck yeah, what a weekend! Every one of the guest stars were polite, courteous and willing to chat with us for as long as they could without holding up the line. I got to meet Mark Sheppard (Badger), Michael Fairman (Niska), Gigi Edgely (Chiana from Farscape), Nector Rose (Lenore the Love-Bot), Christina Hendricks (Yosafbridge), Sean Maher (Simon Tam), Morena Baccarin (Inara Serra) and finally, last but certainly not least, Jewel Staite (Kaywinnit Lee-Frye).
On Friday we rose early, at half four in the morning. Ciarda got dropped up, and we watched a bit of Next Generation on the tv before Mike and Finola called, and then it was up to the airport, full of beans and bouncing happily along in the car. Once up there we met Aoife, had a fry-up in the restaurant, and boarded the plane. We landed at Stansted at ten or so in the morning, and spent the next two hours waiting for the bus and travelling on said bus to the Heathrow Terminal 2. Said bus cost £22 one-way, £26 return. Jerks. We stood about, glancing around, unsure of what to do, but then followed a girl with a Serenity logo on the back of her jacket. Following her, we made it to a bus that took us to the Thistle Hotel, not far off. The hotel was nice enough, but certainly not as nice as their Irvine counterparts. The room was extremely small, but eh, it did us. Aoife went off to check in at the Heathrow Lodge, and when she came back we decided to follow Ciarda into Hounslow to drop off his bags at his sister's flat, as nothing at the convention was happening until nine o'clock at night, when the Meet & Greet would start.
We went back to the hotel, messed around for a bit and having a very nice dinner in the hotel's Avocado restaurant, then headed over to the convention centre. We bought photographs of the stars to get signed, then went to the Meet & Greet. Sean Harry, the organiser of the convention, came out on stage and talked to us for a bit, then out came Gigi Edgeley. She introduced Mark Sheppard, who introduced the next guest and so on. Each guest got a huge roar, but the biggest were for Sean Maher, Morena Baccarin and Jewel Staite. The biggest was for Jewel, which confirmed my suspicion that, though we love all the characters pretty equally, secretly, Kaylee is
everyone's favourite. They waved to us, told us to enjoy the convention, and then we headed back to the room. Another few hours of messing around with the camera, Aoife and Ciarda headed off, and Mike and I went to sleep.
Or at least, we tried. I don't know why, but the weather over there is noticeably hotter than here. And then you have to factor in that there was no air conditioning, and we couldn't open the window. Yeah, that was fun. I had already not slept on Wednesday night, slept very little on Thursday night with the anticipation of getting some sleep on Friday, but no. I got maybe four hours sleep that night. The next day, we went into the dealer's rooms and three of us bought a Serenity t-shirt, and various odds and sods. We then went to the photo shoots - I got
one with Jewel, as did Ciarda, Mike got one with Jewel and Sean together, and Aoife got one respectively with Jewel and Sean. They were so very nice to us - I got a hug from Jewel, who called me "Sweetie" \o/
We then went along to the guest talks - first up was Jewel and Morena. They were very, very nice to talk to, and extremely funny, relating tales of shooting on the show and film, and once Morena broke down laughing on stage for several minutes. She said she was in line behind this guy at the security gate in the airport, where you are not allowed to bring any liquids with you. The security guy said this to the guy in front of her, who had this huge bag with him. The guy in front replied, "Oh. Okay.", and the security guy then opened the bag to find three tubes of toothpaste. And that's it. She cracked up laughing behind him, and couldn't stop laughing on the stage for around three minutes. The way Jewel was looking at her was hilarious. Also, one person asked them, "Who was the most famous person who recognised you?", and Jewel replied, "Steven Spielberg." She said that she and Nathan Fillion were at this party (Nathan had had a part in Thin Red Line, or something), and both of them were staring at him wide-eyed. Nathan was unsure if he should approach him, or if he would remember him, when suddenly Spielberg shouted, "Nathan! Nathan! Over here!". Completely star-struck, both went over to him where he told them how much he loved the show. Awesome or what! Morena also answered an age-old question fans have long wanted to know - what was the black liquid Inara was looking at when the Reavers were passing Serenity in one of the first episodes? Joss Whedon had previously said it wasn't poison. Morena told us that it was something that would kill Inara, but it would also kill all the Reavers. It was great to finally know the truth of it ^_^
The next guest talk was with Sean Maher and Christina Hendricks. I was the first person to walk up to the microphone. I asked Sean about Simon's and Jayne's respective relationships with Kaylee and each other, asking him if he thought the biggest reason Jayne disliked Simon was not because of their different backgrounds, but because Jayne viewed Kaylee as something of a little sister, and her attention was completely diverted from everyone to Simon. Sean replied, "No, I think it was because Jayne fancies Simon!". T'was quite funny at the time, hehe! We had to leave that shortly as Morena was signing photographs due to her having to leave early the next day. I bought a photograph of her painting the logo on the ship, and she was very nice to make sure everyone had her autograph. We had all our photographs and dvd's and books and whatever signed that day. Rich then called out to us as we couldn't make it into the city as we'd intended, due to the times we were to pick up the photographs and other such things. We had pizza delivered to us at the hotel, and had a small party of our own that night in our room, playing lots of Mario Kart and such-like. Everyone but Ciarda then attended the nightly party, though I only stayed for literally two minutes as it was hard to continue to keep my eyes open. I wish I'd had the energy to stay as it sounded like so much fun.
Ciarda stayed with us that night and Rich stayed with Aoife at the Lodge, as she had two beds in the room. The next day I went swimming in the small but nice Health Club across the way, and we pretty much had our last look at the convention. We then checked out of the hotel, and headed off to meet Ciarda (who had gone back to Hounslow to collect his bag), walked around Hounslow for another bit (Mike bought King Of The Hill, season two), then headed back to his sister's flat (Rich departed from us here) where we had a laugh talking to Rosemary, who I'm sure I went to school with back at Colaiste Muire. We knew each other to see, at least. We watched some King Of The Hill, then went off to Heathrow once more to get our bus. Due to the oncoming rush hour, it took us roughly two hours to get there. Our flight was at 19:25pm, and we arrived at 16:30pm, or thereabouts. We checked in, then joined the queue for the security gate. This drove us insane, as it was shockingly long and we expected to miss the plane. It took us well over an hour to get through the security gate - having to take off our shoes, for God's sake, to be scanned. Mike disappeared, and we ran to the boarding gate, shouting his name as we went. The little git then appeared behind us just as we were approaching the boarding gate, with a bottle of Coke in his hands. The little bastard... we were all tired, thirsty and dehydrated, and yet after telling him not to stop for a drink, he did anyway. I could have killed him - if we'd stopped to look for him, or if he had stopped to look for us, either of us would have missed the plane. Neither would be a good situation.
Anyway, we made the plane, where we all devoured Mike's drink, ha. The plane took off and we landed only ten minutes late. We waited for our bags, then left Aoife and joined Ciarda's father, who drove us home. I went on the 'net last night with the intention of writing this, but I was hopelessly tired and didn't even start up Gaim. I went to bed and had my first good night's sleep since Tuesday last. And here I am. It was a fantastic weekend, slightly marred for my by how tired and drained I was. I spent most of Saturday recovering from Friday, and that wasn't fun. But still! We got to meet with all of our favourite actors and actresses. I even managed to talk to Jewel for a few minutes about Ireland, which caused no end of jealousy on the parts of the others, hehe. I don't think we'll be back for Serenity 4, due to the money we spent on this one, the fact that Mike will be studying for his Junior Cert. and Aoife and I will be at college. But should it ever come to Ireland, we'll all be back in a snap. It was a good weekend.
Awesomeness!Music: Firefly OST - Theme
Wee, Smoothies!
Today I finally received a letter from the college, "reminding" me that classes start on the 25th. Woohoo, back to college! Can't wait to go back and see everyone again. I'm really looking forward to this year.
Another thing I am looking forward to is the Serenity 3 convention. On Friday, Comical Seagull, Tycondrius and Mike are flying out on an 8:00am flight to London Stansted, and from there heading to Heathrow to check in at the Thistle Hotel. I stayed in a Thistle Hotel in Irvine, near Glasgow, and it was a fantastic place. I don't think the Heathrow hotel has the same pool/lagoon and rock-climbing area as at Irvine, but from the photographs it otherwise looks exactly the same. They also have a nice pay-per-view system for films that haven't reached DVD yet, so we could be watching film's into the wee hours (at £5 a film, if I recall correctly). Absolutely cannot wait for Friday... I get to meet Jewel Staite (Kaylee), Sean Maher (Simon), Morena Baccarin (Inara) and Mark Sheppard (Badger). There are three parties, apparently. Will be so much fun.
We got a smoothie maker today... mwahahaha! No more spending €4.45 on a smoothie at the Juice bar. I've already made myself a very large one, consisting of two bananas, plenty of milk, and a glob of honey. It was very nice, if a little heavy. Tomorrow, I'll be going for a lighter one with water, strawberries and apples \o/
Music: Danny Elfman - Jack & Sally Montage
Even More Drunken Revelry, Dammit
Seeing as I told Signius I'd post something, here it is.
Yesterday I went up to Mahon Point with Signius and Nabnerd to watch Nacho Libre - it was quite mediocre despite squeezing some laughs out of me. We then paid a trip to the Marlogue Inn, ostensibly to annoy Rob and play Go, so I called Mike, and he arrived not long after Tycondrius did. Rob told Nab that I drink Bulmers, which is a horrible lie, and from that point on my ability to articulate and stand properly rapidly deteriorated.
We went off to the Hi Chapperal where I proceeded to get very drunk, and then I went online. Dear God, I went online. That's not a good thing. Spent tonight apologising to everyone (again) and becoming ever more horrified at eyewitness accounts.
I've had too many nights of excess this summer >_>
Music: Enigma - The Voice & The Snake