Why Compromise?

Small Steps - El Preventorio Infantíl

2012-01-16T15:28:00.000+01:00

By Eoghan Ryan (Published by inVLC Magazine, January 2012)Back in November we ran an article about El Preventorio Infantíl de Nuestra Señora del Amparo, in Real de Gandia. A residential home for children, El Preventorio was in immediate need of support. We made an initial cash donation to purchase a trolley they needed to keep the kids clothes in order, bought some everyday necessities and ran an appeal for support around Valencia.We were very pleased with the generous response that we got from throughout the community. From small donations of clothes to bigger contributions made by schools and academies, all in all, the appeal was a great success. Using the roughest of measuring tools, we have so far delivered twelve carloads of much-needed clothes, shoes, sports equipment and of course most importantly given the time of year, toys, lots and lots of toys. Thanks to a fund-raiser held by Lenguas Vivas language academy we were also in a position to donate in excess of €500 just before Christmas. Hermana Amelia and the team were delighted and very grateful for everyone’s help, however upon making the cash donation we discovered that they had just been hit with a bill for more than a thousand Euros for bed clothes which they were not in a position to pay for completely. Thankfully, we were in a position to tap up some generous sources and add to the donation to make up the full amount. In total we have given them almost two thousand Euros over the last four months, which has gone to fund practical necessities. This incident highlighted the fact that this one appeal, while important in the short term, is not going to make a substantial impact in the larger scheme of things unless we back it up.We have made a very positive first step towards improving the standard of living for these kids but there is a long way to go. Through our association we are planning to set up a network of volunteers in the Gandia area to help in the evenings. With only three nuns and the occasional volunteer looking after fifty-six children, the need is acute. The kids need adult company and help with their homework and the sisters need help getting them showered and cleaned up before bed. We are also looking at long-term projects, which will utilise the fantastic facilities that they have available at the centre in order to generate some regular income. If we can get these two additional steps in motion then we will go some way to not only giving these kids a better standard of living but also a better shot at a good life.We feel like we have generated some momentum but we realise that we are dealing with something that has no finish line. The festive season of giving may have passed for another year but these kids still need and deserve more support.We would like to thank everyone who contributed with their time and donations and encourage others to get involved.We are awaiting official registration as an independent association. This will allow us to continue to support El Preventorio in an official capacity and provide a vehicle for the continued generosity of everyone in the community. Should you wish to help you can contact us at ryan.eoghan@gmail.com

Making an Impact

2012-01-16T15:26:00.000+01:00

By Eoghan Ryan (Published by inVLC January 2012)

Kanyima Twehamye, from South Western Uganda comes to Valencia via London and the Isle of Skye. He is the owner of Impact Idiomas in Almassera. At nineteen, Kany moved to Scotland and laughs as he talks about innocently ‘looking forward’ to experiencing the cold weather he had heard so much about. Exiting the warm airport in Glasgow into -5 degree Scottish winter was more jarring than expected, ‘I had never experienced anything like it’Through family and friends he found himself on the Isle of Skye, which he speaks of with great affection, ‘the people were great, always inviting me to a cup of tea, I didn’t feel homesick at all.’From the Isle of Skye, Kany moved to London to study business at the University of Westminster. He had to study at night, while working a payroll job during the day. It was during this time that he met his wife, Maria.‘I wanted to do something to do with my degree but I became interested in Education too. Maria had spent ten years in London and wanted to move back here.’At this stage their son Ntare (Lion) had been born and daughter, Mirembe (Peace) was on the way. ‘In Ugandan culture it’s important to give a boy a strong name, but I think we balanced it out with Mirembe.’ ‘I did my CELTA and then worked for about two years in different places building up some experience.’Some opportunities came up around town and Kany built up a strong base in the community and found himself being pushed towards opening his own place. He smiles when talking about running into the kids he teaches and their parents around the town.‘It’s great, they call me, Mr. Kany and I always talk to them in English, you can see how proud the parents are when they see them speaking English.’Having finally overcome the bureaucratic hurdles, which caused massive delays, frustration and expense; Kany is now focused on making a real impact in the area. ‘That’s why we called it Impact Idiomas; I really want English to be part of the language of this town. It’s a small place and so I think it is achievable.’Kany tries to get back to Uganda when possible but it’s been three years since the last trip. “My mum is coming to visit over the festive period, it’s an exciting trip for them, if a bit daunting. Especially, when they see the problems we have here, like 20% unemployment, they don’t think of Europe like that.’As a Ugandan living in Valencia, Kany likes to stay abreast of events all over Africa as he feels like he represents more than just his own country but Africa in general.‘My experiences in Africa are limited to Uganda and Rwanda but I try to share the diversity of Africa with people here. When my wife and in-laws visited Uganda in 2006, it was very different from what they expected. The images on the news are generally negative so I think it’s very important to tell the diverse stories of Africa.’Kany, a positive guy by nature, initially says that he has had no problems with prejudice here but there has been at least one serious incident and he says he notices a difference in the way some people in the service industry treat him when he is alone compared to when he is with his wife.‘The best way to deal with it, is to ignore it, to try to be civil, to be intelligent, not to be ignorant too.’Kany says his goal is to make a positive impact on his community, one suspects he already is.

It Might Get Wild

2011-12-14T22:00:00.000+01:00

By Eoghan Ryan (Published by inVLC Magazine Dec 2011)

In the audience at an Emma Get Wild gig, there is a gentle interaction that happens early in the performance between the initiated and the newcomers. As Isabel, the lead singer hits the first refrain and the melody settles in, those familiar with the band smile knowingly, relishing the look of delight and surprise, on the faces of the newbies.It’s fair to say that they could be playing to far bigger audiences, but for now, those of us in the know are enjoying the intimate club gigs.Formed initially for the purpose of entering a song writing contest, Emma Get Wild have evolved over the last few years under the guidance of Singer-Songwriter Isabel Castro and guitarist Salva Fito, into a versatile six piece. The name of the group comes from a Sebadoh song on their 1993 album, Bubble and Scrape.Isabel’s parents are from Galicia but she grew up in London and so writes and performs in English.‘I’ve never really considered writing in another language. I suppose it comes down to, English being the language I best express myself in and it being tied up with the sort of music we play and listen to.’Salva (guitar), Santi (Drums) and Alex (Guitar) are natives of Valencia and veterans of such bands as Jaula de Grillos and Ubisum. New recruit, bassist, Scott DeVore hails from Iowa, USA.Categorising EGW is no simple thing and this seems to be part of the charm. They are certainly headed in the folk direction with country detours but intentionally stepped away from the acoustic, ‘sellable’ route to go to a full electric sound. That said, they are never that far from that folk edge and when Alex breaks out the ukulele or Scott the banjo, their versatility sets them apart.The new album is due out soon and Isabel says she is particularly excited this time round.‘We’ve never been this ambitious before. I’ve been exploring the music which has most influenced me, folk from the seventies, maybe a bit of psychedelia, without veering too far from what is essentially our sound. It helps that we have some great musicians in the band.’The evolution of EGW hasn’t been straightforward. There have been changes in the line-up and an acrimonious experience with a record company but with things settled and the new album in the can, Isabel says, they are enjoying controlling their own destiny.‘There are definite plans to just keep doing what we are doing, record more music, play more and see where this next album takes us. We are happy to be releasing it with Malatesta Records, a local label run by musicians. This means that not only are we in total control of how we sound, we are also very involved in what happens to the album after release.’The days of the small intimate gigs may be numbered so get along to see them. You will be able to bore your friends in days to come with the old line; I saw them in a little club in Valencia way back when.Secret Stories From the Dark Corner by Emma Get Wild will be released in the New Year.

The Kitchen Table

2011-12-14T21:59:00.003+01:00

By Eoghan Ryan (First Published by Foliate Oak, May 2010 - www.foliateoak.uamont.edu) I sat at the kitchen table and traced the grain of the pine with my fingers. At its edge the annual lines were tight and severe; in the middle wider and softer. I strummed the tighter ones with my nails and then stretched my palms over the wider, softer frets in the centre and fingered the dark intercostals. Next to my hand a mug of cold tea sat untouched.The double doors into the living room were open and the early morning sun was glaring through the net curtains at the far end. The windows were open too and the fresh morning air tasted good but made me shiver. I stretched my arms to meet the warm rays that crept across the kitchen table towards me.The scrape of her key lifted me from the grain. She kicked her shoes off as she came into view at the other side of the double doors. She had her back to me. She walked across the red rug between the coffee table and sofa to the bay window. She rubbed the back of her neck with her right hand while plucking out her earrings with her left. Her hair was down around her shoulders, wavy, like it got when she let it dry naturally after a shower. She pulled the curtain to the side and looked down on the street. She lifted each foot up behind her in turn and rubbed her arches with her thumb. They were so defined, unlike my flat feet. She rolled her head to the left slightly, released the curtain, then turned to face me. Her eye makeup was smeared. Her black dress seemed looser than it had been when she left. She stopped for a second when she saw me but I couldn’t meet her eyes. I pressed my palms on the table until my arms trembled and listened to her approach. She turned away before she got to the double doors. The stairs creaked under her weight. I raised my head again and listened to her footfalls on the floor above. The bathroom door squeaked shut; she’d asked me to oil it so many times. The next sound I heard was the shower coming on. My tired eyes stung and I held each blink longer than normal to ease the dryness. I clasped my hands together on my lap and lowered my shoulders to the kitchen table. She was home, she was safe, but she was no longer my wife.

El Preventorio Infantíl de Nuestra Señora del Amparo

2011-11-18T18:13:00.001+01:00

By Eoghan Ryan (Published by inVLC Magazine Nov 2011)Recently, as part of setting up a charity, a friend and I visited El Preventorio Infantíl de Nuestro Señora del Amparo, in Real de Gandia. It is a children’s home that we had heard was in need of some help and so went for a visit. As we approached the building through the orange groves that carpet the small valley in front of the home it occurred to me that it looked like a villa.I spent the month of August working in a children’s home in Darjeeling, India and the superficial differences couldn’t have been more pronounced. The building is set back into the hill with a play ground out front and a school attached at the side. The kids were playing as we pulled up. We had arranged the visit with Hermana Amelia, a young Nun from Paraguay, who has lived and worked at the centre for nine years. As she showed us around we started to ask questions and bit-by-bit garnered a clearer picture of the challenges faced by the sisters who run the residential home. There are only three nuns taking care of fifty-six children aged between three and thirteen. During the day when the kids go to school this is manageable but in the evenings it is chaotic. Hermana Amelia is not one for complaining but when I joked about her not sleeping she admitted that most nights she goes to bed between 1 and 2am and is up again at 5.30. That supposes that none of the kids need help during the night.The government funds the school, but the residential side receives no regular funding. It is a fantastic facility and is spotlessly clean but there was no toilet paper or soap in the bathrooms. There were no toys or books in the bedrooms. They get food from the Red Cross and sporadic donations from the local community but they are affectively living hand to mouth. There are beds for another fifteen children, and while there are six on a waiting list; the sisters simply do not have the resources to take them in.It struck me as we were leaving after our second visit that under the surface the needs of these kids was every bit the same as those in India. The centre operates on a hierarchy of needs. They provide shelter, food, education and some psychological help but the ratio of fifty-six to three just doesn’t work when it comes to the emotional needs of the individual children. Just like in India, their need for affection, support and love is acute. Just like food and shelter this is a universal need.As a first small step in a bigger commitment to the home we are collecting clothes, books, shoes and sports equipment (New or good quality second-hand) for the children at various locations around Valencia. If you would like to donate, make a financial contribution or would just like more information please email me at ryan.eoghan@gmail.com

Mental Health in the Ex-Pat World

2011-11-18T18:04:00.001+01:00

By Eoghan Ryan (Published by inVLC magazine 2011)‘In the nucleus of our cells we have the divine and when we open up we become god.’So says, Margarita Llamazares, a psychologist who works with the ex-pat community.Margarita is originally from Santa Cruz, Tenerife and now shares her time between Valencia and Madrid. Speaking to her, one gets the feeling that this is not simply a job for her; this is vocational.Margarita’s journey to this profession did not begin in the classroom but in India where she spent three years and was exposed to so-called alternative therapies and spirituality. When she returned to Spain she studied psychology, as she felt she wanted, ‘the tools of academic knowledge’. It makes for a fascinating combination of the traditional and alternative. As she says herself, ‘Zen is not for everyone.’ These academic tools certainly give added credibility when she speaks about spiritual grounding and living in the moment, strong tenants of eastern philosophy but can then quote Freud in the next breath. ‘I don’ t want to put myself in a box’, she says.Working with expats was a natural progression for her. ‘One of my teachers was working with foreign people. When people are away from their culture, they need special support, I thought I could do something in this domain.’She describes expat life as, ‘living on the border between cultures with many different ways of seeing life.’ The challenges that expats face may sometimes be superficially different to those of other people but she does not see a great deal of difference in the way that these problems manifest themselves or how to deal with them. She does mention one specific difference. She sees it as an accelerated world. ‘You live a high-speed life. You want things fast, you are out of a comfort zone and you want things faster.’For Margarita, there are some key elements to maintaining mental health. ‘Do something… like Nike,’ she says, ‘Just do it’. ‘You can go to the cave, but the cave of your heart, not the bed. You need to find something that makes you feel good, something that allows you to be yourself and have the discipline to do it.’Action and physical movement are obviously related, but movement is more difficult for adults, as we don't channel energy in the same way and are more self-conscious, she says, ‘children are always moving, they are little Buddhas’.Dealing with the world and its problems means opening up, not turning away. ‘Expats are often people seeking a destiny, they are escaping from routine, maybe family or surroundings but any ghost you have will follow you.’ We may have wanted to escape routine, we may even thrive on change but there are some common needs.‘We need a reference point, we need context… we see reality as a small box, but sometimes we need to shift this point of perception and that’s what enlightenment is.’The journey is a continuous one. ‘When you discover who you are, you have to continue, you must keep moving’.Along that journey, we share our lives, and we will need to feel like we have a floor under our feet, to stabilise. ‘We need to be self-contained but will seek a companion on the way. In a way we are looking for a mirror, something that gives us validation.’Having spent time with her, I suspect anyone’s journey would be richer for crossing paths with Margarita.

Social Theatre

2011-10-17T20:31:00.000+02:00

By Eoghan Ryan (Published by inVLC Magazine, Oct '11)

Eirini Delaki, a native of Crete, first came to Valencia in 2005. It’s a common story in the expat world, she came with a short stay in mind and has been unable to break free since. Eirini runs social theatre workshops here in the capital, which provide for creative expression and social intervention for marginalised people. She works with victims of domestic abuse, addicts, immigrants and people from conflict zones to name just a few. Eirini’s passion for the project is obvious. She says, ‘Theatre is not elitist, it’s accessible to everyone. It aims to discover the artist and child inside everyone.’ She believes the perception that theatre may be seen as a luxury and lower down on the hierarchy of needs for marginalised people needs to be countered and that the concrete results show it’s true value. ‘The objective is to get in touch with psychological necessities so that people can discover how to break down barriers for themselves.’ Eirini has spent a lot of time in India and Nepal using social theatre in marginalised communities with enormous success. In one area alcoholism was reduced by 60% over a number of years following the introduction of social theatre workshops. There is also an additional benefit to social theatre that other forms of therapy don’t have. Because it can step beyond the initial workshop and become a spectacle it has an impact on the audience as well as the participants and this can go a long way to changing attitudes in the community. Eirini calls it, ‘something that comes from the heart and goes straight to the heart.’ Recently she has started to develop a style of social theatre which, combines yoga as a way to supplement the creative experience and develop the expressive potential of the participants. Like most social projects there is a constant struggle to keep it self-sustaining and so Eirini runs workshops at the university and for other paying groups in order to make it possible to keep them going for those who can’t afford to pay. With this in mind collaboration is vital and this is where Eirini sees the future. She would like to see, ‘the creation of a multi-disciplined community, where different artists or professionals, that use art, get together, not just to express themselves, but to co-create and share the benefits of creative expression with an audience. The good news is that it has started already, art is taking over!’As for Eirini herself, her professional and personal life, are intertwined. Her job feeds into the way she lives her life and her life informs her work. ‘A so-called, easy job, would make my life more difficult, since it wouldn’t be the right way to channel my passion. I’ve been living an international life from a very early age. I’ve always had friends from different countries and curiosity to get to know other cultures. I look for the magical common element in all people, no matter what their background. That is what I want to do here in Valencia and wherever I go.

Inaccessible – Darjeeling Quakes

2011-09-19T20:58:00.002+02:00

There was an earthquake yesterday in the Himalaya’s. Its epicentre was in the Northern Indian State of Sikkim and registered at 6.8 on the Richter Scale. It is accurate to say that the quake occurred in the Himalayas, rather than India, as this is a region of borders and it affected parts of Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Tibet as well as India. As the media has reported, the biggest issue they now face is getting rescue workers and aid into the area.

I spent the month of August in the Himalayan town of Darjeeling, one of the areas affected by the earthquake.

I flew into Bagdogra airport at the end of July. It was the middle of the monsoon season but the weather on the plains around Bagdogra and Siliguri was sunny. As I was going to Darjeeling to volunteer at a centre for street children, I was picked up by one of the staff in a four-by-four jeep.

The early running, along the plains and through the first of the tea gardens, was a predictable rural Indian experience. My driver Ajay, like everyone else, hugged the centre of the road, only swerving at the last minute, to avoid oncoming traffic and obstacles. The road was populated with pedestrians, bikes, mopeds, cars, vans, buses, cows, dogs, chickens, and the occasional monkey. The cows in particular were notably disinterested in moving out of the way.

About half an hour from the airport, we were forced into a detour as the main road that leads up to Darjeeling was closed due to a landslide. I travelled back by this main road on my return trip and it is worth mentioning, that calling it a main road, is accurate only in comparison to the alternative route. The main route is a small rural road that winds up through the mountains, which just about facilitates two-way traffic. The alternative route, which we took that day, was nothing more than a glorified mountain path.

Before we hit the first real incline, we drove through the last of the low land tea gardens and already the road was chopped up in places, sections of the asphalt having been washed away to leave a rocky surface that reduced us to a crawl and jolted us from side to side on the bench seat in the jeep.

The plains ended abruptly when we turned up into the forest slopes of the foothills and started our climb. As we made the turn uphill it also seemed that we were turning into the monsoon weather. Almost immediately, the rain started, misty at first and heavier later on. The wipers on the vehicle rattled a constant rhythm for the next two and a half hours.

The road was very narrow and often had unobstructed sheer drops off on the right hand side. Early on, a policeman flagged us down, and asked us to take another passenger to Darjeeling. The man climbed into the back seat behind me, where he stayed, completely silent for the entire journey.

The precariousness of the road was unnerving and I found myself consistently gripping my seat belt tightly as my nervousness rarely dissipated. It was a constant upward zig-zag of hairpin turns and blind corners at 45 degree angles, with traffic moving constantly in both directions. Passing oncoming vehicles meant dipping off the road on the inside and allowing them to edge past on the outside. I was thankful for the small mercy of driving up on the left hand side, coming down meant skirting the edge of the road with little to block a fall into the jungle below.

Occasionally, the jungle canopy cleared enough to give us a view of the landscape around us. Peering from the jeep between the trees and under the clouds the green hills came into view, and with them a spectacular reminder, that if we went off the road we would never be seen again.

Ajay, proved an excellent driver. In conditions where keeping the engine engaged was in itself a remarkable achievement he kept it going even if for at least an hour and a half he never got beyond second gear. Ajay is thin and doesn’t look to be carrying a lot of muscle but he swung the jeep around steep corner after steep corner with patience and without betraying too much fatigue.

We eventually rejoined the main route to Darjeeling. The road widened somewhat and the incline was not as severe. The number of buses and over-crowed vehicles increased significantly and some of the more dangerous corners had small walls or token barriers.

By the time we came across the Toy Train, I felt somewhat reassured that we would make our destination. The Toy Train is a rail service that runs in Darjeeling District. It takes its name from its stature; it is a miniature train on very narrow tracks. It looks like a run down version of a ride at an amusement park and yet functions to carry people and goods around the district.

We were well and truly in the clouds at this point and approaching an altitude of 6000 feet, visibility was no more than twenty metres. Remarkably, atop this mountain, as well as the obvious four-by-four jeeps there were also occasional small Japanese and Korean cars. I suspect they did not come up via the alternative route.

Darjeeling is the biggest town in the district, an area that is home to more than three million people, and although only 96km from Bagdogra airport it took more than three hours to make the journey.

While Darjeeling has the facility to receive aid via helicopter at a number of different locations, the roads that surround it are very small and not many of the smaller towns and villages would have such space. Many people live on the slopes of the hill around the town and their homes are accessible only by paths big enough to take a motorbike. With these homes particularly vulnerable at this time of the year to the landslides brought about by the monsoon rains, the impact of a strong earthquake would be catastrophic. So far, estimates of fatalities have been quite small but with access so limited it is possible that this will rise significantly.

I’ve had messages from friends in Darjeeling to say they are ok. The children’s centre, I worked at, suffered only minor damage and although the children and staff were terrified by the quake, none were injured.

As the army and aid workers struggle to get into Darjeeling District, Sikkim, remote areas of Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet, one hopes that the worst has past and the authorities will be able to get aid to those who need it.

I, Volunteer

2011-09-18T12:42:00.002+02:00

By Eoghan Ryan (Published by inVLC Magazine, September 2011)

As I write this, I am starting into my last week with, The Edith Wilkins Street Children Foundation, in Darjeeling, India. By the time it is published I will be back in the sun in Valencia, a thought that brings a smile to my face.

Coming from Ireland, which has a huge culture of charity, fundraising here in Valencia for this trip was always going to be a different challenge.

The thing with volunteering is that, generally speaking, three groups of people do it. Professionals, such as doctors and engineers take career breaks to work with organizations like, Doctors Without Borders. The other groups, teachers and students have two factors in common, they have time to commit, but generally don’t have a lot of money, so, in order to volunteer, fund raising is essential.

During the fundraising it was important to be as informative as possible. This was not fundraising for an end of term blow-out in Mallorca. This was not ‘Voluntourism’. If I were looking for a free holiday, I certainly wouldn’t have chosen the foothills of the Himalayas during monsoon season.

At the same time, I was educating myself on the situation and the industry and freely admit that my understanding before I left was very limited and in many ways inaccurate.

The financial and moral support I received from friends and indeed friends of friends from throughout the community was fantastic and really showed that the idea of compassion fatigue is rubbish, and there is a real willingness to help when the opportunity arises.

It was reassuring to come across other individuals and organizations in Valencia doing similar things, from building projects in South Africa, to another NGO, called Namaste, doing similar things to the EWSCF just over the border in Nepal

With that in mind, to all my kind supporters… I say thank you, and I think it only right to give you an idea of where your money went?

Getting here was, of course, the biggest expense. The train, three flights and the scariest drive of my life up into the mountains, were covered by the benefit concert and football tournament in Valencia. Other expenses, including a donation to the foundation were paid for from donations from Ireland, Lenguas Vivas Language Academy, Home España and from my own pocket.

What benefit was there for the kids of Darjeeling in my being there, you may well ask?

I worked full-time at the EWSCF centre for four weeks. This generally involved five hours of contact with the kids per day, facilitating games, activities, sports, teaching classes and helping them individually with their homework.

I worked with the teachers on their English as well has coaching them on alternative teaching methods. We put a new reporting procedure in place to allow for a more structured approach to education in the Drop in Centre and Coaching Classes. This will help the kids to make tangible progress and hopefully give them more options in the future.

The idea of a volunteer coming for a month and ‘making a difference’ is something I find a bit condescending to the brilliant people who work with these kids, day in day out, all year round. But, an outsider can give a renewed sense of perspective and new energy to the project and any bit of a leg up these kids can get is a good thing.

The hardest part of the job was when the stories and the personalities came together. Hearing reports of the horrendous things that some of these kids have gone through is not pleasant, but when you put a face to the story and get to know them, it becomes very real.

There are kids here with cancer, heart problems, treatment resistant TB. They have been abused and neglected and lets not forget the every day struggle of abject poverty.

While the sad stories need to be told in order to inform, educate and pull on the heart strings, the key message I want to bring back to everyone who supported me is, that this centre is doing fantastic work, the kids are getting the support they need to be safe, healthy, educated and have a shot at a decent life.

Thanks

The Age of Behaviour

2011-08-12T13:04:00.001+02:00

By Eoghan Ryan (Published by inVLC Magazine Aug '11)

The New York Times recently dubbed this, the ‘Age of Behaviour’. In the second half of the last century the idea of Nationality or Ethnicity determined the grouping of people. This then transitioned to Citizenry, multi-ethnic communities united under the flag of citizenry of a nation. More recently, the suggestion is that behaviour has now become a more important determining factor than citizenship or nationality.

The ‘Arab Spring’ is an obvious example. Across national and ethnic divisions people have found unity based on shared desires and behaviour.

A contributing factor in this has been the proliferation of social media and trans-national activism.

During the uprisings in Iran and Georgia a few years ago, the impact of social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter was greatly overstated. Western Journalists were getting their information by following Twitter and didn’t seem to want to ask the question, why would Iranians on the ground be Tweeting in English when they speak Farsi. Of course much of the Tweeting was going on outside Iran and so was something of a monitoring service rather than a driving tool

The Arab spring has been different, demonstrators on the ground have spoken frequently about how they used social media to organise. The actions of those in Tunisa and the domino effect of across the region showed the power of shared ideas and desires to unit people.

Radical movements have been way ahead of the curve in this respect. Radical Islam and right wing Neo-Nazi groups to name just two, have for years, used trans-national sharing of ideas to unite groups which would otherwise have been so isolated they would have faded to insignificance or dissappeared altogether.

Behaviour as a unifying factor in the development of an expat community here in Spain is in its own transitional phase and has a lot of potential positives but does it have the potential to limit the extent to which people integrate?

In the Middle East and North Africa, young people who feel free online are returing to repressed lives offline and this engenders feelings of injustice and a desire for change and reform. The sense of belonging to a community of shared ideas and behaviour is empowering them to action and so the online world enhances interaction in the real world.

In our community the autonomy provided by online communities and idea sharing might have the opposite effect and increase isolation. If you can get your social needs at home then the need to integrate is reduced significantly.

On the other hand, perhaps shared behavioural traits and interests will serve as unifing factors within the greater community here and can be used to redraw the lines of division and to relegate the old ideas of nationality to a less important consideration. Perhaps, in the age of Behavour even labeling ourselves ‘Expats’ does a disservice to the diversity of the communities of behavour and ideas that we belong to, which transend traditional ideas of classification and nationality.

Endurance

2011-07-17T13:01:00.003+02:00

By Eoghan Ryan

If you would like an illustration of the capacity of the human body to endure, seek not the marathon runner, extreme athlete or prize fighter but locate a teenage boy in a physically uncomfortable position with a pretty girl. Observe the heroic physical durability.

Take the young man near the City of Arts and Sciences on this lovely Friday evening. He lies on the grass face down, his head propped up just far enough to keep his new shiny sunglasses in place. On his back lies a girl, looking up at the pale blue sky. At the side, another girl, lying, knees bent, her head and shoulders supported by the torsos of the twinned bodies.

The position of his elbows, wedged under his shoulders, and his feet, pursed against the turf, brace him against the pressure. He holds this position, fighting any physical betrayal of discomfort, any show of weakness, any squirm that might prompt the girls to break contact.

He doesn’t say much, the desire to flirt verbally contained by the fear that a flutter in his voice might reveal weakness. His phone is in the pocket of his denim shorts, not under the weight of the two bodies but slightly to the side. The taut material keeps it’s pressence felt. If it rang he would have cause to shimmy onto his back, reposition but not break contact, but if it were his Mother calling all would be lost.

The boy holds tough, steadfast, for an unnatural length of time.

The girl at the side, being slightly removed from the intimacy and not having to concentrate on her balance like the girl on top, or survival, like the boy, eventually prompts a reprieve by standing and straddling the other two. Her weight on the the other girl’s stomach provokes cries and laughter and the demolition of the coupling.

The boy seizes this opportunity and springs gingerly to his feet. His kneecaps and the balls of his feet hurt, his shoulders ache and his rib cage feels bruised. He turns away, digging in his pocket under the pretence of checking his phone. He readjusts his potential embarrassment under his belt with amazing deterity and removes the phone. He clicks through an empty inbox and then replaces it in his pocket. He brushes the grass and dirt off his green polo and adjusts his sunglasses.

The silience demands intervention and so he grabs the girl who had laid on his back and folds her over his shoulder. She kicks and screams playfully and so he lowers her to the ground and lunges for the other. Her giggling scamper away is enough to avoid his grasp.

The girl he put on the ground is up and kicks him from behind. He makes a dramatic fall forward and reaches into an attempted handstand. He topples back, right side up, quickly and loses a shoe in the process.

The girls have come together, brushing debris off their shirts and straightening their shorts. The boy plays with the shoe like a football and gives it enough air to attempt a climax by lowering his head to trap the shoe between his shoulder blades. He fails, but the girls, as if on cue, take advatage of his prone position to push him over and pile on top of him.

Face up this time, he is crushed in exquisite discomfort, determined he can endure.

Supply and Demand

2011-06-15T23:19:00.002+02:00

By Eoghan Ryan (Published by inVLC Magazine - June 2011)

In August I travel to Darjeeling in North Eastern India. I will be volunteering with The Edith Wilkins Street Children Foundation. This promises to be quite a change from my very comfortable life here where the more precarious thing I do is slalom with the buses on Fernando el Catolico on my way to and from work.

Located just forty-five minutes from the border with Nepal and close to Tibet, Assam, Bangladesh, Bihar and Sikkim; Darjeeling is something of a hub in the trafficking of children. It is estimated that some 2000 children are sold across the border with Nepal alone, every week. Eight euro a child is about the going rate.

These kids are sold for sex, labour, and drug trafficking. The Edith Wilkins Street Children Foundation has a drop-in centre, over-night shelter and half way house where ‘at risk’ kids can come and eat, see a nurse, play and just be safe for a while.

The first priority is to reunite them with their families and failing that to get them on the path to education and some kind of stable safe existence. There are success stories but the numbers are over-whelming.

This is not an issue restricted to the third world places like Darjeeling but one that has resonance right here on our doorstep.

In my daily jaunt up and down Gran Via the one thing that is impossible to miss is the advertising on the buses that I share a lane with.

There has been a noticeable increase in advertising for brothels or ‘puti clubs’ recently. The advertising is slick and impressive in scale. Of course it plays on the age-old chestnut of portraying these places as glamorous, just like the cards that advertise ‘private services’ that get stuck to your car window every time you park in the street.

We may not be in Darjeeling but these too issues are linked. The trafficking of people, much like that of drugs is a demand based business. If there were not the demand there would be no business.

There are an estimated 12.5 - 27 million people in sexual slavery around the world at any given time. The vast majority of these people are women and while it seems that it is generally 18-24 year olds trafficked into Spain some estimate the worldwide average at around thirteen.

According to a study by the Federation of Progressive Women, an estimated 40,000 foreign women are forced into prostitution in Spain, although only some 18,000 have been identified.

If we choose to continue to view prostitution from the perspective of it being a consenting adults situation and that trafficking is only something that happens in Asia or Eastern Europe then we are turning a blind eye to genocidal criminality.

At least here in Spain the law puts trafficking on a par with rape when it comes to prosecution and sentencing but throughout the world it is often judicially viewed as a lighter offence then trafficking drugs and so is less risky. It is of course every bit as lucrative with estimates putting the annual turnover in the billions.

I’m not one for celebrity causes but in the case of the DNA (Demi and Ashton) Foundation’s recent campaign I think they have the right idea, they are pursuing a cultural awakening to this issue through social media and have pointed at the issue of demand with their slogan. ‘Real Men Don’t Buy Girls’.

In Darjeeling The Edith Wilkins Street Children Foundation is fighting the supply of human commodities, we could do worse than address the demand at our end.

Further information on The Edith Wilkins Street Children Foundation can be found at www.edithwilkins.org

Graceland

2011-06-13T22:57:00.004+02:00

'You see, Elvis, in dis time and place, being a musician is not blessing. It is curse. Listen to my advice. Listen carefully. Do not live dis life unless it is the only thing you can be. Go out and get a nice job. Dere is a nice office job for you somewhere. Find a good wife. Look for a girl with a compassionate smile and fire in her eyes. But not de manic rage of a forest fire - look instead for de gentle glow of a hearth, a girl whose laughter makes de drudgery of life bearable. And, when you bury your nose in her hair and draw a deep breath, if you are lucky, de spice of her love will infuse you with de husky sent of wood smoke, de throat tickle of curry leaves, de breathlessness of peppers and de milk burp of still-unborn babies. Draw all of dese deeply into you, until every part of you is infected by her. And, if you are lucky, she will purge you of de insanity of music, de knife-edge beauty of seeing yourself as you are. As you really are.

From, Graceland by Chris Abani

Amity

2011-05-25T12:59:00.002+02:00

By Eoghan Ryan (Published by inVLC Magazine May 2011)

What do you do when everything seems to be going against you? First you lose your job, then, as a result you lose your work permit and so can’t get another gig and then to make matters worse social welfare is cut off ... oh, and by the way you are a husband and father of two.

Efe Omoregie Obaseki has had a tough year by any standards but he has turned his frustrations into action, helping others in the African community here in Valencia.

Efe, from Benin, feels that, even with a Nigerian Union here in Valencia the services on offer are too top-down orientated and that more needs to be done to give a voice to ordinary Nigerians on the ground.

Through his newly registered NGO, Amity Organisation International, Efe is hoping to achieve two main goals. He calls it ‘a collective forum’, to help the Nigerian community integrate better here in Valencia, and secondly, to help the community to reestablish themselves as part of Nigerian society.

There are thousands of Nigerians living in the Valencian community and Efe feels there is much to be done to help people and to give his people a better image.

‘This is just something we have started as a group of like-minded friends, we want to play a part, improve things’

So many Nigerians like other Africans come to Europe with great expectations. They come for a better life, escaping poverty, war, the limitations of their homeland, for many the journey is harsh in the extreme but what awaits them can be worse. Often burdened with the weight of debt from ‘sponsors’ and unable to work here legally, the situation can turn desperate quickly and they are ripe for exploitation.

There is a need to ‘reduce the zeal to leave Nigeria among the young’ and that by sharing experiences they can get accurate information to these people.

‘Life here is not what we thought it would be, there is a herd mentality at home when it comes to Europe and we need to help people see what it is really like.’

One of the more pressing issues for Nigerians here is prostitution. A huge proportion of the female immigrants are targeted and recruited specifically because of the desperate situations they find themselves in. With little support and resources, options are limited and exploitation is rife.

Efe says , ‘Prostitution is in the bloodstream of Nigerian girls, to address this problem we have to address the economic situation that people face, both back in Nigeria and here.’

Efe is quick to stress that there are a lot of good things happening in the African community. Church groups provide support and some are actively helping women to find a route out of prostitution. CeiMigra are providing invaluable services, including free legal advice, language classes and professional courses. Efe himself is working as a volunteer teacher and feels that there is a need to raise awareness both in the Nigerian community and the wider local community of these positive steps.

He laughs when we talk about the challenges of bringing Nigerians together and sharing information.

‘We rely on English, you could put fifty Nigerians in this room and they would be speaking fifty different dialects … it’s difficult.’

For Efe and his family their situation is precarious but for him it is key to put his energies into something positive.

You can find Amity Organisation International on Facebook.

Generation Next

2011-05-03T12:27:00.004+02:00

(Published by inVLC Magazine April 2011)
As an adult, a move into the expat world can be exciting, life-changing and in no small way, daunting. Many expats speak of needing occasional trips ‘home’, be they for holidays, weddings or just for a break. But, what is it like growing up in the expat world?

Thirteen year old, Orphée and Nicholas Athanassiou moved to Valencia last year.

Born in Toulouse they moved to Rome when they were just five where they attended an international school through English. Their mother Angela is French and her work in International Development brought them to Valencia. Dad is Greek and having acquired Spanish over the last year the boys now speak five languages.

The move last year was difficult, they loved Rome and had lots of friends there and it took a while to settle in.

Nicholas, in particular found the move tough at the beginning but is now much happier.

‘I miss Rome, and even though I didn’t really want to move, I’m glad Mom encouraged us, ‘cause it’s worked out much better than I could have imagined, it is difficult moving countries, starting all over again, but I never imagined I would feel what I feel now. As the Spanish say, me cae bien!’

Orphée, having adapted quicker at the beginning, still pines somewhat for Rome.

‘Rome was more about the people; here it is more about the place than people.’

They attend Cambridge House School, and point out that while they go to an international school, Valencia isn’t as multi-national as Rome.

‘I like it there and there are some English and American kids, but Rome was much more international, there were kids from all over the world there,’ says Orphée.

When we turn to the question of where they feel they are from, they both pause.

Nicholas says, ‘we usually just say we are French because it’s easier, Orph used to give the long version more often but now don’t feel like going into it so much.’

Orphée, bouncing high on their newly acquired trampoline rejoins the conversation from mid-air, ‘I normally speak more English than French though.’

His brother laughs, ‘You speak better English than French, anyway Orph!’

‘I used to feel Italian,’ continues Nicholas, ‘but not now’.

‘Even though we have nothing to do with England, I guess we kind of feel kind of English, because of the language,’ says Orphée.

‘You have more of an American accent though,’ adds Nicholas.

Orphée smiles, ‘Yeah, but we use British words. It’s kind of hard, I think more like someone from the north of Europe, but I live in the South, maybe that’s why it’s easier to say I’m French, it’s kind of in the middle. I wanna be in the middle.’

There is the possibility of a move to Hawaii in the near future. If that comes about Nicholas says he would like to come back to Valencia. Orphée is not so sure.

‘I feel really comfortable here but at the same time I have the passion to travel and maybe study somewhere else, but I’m not sure where I would like to live.’

Angela calls them from the house to get ready. Orphée has a birthday party to go to and Nicholas is meeting friends down in the village, very unexceptional Saturday afternoon activities for two exceptional boys.

Have Art, Will Travel

2011-04-05T15:49:00.001+02:00

By Eoghan Ryan (published by inVLC magagazine in February 2011)

Asking an artist what has influenced them or an Expat where they are from is fundamentally the same question. If you are lucky you might get an interesting answer.

Photographer Nacho Bofarull was born in Barcelona but moved to Valencia when he was two. At thirteen his father’s work took the family to Madrid and three years later to Singapore. His he has attended university in Savanah, Georgia and Madrid.

When considering his work, this journied upbringing is not inconsequential. Moving both physically and intellectually contributed to his style and passion.

The travels were not the only contributing factors of course and Nacho is quick to point to supportive family, particularly a generous uncle who bought him his first polaroid camera at age six and an indulgent grandfather who forked out for film.

Educated at religious schools in Spain, the move to a ‘truely international’ environment in Singapore as well as holidays with family members, as you might expect, had a profound effect.

Nacho speaks of the importance of art to ask questions rather than make statements, perhaps a reflection of the impact his early education had, which he felt told rather than asked.

By his own admission he was not the best student and didn’t like to be told what to think or belive and so he found more fulfillment in books and photographs.

‘We need things that make us think more, not to be told what to think, for example, when art is overly explained, it’s proably not true.’

His formative journey has seen Nacho return to live in Valencia, a move he feels he is lucky to have been able to make.

‘I couldn’t have lived here and do what I do for a living a few years ago, the new technologies allow me that freedom’

Nacho has had shows in Savanah, New York, London and Mexico City. To date he is yet to show in Spain but says he is working on it.

‘I would like to show here in Valencia, I might not sell anything, but, it’s my town, you know.’

It seems that in taking the unconventional route to his profession Nacho has built the all important network of contacts outside the established Spanish art world and so breaking in is challenging.

‘It’s a social business, you have to build relationships. Perhaps its a combination of where I studied and my style but I just happen to have built those relationships outside of Spain.’

He owes his living in no small part to Mexico and to the patronage of Mexico City’s vibrant art world.

‘Art is valued there, rich people spend money on it and that’s what we need to survive.’

A point illustrated on a large scale by the new free gallery opened in Mexico City by tycoon Carlos Slim recently.

Nacho is currently preparing for a show in Mexico City in August. The theme may be described broadly as, ‘interesting spaces that we are not looking at.’

He likes the idea of recreational space and the structures that house the spectacle we are pointed to enjoy.

‘When we are looking at what we are told to we sometimes miss what’s really going on around us.’

Nacho Bofarull will be showing at Tal Qual Gallery, Mexico City, in August.

The Smoking Ban ... A Step or a Push in the Right Direction?

2011-04-05T15:46:00.002+02:00

By Eoghan Ryan (Published by inVLC Magazine, January 2011)

We are a month into the smoking ban, and on the surface at least, the transition has been relatively painless.

As other countries have shown in recent years, it will become socially normalised quickly and while it will remain a talking point, it will lose it’s potency with time.

That said, for many, the change is quite profound and will impact the habbits of a lifetime.

On January 24th, a close family friend died from Lung Cancer. She was diagnosed six months ago but we suspect that she had known for a lot longer that she was gravely ill.

Margaret, was one of those people, that if you are very lucky, you have had as a constant in your life. She was my mother’s oldest friend and my sister’s godmother. She was an everpresent, loyal, wholehearted friend.

Margaret was also the most committed, wholehearted smoker I’ve ever met. Smoking was not something she did, it was part of who she was.

Had she told friends and family that she was ill it would have caused friction as we would naturally have tried to get her to quit smoking. This was not an option.

This was a woman whose addiction was so strong, that having fractured her skull in a fall, discharged herself from hospital because she wasn’t allowed to go outside to smoke.

Tuesday nights when I was a kid meant a fog of smoke in our living room, as Margaret and my mother, smoked, drank coffee and set the world to rights. I really hated the smoke but such was the life in those conversations that I stayed there as late as I could get away with.

When I was eventually shooed off to bed I would sometimes sneak back up the hall and lie on the floor outside the door to listen to them talk. More than once I fell asleep only to be woken with a bang on the head when the door was opened.

When my Mother gave up smoking and subsequently moved house she opted to institute her own smoking ban in the new place, and as a result Margaret’s visits became less frequent and shorter, and something was lost.

My Mother, as a former smoker couldn’t sit in a smokey room and Margaret couldn’t stay anywhere for any length of time where she couldn’t smoke.

A friend, who himself battled clear of alcohol and substance addiction in his early twenties told me that the hardest part of getting clean was changing his social habbits.

Through rehab and N.A. he came to realise that if he continued to live in the same area and stayed friends with the same people, he would never free himself from drugs, alcohol and cigarettes.

His breaking ties hurt a lot of people, but it worked for him. For a while his N.A. crowd became his social circle but with time he moved on and an addiction free life became normal.

A significant difference was that he was a young man, the social and chemical habbits he was breaking were not decades in the making.

The imposition of the smoking ban may seem like nanny-stateism to some, but perhaps it can help to make breaking the social aspects of the addiction that bit easier and we may lose fewer good people before their time.

Margaret O’Callaghan, 1941-2011

Can You Change Your Swing?

2011-01-14T21:09:00.000+01:00

By Eoghan Ryan (Published by inVLC magazine Jan '11)

Here we are again; Resolution time! The gyms are chocablock, folks are sweating their way up and down the park and health food shops are doing a roaring trade.

Whether New Year’s Resolutions are your thing or not, January tends to be a time for lifestyle change.

In 2005, while comfortably the world’s best golfer, Tiger Woods resolved to change his swing.

‘I felt like I could get better. People thought it was asinine for me to change my swing after I won the Masters by 12 shots. ... Why would you want to change that? Well, I thought I could become better.’

Where does this urge to change come from? It may be instinctual, emotional or perhaps at this time of the year, it’s just a biological call for help from a body craving detox after the excesses of the festive season.

Sometimes, change really means just minor modification, a basic equation, do less of one thing and more of another. Consume less and exercise more, right?

So, are we talking about a tweek to a decent swing or a complete overhaul? Any observations are case dependant but fundamental change requires more than gym membership and a blender.

There are varied routes to this expat existence, but a desire for change is at the heart of most stories. It’s a bold step moving to another country and one that is very different from the need to run off a few pounds post Christmas. It would be hard to say that people who fall into the expat category are afraid of change, more likely, we may be accused of being afraid to stay the same.

Perhaps, more than others we understand the old addage that you can’t expect different results while using the the same old methods. But, isn’t it just as easy to fall into the same old habits in a new country as at home?

In the words of Pig Killer from Mad Max, ‘Remember, no matter where you go, there you are.’

New Years resolutions tend to be temporary and fleeting, so perhaps we should discard the terms modification and resolution in favour of self development.

We can’t fight time; we will get older, fatter, uglier, but equally, time can be a friend if you think along the lines of development and what can be achieved over time.

Anthony Keidis spoke of this in relation to his job.

‘Going on tour is weird because you leave your house and you come back a year later and if you don’t go out of your way to continue to grow as a person while you’re away you might accidently come back a year later and you’re the exact same guy as you were when you left...’

A golfer’s swing is notoriously difficult to modify in the same way that lifestyles are to change, but if we discard these seasonal dillusions in favour of long term development perhaps it will be ultimately more rewarding and Tiger might be right and we can become better.

A Question of Distraction

2010-12-22T01:02:00.000+01:00

By Eoghan Ryan (Published by inVLC Magazine, Dec 2010)

Marx described Religion as the opium of the people. I wonder if the Godfather of Communisim were writing his manefesto today, if he would consider substituting Sport for Religion.

Is Sport is the great distraction of the masses? Perhaps you prefer reality T.V. or talent shows? Either way, is this a good thing, a bad thing or somehow both?

Let’s face it, things are pretty bad at the moment, more precarious than we probably realise or politicians are willing to admit.

With Ireland following Greece into the poor house of generational debt, Spain and Portugal edge to the top of the bail-out queue. Unemployment officially stands at 20%. Spanish banks prop up a bogus property martet by holding prices artificially high, while those who have had their homes repossessed are laden with tens of thousands of Euro of debt.

That said, how bad can things really be, when a newspaper like Levante can opt to wrap its Monday edition with a sports supplement? With more than a dozen pages of sport to get through before the news headlines, the news itself has become the supplement.

The TV channel, Quatro, devotes half of its evening news to Sports coverage, predominantly Football and predominantly Madrid and Barca. Does it make sense to anyone that Marcello making fun of Cristiano Ronaldo at training warrents continued airtime? There are more important things worthy of our attention, surely.

The politicians and bankers seem more than happy for the distraction. Perhaps, that is why Real Madrid have no trouble in increasing their exhorbitant lines of credit while small businesses struggle with cashflow problems.

Does the public demand for sports coverage drive media saturation or are we incressingly obcessed because the media is bombarding us with this stuff all the time?

With the newspapers making increasingly depressing reading many of us are clicking on or turning to the sports pages as quickly as possible. It’s human nature, we don’t want to listen to how bad things are, all the time.

I’m reminded of what Timothy Leary famously preached in the sixties, ‘Turn on, tune in and drop out.’ I don’t think we are dropping out in the sence that people did in the sixties, but, are we not opting out to a great extent, absorbing distracting media?

On the other hand, perhaps we are just opting to focus on something a little less depressing.

Spain may be falling apart financially, but we have the Football World and European Champions, the World’s best Tennis player, the winner of the Tour De France, and the Moto GP World Champion. Those are just the highlights in an hugely impressive portfolio of the world’s sporting elite.

A friend recently captained Munster (my opium of choice) to victory over Australia and within minutes of the final whistle I received messages from people asking me to thank him and the team for giving us something to cheer about in the midst of the doom and gloom.

Opium may be bad, its certainly addictive and distructive, but in the short term doesn’t it just feel good and distract from the problems of the real world?

Time to get your MO’ on!

2010-11-28T23:55:00.002+01:00

By Eoghan Ryan (Published by inVLC magazine Nov 2010)

November or Movember is the international month of the moustache. All around the world men will be cultivating their upper lips in celebration of masculinity and to raise awareness of men’s health issues.

Movember has been running for a number of years but has had little exposure in Spain to date. It has been especially prominent in New Zealand and Australia where prominent sports stars and media figures have got behind the movement. Indeed, anyone who watched the New Zealand All Blacks tour of Britain and Ireland a couple of years back might have thought they were caught in a time warp with the players resembling their 1970’s predecessors.

Here in Valencia, the Mo’ was noticeable among the America’s cup crews, although with little cultural penetration here, locals would be forgiven for thinking that it was just a strange fashion trend among sailors.

This year there is a website (http://es.movember.com/) dedicated to Movember in Spain and a facebook campaign running to promote it, so the hope is that it will take off.

Every year more than 13,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer in Spain and approximately 6,000 die as a result. Male life expectancy is significantly lower than women here as in other developed countries. Movember primarily aims to help highlight the need for increased awareness and testing among men.

Participation is easy, simply begin the month clean shaven and do not shave your moustache until December. Beards and goatees are not allowed but if you wish, you may add a little soul patch under the lower lip. Raising money or sponsorship is another benefit but is not absolutely necessary.

At Lenguas Vivas language academy on Calle Palleter, teachers, management and students are participating in Movember for the second year running. Last year, teachers Sam Slesser and Ricky Dunn sported their Mo’s for the month.

This year Sam and Ricky have recruited fellow teachers, students and even boss, Paco to participate.

Sam described the experience as a ‘great conversation starter’, and something which, ‘really added to the banter and sense of fun at work’. He also felt there was a more serious element. ‘Women have done a great job of increasing awareness of things like breast cancer, yet just as many men are affected by prostate and testicular cancer but no-one talks about it.’

Ricky also enjoyed the experience, if, ‘At first, it felt a bit strange. It was a foreign object on my (stiff) upper lip, like having a hairy slug live there for a month, or as if one of my eyebrows had come down for a drink.’

As an international event celebrating solidarity and comradeship, Movember, as well as being good fun, is a great opportunity for the Expat community to play a leading civic role promoting both men’s health and interaction between the international and local communities.

So, put your vanity aside and get your Mo’ on for Movember.

Expat Life - African Expats

2010-11-28T23:13:00.001+01:00

By Eoghan Ryan (Published by inVLC Magazine Oct 2010)

As Britchat morphs into inVLC and we look to become more inclusive it struck me that we have been neglecting a section of the English speaking community here in Valencia.

English speaking Africans from countries like Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and Ghana make up a vibrant portion of the Valencian community. While not all use English as a first language, it often serves as the common language ahead of Spanish.

With this in mind I sat down with Moses Omuekele, (32), from Nigeria to try and get a feel for whats going on in the African Expat world. The conversation which followed was nothing short of remarkable.

The complexity of Moses personal story is more than any summary in these pages can do justice to. It is a story that is a million miles from the experience of us average Europeans. But, there were recurring themes in his life and story which are common to the expat experience.

Moses has been through an enormous amount of adversity in his eight years since moving to Spain. There has been extreme hardship, tradgedy and exploitation.

Moses family sold two plots of land in order for him to come to Europe, the expectation being that he will be sucessful and send money home to improve his family’s lives.

Since being here, his mother has died from Breast Cancer and his younger sister from Malaria. He has been home twice in eight years.

Where Moses story and that of other Africans here is similar to other Expats is the support structures and comraderie which exists.

Moses didn’t know anyone in Spain when he came here in 2002. He tells me that he knew someone in Germany and at the time having little concept of distance or geography in Europe he thought this was enough. ‘Crazy’, he laughs. It was however enough to get him a start. Somebody knew somebody who could help.

Moses attends a Pentacostal church here in Valencia. He sees it as much more than just worship, its a place people can go to talk, to socialise, to find support, to get a job or find a place to live.

Unfortunately, here in Europe, African stories are often seen in sweeping terms as they are presented to us in history books and the media. These impressions are often negative; stories which seem barbaric and alien to many of us. These sweeping narratives only serve to distance us from the individual stories of those who live among us.

The Nigerian Union here in Valencia, works closely with Africans of all nationalities and the Embassy in Madrid. Their goal is to get as many people registered and working legally as possible. There was a big party on Oct 1st to celebrate 50 years of Nigerian Independance. Like St. Patricks day, it was not limited to one nationality but an international expat celebration.

Moses may have faced some tremendous challenges but he remains positive. He wants to succeed, ‘I have a goal to acomplish here.’ His first job here earned him €300 a month, and if the weather was bad he didn’t get paid. His objective now is university. He has been refused a grant to study Business Administration in Madrid but he, ‘might have another possibility’. He is not about to give up and I for one wouldn’t bet against him.

Pedal Powered Hope – Bikes without Borders

2010-11-28T23:10:00.001+01:00

By Eoghan Ryan (Published by inVLC magazine Oct 2010)

Valencian authorities have put a renewed importance on bicycles in recent years, with the provision of additional bicycle lanes and the Valenbisi project.

The importance of the bicycle has come to prominence worldwide for a number of reasons in recent years. The obvious one being the environmental impact of traffic in urban areas and the green alternative provided by a bicycle. In these leaner economic times, many professionals are leaving the car at home and opting for the cheaper and healthier mode of daily transport.

Beyond our urban existence there is even more reason to turn to the bicycle.

Bikes without Borders, is a relatively new NGO, based in Toronto, Canada, which is providing Pedal Powered solutions to poor rural areas in Malawi.

Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world has huge public health problems, especially with HIV/AIDS. Its education system is completely inadequate and its infrastructure almost non-existent.

Bikes without Borders provide bikes to Community Health workers and bicycle ambulances to remote rural villages. This improves access to basic health services.

BWB’s Project Manager, Kristen Corbet, has just returned from their seven-month pilot project, Pedal Powered Hope, in Malawi.

‘We are focused on empowering community health workers and providing improved access to health care services. In the villages, health centres are difficult to access and on average 15km away which is a great reason to not access care and therefore spread disease or illness throughout a community.’

Unpaid Community Health Workers often walk up to four hours a day, providing basic health services such as HIV/TB screening, emergency services, health awareness and check ups.

Since February, Bikes without Borders have been, ‘providing each Community Based Organisation with a bicycle ambulance and 1-2 bicycles that they can rotate amongst the members to more effectively reach their patients. It is very motivating for the Community Health Workers, who are very dedicated to their job. Obviously we cannot supply for the entirety of the demand but we are now well established in Zomba district and hope to expand next year if we are financially able.’

Bicycles can make a huge difference when it comes to education, too. With distances again the main prohibitive factor in poor rural areas, a bicycle can greatly reduce the amount of time spent by children traveling to and from school. This can mean that they don’t have to choose between school and providing for themselves and their family and so can remain in education longer.

Bikes without Borders can be found at, www.bikeswithoutborders.org

Micro-finance – KIVA leading the way

2010-11-28T23:09:00.000+01:00

By Eoghan Ryan (Published by inVLC magazine August 2010)

There have been a litany of humanitarian disasters over the past decade, be they natural or man-made, they have generally had one thing in common. The people least capable of dealing with catastrophe are the ones faced with it - namely the poor.

With each fresh appeal for public donations comes the media suggestion that potential doners are suffering from ‘compassion fatigue’. This horrible phrase is the media’s way of saying that the angry ‘Live Aid’ generation have become desensitised in the face of increased suffering around the world.

The explosion of micro-financing in the last decade would suggest otherwise. Perhaps this generation is looking for a more productive and sustainable method of supporting people in need.

Micro-financing or micro-lending is a model which provides the working poor with access to credit that they would normally not be able to source.

At the forefront of this movement is KIVA (www.kiva.org). Kiva means support or agreement in Swahili and over the last five years this San Francisco based NGO has facilitated more than $156 million in loans to the working poor.

Kiva have taken the corporate model of out-sourcing and applied it to non-profit lending.

Kiva facilitates the transfer of loans (donations) to entrepreneurs in developing countries through field partners. In other words when you make a donation ($25 minimum) you select the entrepreneur you wish to donate to. The entrepreneur will recieve the agreed loan amount (your donation plus those of other lenders to make up the full amount) and will have to replay the loan over an agreed term. When the loan is repaid it is credited you your Kiva account and you may choose another entrepreneur to lend to.

Kiva do not charge interest on the loan or fees to the lenders. They have come in for some critism due to the high intereste rates charged by their field partners, however this is due to the cost of administrating the loan and because the loans are often very small in percentage terms the interest rate can seem very high.

The World Bank estimates that there are now more than 7000 micro-financing organisations working worldwide in an industry worth $2.5 billion.

To date, Kiva have helped more than 400,000 entrepreneurs in over 200 countries and have a 98.85% repayment rate.

A cursory glance will show that loans primarily go to woman in developing countries, a statistic that bucks the trend. 82% of Kiva loans have gone to female entrepreneurs whereas normally NGO programs favour male projects at a hugely disproportionate level.

Kiva feels that improving the status of women in the family and community in areas where women have little mobility and power sends a strong message.

‘Women have become more visible and are better able to negotiate the public sphere. Women own assets, including land and housing, and play a stronger role in decision making.’

Kiva operate on the basis that, ‘people are generous by nature, the poor are highly motivated if given the opportunity and that by connecting people beyond financial transactions they can help to build a global community, expressing support and encouragment.’

At a time when the word ‘finance’ seems tainted, the non-profit world of micro-finance wishes to promote, ‘dignity, accountablity and transparancy’.

Perhaps we can combat compassion fatigue, renew our generosity and put our money somewhere where it can have a long term, sustainable impact.

Expat Life: What’s in a Word?

2010-11-28T23:08:00.000+01:00

By Eoghan Ryan (Published by inVLC magazine Sept 2010)

Let’s be honest, we love division, don’t we? Us against them, nation, language, province, football team, poitical leaning; whatever it is, division gives us identity and a sense of place and belonging. Every bird thinks it’s nest is the best.

My father was born in a working class area on the northside of Cork City in the 1950’s. He has three sisters. One of them moved to Paris and married a French man with a Russian name, another married a presbyterian from Cardiff, the third stayed at home. My Dad however crossed a different border, he married a southsider.

When I was a kid my mother often joked that she was more of an outsider in my Granparents house than the two foreigners. The northside, southside divide in Cork is not what it once was, but back then it was a big enough stick to bash someone with.

We like to catagorise people, and like as not, most conversations in the expat world will usually begin with the question; where are you from?

Southsiders, Pueblerinos, Foreigners, Madrileños, Gays, Blacks, Poms, Yanks, whatever the obvious catagory we are quick to grab a label and use it.

For us expats here in Spain, like as not, we’re likely to be stuck in the extranjero or guiri box.

There is more to these words than just literal translation. Extranjero means foreigner but is linguistically close to extraño the Spanish word for strange, stranger or odd person.

This theme is universal in the expat world. In Korean the word for foreigner is Waygook, which literally means a person from outside, ironic then that gook (Person) was the word the Americans adopted during the Korean war as a derogatory slur for Koreans.

Most people will tell you that the word Guiri is not an insult and that it doesn’t refer to expats who live here, but rather to the stereotypical tourist, sun-burnt and wearing socks and sandals. However, few people would call someone they don’t know very well a Guiri to their face.

So, is calling someone a Guiri insulting or just playful? Like a lot of language it comes down to context and realising that words don’t always mean exactly the same thing from one person to another. It is worth asking though, why we feel the need to use these words? Is it just about classification, a reference point to identify someone, or is it more about consolidating one’s own position within the home team?

Consider how you would like to be labeled. Would you prefer the label to be more specific? Many people seeking to classify us English speakers politely will refer to us as, well, English. This is almost always met with a correction, but as we seem to need to catagorise so much, isn’t it a fair, if annoying, error?

As an Extranjero living here in Spain one might wonder if you can ever step out of that classification. In Ireland I’ve come across people who have lived in the country for decades and are still referred to as ‘blow-ins’ and I suspect that things here are not often that different.

For years my Mom felt she was regarded as an outsider with my Dad’s family. Was this really because she was a southsider? Not at all, but it was an easy way to set her apart and isolate her, an easy way for people to mark their territory.

Saboteurs and Storytellers

2010-11-28T23:07:00.001+01:00

By Eoghan Ryan

It’s a small world. So small that I will spend my summer in Valencia with an American I met in Korea, who now resides in Istanbul. So small that a few days ago my English friend, who lives upstairs, ended up in wine country in Ontario, a stone’s throw from where my ex-girlfriend grew up. It’s a world small enough to bring Micha P. Hinson to play a club across the street.

As ex-pats we instinctively cling to the small world cliché, so for the sake of variety let’s look at it another way.

We, as people, are stories. We are the stories we tell, the stories that made us, the stories we hear and the ultimately the stories we leave behind. We are a complex confluence of narratives and like all good storytelling our narratives invariably intertwine with others and common ground is found.

Granted, that’s not as easy to say as, small world, the next time someone down the pub tells you about their ‘unbelieveable coincidence’, but bear with me.

Micah P. Hinson comes from places I have never been. Born in Nashville, raised in Texas, his stories made me homesick for these places. Hinson recently played my hometown of Cork... small world!

In the flesh, Hinson, 29, seems too young, too fragile for his tortured, bared soul style but there is an underlying innocence and love of life, which provide a counterbalance.

His delivery is a double narrative in itself, he utilises silence as well as anyone I’ve ever seen yet equally can wail at Dave Grohl-like levels.

Between songs Hinson told quintessential American stories, engaging flashes of life, love and pain - full of heart and humour, flawed and self effacing.

When a man explains the origins of a song with the preface, ‘ I was in a mental institution in Wichita once. While I was there, I realised I wasn’t crazy’, that song will have your attention, I assure you.

Hinson is all at once Johnny Cash, Ray Charles and Shane McGowan. His songs are his stories, our stories too. Stories of love and loss, hurt and desire, experienced though-out this small world, from mental institutions in Wichita to dish-washing in London. A Texan, who by his own admission owes his living to an English label and a Spanish audience.

Delivery is important for any storyteller and so Hinson, whispered, screamed, mumbled and howled his way through new material as well as the crowd pleasing ‘Close your Eyes’ and ‘Beneath the Rose’, from his debut, Micah P. Hinson and the Gospel of Progress.

My friend saw him play support to Black Joe Louis with a full band and couldn’t say which he thought was better, the intimacy of the solo gig interspersed with stories or the meatier sound of the full accompaniment.

Why are these stories so engaging? Are they new? Are they different? Are they exceptional? No. And it is for this very reason that they are important.

Good storytellers add to our own story, they nourish us, bring us closer together by highlighting common ground.

The Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Adichie, talks about the ‘danger of the single story’. She wisely asks us to reject the single story, the limited, stereotyped narrative that fails to do justice to anyone. Seeing people through only one story, one perspective, limits the way we see the world, the way we approach our lives, the standards we set and expectations we have.

As ex-pats we are constantly living in a world of diverse storytelling. We are exposed to the complex narrative and so it should be easier for us to do what Adichie asks and see that it takes a balance of stories to be who we are.

Micah P. Hinson is not from where I am and I suspect he is nothing like me, but his stories are my stories, they are our stories they are small world stories, beautifully told.

Micah P. Hinson and the Pioneer Saboteurs is available now.

Expat Life - Welcome to the Framily

2010-11-28T23:05:00.002+01:00

By Eoghan Ryan (Published by inVLC Magazine August 2010)

The Family constitutes the core of Spanish culture, it is the unit around which everything revolves, it’s a support structure, a safety net, the basis of a social network, shoulders to stand on or to cry on as needs dictate.

As expats many of us have left the family unit back in the homeland but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have that same support structure and social network that a family provides, in fact it may be true to say that we have an even bigger Framily.

There have been a number of surveys and articles in the media in recent years about the phenomenon of The Framily as it relates to the new generations of city dwellers who move away from their homes to live in cities. They work together, share flats, stay single longer and usually have no family nearby. This generation has come to rely more on friends and to look on close friends as members of the family, for expats this is even more relevant.

In an expat environment we live in a world of accelerated relationships. We are by nature more open to random conversations, quicker to exchange numbers and lightening fast to add a friend on Facebook. We often jump into relationships faster than we would have back home and as a result have huge social networks and probably a few ex-girlfriends/boyfriends to show for it too.

In the absence of family members we spend much more time with friends and so friendships become much stronger much quicker.

At dinner at a friend’s house recently, with eight nationalities sitting around the table and usually three languages going at any one time, my friend thanked her family for coming. Her mother was there as it happened, but that wasn’t what she meant. She has been living here for five years and has only been back to Argentina a couple of times and so those around the table were her family; people she loves, people she spends her life with, people who support and sustain her.

With cheaper travel and the explosion of social networking in recent years the expat Framily has taken on and even more international edge to it. Many of us have taken our expat travels to a number of countries and built extended Framilies along the way. These relationships are sustainable through the likes of Skype and Facebook in a way that was never before possible and so while one Framily might be left behind as you move to another country the relationships can be maintained.

The Framily is not mutually exclusive of the family at home and neither is it exclusive of natives who have their family nearby, but rather it is about inclusion, friendship and support. For expats this is very important, and something to be treasured.

This is the first in a series of features on Expat Life so look out for the next one and welcome to the Framily.

2009 - A Reader

2010-02-21T23:25:00.002+01:00

Last years list... might give you some ideas. Happy Reading 2010!

1. The Auto-biography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X with Alex Haley

Brilliant insight into America, the time, the man and who he might have become.

2. The Dirty Havana Trilogy - Pedro Juan Gutierrez

Exactly what it says in the title. Dirty, hot, sticky sexy, poor... Havana

3. The Case of the Missing Books - Ian Sansom

Charming... good fun.

4. Why I Write - George Orwell

More to this than just a meditation on writing... great stuff on nationalism.

5. A Brief History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson

If someone had given me this when I was in school I might have paid more attention in science. Fantastic Book.

6. Half a Life - V.S. Naipaul

Well written and quite boring.

7. The International - Glenn Patterson

Good Story... even better post script.

8. 1984 - George Orwell

Its a classic for a reason.

9. Under the Banner of Heaven - Jon Krakauer

Very interesting look at extremest Mormons.

10. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz

This guy is a rock star.... favourite book of the year!

11. Amongst Woman - John McGahern

Brilliant.. chilling.

12. Black Boy (Auto-biography) - Richard Wright

Superb!! A classic of American history!

13. The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry

Nice read, good story... very Ireland!

14. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje

This guy is the real deal... much better than I thought it would be.

15. Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi

I know little about graphic novels but I now know a lot about Iran... excellent!

16. The Years with Laura Diaz - Carlos Fuentes

Dense... impressive

17. Fictions - Jorge Luis Borges

Genius!

18. A Pale View of Hills - Kazou Ishiguro

Very Japanese style... gentle and insightful.

19. Welcome to Hell - Colin Martin

Another Bangkok Hilton story... this time an Irishman who got stitched up.

20. I'm a Stranger here Myself - Bill Bryson

I love this collection - buy it for an friend!

21. The Museum of Innocence - Orhan Pamuk

Relentless, brilliant, at times boring but ultimately very rewarding. This guy is one of my favourites!

22. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

Masterpiece... brilliant ending!!

Korean community thrives in Valencia

2010-02-19T13:02:00.001+01:00

Korea Herald - 19/02/10

VALENCIA, Spain - Charisma has that intangible charm of being impossible to define but easy to recognize. Whatever charisma is, former Olympic coach Kim Jin-hak has it in spades.

Born in Pyongyang, North Korea in 1951, Kim has lived in Spain since 1977. As a child he moved to Seoul in the post war period where he began to practice taekwondo. It seems that at this time in his life taekwondo became something more than a hobby for him. "Taekwondo is much more than a sport to me," he said.

By his mid-20s Kim was competing in national and international competition as well as teaching taekwondo in Seoul. He was offered the chance to come to Spain as part of a sports exchange program - and here he has stayed. Kim has reached the remarkable level of ninth Dan black belt and along the way coached the Spanish national team at the Olympics.

Kim spent time in La Coruna, Bilbao and Barcelona before finally settling in Valencia.

Kim speaks about his early days in Spain with some pride, not lingering on the difficulties of setting in a new country at a time when Spain was undergoing its own transition following the death of Francisco Franco in 1975.

He makes the point of saying that he has always been treated with great respect in Spain. But Kim is the type of man who naturally commands respect, so this is no great surprise.

As we speak, Kim's wife, Han Soon-ok sits quietly at the table behind him, keeping an eye on the restaurant. She was his student in Seoul back in the 1970s. When he came to Spain they corresponded by letter for three years until he finally proposed and she made the move to Europe. There is a comfortable humor between them, which gives authenticity to the romance of their story and makes for a lovely, welcoming atmosphere in the restaurant.

Soon-ok, who sometimes goes by Maria, and Kim have two grown children, who they readily admit are more Spanish than Korean. They have been back to visit family in Korea several times and are very active in the Korean-Spanish community in the region. Kim mentions the importance of having an international outlook and the role that language plays in this, his children speak Spanish, Valencian, English and Korean.

Kim has retired from actively coaching Taekwondo and is president of an association for Koreans resident in the Valenican Community. "They like to help each other out, keep an eye out for how people are doing work-wise and of course organize get-togethers for occasions such as New Year," he says.

Koreans here, he says, are very integrated into local life and as such he is very proud of the positive influence that Taekwondo has had on the community. At the gym that his nephew now runs in Torrent they have more than 200 students. Kim says that they have trained all of the police and worked to help young people use taekwondo as a way to learn about life. "It's a small place but we have a lot of demand and interest."

The Spanish national taekwondo team has been very successful, usually occupying second or third place in the world rankings and Kim puts this down to the presence of good coaches, both Spanish and Korean, as well as the physic

al conditioning, competitive attitude and application of Spanish students.

Kim, of course, is well positioned to comment on the changes he has seen in Spain over the last 30 years. He says that the city has become louder and that some of the large groups of immigrants who have come have not integrated as well, but he likes the calm lifestyle and says that in 30 years here he has never had a problem as foreigner.

Yuk Mi ("Six Flavors" in Korean) Restaurant acts as a focal point for the Korean-Valencian and taekwondo community, with lots of photos to be found on Kim's daughter's web site, www.paelladekimchi.com. At the Yuk Mi, the food was fresh and the company engaging.

To comment, e-mail mattlamers@heraldm.com; to contact the author, e-mail ryan.eoghan@gmail.com - Ed.

By Eoghan Ryan

2010.02.19

Here and Now the Way Forward

2010-02-19T12:58:00.002+01:00

Korea Herald - 2009.12.11

The passing of a close friend recently drew into focus the wrenching hurt that a major change in life can cause. As a person who generally seeks out and thrives on change (I've lived in five countries in five years), I've valued all things new, and often to the detriment of the old and the neglect of loved ones. New countries, cities, jobs, friends, lovers, all fire the restless mind and revamp the listless soul; at least they have for this oft-bored Irishman.

All moves have, by degree, been by choice. With each change there have been elements of excitement, trepidation and melancholy. But this most severe of losses has done several things to change the way I view my lifestyle and those I share it with.

With the grief for the loss of my friend has come melancholy and nostalgia for losses of a different kind. My moves and adventures may have upgraded my life experience, the size of my pool of friends, or at least my bank of stories to be told at the bar on a Friday night. But, I have also seen significant downgrades, losses which were grieved.

Some losses are abrupt but most are more gradual. From lover with a future, to boyfriend, to acquaintance, to chapter in the history book; from daily contact to occasional Facebook comment; from ever present to worthy of a visit some time. The frequent buzzing of the phone, to the point of annoyance, falls away to stoic silence. The hollow echo of those names contained within can ring loud sometimes. In swells and troughs these transitions from times of plenty to famine and back, rise and fall.

With noteworthy exceptions, the relationships that replace the lifelong ones left at home drift away, downgraded by distance, indifference, choice and, well, life.

Last month for the first time in five years I considered moving back to Ireland. The unconditional support of friends and family after my friend's death was a sight to behold, the very best of people at the very worst of times. But yet I choose not to live among them. So, back to my expat life I have come and despite that traveler's instinct to cut and run, here I am going to stay. There are only so many times you can leave good people behind and start again.

A friend I contacted recently following the breakup of her marriage commented that she was thankful for the message as it seemed some people thought that heartbreak was contagious.

Heartbreak is not contagious but it does allow for a clarity that adds to your appreciation of the relationships that remain. Be they back home, or in one's new home, those that don't drift away and are not downgraded should be valued.

Any temptation to feel bitterness towards those who've faded away is negated by an understanding that they have lives to live, priorities to manage, aspirations to pursue. Equally, by leaving, by moving on, I've generally been the catalyst for any downgrading of relationships, so the responsibility lies only with me.

So, for now this expat is not leaving. I'm staying here. Instinct tells me that upgrading the appreciation for what I've got is the way forward.

The author can be reached at ryan.eoghan@gmail.com - Ed.

By Eoghan Ryan

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/archives/result_contents.asp

2009.12.11

The Yellow Nib 5: The Literary Journal of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry

2010-01-19T13:32:00.002+01:00

The Yellow Nib 5: The Literary Journal of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry

http://www.amazon.com/Yellow-Nib-Literary-Journal-Seamus/dp/0856408506/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266583063&sr=1-1

Editorial Reviews

Anonymously scribbled into the margin of a ninth-century manuscript, this much-loved Irish poem has inspired countless writers and publications over the years, including The Yellow Nib: The Literary Journal of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry. Now firmly established and renowned for the quality of its content, the journal takes its lead from that anonymous scribe: aiming simply to promote good writing - by both established and emerging writers - and nurture creative talent.

About the Author

Ciaran Carson was born in 1948 in Belfast, where he lives. He worked in the Arts Council of Northern Ireland from 1975 to 1998, with responsibility for Traditional Music, and, more latterly, Literature. In October 2003 he was appointed Professor of Poetry and Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University, Belfast. He is the author of nine collections of poems, including The Irish for No, Belfast Confetti, The Twelfth of Never, First Language, Opera Et Cetera and Breaking News. His translations include The Alexandrine Plan, The Midnight Court, The Inferno of Dante Aligheri and The Tain. Prose includes Last Night's Fun, The Star Factory, Fishing for Amber, Shamrock Tea and The Pen Friend (forthcoming). In recent years he has written four prose books: Last Night's Fun, a book about traditional music; The Star Factory, a memoir of Belfast; Fishing for Amber: A Long Story; and Shamrock Tea, a novel, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize. He has won several literary awards, including the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His translation of Dante's Inferno (2002) was awarded the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize, and in 2003 he was made an honorary member of the Irish Translators' and Interpreters' Association. Breaking News was awarded the 2003 Forward Prize

When Adventure Becomes Business

2009-12-01T13:10:00.000+01:00

Korea Herald - 2009.12.01

COSTA DEL SOL, Spain -You've fantasized about quitting your job, moving to the tropics and starting a business. Everyone has at one time or another. But what sets Jeong Bae and Daniel Scannell apart from most is that they actually went through with it.

Amistad is the Spanish word for friendship, and so an appropriate name for an expat bar on the Costa del Sol. Expat bars on the Spanish coast are ten-a-penny, but there are not too many that are run by the likes of Scannell and Bae.

"I got sick of working for other people and wanted a creative outlet. The beauty of Spain, the culture and life by the sea were all incredible influences and I felt this was a viable way to showcase my life experiences and talents," said Scannell.

Scannell, a native of Baltimore, Maryland, immigrated to Korea in December 2006, where he met and married Bae. Although his background was primarily in hospitality, like many, he came to Korea as a teacher. His plan had been to make enough money to open a restaurant in the United States, but then fate intervened in the form of love and marriage, followed by the mortgage crisis in the United States.

With Bae on board, Scannell was not about to let a little thing like a world financial crisis slow him down, so they looked at alternative options.

Bae spent some time in Malaga a few years back, and so the couple packed up and headed to Spain. With Amistad, the couple has adopted for a fusion approach to their cuisine, which in one sense tailors to the diversity of their clientele, while at the same time offers something unique to the area. So far things are going well, although Scannell hopes that some family will visit from Korea soon, as he is struggling to find the right ingredients for his Korean dishes.

"Everyone who has tried our food has sung its praises, but a lot do just want their English breakfast, Sunday roast or Spanish tapas. We offer a unique alternative on the Costa del Sol," he said.

Bae said they are trying to create a multinational, relaxing environment that people of all places can mesh, relax and enjoy. "We feel we have a young, artistic, creative feel to our food and atmosphere and try to introduce people to new things in our culinary, art and even music offerings," she added.

Her husband said from a business perspective, it's a clean, inviting, relaxing place to chill with good food, a large selection of drinks and a comforting atmosphere. "The biggest thing for us and most our clients, however, is the people. People of all nationalities, ages and walks of life," he said. "Although we have had only one Korean visitor, we hope to have more."

Costa del Sol is so beautiful, it is often compared to a Picasso painting. "Look at a Picasso, Goya, Dali - there is some thread that holds them together. The clear air, stark sunlight, Mediterranean sea. Iberico Jamon, Manchego cheese, Rioja wine - there is a lot to love," said Scannell.

Away from work, Bae, an artist herself, "adores the crisp sun and colors the landscape provides," she said. Malaga, which is nearby, is the birthplace of one of Spain's most famous sons, Pablo Picasso.

"The way the light, sea, mountains interact are very inspiring. At the same time, it is a bit stark in contrast to Korea's diversity of flora and weather," Bae said.

The language barrier and the bureaucracy of the Spanish system have provided some frustrations for the couple, but with the business up and running, they are over the worst and Scannell hopes they will get to grips with the language, too.

For Bae, leaving Korea was a natural progression for her adventurous spirit, but she admits to missing, "rain, mom's food, family and good friends."

Scannell hopes that with the success of the business and their integration into Spanish culture that the Amistad adventure will be a long term one. For Bae, her hopes away from business relate to her art, and so far she is finding Spanish life inspiring.

"From Korea, we miss the convenience of things and safety. Living and running a business in a resort area, you find most people are transient and relationships come and go too quickly. Still, in our short time here we have met and made some really good friends," the couple said.

To contact Scannell, e-mail danielpscannell@yahoo.com and go to www.amistadbar.com for more information on Amistad.

To contribute a story idea to Koreans Living Abroad, e-mail mattlamers@heraldm.com - Ed.

By Eoghan Ryan and Matthew Lamers

2009.12.01

Finding an Ex Pat Community in Northern Ireland

2009-07-14T12:11:00.001+02:00

Kim, Myungshik is Chair in Theoretical Physics at the School of Mathematics and Physics in Queen's University, Belfast. Northern Ireland. (Under Photo)

As part of my preparation for my meeting with Professor Kim, Myungshik I had a hopeful anticipation of a walk around campus, a friendly chat and some photos in the historic central quad. The biting wind and stinging rain reminded me that I was in Northern Ireland and the photos would have to wait. Instead, locked away in Professor Kim’s office I had the pleasure of a most remarkable conversation.

Professor Kim and his family have been living in Belfast for nearly ten years. He lives in what he termed and “Island within Belfast”, referring to the nature of socialising primarily within a foreigner community in a place that even if he “stays until the end of his life he will still be a foreigner.” This however is a concept that seems to sit easy with him. He is a man very much at ease with himself and his surroundings.

“Would I go back to Korea? I don’t know. I originally thought that I would live abroad for ten years but it’s been nearly that already and I have no definite plans to move back to Korea. I find teaching here interesting. The students respect what I teach and take me seriously. That’s important to me. It’s rewarding.”

Prof. Kim moved to London in the 1980’s to do his post graduate work at the Essex University and Imperial College. He lights up when he talks of his time in London and called it the best time of his life.

The five years he spent there in his early twenties certainly opened his mind to the possibility

of living abroad.

“Learning every day and experiencing so many different things. It was a stimulating environment… I was very happy.”

Prof. Kim returned to Korea in 1990 to work at Sogang University in Seoul and with the exception of a two year stint in Germany remained at home for nearly a decade. By 1999 he was “ready to return to Europe.” The reasons were ‘complicated’ but he felt he was ready for a change. The job at Queens was the first one he applied for and so he and his young family were quickly on the move.

“I must admit that I didn’t know anything about the political history and conflict here before I came. I looked at it as another part of the UK. I didn’t think it would be much different to England”

After ten years he feels more informed about matters and recognises that there are differences between Ireland and England that he may not have previously been aware of but, “compared to the differences between Korea and Europe, they are small.” Prof. Kim is a member of a thriving International Community which has blossomed as Northern Ireland has recovered in the last decade from twenty-five years of conflict.

Prof. Kim has certainly retained the Korean work ethic, admitting that he is usually to be found in the office at the weekends. He does feel though that in the current economic climate that the days of long hours alone are not enough for Korean development.

“We can’t compete with the Chinese with regard to labour intensive industry. In the first phase of our development it was enough to work long hours. In the 60’s and 70’s we grew by 10% every year which was great, but that was then and we can’t go back. This phase will be harder because we must be more creative to develop leading edge industries. The idea of long hours is probably neither necessary nor sufficient any more for the next phase economic success.”

Prof Kim’s passion for Korea was evident as he spoke but he was also wary that he did not want to be the ‘Monk who left the monastery’ only to say how it should be run.

I asked him if he felt that he understood his country better having spent some time away.

“I think the education my father gave me was always to try to think independently and living abroad has added to that.”

Having left Korea not long after the 1997 Economic crash, Prof. Kim is concerned about the current situation and the possible effects it might have. He has recently been involved in various events to attract financial and high tech industries to Northern Ireland in association with Invest Northern Ireland, a government body charged with bringing investment to the region.

He feels the situation at the moment in Korea is worrying. As well as the business and economic ties, “a lot of our decision makers are educated in the U.S and so even as there has been diversification in the countries we are sending our students to; nearly all the clever ones still tend to go to the U.S. To rely on one country does not seem to be right.”

By the end of my visit with Prof. Kim the conversation had long since lost the format of an interview and with a handshake we agreed that it should be continued over a Guinness or some Kim Chi, although perhaps not at the same time.

ryan.eoghan@gmail.com

2008 - A Reader!

2009-01-02T15:18:00.001+01:00

1. Clapton (Autobiography) – Eric Clapton
Really interesting stuff about the early years but by the end it's just another self centred, rock and roll, junkie story!

2. Blind Willow Sleeping Woman – Haruki Murakami (Short Stories)
Wildly imaginative and colourful collection - loved it!

3. The Stone Raft – Jose Saramago
This guys is high on my 'to read more of' list for 2009.

4. Junk - William S Burroughs
It sat on the bookshelf for a long time and to be honest I wouldn't have been sorry if it stayed there a bit longer... did nothing for me.

5. Interventions – Noam Chomsky (Non–Fiction)
Brilliant... Scary!

6. Imperial Ambitions – Noam Chomsky (Non–Fiction)
Covers a lot of the same ground as Interventions but a really good read... more accessible than most political writers.

7. Lila – Robert M Pirsig (Non-Fiction)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a tough act ot follow but this does it justice... just brilliant!

8. Snow – Orhan Pamuk
Bleak and cold like the landscape it is set in. Not as engaging as some of his other work and reminiscent of some of the Russian writers at times but very good in its own right.

9. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Tough read... took way too long and more than anything I was relieved to finish it. Brilliant at times but a slog.

10. Dry – Augusten Boroughs
Fast read... entertaining

11. South of the Border, West of the Sun – Haruki Murakami
Typical Murakami, simple, beautiful, engaging.

12. My Name is Red – Orhan Pamuk
My favourite of Pamuk's work... Colourful, engaging and rich.

13. The Way to Paradise – Mario Vargas Llosa
Struggled with this a little and has put me off Vargas Llosa a bit... not a touch on Aunt Julia and the scriptwriter.

14. After Dark – Haruki Murakami
I love Murakami... simple as that!

15. Dreams from my Father – Barack Obama (Memoir)
A really interesting read and very well written given it was his first outing. If you've heard him speak enough you'll here his voice as you read.

16. Oracle Night – Paul Auster
Standard Auster fare...good if not memorable

17. Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M Coetzee
Dark.. stunning!

18. Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
The first McEwan book I didn't really like. Goes to show that characters sometimes just need to be likeable.

19. Underground – Haruki Murakami (Non-fiction)
This is facinating account of the sarin attacks in Tokyo. Extremely disciplined and true to the aim of giving voice to the people involved without judgement.

20. The Enchanter – Vladimir Nabokov
A precursor to Lolita I believe and more or less the same story, reads like an inferior early draft although it has moments of gold.

21. The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
One of McEwan's early works.. good read.

22. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
It took me a long time to get to this and I'm glad i gave it the time and care it deserves. There is good reason why it was the booker of bookers.... magic!

23. The Book of Fame – Lloyd Jones
A rugby book written in an untypically literary way for the sporting genre... tracks the first tour of the UK and Ireland by a New Zealand Rugby team... makes the modern boys look soft!!.

24. The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
Probably my least favourite of Auster's work. Did nothing for me!

25. Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
I just want to read more and more of this guy. Excellent.

26. Shock Doctrine – Naomi Klein (Non-Fiction)
This should be required reading for EVERYBODY. A very accessible look at US foreign policy over the last thirty years.

27. The Enchantress of Florence – Salman Rushdie
Beautifully written and a nice story.

28. Doctor Salt – Gerard Donovan
A much bigger story than I initially expected.. really good in an understated way.

29. The Deportees – Roddy Doyle (Short Stories)
I loved this look an multi-cultural Ireland.

30. The Reluctant Fundamentalist – Mohsin Hamid
Lovely, gentle and terrifiying

31. Charles Bukowski, Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life (bio) – Howard Sounes
It is exactly as it says in the title... Bukoski's crazy life... good read

32. Memories of My Melancholy Whores – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Had to reread this... probably my favourite novella.

33. No One Writes to the Colonel – Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Short Stories)
Classic Marquez...colourful, dark, magical.

34. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Brilliant!

35. In the Garden of the North American Martyrs – Tobias Wolf (Short Stories)
I'm not sure about this guy... some were good but others not so much!

36. Norweigan Wood – Haruki Murakami
Cover to cover in a day... magic

37. Drown – Junot Diaz (Short Stories)
This guy might just be the find of the year.. fantastic!

38. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – Raymond Carver (Short Stories)
A great collection to round out the year with... masterful!

Head Down

2008-12-08T17:40:00.001+01:00

In our library
the doors bang every 14.9 seconds

this is the average
timed and tallied

in the quietest room of four

Cead Mile Failte

2008-12-05T17:58:00.007+01:00

Welcome to Ireland, indeed may I offer as is our custom, one hundred thousand welcomes.
As it is your first experience with our great nation please allow me to take you through some to the key considerations when conversing and interacting with our native and recently arrived citizens.

Before we start I am sure that you will be relieved to know that you are entering a democratic country, this of course gives you the peace of mind of knowing that like your home nation we too have the good sense to place our well-being in the hands of liars and self serving idiots.

I am delighted to inform you that you will find our country reassuringly expensive, by this I mean that you should consider a €12 lunch or a €5 pint of beer good value. You may question why this should be regarded as such; well allow me to suggest that the value I speak of is not that of the nutritional sustenance or refreshment sort which you might assume. The value is a cultural one. By over-paying for basic foodstuffs and refreshment you will experience a sense of exploitation and will be compelled to talk about it. By talking about this, and might I add that you should always refer to it as a ‘rip off’, you will be entering Irish linguistic patterns and be well on your way to an experience of true Irishness.

For the next step I advise you to acquire the property section of one of our esteemed national newspapers. It is vital that you familiarise yourself with the cost of property and if at all possible bring yourself up to date with the current mortgage options available. Might I suggest that you do this over a Latte at one of our recently acquired coffee shops. An added value would be to purchase said Latte but consume it elsewhere. You will be provided with a paper cup with a non-spill lid which will allow you to maintain the pretence of the precious value of your time and worldliness long after the latte has expired and give you staggering credibility when throwing around newly acquired impressive phrasing. A recommended test of one’s ability to handle such cultural idiosyncrasies would be to comment glibly about the ‘state of the property market’ while referencing it to the fortune one has to spend on a Latte these days. Should the person closest to you roll their eyes, sigh and respond, ‘tell me about it’, then you have passed. Be forewarned, despite the request, actually 'telling' the person about it would undo all your hard work and be an abject failure. The importance of this process of Irishisation cannot be over stated. I feel compelled to inform you that a large proportion of our good people have been suffering from a condition whereby they have been unable to talk about anything else for years, and are currently in an uncomfortable transitional period of withdrawal. Many have opted for the transitory treatment of replacing ‘property’ with the ‘fucking economy’. It is hoped that by not forcing them to change too fast withdrawal from mono-communication it will be easier and we hope to ease them towards some kind of an life adjustment that doesn’t involve buying and selling houses as the only way of life and the foundation of our economy..

Once you are comfortable with our mono-conversational culture the next step is even easier. As you are no doubt giddy with anticipation at the prospect of experiencing our world renowned hospitality so we will begin with some advice which will help you to make the most of our world famous social environs. Firstly, you should purchase some new apparel…no... no, what you’re wearing now will not do at all. I will try and arrange some time for you to watch reality TV or American Drama before you make a purchase, but please bear in mind that it should be as unsuitable to our climate as you can possibly find. Yes... well done... the apparel will be reassuringly expensive too. Yes, Australian flip flops would be wonderful option but they may not be acceptable when we come to discuss a later cultural foible. Once you are dressed appropriately…. Oh yes… inappropriately…. I can see that you are catching on very quickly. The next step is to find somewhere to purchase the over priced alcohol that I mentioned earlier. As you are new to these shores it may be possible for you to sample some of the locally produced beverages for a time but if you wish to elevate yourself to an acceptable status you should try to procure an imported beer, perhaps one that is produced in your country but sold here for ten times the price or an elaborate cocktail. If you go for the beer option you should amend your pronunciation to match the native vernacular and take on a slightly nasal tone. Where should you do this? Ah yes, good question. The best advice I can give you is to locate yourself centrally in an urban area and then attempt to follow those who have shinny hair to the most crowded pubic establishment possible. You will want to go to one that demands that you queue. Your choice of clothes will become important at this point because while the aforementioned Australian flip flops may have seemed the right choice during the day and would certainly help you with the expected bout of shivering, the wonderful gentlemen in black who dictate and patrol your evenings adventure will deem them unsuitable… No… now, remember you must at the same time stay within the inappropriate guidelines mentioned before so something to maintain warmth, like a hat, would also incur disapproval. Provided you meet the criteria we’ve mentioned you will be asked to pay a large amount of money to enter – A good time to use what phrase? Yes, ‘rip off’. Very good. Once you have gained entrance to this wonderful establishment the expectation is that you should again patiently wait until the appropriate opportunity comes to spend everything you have and consume as many of those imported beers and cocktails as you can humanly ingest. This three pronged system of wait, spend and binge will stand you in good stead for the end of the night but we will discuss taxis and food later on.

The next step on your journey is to explore the magnificent Irish art of complaining. Yes, the ‘rip off’ phrase is a good place to start, but one must remember that for now you will not comfortably pass for Irish so the forms of complaint one can make will be limited. This is quite advanced stuff so please pay close attention. Once you are deemed Irish you will be expected to moan about issues other than the prices of houses and Lattes. No... oh dear that would be a huge mistake... you should never do anything active to fix that which you are complaining about or take steps to avoid it... oh my... that would be a disaster. So what should I complain about, I hear you say. Well this is where caution is advised. Traffic will be a good place for you to start, it is regarded as neutral ground because reference to traffic suggests ownership of a conveyance and so gives you an elevated status akin to the property talk. But be warned, unless you are at an elevated state of Irishness you are not to complain about the food or weather and you should at all times complement the people for their friendliness. Failure to do so will result in you being ordered to go back to your own country. A key process indicator of your assimilation is when you can move from the necessary positivity as a foreigner to the negativity of a native...oh what a day of joy that will be. Should you attempt his transition too early the consequences could be dire. Should you be unsure, I advise you to take a step back and consolidate your earlier progress…one must walk before one can run after all.

Should you find yourself in a rural area it is advisable to ally yourself to the local sports team as soon as possible, a small bit of reconnaissance will stand you in good stead. As a simple rule of thumb, if you see several people wearing a colourful shirt advertising agricultural products with the same colours hanging above raw meat in a butchers shop nearby, that is the group to which to affiliate yourself. But, be warned, if you are in a larger urban area, to don such attire would be a mistake of cataclysmic proportions and one that even a latte and property section from a newspaper is unlikely to redeem.

My next piece of advice is to acquaint yourself with our esteemed glitterati as soon as possible. Once you have familiarised yourself with those who fly high in our society it’s important to recognise which portion of the cycle they are in. Failure to do so will again land you in trouble. No…no.. I didn’t say talented people… oh dear that would be a fatal error. Yes some in the cycle are very talented but they tend to strike lonely figures and are set apart from the rest. How does the cycle work? Well let me give you a rough break down. It is generally a six stage process although participation does not guarantee completion; in fact most struggle to negotiate their way past Stage Two. The stages are 1. Next Big Thing. 2. Who Does He/She Think He/She is. 3. World Conquering Hero 4. Retched Betrayer of Irishness (At its most deviant when accompanied by partial Americanisation). 5. Our Boy Done Good (a status only achievable when they win something enormous on a world stage that we have done little to support them with). 6. Around So Long We Deem Them Experts In Everything and Ask Them To Tell Us How To Live.

The final step on your cultural induction is conflict management. Should you fail to pass off any of the above cultural expectations you may be required to explain yourself. Be careful in these situations as it is important that utter vagueness is maintained as much as possible. You may be asked a general question and expect to answer specifically. This is not a good idea. You will find the opposite will also be the case. Should you have specific grievances your queries will be met with general responses. For example, if one of those wonderful men in black that we talked about earlier should insist you remove the ill-conceived hat that was keeping you warm as a condition of entry into the over-priced, over-crowded, reassuringly expensive alcohol consumption establishment do not expect your case to be dealt with specifically rather you will be referred to ‘the rules’, it is important to also consider that these ‘rules’ will be arbitrarily enforced. An interesting question! Yes this does apply to spheres of our society beyond the men in black, indeed there is a permanent exhibition of such cultural nuances showing at the castle in the capital. Yes… I can suggest a phrase to use in such circumstances, ‘It Was Just a Bit of Craic’ is socially, culturally, morally and legally deemed sufficient explanation for all indiscretions but I must warn you that sufficient Irishness would be a prerequisite of such acceptance.

So my friend I set you loose on our wonderful new Ireland and hope that you will lose your sense of perspective, priorities and self to such a magnificent extent that you attain true Irishness.

Fleeing pricey schools, Koreans settle in Spain

2008-12-02T13:15:00.000+01:00

Korea Herald - 2008.12.02

VALENCIA, Spain -- There are many faces to expats living out there. Meet Jeon So-hyun, Jeon Ah-hyun and their mother Lee Hee-jae. This young Korean family, originally from Seocho-gu, Seoul, have left dad at home and moved to Valencia, Spain in pursuit of an education in English and Spanish.
So-hyun, 17 years old, and her sister Ah-hyun, 14-years-old, who go by their chosen names of Grace and Anna at the American School of Valencia headed back to Seoul as the school year came to an end to have a holiday at home and see their father.

The family originally moved to New Zealand in 2006 in order to attain an English education for the girls, however with the large Korean population in the school system, they found they were spending most of their time speaking Korean, so a more radical step was needed.

Hee-jay said that they looked to Spain because of the climate, the availability of foreign schools offering education through English and the cheaper cost of living compared to the United Kingdom. Valencia was chosen as the destination because it has a very small Korean population compared to Madrid and Barcelona, so the girls would be more immersed in the language.

Ah-hyun says she prefers school in Spain because they get to be, "a little more creative and there is not so much memorizing."

"Here, I study seven subjects, whereas at home I had 15. It's very hard to study everything for 15 subjects; here we get some choices," big sister, So-hyun, said.

Like most teenage girls, finding good friends seems to have been the biggest challenge and Ah-hyun sees that, with time, it's becoming easier.

"Most students at our school are Spanish, so even though classes are in English, they prefer to speak Spanish and so it's hard to hang out with them.

"I didn't like Spain at first, but if I can speak Spanish better and make Spanish friends, I will like it better."

So-hyun says that her attitude to learning a foreign language has changed a lot since moving to Valencia. "Before, I just wanted to learn English. But now I think if I learn Spanish well, French and Italian would be easier. I want to learn more languages"

Similarly, Ah-hyun now sees her future as a multilingual one. "I like languages and math, so I'd like to travel for university, maybe to an English speaking country."

For Hee-jay, their mother,

who doesn't speak English, learning Spanish and making friends has been even more difficult. She attends Spanish class four hours a day but finds it challenging.

"Most of the students in my class are European and so they learn more quickly.

"Without English or Spanish, it is hard to make friends."

One senses that living in Spain away from her husband, friends and family, and isolated as she is linguistically, life is much harder for Hee-jay, but the pride she has for her daughters is obvious as they take turns to translate for her.

The trio speak to their father daily and are in regular e-mail and instant message contact with friends in Korea. However, the excitement of going home for a vacation is palpable.

For the girls the priority is to see their friends -- but not far behind will be some "Jajangmyeon," or black bean noodles -- while Hee-jay is looking forward to seeing friends and family over a Galbi dinner.

By Eoghan Ryan

To comment, e-mail mattlamers@heraldm.com -- Ed.

2008.12.02

Shopping

2008-11-15T00:43:00.003+01:00

She was tall, a man in drag I thought at first

Black boots to red and black pop socks
tights to the cleft shelf of her ass
hot pants to the the tight sleeveless leather jacket

Her make up started at the jaw line
powder over a whithered face
paint over the past
a mask to match the costume

She carried a basket
what else would she carry in a supermarket?

A Child of War

2008-10-07T16:40:00.001+02:00

The tree was bare, undernourished, painted against a grey sky.

The ties that bound her would not have held a grown man or woman.

A stream of people trickled by, heads lowered; avoiding her hollow eyes.

She imagined that the grip that held her was the embrace of her mother.

Those who passed imagined they didn’t see a diseased child left to die.

Do As We Say… Not As We Do!

2008-10-01T16:44:00.000+02:00

700 Billion Dollars! I tried to use the calculator on my phone to work out how much that was per person in the United States, but the phone couldn’t handle the number of digits. The answer I derived the old fashioned way was somewhere in the region of 2,400 dollars.

Across party lines there is a strong animosity among ordinary people towards this bail out. Americans are understandably unenthused about forking out to save financial institutions that have fallen due to exploitative and greedy policies.

With the ‘Bailout’ set to be passed in one form or another, the question arises, is this really the action of a government who has rabidly enforced free market economics?

It is interesting that this right wing US administration is going to see out its final term with what is basically a nationalisation of the financial structures upon which they have hung their free market capitalist policies for thirty years or more. These steps are nothing short of remarkable and enormously significant historically, but, are they not also incredibly hypocritical?

This US administration has followed the same free market mantra championed by previous governments going back thirty years. They have done this not only domestically but through their domination of the IMF and World Bank they have dictated to countries such as Argentina, Indonesia, Bolivia, and South Korea that they privatise their economies and banking in order to expand this free market philosophy. This burdened these developing economies with huge debt, polarising their societies and made American Corporations richer and more powerful. Throughout all of these interventions was the ethos that the pain had to be endured in order for the market to stabilise and eventually put things right.

The idea that a free market free for all would somehow see economic benefits trickle down to the little guy is a fallacy that has been borne out to be nonsense.

For Korea in the late nineties the price of beating the Economic crisis, was to give up control of their home-grown industries at fire sale prices. In the short term this may have stabilised the economy somewhat, but in the long run it was more successful in making money for US corporations and giving Korea less autonomy economically. This has been clearly illustrated in the last twelve months as we have seen the Won fall in tandem with the Dollar.

It is worth remembering that this is the same USA that helped rebuild Europe through the ideology and economic generosity of the Marshall Plan, a plan that allowed for the redevelopment of Germany along with its former adversaries. On the face of it the Marshall plan sought to prevent the reoccurrence of world war through economic partnership and mutual self-reliance, and increase US influence in Europe and beyond.

The US government may state that they are trying to do something similar in Iraq but the facts say otherwise, the rebuilding of Iraq is an outsourced corporate windfall paid for by the US tax payer. Halliburton, Blackwater and company are the ones benefiting, not the Iraqis and certainly not the US taxpayers. The philosophy is not about building partnerships and helping create economic inter-dependency, it is simply about making money and so again hypocrisy is at its core.

The US has for generations resisted the nationalisation of services due to a culturally ingrained desire to avoid socialism. ‘The bailout’ is socialism for the wealthy.

Under the current administration they have taken capitalist free market practices to whole new levels. Privately run Charter Schools in New Orleans, post Katrina, the oft forgotten declaration of war on the bureaucracy of the Pentagon by Donald Rumsfeld the day before the attacks on 9’11’’, and the outsourcing of the military to ‘Defence Contractors’ (called Mercenaries in the old days) in Iraq to name just a few. Yet, this week they will move towards a de-facto nationalisation of their own financial system.

The US congress is looking for a quick fix to this financial situation, an illustration in historical terms that they would not be willing to take the same slow painful steps for themselves as they would dictate to another state.

Ironically the Japanese who had to take the slow route to economic recovery over the past decade are now in a position to benefit from the crisis, buying up divisions of failing western financial institutions on the cheap.

Will the bailout work? Who knows? It’s been designed by the very people who masterminded the financial crisis in the first place so scepticism is understandable. From a cynical point of view the additional financial burden may act as a restraint to the spread of US free market economic imperialism for a time, and so they may be less likely to dictate economic policies to other nations. It’s more difficult to take the stance of, do as we say, not as we do, when financially bankrupt!

Jesus Saves

2008-10-01T16:21:00.002+02:00

Jesus Saves

I was walking fast, my hands dug into my pockets. I cursed my naïve attempt at frugality in not buying a winter coat, my jacket and hoodie kept my torso from numbness but my legs were lost.

The cold forced stiffness into my brisk movements, and gathered tension from the base of my skull, across my shoulders and back to the backs of my arms. The rain had stopped but the street still glistened enough to reflect the vivid colours of the neon signs that enveloped every building on the street.

The young woman came from behind me and made me start, the music from my headphones robbing me of the forewarning of her footfalls. She must have been sheltering under the awning of the market I had just passed.

She was young, maybe 25. She was dressed in a long black coat and black gloves but didn’t wear a scarf. She was pretty in friendly kind of way if not especially attractive.

She addressed me in English. I’m used to this; there are only a few of us ‘Waygooks’ in this small town, or new city, depending on how you look at it.

My flinch at her approach takes her by surprise and she steps back a little.

“Hello”

“Sorry… Hi!”

I take the headphones from my ears and she understands my reaction.

“Where are you from?”

This standard introduction has grown tiresome over the months and I default to sarcasm.

“I live here, where are you from.”

“Oh… I’m Korean.”

“Yes, I guessed that but what part?”

“I’m from Daegu, but I live here two years. Are you American?”

“No, Irish”

Her eyebrows furrow slightly.

“Ah…. Yong-gook…..UK?”

“No, but close”

“Okay.”

“What can I do for you?”

I’m cold and stamping my feet a little to prove my legs still work.

“I have some questions… you answer.”

She hands me a small brown glossy flier.

“Ah…..Jesus!”

My sarcastic tone is back.

“Yes.”

She smiles.

I scan through the questions and she hands me a pen to tick the boxes.

“wow… all of them right. First time, no-one gets them all. You are Christian.”

“No, reformed Catholic.”

“I don’t understand!”

“Catholic School….my country…. very Catholic.”

My English is turning into caveman slow speak.

"You are Catholic.”

“Not anymore.”

“You can come to my church. You should come.”

“No thanks.”

She looks puzzled.

“The people very nice. Some speak English.”

“Thank you, but I’m not interested.”

“Have you been saved?”

“What does that mean?”

“Do you know Jesus?”

“Not personally!”

It’s to

o cold for this, my patience is waning and I’m glancing around eager to move on.

“Ammm… when did you lose your faith?”

The predictability of her questions rises me a little.

“Did your priest tell you to ask these questions?

“Yes, he speaks English very well.”

“Okay, well, I have a question you can ask him.”

“Okay.”

“Ask him when he lost his hope.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, he wants you to ask me when I lost my faith so I want you to ask him when he lost his hope.”

“I don’t understand, my English is not very good.”

“Your English is fine. Look, you ask me about losing faith. You understand this question right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so you believe in God and the word faith is how you explain everything, right?”

“I think…okay.”

“God and the Devil….faith. Twelve apostles….faith. Virgin birth…faith. Heaven and Hell….faith. Right?”

“Yes”

She looks puzzled and uncomfortable.

“You believe this right?”

“Yes?”

“Well I believe that sometimes people need faith when they have given up on hope.

“I don’t understand.”

“Faith replaces hope? When did I lose my faith? When did you lose your hope?”

I’ve gone too far, I’ve strayed off the script and she is lost. Now it is her turn to stamp her feet and glance around, eager to leave.

“Okay, thank you. Come to our church sometime.”

“No thanks.”

“Okay, have a nice day, bye!”

“Bye”

She shuffles off, back up the street the way I came. I replace my headphones and push play. I walk on; I need to get out of this cold.

Georgia - Behind the News

2008-08-21T20:56:00.000+02:00

It is a frustrating situation to watch the coverage of the Georgian crisis on any of the mainstream news channels at the moment because with the exception of the odd reference to Georgia’s imminent membership of NATO few seem willing to look at the truth behind the news.

Unfortunately, much mainstream news reporting doesn’t often go into the reasons behind what is happening and so we are left to make assumptions based on half truths and spin and this has been the case with the Georgian crisis. As it stands the world media is portraying Russia as the big bully and Georgia with their media savvy, English speaking president, as the unfortunate victims. Very few in the media seem to be asking why this sudden crisis has happened and why now?

Saakashvili sent the Georgian army into South Ossetia with the expectation that he would be unconditionally supported by his US paymasters and that the rest of the world would be too busy watching Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt in Beijing to care.

Why not? After all, the CIA backed his ‘Rose Revolution’, and American George Soros, through his ‘Foundation for the Defence of Democracies’ paid for it. The Georgian army drive American Humvees, uses American weapons and is currently hosting in excess of 1000 US Special Forces operatives.

Saakashvili’s aggression resulted in the deaths of 2000 South Ossetians and the displacement of 38,000 more.

South Ossetia is separated from its ethnic twin, North Ossetia by the border with Russia and has sought independence since Georgia split with the Soviet Union. (The last referendum, although disputed in some quarters had a 95% turn out and a 99% vote for independence). The attempt by Sarashvilli to redistribute the population was a brazen effort to ethnically cleanse the region and so eliminate the internal political issue of South Ossetia before Georgia joins NATO.

On the other side of the coin it seems that Saakashvili was remarkably naïve in his expectations as to how the Russians would respond. This was just the type of aggressive move that Putin and Medvedev have been waiting for. Putin didn’t spend seventeen years in the KGB without learning to counter punch. This targeting of a people they describe as Russian (Medvedev claims 90% of South Ossetians hold Russian passports) gave them the excuse to go into Georgia. Delaying their withdrawal is simply a tactic to destabilise Georgia and delay its entry into NATO and countering US attempts to increase influence and control of the strategically important Caucuses.

Russia does not want Georgia to join NATO for very obvious reasons. With the development of the US “Defensive Shield” in Europe and the imminent positioning of key instalments in Poland and Georgia, Russia is facing a form of aggression from the US and its European allies more threatening than anything since the Cold War and certainly a lot closer to its borders than ever before. In essence they are being covertly surrounded and they don’t like it.

Saakashvili had lost a lot of support at home for his blatant pro-US policies, and participation in the “Coalition of the Willing”, until this crisis kicked off, but it seems that the Georgian people are willing to rally around their seemingly embattled leader and according to the BBC his approval ratings have jumped substantially. Of course it would be difficult not to draw parallels with Margaret Thatcher during the Falklands war or indeed George W. Bush, post September 11.

Equally predictable has been the NATO response of total support for Georgia and while it is believed that behind closed doors Saakashvili has received a telling off for his poor timing, Condoleezza Rice and David Milliband have been flashed across our screens and papers repeatedly with concerned faces rallying around the vulnerable and bullied Sahavilli.

Barack Obama and the Politics of Compromise

2008-07-09T10:57:00.004+02:00

[As Published in the ´Korea Herald´ 03/07/2008]

Barack Obama and the Politics of Compromise

In Barack Obama's memoir, "Dreams from my Father," he quotes his sister Auma, who justifies her dislike of politics by saying that "people always end up disappointed."
Obama's campaign had to apologize to Hebba Aref and Shimaa Abdelfadeel, two young Muslim women, for refusing to allow them to sit behind the presidential hopeful's podium as he addressed a rally in the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit because they were wearing hijabs.
Echoing the sentiments of his sister years before this election process began, it would be fair to suggest that the two women and a lot/of his supporters feel disappointed.
There has been no mention of whether Obama was aware of the actions of his campaign volunteers in moving the women, and the apology from campaign manager Bill Burton was unambiguous.
"It (was) offensive and counter to Mr. Obama's commitment to bringing Americans together."
The explanation given to Aref and Abdelfadeel at the time is perhaps more interesting in the context of this campaign. They were told that they were being moved because the head scarves were "a politically sensitive" issue.
The reality is that the head scarf issue is a politically sensitive one and, at a time when Obama is trying to fend off accusations that he is in fact a closet Muslim, the actions of the volunteers - while, at best, distasteful, were understandable.
It is, however, interesting in the context of where Obama has come from, where he is going and the manner in which he claims to want to get there.
Obama is a powerful orator and many of his critics are attempting to counter this strength by leveling the old, "all talk, no action" accusation at him.
In his book, Obama talks repeatedly about the struggle to feel like he belonged as a child and young man, and, as his campaign is premised on uniting Americans on the road to change, this small incident may be quite revealing.
In "Dreams from my Father," Obama talks about the "price of escape" in relation to the compromises that have to be made by black Americans in order to advance economically and socially.
He too will pay a "price of escape" if he wants to live in the White House.
Michelle Obama has been on a charm offensive. For example, she appeared on the TV show "The View" in what appears to be an attempt to soften her image.
Comments she made during the primaries such as: "This is the first time in my adult life that I have been proud of my country" were pounced on by the media and Obama's rivals; now she must compromise and talk about household chores and cooking bacon for the kids if her husband is to win.
Michelle Obama, in a college thesis, wrote that "immersion in an elite white institution draws blacks away from their community."
American politics and the president as its standard bearer are the ultimate "white institutions." Will the compromises that the Obamas make draw them away from their community?
She must "watch what she says." Advice gained from the present first lady, Laura Bush.
Obama understands compromise better than most. He understood that his father's unwillingness to compromise as a government official in Kenya pushed his family into poverty. He understood that the compromises his stepfather in Indonesia had to make broke that man's spirit.
Race and religion are central themes in this campaign, as they have been central themes in Barack Obama's life. His address to the nation following the first installment of the Rev. Wright controversy was a rhetorical masterpiece and captured the imagination of Americans of all races, as well as giving a timely boost to his primary campaign.
The actions of his staff have at times flown in the face of all those words, so the question is: In a political climate in which huge compromise is needed in order to be electable, will Obama know where to draw the line? Will he be brave enough to align his words with actions, or, in the end, like his sister, will we all be disappointed?
By Eoghan Ryan
(ryan.eoghan@gmail.com)
2008.07.03

Negativity as a Positive

2008-06-21T19:01:00.001+02:00

And so “Ex Pat Living” comes to life in the Korea Herald and with such life comes reaction. Good or bad, many in the newspaper business would see reaction as proof enough that the paper is doing its job.

In response to some of the feedback this section has received I was given over to revisiting a pondering that comes upon me from time to time.

It is the nature of Ex Pats to observe and comment on their new found home of choice and thus a lot of comment is deemed as negative. It is the perception of this commentary and all its connotations that interests me.

I am loath to listen to one more fresh off the boat or burnt out English Teacher whine about life in Korea. As I used to say to a particularly whiny bunch of French people that I worked with at home some years ago, if you dislike it that much….LEAVE…. no-one is forcing you to stay here.

I once lectured my sister, herself an Ex pat living in Germany, on her tendency to generalize and rant about “rude and ignorant” German customers at her bar. Not two years later in something of an out of body experience I found myself saying the very same things about the Spanish customers who frequented the bar I managed in Valencia.

It is human nature to generalize and pick out the negative in what we experience from day to day. This tendency is accentuated by the isolation from what is going around us by our inability to understand the language and culture. Where it becomes monotonous is when we have heard these observations a million times before and have little patience for the naive soul who thinks they are the first person to spot a trend or foible.

Negativity breeds negativity without doubt, but I am more and more of the opinion that negativity needs to be embraced as it is not about to go anywhere. Enjoy it when it’s done with a laconic air of irony and humor. Discard it when it is done unimaginatively and by those who are only happy when they are complaining.

As Ex Pats we have a different way of looking at things around us. We are more likely to pass a remark, complain, bitch and moan, as a cursory glance at any ex-pat comment board or blog will show you. This does not amount to racism, or prejudice. At it’s worst its small mindedness and inexperience.

It worries me that I have started to edit my comments which may be seen as negative because I don’t want to be misunderstood as being overly negative.

Let us vent our frustrations. Understand that if I complain about something in Korea or get up on a Soap Box about George W Bush it is not because I am prejudiced against Korea or anti-American. I react, I have opinions and if I were at home I’d be venting about incidents and people there.

The problem lies with the very language we use and our tendency to preface every anecdotal story by classifying the individual involved. An “American” guy annoyed me in the bar. A “Korean” woman was rude to me on the bus. A Waygook, a Foreigner, a Muslim, a Black, a White, a Gay… the list can go on and on. Our internalized need to categorize those whose paths we cross, particularly as Ex Pats, accentuates the negativity and division and it is in this categorization and division that the true problems lay, not in the negative commentary itself.

Discourse is vital, it is necessary, and like or not, part of discourse is negativity.

(published in the Korea Herald May 2008.. www.koreaherald.co.kr)

Ice-Holes blast visiting Canadian Navy team

2008-05-29T13:22:00.000+02:00

Korea Herald - 2008.05.29

The Incheon Ice-Holes ice hockey team hosted a team from the HMCS Ottawa at the Mokdong Ice Rink on Friday night in a charity game, drawing scores of supporters and hockey fans.
The HMCS Ottawa is a Canadian Navy Frigate and is in port for less than a week. Knowing that they would have some shore leave, Karl Rayment contacted the Ice-Holes and initiated the game between the sailers and the mostly-Canadian expats in Korea.

"I found these guys on line and got in contact, they did the rest," said Rayment.

The rest fell into hands of Dave Kim and his Ice-Holes teammates and supporters who, with the aid of the Canadian Embassy, secured the use of the Mokdong arena and set about using the occasion to raise money for the Hyang-jin Won Orphanage in Incheon.

By the end of a very successful evening, T-shirts sales and donations had amounted to 700,000 won ($700).

Proceedings were given a somewhat official air from the beginning, with both sides lining up for a presentation and the singing of the Canadian and Korean national anthems.

As the two sides faced off, the Ice-Holes seemed to be giving a lot away physically to their Navy counterparts; however, they were not deterred and started the game quickly by scoring almost immediately through Chris Shears.

The friendly nature of the game was reflected in a less than physical encounter and so suited the faster home side.

Entertainment on the ice was supplemented in the stands and on the bench with an abundance of good natured banter. An improvised PA system blasted music in true NHL style during game breaks and the announcer valiantly attempted to imitate the buzzer sound.

The game itself was an open, high scoring affair with the home side winning comfortably. The 9-3 score line was somewhat flattering to the Ice-Holes who seemed to have luck on their side at every scoring opportunity, while the Ottawans were denied on numerous occasions by player of the game, goalkeeper Matt McDonald.

From the Ottawa, Goalkeeper Rayment was not unduly downhearted with his team's performance and with the pace with which both teams departed to the post-game festivities one got the impression that priorities were exactly where they should be for such a fixture.

As he headed for the locker-room Rayment commented, "There is just nothing better than getting to play hockey all over the world."

In the stands, Mike Gorman, himself visiting from the Ontario ship said he was "pleased and somewhat surprised to be watching a hockey game in Korea," and that he was "impressed with mix of people from all over the world."

The HMCS Ottawa departed Incheon on Tuesday, a game lost, but with goodwill and friendship certainly won.

By Eoghan Ryan

(ryan.eoghan@gmail.com)

2008.05.29

Suwon turns into a true global village

2008-05-22T13:17:00.001+02:00

Korea Herald - 2008.05.22

SUWON - A collaboration of local organizations and the expat community in Yontong, Suwon, celebrated International Day with a Carnival Day in a local park last weekend. While the local government ran its official proceedings around the Fortress Wall, the Yongtong Carnival Day was an altogether more grassroots affair.
The YMCA supplemented their monthly flea market with the support of the Suwon Women's Association and the local international community.

While parents browsed the markets, scores of children were entertained with face painting, carnival games, and arts and crafts, hosted by a group of international volunteers.

As is the case with the monthly flea market, all proceeds from the day went to support underprivileged families and orphans in the city.

Lee Sang-myung, director of the Suwon YMCA, stressed that with Suwon now having in excess of 15,000 non-national residents, it is already an example of the global village we all live in, and that all present were citizens of this global village. He added that initiatives such as the Yongtong Carnival Day served to "bring civil society together."

He also stressed that the international residents were "already citizens" of Korea and should feel and be treated as such.

Lee was also responsible for last year's Asian Youth Initiative, which brought together teenagers from different Asian countries with the aim of improving perceptions and particularly exposing Korean youth to neighboring cultures.

Kim Ki-jung of the Suwon City Council said that the carnival offered the chance for "every nation to become one." He went on to add that with the ever-growing international community in Suwon, and in particular the rise in cross-culture marriages, the challenge was to make immigrants feel they weren't entering an exclusive society.

Local mother of two, Jun Il-joo, said: "It was a great opportunity to meet people," and that, her children DJ and Yung-ji were particularly impressed with the games.

She went on to endorse the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle ethos behind the games, arts and crafts.

"Korean children are used to playing with toys bought from stores, so it's great to see them playing with basic things."

For Ryan Phillips, from Texas, who coordinated the International Contingent's participation and organized the carnival activities, the day was particularly poignant.

Phillips' father, Kim, was born in Seoul, but was adopted by an American family as a 2-year-old. Phillips Sr. returned to Korea for the first time in 50 years last summer to visit his son.

Of his son's recent work, Kim Phillips said that he felt, "very proud and excited for him, but not totally surprised." He applauded his son's "desire to learn and embrace the culture, language and customs of so many countries and peoples."

While the greatest obstacle to true integration remains the language barrier for many people, Lee's observation that the young children "don't care about language" struck a chord on the day, and pointed to the potential benefits from investment in English language acquisition from a young age.

Yongtong has one of the highest proportions of international residents in Suwon and getting the English-speaking community out in such force in support of local charities and integration will surely help inter-community relations and serve to enhance the reputation of expats in the area.

By Eoghan Ryan

(ryan.eoghan@gmail.com)

2008.05.22

International Day in Suwon

2008-05-06T13:20:00.002+02:00

Korea Herald - 2008.05.06

Like much of Korea, Suwon's international community has exploded in recent years. However, the pursuit of integration and positive inter-community relations has not kept up with the economic demand for migrant workers.
While the local government will be holding official proceedings around the Hwaseong Fortress Wall landmark, a number of proactive local organizations have come together in Yongtong to celebrate Suwon's burgeoning diversity. Their efforts will culminate in "International Day" on May 17th.

According to coordinator Ryan Phillips, a native of Texas, the aim of the international community's participation is to foster improved integration and relations with the locals. Phillips and friends have been involved in fundraising on a small scale for the local orphanage over the last couple of years, but felt that their efforts were limited, as they are isolated from the larger community.

The local YMCA, the Women's Association, and Yongtong's International Community have joined forces to hold a "Carnival Day" at the park at Yongtong 9 Dan-ji on Saturday from 1 p.m. to 5 .p.m.

There will be a flea market and "Green Store," from which 10 percent plus 500 won from each purchase will go to support local under-privileged families and the elderly.

The flea market is a monthly event for the YMCA but the support of Park, Kyoung-suk and the Sae Ma-eul, the Woman's Association, has insured that it will be on a grander scale than before.

An "Ant Market," stocked with donations from the Grand Department Store of Yongtong, the International Day's sponsor, will be donating all proceeds towards prizes for a kid's art competition to be held that day.

In addition to the fundraising initiatives, the international community will be hosting free carnival games, face painting, and arts and crafts.

This is not the Suwon YMCA's first foray into community relations for the international community. Lee Sang-myung, executive secretary of the Suwon branch, was instrumental in last year's Asian Peace Youth Initiative, which brought together local teenagers through team-building exercises focused on exposing them to other Asian cultures.

Suwon has a history of fostering international relations, as with its participation in the 2001 U.N. International Peace Conference. But it may be through more grass roots activities such as the "Yongtong Carnival Day" and the "Kyunghee University International Day" that true tangible progress is made.

By Eoghan Ryan

(ryan.eoghan@gmail.com)

2008.05.06

Ruya

2008-02-15T06:56:00.001+01:00

Her name was Ruya. An unusual name and so I would ask.

Just a dream, she would say, a dream in my mother’s tongue.

And your Mother, did she give you that?

No, it was my father, a long time ago.

It is quite small I suppose.

Yes.

Easier than carrying a big one?

Yes.

Ruya was small too, appropriate that she be so. Silent, she would make no sense any other way. Can I help you, to carry it I mean?

No, thank you.

It would be no trouble, such a little thing, to carry it, for a while at least.

No, thank you, it’s mine to carry.

Share the load, a nice thing to do. Her smile was fleeting, her gaze lowered.

I should go now.

Why a drawer, I must ask?

I was too loud, cried too much, you know.

I see. Not really. Wait, please explain?

I would be quiet then.

When?

In there.

For how long?

You like questions.
Yes, I’m sorry.

I don’t know. I just carry it.

No, inside I mean, how long would he put you in there?

Oh, I don’t know, time is different in the dark.

And your Mother?

Oh, she carries something else.

My questions stopped and Ruya went.

Letter to the Editor - A Question of Priorities

2008-02-13T04:57:00.002+01:00

A Question of Priorities

Recently I volunteered at the Taen Oil Spill clean up as part of a corporate outing. It was an experience which left me with a lot of mixed feelings and anecdotal stories I’ve heard since have left something of a bad taste in my mouth about something that should have been such a positive experience.
As international volunteers, my companions and I were something of a novelty presence on the bus when we left Suwon early on Saturday morning, the occasional stares and giggles aside we were made to feel very welcome. After four hours we finally arrived at the beach and were directed to join queues to receive protective gear. We were decked out in disposable overalls, cloth gloves, rubber gloves, masks and boots. We then were handed large white cloths, not unlike gauze used in hospitals, and escorted across the beach to the rocks. I was surprised and glad to see how clean the beach was, but once we got to the rocks the smell of oil was all too apparent and we set to work. There were approximately one hundred and fifty people present which was very heartening on such a cold Saturday morning. Surprisingly after only forty-five minutes or so we were called back to the buses for lunch, again we joined the queues, this time for instant noodles, kim chi and rice. After lunch we headed back to the rocks and continued working until at four O’clock the approaching tide having cut us off from the beach forced us to head up through the woods and back to the buses. Shortly before we abandoned our posts I was interviewed by one of the television news stations, and they informed us with some pride that more than a million Koreans had volunteered at the clean up, while I was embarrassed to be singled out for an interview I was glad that as a European I had the opportunity to give a positive impression to Koreans and perhaps encourage other international people to volunteer.
As we walked through the woods I looked back at the line of white suits trekking through the woods and couldn’t help but think that we had created more waste than we had cleaned up. Getting back to the buses this thought was reinforced further by the piles of discarded overalls, masks, gloves and the piles of rubbish created by the lunch run. The good will of those present was very evident throughout the day with several people approaching us to thank us for helping with the clean up but I couldn’t help but feel that in the Karmic scheme of things we had done little and that perhaps the corporate presence was more a gesture in public relations than a genuine move to help the situation. The day ended on a positive note as we had lunch at a local restaurant and the company we came with picked up the bill, this was encouraging as it is evident that the economic cost of this disaster on the local people is severe and that at the very least the presence of large numbers of volunteers spending money in the area will go some way to redress the losses caused by the destruction of the fishing industry.
A few days ago I heard a story which made me quiet angry and will unfortunately influence any future decisions I make to give up my days off. A group of international volunteers at the Taen Oil Spill the weekend before last, instead of cleaning rocks, spent their day hiding in the woods. The police had taken it upon themselves to maintain a presence at the volunteer site on the basis that such volunteer work was in breach of visa restrictions and were looking to arrest non-Korean volunteers. I was astounded by this information; it defied belief that the police would see the persecution of people generous enough with their time to give something back to this country as an appropriate use of their resources.
An environmental disaster such as the Taen Oil Spill doesn’t throw forth an enormous amount of positives but surely a spirit of community between International residents and Koreans alike is something which should be fostered and encouraged.

2007 in Books

2008-01-05T13:50:00.000+01:00

1. The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

I’m sure you’ve come across this, a lot of fuss and they’re finally making a movie. It’s a nice read but in retrospect I’m slightly put off by the fact that he seems to be pumping these types of philosophical fiction out with the regularity of a… dare I say it John Grisham!!!

2. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Really different, a really good and fast read.

3. The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende

FANTASTIC… Fantastic….. Fantastico……..ask no questions… just get your hands on it and read it.

4. Ghosts of Spain - Giles Tremlett

Made me want to go straight back to Spain. A fantastic exploration of 20th century Spanish culture, and a must for anyone who has or is living there.

5. An Evil Cradling – Brian Keenan

A remarkable piece of work, the best examination of masculinity I’ve ever read and I’m sure he didn’t set out to do that.

6. Hannibal Rising – Thomas Harris

Short cut to the screen play…. He still shows elements of mastery, although you always feel detached from the characters and so it is never that engaging.

7. The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie

Probably the most intellectually rich thing I’ve read, hard work at times but rewarding.

8. Slaughter-house Five – Kurt Vonnegut
Class!!

9. Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter – Mario Vargas Llosa

Wonderfully rich, funny and engaging. Very much in the vein of Garcia Marquez and Allende.

10. The Brooklyn Follies - Paul Auster

Classic Auster…. Great stuff

11. Life of Pi – Yann Martel

It sat on my book shelf for two years…. How stupid was I….. one of the best endings I’ve read in a novel.

12. Shalimar the Clown – Salman Rushdie

Much more accessible than The Satanic Verses…. masterful

13. Atonement – Ian McEwan

Deserving of the fuss… The first 70 pages or so are a bit slow work but it is worth it and their importance becomes evident as the story unfolds. Masterful!!

14. Istanbul, Memories and the City – Orphan Pamuk

Lovely read. Made me want to go to Istanbul.

15. The Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Bloody hard work… his most inaccessible work by far. Glad I read it but….phew! Maybe I’m ready for Ulysses after this!

16. Strange Pilgrims – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The best collection of short stories I’ve read

17. Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry

Very good, although not as powerful as his previous book; “A Fine Balance”

18. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

Read it in two hours, but never got really engaged by it, I was too distracted looking for comparisons with Apocalypse Now.

19. Letter to Daniel – Fergal Keane

Wonderful, provocative….unforgettable.

20. The Black Book – Orphan Pamuk

So glad I came across this guy that I’ve lined up three more of his books for 2008.

21. The Road – Cormac McCarthy

There has been a lot of fuss about this book this year and with good reason. I think it touches a cord in the world today and it’s a bit scary that a story set in a post apocalyptic world is no longer seen as science fiction.

22. The Jungle – Upton Sinclair

Not a classic novel in the sense of fiction but it was never meant to be. Should be required reading for any of those who advocate the “American Dream.”

23. India, A Wounded Civilisation - V.S. Naipaul

Fantastic writer, wonderful style and an interesting read.

24. A Spot of Bother – Mark Haddon

Much easier read than his first novel (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time) but equally not nearly as rewarding. A nice easy read which would make a good beach book.

25. News of a Kidnapping – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
So the master of fiction can write brilliant non-fiction too……damn his eyes!!!

26. A Man Without a Country - Kurt Vonnegut

This should be on the curriculum of every high school in the USA.

27. Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
He loves to wrap his stories in the idea of a single incident having monumental repercussions and so this is classic McEwan. The man is a genius….simple as that!!

28. On Chisel Beach – Ian McEwan

A great novella, snappy, engaging and as you would expect from McEwan, brilliantly written. Read it in one sitting.

29. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I was on holiday and had to read it again…By the way I never reread books but what can I say….I LOVE THIS BOOK.

30. Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami

This guy is very prolific and I’m really pleased that he is because having read this I intend to read everything he has done…..fantastic!!

31. A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khallid Hosseini

A lovely read. Like a couple of other writers on this list it suffers a little in comparison to his first book (The Kite Runner). Mainly, I think because it is also set in Afghanistan through the same period and is written in the same style. It’s as if it could be part of a serial. Good nonetheless.

32. In Between the Sheets – Ian McEwan

Quite a dark collection and the first of his short fiction that I’ve read. Some of the stories are unforgettable.

33. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling
34. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling

I was a late convert to the HP phenomenon but having watched the five movies I just had to know what happened. Reading the books I realized how little script writing went into the films….It says something that I read approximately 1400 pages in a weeks.... Take a bow Ms Rowling!!

My Chest of Drawers – Notes from London

2007-10-28T00:22:00.000+02:00

London Oct 2007

"The only thing that the world will not have enough of is exaggeration." Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali
Pablo Picasso
Tate Britain (Turner)
Banksy

From Dali's chest came the drawers of consciousness, sub-consciousness, secrets and dreams.

The Anthropomorphic Cabinet (1936)

In an age that seems to me to increasingly lack reason, perhaps it is time to loosen the ties to perceived realities and embrace the unreal, the surreal; images of perceived untruth and fiction that may offer more truth and thought than the lies and conditioning that we are force fed daily create.

Why for example is it acceptable to punctuate our city landscapes with golden arches and perfume selling celebrities but graffiti is seen as an eye sore, vandalism and so immediately and with distain removed? We are bought and sold every square inch of our city lives. We are conditioned to accept these acquired normalities and to reject the unfamiliar and different.

Are we are slaves to the accepted mediocrity of our lives, bought and sold by corporate sales and political lies? Dumbed-down by the capitalist suction, which conditions us to be more interested in the boring and mundane than the real. If we are inspired to really think… to REALLY think, then the world around us could collapse and even those of us who sometimes try to think beyond the everyday are frightened of the possibilities should be abandon apathy.

Some of us care enough to discourse but we also see the futility of the thought process, the bullshit it sounds like to say these thoughts aloud. In expressing these thoughts and ideas we are more culpable than those who didn’t know or don’t think about such things. There is no superiority or pride in exploring these ideas in ink or words; in fact it may show us as flawed and inferior to those who are unaware, as we knowingly fail to act.

Banksy

Today I decided to live to be one hundred years of age!

A trickle of salvia at the back of my throat has of late started to habitually catch my breath and force me to cough. I think this may be a psychosomatic symptom of the stuttering engine of my creativity. Christ that sounds pompous! That trickle of moisture may be my body’s way of breaking the rhythm of my contentment and reminding me that there is something missing.
Now back in the centre of the world, surrounded by the brutally beautiful spoils of Imperialism, stimulated by the presence of great creators, my pen re-emerges and starts to produce. Profound nothings will perhaps evolve into something. Attractive word combinations and stolen ideas might manifest themselves in something real and simple. For now the fact that there is ink on the page is enough, I am waking up!

Artists, as people are limited…art is limitless!

Grey clouds, heavy and dark drag the sky closer to engulf us. Grey buildings are columns to this grey ceiling, closing in, making us feel tighter, claustrophobic, imprisoned. But, then the drops of colour come from the grey sky to the grey ground. They fall, invisible until they splash up in a rainbow of surprising colour.

I’m drawn back to Ryan, my hibernating, narcoleptic protagonist from “5 Prime AMP”, the only me capable of putting all these images and ideas together in a cohesive context. An exploration of dreamscape, sub-conscious and jumbled influences; my hero, the host of the plain between worlds, at times the only me who makes sense, my only self that I understand.

Incomprehensible at times he is a picture of psycho-analysis, a source of creative exploration who owes more to what I don’t understand than what I do.

Dali said something about the meaning of his work which I like. He said that while sometimes at the time of creation his work may have had no meaning, which is not to say that that they are without meaning.

Human beauty is vulnerable to time and inevitability fades. Art is true immortal beauty.

The difficulty I face with these little streams of consciousness is that I want to avoid some dangerous pitfalls. Grasping onto profound nothingness, condescending preaching and self-importance are unpleasant by-products of letting the mind wander. The safety net is, as always, to fain ignorance and use the guise of subjectivity in interpretation, but this a hollow defence for poor writing.

The persistence of memory

A number of images and ideas stay with me from the couple of days I spent in London that have been crying out for exploration.

Dali’s melting clocks are fascinating. He used these repeatedly both in his sculpture and painting. He was drawn to the idea that the passage of time is entirely in the realm of control of the individual. Time passes according to the state of mind of the person experiencing that time. In simple terms if you are having fun, ‘time flies’, if you are not having fun, time drags. And, so his clocks melted and time became an intangible. Richard Powers writes that time exists only to prevent everything from happening at the same time. We fear death more than anything else yet we spend our days passing time, killing time, living for the weekend, watching the clock. Melt the clock. Follow Dali’s example and confine time to a place of less importance and use that time better.

Dali’s sculpture of the unicorn penetrating the wall, with the blood dripping from its horn had me transfixed for ages. Far from subtle in its phallic and sexual nature, it is still hugely thought provoking. Thoughts of masculinity and male female dynamics linger long after the piece has been left to others to discover. Man as the protector, the perpetrator, the distributor of pleasure and pain, the threat of danger and the security of protection. As men we are seen as the threat and the shield, we are the ones who perpetrate the wrongs but also the ones who must protect from these wrongs. Sexually we must be strong and gentle, we have perceptions of the expectations women have of us based on our cultural influences. The lines are clear at times but so blurred at other times. When does the line between sexual strength and penetration cross over to aggressive violence and who determines that line. In solid relationships these lines are more clearly defined and understood but in the world of random action and self gratification when does the phallic unicorn cease to be a beast of mythic strength and virility and become the perpetrator of something more sinister and hurtful. To continue on the alliteration of the letter ‘P’, perception and pre-conditioning are central to this idea.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."from Boswell's Life of Johnson

I am repeatedly reminded in London that I am enjoying and very willingly so, the spoils of imperialist politics and exploitation. Why am I happy to do this? Simply because it is quite a cool place to be and the images that funded the creation of this place are a million miles away. Here in this grey town I see drops of colour bounce off the pavement; beautiful girls of every shade, handsome buildings tastefully pepper the streets and dilute the capitalist bunting that is everywhere. The different tongues and general pleasantness of most people belie the crude brashness of the late night revellers celebrating sporting victories in the manner I imagine their ancestors did the conquering of foreign lands. These football and Rugby supporters celebrate in a manner not dissimilar to how my friends and I would celebrate our equivalent yet in the context of this monument to imperialist Britain it seems distasteful.

Colour and passion, art and inspiration that has been absent from my life recently are in abundance here. There is a positive legacy that I see from the multi-culturalism; the prioritising of the arts, the new fashion of turning to organic and natural produce. It is a place of contradiction yet I feel more hope here despite the very real violence and drugs springing from a very real hopelessness here. I feel more hope here than I did twelve months ago when it was harder to see past the abuse and neglect, the hate and prejudice so prevalent in this place. More content in my self now I am more positive. A fleeting position, perhaps precarious, but one I’m happy to hold on to. England, a place of contradiction tips heavier in both directions than most and so with the tilt and roll more extreme so the ideas and emotions are more abundant.

Doctor Patient Privilege

2007-10-28T00:12:00.000+02:00

As I rode my bike through the sun drenched morning streets a slight nervousness tightened in my stomach. It had been four days since I’d had the tests and I’d hardly given them a second thought, but now I began to contemplate the possibility that my life could be about to change drastically. It was possible I had something. Maybe, there has to be someone behind all those statistics.

I smiled confidently at the nurse and tried to gauge her reaction to me as she waved me to a seat to wait. There was no reaction, which was good I thought, but maybe she just didn’t know anything. After waiting for a few minutes I could see that she was printing off something, there was no-one else in the waiting room so I assumed they were my test results. Again no reaction as she glanced over them. What did that mean?

She gathered up what looked to be three or four printed pages and headed for the doctors office, beckoning me to follow. The Korean doctor greeted me with a broad smile and a handshake, he had the sheets of paper in his hand and any confidence I gained from his happy greeting was tempered by my suspicion that he hadn’t seen the test results before now, and so my nervous anxiety remained as proceedings unfolded.

Following a brief exchange of pleasantries he sat down and poured over my test results. His glasses low on his nose he grunted affirmative noises as he proceeded down page and on to page two. On the third page as he reached the bottom he suddenly froze. His facial expression changed drastically from one of sincere concentration to one of surprise and shock. He quickly scanned back over the previous two pages and then dropping them he reached across his desk to a bookshelf and started to frantically leaf through fliers and booklets. In the mean time my stomach had dropped to the floor and my heart was in my mouth.

As he searched, I lost patience, reached over and grabbed the report. I went straight to page three and scanned down through it. The first half of the page looked like a maths equation and I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Further down I clocked the Hepatitis tests… negative. Then HIV…negative. That was two of the big ones out of the way, but he had tested me for other serious stuff and I couldn’t make sense of the information looking up at me. Just then the doctor reached across his desk and took the results from my hands. He leaned back in his chair, smiled and said. ‘AHHHH… VERY GOOD RESULTS!’

I was in a state of shock. He continued by leaning closer and taking me through the report test by test. From Sodium levels and cholesterol to cancer tests everything was clear or healthily low. By the time he was finished I was too relieved and perhaps too stunned to question what his little panic had been about. Since then I’ve wondered how he would have explained to my loved ones that a man with ‘VERY GOOD RESULTS’ had dropped dead of a heart attack in his office.

Francesco Totti and My Friend Roberto

2007-08-24T05:41:00.000+02:00

I didn’t want to leave Rome. Why would I? I had Mama, Popi, and Roberto. More importantly, I had Francesco Totti.

Mama and Popi were teachers at the international school that I went to and Roberto was my best friend. I had a little sister too but she was only a year old and she didn’t do much. Roberto’s parents were German and his name was really Robert, but he told everyone that he was Italian and always wore lots of gel to make his hair look darker. We spoke English all the time. I didn’t speak German and Roberto’s Italian wasn’t very good.

Roberto loved football, more than football he loved AC Roma, and to love Roma was to love Francesco Totti. I went along with him cause he was my best friend but the truth was that more than Football, Roma or even Roberto, I loved Francesco Totti.

Roberto and I had Roma shirts with Totti’s name and Number 10 on the back. I had the away strip because Roberto had got the home one first but that was okay with me.
I decided that I hated Popi for a whole week when he wouldn’t let me go to see Roma play in the UEFA Cup with Roberto and his Dad. Popi said it was too dangerous for a little boy. I hated when he called me that, I was sure Totti would never have called me a little boy.

Roberto came to school the next day wearing a Roma scarf and carrying a program autographed by Totti himself. We always called him “Totti”, I knew that it would be alright for me to call him Francesco but I didn’t want Roberto to call him that, so when he was around I stuck to “Totti.” Roberto said that he and his Dad had waited after the game for the players to come out and that Totti had signed his program first of everyone there. All the boys and most of the girls crowded around Roberto for the day hoping to catch a glimpse of the sacred ink. They wanted to know what he had said and how he had held the program. Roberto was meticulous in his detailed retelling of the events but he would not let anyone touch the program itself. It wasn’t until we were sat together on the bus home that I finally got to see it up close and Roberto said that I could hold it…”only for a second”… because, I was his best friend. It was a wholly underwhelming experience. The scrawl on the front of the glossy magazine could have been anything and Roberto wasn’t impressed when I said that his little bother had probably scribbled on it and that he had made the whole thing up.

Roberto didn’t talk to me for two days. I felt very lonely and I didn’t like the way he would look at me in class and ignore me in the playground. Mom said that I should apologise. I still wasn’t talking to Popi much, so I thought I better make things up with Roberto. I said sorry and gave him some AC Roma stickers and things went back to normal.

After school I was so happy I forgot that I hated Popi and ran up to his home room to tell him that I was friends with Roberto again.

Mama and Popi said that I had to go and live with Nana and Granddad for a year. They wanted me to go to school in our own language, so that I would learn to read and write it properly. Nana and Granddad were much cooler than Mama and Popi. I was sure that Granddad would have left me go to the Roma game with Roberto and his Dad. I was scared because a year was so long. Mama told me that it would go very quickly, but I didn’t want to think about how long it was. Mama said that it was how long my sister had been with us, this made me more confused because that seemed like no time at all, but I had met Roberto at around the same time and I had known him forever.

Roberto and I decided that we would be best friends forever and so it didn’t really matter if I went away for a year. Roberto said that when I came back we would be able to go to see Totti play every week by ourselves. I agreed enthusiastically but I didn’t believe that Popi would ever let me go.

In the weeks before I left everyone was saying that Totti was going to leave Roma. AC Milan wanted to buy him and Roberto was sure that he was going to go this time. He kept saying, “Roma will never win the Champions League, he has to go.” I knew that this is what Roberto’s father thought, because I heard him talking to Popi about it in the car park. Roberto looked permanently concerned and I did my best to show the seriousness of the situation on my face at all times.

I didn’t tell Roberto but I wasn’t too worried about Totti leaving. I knew that he leaving Roma had something to do with me leaving Rome and I was pretty sure I could persuade Granddad to buy me and AC Milan jersey.

5 Prime AMP

2007-04-27T16:23:00.000+02:00

The white wall circled the black clock like water would a sink-hole. With a gentle pop the clock disappeared and with it time ceased to exist.

The sterile brightness that surrounded him exasperated the vicious stinging of his eyes and Ryan became aware that he was awake. It felt as if he was clenching his whole face, and so he fought to force open a narrow slit through which to peer at the strange blurred environment he inhabited. The only break in the piercing light was the dull shadow above to his left; the gap between the base of the pod and the door that was now open, he realised. His mouth and nose were parched dry and he had trouble swallowing. His back ached deeply across his shoulders from blade to blade and up into his neck. His head was cocked to an obtuse angle as if it had tried to flee the sensible comfort of the moulded foam pillow. Ryan tried to pivot his torso to stretch but there wasn’t room. Overwhelmed by his burning eyes he let each blink linger longer until he felt himself grow heavier and sink, submerging deep into the mattress.

Waking up in the recovery room was disorientating. He remembered that he should feel like he had only been there minutes, but yet years had passed. He remembered the glare of the lights, the mask, and the paediatric surgeon with the red bow-tie and confident smile. He couldn’t tell if he was seeing the clock or if he was remembering it. He could see the face, the numbers, even the hands, but he couldn’t tell the time. Like looking through a frosted mirror, the numbers and direction of the hands didn’t make any sense to him. Why couldn’t he read it? The pain in his abdomen was different than it had been before. Then a voice; “don’t fight it love, sleep as long as you can.”
Opening his eyes, the wall of the capsule so close to his face made him start, and he banged his knee against it. It was a pill shaped moulded plastic pod, just over two metres in length and seventy-five centimetres wide. From the mattress the wall rose and curved gently inwards until, if closed, it was met by the pivoting roof. His back still ached, worse than before. “I should get up,” he thought. “I want to be up when the others wake, it’ll be an exciting time.” His eyes stung severely and it was nearly impossible to keep them open more than a fraction. He banged his hand on the wall as he raised it to rub the crusty sleep from his eyes. It felt like he was breaking the icing on a cake as the flakes fell away from his eyelids and lashes. Was this like the chewing gum he wondered? Would he ever rub it all away? The pod shrank and slowly inhaled him.

Looking down at the torn up grass and mud, he was standing at the side of a football pitch with his friends. They were waiting for him to come on, but he wasn’t wearing his gear and he was spitting an unending stream of chewing gum from his mouth. Getting frustrated, he moved behind everyone so they couldn’t see him and reached into his mouth with his middle finger and thumb. Ignoring his uncomfortably stretched lips, he peeled the encasing gum from his upper left molars. Stripping it away was excruciating and caused an involuntary moan and his eyes to water heavily. The upper right set was next, but even as he pulled the gum from them, he could feel that it had regenerated on the right side and thickened on the bottom teeth. His friends were gone and he’d forgotten about his crusty eyes, but the chewing gum was still being hauled in great fistfuls from his mouth and cast aside with frustrated distain. He spat out smaller amounts without help from his fingers and fists, but it was the attempts to peel it all in one go that left him feeling the roots of his teeth shorten and the enamel lift away. He could feel chips of teeth in the gum he hauled out, and with every one his panic intensified.

He arched his aching back and stretched his hands further back into the water. He kicked his legs together as a mermaid would, and pushed himself; faster, backwards, up the river. He wanted make himself longer and kick harder to escape, but the more he stretched the slower he felt and the more the danger of over extending himself and dislocating his already aching joints surrounded him. He felt the fear before he was aware of who was chasing him. When he did see them, it was somewhere else, another time. Now that they were here, he tried to increase his speed but the more he did the faster they gained on him. The two of them together… they were always together. He felt sick seeing them, so he tilted his head further and further back. Still they kept coming. Why wouldn’t they let him go? She was smiling the smile she used to smile for him. He wasn’t moving anymore and they were nearly on top of him. Conceding, he treaded water to the ramp and they followed. Calmer now, he walked up the spiral ramp to the grass covered bridge. When he got there, he looked down on the city street that had been his river. There was a battle going on below him. The grotesque brightness of the pink and red neon was being reflected by dark windows and dark shadows of stagnant water. Bouncing from the windows of dark buses and cars into the hollow glaze of dark eyes, colour spared with darkness for superiority. On the walkways people shrank and massed together like a great larvae of perpetual motion. From his bridge viewpoint he couldn’t make out any detail, just light and dark, masses and movement. He slumped down with his back to the granite wall. The grass was a deep green and very soft, it was laid out over the bridge like a perfect ached fairway. He kept his head down and ran his hands through the grass as they came and sat down next to him. They talked to him, about him, as if he were not him. They didn’t recognise him because he had chosen to look like someone else. As they talked, that melody rang in an unrelenting loop in his head. “Safe outside my gilded cage, with an ounce of pain, I wield a tongue of rage……” She was so beautiful, so beautiful it made him feel sick. Her hands were small and he watched them in close up, entangled in the hands of the faceless man. She didn’t squeeze back. She held, but never squeezed back. Her hands were then in his, limp, allowing him to hold them. He turned away and spat a tiny ball of blood stained chewing gum from his mouth. The next was bigger and white like before, so he subtly took it from his mouth with his hand and dropped it on the grass next to his new white runners. He must make them leave before they see the gum and recognise him. She was laughing and putting on that accent she did when she drank. Ryan felt sick; he needed to get away.
When they chased him from the bus and he hadn’t got far. He had his dog with him on a leash, the dog he’d had when he was in school, a back Cocker Spaniel. She was beautiful and crazy, and she would never stay still. She wanted to play with him; the dog didn’t know that they had to run away, the dog didn’t know that her paws were clinging to the footpath and that he couldn’t drag her away.
There was no pain really, just a dull bite in his abdomen and a nervy ache across the shoulders. The blood flowed away from him in rivulets through the cracks in the footpath; the only part of him that could move, the only part of him that could get away.

She wasn’t smiling anymore, she looked hollow, thinner. The others didn’t see her like this; she only showed the world that beautiful smile. She looked more beautiful now, but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t reach her; she closed the sliding door between his room and the balcony. It frosted over and she was gone…again.

“Am I awake? Everyone must be up by now.” It was just like him to stay in bed late, dosing and dreaming while the whole world got a head start on him. Even with the pod open there wasn’t enough space to sit up straight. For the first time he became aware that there was no sound coming from outside. Maybe the others weren’t up yet. He propped himself up on his elbows to ease the rigidity of his neck, then he balled a fist and reaching back he placed it at the centre of his back, between his shoulder blades, as high as the rotation of his shoulder would allow, and then pushed himself back onto the hard mattress twice. The double pop of the vertebrae, or ribs or air, or whatever it was, eased the tension slightly, and so he repositioned his elbows under himself. He pushed his right hand down under the covers and into the tight pants. Despite his objections, they had insisted on underwear, and to make it worse they had gone for the full leg variety that people wore on planes to avoid clots. They felt alien to him but as he cupped his testicles and penis he found the warmth satisfying. He didn’t have an erection but he was slightly engorged; enough for the temptation to masturbate to cross his mind. Thinking better of it, he replaced his right elbow under his shoulder and gently stroked the scar low on the right side of his abdomen
The pods were lined up row upon row from the bottom of the hangar to within inches of the roof. Huge beams and columns framed the beige hive, while a forty centimetres of corrugated steel ran as a brittle appendage from the base of each to the next. As he lowered his shaky feet onto the steel it seemed to offer about as much structural security as an aluminium measuring tape that had been extended too far. The pods touched end on end and when the lid was open it would fail to reach the apex of its arch before meeting the base of the pod above. Ryan realised the steel would support him; he wasn’t so sure about his legs so he reached for the ladder.

Every possible indoor space had been commandeered for hibernation dormitories. The airport hangar, in which, Ryan was housed in pod Number 63, Row 110. Elevation 9, was home to 165,000 people for the six month hibernation period. There were some basic electrics connected for light, but only private dormitories had any kind of monitoring equipment or supervision. “We trust the research completely,” the Prime Minister said, before being shuttled to his private, secure and monitored hibernation villa on the eve of the “Shut Down”.

As he descended the ladder slowly, the eerie stillness of the partially lit hanger began to ring in his ears. Nothing…no noise, no people… nothing.

The front door of the bus didn’t open and the driver sat staring forward, oblivious to Ryan’s shouts and knocks. He ran to the middle door and flipped the circular flap. He released the hydraulics and the door slid open with an expiring hiss. Ryan pulled himself up and pushed through the motionless, expressionless passengers. He made space enough to stand, and reached skyward. Strap hanging with both hands, he bent his knees in the hope of absorbing the violent lurches of the bus and keeping his balance. All around him a small Asian man with short black hair, a tight dark suit and dead eyes, stood still, duplicated, undisturbed by the violent lurching of the bus. Ryan was thankful for the small mercy of his MP3 player, which drowned out the conversations and giggles of school kids whom he couldn’t see, surrounded as he was by one Asian man. He realised that the MP3 player was there when the man from the Spanish CDs started to talk to him through the headphones. It was not a recording but rather one half of a conversation which Ryan began to realise, he was expected to complete. The man asked him in Spanish if he remembered the beautiful girl on the tube in London. The really beautiful one, who looked like she had been up for two days and was about to cry? She was thin like his sad girl but without the smile, she had the same dark complexion and dark eyes. The train girl’s eyes were whiter and darker and sunk further back above dark circles. She was thin too, but her hair was longer and greasier. She was so beautiful in her sadness. She had a bandage on one of her wrists, and now she stood across from him on the Seoul subway. Her face was the same. Her stance was the same. But this was Seoul, not London, he wondered if she would be surprised when she exited the train thinking she was on the Northern Line only to find herself on the outskirts of Seoul, Korea. Would she blame him for bringing her here? The carriage was almost empty but on his left a blind man with the transistor radio around his neck shuffled towards him chanting in Korean. He was old and looked like he had induced his own blindness by squeezing his eyes shut too hard. Ryan wondered what he had seen. Terry from football sat on the floor of the carriage with his back to the door that ran to the next carriage eating a sandwich from a pile of greaseproof paper between his legs. He looked up at the sad girl and with his mouth full nodded and mumbled, “Yip, that’s her.” “How do you know? Get out of the way.” The blind man was gone. When he looked back, the beautiful sad girl and Terry with his sandwich had disappeared too.

Ryan was flat on his back on the cold concrete floor of the hangar. He rubbed his eyes and they opened a bit easier this time. Still and silent as it was, the hanger could have been a giant morgue. The hum of the electricity that powered the emergency lighting was the only audible thing beyond his own movements that Ryan could hear. Ryan walked, feeling like he had woken up still drunk, and was awaiting the hangover of his life. He wobbled his way through the vast hanger towards the massive sliding door a hundred metres away like the rubber men wandering home from the pub on a Friday night. He didn’t have any real idea of what he was doing or where he was going but he knew that if he was awake and everyone else still asleep then something was very wrong.

Outside under the clear night sky Ryan felt somewhat more orientated, but physically more uncomfortable for the reduction in the numbness he felt all over. The shadow of the enormous terminal building loomed to his right, movement was key, and so he walked again.

The grass wasn’t as lush and green anymore, it was suddenly longer, thicker and coarser. The colour had changed to a scorched brown with only a suggestion of green validating the assumption that it was grass. He reached over and picked up a small pink petal, completely out of place among the dry and colourless grass. He lay back and the grass was gone, replaced by a bed of giant versions of the petal he held in his hand. A teacher had told him about the danger of beauty. He didn’t dwell on it, just smiled and lay back. The beautiful, poisonous flower drew him in more and more. Euphoric, he ignored the alarm bells sounding by way of a nauseous feeling in his stomach. He absorbed her light, her touch, her smile, her eyes, her skin. Larger than life and strewn all around him were the pinks and reds of the enormous petals, each of them smelling more of her than the last. Each one felt and tasted like her skin and each held the beautiful eyes that could not look straight in his when they were sad. The beauty energised and lifted his spirit but the poison gnawed and clawed at his insides. In his euphoria he still ignored the warning churning in his gut. The cancer spread, it grew, and it metastasised until he could no longer move. He was back on the footpath, blood streaming from his eyes, his ears, his nose, and his nails. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. He became engulfed in fear and still he couldn’t move. Still the blood flowed, more and more, from every joint and pore until it washed his skin transparent. Stretched tighter and tighter over his ribcage his rinsed flesh became a screen through which he could see her little hands holding his heart, without gripping. Through the scarlet tinted windows of his eyes, he used his last to see her one more time, her smiling eyes lean upward and kiss the faceless man. Her blood stained hands took this new man, without gripping, and drew him onto a bed of beautiful and fragrant flowers.

This island of grass separated the two runways that ran parallel in front of the main terminal building. The grass was filthy, coated in a dark residue and greasy to the touch. How long could he have been under if even the grass hadn’t managed to grow itself clean? What if this hibernation period did nothing? What if it was all a charade to convince voters that the government was finally doing something about the environment? What if the six month stint was a hugely arrogant underestimate of how long it would take to see some form of regeneration from the rotting planet? “Why am I lying on the grass?” thought Ryan finally as the rush of questions tapered off. As he stood up, he felt for a lump on the back of his head and brushed some dirt and grass from his hair. He didn’t know if he had fainted or just fallen asleep again. There was a sense of isolation on that island of dirty grass that was horribly exposing. He felt like he was on show to the rest of the world. In front of him the imposing terminal building, behind, huge towers of apartments. They looked like giant filling cabinets that sorted people away when they were not in numbered pods hibernating. He imagined that behind every window there was a crowd of faces watching and laughing at him. He could see great rivers of people in the concourse of the terminal building, jostling to get to the windows to point and laugh at him, all alone, wandering the runway in his full length underwear.

It took Ryan a long time to find a way into the Terminal building. All the doors required fingerprint recognition to open and the glass looked too sturdy for him to attempt to break given his difficulty staying upright and awake. Finally, he found a luggage carousel that had an unlocked steel door. He crawled though the overgrown cat flap and found that he could stand again almost immediately. He negotiated his way through the backstage luggage handling area and through two more cat flaps and found himself lying on luggage carousel number 15 and staring up at the advertising above him.

The model in the photo wore a brown and white vertically striped shirt and tight blue jeans. He was barefoot and standing in front of a beach and ocean backdrop. As the milk chocolate brown of the shirt’s stripes drew Ryan’s gaze, the pattern slowly began to spread out in all directions. Closing out the seaside location, the brown and white enveloped him in a room the size of a small bedroom. The shirt’s pattern crawled the walls, ceiling and floor, becoming a grotesque wallpaper and removing all else from sight. His focus couldn’t stray from it, no matter what he did, until without trying he could see the hairy backed wood lice that carried the pattern all around the walls that enclosed him. Methodically and deliberately they worked in steady unison until all that remained was a moving, crawling, all enveloping pattern of brown and white.

5 Prime AMP was the beginning. Ryan had got the new beginning he sought. He could sleep for six months and awake, regenerated, renewed… no…reinvented. If 5 Prime AMP and hibernation were a new beginning, then there would be a new middle and a new ending. He knew the middle he sought to avoid, but the ending he discarded had not been revealed. He was a new beginning, a fresh start, a blank canvas. He would discard the past and invent a new self for the future, and so, a new middle and a new ending to go with the new beginning. He would discard all but wisdom from the past. A new invention; he was the creator of his own destiny, the creator of himself. Unburdened by the past, circumstance or regret, he would invent a superior self. He would be the creator and the created, a supreme being, greater as the two, than either could ever be in isolation. He would be wise and confident, omnipotent and divine. Who ever imagined the creator as his own creation, a father and son, as one? He would be the solution to his own dilemma. He would be the chicken and the egg; a dilemma decipherable only because his conclusions would go unchallenged.

Ryan walked the wide empty concourse. The centre of the world, the centre of his world he wondered if he had always been the centre of the things. Since he was the centre of his experience, was it beyond possibility that he was the centre of all experience? The world he now walked, his world, maybe this was proof that everything else had always been there, existed, only to provide the stimulus and experience to form his character. Was he an avatar of the creator he would invent? Beside him a huge mural depicted thousands of people crowed into a city square, taken from a black and white print it was laced with bright colours. Ryan considered a world without people. He wondered about those before him, maybe they were not real people but cautionary tales to shape his thinking. In his world, how would he rule and avoid the mistakes of the past? He came to the vast windows of the arrivals department and looked through the darkness at the tower block apartments at the far side of the runway. Lined up like great concrete dominos, he saw that the tools of his tyranny were already in place; his maniacal alter ego would complete the enveloping greyness. People would have their imaginations surgically removed; there would be no more dreams in sleep, and there would be no more fantasy while awake. People would shuffle from their towered, filing cabinet homes, to cubical work-paces, blissfully unaware of desire and regret. His great tyranny would be complete when he would amass and collectivise the confiscated imaginations and amalgamate them with his own. The greatest of all mergers, his would be an intellect and imagination so powerful that he would find eternal bliss in the landscapes of these stolen dreams. He would be the writer and director, and most importantly he would control where his imagination lingered, and so reality and dream would become one and he would not have the panic and fear that now seeped from his dreamscape into his everyday life. He would force hibernations. He would feed off their sleep so that he would need none. In his sleepless existence he would live the fantasies of the sleeping. Unobstructed, his would be the great intellect of this and all the ages. He would attain divinity in life, and immortality to sustain it. If he could imagine it, it would be so. His voice could make truth of fiction and dream, and infallibility would be so because he deemed it. He would create a new righteousness, a new mental landscape. He would be the creator of all those things in the future that were ever imagined in the past. He would go back in time and create the masterpieces of every age before they were imagined by genius. He would do it all and he would be worshiped by all those who didn’t understand it. This is where the internal monologue came undone, his imagination usurped by longing. Without a muse or an equal opposite to revel in his brilliance he would be the thing he dreaded the most, irrelevant.

Ryan enjoyed the little meanderings that solitude allowed and his psyche created. He laughed at his little trip into megalomania and focused again on the towers on the horizon. If the great religions had all been built upon fear and hope, then were they not truly the work of imagination? Freed from imagination people would not fear death. Free of imagination, people would not hope for a better afterlife. Would they be content in the present if he lobotomised their imaginations as they now slept? He couldn’t stop himself. Alone and unchallenged his imagination was his only company, and it was willing to create all manner of personalities to compete for his time.

The rain came down and washed away the shadows of those who stood around watching the blood seep away in silent streams of exploration. After the shadows, colour was next to go. It drained away unnoticed by the unimaginative. Once the colour was gone, all but the red of the blood that still ran from his motionless corpse, he noticed their eyes had sunk back into black nothingness. With the eyes went any expression or feature of familiarity and those faces he had once known transformed into those of unknown, unknowing uniformity. Their numbers were thicker now, his space being invaded by a growing legion of un-dead bleakness. Still he bled, and still they looked on without seeing. He was then looking down on himself, surrounded by the shadowless, blind hoard. He drifted further and further away with every heartbeat; although glad to be gone, he was scared to leave himself bleeding on the footpath. Was he flying? No, he was being carried, the shadows had returned to guide him away, and he felt safer. The shadows stroked and fondled him. They held him lightly and ran fingers through his hair; all with the gentleness of a child exploring its father. Comforting, soothing, he trusted these hands, these small hands that didn’t grip.

There was a mosaic on the ceiling of the departures lounge that Ryan hadn’t noticed when he was vertical. It was a depiction of floating women, angel like, in green and white ceramics. A teacher had explained the nature of ghosts to him in such a way that he believed, indeed greater than believing, he understood. He had not only learned about Ghosts but had come to understand that he was haunted by them constantly. They haunted and accompanied him in everything he did. Ghosts were simple beings; they did not represent he souls of the departed, or some vindictive presence, but rather a simple reality. Ghosts were the souls of unfinished business that haunted and accompanied us through life. They loitered with a lingering intent, not a weightless apparition, but rather a burden that slowed the mind down until either opportunity was taken to remedy their regret, or the weight became too heavy to bear and we became lost.
Ryan lay on a bed of books. He was surrounded, enclosed and enveloped by them. All around him was the knowledge of the world. Somewhere among these reams of paper were the answers to questions he didn’t yet know to ask. Among these pages and their ink was a safety he wasn’t aware he craved. Instinctively comfortable he lay there, not bleeding anymore. He would reach gently for a book only for another to catch his eye before he made contact. This continued until his sense of comfort deserted him and he knew all this knowledge was unattainable. He couldn’t focus on one book long enough to absorb it, so he drifted and the image of the books dimmed. Although he knew all opportunity was disappearing with the diminishing light he was unable to stop it. In the corner that hadn’t existed before, a shaft of blue light pierced his hideaway. He crawled towards it until he could reach up and pull himself to the peephole. The sun drenched world outside stung his eyes but he pushed himself head first through the opening anyway. His arms forced down by his sides he squeezed through. Naked and lubricated he found himself not in an open expanse of plains and big sky, but on a grey city street. He lay, curled up, foetal, as teeming suits stepped over and around him, the books were gone and he was scared again.

Ryan lay on the tiled carpet, angry at the transience of his dreams, frustrated by his inability to control the journeys and confused by the indecipherable progression from one image to the next. The links between his waking time and his dreamscape remained foggy and unclear. Each time he awoke he felt more rooted to the reality of his solitude in the waking world, but less inclined to separate the rivers of thought that flowed unimpeded from subconscious to conscious. He began to question if his waking thoughts were more valid or more accurate than the confusion of his dreamscape journey. Sleep and wake, like shadow and light, were inseparable for him and in the growing haze more difficult to recognise as different entities.
The urgency Ryan had felt to stay awake and move forward with practical purpose was fading as morning approached. He felt an increasing desire to induce dream time rather than fight to stay awake. The more he tried to understand what he saw; he found that the images slipped from his waking memory. The more he tried to control his dreams the less familiarity they allowed him. Faces he knew and contexts he understood slipped away like shadows. Even when awake, the more focus he brought to an image in his mind, the less he saw and the more he became overrun with conscious images. The more he tried to control it all, the less he understood. He lost himself to the alternating visions of reality and fantasy. He questioned his sanity. Was this cross over world of dream and reality just a common expression of lunacy? Was he becoming more comfortable in his dreamscape because it was populated by people other than him, rather than the world of solitude he wandered? Surely this was not a real population of spirit and individuals but rather the creation of his subconscious and the projection of the things he felt as a corporal existence in the real world. He was becoming increasingly drawn to the world of sleep because the more of the empty waking world he saw, the less stimulation was afforded him. Without people to fill the space, everything seemed bigger to Ryan; the sky, the airfields, lobbies, rooms, buildings, everything. The initial sense of liberation he felt as he left the hangar was eroded minute by minute by the exaggeration of the emptiness all around him.

Ryan found a wall that showed him the time in six places around the world but not the date. The wall was white and so reminded him of the one in the recovery room of the hospital. This time he could tell the time, six times. He couldn’t figure out if the clock he remembered was really the one from the recovery room or if it had been replaced in his memory by the creation of his dreams. Ryan remembered the old man he used to know and how he would wander from his home of fifty years to “explore the place,” robbed as he was of a lifetime of memories by Alzheimer’s. Maybe that was it; maybe this wasn’t dreams or lunacy at all, but dementia. Perhaps he was older than the face he saw in the airport mirrors. After all, those were just memories too. Where was reality? Where did dreams end and reality begin? He became so crowded with questions and fear that he ceased to function. Ryan stopped his attempts to move, and succumbed to fear and confusion. Ryan knew he was losing the essence of who he thought he was, he was losing the stability provided by the presence of others to validate his existence. The arrogance his isolation had initially fostered was replaced by a humbling panic. No longer the centre of existence he was emasculated by thoughts of mortality.

Wandering on the beach he came across a man sitting. The man wore shorts he recognised and a sweatshirt zipped up, with the hood pulled so far over his head it covered most of his face. Ryan had found his “Man Friday.” There was another! Of course there was another! How could he have been so self centred to believe that he was the only one? Sitting next to his new companion Ryan began to express his relief and the other responded in kind. When eventually the hood was pulled back Ryan sat facing his younger self. The same him; younger, more flawed, less cynical sure, but less interesting. Ryan’s panic was all consuming. How could he find release from his own thoughts when faced with and inferior version of himself? Backing away and looking again, the man had changed into his father. Was this better or worse? Ready to scream, to cry, to fight, Ryan was gone from the beach and lying on the tiled floor of a terminal bathroom.

He didn’t notice the blood at first, consumed as he was by the residual fear from the dream. When he did see it, the irony of the familiarity was not lost on him. The blood ran away from him in a small rivulet on the grey tile, the only part of him moving. He righted himself and found some paper and the mirror. These falls were becoming more treacherous but he wasn’t worried. He looked at himself in the mirror and noticed that his beard had started to grow. He wondered why it hadn’t while he was hibernating. He giggled as he thought of Willie Wonka’s Umpa Loompas moving from pod to pod like little worker bees carrying old-fashioned razor blades and pots of lathered soap. Maybe he should have read the small print in the leaflets posted prior to hibernation. Somebody must have asked the question, but then, laboratory mice didn’t have beards so perhaps the scientists didn’t know. If hair can continue to generate after death than surely it was logical to assume that it would do similarly during hibernation. In the absence of Umpa Loompa Barbers he reasoned that some enterprising soul would have thought of the idea of post hibernation grooming for the hundreds of thousands of bearded men and hairy legged women. They would all be desperate to look good for the reunification of the world of loved ones and the infatuated. My God, he could make a killing. The bleeding had stopped now; the cut was small but the bruise big; bigger than the others. He better be careful in these bathrooms and avoid shelving, corners and kerbs. The bizarre stream of consciousness made him smile. In two heartbeats he had transitioned from Umpa Loompa barbers and a business plan to self preservation and sensibility.

In the shopping area of the departures lounge Ryan found a box of CD’s behind the counter of the Record store. His initial hopes of a kid in a sweetshop type indulgence had been dashed when he found the shelves of all the shopping units had been emptied of stock. The box of CD’s was an oversight and a gift. He found a functioning player in the pharmacy and an isle in which to drift off to the electronic beats. He wondered what dreams he would face now that he was choosing to sleep and was surrounded by the first aural stimulation he’d had in months. Was it months? He didn’t know. As he lay there letting the waves engulf him, Ryan found his chest gain weight and drag him deeper into the floor. As the beats were interjected with brass tones he felt heavier and heavier. The clouds of sleep and dream surrounded him but before the images came, silence woke him, and memories stung him from his drowsiness. He fought it for a while but eventually, realising he had lost; he pushed up and pivoted to lean against a counter. The music had come back but he hadn’t really noticed it. He put his head down on his arms and thought of her.

He knew where she was; a hanger, probably not unlike his. She would be positioned close to those she chose, and those who chose her. It was not so long ago that she may have chosen to be positioned close to him, not too close! That time had passed. When she chose to leave, he did too. The distance she created, he multiplied ten fold. The further the better, he hoped. Not far enough! Dreams before her time rarely lingered into the waking space, but now, lost as he was between wake and sleep she became his accompanying ghost, his spirit of unfinished business. He explained things to himself in his moments of clarity, but knew that logic would not offer peace, denied as it tends to be by change of mood, circumstances or state of mind. The music had changed something, these thoughts were more familiar to him; these were pre hibernation thoughts. While not pleasant, they were the thoughts of a person he regarded as himself prior to narcoleptic meanderings in an empty world. He continued; she was the easy explanation for his angst, dreamed or otherwise, too easy an explanation he knew. She had become his excuse for flaw and self-perception. She had become his explanation for mood and longing. Her absence had come to explain emotion and feeling that had existed long before her presence. She had become his excuse for himself. He used her, in her absence, to define characteristics in himself. He hated and loved the longing he felt for her. He loved having a focus for that longing he knew in his heart would be, even without her existence. He clung to her memory because it gave justification to his existence between life and dreams.

Ryan walked from the music, he wanted to carry it with him but his need to be with it was out weighed by the discomfort he felt in the stillness, so he walked. He couldn’t bring himself to press stop so he let it fade into the background as he walked…..”Say what your soul sings to you…..”

It took Ryan a long time to get out onto the roof and the maroon red that filled the sky told him that the day was behind him. The doors couldn’t be forced or the windows broken, but finally, with an acquired screwdriver he jimmied the window frames from their hinges, lifted them aside, and stepped out. His first thought was that the deep gravel on the flat roof would make for a softer landing then the tile in the bathroom or the polished stone of the terminal, but then he hadn’t had an episode for hours. This disappearing sun reminded him that it had been nearly a day since he had left the hangar. He leaned on his elbows, the rough concrete of the wall uncomfortable against his bare skin. He wondered why he hadn’t got hungry, but he was beyond stressing the effects of 5 Prime AMP Gene Therapy. He took a long time to absorb the panoramic view. The sun held his gaze the longest, surrounded by flashes of dark colours changing with every blink and glance away. The sky was the opposite of his dreams and so proved to him that he was finally awake; it allowed him to look at it. It allowed him to focus, to hold its image in front of him. The sky would remain constant until he looked away or blinked; when he looked again, it would be different. When the sun disappeared below the horizon it took him a while to readjust his eyes to the artificially illuminated landscape created by the halogen lights, as they flickered to life. They created their own reality of shadow and light, a reality without focus or colour, just dark and light fighting for attention before their one man audience. He became more aware of himself as the temperature dropped and his skin goose pimpled to resemble the concrete of the wall in front of him. He rested his eyes on the great shadow that was the hangar and didn’t think about anything.

It only took Ryan fifteen minutes or so to find his way back, uninterrupted as he was by narcoleptic falls and locked doors. He made his way through the honeycomb to his ladder and climbed up the nine storeys to his pod. He pulled the lid closed and the light went out. He settled flat on his back in total darkness. His back didn’t ache anymore and his eyes were cool, but the stillness made him conscious of the gentle throb from the various bruises he had collected. Ryan felt heavy, he started to drift off. An expiring hydraulic hiss was the last thing he heard… another pod opening? He smiled as he stepped onto the bus and passed the small Asian man in the grey suit. It wasn’t as crowded now but as he hung from the straps with both hands, he saw that his arms were coming unzipped at the shoulders. With every lurch of the bus the zip wounds opened further. As his arms came undone he slid downwards, deeper and deeper into darkness until there was nothing.

Speakeasy

2007-02-15T16:58:00.001+01:00

Speakeasy!

I'm off on my first Korean Road trip next weekend, as was always the case in Ireland I'm doing this because it is being organised by someone else, there's a football tournament and I'm going where I'm told.... bring it on!!

As part of the key preparations for any excursion involving 13/14 ex-pat pissheads our commander in chief has done excellent reconnaissance and sourced an appropriate watering hole. Aptly named "Speakeasy" they profess to serve the cheapest cocktails in town, all sorts of beer and the all important tacos for soakage. It remains to be seen whether they will have the Ireland V England game but, I live in hope. Reading the blurb on the website (Note that I know nothing about the town but have researched the pub!) they talk about the importance of having a place for ex pats to go where they can relax and talk freely with like minded people... hence the name "Speakeasy". It got me thinking.

At times I feel like I have so much to say that I'm fit to burst, but this evening I was thinking as I sat drinking coffee in a convenient and personality free bar on the out-out-outskirts of Seoul and hanging with my notebook that, I would love to have been sat in some shite bar in a lane off a small plaza in the middle of the day getting gently drunk with Sanders and John. Equally it could have been the East Village with Andy and Mel or the Left Bank (RIP) with Terry and Mangan. I'd like to be in any of these places and not really feel like I have to say anything; conversation would bounce along as I got the piss taken out of me and gave it back as best I could. I don't get lonely thankfully, but christ, I miss meaningless banter. A lot of my pub conversations here are so loaded with bullshit thoughts and ramblings (mostly my own) that at times I fall over myself trying to get points across to people who may or may not be listening, no real reflection on the people I hang with here but more a product of the week I spend among people I don't really talk with. There is banter building with a few like minded folk here but with one or two exceptions it is generally reigned in and tempored as there is the danger of offence. If I was in Twomey's kitchen or at the bottom of a mountain in Scotland with Danny and Carrie there wouldn't be any such rubbish. Conversation would roam freely from the important to the unimportant and back again with ease and the deliberate forethought of a hyperactive child's imagination. If I was looking for my tenth lost ball on the back nine of a West Cork golf course with Chuck or watching the Heineken Cup on Andy's couch, the good the bad and the ugly would be talked through with the same humour and lack of self consciousness as goes with the piss take that is never that far away. I have always sought out new personalities, at times to the neglect of good friends, but as I find myself on the far side of the world and exploring the far side of myself (Where is Gary Larson when you need him), I realise that I would love a Junior Cup Sunday in Rathcooney, a beer with Scott and Marta or an Earl Grey with Frankie. There are friendships that need revisiting, renurturing, so perhaps a trip to Copenhagen or Amsterdam and a load of pints with Jack or Shane should be a priority after this sojourn in the grey East. An off the cuff piss up with Ken on a Friday is long over due and I wonder what are the chances of getting Madden and Keeffa in a shitty pub some afternoon so I can laugh my ass off at the funniest double act I know. There is a lot of beer involved in this wondering I'm realising but when else could you call AT a "cockhead" and just have him piss himself laughing.

I know what nostalgia is, and I recognise it for its dangers and lies, but this is a wee bit different. Just writing this has brought a smile to my face and I realise that in the absence of the very banter I am craving, of course there is the danger of taking myself too seriously, a fatal flaw that none of the above mentioned friends would tolerate for a second, so I don't long for the rose-tinted memories of the past, but just look forward to seeing all ye fuckers again soon... Speakeasy, speak freely!

Quality

2007-02-08T15:39:00.000+01:00

"Introspection and afterthought, swimming in guilt your favourite sport..." Just another Victim. House of Pain and Helmet

It seems I've fallen into the very trap I've studiously avoided over the years. I've lubed myself up and slid on down that slippery slope of self-fulfilling negativity which, like it or not ties and binds you to a not so merry-go-round of whinging and misery! Ok...now I'm reaching for the melodrama which is the final straw in disliking myself and the first step in alienating anyone of a positive disposition... must be time to write!

I told someone recently that it was okay to be negative as long as you did it with a kind of articulate, self effacing sardonic attitude that would set you apart from the whingers, I don't think I used the word sardonic but that's what I meant. I know from past experience that I'm very likely to think and sometimes say that someone is a whinging bitch, drama queen or similar, but when someone is attractive I'm much more forgiving. Doesn't beauty create wonderful double standards? In retrospect I think I may have initiated the whinging and so it is more accurate to level the whinging bitch comment at myself. I was thinking a little today about my more recent outbursts of verbal diarrhoea, and my outward verbal searches for wisdom and irony, and I'm beginning to think that it's not such a good idea to do this kind of thing off the cuff, as I have been doing more and more recently. I spout first and consider later and while sometimes people seem sightly impressed I think more often than not I sound like an opinionated twit. This character flaw is accentuated because I've not put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard in a meaningful way in a couple of months. I have a clot of ideas and bullshit which are finding exploration in inappropriate moments of philosophising and ranting.

A few years ago my friend Terry used to get pissed off when I would go on and on about Rugby. I suppose it takes time to realise that no matter how passionate you are about something most people don't want to be listening to you babble on about the same shite all the time. These days I keep my Rugby rants under check as it doesn't consume as much of my waking consciousness as it used to but my tendencies are the same. After a few beers I'll bore man, woman or child about whatever book I'm reading or with my little observational ditty's. I often get a positive response from people because let's face it most people are nice and when you exist in an ex-pat community most people are just trying to make a few new friends so they tend to be more patient or better at feigning interest, all the same there are times when I want to kick myself and scream "Shut up you ASS!", but of course I just keep on talking.

I'm exaggerating in the search for that sardonic humour I was talking about earlier but the faults I see in myself at times have seemed exaggerated over the last couple of months and I'm curious why.

I think part of it is that from Monday to Friday I have very little interaction with what I think of as normal people who I can chat with in an ordinary everyday kind of way. Unless I catch up with James in the week I need to be on line to talk about Munster, Liverpool or any thing normal and importantly mundane. There is no conversation or banter with the people I work with, I know nothing about them, and they, nothing about me, at this point I don't care to explore these characters and I'm happiest at work when I'm by myself. So by the time I hit Friday night I have five days of shit talk, observation, comment, sarcasm, humour and frustration bursting to get out. Throw a couple of pints into the mix and the potential for pretentious, self involved shite is enormous.
It is a new experience for me to be in a work environment where I watch nearly everything that I say and I don't like it. I've given up trying to make small talk or any kind of talk with the Korean girls, the response is always the same; at best a monosyllabic answer, a downward glance and a duck for cover behind their blue peter class preparation. I'm not up for a sense of embarrassment every time I make a comment. With the Yank I'm even more careful but for the opposite reason. He still asks me almost daily what I did the night before and what I have "planned for supper." I give him nothing because I don't want to have to fend off his insecure attempts to grasp at friendship. My life may not be particularly exciting at the moment but I do have a life and friends and I'm not willing to let his dead weight personality attach itself to mine. In a moment of weakness a couple of weeks ago, I was thinking aloud and I mentioned by name a girl that I had met and a conversation we had had. Queue wide eyed amazement and the inevitable plethora of questions. Where was she from? Was I dating her? How old was she? Where did I meet her? By the last question I simply replied "In a fucking bar John!" and bolted for home. Socially inept doesn't even begin to describe the guy I have to sit next to five days a week.
I over did it on the piss a couple of weeks ago and so have spent the interim overdosing on soup and smoothies in an effort to restore myself to a resemblance of health (over dramatic I know but bare with me) I think this little ramble is the final stage in the detox process as I rediscover the ability to type. If I've had enough caffeine emails may follow. The usual suspects will probably bare the brunt of it; Scott, Frankie, Shane and a few others tend to get the more self indulgent rambles.... bless their patience!!! I've neglected quite a few friendships over the past few months so perhaps now would be a good time to attempt to redeem myself, but I fear that I will get tired of the sound of my own inner voice before I get to more than one or two. I feel an unshakable need to get a lot said in order that I can move on and say something worth saying. Am I trimming the fat in this ramble?
Having something to say, whether interesting or not, is a perpetual state for me but sometimes if I am expressing it at the wrong time or in the wrong place then I end up with that obnoxious shite talk, whinging or fucking someone out of it on the football field... yes I did that this week too... and this is not good for the soul. It is at this point that I move beyond the dislike of some of those around me and start to dislike myself... so with no rugby training or a tackle bag in sight I do what I must... I write.

For the sake of exorcism or maybe just to chronicle my thoughts I'm going to explore some of the things I've found to be negative about recently. I know that these are insignificant little annoyances especially compared with some of the stuff I was trying to write about this time last year but life has a strange way of elevating problems to inappropriate levels of importance when there is little else to occupy the mind, feel free to think of me as a whinging bitch.

I've been in Korea for nearly four months now and in the last couple of weeks it's fair to say that I gave up on the place as somewhere I will ever like. A couple of people have asked me recently what I think of the place. I'm sure they saw this as an innocent enough question and didn't think they would open the can of worms they did, however it was red rag to a bull territory. Most recently I think I opened with something along the lines of, "I find it amusing that a place called Seoul can be so lacking in Soul, I don't think too much of Korea". That is not to say that I haven't thought about it, I do little else on the groundhog day like taxi trips that I make with frightening frequency. Should I be so quick to write off the entire country or more importantly it's people? Well, Let's see.

As I get a bit older, for better or worse I think I understand more and more what makes me tick, and unfortunately I'm not one of those people who can naturally make the most of a situation, I'm usually fairly positive but eventually I get burdened. My surroundings and particularly the people I'm around have a huge baring on me.
One of these days I'll take some photos of the street I now look out on so people can see what Korea looks like. From what I've seen, this street IS what Korea looks like. Seen one, seen 'em all! Everything looks the same. The Architecture is about as imaginative as the box your TV came in. Wrap a bit of advertising and neon on it, paint it grey and you're there. I think at some point architects stopped designing in favour of using four or five templates.
Everything is a copy of something down the road, it's like that Simpsons episode where they take the piss out of themselves for using stock backgrounds over and over..... remember Scooby and Shaggy running away from the mummies and they keep passing the same doors, plants and armour... that's it!! From the Orwellian tower blocks which file people away after work and school to the guy having the grand opening for his Korean BBQ Restaurant on the same block a three others which are empty every night. The same guy will be out throwing fliers on the ground and sticking them on every apartment door... the fliers look exactly the same as the other twenty five I binned that morning. The four places that sell glasses, the five mobile phone shops and six or seven PC rooms on this street are all pretty much empty. There is another English Academy opening down the street soon, the five already here are running at about 50% of capacity, if that!
What about the people? When I'm in bad form I'll tend to suggest that they fall into the template idea too. I've heard fellow teachers describe them as clones and robots; I just keep thinking of John Frusciante's album called "Shadows Collide with People." There is such a herd mentality here it is quite frightening. Parents are focused on their children being educated because everyone else is, so they send them to academies after school where they fail to learn English because they can't communicate in their own language much less in a second one. What is lacking???.... One word... IMAGINATION... in design, in business, in education, in thinking, in life.
In another crass generalisation people are childish at all ages to an irritating degree. Spoiled kids are maturing into idiotic princesses. Sixteen year old boys cry when they are scolded for not doing their homework and Mommy calls to make excuses. Twenty-six year old University Students cry at parties because they "have no friends". Take your melodrama and FUCK OFF! I find myself generalising more and more and I wonder among these twisted priorities where lies the real tragedy. There is a machisto thing here that is every bit as strong as in Spain or Italy but just not as obvious. There is the huge concern with losing face and it seems not to be a blanket social thing but more a male domain. Women play the submissive role which I find really uncomfortable with. There is soft porn on the TV all the time but all the sex at best dipicts reluctance on the part of the woman and at worst looks like full on rape. I don't know enough about relationships here to make any insightful comment but a lot of my superficial observations make me uncomfortable. Korean girls I know have talked about choosing their boyfriend in the same way you might talk about choosing a car or a job. Sensible decisions all round. Where is the passion? where is the romance? Maybe that is templated too.
Domestic abuse is a big problem here I've been told, in a similar trend to Spain, there is little or no violence on the street but it seems there is plenty behind closed doors. I have one student who I believe to be mildly Autistic (Maybe not autism and maybe not that mild) but my boss told me that his father is "Strict", this translates to him getting battered when he gets his grammar homework wrong, the kid has a learning disability so I can only suppose that he gets it a lot. He smiled the biggest smile I've seen in ages when I made fun of him for sleeping in class... what can I do... just leave him alone, he has enough to deal with without getting grief from me.

There is a non confrontational attitude which irritates me more than anything else and I think this is at the root of a lot of my other pet annoyances. I read this week about Confucianism and how it's beliefs infiltrate all aspects of Korean culture. The idea is that you say positive things rather than risk offending someone. This basically makes people appear very two faced at times and drives me mental. On Saturday I had dinner with a very cute and so I thought cool Korean girl. We met in a coffee shop a couple of weeks ago and chatted for ages, I gave her a book and we exchanged numbers. There were a few texts sent and she called me last week to meet up. She mentioned that she had an interview for a University in the US and could I give her some advice. I thought this was an aside and would be part of the getting to know you stuff, so I thought no problem. We were done with dinner in about twenty minutes and headed for coffee, we had talked about the interview and I gave her some advice I thought would be helpful. When we got to the coffee shop she cranked things up. She pulled out her laptop, plugged it in and proceeded to have me proof read her application letter, her CV and Statement of Intent. When she moved on to the interview questions which I saw she wanted to go through one by one and have me type answers I asked her straight, "would you have called me if you didn't have this interview?" I asked this question with a smile on my face knowing full well the answer, but her response pissed me off something terrible. All of a sudden her near fluent English deserted her and she said that she didn't understand the question. After four attempts at rephrasing I let matters drop and she made a apologetic expression of gratitude for my help and an apology for taking up my free time. I was tempted to tell her I'd be invoicing her for the $60 I normally charge for such a consultation. Does she fall into a category of Korean people, she certainly did when I spent an hour and a half on the train to get back near home... She like many Koreans saw an opportunity in a pale face and blue eyes to gain a free lesson or consultation, I was an opportunity, not a person.
A mate of mine from Boston called Brett got some grief from some South Americans a couple of weeks ago for being American. They never bothered to ask him his politics or talk to him on the level but instead just gave him shit in quite a personal manner. Quite rightly Brett told them to go fuck themselves and came back to me ranting about individuality and the ignorance of generalisation. I hope my own limited experiences and tendencies don't cost me the opportunity of meeting good, open and interesting people.
There is a lot of prejudice here and it becomes more apparent the more you scratch the surface. It is interesting at times, but on bad days it is quite hard to take. As a white Irish guy I've not had to put up with much real discrimination over the years and have usually found challenges more from the prejudices I've seen against others. It's one thing to be called a hairy monkey and ugly by six year old kindergarten kids, but it starts to resonate when the staring and under the breath comments become tiresome. You don't have to understand the language to recognise when you're being talked about. Two girls I passed on the way to school last week nearly got hit by a 4X4 because they were staring so hard at me they didn't look either way as they stepped out onto the street. Some days I take it more seriously than others and it is no coincidence that I started to get pissed off towards the end of January when I was pretty exhausted from work and in reality it means about as much to me as the bartender who said I looked like David Beckham and the taxi driver last week who said I was "A Very Handsome Man". It all amounts to the same thing. In this town of probably 50,000 plus, I am one of five "Westerners". There are no Black people, no Muslims and I cant begin to imagine the carnage that would occur if a turbaned Hindu were to saunter out for a bit of Kimchi. I suppose I'm no different to the Brazilians in Gort or the Nigerians in Cobh. I'm different and this is a SMALL TOWN.

Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) made a career for himself attempting to explain the word "Quality". His journey began in Korea when he was stationed here with the US Army. I find this ironic because while I can't explain what the word quality means, I know it when I see it, and there isn't a lot of it here.

A Year Behind Words - 2006 in Books

2007-01-03T07:52:00.000+01:00

A Year Behind Words - 2006 in Books
3/1/07

So a year behind words is complete. They say that sometimes you don’t choose a book but that a book can choose you; that seemed to be the case for me very often this year. From Edmund Dante’s search for sweet revenge in “The Count of Monte Cristo,” to Pirsig’s remarkable examination of life and values in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” books seemed to choose me at very appropriate times this year. Delving into the worlds of Marquez, Allende, Foer, Neate and Neffenegger provided times of peace, hope, inspiration, colour, music and love. Hosselini, Roy and Allende did their utmost to make me cry, while Hornby and Wilder made me laugh (at times with that self conscious cringe that makes your stomach knot). Roth and Auster restored my faith in American literature and showed me the future from the past, while Nabokov and Marquez gave me a level of beauty in words I had not experienced before.

1. The Incredible Hides in Every House (Short Stories) – Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill (Editor)

2. The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

3. Living to Tell the Tale – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

4. 100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

5. Memories of My Melancholy Whores - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

6. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

7. In Evil Hour – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

8. Of Love and Other Demons – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

9. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

10. Kiss Me Like a Stranger – Gene Wilder (Bio)

11. High Fidelity - Nick Hornby

12. The Kite Runner - Khalid Hosselini

13. Human Stain – Philip Roth

14. A Picture of Dorian Grey – Oscar Wilde

15. The Beach – Alex Garland

16. Sky Burial – Xinran

17. Eva Luna – Isabel Allende

18. Everyman – Philip Roth

19. The Marabou Stork Nightmares – Irving Welsh

20. No Country for Old Men – Cormac McCarthy

21. Chronicle of a Death Foretold – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

22. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

23. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

24. Innocent Erendira and Other Stories – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

25. Daughter of Fortune – Isabel Allende

26. The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster

27. American Pastoral – Philip Roth

28. The Woman Who Walked into Doors – Roddy Doyle

29. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

30. Paula – Isabel Allende

31. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Jonathan Safran Foer

32. The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion

33. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

34. Munster; Our Road to Glory – Alan English

35. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – Robert M Pirsig

36. The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly – Jean-Dominique Bauby

37. Twelve Bar Blues – Patrick Neate

The Bad Man

2006-11-28T05:16:00.000+01:00

The Bad Man
28/11/06

Over dinner on Saturday night I got to chatting with a Scottish lad about the symptoms which kick in late in the day when you have a hangover. Obviously the two of us were not feeling the “May West” having been up till seven that morning discovering the wondrous invention born from a lack of skins or pipe and the presence of weed. I would not have entered my mind in a million years to overcome this predicament with an apple, but that was the course we took and it worked a treat. Neither the apple nor the grass was responsible for the symptoms we were both feeling and discussing, but it had reduced the amount of sleep we were afforded to recover from the beer and Soju we had had beforehand. Sam and I had different terminology for the specifics of this ailment which added to the value of the conversation and so I will use some of his and some of mine, a pick and mix of rottenness if you will.
The first and most obvious is the “Dodgy Belly”, I’ve been prone over toilets on many occasions with hangovers but generally the “Dodgy Belly” does just enough to make you uncomfortable, unable to eat large quantities, and craving food that you won’t really be able to stomach. This was the first topic discussed as we were at an all you can eat buffet, and I was lamenting my inability to optimise the potential calorie intake available. We were both struggling on our first pint and the Celtic guilt of not making the most of what was for all intents and purposes a free bar was bothering us. The second Symptom is what Sam calls the “Sloth head”. This basically refers to the absolute laziness and unwillingness to do anything that requires any effort when hung over. This includes drinking the water that would ease the dehydration or eating the food that would speed the healing process and aid sleep. Closely tied into the “Sloth Head” is the “Hangover Horn”. This affliction has led many a man to call an ex-girlfriend or try to bed that girl mate that you always thought was into you, but you never fancied. Generally speaking when in public it leads to a lot of staring and ignoring the person talking to you in favour of ogling the girl in a short skirt across the way.
I’ll skip to the worst part of the whole experience before finishing on my favourite symptom. Sam called it “Doom”, I prefer a term coined by my friend Jack but the meaning is the same. The “Bad Man” arrives when you are hung over and dealing with all the above mentioned symptoms and hits when you are most vulnerable. Sometimes he really only gets to knock on the door and you can count yourself lucky that he’s moved on, but sometimes, usually when there was a lot of hard liquor or drugs involved he gets past the front door and settles himself in for a more extended visit. With him, “The Bad Man” brings anxiety and a mild form of depression. Call it “Doom”, “The Booze Blues”, “A comedown”, whatever you feel most comfortable with, it is not pleasant. There are a few key things to bear in mind when it comes to dealing with “The Bad Man”. Firstly, his visit is temporary, the longest he is likely to stay is a couple of days and he is usually at his worst late the night after the booze intake. If he stays longer than that you shouldn’t drink. Don’t make any decisions while “The Bad Man” is visiting. Don’t call ex girlfriends; don’t bring up something that has been bothering you about your mates or family. Avoid any conversation that will involve strong feelings or has the potential to go haywire. Be aware that the person you might want to talk to, might also be having the very same visitor and the results will not go your way. Finally, don’t call that girl that you’ve liked for a while and have been waiting to ask out. “The bad man” will get there before you and fuck it up!
The final symptoms on this little exploration of post alcohol over analysis are the bizarrely random trains of thoughts that accompany any hangover worth its salt and lemon. My favourite example of this was told to me by a mate in Valencia. At the time we were with two girls and neither one of them found it remotely amusing but then girls don’t get the visits from “The Bad Man” as bad as us lads do and this symptom goes hand in hand with the aforementioned visitor. My friend Adam explained how on one occasion he was on the bus going to work with a particularly dirty hangover. As he stared out the window and did his utmost to ignore the chattering school kids that surrounded him he contemplated the fate of those astronauts who were killed when they burned up on re-entry a few years back. Adam’s thought process was such that he was considering that the only possible fate worse than being burned alive by the earths atmosphere would be, to have to deal with the anticipation brought about by the knowledge that one was about to be burned to death by the earths atmosphere. His idea being, that the anticipation of an agonising death makes the end result all that more difficult to deal with. This is the type of psychological scenario which doctors have looked at with death row prisoners and terminally ill patients but I wonder what these psychologists would think of Adam’s state of mind when he transitioned seamlessly from this pondering to singing, the “I feel like Chicken tonight” song the rest of the way to school.
Back tracking a bit from this conversation with Sam, to Saturday morning and my spin home following a night of several beers some Soju (Korean Hooch) and smoking grass through an Apple. It was seven in the morning, I was in good form having had a serious fit of the giggles, drawn on James’ face and set the alarm off in Sam’s flat. The sun wasn’t yet up, but it was bright and I was afforded my first real daylight glimpse of the landscape that surrounds my little town. I was knocked from my good mood in a manner I didn’t think possible by just looking out the window of a cab and the word “bleak” has been knocking around my head constantly since.
Try to picture a landscape somewhere between the grey lunar world and the red earth of Mars and you might find the yellowy brown which dominates the horizon. The sky for some reason seems further away and as the sun brightened the sky unseen I thought that if I searched the pale blue I would see the three moons or a twin planet which would prove to me that this was not my world. The most disturbing part of this view was the ever more frequent stacks and rows of tower block apartments. They were set and coloured like the shelves in the library in UCC. Beige and numbered, they were not named and they loomed like shadows of dominos waiting to be pushed over to bring this horrible place to ruins. They stood silhouetted against the morning sky casting shadows from shadows on the dead brown earth.
This glimpse of an Orwellesque present reaching into the future was like a dream sequence from a bad Science Fiction Flick. The overflow from the world’s tenth largest city is a waking nightmare. There are tower blocks in every major city and most small ones. The flats in Mayfield and the Glen in Cork while a tenth of the size of these were even uglier and there are plenty even in beautiful cities like Paris and Madrid that look awful but there is something much worse about these. In Paris or New York or Madrid tower blocks are generally surrounded by, or at the very least accompanied by, park areas, tennis courts, basketball courts or trees. Here the scale of these developments and the complete lack of anything resembling nature made it seem unreal. There was NO green, just yellow brown. There were no apparent designations for playgrounds or parks. There were no football pitches or basketball courts, just row upon row of enormous generic tower blocks. In Beomjeom, where I live not five minutes from this extraterrestrial landscape I have seen only one dirt football pitch and there is no park. All the buildings are functional, new, cheap and ugly. There are linear and cluster developments on the outskirts of every town and city and they often lack for the types of facilities I am talking about, but even the notorious Ballymun, in Dublin, at its worst had some green areas. The more I see of this city the more I realise that there is no attempt to create beauty. There seems to be no desire to build anything that will age with dignity or provide an interesting environment for the thousands of kids that live in this town. While I try to avoid one of the pitfalls of the “Sloth Head”, and fall into the delusions of nostalgia; at least in occasionally in Ireland and often in Spain you have your “Oh look at that” moments, where something of insignificant beauty or style will catch your eye and lift your mood. This is a place built on functional convenience and it is horrible. I asked two of my students today what they liked about their town, one said she had a good friend at school, the other said “Education is convenient.” They could not be pressed to say anything else. There are restaurants opening every day that sell cheap Korean food, there is a fast food place on every corner, and every day they plaster every door and every car with fliers. I saw a guy walking up the street the other day just throwing fliers on the ground. He was not a kid trying to get out of a job he didn’t want to do, but rather this was his way to advertise. New shops stick speakers outside and hire dancing girls in cheerleader outfits to talk into microphones to attract punters, but for all the convenience there is no atmosphere. I think I’m beginning to form an uneducated and overly presumptuous understanding as to why the kindergarten students in my school are so full of life and the middle school students are so shy and bereft of personality that the grey into the background like shadows of people. They are greyed out by their surroundings; they are greyed out by blandness and convenience. Girls cover their smiles; punters in the gym don uniforms so they all look the same. The schools concentrate on Maths, Science and English and imagination is drowned out by bad TV and video games. The drunks on the streets, and there are many, are not the young kids drinking cans on corners you see at home, or winos clinging to cheap brandy. Neither, are they the young and loaded getting loaded on work parties and stag nights. They are men and the occasional woman in their thirties, forties and fifties, dressed in work suits falling all over the place at eight in the evening. The are falling out of elevators, sleeping and soiling themselves in stairwells, waiting sometimes in my mind to be picked up by the cops, scanned, catalogued and refilled into their high rise cabinet. Suicide rates are on the rise here, and it’s not hard to see why.
There are no landmarks in this satellite horror show, just layers of neon. The neon that stands higher and more frequent than all the others is the red neon of the Lord. There are churches all over the place; I pass within fifty feet of at least five on my eight minute walk to work. Big red neon crucifixes call the faithful and the Jehovah’s Witnesses call round to me every Saturday with the intent of saving my soul. The last crew were met at the door by a wet and very cranky Irishman and decided my soul wasn’t worth trying to explore their few words of English for. They backed off with their hands raised as if I were holding a gun mumbling “Sowy…. Sowy”. I know that lots of Korean spend their entire weekends in church or prayer groups and when I asked a lad whose lived here for a while why this is so common he simply replied, “They have nothing else to do.” I wonder if the drunken business men staggering home on a Friday night get up for church on a Saturday morning. I think about the guy throwing flyers on the street outside the school, near the biggest of the Red Neon crosses and I sing a slightly altered verse from “Wooden Jesus” by Temple of the Dog. A better song than “I feel like Chicken tonight” methinks.
“Wooden (Neon) Jesus where are you from?
Korea or Canada, maybe Taiwan
I didn’t know it was the holy land
But I believed from the minute the check left my hand
I pray……. Can I be saved?
I spent all my money on a beauty grave
Oh Wooden (Neon) Jesus I’ll cut you in…………. on 20% of my future sin……….”
So it was walking back from a very convenient restaurant last night that my wandering hung over mind rattled from thought to thought. Why was I uncomfortable with the lady changing her child’s nappy at the table next to me, she was discrete, it didn’t smell bad. I knew why I was uncomfortable with the lady at the other table even if she wasn’t doing what I thought she was doing initially. Trying to isolate a grey hair on the top of her husbands head looked very like picking knits. Not a nice thing to do while those around you are trying to eat and stave off “The bad man” scratching at the back of their eyes. As I walked home passed a cluster of tower blocks close to my villa (Yes, they call one room studio apartments with no natural light, “Villas”) the wind kicked up and showered me with golden brown leaves and the footpath in front of me filled with colour. For more than a minute I smiled and thought maybe that’s Mother Nature or Neon Jesus informing me that “The Bad Man” was leaving and asking me to give them a little time. Maybe I should chill out on the use of the word “bleak” and walk on that side of the road to and from work in future!

Danny and Declan

2006-11-20T17:36:00.000+01:00

Danny and Declan
21/11/06

I had a dream over a month ago and I’ve been trying to figure out how to use it in a story. I thought it was a funny dream, and because I usually don’t remember even the vivid ones I have regularly, I wanted to use it, through a character or maybe as a children’s story. The sorry fact is that I can’t figure out how to do it, without it being completely out of place, or just too random to make sense, but I still have a hankering to get it down in black and white.
I went to school with a couple of lads called Danny and Declan. Danny is still a good friend and while I haven’t spoken to him in a few months I’m sure he’ll find this amusing. Danny, Declan and I, along with a bunch of other lads went to the same secondary school in Mayfield. We spent our lunch times together in pursuits that ranged from the abstractly boring to the ridiculous. The particular lunch break which bares relevance to this dream of mine happened when we were in second or third year. The sky had opened at some point in the morning and it was pouring down. At break the smokers braved corners and hideaways closer to the school than normal, willing to risk being caught on the basis that the teachers weren’t about to venture too far from the staff room on a morning like this anyway. They were right, and for once they were able to smoke in peace just outside the “C” corridor. There were puddles of water that took up entire footpaths and were unavoidable if you wanted to circumnavigate the school or even walk outside, but the weather was so extreme that it warranted our presence. The rain was such, that ten seconds out from the cover of the school and you were soaked. Beyond the paths the grass was cutting up with a single step and the mud looked likely to overtake the place at the slightest invitation. At some point we found ourselves outside at the back of the school and Danny, who normally went home for lunch took it upon himself to entertain the masses. Now the boy was always fearless and has good balance so it was not surprise to see him running through the huge puddles until he reached the grass and then sliding, still on his feet, for metres at a time, leaving a brown streak through the green in his wake. It was hysterical and soon others were getting brave enough to have a go too. It should be pointed out that the grass that surrounds Mayfield Community School is not flat; far from it, the school is built into the side of a hill. At the back of the school there is an embankment which runs steeply down to a steel fence and an all weather hockey pitch. This embankment, known as “the bank” has had more teenage boys flung down it than you can imagine and has seen its far share of broken bones and fights. Before I started at the Community School I was warned by one of my more streetwise twelve year old friends to stay away from “the bank” “‘cause that’s where all the first years got a battin’ and their first year death.” This translated to getting the shite kicked out of you by the older lads and then being flung down the embankment. The AIB bank just up the hill from the school was the only “Bank” that I knew of, so I couldn’t quite figure out how people were thrown off it in full view of the public. I was terrified of the AIB for my first few weeks in school.
Getting back to Danny and the mud. Not being one to stop when he had people laughing Danny decided that the simple upright slide was not going to be enough. The brave copycats bailed out as Danny took to running along the path, diving onto his chest and sliding down one of the lesser of the infamous “bank” slopes. After the huge cheer he received, Declan the only one of us daring enough to do it went straight after him. The two lads spent the last ten minutes of our lunch break sliding face first down the grass of the embankment. They were destroyed in mud, were as happy larry, and my friends and I had rarely laughed so much in our lives. Of course when the bell rang and the reality of the situation set in, we were in trouble. We were all wet, we were all going to be late for class, but Danny and Declan were literally covered in mud from head to toe. We scuttled off to class, the rest of us more concerned with saving our own ass than what the fate of the friends we had egged on would be. Later we found out that the teacher who caught them was so bemused that she just sent them home to change and I think that was the end of it. The consequences of these little episodes are only memorable if you are on the receiving end and even then will be lost in the retelling. Danny and Declan’s sliding show would not be repeated at school, but it was played to death any night we were up to our ankles with mud at rugby training. Us cowards who wanted to do it at school but didn’t have the balls got to act out our bravado in the one place we were supposed to get covered in mud, good fun but not quite the same.
So what has sliding around in mud got to do with my dream? Well I have no idea what precipitated this little snippet but it reminded me of Danny and Declan. The dream began when a big American style, yellow school bus pulled up outside a huge old fashioned English private school. There were students in impressive uniforms carrying books and bags towards the big entrance which was on the first floor, atop some daunting dark stone steps. The sky was grey and rain was falling gently. The bus complete with the extendable “stop” sign pulled in and the students filed off, joining the stream of well to do students headed for the steps and the imposing school. Between the school bus and the school is a big muddy pond. Why the bus didn’t pull around to the steps I don’t know but I’m glad it didn’t because it wouldn’t have made for such a good dream. The pond has a grass verge separating it from the main drive way, which circles it anticlockwise. There was a lull for a few seconds in the stream of students getting off the bus and then suddenly two polar bears complete with posh uniforms and books rumble off the bus. Yes, big white polar bears in private school uniforms carrying school books. The books were dropped and they both bound towards the pond and legs agape they flopped dramatically into the pool. Now if you watch as much Discovery Channel as I do, you know that their powerful stride and jump meant that with one bound they are in and out of the water and clamouring up the other side. Somehow their books had relocated to the exit side of the pond and after shaking some of the excess mud and water from their white coats and posh uniforms they gathered them up to the soundtrack of the Mayfield Community School bell and sauntered towards the steps. The other students, none of whom were Polar bears I might add; take little notice of the smiling dirty bears (Polar Bears can smile you know… at least in my dreams). It seems that these polar bear brothers never make it to the door of the school without a flop in the water; after all that’s what polar bears do. I did spare a thought for poor Mammy Polar bear, cleaning their uniforms every day but I figure that if they can afford such a posh school they probably have a maid for that sort of thing.
Finding a home for this bizarre dream in a story may not have worked out, but coming up with names for the dirty Polar Bears brothers was easy. They couldn’t be called anything other than Danny and Declan now could they?

Fan Death

2006-11-14T18:05:00.000+01:00

Fan Death
15/11/06

I haven’t had a watch since a particularly daring pickpocket lifted the one my Mother gave me from my bag in broad daylight in Valencia. At two O’clock in the afternoon as I sat on the grass reading and listening to some tunes, the little bastard snuck up behind me, and swiped it and my wallet. Needless to say I was not too pleased. Of course, as I didn’t speak Span

ish at the time I couldn’t go to the cops. Having said that, I’ve heard enough stories and seen enough Spanish “Polizia Local” to know that it would have been a waste of time would have made me even angrier. So, a year and a half later, I’m here in my little Korean cell having to guess the time when I wake up, and then leave my lap top on as I doze off again in case I sleep too late; these 2.30pm starts are tough! It did occur to me that rather than buy a watch, or even a phone by which I could regulate my sleep patterns, I could instead see if the F4 patrols which wake me most mornings are regular enough warrent my trust and use them to wake up every morning. Only once have I been up early enough to be out and about when they are overhead; although “overhead” may well be the wrong word, the jets were so low that “over the shoulder” would be a more accurate description. When I was sixteen I’d have known for sure that they were F4’s but that certainty vanished a long time ago, along with my ability to speak Irish and do maths so I’m bluffing a wee bit.
Speaking of bluffing, I must admit that when my good friend Shane brought the phenomenon of “Fan Death” to my attention last week I was sure that it was a bluff. Reading the encyclopaedic description of this urban legend I started to giggle and ended up reading it to my work mates. I was expecting to get a laugh but before I get to that, let me qualify the situation a bit, by saying that along with the Plank of a Yank (ahhh to be a poet) that I’ve vented about several times, I work with three Korean girls. They’re nice girls and if I had only maintained that ability to do maths, I could add the three of them together and get a personality. Harsh, I know but let’s just say that only one of them seems capable of a decent conversation, or a bit of craic, and she only works part time. As the more interesting of the three ladies and it would seem the more intelligent, (yes she is getting more attractive as the days go on) was standing in front of me, I read the description of “Fan Death”
Fan death is an urban legend that originated in South Korea, but has since spread to other countries in the Far East. The belief is that an electric fan, if left running overnight in a closed room, can result in the death (by suffocation, poisoning, or hypothermia) of those inside. This belief also extends to air conditioners and the fans in cars. When the air conditioner or fan is on in a car, some people are apt to leave their car windows open a crack to avoid "fan death." Fans manufactured and sold in Korea are equipped with a timer switch that turns them off after a set number of minutes, which users are frequently urged to set when going to sleep with a fan on.
She didn’t laugh... none of them did. The "plank" let out his standard, “Oh My!” which I took to mean that he believed it. THEY ALL BELIEVE IT! These three college educated girls actually believe that if you leave a fan on in a closed room that it will eat up all the oxygen or forcefully keep the air from your face long enough to prevent you breathing. I wasn’t laughing anymore! I say again… she is the intelligent one of the pose! What I would have given just to rip the piss out of them but something told me to quit while I was only mildly insulting their intelligence. Fuck Me! What am I dealing with?

The one downfall to my social wanderings in the last couple of weeks is that they have tended to consist of, home to Subway, subway to bar, bar to subway, subway to home. Substitute Taxi for subway and you are seeing the only variation to the theme of the last couple of Friday and Saturday nights. So while I’m not seeing anything of Seoul or Korea, I am getting a sample of the colour in the expat world. On Saturday, I made my most adventurous outing yet; which simply means I spent longer on the subway than previous nights, and headed for expat central, Itawan. “Scrooges” was showing the rugby and I wasn’t going to miss it. I won a jug of beer thanks to the mighty Argentina but even the wonderfully entertaining nature of the inept English team couldn’t hold my attention when I was listening to a story something beyond the standard pub shite talk that I tend to propagate. This lad is twenty five and an ex Rugby player of some note. His exploits with England underage and Northampton were a mere precursor to the real adventures however. Now all you, “l’m off to Australia to get laid and locked for a year” folk, and us, “shite, I better go to Korea and make some money or I’ll have to get a real job” bluffers, can sit back and contemplate a real tale of a traveler. Young Dan (There not called Indiana in real life) set off on his bike last year to cycle from London to Capetown. He did so without any support and little organisation. He had a route and a few bob and off he went. Visas were arranged as they were required and upsets dealt with as they occurred. The journey I’m led to believe was an eventful one from start to finish but the lowlight, or highlight, depending on how you want to look at it, began with a collision with an Ethiopian woman on the down-slope of a dirt road about six months ago. Traveling at about 20mph, our intrepid Dan was weaving between people on this busy road when a particularly hesitant woman panicked and left him guessing which way she was going to go. As happens at every Spanish roundabout I’ve ever negotiated, such indecision, of course resulted in a collision and Dan was thrown from his bike and the lady hit the dirt. The next twenty minutes were not as predictable, indeed the next forty-eight hours would make an episode of “the twilight zone” look like the “simple life.” As Dan lay in the dirt tending a dislocated shoulder and shattered collar bone he was stoned and beaten by a gathering crowd. It transpired that the woman had split her head open and was dead; the crowd was intent on sending Dan after her. Unable to fight back Dan made several attempts to stand up but was beaten back down, when his attempt to flag down a UN vehicle failed, he slumped back down and accepted his fate. As he slipped in and out of unconsciousness a bus pulled up along side him and he was hauled aboard. Some time later Dan found himself in a cell at the local police station. His wounds, including a collar bone piercing the skin near his neck went untreated and he passed out contemplating the wooden bars of his cell and the four others he shared it with. The next day the mob located him and began stoning the cell and demanding his death. He was judged by the local chief and sentenced to death. Later on, a man in a suit appeared and explained what had happened. The woman was dead and in Ethiopia things are simple, you kill, you are killed. So Dan spent another night in the cell awaiting death. The next morning the man in the suit arrived again and simply said, “You can go.” It turned out the woman had not in fact died and so Dan was free to go. He was due to be executed that morning. Had he been closer to an urban centre or had more than seven dollars in his pocket he would probably not have undergone such an ordeal, but it was only after surgery and several days in hospital that he got scared and realised how close he had come to death.
My reaction was simple, “someone needs to write that down.” He already has, Harper Collins release the book at Christmas. We continued to watch England get humiliated and he told me about his next trip. He leaves Korea in September on his bike. Pyongyang, North Korea to Peterborough, England, via, China, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Spain, and France. He asked me if I wanted to come. I haven’t thought about much else since, but the truth is, I don’t have the balls; I’ll still be here, waking up to the boys in the F4s, and doing my utmost to avoid the dreaded Fan death.

Did Someone Order Winter

2006-11-06T16:10:00.000+01:00

Did Someone Order Winter
6/11/06

Winter arrived today. I was aware that it was on the way but I really didn’t expect that having played football in the sun yesterday I’d be walking home from school in sleet this evening. An anonymous downpour overnight on Saturday cleared the heat and left a spring freshness about the place for the footie on Sunday. We gathered in Seoul to play Celtic and the rare treat of competing on an astro surface rather than the joint shuddering rock, dirt and dust we play on at home in Suwon. There was much excitement and many the step over and side step as we warmed up. As the name would suggest Celtic was made up of mostly Irish lads and they brought with them some vocal Cailins for the sideline.
We were on the rack from the start, they had two or three serious footballers in the middle of the field and us bluffers were well out played. Most notably though it was the left back who made the biggest impression on yours truly. She looked Hispanic, had a wicked touch, didn’t make a mistake, was cute as well as fit and beat me in the air two or three times. I had fallen in love by the time we went a goal down twenty minutes into the first half. Lucky to get to half time only a goal down there was some talk about tempo and shape but seriously I was thinking “lets not get thumped” As it turns out they didn’t really have the legs to keep things going in the second half and we looked to be in with a shout…. Well not really, they got a couple more before our token Irishman got one back from six yards and could have made a game of it with an overhead effort which quite surprisingly only went narrowly wide. The Celts got a fourth and it was time to go home.
The little sojourn to Seoul did provide my first opportunity to get on the mammoth subway system which services a ridiculously impressive network in Seoul and the surrounding areas. Subways for most people serve as a necessary evil but for some reason l like them. Actually truth be told, saying “for some reason” suggests I don’t know exactly why I like it which isn’t true. “People watching” is cool and there is no-where better to do it than on a subway. Subways are where people who don’t know what a poker face is, perfect the art of the expressionless façade. I’m quite good at it myself I think; you get to practice it all the time on trains with every window a mirror (Why are there windows on underground railway?) So, when you’re happy with your own “too cool for school” expression its time to check out those around you. I still think about a girl on the tube in London who I saw in August; she was beautiful but looked tragically sad. I felt guilty looking at her so much but I couldn’t help it, I was fascinated and attracted in such a way that I’m still intent on turning her into a story. She didn’t have that cranky look that you see a lot, especially in Valencia, but rather that she was only waiting to get behind closed doors in order to cry. She had straight brown hair that hung limply below her shoulders and looked like it needed a wash. She had sallow skin and dark eyes, probably partially of Indian or Pakistani heritage she had dark circles under her eyes which while part of her genetics were definitely accentuated by whatever was making her sad and keeping her awake nights. She was very slim and had thin long hands. She only stayed on for three or four stops, and when she moved to get off the sleeves of her shirt rode up slightly and my gaze was drawn to the bandage on her wrist. I thought about her all the way home and still do, sometimes. She reminds of one of those quotes I used to have in a notebook, “there is nothing as dangerous as a woman who needs to be saved.” I don’t remember who said it but lets be honest it should have been more along the lines of, “there is nothing as dangerous as a beautiful woman who needs to be saved.”
Yesterday, armed with my book and my slight height and size advantage (now that’s the first time I’ve ever been able to say that) I had a good forty-five minutes of quality people to watch on the way home. On the way up to Seoul I was well pleased to see that the attractiveness of the Korean female seems to increase rapidly the closer to the epicentre one gets (Byeongjeom, where I live is FAR from the epicenter). Mini-skirts are the order of the day and I’m reliably informed that much like the tough lasses of Newcastle, who are reputed to stay short short long into the North Sea winter, they will continue to be sported long into the bone shuddering cold months here too. Women’s capacity for pain in the name of maintaining image is to be commended. The central train stations are huge and have every sort of commodity and consumable available from underwear to chicken on a stick. There is a nice touch on some of the platforms where the track is sealed off until the train arrives and its doors line up with those of the platform to let the throngs of eager commuters on. Now it’s worth noting at this time that those small slightly hunched over, feeble types that you’ve seen in every movie set in Asia are not to be underestimated. They will push you the fuck out of the way to get on that train, and what they lack in body size they make up for with an O’Driscoll like drop of the shoulder and low centre of gravity. They squat down on the platform and spring forward bouncing any unknowing Waegooks out of the way. Once on the train they become all feeble again and smile gently as someone gives them their seat. Now there are plenty of Waegooks (foreigners) in Seoul, we acknowledge each other at eyelevel above the natives on the train once we’ve negotiated the trail of the stockings to bare thighs and short skirt and surface again, crocodile like, above the line of straight black hair and realize that we were both checking out the same girl.
Most Korean people are accustomed enough to us wide-eyes not to give us a second look but there are frequent, “is that person looking at me moments.” It happens mostly with kids who are not used to Westerners and as kids do, they point, stare and giggle; I like these ones, it makes me feel like a rock star and I give them a little wave or a wink and they shy away. Older folks will sometimes give you a second look but I put that down to the shaved head rather than white skin. But, sometimes, just sometimes, the girls are looking simply because they like white guys with blue eyes. Honestly, I’ve had the most random complements about my eyes, not going to happen too much at home given every second guy has blue eyes but as one of my younger students calls me ugly on a daily basis I’ll take it where I can get it.
So, I dragged myself from my bed this morning warmed in the cool air by the knowledge that while we lost, Chelsea, Arsenal and England were all stuffed on Sunday and I drag my tired ass up to work to join the next installment of Ricky Gervais does Wisconsin in Korea. I could do nothing but laugh when I got my new timetable, it seems my mid-western colleague has had to hand over any of his classes that involve kids over the age of eleven and requires anything more than pressing play on a CD player to me. Well, with a timetable of seventeen hours a week, I can’t really complain about being overworked now can I?
As I left the pizza place after work with my €5 dinner and shivered into the sleet I remembered the last guy to sit across from me on the subway yesterday. He was a very old man but, according to his hat he was, “commanding officer of the USS Enterprise,” He caught me looking and gave me wry smile, I could see him thinking, “ha ha, you think it’s a fake don’t you!” I glanced away as we arrived at the station and he was gone, I guess he didn’t have to walk from the train he just beamed himself home.

Please Please Please Say Something………. Anything

2006-11-01T12:10:00.000+01:00

Some of these kids take shyness to an all new level. I had experienced it to a degree during the summer and indeed with many shy kids before now, but this is different. Many of these kids have studied English for six or eight years and struggle to respond when you ask them how they are. As I torment them, cajole them and bully them into speaking I wish one of them would just pipe up and tell me to “Fuck Off”. Sometimes when I look at these kids I wonder how they even step out the door in the morning. Few of them seem to possess any sort of imagination and start at me in horror if I stray from the set curriculum.
I’ve often been attracted to shy, quieter people, perhaps because I see strength in their silence that my loud mouthed opinionated nature doesn’t possess. I’m often drawn to quieter people because I hope that because they don’t say much, that what they do say will perhaps be worth hearing. Quieter people I think often have greater and more terrible stories than us that will rehash the same histories over a few lip loosening pints in an effort to sound funny, intelligent or endearing. We all have our sad stories, our embarrassing stories, our conquests and failures but why do some of us sit itching till the other person finishes their account that we have not listened to beyond the word that triggered the story we want to tell next. We spend so much time in company not really listening but waiting to speak. Why? I’ve heard my stories a million times, they weren’t that good to begin with so why am I intent on repeating them ad nauseum. It’s a character flaw in the social that we are all talking and no-one is really listening. They truth maybe that we’re not listening because the stories we are being told are like reruns of a sit com you may or may not have seen. It doesn’t really matter if you’ve heard it all before or what happens, because it will all pan out the way we expect it anyway and we are only watching to distract ourselves from thinking or going out and creating new stories. We take comfort in the repetition, support from the victories of the past and hope that they will inspire something in the retelling. Well at least they’ll fill a silence.
The shyness with some of these Korean kids is different. Some are so shy it isn’t simply a matter of creating a comfortable environment for them or developing trust. They are incapable of communication it seems in its most basic of forms in any language. Many of these kids are physically incapable of raising their voices. They are incapable of the basic shedding of inhibitions required to shout. Many of them can’t do it in Korean so it’s a long shot that they will ever be persuaded, cajoled or provoked into doing it in English. Even some of the more talkative kids refuse to raise their voices. Being in the presence of kids like this often causes me to question where their passions, love, pain, and other basic emotions will gain expression. Some of the girls when in company will cling to their friend and will not interact with the other kids but then they don’t seem to interact beyond the physical holding hands with their adopted Siamese either. These kids are sent to this after school academy not I think to learn a language but in the best cases to pass exams, in the worst case as a cheap childminder. The irony is that most of them are taught by Korean teachers themselves too introverted to ever speak English properly. This is shyness that I don’t find endearing in many cases as it is one that does not seem to shield what maybe an interesting character but rather an uninteresting person with little to offer as far as many of the attributes I value. The harshness of the previous statement doesn’t stand up like most generalisations to close scrutiny but when a kid who is incapable of choosing between the word yes and no, having studied the language for at least five years is sitting in front of you then frustration can generate such sweeping statements. I don’t think it a coincidence that many of those who do seem to interact in a more normal way like to play football. In a country where the people tend to be shy by nature I think the popularity of video games may be putting a nail in the coffin of many of these kid’s social skills. Maybe few are playing football but at least that universal language will draw those that do a bit.
I spend much of my week in silence, outside the classroom in my school there is little to talk about. To be honest it suits me fine, it gives me a bit of quiet time I haven’t had for a while. The Korean teachers talk amongst themselves and show little interest in us Waygooks. The other native English speaker is about as interesting as the wooden desk that I sit in front of except noisier and due to my ignoring him, he has finally stopped trying to make the painful small talk he inflicted on me in the first couple of week. So, by the time I hit the weekend and have a few of those lip loosening pints I mentioned I’m like a coiled spring of conversation ready to bounce from topic to topic with anyone who has any bit of conversational ability. The expat community here is a bizarre mix of characters and so I look forward to the weird and wonderful conversations that will be explored at the weekends and will provide plenty of food for thought for the quieter week days.
The saving grace with working with kids is that every so often one of them will surprise you. The stocky Korean boy we nicknamed “Oddjob” during the summer (yes he did look just like the henchman from the Bond movie) wouldn’t respond to the most basic requests or gestures in any language for the first two weeks of the camp but went on to cry and hug us on his last day because he didn’t want to go home. This boy who seemed to have zero ability to make friends even had a slow dance with a girl at the last disco. We were stunned and jumped around in glee. Why did this happen, I wondered at the time? I like to think it was because there were enough of us working there who cared enough to cover for each others moments of frustration with him. We gave him a consistency of support and positivity which brought something out of him and created some kind of affinity. I might have to walk away one day, pissed off and cursing him but that might be the day that Chris, Giles or one of the others was on the ball and stayed positive and perhaps when roles were reversed my little attempts to engage him were there when the boys were too tired or frustrated. On the other hand maybe it was simply a case of us being there all day every day and so we won through by the fluke of a dripping tap rather than ability. Another, probably more plausible conclusion may be that it had nothing to do with us at all, but rather the other kids that he was forced to live with brought him out of himself. Whatever the reasons “Oddjob” was something of a success.
So, I look to the five half hour lessons a week that I have with these little misfits and I wonder what difference a year will make. I’m working in the language world’s equivalent of McDonalds and I don’t have a Chris or Giles to back me up so my expectations are low but I will try to drag some life out of these little statues. I’m not doing it out of some massive sense of goodwill or passion for my job but just to make my six hours a day in the classroom a bit more enjoyable and I’m already getting sick of the sound of my own voice.

The Sun is Shinning

2006-10-26T06:34:00.000+02:00

The Sun is Shinning
The sun came out today and with it the realisation that the Smog/Fog is not a permanent thing. I’ve missed the sun a lot, more than a Cork boy should. It’ll be back to Mediterranean climes methinks after this little adventure. Any plans beyond my initial contract are of course dependant on me not being sent to prison in Korea for killing one of my co-workers. The guy is really starting to get on my tits and it’s only been a week. He is one of these people who seems to feel the need to fill silences with his loud voice and yet has absolutely nothing to say. On my seventh working day with this guy I can predict the mundane crap he will want to talk about. I’m inclined to talk shite myself but I don’t ever remember asking a co-worker every day what they had for breakfast and what they were going

to have for dinner. I want to scream at him, that his “on-line” master’s degree will be about as useful as his five years “management” experience in McDonalds when it comes to securing the “Dean” or “Principal” position that this accelerated program is going to get him when he moves from Wisconsin to Florida next year. Now, he’s not moving to Mickey country to be near his ex-girlfriend who just moved there you understand but because he likes it. I think it’s the only place outside of “shoot me I live in the arsehole of no-where,” Wisconsin, he’s been before Hwaseung, Korea. Having said that, this one horse town is, probably, not that different from the aforementioned “shoot me….” I made a small attempt to broaden his horizons the other day by burning a couple of CD’s for him, nothing too strenuous just a bit of Radiohead and Pearl Jam and then he has the wherewithal to ask me today if I had any “Simple Plan” on my lap top… FUCK RIGHT OFF………..NOOOOOOO, I’m not a 13 year old girl. ….Yes, somewhere in Wisconsin a Village is missing its idiot!

The sun is shining, the place looks nicer and I started in the gym today. Operation “be the size of Paul O’Connell by March” may be realistic as there ain’t much else to do during the week. The gym is class, both in a practical and a sarcastic sense. Except for lacking the pool and track which I accept would be hard to fit on the eight floor of any building it is far nicer than the Mardyke which I loved at home. The gym is huge and perfectly equipped. The staff are really friendly and most importantly it’s damn cheap. The changing area is the best bit, by a long shot. It’s a bit like what I would imagine a roman bath to have been like, with a few Asian twists. It’s huge; lovely wooden lockers and benches greet you when you get up the stairs and slip off your shoes. You can pick up a clean towel or an egg if you wish, at the shoe discarding area. (Apparently they boil them in the sauna….. I’m not kidding). The Shower area is magnificent; the walls are lined with conventional showers, it’s all open plan by the way and leave your modesty at the door with your shoes. In the centre of the rough stoned floor are six bath options, the centre piece being a Jacuzzi of sorts. Given the nakedness of all the clientele the fact that the Jacuzzi is yellow is slightly unnerving but it’s all very clean. The steam room is huge, ornate, with wooden stools in the middle and marble benches at the sides. It, like everything else is super clean, (most are not at home) and has a nice smell originating from a bag of herbs hanging on the wall. The Sauna is really hot and again spotless. Everyone strolls around as the Gods made them and yes girls all you’ve heard is true, Black Guys are bigger than white guys, and yes… white guys are bigger than Asian guys…result, there are no black men in this gym! Come to think of it I haven’t seen a black person in Korea! Ah, flashback to good old Jake, he did say that I could see “Real Africans in Seoul, even Nigerians”, I wonder where they keep them? Now, back to the cleanliness issue; the gym very kindly provides towels as I mentioned and soap and everything and everyone seems really clean but despite this I was still somewhat unprepared for the sight which greeted me as I exited the sauna. A middle aged man squatted forward on his haunches, with his back to the shower, SCRUBBING himself vigorously. If you’ve ever seen a dog with worms drag it ass along the ground you’re at a good visual starting point. Now, lift the ass off the ground and have one of the forelegs reach around the back and scrub with the same vigour with which the aforementioned dog would try to scratch the fleas from its ears (believe me if the dog has worms it definitely has fleas too). I trust you’re getting the picture. I don’t mean to suggest this man was dog-like in any sense other than the bizarre position and motion he adopted in order to clean his ass, but Madre Mia he must have been damn clean down there.

There were a couple of other little observances that tickled my fancy at this bastion of health and well being. The treadmills had a harness contraption hooked up them which some punters used to strap themselves in. Now, while they were advertising the “hipdominal system” as the latest fitness trend and had all sorts of vibrating machines, I could not, for the duration of my upright rowing, figure out what the harness had to do with it. Were they sentenced to a certain amount of time on the treadmill? Was it like community service and they were afraid they’d run away? I was perplexed!

My next observation is much easier to accept if not explain, because as a male I still don’t understand much of women’s mentalness. Gangs of predominantly slim, fortyish women arrived for their aerobics class at ten wearing an amusing collection of outfits. The legwarmers were more original “Fame” than retro, and the vinyl skirt was tacky funny. BUT, why were so many of these women wearing cut off tank tops (titty tops to us Ex Mayfield Community School Students)? Now, I’m all for showing a bit of Britney midriff, but why wear these tops and then wrap the free towel around your stomach to cover it up? I wouldn’t stare at a woman’s midriff in the gym (much!!) but I was gazing puzzled at their efforts to secure the towels as they trotted into the studio.The weather was beautiful as I walked home. A sunny September day at home or November in Valencia, would have done it justice. An old guy pulled around the corner in a battered cross between a “Chuk Chuk” and a pick up truck with a loud speaker going. I was hoping to hear Elwood announce that “For one night only the Blues Brothers Rhythm and Blues Review” would be playing nearby but instead he was shouting something in Korean. Now, I’ve mastered the ability to say “thank you” in Korean so I like to think that I could make an intelligent guess as to what he was shouting. “WAKE UP, WAKE UP, THE SMOG IS GONE….. For one day only.........The Sun is Shining!”

First Impressions - Keep Your Socks Clean

2006-10-20T07:55:00.000+02:00

First Impressions - Keep your socks clean.

I felt about as grey as the Seoul that surrounded me when I got off the plane; a sharp contrast to the bright sun and bright mood, which met me with a smile when I landed in Valencia a year and a half ago. I was worn out and needed some sleep. I was met by a false smile and a sharp suit when I hit arrivals at Incheon Airport and taken to an imitation “Towncar” to be transported to my new abode. “Not bad,” I thought. How wrong I was. The hour I was expecting it to take to get to my apartment would turn out to be closer to 30. Once we got off the grey highway under the grey smog, darkness revealed the life and light of the neon, and I thought things were beginning to look up. Conversation flowed easily enough on the drive. I asked my companion questions that drew neutral responses. This guy was about as grey as his suit and the sky above. After a while I realised that these responses were not made in an effort to remain cautious with a stranger or from some form of sensitivity to my possible opinions. He just wasn’t bothered. North Korea, US Troops, Nuclear Tests; Just normal life, and he didn’t really care. The only thing that seemed to gage a genuine interest was the football game he was organising for the next day. He asked token questions about my family and experiences but didn’t listen to the answers. Ah well I’ll be at the gaff soon……
There was little to see on the drive as the last hour of grey daylight faded. The highways look American; the layout is the same and the signs have the same design. The bilingual names and the different cars unmask the imitation. The Towncars are not the Lincolns of New York but SanggYoung, the SUVs not the Fords of Westchester but Hyundai. It smacks of neither one thing nor the other. A “miscommunication,” Jake told me when we finally pulled up outside the school in Dongtan, meant I couldn’t go to my apartment but would have to wait until the following day. Jake suggested that we drive to a motel near his parent’s house so that I could I could play football the following day, and he could then bring me back to meet the boss afterwards. As the man says; it seemed like a good idea at the time. As a result of this decision, to my amusement and perpetual childishness, my first purchase on Korean soil was a pair of football boots (I’m sure Debs would be proud) and to my slight embarrassment they were white (the alternative was gold… easy choice). My first Korean meal (I don’t count the crap on the plane) involved a pit stop on the way back towards the airport in Ansan. The food was Ok, I had my first taste of the famed and much lauded Kimchi. It’s like thick rubbery cabbage smeared with a bad pepper paste, what the fuss is about, I do not understand, it’s awfull. My back was sore from the eleven hour flight and the two hours we had now spent in the car so the break was welcome. With this in mind it probably wasn’t the best time to experience a Korean restaurant; sitting on the floor with nothing at my back, trying to get the hang of chop sticks was punishment.
The Motel was something else!! “The Black Hole Motel” was like a set from a burlesque porn version of “Blade Runner”. You drive to check in under a rubber canopy, beneath a blinking pink neon sign. Reception is a booth with frosted glass so I signed in with a guy I couldn’t see and an all knowing finger pointed to the elevator. Upstairs the dimly lit corridor led to a room with all the comforts of a brothel. The mirrored ceiling was unnerving; I’ve never understood the attraction of being able to see yourself while doing the deed, I was almost glad to be alone. There was a selection of free and pay per view porn on the TV and a black tiled bathroom with a Jacuzzi. This place just oozed class. I managed to find the football just in time to see Cudicini get knocked out against Reading and later realised that “Pirates of the Caribbean” is not as good the second time round, or, was I just cranky? Three hours sleep in my little palace and then I was back out on the street waiting to be picked up for the football. “Did you say you were leaving at 5.30 AM for the football?” He didn’t mention that with the initial proposal. It seems grass pitches are few and far between in Seoul so we had to drive for an hour and a half to a ground that he and his club had acquired. As I waited for my spin on the side of the street, (he was half an hour late) I amused myself studying the details of the three “love” Motels on this back street in Ansan, no not Ansan, shit! I didn’t have a clue where I was. The grey night turned to grey light. Is it smog or fog? I couldn’t tell.
My driver went by the name of Jake by the way, and he was very excited about the game we were headed to. There seem to be a lot of “Jakes” in Korea and this one mentioned early in the drive that he would have to get my photo to prove to his wife that his decision to stay at his parents the night before had nothing to do with the “foreign” teacher he had picked up at the airport. “She thinks you’re a girl he laughed.” Koreans who interact with westerners generally chose a western name to make things easier on us idiots who can’t handle their names. Sometimes this makes sense as a westernisation of their Korean name, like us Irish had to do at some point, but other times they just pick a random name they fancy; like “Jake”. We picked up his brothers, I can’t remember their names, a bit more difficult than “Jake” to pronounce. I left my bags in the back of an SVU belonging to one of them and then we all piled back into Jake’s car and hit the road.
We headed north of Seoul and on another grey highway after about half an hour I noticed the barbed wire on the left-hand verge. The little military towers made Jakes mention of the DMG (Demilitarised Zone) redundant. I peered under the fog to what reminded me of the dead marshes in Lord of the Rings. Jake told me that you can do a tour for about 35 bucks… a tour of what I wondered… a bog?? As a central area to world news at the moment the DMG looks altogether unimpressive and the Army posts comic in their insignificance, we had tree houses in Rathcooney that were more impressive. We stopped for a bit of breakfast at the side of the road; ham and egg sandwiches with Orange Juice and Coffee, things were looking up! We then got off the highway onto the local roads. This area he told me used to be part of the North so there are still a lot of Communists living in these crappy little villages. The wealth of Seoul is obvious in its absence up there away from the neon. There were shacks in the corner of fields that I hoped were tool sheds but suspected could be farmers huts.
We met up with another guy who had a blue pick up truck (it looked like a clean version of the one Pat McNally had up the road when I was a kid, except for the concrete) in a village half an hour from the highway and I sensed we were nearing our destination. He had the footballs and various other bits and pieces in the back of the pick up. As we had got further from the city the fog had remained so I presumed that the grey veil wasn’t just smog. Sure enough after about five minutes we pulled up outside a pitch. We drove an hour and a half at the crack of dawn on a Sunday for this?? For Fuck Sake! I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. The grass was long, coarse and yellow. The surface was rough and uneven and the goals too small. To the left, over-looking the pitch was what looked like a school, and on the right there was a sandy area with swings and slides. We set up camp and the boys argued about where to hang the banner they had brought. After three attempts they tied it up between two trees and we ventured onto the pitch for a kick about. Jake’s brothers were nice, the younger one apparently was on the Korean Judo team. I was impressed. He was a shit full back though, I was to discover later. I convinced myself that a bit of a game to clear the system, and then back to Dongtan and some sleep in my new gaff would make for a good day….. Oh will I ever learn??? After a few minutes we were back on the sandy area sweeping leaves out of the way, I didn’t really see the point but I fell in and did my bit. When the bus pulled up at about 8.30 and whole families alighted my heart lifted. They were carrying water, boxes of food, toys, gear, flags, all sorts. They were a really friendly bunch and I felt really embarrassed that I couldn’t even manage to say hello in Korean. Oh how Spanish was a doddle!!
It’s hard to gage Korean people‘s ages sometimes, but I gathered quickly that Jake at thirty-five was one of the youngest. Most of the men were around forty and some quite a bit older than that. Teams were picked, and I was put in the centre of midfield for the orange team. We kicked off with a proper ref and two linesmen all kited out and intent on taking things VERY seriously. As we approached 10am it stared to get hot and only a few minutes into the game I realised that my boots were too small and was probably going to lose a couple of toe nails… nice! I ran my ass off and should have had a couple of goals but my finishing was about as good as any new Liverpool striker. Give me four months lads and I’ll be banging them in at an unbelievable rate!! They were tidy footballers for the most part and had the positional discipline and economy of movement that only advanced years bring. I, on the other hand ran like a lunatic and threw myself into everything. We were 3-1 down early in the second half, but I managed a deflected long range effort and a few minutes pulled a cross back for the boy Jake to score and we were level. The final whistle went and there was talk of PK’s and Golden Goals. The drama of penalties was prefered, or should I say “PK’s”…… Oh the tension! The first two efforts for both sides were missed and so with Robbie Fowler-like ease I slotted the third to the left of the fat 45 year old goalie just inside the post….. Cracker!! Queue Robbie Keane-like summersault and much rejoicing! We won 2-0 on penalties and I was the hero!! Oh to play against old men every week!! By the end I’m feeling VERY old myself and my Zidane-like bald patch is getting burnt through the thin grey haze that still manages to hide the sky. We finished, victorious and I’m ready to leave. It’s still not noon, so chop chop, things to do!! Wrong again!
Over the next five hours, games for the kids and adults were interrupted with mouthfuls of KimChi (I opted for a couple of apples, a banana and a bit of chicken). Some of the guys were very cool and as would be the case in most places it wasn’t long before a beer was shoved into my hand, quickly followed by a couple of shots of the local hooch… not bad! The guys and their wives were great, but obviously as I haven’t a word of Korean the conversations were painful, so I headed for the pitch and hung out with the kids. One of the girls was designated to approach the strange “Soccer Man” and so she ran over and poked me. “Hello….. he he he,” she giggled and ran away. Later she was sent back, “What your name…..he he?” So before long I’m running around on my brusied and bleeding feet with a bunch of Korean kids who are shouting “Oven, Oven!” at me. To hell with it, this is great fun, just keep drinking water, you’ll be grand.
Some of the older kids had some English and they wanted to talk about Park Gi Song and Wayne Rooney. I told them they should forget Man United and support Liverpool, I told them I liked Park and Rooney was good but Steven Gerrard is a superhero. We went back to juggling the ball. Football makes everything easier.
The older lads are gathering again and I’m summoned for a three legged race. One of the young lads wants me to be his partner but an older guy, who I think was his Dad says no, they seemed to want to mix it up a bit. I looked around for the little girl who was braver than her friends and dragged her out for the race. Our team lost… hate that! After that, it’s Mother’s Vs Kids in baseball with a football. It was hilarious, apart from the dragon fly that landed on my water bottle it wouldn’t have taken too much imagination to substitute this lot for the crowd in Rathcooney on a Sunday. Soon the men are back in for a relay. They argued over which team I should be on. I beat the old guy I’m up against easy…C’mon he wasn’t that old, just a couple of years over forty and he had at least fifteen metres start on me. We lost again… hate that!
So things seem to be winding down, I guessed that it was coming up on 4 O’clock. I was knackered, sunburnt and my feet were killing me. I took my boots off at every opportunity but when one of the lads saw me putting my filthy socked feet into my runners he looked shocked and stopped me. He tried to rub the sand off one of my feet and I gathered from his gesticulations that he didn’t want me to have dirty socks in my runners in case I had to go indoors later. His efforts were futile as my white socks, soaked in sweat and blood had gathered enough sand to ensure that they would never be white again. I was too tired and too sore to care, but he was quite concerned that I would embarrass myself with such a breach of etiquette! We were interrupted by another guy asking if one of us would “leferee”. None of these guys spoke English but yet they use all the English football terminology; free kicks, ‘orners, goals and of course, leferee. I’m confused and we both decline. To my horror I realise that we are to play another game. You are kidding me! Sure enough we are separated again and once again I find myself in Midfield for the oranges. Jake tells me we’re only playing for 30 minutes this time. “Only two quarters, only two quarters,” The runners are staying on, there’s no way these swollen feet are going into those dainty white boots again. A deep breath and a little glance at the sun burning through the grey haze…. OK, let’s go!!
After five minutes I’m out on my feet. My Roy Keane box to box notions are replaced by “Fat LeTissier” strolling. There are a lot more mistakes in this game, the young lads are no-where to be seen and the heat is killing. I’m getting more and more irritable and cranky so I avoid any 50/50 challenges, I couldn’t cope with getting injured by a 50 year old, not on my first day in Korea. We played really badly but luckily the other team couldn’t hit a barn door so we held on till half time. With what I guessed to be ten minutes left we won a free kick on the left of the penalty area and three or four of the usual suspects’ stepped forward. I’d been diplomatic all day with the appalling standard of free taking but I fancied this one so I pleaded with them and they capitulated. My LeTissier analogy was complete when I stroked the ball over the wall and in off the post, the goal keeper rooted to the spot. I shrugged and turned to limp back to half way. The boys couldn’t believe it and went mental, I couldn’t believe it either but I was too knackered to care. They surround me and there were more high-fives than a Super Bowl Sunday. The Leferee played an agonising twenty minutes more and a handful of goals for either side took the gloss off my free kick but we held on to win.
We cleaned up the mighty mess that we had created around the swings and slides and I posed for a few photos with some to the lads and kids. The posturing of Jake in his flash car, sharp suit and American twang were a distant image in contrast to the warmth, generosity of everyone that day. By accident I found myself back at the car and leaving without really saying goodbye, not that I could have anyway, but I felt bad that I left without so much as a wave. I take a look out over the yellow valley as we leave and on the drive back stave off the horrible dehydrated half sleep that had taken me over to see the DMG up close again. Some two and a half hours later I reach Dongtan and meet my new boss. Sleep deprivation, dehydration and a touch of sunstroke were going to make for interesting dreams so I picked up a pizza to seal the deal and crashed! Had I really just spent the day playing football twenty-five miles from North Korea? Hawkeye, are you watching?

Holy Thursday; Robin Winkler

2006-09-19T15:43:00.000+02:00

At 47 years of age, living alone in a small house in a town where he knew few and did little Robin Winkler was numb rather than unhappy.

Grey at the temples and bald on top, there was a slight reminder at he back and sides of the mousey brown mop he had sported till it receded prematurely and rapidly soon after his 21^st birthday. Robin Winkler was average height and of average build. He wasn’t especially overweight, but he was out of shape. His sloped shoulders and the strange protrusion of his pot belly from his podgy frame suggested that he had never been in shape in the first place.

When the agency sent him on a motivational weekend training course he was asked to describe how he saw himself in one word. When he made an uncharacteristically open response and said “invisible”, the group reacted by talking about a Kevin Bacon movie from a few years back where he makes himself invisible and gets drunk on power. They talked about it for fifteen minutes. Robin Winkler hadn’t seen it.

The world was greying to black as Robin Winkler pulled his government Camry into the North Eastern Shopping Mall car park on the Thursday before Easter. He drove around the sprawling lot until he finally found a spot. He sat and watched the cars circling for spaces close to the doors that never became available. He wondered how long these people could keep going in the same direction. Would they get dizzy? Are they always the same people, a vision of purgatorial penance? Circling a shopping mall could be the fate that awaits the ordinary sinner. He let the engine run as he sat and listened to the weather warnings on the radio. He paused and contemplated the effects the weather could have on his weekend. Did it matter if the sun shone or rain fell, tornado, blizzard, or the horsemen of the apocalypse? Didn’t really matter did it? The radio died as he turned the key and stepped out into the blustery day. The North Eastern Mall was as good a place as any in Cedar Rapids to stop for lunch.

Robin Winkler was wearing a grey suit with black shoes, a white shirt and dark blue tie. The shirt was immaculately pressed but obviously not new, likewise his shoes were polished to an impressive shine but were old and cheap. Robin Winkler’s pride in his grooming and appearance came from something other than a desire to look good. He took his briefcase from the back seat and walked towards the mall entrance. Despite his hurry to get in out of the elements he was sure not to step on any of the cracks in the concrete or the white lines which marked the parking spaces. He avoided shoppers struggling to control their trolleys which refused to go in the directions they were pointed. In his top breast pocket his INS Identification badge folded out to show his photo. He had come from a home visit and had forgotten to replace it in his inside pocket. Agent Winkler had spent the morning at the home of a Polish School teacher who had an illegal Nigerian emigrant living with her. They were not related. The boy was seventeen and had made his way to Cedar Rapids three years previously. He had initially lived in a motel and worked as a cleaner while attending Abraham Lincoln High School. The Polish School Teacher had taken him in at the beginning of his Junior Year after she gave him detention for falling asleep in class and he had pleaded with her to excuse him because he had to work after school. The boy’s GPA was in the top ten per cent in his class and he was now two months away from graduation. The Polish teacher had told Agent Winkler that if the boy didn’t have to work after school he would probably make valedictorian. Robin Winkler had set his deportation proceedings in motion that morning.

As he approached the entrance of the mall, the true lunacy of the pre holiday madness became apparent. People were shopping as if it were the end of the world and not a blustery long weekend which they were facing. The minivans and SUV’s queued up to collect stressed mothers struggling to keep track of hyper active children and hold on to their huge quantities of shopping. The awning over the automatic doors flapped ferociously with every gust of wind that seemed to bring the storm closer and closer as if contractions indicating the imminent birth of something huge.

Robin Winkler’s demeanour gave little away as he ghosted past the throngs of people at the entrance and made his way towards the food court. Hungry now, he told himself that he wanted to go to Souper Salads but without much deliberation did enough to convince himself that the queues there would be prohibitive and so to save time he’d postpone the healthy option and go for KFC. As he rounded the corner into the food court he stopped dead and stared at the insanity that was every fast food outlet in the place. The counters were ten deep and any expectation of finding a seat was crushed by the Old Folk’s home outing, which was squatted on the ground picking at their happy meals, around the giant read plastic cubes that housed the strategically placed greenery. If Robin Winkler was disappointed, it didn’t show on his dead pan face but he veered sharply to the left and seeking a clear path he moved almost in slow motion around the circumference of the court to the far side and continued on into the guts of the mall, hoping to find an eatery that while not worthy of the food court could provide some sustenance. Robin Winkler stepped onto the escalator and stood close to the side to avoid the kamikaze skateboard kids hurtling up and down the steel stairs. He looked down to make sure that he was not so close as to scuff his polished black shoes on the brush like thing that stuck out just above the corrugated steel surface.

At the top of the escalator Robin Winkler lifted his foot very deliberately from the escalator stair and stepped off gingerly. He turned left; he always turned left when given the option. He walked up and down the tentacles of the mall occasionally passing restaurants that were closed during the day; Italian, Mexican, Indian, all closed and he didn’t understand why. Robin Winkler went up another level and on his third tentacle of the third floor he found a Chinese restaurant open.

The restaurant had big glass windows like all the units in the mall, but they had decorated them with Chinese designs; illustrations and lettering to above head height so that you could only see through the door. Robin Winkler wasn’t concerned with the outward appearance or the menu which was laminated and stuck to the front door, he needed to eat and soon. Stepping through the glass doors Robin Winkler stood on a false wooden floor which ran like a bowling lane up the middle of the floor space to the counter at the top. Its shinny, smooth surface did not have the strong workmanship of a bowling lane but the way it was raised an inch or so from the tiled floor on which the tables were laid out either side, compelled him to walk all the way to the top without stepping off to be gutter-balled to a table not of his choosing. As he reached the counter two members of staff stepped from the kitchen and greeted him. The Restaurant was empty except for the staff and he began to understand why the other restaurants were closed. It seems people are only willing to descend stairs in order to eat. One of the staff, a small Chinese man with deep set eyes and a very round head, crowned in a thin but even tuft of dead straight black hair, stepped to the counter smiling and nodding. The other came around the counter to show him to a seat. Robin Winkler chose a booth and shimmied in as he took the menu. His waiter was very tall for a Chinese man he thought and very thin, brittle thin, but he had a pleasant demeanour and took his drink order with a smile. Robin Winkler noticed the waiter’s smile waiver and the young man did a double take glance back at the table as he walked away. Robin Winkler scanned the menu quickly, more in pretence than anything else; he always had the special fried rice and lemon chicken when eating Chinese. He then opened his brief case and pulled out a copy of the “Daily Iowan”. The headline read “High Winds Threaten City”.

Robin Winkler sat reading, only raising his eyes from the paper when it came time to turn the page. After about ten minutes he began to get impatient and think it a bit ridiculous that the skinny waiter had not come back to take his food order. He hadn’t even got his Diet Coke and he was thirsty and hungry. Putting the paper down he leaned from his booth and looked for someone whose attention he could attract. There was no-one on the floor and now no-one behind the counter. After waiting a few minutes more Robin Winkler rose and walked to the counter. Peering into the kitchen he couldn’t see anyone. Calling out gained him no response, so after a second shout he walked behind the counter into the empty kitchen. Not a soul. The kitchen was very new and immaculately clean, the stainless steel surfaces did not show a blemish. The white tiled floor sparkled and he was impressed by the hanging contraption which held all sorts of pots and cooking utensils on an adjustable frame above the burners and work surfaces which formed an island in the middle of the large kitchen area. At the sides were more worktops, some fridges and storage cupboards. He wandered around the kitchen, finding an equally deserted office at the back. Agent Winkler was walking back towards the restaurant when he noticed a wok with rice, vegetables and chicken in it. The burner was off and the food cold. He first bent over to sniff the contents and then found a fork and tasted it. He made half a step to leave and then hesitated. He couldn’t face the trek back down to the mobbed food court with an empty stomach. He didn’t want to face an endless queue and a fight with the cast of “Cocoon” for a giant potted plant to lean against while he ate too fast in an effort to avoid conversation with people who would surly sit too close to him. Thinking he could light the burners and heat the food he placed his hand on the knob but again he hesitated. Robin Winkler shovelled a cold serving of rice, chicken and vegetables onto a plate and headed for his table. He found cups and a coke machine behind the counter and dispensed himself the Diet Coke he felt he had waited long enough for. Within two minutes he was munching on cold but tasty Chinese food. Robin Winkler ate slowly despite his hunger and continued to read his paper, it was at least fifteen minutes before he carried his empty plate and cup back to the counter, fed, satisfied and not bothered by a single Senior Citizen. There was a menu next to the till and Robin Winkler checked it and saw that the Chicken Fried Rice was $7.49, the coke a buck fifty. He left an even $10; he didn’t think 15% appropriate in the circumstances. As he walked towards the door Robin noticed his ID hanging over his pocket as his reflection approached him from the glass door, he took it, folded it over on itself. He put it in his inside breast pocket and left.

Can Somebody Tell Me

2006-08-23T23:59:00.000+02:00

Can Somebody Tell Me
23/08/06

Are words like people? Do they sometimes look better then they are? Are they sometimes more beautiful than they appear? Why do some words fit together so well while others bounce off each other horribly? Why do some words always lead to the same combinations and couplings for good and bad? Do words have the same accidental beauty as people? Would beauty be as beautiful if it was spelled UGLY?

Bear Hug Flirting

2006-08-23T23:54:00.000+02:00

Bear Hug Flirting
23/8/06

I’ll pull her hair
Kick her shins
Slap her ass

I’ll call her names
Wrestle and tickle
Pin her down

I’ll smell her hair
Stroke her skin
And hold on for dear life

Space - Bedtime

2006-06-04T17:44:00.000+02:00

Bedtime

Going to bed meant exclusion, segregation from the adult world. I would fight tooth and nail to stay up just to watch and listen. My bed was for morning’s second sleep and avoiding the day ahead, nighttime was for words and talk, fantasy and waking dreams.
Being put to bed with the full energy of the moon’s imagination meant battling a wilful mother, but it was a battle I could win. Being in bed in the dark was not a concession to her demands but the first lie of youth’s imagination. My truth was lying on the floor in the hall looking at the narrow sliver of light under the door and listening to muffled conversations beyond. My dreams are fuelled by words and half sentences, half meanings grasped by a mind too young to understand but too active to ignore. The yellow glow under the door, the pasty stickiness of the lino against my cheek and palms, my bed a floor, my blanket a dark hall, sometimes cold but always more attractive. Until the opening door banged my head awake and my mother carried me half asleep to her belated victory and my deeper dreams of sleep.

Space - Religion Class

2006-06-04T17:43:00.000+02:00

Religion Class

I always looked at the religion classroom as something of a joke. It was an afterthought space, different to the other classrooms, awkward, stuffed between the staff room and the toilets. There were three religion teachers in the school and I got the one least equipped to deal with my argumentative sensibilities. He was a good hearted man who unlike the others only taught religion. He was bearded and pallid skinned and lacking any kind of charisma or presence, which may have conjured interest from a community school audience. His response when I told him that he was wasting his time because I didn’t believe in God still makes me smile; “I’ll pray for you,” was not the counter argument that I was looking for. The religion class was space and time to daydream or to finish homework for other classes. Any discipline could be avoided with a bit of charm and feedback from my religion teacher at parent teacher meetings was not a priority for my mother so I wasn’t bothered. I spent five years going to that class three times a week and I can’t remember a single lesson. Despite this, it’s the only classroom that comes to mind when I think of Mayfield Community School. Sitting daydreaming on a May afternoon, I didn’t take much notice as to why the class hadn’t started but as my classmates filtered out the door the chit chat drew me from my seat. The words “David Wall hung himself” will probably stay with me forever, as will the guilt that upon hearing that my friend was dead that I burst out laughing. I understand now why I laughed but I still feel bad about it. I walked out of that awkward religion classroom and found a cold radiator to sit against at the end of the quiet C corridor. The Religion classroom was not the place for me to stay and would never again be a space to daydream and fantasy.

Space - Two Feet Square

2006-06-04T17:42:00.000+02:00

Two Feet Square

There is a battle being fought beneath me. A timeless battle between the strength of youthful beauty and the irresistible power of the elements of nature and time.
To the casual observer of this riverside bench, the stationary wood, steel and concrete may seem unmoveable, undefeatable but the truth is that defeat is already assured. The beautiful bright sunlight seems only to accentuate the qualities of the bench and an irrelevance as a threat of attack but the deception is that it flatters to defeat. The slowly moving shadows and light cut through the strength of the bench with the precision and power of a power tool if not with its speed of action. The slow moving degradation and destruction goes unnoticed to the watching eye but is all apparent when absence gives time its opportunity to make noticeable progression.
The varnished façade of the bench is greying and receding with the pattern of the woods grain. The change in colour and texture seems natural until the unnatural scratches of life’s intervention interrupt its flow. Coins, fingernails and keys have scratched the face of aging dignity and broken it’s rhythms beat.
Attracted to the appearance of a life whose decisions has had visible consequences we are reminded just how important it is that “Spike was ‘ere” and that “Jenny Loves Tommy”. I’m sure that Spike thought that he would always be here and that Jenny thought that she would always love Tommy but like Dorian Grey’s portrait they too will succumb to times irresistible force.
And so the light and shadow spar on, no beautiful girl to announce the round, no time reference, no fixed duration no final bell or whistle. The steel rivets offer support and resilience to our aging pugilist. They too lack the bright vitality of youth but maintain a polished durability, which will see them, orphaned and alone by the inevitable destruction of the wooden partner they support.
Even as time has taken its toll, the façade of the seat and back of the bench hold a crafted beauty not shared by the rough frame, which supports them. The smooth edges like the soft hips of a woman sit in the lap of her broader, darker, splintered man. The rounded, smooth, sunken rivets face the world while underneath bolts, robbed of their clean edges are gauged into uneven splintered potholes to provide the necessary stability and support.
Beneath the bench, light and shadow dance slowly towards the west. Reluctant partners, their bout is a tease of reveal and conceal. The concrete holding the bench as a stationary target too shows signs of attack. Scratches of whiter grey punctuate the flat rough surface. Blackened chewing gum fights its own battle of endurance and clings to the concrete seeking a home.
Glancing back a few inches back to the base of the bench, the subtly moving light has revealed an accomplice until now hidden in the shadow. A soft green moss grows on the concrete and up the leg of the frame, magnifying the suns strength and impact and absorbing the waning energy of the benches trunk.
The battered bolts in the potholes are clearer now and are further tarnished by lost streaks of varnish, which have discoloured their already battered surface. The remnants of a cobweb reveal a former resident not yet fully vanquished.
At the side cowering in the shadows is a crushed beer can, broken prematurely young, it maintains its shiny blue and gold gleam but is damaged beyond repair. Surely its bedfellow, a discarded roach of a joint snuggles between the concrete and the grass awaiting the scuff of a shoe to which will condemn it to final decomposition and abandonment of its frightened friend. The fading light and increasing shade give the false security of reprieve but darkness will bring forth fresh battalions of destruction and so the attack will continue unrelenting. Stability, strength and beauty will succumb to the inevitability of times stamina.

Space - Dad's Old Room

2006-06-04T17:40:00.000+02:00

Dad's Old Room

My parents occasional Saturday nights out were usually sprung on me as a last minute surprise. Perhaps this was their way of saving me the pain of anticipation in the days before being shipped up to my Grandparents house on Blarney Street. I didn’t really mind going any night other than Saturday because they had cable TV and usually let me watch what I wanted. But, Saturday night meant Mass on Sunday morning and this was torture. Deprived of my comfortable bed, dragged down the street to sit on hard wooden benches in a cold church surrounded by the smell of old people, horrible.
There were two sleeping options in Blarney Street. There was a fold out couch in the tiny sitting room that people only went into to use the phone. This ugly contraption to my mind could not have been seriously designed and built under the pretence of comfort and convenience and it’s horrible coarse black and white design was no more pleasing to the eye than the hard surface was to the back. The other option was my Dad’s old room at the back, squeezed between the bathroom and the kitchen. At some point it became a given that as the boy and only Grandson that I should have Dad’s room and so my Sister drew the obvious torture of the couch. Any preconceived ideas of getting the better option came unstuck the first night I slept in that room.
Regardless of time of the year, weather or temperature, that room was cold and damp. The thick painted walls had moisture on them and the lace curtains were dotted with black mould. The bed was jammed between the wall and the wardrobe on the left and under the window, which looked into the tiny enclosed yard behind the house. The yard was enveloped by walls on the left and right and by a huge embankment at the rear so the window left no light into the little cavern.
I was used to a duvet at home but this bed had sheets and blankets tightly wrapped around a large lumpy mattress. There was a small wall mounted electric heater opposite the window, which warmed the room well enough but it had to be turned off before going to bed and so the room reverted to cold very quickly.
I would curl up in that bed, drawing my knees to my chest, trying to get warm enough to sleep for ages. The physical discomfort might have been overcome had it not been for the psychological unease that accompanied it. This was supposedly my Father’s old room but I didn’t see anything of the man I knew in it and drew no comfort from his history with it. My Grandmother had removed any sign of him years before when she turned it into a guest room. This of course meant filling it with all sorts of iconry and trinkets; more than any other room in the house. It occurred to me many years later when she died that the appearance of devout faith had always been more important to her than true belief.
The hardest thing for me to deal with as a little boy in this room was the huge crucifix, which hung precariously over the bed. It was a hefty, heavy wooden cross with a pasty porcelain Jesus riveted to it. It scared me in many ways, not least because I’ve always been frightened by religious statues. Even before I knew why, the ugly depiction of suffering and piety unnerved me. I could never identify with these things as real people of as having any relevance in my life. Outside the church in Sundays Well there is a statue of St Vincent de Paul. It was only after my Grandfather’s Funeral a few years ago that I realised that my previous belief that this statue was the Devil was incorrect. It’s dark features, squinting eyes and it’s red, black and white robes brought me to the not unreasonable assumption that he was the only statue outside the church because obviously Lucifer wouldn’t be allowed in. It all made perfect sense to me.
My discomfort with statues in general was heightened when it came to this tortured saviour who hung over my head. Firstly he had a chunk of ceramic plaster missing from his shin revealing a skeletal wire by way of a shin bone and secondly it was positioned directly above my pillow and so my head. I may not have been the most practical of children but the damaged shin indicated to me that at some point old JC had taken a tumble and with him lined up above my head there was a real chance of night-time decapitation. My Grandmother I’m sure would have got great mileage with the neighbours had her only Grandson been killed by a falling Jesus but I had a career as the greatest footballer in the world to think about and so wasn’t willing to risk it. I would take the pillow to the other end of the bed and in a very lazy, half hearted, working in the dark kind of way; attempt to rearrange the bed clothes. All this served to do was make me damper and colder and less likely to sleep. On these restless nights I would explore this little poke of a room. I would did through the wardrobe and dresser and search under the bed looking for something of interest or secret but I would always be disappointed. I would end up attempting to read adult books that I couldn’t understand until tiredness overcame discomfort and I would drift off. The cold damp sheets would wake me before dawn and I would resume my shifting, tossing and turning, my mind enlivened by the anticipation of Eleven O’clock mass.