Drinkin’ Guinness in the 416

I’m on a self-imposed internet diet at the moment, as I have family in town and have taken a couple of weeks off work. This has the dual effect of making me really busy and lessening my need to procrastinate. But I’ve checked in with my feedreader a couple of times to clear it out and check in on some favourite blogs, and there are relatively few I “need” to read - I think a mass de-subscription is in order when I’m back at the office. I’m at home now while my parents make several zillion phone calls gossiping analyzing with their friends and other children the impact on my native land of the embarassing Lisbon vote.

Anyway, as is par for the course on a guinness416 break, I’m brutally sunburned and have been reading a lot. My parents love book shops and, like their eldest kid, are voracious readers so to escape the sun we sat in the big Indigo at Bay and Bloor for a couple of hours the other day. They couldn’t get over the fact that the shop allows you to sit there and read away the day without aggressively moving you on - wouldn’t happen in Dubbilin! I think Mr Cheap does this too, so we’re in good company. I got through most of Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Pilgrims” which is a good collection of short stories. The folks were laughing at me writing all the names of the books I’m interested in on my little notebook instead of just splurging (like they did!). And sure enough, they were all available at Toronto library, with varied wait times. They know how much I love to read - they taught me after all - but I don’t like buying books. A house full of books is of course considered a healthy addiction by people who would turn their noses up at spending similar sums at the casino, or on baseball memorabilia or something. But shelves and shelves of dusty books which haven’t been opened in years make me sad. I just buy the ones that I really love and know I’ll come back to.

One of the books on my library wait list is Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Unaccustomed Earth”. She writes about Bengali expats, and I’m married to one, so in addition to her great writing I have special interest in her stuff. My man is thoroughly americanized (or more accurately, New York-ized, he has as much patience as his missus for the US outside the tri-state area) by virtue of having moved to pre-cleaned-up NYC as a teen and is fairly Irishized due to being married to a bolshy Dub but I liked this extract from the Irish Times’ review (subscription only, I’m afraid):

While the older generation is abashed or bewildered by the short skirts and funny foods and informal manners of Americans, for the younger generation the experience of being caught between cultures tends to play itself out in the question of marriage. Women, particularly, feel the pressure. Extremely high achievers, financially independent, they remain nevertheless trapped in dilemmas and mindsets that at times sound lifted out of the 1950s. Ever present is the issue of marrying outside the Bengali community. Then there’s the arranged marriage, still limping awkwardly along, which acquires a certain retro-chic.

which made me smile in recognition.

Ok, I’m off to continue scoffing through the metric ton of chocolate which my guests brought over and to put more after sun on my nose. I am aggressively ignoring my inboxes, if anyone’s expecting any email responses.

These husbands’ and wives’ tests are the best thing I have ever seen on the internets, ever.

Insists on driving when husband is present?  Bad!  Likes “unfortunates”?  Good!

Yes, I failed.

I discovered today that I actually have a drivers license of some description.  Apparently I applied some time in 2006 and have no recollection whatsoever about this fact.  How can this be possible?  Last night I crammed the driving textbook (I couldn’t have told you “climbing lanes” even existed until about 3 this morning) for a written test.  This morning I had to drag myself out to Etobicoke (I mean really, it may as well have been Detroit) at the ungodly hour of 7:30, stand in a long line on the sidewalk for an hour, another line inside the licensing place for another hour or so, and was then told by the one (one!) person behind the counter that I have a license valid until 2011.  The counter person, my ever-patient spouse, and the woman behind us in the line all thought I’d lost my mind.  Brainfog

I hate (seriously, it’s borderline phobic) cars, traffic, driving, and being in places which don’t have transit; I’ve structured my life since I started college around being in cars as little as possible.  So my spidey senses must have been tingling when I decided to do this last night, because the shower of expletives-of-choice at Local 113 decided to strike at midnight last night - and deigned to give an hour’s notice.  Not that it seems they even waited til midnight to shut down.  There’s a string of tales of woe over at Torontoist, including a guy coming from the airport who got dumped at Kipling station by a bus driver who didn’t bother to tell him the subways weren’t running.  My husband got stuck too; he finished work around 2am although one of his colleagues dropped him home.  Downtown must have been some sight in the early hours, all the drunk and clubbed-up Torontonians discovering they’d have to fight to the death for the few cabs around.  The deal on the table is sweet (I would love to be offered a guarantee that I’d always earn more than anyone else doing my job function in other parts of the GTA) and it’s fair to say that whatever sympathy still remained for them is well gone by now.  A large number of rotund hairy bus/subway/streetcar drivers drink coffee at my local Hortons, and I’m going to mutter strongly worded complaints under my breath next time I pass them, let me tell you.

My favourite links that I saw this week were this jaw-dropping tale of corporate scumbaggery, this patriotic lolcatmoose, an interview with two firefightin’ Toronto women and another great post on retirement by the interweb’s best moneyblogger, Canadian Dream.

Plonkee asked about peoples’ best financial moves in college, and in looking back I’ve made a few.  Not through smartness or good planning, mind, just my regular dumb luck:

• Winning the birth lottery and being born Irish.  As ever.  Tuition is taxpayer-paid at home, students (at the time anyway) are not given the access to credit cards etc that our Nordamerican cousins are, and there’s less opportunity to faff around with minors and irrelevant subjects than thereis in some parts of the world.
• Switching from architecture after a couple of years to get a degree in quantity surveying.  I am less likely to be a major character in a sitcom or a romantic comedy, but am way ahead of my peers in the architecture degree course in terms of salary, and (seem to) have more job options, certainly in North America.  Supply and demand, baby.  Also, I skipped all the expenses on materials and all-nighters before crits in the latter years of my studies.
• Living with my parents.  I was only a short bus or DART ride from the college, but saved a packet and had a nice, comfy, quiet place to study.  However this is not without its drawbacks.  I did have to suffer the “you treat this house like a hotel!” lectures every so often, and my folks have seen me stagger through the door in horrific states on quite a few occasions.
• Spending summers (and some Xmases) pulling pints in NYC (and a couple of other Stateside locations).  Not only did I meet my husband, I learned to love peanut butter and the Yankees, and made some great contacts who have gotten me where I am today.  Plus it was fun.
• Working nights throughout my college career.  We didn’t have fees, so a lot of my fellow students didn’t work at all, but I bartended throughout college.  It’s always good to make your own readies, and I was able to travel widely, indulge my bad taste in indie music in venues all over Dublin, eat fry-ups when I was hungover and leave college with no debt and several thousand in the bank.
• Becoming a guinness drinker.  25 pints a week x 0.40 cheaper than lagers/ciders x 4 years =  E2,080 before interest.  Which to a student is, like, two million bucks.

I don’t think I did anything too odd here, but these few moves added up to a good start in life, which I certainly appreciate now in my advanced age.

Over the years I’ve taken many lunches in clients’ offices, and it’s always the same.  It gets to around noon, and a plastic tray of nasty deli sandwiches and those ultra-sweet cookies gets dropped on the table by a surly admin person.  You don’t want to eat them, but if you don’t, who knows, it may be quite a few hours before you get some food.  And taking an apple out of your bag is just not the done thing.  So you choke down a horrible cardboard ham and cheese, all the while crunching numbers.  It’s enough to tempt you to take up smoking just to get the hell out for a while.  Exactly never have I had a meeting broken up at lunch time to go out, get some fresh air, eat good food, and then resume.  Until today!  We took a walk, went to a nice little pub, ate great fresh food, lingered a little over coffee and went back to work.  I don’t think anyone even checked their blackberry.   The meeting was in Montreal, I don’t know if that makes a difference.  But you actually regroup, get to know the rest of the team, and recharge a bit.  Much better.

I’ve said this before, but I’m overly fascinated by the searches that bring people to this blog.  It’s just a little glimpse into the stuff people search for which overlaps with my interests, and the nosy sod in me loves it.
The sheer quantity of guinness + something queries that get people here is nothing short of amazing.  People look for a lot of wacky info regarding the plain stuff, and if I were smarter or less exhausted I could probably think of a way to profit from that.  “Why is guinness important to Ireland?” is one impeccably punctuated search, and truthfully while I’ve always loved guinness the country is a nation of wine and lager drinkers really at this point, so the answer is probably a combination of history, Yank tourists and Diageo’s outstanding branding.  We’ve also got “Canadian version of guinness”, “is there guinness in Turkey”, at least thirty different search strings related to guinness and pregnancy (I don’t know, is there an old wives tale?), and myriad other searches.

“Where gay meeting Killiney beach?”  I actually lost my virginity a stone’s throw from Killiney Beach, and apart from that the things that spring to mind about the beach are the amount of condoms, needles, crisp packets and other assorted dangerous crap you had to avoid when walking along the sand, and Spanish summer students having drunken parties involving bonfires there.  This is all probably quite dated, I’m sure it’s a different beach now.  I don’t know anything about gay meetings at Killiney beach, which in my mind’s eye involve a boardroom table and men in suits but I’m probably barking up the wrong tree there.

Another question is “why Atlantic Canadians very bad at taking vacation.”  I wasn’t aware that they were, but they’re no different to Ontarians in that respect.  Youse Canucks love to work.

Someone also wanted to know what caca milis means in Irish, and the answer is “cake”.  Mmm, cake ….

McWilliams had an interesting post a couple of days ago about the sad state of Iceland’s economy.  Yes, that’s Iceland with a ‘c’.  Not a country you hear very much about.

It is clear that the Icelandic model is over. It was based on a bank-led boom, taking full advantage of financial liberalisation to borrow huge amounts of money and lend it to all takers. Icelandic banks expanded aggressively abroad - including in Ireland where Landisbanki bought stockbroker Merrion Capital and thought about bidding for Irish Nationwide.

Bjork may be Iceland’s most famous export, but the vast bulk of the wealth created in recent years has spun off from the banking sector, leveraging up and expanding. This was a country behaving like an out-of-control hedge fund, and it is suffering accordingly.

He also has a post which mentions drag-queen bingo in the George, Dublin’s flagship gay pub, which is an oddly dated kickoff to that article, because I’m sure I went to that bingo night when I was in college ten years ago.

The other article I thought was quite interesting in the last couple of days (I’ve been home sick and reading a lot) was about the engineering firm out west which lost so many of its execs in two (two!) plane crashes in the last few months.  It would definitely be a strange and sad situation to lose most of the big shots like that, and probably means much uncertainty and overtime for the rank and file.  I didn’t see the execs’ photos in the print article but they’re in the online version.  All three are very young and it’s almost unthinkable.  Small planes, man ….

In other news, after two years of skirmishes and the breakdown in the Treaty Regarding Which Species Shall Sit on the Bike When It’s Propped Against the Side of the House established in Summer 2007, I am sad to announce that we are capitulating in our war with the raccoons.  They are smarter, more fearless, more relentless and more dexterous than we ever imagined.  We’re knocking down the previous home owners’ homemade shed which they can open with their little raccoon hands/teeth and in order to protect our trash cans which they can also open with their little raccoon hands/teeth getting one of these.

Also, my aunt, the family’s Atlantic Canada representative was right - Newfoundlanders (Newfoundlandians? Newfoundalians?) are still using Irish phrases.  Social climbers.

Never let it be said that Torontonians don’t know how to have a good time on friday nights; someone hijacked a hummer limo, and:

The woman, who police said does not have a driver’s licence, drove through the downtown core, causing six accidents, striking a hydro pole, and hitting a female pedestrian, who was not seriously injured.

Police said the woman then drove four kilometres to Inglewood Drive, near Mount Pleasant Road and St. Clair Avenue.

There, she drove through a front yard, knocked down several trees, and hit three parked cars. The vehicle finally came to rest in a snowbank.

“It looks like there’s been an earthquake,” said Sam Liu

Good lord.  Also, while this chick ain’t bringing up the average, Canadians are smart.

It’s been a rough month.  A close family member, at 30 pretty much the same age as myself, is extremely ill.  Apart from the horrible time she’s going through, the fallout is affecting a lot of people at home in Ireland’s plans, routines, responsibilities.  This has rocked me back on my heels a good bit, in the life-is-short sense (my mother has called three times to make sure I’m not going to quit my job!) which I feel quite guilty about; it isn’t all about me.  So my moods have been all over the map.  It’s tough to be far from home and have indentured-servitude type North American vacation time when things like this happen.

Anyway, I subscribe to Macleans using my aeroplan miles, which is a bright and shiny right-wing Canadian newsweekly*.   which had an article about Tim Hortons’ US expansion plans, which had an intriguing aside about American Tims-lovers:

Slowly but surely, the chain is developing a following south of the border. They congregate on the Internet, if not over the company’s coffee

I have tried every search string I can think of to locate this forum, which I can only imagine is a fascinating read, but no dice.  I’ll keep trying though.  Frankly, I can’t understand why anyone who isn’t brainwashed into thinking that that swill is a national treasure would drink their coffee, but it takes all sorts.

Also, I remembered reading this being a kid eating Hedgehog crisps.  These were delicious organic salt and vinegar crisps in a purple packet which could only be gotten at the vegetarian/health food store my hippie mum frequented.  The story on the wrapper was that the profits went to St Tiggywinkles, a hedgehog rescue hospital.  I made the mistake of doing a quick google of this brand, which suggests that this hospital may not have existed.  More childhood beliefs shattered!  I have no idea if this is the same product.

* Although I’m considering unsubscribing again, as in Andrew Coyne they have added another oh-so-”controversial” conservative with way too much regard for himself, as though Steyn wasn’t one too many.  I’m your typical Dublin quite-lefty, if that weren’t yet clear.

I kind of love this post with five reasons why “the customers are always right” is wrong over at the Chief Happiness Officer (who I have quite the internet crush on) as well as this post with five reasons to fire the workaholics over at 37 Signals. There’s a lot of good work-related blogging I’ve been reading recently.