Deeply touched

Just a reminder that I’m offline again until 19 November, but I’m at least going to try to check email and so on daily from a wifi hotspot.  Why am I in this pickle again, when we’d just been reconnected after our move?  Well, here’s why:

We’d moved from the house where we’d lived since arriving in Ireland to another place which we hoped to buy.  The estate was beautiful, the house was fantastic and well built and the view of the Cooley mountains was to die for.  However, in the three months we lived there, Jonathan got beaten up three times, Nicholas had money and sweets taken off him, all three the kids had fireworks thrown at them, our babysitter’s parents witnessed a firework being thrown under a passing car (with a whole family in it) and exploding under it – the underside of the car was a mass of flames, according to our friends.  If there had been even the tiniest leak in the petrol tank…

We had ‘bangers’ set off near enough to our house to inspire us to call the Guards (Gardai [pronounced gaar-dee] is the Irish word for the police, also referred to as the Guards), one time it was set off right on our doorstep.  Don’t know what a banger is?  It’s a firework which does nothing but make noise.  No pretty colourful explosion in the sky, no frizzy flower of sparks.  No other possible explanation for its purpose than noise.  When one of these goes off on your doorstep, it sounds as if a bomb exploded in front of your house.  Come to think of it, that’s exactly what it is.

As a result of all this unpleasantness, Lara became a nervous wreck.  She’s a highly strung child at the best of times, and though we’re handling it, it was hard to comfort her when there was real cause for concern.

Our rent agreement was a rent-to-buy thing, which meant the rent was very high, but the idea was to save a deposit over a period of eighteen months.  We would have gotten every cent back.  Because we withdrew from the contract after only three months, we lost the deposit.  Taking in consideration with that the money we would have saved in lower rent if we’d just rented somewhere, we lost about €1 900 on this deal.  However, the huge relief to feel we are safe, to not stress myself to death when the children are out of sight, to have Lara sleep soundly and not be nauseaous with tension all the time, is worth every cent.

So we moved again this past weekend, and though it was bloody awful, it was so worth it.  We now live in a very small estate, in a nice four-bedroom house, in a good neighbourhood.  I am hugely relieved.

But internet-less again for a while, unfortunately.

Now to the reason for the title of this entry.  A post inspired by the recent Ford Hood shootings which gives a lot of food for thought on war in general.  I’ll let Stonekettle Station speak for itself.

Moving again

After three months of living in a house we’d planned to buy, we’re moving again.  I don’t really want to go into the reasons, suffice to say we’re just not happy here.

This means another upheaval: packing, arranging the transfer of utilities… but it will be worth it in the end.  Even if I have to go almost two months without internet again.  Hopefully, though, that will not be the case this time.

That’s also an explanation for why I’ve been so tardy with new posts: we decided on 19 October to move, I gave notice here on 20 October.  I started house hunting right away, and found us a place in Blackrock, Louth.  However, last week Thursday I discovered that the owner intended to put the house back on the market after a year.  We really don’t want to deal with living in ahouse that’s being shown, and we also very definitely don’t want to have to move again any time in the foreseeable future.

That meant a mad rush to find another place, as we’d arranged to move on 7 November.  I was frantic and depressed, as it’s not easy to find a house to rent when you’re a family of nine (five people, four cats).  I was just starting to despair when on Friday afternoon, I was showed a lovely four bedroom house with a landlord who is, according to the agent, a very nice guy.  He doesn’t mind the cats and is prepared to give us a long lease – he works and lives on the continent (that is, somewhere on mainland Europe) and the house is a rental property with no foreseeable prospect of becoming anything else.

So.  I’m packing.  And cleaning and stuff – thank the gods we were only in here a short while, there’s some stuff I haven’t even unpacked from the previous move yet.

Sheep? Um, sort of.

Via Picture is unrelated

Zombies Crossing

From Makezine comes this excellent Halloween effort:

If you’re going to criticise, find out what you’re talking about first.

It’s strange that in a country where religion was king until a very short while ago, I feel there is greater religious freedom than I perceive Americans experience.  True, the schools are still heavily influenced by the Catholic church.  Mother Mary stares me in the face when I walk in the front door.  Religious pictures grace the halls.  There are religious lessons in class.

But religion doesn’t get stuffed down my throat.  My kids read story books during religious lessons, at our request.  Nobody looked askance at us for this, and the school staff are friendly to me and treat my kids no differently for our views on God.  I often get the feeling most modern Irish people are Catholic the way I’m a Boer – they were born into a society that revered it, grew up with it, but as adults it’s more an afterthought than something they embrace.

From entries in blogs I follow written by Americans, I get the feeling that for all their secularism, they have a much higher percentage of people who identify as Christians and are really serious about it.  Fox News is a glaring example of this demographic’s strength: it would have died a quiet death if it didn’t have support.  People watch this shit.

And shit it is, I’ve concluded from numerous clips I’ve seen on YouTube.

Racism, and other -isms

I come from a country where racism is a problem.  I suppose I don’t need to say more than: “South Africa has eleven official languages” to give an idea of the cultural diversity and related mess they’re sitting with there.  Because of the Apartheid disaster, a lot of people are super-duper sensitive about racism.  It gets ridiculous sometimes.

One example of where I shook my head and rolled my eyes, was when cricketer Brian McMillan loudly urged an Indian bowler to toss him a “Coolie Creeper”.  The brouhaha surrounding that was unbelievable.  Yes, he’d messed up, but I couldn’t help but think the guy was so ‘colour blind’ that he forgot he was playing with an Indian and used a ‘we’re all buddies’ term that was insensitive in the circumstances.  The whole mindset is not to discourage racism, but to make people over-aware of the race of whatever person they’re dealing with.

I also resented the way the incident was handled.  Wouldn’t a quiet word with Brian, explaining that his old-school terminology was hurtful, have been much more productive than an official complaint and a national scandal?  That said, only those directly involved would know the spirit behind the incident, whether it was the final straw in an attitude that was generally insensitive and derogatory, or a one-off where he was so unconscious of race and colour that he didn’t watch every word.

I often get the feeling there are some black people who are constantly on the lookout for insults.  They’re always poised to be offended, and therefore the smallest little thing can set them off.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to take a walk in their shoes.

Thanks a lot, Mister Fick

I’m sure I was one of the more annoying kids in school.  I wasn’t a rebel, and I wasn’t a nerd.  I was something in between, probably more self-absorbed than most, and with more kinks in my soul than I realised at the time.  I tended to ask questions, to point stuff out when I thought it was wrong.  This habit was not bad in itself, but I had no consideration for diplomacy or tact.  I look back with regret on the way I handled a lot of stuff as I grew up.

I can’t really think of any other reason why Mr Fick hated me so much, but he did.  He must have despised me from the moment I walked into his class the first time at the age of ten.  I was entering Standard 3, the school year in the system used in South Africa at the time when the subject ‘Hygiene’ turned into the subjects ‘Science’ and ‘Biology’.  Same teacher, but separate periods in which each was taught.  And we got a more specifically qualified teacher to impart the delights of these subjects to our fresh young minds.

We were given the task of copying a sketch of a germinating bean plant into our copy books from the textbook.  Later developments in my life showed me that I’m pretty good at drawing.  I therefore have no doubt that the sketches I produced were accurate and well done.  When Mr Fick saw them, though, he had a serious problem with them.

You just have to laugh

You might hate me for this later, but here is a link to the 2008 results of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest.  In which people get rewarded for writing terrible prose.  My favourite out of all of them is among the honourable mentions:

Behind his pearly white smile lay a Bible black heart, not like the Psalms with its, “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord,” but like Revelations where God just smites people.

Go check it out, but make sure you have a good while.  There’s a lot to chuckle about.

Delightful demonstration that the carrot works

When you want someone to do something, offering a carrot – an incentive – always works better than hanging a threat over their heads.  Never have I seen this better illustrated than in this video.

It also is a striking reminder that we need to bring fun into our lives in whatever way we can.  What an awesome and blatant demonstration of how easy it can be.

Now that’s competence for you!

Apparently, a document from the Ministry of Defence in Britain advising staff on how to stop documents leaking onto the internet has been leaked onto the internet.  Hahahahahahahahahaha!