"Chinese Corner" in Dublni!

I'd heard about a Chinese Meetup in Dublin from a friend of mine, so I went along last Thursday. Basically, it's like “English Corner” in China: people who are learning the language can go to a place and practise the language with learners and native speakers. Been to many of them in China (English corners that is), some interesting, most not (more because of the lack of interesting conversation than language skill).

So, without any expectations, I hit off for Ron Black's pub in Dublin. I was surprised that there were so many Chinese people there, including one Chinese teacher who teaches in Trinity. I really enjoyed it cos I love speaking Chinese and it had been a long time since I actually spoke so much Chinese. It was like the flood-gates opened and out it came. Sort of like the time when I met an Irish guy in Dalian. I hadn't talked to another Irish person in weeks and it was so relieving to just be able to speak naturally instead of having to force myself into speaking “standard” English, to be sure, begorra.

The Irish people I met there had only learned a little Irish and I think they were a bit shy to try out their Chinese. That's the Irish for ya.

I hope these meetups continue. They are useful in a few ways: the obvious being to help people who are learning Chinese. However, they also give an opportunity for Chinese and Irish people to mix, which doesn't happen much.

I only with there way a 四川话 (Sichuan dialect) Meetup!!

images broken

I don't know what's up with the images. I used blogger to put in 2 photos in the previous post. In the past, it showed a smaller version of the image in the blog. Now, I think it's showing full size...

Election Time

The Local and European elections will be held in Ireland tomorrow. As you'd imagine, there are election posters everywhere and people canvasing all over the shop. I haven't been in Ireland during election time in years. What drew my attention was the multi-racial candidates on offer. In the past, all you could see were fat white fellas in crap suits with even dodgier heads on them. Now it's different. Although not foreign, a guy who in the same class as me in primary school is now a TD (member of parliament for our non-Irish readers). His father is Indian and his mother Irish. he's Irish himself and has grown up in the area. Now, we have a number of foreign nationals running for election. Some are independents, howver there are also a few on the tickets of the main parties. I took these pictures on the way to work today:


I don't know how well these guys will do against the locals. I can see 2 reasons why they might not succeed: 1 is that they are not locals so some may feel they might not know much about local affairs or culture. The second reason is good old-fashioned racism. Many won't vote for them simply because of the colour of their skin. We've come a long way but we've still a good distance to go yet.

He Blogs Again

I always seem to start blog posts with a clichéd "long time no blog" line. So no need to do that this time :P

I thought I'd get my ass in gear and write something in my blog. The name of the blog is sort of inapt for where I am now. I came home in August 2008, tried to find some sort of job in Ireland connected with China and/or the Chinese language. It seemed that most of the few jobs available were pretty much looking for native Chinese speaking call-centre people. I also looked for jobs in the IT sector and landed one with a well known American company. I've been doing that since October. I think I am pretty lucky to land a job like that, especially cos Ireland is in the firmly stuck a long way down the shitter in terms of finances and jobs.

I think I found it hard to adjust to Irish life at first: the fact that nobody understood me when I spoke Chinese (actually probably the same as when I was in China), the lack of Sichuan food, the over-indulgence in alcohol, the crappy weather (allegedly Ireland didn't even have a summer in 2008). However on the plus side, there are friends and family, good old Irish food like snack boxes and sausage rolls, and of course, the alcohol!!!

I landed home just before the poo-poo hit the proverbial fan. Then came the Freddie Mac/Frannie Mae (love those names) and the rest of the start of the financial crisis. The news here was just depressing: job loss after job loss, factory closure after factory closure. It was all doom and gloom. Then came the banks, and the drop in retail sales figures and then to top things off the government in all their wisdom slapped on a tax levy and increased VAT. The result of this was a mass exodus of shoppers north of the border, the weakness of Sterling catalysing this phenomenon.

Now it's June. There are not as many factory closures per week as before (maybe there aren't many left to close) but the banks are still in rag order. I don't think we've seen the bottom yet.

Talking to people in China last year, a lot of them didn't really feel the recession pinching. I think that has changed now. I've heard of factory closures and job losses. Their economy isn't growing as fast as before probably hugely affected by the fall in exports. However, they are probably in a better shape than we are in Ireland, cos I don't think their banks were let run loose as they were here. Maybe China will be bailing out Ireland in the same way they are bailing out the US!

There probably hasn't been much of a point/direction in this blog post. But at least it served the purpose of firing up my brain and prompting me to write something!