Day 5: Runaway Plane

And then came the day I had been dreading. I called in sick for work, after 3 hours of sleep and with my heavy broken heart that was not even a real lie. When we arrived at the airport Americano was stopped at the luggage check-in. Seems he couldn’t take more than one bag on the plane according to his ticket. I told him it was fate saying he shouldn’t get on that plane, he should stay with me in Ireland, but by that time his other bag, containing all his clothes, was already on its way to the plane…

We said our goodbyes, sang a few songs (‘I’m not crying’ by Flight of the Conchords was quite the favourite that day) and tried to laugh it off. It didn’t work. He asked me to send him a text when I got back safely to Dublin. I asked him to send me a text when he got back safely to Chicago. I couldn’t take it anymore, I was starting to tear up, and I didn’t want his last sight of Ireland to be this crying Belgian girl. So I hugged him one last time, and left thinking I would never see him again. I walked away.

I tried to stop crying on my way to the bus but it didn’t work. Luckily the bus didn’t arrive too soon, so by the time I got on I had finally gotten a grip on myself and my tears again, though I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. I figured I wouldn’t hear him any time soon, that it was all just a sweet holiday romance, that maybe we would chat a few times in the next few weeks and would then forget about each other as life went on. While I was thus engaged in being totally depressed and feeling extremely sorry for myself, I got a text message saying he was at the terminal and missed me already…

Day 4: The Final Countdown

Of course I paid for it dearly the next day. Work was a disaster. My head hurt, I was snappy and annoying (your average Monday) and could not wait until I could finally get back to Dublin. I met up with Americano the moment I stepped off the bus. I had been nice enough to let him sleep in, while I had to get up at that ungodly hour and spend 8,5 hours whining and moaning. I was so tired, I think that was the first time I fell asleep at work. So that evening – Americano’s last evening in Ireland – he proposed to just stay in, watch a movie, have some dinner and some drinks. I was not unhappy with that plan since I was so dead tired I would have agreed to having my legs slowly boiled on a nice cooking fire on the plains of Nebraska. I did propose to go somewhere, it being his last night in Ireland and all that, and told him he could choose… but he chose to hang with me. So we stayed in, ate some Beef and Guinness pie (without a doubt my favourite Irish food) and after half an hour I didn’t even feel I had hardly slept that night. We stayed up again till 4 AM or thereabouts, telling each other stories, playing songs, being miserable in the knowledge that this was probably our last day together…

Day 3: “Wearing high-heeled Wellies she tiptoed her way into my heart”

The following day was a Sunday, and we decided to go to Howth (rhymes with tooth) on a literary quest. Americano had just read a book that partly takes place on this peninsula (The Ginger Man, very fitting), so naturally he wanted to see the surroundings. (I know it’s just a book, but… it’s a book! How can you say no to that?)

So we took a train (in case you’re wondering, I didn’t tell my landlord about that) and darted our way to Howth (the trains here are called Darts, for some sinister and unknown reason that obviously has no single bearing in reality whatsoever, as they are among the slowest trains that ever crawled their way across an island). It was another incredibly sunny day (for comparison: this morning we have had rain, sunshine, snow, sunshine again, and I’m pretty sure it’ll be hailing by the time I have my next cigarette, and now it's 1PM) and there were a lot of tourists as well as locals on their way to this seaside stroll.

Howth is a small village by the ocean, with incredible cliffs and beautiful if somewhat hostile scenery. We decided to take the easy road and not the steep one with all the steps… which turned out to be a little trail on the side of the mountain through mud and rocks, usually too small to allow two abreast and not always easy per se... Add to that that people were also coming from the other side, and the fact that we could not shut up for two minutes even though the going was quite steep, and you understand we didn’t walk too quickly.

We talked and talked and talked, and rested in between, because that climb was pretty sharp at times. I was quite glad that the weekend before I had bought myself some Wellies (rubber boots, the ones that in Belgium are either green or incredibly expensive, are available here in 100 different colours and patterns, and mine – aside from being black with pink dots and bowties – even have high heels, how cool is that!) When we finally reached the outer point of the trail, the sun was almost going down. So naturally we hung around to watch the sunset… at the risk of sounding like a bad cliché: it was magical. No sunrise or sunset has been the same since then, and I have to get up pretty early and have seen quite a few sunrises in the last months… We talked and talked and talked. It seemed the world wasn’t big enough to contain all our thoughts, and my emotions were running blue sky high as well.

Writing all this makes me realize it sounds like a romcom; and maybe that is just what it is, a remnant of too many movies and too many books, a desperate wish for finding romance in the humdrum reality of daily life, searching for signs in a chaotic and unresponsive universe. It doesn’t matter, the intensity of feeling like that is worth all the romcom references in the world.

When the sun had set and we were freezing cold (Americano being the ultimate gentleman lent me his sweater, which I still have) we went to the local pub (think it was the only one in the entire place) where he ate mussels for the first time. Being from Belgium I’m practically raised on mussels, and it was so sweet to see him discover how to use a mussel to eat the others with (the Irish have great mussels, a little harder and more flavoured than Belgian mussels, but unfortunately the Irish mussels seem to be less plentiful… they don’t automatically give you a kilo or more, but just one plate… whoever invented that crazy idea should be shot).

After some star-gazing we caught the last train home, and despite having to get up the next day at 5.15 AM, the last thing I wanted to do was sleep.   

The Wanderings of American Hero

So the next day… no, I won’t bore you with all the juicy details… I am counting on your imagination to do the job for me, though I know in some cases that could turn out to be quite dirty. Suffice to say that when we finally decided to leave the bedroom we were happy, hungry and quite hung over. So I took a shower and when I went back to my room I ran into my landlord who had sobered up enough to resume his plan of getting me to sleep with him and was actually capable of enough coherent thought to think up a plan. He asked me if I wanted to visit Galway with him, I think it was. I don’t think he knew that the guy he’d introduced me to was lying in my bed at that very moment. So I politely declined his lovely offer to take a train somewhere and told him I’d just hang out in the city that Saturday. A couple of minutes later the Americano walked out of my room (he does have a name, but that will just be disclosed on a need-to-know basis, for propriety’s sake… as if I ever cared for propriety. Anonymity’s sake maybe? For now he will just be Americano to you, his favourite coffee by the way).  My landlord seemed surprised, although he didn’t show any overt animosity toward Americano. After the initial hello’s however, you could see his brain cells starting to work again, and he suddenly asked, with a big grin on his face: “How was she?” I was shocked, mortified even! (I always thought of mortification as a state mostly felt by utter prudes, but in this instant I completely support its usage in characterizing my state of mind at the time. I should have known though, my landlord is the sort of guy that introduced me to his friends and told them I was a great ride. Iieeuuuww… as if he would ever find out!) So I played it cool, raised one eyebrow, and said disdainfully to my landlord: “Seriously?” Then I walked out the door. Americano followed me, glad to be out of this overly tense hallway encounter and probably thoroughly confused. (The day before he had told me that my landlord had implied that I was his girlfriend instead of his roommate… that man is so totally insane, after the entire showdown I went to the website where I had found his ad, and mailed them to say they shouldn’t post his ads anymore. Two days later, they did just that and now he’s got a new tenant. Life is very unfair sometimes.)

After we had escaped the freaky gnome that calls himself human when he can still articulate, we started looking for a nice place to eat breakfast. Since I’d only arrived two weeks before and he had just been in Dublin a couple of days, we didn’t really know where we were going, and it didn’t help that we were constantly distracting each other with talk about Ireland, Dublin, literary references, and so on. I think it took us about an hour or more to find a nice place to break our fast, which by that time was making itself felt. Didn’t really matter, because for a change the incredibly rainy country of Ireland had decided to give the clouds a well-deserved rest, and the weather was uncharacteristically gorgeous. Feeling as though the weathergods were smiling down on us, we decided to go visit Phoenix Park after we had finally finished our breakfast.

Now, Phoenix Park is renowned for being one of the largest parks in the world. So when we had walked through it, had sat down on a bench overlooking the area and had climbed a tiny hill and saw some interesting rock formations, I did wonder why its reputation was so widespread (that evening we told someone where we’d been and he replied with a casual: “Oh, did you get to see the deer?” Deer? In a park that size? Evidently we had not noticed anything of the sort, and we were quite flabbergasted by the way we had completely failed to notice any wildlife whatsoever. Apparently we had also failed to notice the other 5 odd square kilometers of park… guess we were a tiny bit distracted). 

Afterwards we visited an old Irish pub to warm ourselves up a little, because although the sun was still shining lustily Ireland is quite damp and no warmth ever seems to linger longer than 5 minutes. This pub was not the standard tourist’s pub however. Instead of a bunch of drunken Spaniards or muttering Germans, we found there was no one in the bar apart from a few locals, who were all very surprised about seeing a girl walk through the door. Giving them my most winning smile I ordered a cup of tea, and the locals all directed their attention back to the TV-screen which was featuring some sport or other. I guess my most winning smile is not really the way to make new friends… The bartender, an old, quite bald man who was – typically – wiping some glasses with a slightly dirty rag, almost dropped the glass he was cleaning – which would have been a kindness to all future patrons – when he saw two strangers walking in and after some head-shaking served me my tea in a rather grubby glass, luckily not the one he’d been cleaning earlier. I wonder why there are bars like this all over the world. Do they duplicate them or something, landlord and all? The interior may be specific to the country, but apart from that in every town there seems to be a bar only frequented by locals, with a weird bald owner and a grimy rag, reeking of detergent… in Ireland, one of the first countries to introduce the smoking ban in bars and pubs, the smell of stale cigarette smoke still permeates the wooden beams and musty carpets. It rises out of the cushions and wafts from the bar, though that particular fresh breeze has to contend with the smell of stale ale that also oozes from the general drinks serving area.

I won’t bore you either with the details of our conversation. After another couple of hours of busy talking and mostly freakishly agreeing with each other, or disagreeing in a very agreeable manner, we continued our little Ulysses throughout the rest of Dublin, had a bite to eat and made plans with one of my colleagues to go out that night. Now came the tricky part. We’d been walking hand in hand practically all day (it was cold, that’s all, no ulterior motives whatsoever). We’d been kissing and making puppy dog eyes at each other until it would have exasperated Shakespeare himself, and that boy went theatrical in his love descriptions. In a town where no one knows you it doesn’t really present a problem. But now we would be interacting with a known acquaintance, someone I would see again next Monday. Do we hold hands? Are we allowed to kiss? It felt a bit weird, so at first we tried to keep the touching to a minimum. Then we just touched behind my colleague’s back. Then we started kissing behind his back. Before the night had gotten an hour shorter, the colleague asked me how we would deal with our relationship, my “boyfriend” going back to America and all… I suck at undercover.

Then we got to the same point in space, only 24 hours later. Quickly it became clear that this was still not the spot to enjoy a leisurely chat and a sweet kiss. Claiming fatigue from the night before (not completely unfounded in reality) we made our way home, stopping on the way to pick up the world’s worst burgers. We crawled back into bed and wished we never had to leave it again… Told you it would be corny.

Runaway Plane

This is a story about L... no, scratch that. It’s too soon to start defining these subtle but oh so sweet feelings. Let’s say this is a story about romance. Or rather Romance, since the regular boy meets girl theme is interspersed with references, notes and add-ons to that most cheesy of styles…

So, once upon a time… there was a bar. And a girl that went out for a well-earned drink on a Friday night, having no clue whatsoever what that drink would lead to...

Day one:

I walked into the bar. I was only a couple of hours late, so earlier than usual. I looked around for my landlord, since he was the only one I knew around here and since he had so cordially invited me after work to pursue his only interest. I couldn’t find him on the ground floor however, so I went upstairs and checked the first floor. Still nowhere to be seen, so I went up to the second, the third and even the fourth floor. Geez, how big was this bar? And every floor has its own bar and beers… felt like I died and went to beer heaven, only the escalators weren’t working. Finally I found him, outside. Obviously. He was talking to some guy, that I figured to be Irish because he really looked the part. Auburn hair, red beard, and the obligatory green cap that makes all Irishmen look like Paddy O’Connel. Cute though. Quite cute indeed. So I asked him where he was from, and to my surprise he wasn’t Irish at all but American. I always like Americans, they seem so naïve… so I asked him what he did for a living. I wasn’t expecting the next answer either, he told me: ‘I’m a writer.’ An American writer? Does such a thing still exist? I thought they all died out when Poe finally croaked, alone and delirious in an old hospital a thousand miles from home. But I’ve known plenty of writers, or rather would-be writers, so I wasn’t going to be fooled by this one, who still looked young enough to be in college. I asked him what kind of things he wrote, and he told me he’d already published one novel and a book of poetry, and that he was now doing research for his second novel. Published? I could not believe my ears, and was kind of struck dumb which is quite a feat for me. My landlord took advantage of my sudden shock to steer the conversation and the guy away from me, and I was forced to think of cunning and inconspicuous ways to strike up this fascinating conversation again. Problem is, the moment I really want to talk to someone I do not know for the life of me what to say. My mind, which usually keeps me up late at night whirring away like a crazed mosquito inside the bed netting, draws a complete blank when forced to think of something interesting to say. And when he started talking and laughing with this other girl who was not just racking her brains about what to say next, I sort of gave up on it, and resigned myself to thinking yet another man didn’t like me (something I know for sure is purely because I’m too smart, pretty, sexy and rich, all qualities that make men notoriously insecure around the vibrant social dragonfly that I call myself).

By now my landlord had consumed enough alcohol to keep the Earth from moving, which might be for the best cause he was moving enough for the both of them. He asked me if I wanted to share a cab home, but I graciously declined, it being only 12 o’clock for crying out loud! On a Friday! Wild horses couldn’t drag me home right now, and certainly not some overweight ugly drunk Scandinavian guy that was already wasted after two pints, yet still didn’t know when to call it quits. So I joined these two girls that seemed like a load of fun, and I finally saw my chance to say something to the American, who was still hanging around with our rag-tag band of crazy smokers outside the bar. The comment I had been trying to come up with for the last hour or something was pretty nifty, even if I say so myself… I asked him if he wanted to come with us to the club. I know, A-class material, isn’t it? Anyway, he said yes, so I finally had another chance to have a chat with one of the most intriguing persons I’d met since coming here. Unfortunately by now I had already been plucking myself some Dutch courage, and lots of it, and though the beer is not that heavy around here, it does come in pints which you have to finish fairly quickly of course, otherwise they’ll get warm. So my next conversation attempts started out like good ideas in my head, and turned into idiotic mumblings when I tried to get them out of my mouth. So I just followed the others and tried not to think about intellectual topics and famous quotes. By then we had arrived at the club, and the Americano had started dancing with the girl he had been talking to earlier. Oh well, I couldn’t blame him, she was cute and did obviously not get completely tongue-tied just by the idea of talking to an interesting guy.

I did manage a few minutes of conversation though, but obviously a club with loud music is not the place to start questioning the meaning of life. I did think up another brilliant question though, namely: “How long will you be staying in Ireland?” Unfortunately the acoustics, though perfectly suited to hearing yet another rendition of Jon Bon Jovi’s greatest hits, is not one for subtle innuendos in areas like grammar and vocabulary, so when he replied with “Three months,” I was quite happy, since that was about the amount of time I’d be staying in sunny Ireland. A nice holiday romance, I was looking forward to it already. So I asked him: “Wow, me too, when are you going back?” to which he casually replied: “Next Tuesday.”

Next Tuesday? Already? That hardly seemed enough time for foreplay, let alone a full-blown holiday romance! Still, the more I talked to him, or at least shouted in his ear, the more intrigued I was, so when we were outside smoking again, and resting our ears a little, and … oh well, to be honest, any excuse would have gotten me outside with him at that point, I decided to chance it. I mean, I knew no one there, this guy would be leaving in four days’ time and it’s not as if a lot of people know me in America, so the worst that could happen was that a bunch of strangers knew me as the crazy stalker-girl from Dublin. I’ve had people call me a lot worse than that, most of them my friends. What also might have been a deciding factor in the lacing of the boots department was another chorus of “It’s my life” playing in the background. It’s now or never, I thought, he’s going back to the States in just four days, you might as well ask someone out on a date for once in your life, nobody will ever know anyway if he should say no. So I asked him out for coffee the next day. I don’t even like coffee, can’t stand the smell of it, and trendy coffeehouses fill me with a dread akin to the chills I get when going to the dentist’s. But I figured, he’s American, he’ll probably like coffee, and jumping directly to dinner and a movie and some hot sex and marriage and divorce later on might be a bit much… Plus, like I said, this was the first time ever I asked someone out, so I was just going on what I know from American TV-shows, and coffee is the “non-relationship based drink of choice”. Anyway, he said yes. Damn, now I was going to have to find a trendy coffee shop that didn’t come with little packs of green stuff in Amsterdam… but that smoking break we didn’t arrive at making a decent date, so when I asked one of the pleasantly crazy chicks her phone number so we could go out again the next weekend, I asked him his number at the same time… I’m not saying I set it all up! It was pure coincidence, I promise. But the number exchange went far from smooth, and by this time I was already flush with Dutch courage, or rather Irish, because I wouldn’t even touch the Dutch beer in Holland with a ten-foot pole, let alone abroad where so many nice beers remained untasted.

Out for a smoke we went again… and to yet another rendering of “It’s my life” – the most often played song in Ireland after “Wild Rover” and “Danny Boy” I figured what the hell. I told him I liked him, and that I would be sorry to see him go without having had a chance of talking about books and stuff… I’m such a smooth talker. Luckily he replied he liked me too, which was a relief and a conversation killer at the same time. Uncomfortable silences are never my forte, so I just said something like too bad you’ll be going so soon already. Booze had made me overcome a lot of my shyness, since I could hardly remember how to say anything at all, let alone something deep and interesting and preferably referring to a great work in literature. By this time, we were already on our fourth cigarette break, because we both felt we’d rather talk to each other than shout into the empty chaos loud music creates in tortured eardrums. I turned to him and smiled a little wistfully, to let him know I meant it, and before I knew it I was kissing him, or he was kissing me, it doesn’t matter who started, it just went on and on and was so soft, like a baby’s kisses or the feeling you have when the dentist’s anesthesia wears off (again with the dentist! Puts it all into painful perspective I suppose). Maybe he drugged me… I can only hope.

In the spirit of whirlwind romance, and because he would only be staying another three days after that Friday, I did something the slightest idea of which would normally not even begin to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind: I took him home with me (hehe).

To be continued…

The dullest job in the world... in one part because no one should have to read more than one part about this.

I was going to write about a very nice thing that happened to me while visiting Ireland, but due to recent circumstances, I will first log a blog about my job here. As some of you know, I have accepted a job at one of the major IT companies. I was hoping to learn a little more about computers during my stay here, but turns out I have only learned to use one particular system, and I haven’t mastered that one very well either…

When I first applied for some jobs abroad, one company was very keen on having me. I had just put my CV online, and I received more than 5 calls the first day. Apparently my knowledge of Dutch, pretty standard in Belgium, is a certified way of getting a job at a helpdesk or callcenter in Ireland. I just went with the first company that offered me a job, because the girl that wanted to hire me was pretty nice and because the company seemed quite eager to have me on board. I even received a telephone call from a different girl, same agency, for the same job.

So I did all my interviews. I even passed the French one without major difficulties… Only after I had done all my tests and they had confirmed their job offer did they ask me to do a test to check my computer skills. Seems like a topsy-turvy world to me, but I was quite happy with that. The computer test was just to check what level of training I had to go to.

When I arrived in Dublin though I think they must have checked that last test, and found out I don’t know anything about computers… I should have known they would catch on to that sooner or later. So they offered me a job at the helpdesk for business-clients, which involves no troubleshooting, you just handle a computer program to transfer calls from the first telephone call to the troubleshooter in question.

So I got to work on my first day, a bit apprehensive yet still quite eager, and I went to my first morning of training with a number of other people. I was quite surprised when it turned out that after lunch, I was the only one that was to be training at an entirely different department. The first morning was just a general intake, which involved things like dress code (that no one follows), security measures (that no one takes seriously), and an explanation about taxes, pay-checks, bank accounts and the like (that no one understood). All of us newbies were non-native speakers of English, apart from one, and when this girl came in and told us in five minutes flat how to fill out our official forms, and where to send them, even the English guy didn’t understand completely. So he asked her to repeat it, and she stormed out saying she would ask our regular trainer to help us idiots with the filling out of five different forms that all had to go somewhere else. The regular trainer returned, and explained in mono-syllabic words how, when and where these forms should be processed.

After lunch my new team leader was supposed to pick me up. I waited for about an hour until she finally came to get me, and I followed her to this office hidden behind the ink-cartridge production department. There was no one else that was starting training at that point, so they just told me to sit in with other people and look at what they were doing. One of my new colleagues told me to come sit with her, she would show me the system, so when I sat down I was quite surprised that she turned to her friend and started yapping away and gossiping about all our other colleagues for about 15 minutes. I soon found out that if I actually wanted to learn something this was the worst person to sit next to, and still my coach kept telling me to watch what the girl was doing. This girl had an interesting way of explaining: she just went like: “So, you click on this, then you click on that, then this button and you select that option, and then you send it through.” Excuse me? Is there a logic to this system, or a reason to press one button and not another? But all my questions were answered with a “You just do.”

So I pottered around for a bit, trying to get the system. After a couple of days the official trainer came up to me and asked me to sit in on a training session with some Scandinavian people, who use an entirely different system and were already in their second and third week of training. Needless to say, I would have preferred to start at the beginning… Call me crazy if you like. A couple of days later I finally received the initial introduction training. Though the trainer is a nice girl, she rather believes too much in hands-on experience. A training session starts with her accessing her laptop, doing her job while constantly uttering comments, often sotto voce, and explaining with another country’s system what I am supposed to be doing. I’ve had better trainings… in kindergarten. I especially liked the bit of our first beginner’s training session, when after a half an hour she finally had her laptop running and then went out for a smoke…

After two weeks of ‘training’ I had to do my test. By now I had more or less mastered the system, and everyone was very patient with me while I was doing the test. Someone can sit behind you while you’re taking it, and you’re allowed to ask questions, so there really wasn’t any way you could fail it (though some of my colleagues have, repeatedly, or so I heard). I panicked a bit during my French test, but got through it in the end. I figured now I would start working. No, now I was ready for another two weeks of training.

Also, with the department moving back to Belgium, there was only so much to do in a day. I have time to update my Facebook status, answer my emails, write a blog… Still there is one hour that fills me with dread… at 4 PM Irish time the Belgian shift ends, and the calls are being transferred back to us… including the Indians. Though a nice people an sich, having an Indian guy on the other end of a Transatlantic telephone connection is not the best part of your day. They never tell you what they want, or they tell you the same thing over and over again. “Yes, I am calling for company, can you give me ticket?” “Sure, in 10 minutes or so, can you give me your serial number please?” “I need ticket.” “Yes, I understand that, but first I need a serial number so we know which part of our gigantic product line is faulty.” “Ah, yes, EVA Proliant 66 5…” “No sir, that is not the serial number, and we do have a few of those Proliants out there… I really must insist on a serial number.” “Ok, 1035…” “No, that is your Carepack number, but it can work. Let me try that.” “Ok, i also have number 4636...” “So, you have made a case already?” “Yes, I want update on ticket.” Well, if you could have told me this 10 minutes ago I would probably be in a much better mood right now.  

Still, right now it’s quite a cushy job. My phone has not rung all day, I’ve made a total of 6 cases, I have corrected some texts and I have written 3 pages for my blog just today. If only this place wasn’t so terribly dull, I might actually like this job.