bang! bang! bang!

Fireworks are illegal in Ireland, apparently. But that sure as heck doesn't stop them using them. They seem to be on sale all over the place and if you go into residential areas, you can hear them already.

So I guess Hallow'een is a really big deal here. I'll be saving my pennies till the end of the month so that I can go out and have some fun without having to worry about money too much.

Following my brief but succesful venture forth on a bicycle last week, I've done it again.



As you can see, the bikes are quite chunky, but they are none the worse for that. I see some chicks going around town with bikes they've personalised with artificial flowers and stuff. I wonder if people are going to do that sort of thing with these? Wouldn't that be fun?

Anyway, because of the financial situation, this weekend I'm having some friends over tomorrow night. We're going to watch a DVD and eat. Thankfully, Bepe is cooking. He is bringing along some buddies who, I think, are coming less for the free food and more in the hope of meeting some Irish women (the friends are Irish gals from my department). Lamentably, Bepe's girlfriend will be there too. You can't have everything.

I have already done some of the grocery shopping for the weekend on what is one of my favourite streets in the city, Moore Street. While you would hardly call it elegant, I love it, from the old ladies touting illegal fireworks from battered prams, to the fruit and vegetable stands, to the Chinese Lotto outfits to the mall where you can get all sorts of exotic ingredients. It feels so big-city-real but also very Irish. And you can have the best conversations with the people who work there.

"Dese Africans," one woman said (I am trying to write in Dublinese). "They are great cooks. "There was a fella here with a bunch of quare stuff and I asked him how you'd cook a yoke like that and didn't he come back the next day and he'd only brought me a Tupperware dish with the meat and the sauce in it and I brought it home and fecked it in the Microwave and it was only delicious."

If I'm feeling motivated enough and don't have a hangover, on Sunday I'm going to go here: The Huge Lane. Classical music is not necessarily my usual thing, but I've been told its free and, as I said, money is a bit of an issue for me right now!