“Will you stop this foolishness?”

So. Sam the Eagle fans.

I have a bone to pick with you.

Who are you? Where have you come from? Why the obsession with Sam the Eagle?

I see what you’re doing with your google searches for Sam.

You’re just using me. I know that.

Well, here you go. Take your pictures of Sam. Don’t spare a thought for me! I’ll be left emotionally scarred.
But I’ll survive.

I can deal. I’m a classy bird. Like Sam.

“Ich hab’ keine Lust etwas zu kauen…”

…denn ich hab’ keine lust es zu verdauen.

If I was a pretentious, hip, pseudo-theatre fag, I’d give you my endless apologies and a picture of my latest mashed potato outfit, complete with unflattering patterned tights.

Instead I’m going to leave you wondering what Lord Mandelson has planned in revenge.

Also, maybe, a proper post, soon, loves.

“Well in five years time we could be walking round a zoo…”

I’m going to the ZOO today. And it’s SUNNY.

My goodness, let’s not jinx it… (Is spring here?)

“I can cry like Roger, it’s just a shame I can’t play like him.”

As much as I love this man-

I’d really love to have seen Andy win.

Final score: 6 – 3, 6 – 4, 7 – 6 to Federer. That final set was an absolute edge-of-the-seat affair. Maybe third-time against Roger in the future will prove lucky…!

And the tears? Just made me go from supporting him to loving him. Here’s to 2010, Muzza.

“China looks like chicken! Why you dont know this?”

So today I found the rather interesting website Things I have learned in my life -

People literally post something they have learned in their lives, along with a pictures. I like pictures. I also like pearls of wisdom. Some things are always worth knowing. Some things we learn the hard way.
Well unless you have amazing instinct and forsight – or you just follow common sense.

But I like to tell myself it’s not as fun that way. Because otherwise I’d feel a bit daft most of the time…
I tend to learn by, er, experience. You learn by your mistakes, so they say. Or in other cases, your drunk slightly tipsy German teacher.

10 Things I Have Learned The Hard Way or From Others’ Advice:

1. It doesn’t matter if coffee perks you up. Sometimes that 6AM flight with 1 hour’s sleep will just make you sick, when coffee and the hour-long bus ride after are thrown in.

2. Just because you like black, and you like baked beans, and black beans look like black baked beans, doesn’t mean you’ll like black bean sauce. (Tesco lies in general anyway…)

3. Don’t give money to the gypsies on the street corner. They’ll just give it to their pimps. (So says said Germany teacher.)

4. Just because your Chinese friend, who gets 100% in her honours-maths tests, says you can do well in honours maths, doesn’t mean you will. In fact, the universe may just make you fail anyway, because of her comment.

5. Just because you think fake dildos and French liquer are funny when Rammstein use them, doesn’t necessarily mean your friends will think the same. In fact they may just stop trusting your judgement all-together.

6. Don’t listen to Liverpool fans when they say “Champions of Europe… again!” They’ll end up having the season from hell anyway.

7. Don’t brag about your football team constantly. Or you will have the season from hell.

8. The uber-’stylish’ individual girl may be wearing a pretty dress, but she is also freezing. Take solace in your leather jacket and huge grey hoody, and laugh, silently.

9. Sometimes you will enjoy watching Snow White more than your 3 year old nieces. Kids these days don’t have taste…

10. Don’t bother drawing a map of Asia for your Chinese friend who doesn’t understand what you mean by “India”. She’ll just complain that you drew China wrong, and here, it looks like a chicken, why didn’t you know that?

…common sense? pah…

Happy New Yea-

-oh wait that was a week ago.

Dear oh dear. Considering a missed the boat, I won’t be dishing out the obligatory-self-examination that some post every year.
This time last year I was dying to engage in such behaviour – “Fantastic! I can rant about how bleedin’ deadly me life is!”

- except 1) I don’t have a propa bleedin Dublin accent. And 2) my “deadly” relationship that I was in came to a halt about a three days after New Year’s ’08/09.

Oops.

Embarassed, I realised that the uplifting gloat-post wouldn’t work as well, as a resident of the doldrums. So instead I got on with my life. I spent the first part of the year arseing around in Transition Year, then spent my summer arseing around some more (June: festival season, July: hanging around Freemason steps and random walks through Rialto, August: arseing around in England), and then I spent the last part of the year arseing around pretending to do real work in 5th year.

I say arseing around in 5th year, what I mean is, tearing my hair out insisting that, yes, I can actually do honours maths. Turns out, no, I can’t really do honours maths. You start to sense a stink about the whole thing, when your friend who gets 100% in her honours maths tests, is telling you “but no! It’s so easy!”

So here I am in 2010. Do I have New Year’s Resolutions? Yes. But if I told you what they were, you’d have the capacity to hold me to them, and then I’d never be able to sneakily give up on the sly. I could do a cross-examination of how I’ve grown (or shrunk) as a person over the past year. I could complain about how irritating people are, and how I’d rather have all of my teeth pulled out, than listen to them rant about their originality-

I could, but I have an irrational fear of my dentist. Plus having my teeth pulled out may be a bit counter-productive in the braces-shenanigans.
In total? 2009 was a good year. It’ll be memorable in its own way.

In the mean time, here’s a picture of a security guard perving on Marat Safin:

you’d totally do it too.

“I am not a singer or a rock star. Tennis is Tennis. If you want to see a clown, go to a circus.”

So last weekend I came across this in a bookshop, and bought it-

Marat Safin is officially retired from professional tennis.

That’s it. Done.

If you have no interest in tennis whatsoever, and don’t know your Rafa from your Rogi, you probably haven’t a clue what I’m on about. But if you have even a passing interest, you most likely have some vague idea of who Marat Safin is, at least.

His retirement means that the ATP circuit is now minus racquet smashing, cursing the hawkeye, arguing with line judges, and essentially, a major character. I know that a lot of people are sad to see ol’ Sunshine leave -and I most definitely am one of them.

Unfortunately, for those around me in my daily life, I am subject to rants about many things, whether it be those damn first years running ruckus (previous problem of filling the library? Yeah, complete turn around. Expect post on effective use of shotguns in librarianship one of these days), or the random civil servant that yelled at me over the weekend (I wish I was making this up), the rants happen, and every so often, they involve tennis.

Did you SEE the final? It went on for five hours, third year in a row, felt like it was going to go on forever, especially what with both Roddick AND Federer droppings game and set points all over the gaff like that, which I definitely was not expecting from Roddick, you’d totally think he’d be on the ball – quite literally – considering this was his big year and everything, and wth was up anyway with everyone suddenly being all RODDICK!YEAH!???like they have actually watched a match of his in their lives, Roger deserved this so much more, he’s been working for this, did you SEE the semis…?

And so on.

Not being a regular player of tennis, I can’t really comment on technical play of course, so I’m admirer of the aesthetic point to tennis (no, believe it or not, I’m not sitting there waiting for Dmitry Tursunov to take off his shirt between games. Much).
However, I have sat watching the live score online for matches. When Marat Safin was playing his quarter-final match at Wimbledon in 2008, the BBC decided not to show it. We don’t have Sky.
To the internets!
I sat watching the damn score for… the remainder of the last set, anyway. The damn Russian won, and I shouted out loud in joy. Family thought some vagabond had jumped through the window upstairs, when in reality, I was just cheering on a vagabond Russian.

As the 2009 tennis season officially draws to a close, I’ll tune back in January to find a Safin-less tennis circuit. There is a genuine regret here in seeing him go – as one of the most intelligent players in tennis, Marat gave the most interesting, entertaining, and at times, heart-felt interviews, as well as moments on court. He could be tear-jerkingly-funny. He could be heart-breakingly-honest. There were times such as mooning a crowd, or turning up to a match with a black-eye, that will stick in the memory. As cliched as it may sound, one really did feel as if they had got to know Marat. Of course, he was also a gifted tennis player, but as a self-confessed perfectionist, it’s at once hard, but still easy, to understand why he seemed to have a difficult relationship with playing on the circuit. Unless you’re Federer or Nadal, and eat, breathe, and sleep tennis, then it would turn into a strain after a while.

So what path will the great entertainer take now? A question that the press hounded him with throughout the 2009 season – but it would seem he’s running for vice-president for the Russian Olympics committee.

“I’m ambitious. I want to achieve some things. I’m different from another person who want to lay back and do nothing for rest of the life and talk nonsense on ESPN, talk about my [2000 U.S. Open final] match against [Pete] Sampras. I will not do that.”

Whatever Marat Safin does, laying around, or keeping that involvement in sport, I doubt we’ll be saying a permanent goodbye just yet, with the news that he’ll be representing Team Russia in an exhibition tournament next year.

In the meanwhile, I have my new tumblr to keep up to date with the, er, aesthetic side of tennis.

I <3 Switzerland

Legends.

Though I’m sensing a real reason as to why they’re not in the EU…

I am craving…

and

and most of all…

…what you see there is an example of the most divine hot chocolate ever to be served 3.80. It can be found at Fassbender & Rausch in Berlin. They literally take a brick of chocolate, melt it, and add cream and milk. Divine, incredibly decadent, and leaves you full for a good four hours.

My latest baking obsession, however, is this creature:

Oh goodness. 5th year was never destined to take the front seat in the first place, was it?

Not quite Breakfast Club, just a bit The Great Library Misery

My name’s Evie, and I am a librarian.

There. I said it. It’s out.

In a recent two minute break to breathe, I realised just how much I’m beginning to emulate the stereotype of Nerd Camp-alumni, when it occurred to me that I’m now juggling student council duties with librarian duties. I’m still only just understanding maths though, so it’s okay yet…

For a long time being one of the school librarians was a rare thing; the (slightly batty) teacher who takes charge of the library, recently expressed her joy that there were so many of us this year.
I should now point out the fact that the 9 librarians (originally 10, one relocated to Donegal) started out as a group of friends who signed up to the job last year as a bit of craic. It was TY. We were fumbling for something to do for Gaisce. We had nothing else to do at lunch.

What started originally as a bit of fun to occupy ourselves, though, has now evolved into something that we’ve began putting as much effort as possible into.

The fact with the library at our school, is that it’s too small, too out-dated, and it’s tucked away forlornly in a forgotten corner of the school. First years use it when they’re feverishly attempting to get their all-important homework done. It’s occasionally used for rare events. It’s otherwise deemed unimportant, and this is probably why the school management has failed to do anything about it. I often get the feeling they’ve forgotten about it, too.

The library should be a focal point in the school. It should be the school’s centre for information. It should be somewhere the students can come to read, to study, to look something up, to borrow a book. As it stands, maybe 6 books are borrowed each month. The majority of books are outdated, and – as interesting as old books are to people who are true bibliophiles – are just not being taken note of anymore. We were recently dictated to cull the number of books to as few as reasonably possible.

Out go the old encyclopaedias. The battered copies of Enid Blyton. The beleaguered folders on the EU. The science department has sent out the order to get rid of all the science books. Reason being “they’re out of the date”.

Out-dated. Out of date. You can correctly pinpoint the slip in the library’s usage to this terminology.

What we really need to do is fix that. How do we bring the library up to date? How do we convince the students that it’s not just a dusty, slightly musty-smelling place to study at a last resort? Especially when the heaters barely work, and the security shutters are always half-shut, cloaking the place in darkness…

The slightly-batty teacher had high hopes. Apparently there were plans to revamp the place, refurbish it, dispose of the ancient bookcases that are half-empty and take up too much room. A section of the room (because the library is just a room, half the size of a classroom) was to be transformed into an IT area. The rest of the space was to hold all the new books she plans to buy in.
But the management saw greater urgency in refurbishing the much older toilets, so the plans for the library have been shelved for now, and so we’re back to square one.

At a recent meeting in the library, we were discussing just what can we do now? There are a few things. A light at the end of the tunnel.

We’re to go ahead with the book cull (the nerd in me still protests to this, but however). Tidy things up, dispose of the creepy dried floral arrangements. We pointed out the need to also dispose of the ancient computer that doesn’t work, and replace it with the one that does (this is also tucked away, forgotten. Yes, there’s a theme running here…)

We’re making efforts to buy in books that are current. In-date science books. Books that people want to read – even if they’re not the classics. We’re going to have subscriptions to National Geographic and The Economist, in an effort to encourage students to take some interest in current affairs…

The suggestion of improving the careers section is also going to be taken up, finally. There’s a prospectus for UCD sciences, 1997. And the beleaguered folders about the EU. And the teachers wonder why students look at them confusion when they suggest using the school library to “research careers”…

The library needs to just up activity. Let’s hold more lunch-time debates, which went down as quite a success with junior students last year. Hopefully a go-ahead for a planned Model UN group will enable the library to be used as a place of discussion.

Slightly-batty teacher has plans for some emulsion-paint and a lunch time, too…

Ultimately, there’s only so much we can do in our position as the 9 librarians, the slightly-batty teacher, and a neglected collection of books. A love of reading is something acquired. You cannot ram it down the throat of a student, which is something the English department has to realise. Incomprehensible Shakespeare, “depressing” classics, “emo” Kavanagh only reminds students why they dislike and shun reading in the first place. It’s about time English teachers began encouraging, and allocating time in class, for people to read books of their own choice. Let the students discover reading at their own pace.

Even if that starts with Twilight…