on the job
so, I’ve started working at a call center here in cork, and today is the first day we are going to be put on the phones. we had been training all last week, and all of the beginning of this week, and we start calling in half an hour. I am somewhat ambivalent about it, not sure if that is a good approach or not, but it seems to be a bit more calming than getting really nervous like some of the other trainees.
will let you know how it all goes tomorrow. 
One of the most striking things I have noticed about living somewhere new is the sheer intensity of it all. when someplace is so familiar that you no longer have to think about how to get home and you can tune out your co-workers chatter or you can predict the crowd that will be at the bar on friday night, it all gets a bit muted, diluted, flat. When every single thing is brand new, unexpected and uncertain, your brain works on a higher frequency, and I think you are more impacted by what actually happens. the mildly unusual becomes more bizarre because it seems so intense.
Talked to a Aussie man this morning, who had curly blond hair and was waiting at my bus stop for the coach to macroom, and he had a charged car battery with him. and he was talking about the earth summit, and george bush, and eating starburst candies. and it all seemed a bit too weird to me.
anyway, the job hunt continues, and I will not get discouraged by the fact that I feel like I’m playing the greatest game in the world in which none of the rules are written down or publicly accepted. I never realized how much canadians like to follow the rules until I stepped into the land of the fiddle. the definition of blarney is “to decieve in a pleasant manner without offending”.
also amusing and worth a look is the cork slang dictionary:
peoples republic of cork — click on the dictionary link. the rest of the website is amusing as well.
one closing word:
the reason this site is at clearbluecup.net is because clearbluecup.com implies a commercial site. and this really is not a commercial site at all, it is a tool to keep this network of people I know together, hence it is at dot net.
