Battle Royale, or, Getting a PPS Number

My struggle with Irish beaurocracy has reached the 'epic battle' stage, given the past week's 4 aborted attempts to attain any sort of legal document. Having spent fruitless hours sitting in a room with other wannabe Irish employees, watching the grass grow faster than the numbers were called, I decided to bite the bullet, and arrive at the office BEFORE it opened, thereby being the first person in the building and the first to receive official attention.

So this morning, I climbed out of bed long before the appointed hour. I should mention that, for reasons that are still very unclear, the office does not open until 9.30 am, making it challenging for us working types to visit it at all. However, I got myself ready, hopped on the bus, and was standing in front of the office at 8.30, a full hour before any doors would open. You will imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered a small mass of people already milling about in front of the doors. Nor were these people in any sort of order; I have experienced the British/Irish obsession with 'queueing', but my fellow document-seekers seemed to be taking a leaf out of the Italian playbook. I suppose that makes sense, as not a one of us was Irish, but the small mass of people was a full scale mob by 9.15, and tensions were running high.

At 9.30 on the dot, a man appeared on the opposite side of the glass, and his unlocking of the doors was akin to the firing of a starter pistol. As soon as that door opened, every member of the now sizable crowd tried to be the first person through it, regardless of how far away they stood. A big Russian man barreled his way towards the doors, only to be stopped cold by a very fashionably dressed Japanese woman, who drove one of her stilettos into his foot. An Indian man, trapped at the back of the melee, hoisted his wife on his shoulders and prepared to launch her over the heads of the crowd. Two Chinese women were delivering an onslaught of kung fu to a very tall Malawian man, who was trying to fend them off while still holding a smaller man back from the doors by the scruff of his collar. Trying to stay aloof from the fracas (while still trying to get through the doors as quickly as possible), I trod carefully among the battling groups. I saw the Indian woman, having vaulted to the front, now held in a headlock by a woman in a headscarf. The only other American besides myself was dishing out Chuck Norris-style roundhouse kicks, and I utilized his circle of destruction to squeeze myself between two Polish women and throw myself inside the building.

Yet the contest was far from over. Once inside the building, I had to join the 10 kilometer sprint to the desk handing out numbers. It was at this point that I gave up on any sort of sportsmanship, and elbowed the man next to me in the liver. The tiny woman who somehow managed to beat me to the desk had managed to break the number-dispenser, so I had to repair it while fending off other rabid PPS-seekers. At the end of all this, I managed to emerge with number 5, not a bad showing considering that there were still people outside the doors fighting to get in.

Once I had the number and was properly seated in the wounded tent- I mean, waiting area, it took all of 7 minutes to apply for the number. Grand! I thought, but it turns out I still have to wait 6 to 10 days to get the number itself. That is, unless I want to go back to pick it up...

The Employment Duel

Today marked my first day as an employee of yet another Irish university, this time Trinity College Dublin. Like UCD, Trinity has chosen to entrust me with the minds of young people. These people, however, are a bit younger than my students at UCD. Mainly because they are 12. This job is not in the classroom, but in the lab, specifically, the neuroscience lab at the Lloyd Institute. I am working on a study that looks at cross-hemispheric attention in children with and without ADHD, using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation.

TMS is probably one of the coolest neurotechnologies, and is fast on its way to joining fMRI as one of my personal favorites. It works by stimulating the neurons in a specific location to fire, allowing the researcher to see the direct behavioral correlate to a specific brain region. We are looking at the motor cortex, so when we hold the coils to anyone's head, we are looking to make his or her fingers twitch. (One side effect of attempting to stimulate this area is uncontrollable blinking every time the machine pulses, due to the proximity of those neural regions. I know, having been a willing test subject myself...)

My first day was a long one, and I left the lab at quarter to 7 this evening, heading home to an evening of translation and correction for the UCD job. Tomorrow, I am off to try my luck (once again) with the Gardai, who (for the small sum of 150 euro) will give me a stamp officially welcoming me as a legal worker in Ireland. I don't know why I can't just pull the same stunt I did in Rome, and opt NOT to have a Permesso di Soggiorno...

Ah, University...

I'm in the middle of my second day of my teaching position at UCD, and thankfully past the beginner's anxiety. Mostly. This morning, at 9am (which forced a very early commute, just in case the buses were running late), I began with Virgil's Aeneid. My class is all male, with the exception of me, which made our discussion of Virgil's presentation of women VERY interesting. I was thrilled, however, because they all participated in the discussion. This is a marked difference from yesterday's class, which saw me facing 15 first years, only one of whom had done the assigned reading...

My second class today was the second-year Latin course. We translated a letter of Cicero, and it is clear that the levels of comprehension are widely varied. Two of the women in the Latin course are actually sisters, and both are doing MAs. They are in their mid to late 50s, and neither told me that they were sisters until the end of class. Thus, when they were bickering during the middle of translating, I was wondering what kind of animosity I would have to mediate in the rest of the semester. Both of them are very nice, though, and I'm actually excited to be doing more translation with this class.

It is wonderful to be back on a college campus. Even half a world away from my own higher institution of learning, the feeling of the campus is the same.

Is ait an mac an saol

This phrase, which I cannot even begin to write phonetically, is an Irish/Gaelic saying that basically means, "Life is strange," and I could think of no better way to christen my chronicle of life in the Hibernian Land than to give it this title.

Originally, I had thought to rely once again on my favorite language, Latin, to title this blog, but given that the Romans never made it to Ireland (a country so cold and miserable that they called it "the winter land," and never bothered to invade), it didn't seem fitting. Now, having very VERY recently arrived in Dublin Airport, I am looking out at the drenched green landscape, getting ready for my first day of work, and thinking how unexpected it is to be here. So searching for an Irish phrase to describe the coming months, I found "Is ait an mac an saol," and knew that it is that sentiment exactly that keeps my eyes smiling, however Irish (or not) they may be...