Sunday 07 July 2002

The truth is ...

Well, its like this ...

Oh bugger. The truth is I'm not happy, in fact I'm very sad. I'm fed up and pissed off and frustrated and bored bored bored and verging on depressed. And I wanna go hooooooome.

Now don't panic. I said, don't panic. DON'T PANIC. Blah, maybe I should have started this entry off with that, in multicoloured flashing lights a la The Hitchhiker's Guide ... Hope I didn't scare anybody.

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I'm feeling very very homesick today, missing Australia and all the family and friends and people who've known me since I was a foetus and still love me anyway, bless'em  ... I finally figured out that that's what "home" is, but I had to go 15,000 kms and leave everything and get hitched to a foreigner (hee) who I absolutely adore in every single way to find this out. I'm hoping my mother doesn't call today because I might just ask for the airfare ...

I'm not liking it much here, either. Sure, the whole being in ID limbo/not working/being isolated isn't helping, but there's other stuff. I was planning on writing a facetious entry about what's different - stuff like, I can't find my favourite facial scrub here, and I can't just walk down the street and get my sushi fix blahblahblah - but I don't have the heart (maybe another day, it is kinda funny really). But the issues that are really bugging me, which I touched on in my "What's Belfast really like" entry is the homogeneity of the culture and goddammit, this whole fucking ridiculous Catholic-nationalist/Protestant-loyalist garbage and all the violence and bigotry and hatred and filth. I mean, it is such a load of shit. What I particularly hate is the whole boys-in-a-sandpit mentality of "he started it" "no he did he hit me first" "no it was him waaaaah". Bullshit, all of it. They're all terrorists and criminals and thugs - just forget the current terminology and call them that, for fuck's sake. And maybe get some perspective while you're at it. They're fighting a cause that (a) was started several hundred years ago and (b) in this day and age of the European Union is no longer relevant. Jaysis.

-- expecting a pipe bomb through my window any second --

Did you know you can't be a Catholic and a loyalist at the same time? Church and politics have become that enmeshed that being x religion means your politics are x+1. That's it. Where does that leave a pagan-leftie-femmo-greenie-economic rationalist-commie bastard like me?

And July is a really, really bad month to live in Northern Ireland. We live quite a-ways out of the city, but I've been hearing the army helicopters overhead pretty much nonstop since June; there's been ongoing violence and rioting - and serious shit, guns and blast devices, not just (ha!) petrol bombs and bricks. There's no way the police can, and should, have to handle that. And for an Australian, who has been angered by the lethargic "ah she'll be right mate" attitude of Aussies for most of her life - well, you can figure which I prefer now, and certainly which is healthier. Now when I go for a walk along a main road near where I live there's overt flags and banners and graffiti for [insert paramilitary organisation here], and paint splashed over the street. I didn't know what that meant, a few months ago; now I know that there's been rioting and petrol bombs being thrown blithely about (paint being a nicely flammable component of your common-or-garden petrol bomb).

Yes I knew what I was signing up for. No, I don't have anyone to "blame" but myself. No, I'm not running back to Australia. It's just the reality is a bit different from the occasional snippets and sound bites one gets on the news.

I miss sunshine, and the sea and sandy beaches, and warmth, and space, and parks, and being able to bike and hike without getting bricks thrown at me/being ridden off the road/getting hypothermia. (I went for a walk the other day - this is summer, right - and I was dressed in jeans, warm fuzzy socks and sneakers, a long sleeve t-shirt, a zipped up polartec jacket and an alpaca-mix scarf. And I was still bloody cold. And very wet, because it rained and there's no point having an umbrella this close to the North Atlantic because the wind will turn it inside out like *that*.)

I hate the frigging bathrooms, with no frigging mixer taps and incompetent hot water systems. And pissy half sized little fridges and minute kitchens. Bloody Brits - they've taken the whole Eton-esque character-building logic to an extreme.

And of course I'm really really missing everyone. That more than pissy little fridges, even.

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Sam knows all this of course, and is being incredibly understanding and sympathetic. I think he feels the same about a lot of it; but of course he doesn't really want to leave yet, either. We've always planned to go "back" to Australia and live there, in three-to-five years time anyway, but now is not the time. I just have to hang on until I get my ID, get a job, so we can save; and I have to give this a go, I can't go running back because I could never live with myself.

But oh, I'm just sad. That's the truth.

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Mind you, this did give me a giggle:-

http://www.geekissues.org/quotes/

My favourite quote:-

<splice> wow, irc really loses its luster when you have a girlfriend
<splice> be back much later

Takes me back, alright ....

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