Chapter 5

It's coming to the end of August and still no hint of a job. That being said, the most exciting thing I've applied for recently is to become an Aer Lingus pilot cadet. After applying and failing to get the Masters or the Army Cadets, I'm not going to get my hopes up as much as I did but I'll still try my hardest. Back when I was fifteen or sixteen, I really wanted to be a pilot. I had about five hours in lessons and then stopped when the Leaving Cert stress hit. I figured I'd go and do a course in college that would help me to get a job at the end (HA!), earn a bit of money and then begin on the road to becoming a pilot. Even back in 2004/5/whatever it was, Aer Lingus, Ryanair and all of the others had stopped training up pilots themselves as Cadets. Luckily, and with eerie timing, Aer Lingus have re-opened their Cadet Training Program in order to stop their industrial disputes with their pilots over their rostering issues. So, I filled out their application form, admittedly a little rushed, and tonight I'll be taking part in their online assessments. Last Saturday's Times reported that Aer Lingus had received 1200 applications, and this was before applications had even closed on the Sunday. Wish me luck.

On Tuesday, the bro and I went to Belfast to the 30 Seconds to Mars gig. It was awesome. And, yes, Jared Leto is as hot in real life. It seems he does not age, he looks the same as he was fifteen years ago. This picture describes how unnaturally pretty he is.

You Me at Six were the support and were really good live. During the gig, I said to Alan that I never checked the closing time of the car park where my (well, my mum's) lovely little red Micra was parked. Ah, sure, worst case scenario would be that we'd sleep in the car and drive back to Dublin when the car park opens. But no. It's half eleven when we walk up to the car park and find the car trapped. It seemed so lonely being the only car in the place. The bad thing was, we couldn't access it. There was a huge fence and gates all around the car park. So I ring the mammy telling her not to panic but we were stranded. She tells us to find a hostel. Grand. So we go the pub and had dinner of a pint of Carlsberg and a packet of Tayto. She rings again seeing if we've found a hostel yet. We were like, it's grand, we'll get one, we're just relaxing with pints, chatting to the barman to see if he knew of any hostels nearby, it's grand. It wasn't. Hostels and hotels we all booked up and we didn't get a hostel until 2 in the morning after walking around the whole city, twice. I'd text mum at 1 to say that we found one so that she'd go to bed and stop bugging us. Belfast seems to shut down as soon as it hits the wee hours of the morning, like literally ghost town dead. We stayed in the Linen House Hostel. It smelled. By 8 o'clock, we were back at the car, eating Toffee Crisp Clusters that I'd left there and had been craving since the gig. The car park attendant said it was always the Dublin cars. Also, she only charged us £18 instead of the £33 I was expecting to pay.

Caoimhe had a few of us over to her house for an amazing Veggie Thai Green Curry on Wednesday night. I'd never tried tofu before and she made my introduction to it absolutely yummy. Thanks Caoi!

Chapter 4

It's been a good two weeks since my last post. I spent most of this time in Donegal and Monaghan. The bro and I went up to Donegal for three nights with the Mammy, a little family holiday if you like. I never realised how big the county is. It's also pretty gorgeous with the lovely beaches and mountains and pretty stuff like that. We popped over to Derry one evening. Now, there's a city I'd like to explore when it's not raining. That's the thing about taking holiday breaks in Ireland: you're pretty much guaranteed it's going to rain at least once, no matter the time of year.

This is what Malin Head looks like:

So, I drove back from Donegal on the Friday of the Bank Holiday weekend, worked on the Saturday night and then the Sunday night (which was horrible, cleaning up the kip until half three in the morning) and went to Monaghan on the Monday. I stayed until Saturday then made the hungover drive back to Dublin for work in the evening. I spent Sunday driving around Wicklow with Caoi and Moyne, watched Paul in the evening and that pretty much sums up everything between the last post and now.

I've watched the entire Battlestar Galactica series in this time too. Ciaran has always been at me to watch it "because it's the best series ever" and "it's not really sci-fi". And actually, yeah, it's pretty damn good. Also, I was kinda transfixed by this woman:

And before you ask.....yeah, I would.

The male eye-candy wasn't as good as the female eye-candy. I'd imagine this is the case as their viewership would be mostly male. Oh well. *sigh*

I spent the weekend just gone trying to forget Lollapalooza was happening. I was so tempted to just get on a flight to Chicago. The line-up was amazing and the festival itself is fantastic, well at least it was on that one Sunday in August '09. Majorly jealous of anyone who got to go.