Day of Random Weather

My first week here was misleadingly sunny, so I didn’t need to purchase an umbrella until early this week. Yesterday was sunny when I got out of bed, so I didn’t put it in my bag. Never again. It starting spitting almost as soon as I had left my house, then got worse. Of course, I didn’t want to buy another umbrella, so I just dealt with it. I walked all the way to city centre to go to the welfare office to order a PPS number, which I need to have in able to get a bank account, which is needed to pay my bills, etc etc. The welfare office is on Pearse Street right by Trinity College. I sat with the other immigrants (‘I’m an immigrant,’ it dawned on me slowly) and read James Baldwin’s ‘Another Country’. I really am trying to save money, but I was running out of groceries and I was downtown anyways, so I decided to go out for lunch. I crossed the Liffey to this bookstore slash restaurant called The Winding Stair. The bookstore down aforementioned winding stair is marvellous: tall bookshelves, cool new releases, art books, used classics and even copies of Butt magazine (if I wanted at some point to shell out the seven euros!). The restaurant upstairs, one big room with grand windows looking out on Ha’Penny Bridge and the Liffey, was empty with about five female wait staff standing around. “Could I have a table by the window?” I asked. “Do you have a reservation?” “Uh, no...” “It’s just one, is it?” “...Yes.” She then sat me at a little table looking right down on the river. Then the sun came out and bathed the room in a warm glow. It turns out I got there right on time: not five minutes after I had arrived almost the entire restaurant was filled up with business men in purple dress shirts and middle-aged women splitting salads and desserts. I ordered the seafood chowder, which was my favourite thing to order last time I was in Ireland but I had not come across it yet. Rich and creamy, with bits of salmon, scallops, mussels and salty bacon, with a side of dense brown bread and a cup of tea; the ideal thing to warm you up on a chilly day. I must admit though, I wished I was sharing the experience with someone else, and I just kept imagining showing visitors to Dublin this spot.

When I finally left The Winding Stair it began raining again. So as quickly as I could I dashed off to the National Museum of Ireland. I’m trying to do one touristy thing a day, to remind myself why I’m here and distract from my worry about finding a job. The Museum is held in a grand neoclassical dome with pillared arcades, but I just wasn’t feeling their collections of ancient and bronze-age knick knacks that day. I was on the second floor looking at intricate Celtic book covers when my cell phone rang. When I saw it wasn’t Tim I got really excited. “Hello there, is this Maximilian?” Professionally-polite tone and full name: now really excited. A security guard came over and told me to turn off my phone. I mouthed an apology to him and began running towards the stairs. “I wasn’t wondering if you were still looking to work for Starbucks...” “Yes, absolutely yes! But, um, could I phone you back in two minutes. I’m in a museum right now and I don’t want them to yell at me again. I will phone you RIGHT BACK.”

The manager sounded nice (her name is Irish and I can neither spell it nor pronounce it). She got my resume from the manager of another store who faxed it around the city. I have always relied on the kindness of strangers. I have an interview on Monday, and if I get the job I most certainly need to go back to that store and thank the woman in person. The catch, there always is one: the Starbucks is in a shopping centre in the suburbs. The city bus goes there but it might take awhile. Right now, I don’t care. It’s a foot in. It’s an invitation back into the club, after which it’s much easier to move around. Best of all, it gives me hope that I can actually settle down a little, relax and not worry about having to pack up in a few weeks and retreat with defeat.

In a relieved haze, I went and sat in St. Stephen’s Green and read James Baldwin for awhile in the sunlight. That is until, of course, a giant wind blew up, scattering the fountain’s water all over some teenage girls, and then the rain came back. Some people huddled under gazebos, others went back to their offices. I decided to walk home. Halfway back, the sun came out again.

I had been planning to go back to The George last night for the first of many Pride Week celebrations, but it turned out that I got the night wrong. I didn’t want to sit in my room all night so I decided to go to another movie (having just had microwavable rice for dinner, I decided I was allowed to). I looked up Irish cinemas on google maps and decided to check out the Irish Film Institute, which is in the middle of Temple Bar. I walked all the way there. The wind was now so blustery that crossing the street at one point I leaf landed on my face and actually hurt. The sun was low in the sky when I got to Dame Street. Across the street I saw a group of drunken young people, a somewhat unusual sight in daylight even in Temple Bar. They were in two groups and a girl from one starting screaming at a girl from the other one. The girl’s friends tried to hold her back, and the other girl ignored her, until she grappled free, stomped over and punched the girl in the side of the head. Now that is a beef. The punching girl’s friends pulled her away screaming obscenities, and the punched girl and her friends wisely walked in the other direction quickly. What was funniest was watching the reaction of all the people waiting for the light to change to cross the street; ‘Did that just happened?’ they seemed to be thinking, some with embarrassed smiles.

The Irish Film Institute is awesome. It will become my main movie theatre. Their brick-walled glass-ceilinged courtyard makes one film like an indie film intellectual and their movie screen is surprisingly full-scale and epic-feeling. I saw ‘Looking for Eric’ a British film about a working-class father who imagines the great footballer Eric Cantona to give him advice and inspiration. I got chatting with a group of Irish ladies on the way in (“Why Ireland?” they asked) who wondered if I even knew who Eric Cantona was (“I do now!”) On the way back I bought a falafel and marvelled at how many stores and restaurants stay open really late for the drunken hobblers home. Basically, a really good day in which I start to imagine actually being able to live here.