IT CONTINUES

WENT INTO DUNKIN DONUTS FOR BREAKFAST and the guy serving me says:
"Buenos dias senor. Com estas?"
... "uh...?"
"Oh, sorry sir. How can I help you?"

He thought I was Spanish/Mexican too!

Aside from that, everyone I've dealt with in the service industry has been EXTREMELY professional and courteous. You wouldn't expect a 15 year old Taco Bell employee to be friendly or polite at 1am, but he totally was. I'm very impressed.

And now I am going to eat my breakfast and warm my fingers which are actually tingling from the cold.

IESSO

NYC PHOTOS

ADMITEDLY I'VE ONLY GOT ONE PHOTO SO FAR, but if you check back regularly there should be more photo's coming.

CLICK HERE to see the photo collection.

IESSO

BACK IN THE USA

SO I MADE IT TO NEW YORK SAFELY. The flight was a bit rough, but it was ok.
So far (being here for 6 hours) I've already:
1. Rode the subway around.
2. Been to see Ground Zero.
3. Seen Times Square.
4. Had a slice of pizza.
5. Eaten 3 tacos (2 crunchy and 1 soft) from Taco Bell!!!!
6. Seen a 'New York Crazy' yelling about how we hate him, but he'd jump across the tracks (of the subway) to save us.
7. Been sworn at for crossing the road by a limo driver.

Huzzah!

IESSO

VISA

WE APPLIED FOR OUR UK VISA'S JUST THEN. Fingers crossed. Like for serious.

CHANGE OF PLANS

BECAUSE OF THE STRIKE I'm going to New York tomorrow instead of wednesday. Huzzah!

I MADE A FUNNY

LITTLE IS NERDIER than rewriting lyrics to incorporate typefaces. But I'm gonna have a series of posters for my makey-upey film "Cooper Blaxploitation". They're gonna be used in ads for my new folio. Yeah, I gotta do it again.

IESSO

ONE OF 'THOSE' DAYS

SO IT SEEMED AS IF WE WERE GOING TO GET SPONSORED BY OUR COMPANIES which meant we could stay in Ireland for another year and work at our companies for a full year (instead of only 3 months). BUT as luck would have it, we can't.

I finally got my head around leaving for England, after sorting it out for months, with lots of stress, then we find out we are wanted to stay, and finally after getting used to not going to England, we find out we can't stay here.

HOORAY for fun.
IESSO

PS. I did this as a representation of how I feel. Also that shirt image is totally copyrighted. If you even dream about even looking at it at hi-res, you're in big trouble mister!

PPS. Despite my semi-cheerful post, I am extremely furious at the Irish Govt as well as totally disappointed. Again.

PPPS. Also, in awesome news: Aer Lingus is planning a staff strike on wednesday. Which means; my flight will be cancelled. Hooray again! If that's the case I am NOT waiting till another day, I'm leaving a day early. This is NO WAY I'm not going to have fun.

PUNS: Scream! and locking horns. Genius, I know.

FAKEFFITI (UPDATED)

SOME STUPID STUFF. Might turn them real. The kitten grenade is a reference the the Whackers who we are so scared of, we think everyone is going to egg us. And the little girls through kittens and glitter at us. SCARY!!!

IESSO

NO MORE COUNTDOWNS (EVER!)

INSTEAD I've got a permanent countdown built into the blog! There's always something to count down, even if it is pointless, makey-uppy things like 'Time till I pee'. Fun for the whole family.

IESSO

PS. It's right below my photo.

EVERYTHING'S COMING UP MILHOUSE

ALTERNATIVE TITLE: IT'S THE SUMMER OF GEORGE

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR EVERYONE! Did you know Soryi is 1/8th Chinese? Well, she is! We celebrated the arrival of the year of the pig by eating pork buns and moon cakes and being lazy. That last point isn't a pig attribute, but we did it anyway. The year of the pig is the year for people born in 1983 (as well as 1995, 1971 and 1959) and apparently it's gonna be a good year for us. Also it's 2007 (obviously) which is my lucky number (7) so that's a double whammy.

So far it hasn't been great luck, but nothing too bad either. I am going to New York in 10 days, so that's a good thing. And my job, although sort of boring is a pleasant environment with potential for good work, personal and professional growth and generally positive. Also me and Soryi are getting on very well too. Better than 2005,4,3 and 2.... 6 was okay though.

Anyway, Happy New Years*!

IESSO

* Chinese style that is. 新年好

MOMENTS SILENCE

I'VE NOT POSTED MUCH SINCE LAST WEEKEND, sorry about that. I've been busy at work, and more so, I went to a funeral on thursday. It was horrible. I won't share the details, but a friends brother killed himself on sunday and it was just awful. The funeral was so sad, and the burial was horrible, it was freezing cold and pouring rain.

The whole thing has made everyone very depressed and in no mood to have any fun.

I'll put something else up when I'm feeling a bit better.



IESSO

PS. It's good to hear Linus is safe in NY at last after being delayed in LA for so long.

POINT OF REFERENCE

IN CASE IT'S STILL NOT CLEAR: This is what I mean by whackers/knackers. The image was requested to be used in an Annual Report for an Irish company to show 'typical people'. Typically bad! So next time I mention these guys, think of these two upstanding citizens. The girl may not look bad, but just below the camera is her daughter and possibly granddaugter. Both from the same guy. Harsh: but fair.

Also, apparently a knacker is a person who renders animals unfit for human consumption (ie. horses) and turns them into dog food and glue. It comes from the Irish work for horse. They do ride horses around a lot, I wonder if that's a coincidence?

IESSO

PS. 16 days

HAPPY VOYAGE

LINUS IS OFF TO NEW YORK TOMORROW, AND THEN THE WORLD! (in subsequent days of course, not tomorrow). We here at Mondayne (me and Soryi, as well as Dermo, etc.) all wish him a safe flight and fun travels.

IESSO

POSUER

WE TOOK THE PHOTO'S FOR THE T-SHIRT SITE (to be used in the style below). So hopefully I'll have something together in a few weeks. It's on my to-do list as well as: Pitch for the Jewish Museum, do some posters and actually do some f*ing t-shirts!!!

Also; we went to our usual Korean restaurant and aside from being typically delicious there was a funny show as we were leaving.
WACKER* MAN: Give us a spicy beef, a bag of chips, some curry sauce and a fried rice.
FRIENDLY KOREAN WAITRESS: Uh, no, we don't have fried rice. This is not Chinese, this is Korean.
WM: No fried rice? What do you have then?
FKW: Only steam rice.
WM to WACKER WOMAN: They only have steamed rice.
WW: Fine, just give us a spicy beef, curry sauce, and steamed rice!
FKW: No, we don't have curry sauce.
WW: Well what do you have?
FKW: Here is menu.
--- We left before it started getting violent. The usually friendly waitress was about to lose her temper. She was obviously frustrated at their assumptions. Also they weren't being exactly apologetic or friendly about it. Like it was her fault they didn't have what they wanted.

Hilariously they not only couldn't tell that it wasn't Chinese but that it was even a takeaway. I would've thought the sign saying Korean Restaurant, plus the special of the day being grilled eel, and the fact that everyone was sitting down would be clues enough they weren't in familiar territory, but evidentally not.

IESSO

* Remember the wackers? They're the lowerclass scum of Dublin northside. I say scum because they are and not because I'm some sort of elitist snob. Racist, rude, arrogant, ignorant, disgusting, abusive, alcoholic, violent scum. Also they never say please or thankyou, only "Give us this" or "Do this for me". And they wear tracksuits at all times.

RULE OF THUMB: ONLY EAT WHITE SNOW (updated)

IT SNOWED YESTERDAY! I've only ever seen snow twice before, so waking up yesterday morning, opening the front door and seeing soft powderey whiteness was a great suprise! I woke Soryi up and it was great. She'd never seen snow before so it was exciting for her too. And the best news is: it's going to snow more. Not just some freak occurance it's actual weather that normally happens.

YAY! IESSO

COUNTDOWN: 20 days

UPDATE: It's snowing right now while I'm at work, typing this. I've uploaded a video onto YuoTube to watch. It's a bit rough, but still pretty cool. I've never seen snow falling, it's so silent and beautiful. And the flakes are strangely pretty big.

Be warned: The video quality is pretty poor. And the sound is annoying, so make sure you turn it down.

UNAMED GIRL GETS ILLUSTRATED

SO TECHNICALLY SHE'S NOT 'UNAMED' ANYMORE, she still is the UNG to Mondayne.

Anyway; I'm going to produce a second website, featuring my t-shirts and that sort of thing. I'm liking this stlye at the moment, but when I produce it I'll spend more time developing the illustrations properly, as well as perfecting the light/dark balance of the face. Also, I'll have me in it too, representing the boys.

IESSO

DINOSAURS LIVED A LONG TIME AGO

SO I DIDN'T DO MUCH TODAY AT WORK (not by choice!) aside from corrections to a 98-page document... So I tried playing with information systems. They're something that really interests me, but I've never been given the opportunity to try. so this one is a bit simple and rough, but it's only a few hours of muckin' around. And I got to play with Gridnik!

Make sure you follow the flickr link, it's quite big!

IESSO

COUNTDOWN: 22 days

IT'S JUST NOT THE SAME...

I prefer the old ones. What about you? Don't even try to get me on some sort of England vs America-type argument, cause it ain't gonna work. I liked the dynamic of the US guys, regardless of where they were from, the USPC guy totally rules. USMac guy was a bit arrogant but still, he was better. Maybe they'll grow on me, but probably not.

As they say: "If it is not broken, then there is no need to repair it".
YE OLDE / NEUE

IESSO

PERFECT HOLIDAY DESTINATION

The ten years of independence which San Serriffe celebrates today have been a period of economic expansion and social development probably unrivalled by any other new nation. With this achievement has gone a determined attempt, in part successful, to maintain the outward forms of a parliamentary democracy. This special report, edited and introduced by Geoffrey Taylor, attempts to recount the remarkable transformation in the life of the Republic, to inform British investors and visitors of the opportunities which have been and are being created, and not least to encourage companies trading with the Republic to call attention to their share in its development. Rapid growth brings its own problems, not all of which can be solved in total composure. The survey allows some of those problems to be brought under closer scrutiny.

READ MORE or WIKIPEDIA

IESSO

RUMOUR REMOVER

I'LL BE GOING TO NEW YORK THIS MONTH! Some people have asked some questions, which will be answered below:

1. No, I won't be looking for work while I'm there. I plan on enjoying my time there, and acting as a scout for possible intentions on moving there and working if it is good.
2. No, Soryi is not coming with me. I needed to book my ticket by a certain date to get the great deal that I did. Soryi wants to go, but at the time of booking didn't have the money to spend. She does now but has just started a new job so can't take time off yet.
3. Yes, I will be meeting Linus in NY while he's travelling around the world. He will be there before me and after me, and then travel onto Chicago and beyond.
4. As far as I know Linus will not be looking for work in NY. He does has work to do while travelling providing some income, but that work was from Australia, and worked out before he's leaving.
5. Of course I will miss Soryi and wish that was coming too, but unfortunately it didn't work out that way.
6. Yes, I am aware Linus snores a lot, and we will be sharing a room in a hostel, so I will need to buy some gaffer tape.
7. No, I am not moving there permanently. I will be going back to Ireland when the trip is over.
8. No, I don't know what I'll be doing after Ireland!!! Please, I beg everyone, seriously, stop asking. I don't know!

Ok, so that was obviously a bit intense, sorry. I am getting very frustrated/nervous.
Changing the subject: Does anybody want anything?
IESSO

COUNTDOWN: 27 days!