Category: Ireland

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Back in Vancouver

Dee, 

Herewith a few words about some folks I met on the train.

On our trans Canada group train tour from Vancouver BC to Halifax NS I was returning from the second dinner service when I noticed a very depressed looking lady, as they say in France of a certain age, sitting alone in the bar car appearing or well on the way to being drunk. I stopped and asked why she was looking so sad.

She told me at his request she had flown to Vancouver to see her son George, he was working on a large construction project in northern BC, in order to let her know, in person and face to face he had been diagnosed with a cancer that had metastasized and he had 18 months to live.

I commiserated as best I could and listened a lot while she told me about her heartbreak and desperate anger. She told me they both had Fuck Cancer tattooed on their left breasts above their hearts and showed me hers and told me George should be back soon, he had just gone to his cabin to fill his glass, CN Via Rail  was providing the mix.

Our conversation had skipped platitudes and spoke directly to and acknowledged her situation and we both found a place to be friends. With that in mind and to lighten the mood I proposed that when George returned we should tell him that we had just met, that our attraction was both mutual  and immediate and  at our age had decided to skip all the intermediate hoopla and if not marriage at least wanted a romantic relationship. She thought this was a very funny idea, in her defense she was a bit inebriated, terribly sad and obviously needed a laugh.

George arrived, a very large and heavily muscled man, he also operates a lobster boat in Nova Scotia, I later learned he boxes,  arrived and inquired “who the fuck are you and are you flirting with my mother.” I told him I am Irish and relatively harmless and he told me he was a fan of Connor McGregor the Irish world Ultimate Fighting Champion.

I told him his mother and I had just met but there was an instant attraction, she had even shown me her tattoo, and in consideration of our ages and the time remaining decided to skip all the preliminary hoopla and move directly to the planning our future. He was immediately in on the joke and told me he liked the Irish and was OK with our plans and showed me his tattoo.

I told him there was no need to feel threatened as his mother and I had agreed I should adopt him and we were for now not planning on children. At that he laughed and asked ‘just who the fuck are you Irishman ” and had another drink.

The next day the train stopped as scheduled at Jasper in Alberta. The hours ticked by and the train manager finally announced that due to the massive forest fires along the track we were going to wait to see if it was safe to proceed, that we could leave the train but should stay around the station. When I joined George in the station he presented me with an Irish flag, the last one to be found, he assured me in the small station. It is  now on my balcony.

I thanked him and scoured the stalls and the best I could find at the charity second hand book stand was a copy of The Little Mermaid which I endorsed to my new friend George, signed and hid in his backpack.

Later the train manager advised us that due to the fires we would be returning, another 24 hour overnight journey, back to Vancouver. Next morning while waiting in line at the Canadian National Via Rail counter in Vancouver for reimbursements or rebooking I saw George and his Mom, George laughed and said “you shit, I found the book and knew it had to be you.” He was putting his mother on a plane to Houston to attend her granddaughters graduation while he was going to lay up in a hotel and call family and friends, and now having told his mother personally, give them his news. And would then return to Nova Scotia, take his boat out and set some lobster traps.

We hugged, wished each other well, took these photos and said our goodbyes. 

We did not exchange email addresses.

If you pay attention when you least expect it life sometimes presents you an opportunity to meet wonderful people.

Stay well, take care of yourself and if you can, someone else.

John

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An Ongoing Bureaucratic Experience

I just spent a week in Killarney sharing it with my best friend Mel of 50 + years and his wife Evi who has a colon cancer which has metastasized to her liver and bones. She is unsuccessfully part way through the first of the trio of medical protocols normally on offer for these conditions; poison, burn and cut. So a salutary moment to reflect on our shared times and experiences together on this earth and the very real possibility that it was the last time Evi and I will see each other. And keeping banality in mind, since I am drastically allergic to their cat,  so an experience heavily clouded by Zyrtec.

On Saturday I flew from Kerry to Dublin and after a quiet night at an airport hotel on the 15th, the next day presented myself at the Aer Lingus check in counter with my boarding pass, Irish passport and US ESTA visa obtained as on all previous occasions at on the US Department of Homeland Security web site. From Dublin there are so many Irish people traveling to and from the US that you clear US immigration and customs at the Dublin airport. Ahh said the young lady this visa is not valid and we cannot let you board the flight. Why so I inquired, well she replied your passport number contains a 0 and you have entered an O on the visa application, or maybe it was vice Versace. The 0 in the Proton Mail system has a bar through it, the Apple Mail does not.

Well I asked can I speak to one of the US immigration officers and see if we can resolve this minor mistake. Sorry that is not possible we cannot process you and she reversed the luggage belt and presented me with my suitcase. So what do you suggest I do I inquired. Well she said you could reapply for the ESTA visa now on your mobile phone. Indeed I could I told her but if I confused a 0 and an O on a computer at 77 years of age do you think I will do better now stressed and using a smart phone, and anyway we both know it takes 3 days to process the visa application.

OK I said this cannot be the first time something like this has happened can you inquire with your manager how we resolve it and off marched Emma with her tight bureaucratic smile in her green Aer Lingus uniform. Five minutes later she was back with her frigid and now winning smile in place and said no we cannot let you board. Fine I asked and where do I find the manager and she pointed to Gate 56 where trundling my suitcase I presented myself to the lady in charge.

Yes she said Emma told me about your problem but you see if we let you board and you are refused entry on arrival in the US then we become responsible for your return trip. Indeed I replied but you do notice I have purchased a return ticket. This is true she said but we have made an exception in the past and it resulted in problems for us. Well I said far be it for me a paying customer to cause a problem for Aer Lingus so lets pretend we never met and I will return in a minute. I walked away, fished my Canadian passport from my backpack, returned said good day and presented it to Mrs manager who then printed and gave me my boarding pass and checked in my suitcase.

I arrived at Dulles airport some 7 hours later but my suitcase did not. The young lady representing Aer Lingus at the baggage carousel checked my baggage tag and pointed out that it was made out to a Ms Suzann Quinn and had no doubt as indicated arrived safely with her in JFK in New York. Looking for a bargaining chip I inquired do you know if Ms Quinn’s suitcase is here on the carousel. No she said and and presented me with a copy of my lost luggage complaint form. Touché Mrs manager.

Yesterday morning I called the Aer Lingus lost luggage number in Dublin and consulted with a confused young man in Mumbai who told me his name was Juan. He assured me he had copied down all my information but when I asked him to read back the luggage tag number, it must have been time for tiffin, he hung up.

My second attempt speaking with Curtis, still sounding like Mumbai, was more successful and I am assured my suitcase might possibly arrive soon.

This morning Tuesday I spoke with Natasha again evidently in Mumbai and she assures me my suitcase is still somewhere on the east coast of N. America. I explained to Natasha that as there are limitations to the amount of liquids you can carry on to the plane the bulk of the essential medications to treat my eyes are in the suitcase and that soon I may be obliged to present Aer Lingus with a substantial financial claim for urgent medical services.

Years ago I read an interesting case study where these back office workers in India are obliged to adopt a name which serves the area from where a call originates and also attempt a suitable accent. They also because of their work tend to socialize together and become “fractured” on returning to their parents home in the evening. But that is another story.

Reflecting briefly on your description of Melody’s unfortunate experience with the California bureaucracy, an initial conclusion.

In any critical encounter with a bureaucracy I presume the person facing me is expected as part of their successful annual performance appraisal to have failed or found fault with a number or percentage of the cases encountered in any measured period so I prepare accordingly. Ready to cede a few considered points while attempting to win my objective. The World Bank audit team sent to my office by Mr. Vu to review the totality of the VSAT project comes to mind. It is also a Tierney truism that the lower the bureaucrat is in the power structure the more likely they are to want to wield the small power at their disposal and therefore they require delicate handling.
Unfortunately I think Melody met such an unsympathetic and evidently also ill informed bureaucrat.

So a jet lagged poorly thought out and unhelpful conclusion. Fate sent Melody to a small minded and incompetent bureaucrat whose salary and pension very much depend on people paying taxes and the “system” designed by bureaucrats is failing her.

But keep in mind, I think it is called the Kansas Syndrome, whereby if I remember correctly a group working on a project will collectively agree decisions that individually they find unacceptable. So good luck trying to design a perfect bureaucratic system.

link.springer.com/article/10.1057%2Fpcs.2014.4

Abstract This paper explores white working- and middle-class Americans’ paradoxical support for policies that have contributed to their thirty-year economic decline while benefitting the wealthiest people in the country. Their habit of identifying with the aggressor has caused them actively to be engaged in their own economic descent. In the words of Jesse Jackson, “They’re turkeys at their own Thanksgiving.”

Back to the battle with Aer Lingus.

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Cork

Hello from the small city of Cork in Ireland on the coast south of Dublin, somewhere I think the population, indigenous and expatriate may have been keeping below the radar. The weather for the week has been sunny and clear, my bald head is sunburned, lets hear it for global climate change. 

I had lunch today in an open restaurant above the Old English Market, the oldest covered market in Europe. They have a set menu but if you want something else e.g. the fish of the day, I did and had a nice piece of hake, they go down to the market and fetch it. With a grated carrot and raisin salad, fresh wholegrain bread and butter, mashed potatoes rich with butter and a side of fresh mixed vegetable total €15. 

I inquired as to why a young man working at a stand downstairs was, by his accent, English yet living and working in Cork. He assured me he was Irish but his parents were refugees, part of the exodus that fled Margaret Thatcher’s England for Ireland and thus his accent was English. Who knew.

With my old person’s bus pass in the morning I went to the small central bus station and took the next bus to, Skibbereen, where the Saturday market  had old hippies selling hand made furniture  and organic everything, Rosscanbery, simply beautiful, Kinsale, a small harbor town where 4,000 Spanish soldiers landed in 1601 to help with the war against the English, it must have greatly enriched the lives of the local girls and help explain the “black Irish.”

Yesterday, Sunday I went walking early and decided on an Irish breakfast in the Gresham Hotel, somewhat grander than mine, with a view of the river Lee. I crossed a large lobby went down a hall and asked the young man at the desk for a table for one. He asked for my room number and I told him I wasn’t staying in the hotel. He showed me to my table and asked me to pay at the reception desk on the way out. Poached eggs, Irish bacon the full Irish and a lot of tea. I ambled out later unwatched to the front desk and paid €10. 

The town is a mix of locals with thick brogues, Polish immigrants working in all the restaurants and coffee shops, some who learned English here so with Irish accents. Small numbers of Asians, one working in Marks & Spencer’s with a Thai name badge and an accent so strange I inquired and she told me she grew up in Newcastle in the north of England, and a scattering of Africans. There are students from China to Venezuela and places in between ostensibly here to study English, many also with Irish accents. When their children get through high school and university Ireland will be much improved and never look the same.

They have great book stores in Cork. In Connolly’s a second hand bookstore I asked the owner if he had a copy of Charles Bukowski’s “Post Office”. Mr Connolly, he had lived and worked, among other places, in Brooklyn, Saigon in the 1970s and a small town inland from Darwin and also in Vancouver told me to follow him. In passing he picked the only copy of Post Office from a shelf and arriving at a wall with some photographs pinned on it told me “put your fingers in your mouth” which I of course did. Looking at me and tapping the picture he asked “don’t you think there is a resemblance”, a picture of Bukowski with his fingers in his mouth. And there was, ask my friend Mel he was there.

Before leaving I asked Mr Connolly why having visited all the other exotic places he had chosen to return to Cork, and he told me “why settle for anything less”.

I hope this finds you well and in good spirits,

John

The hotel lobby is full of people who have flown in from Germany and Scandinavia and one couple definitely from Scotland for the upcoming Bob Dylan concert. Mel tried to get us tickets for last week’s Dolly Parton concert but it was sold out. 

Local graffiti.  Be Yourself – Everyone Else is Already Taken.