"Please don't strip my mind...

...Leave something behind."

I can feel my mother's gradual memory loss sneak up on me every once in a while. The beauty of the city is that it gives you a chance to reinvent yourself; shape yourself into whomever you want to be. I keep this blog because I want to have a record of my life, when time comes again for me to decide who I want to be.

The day before yesterday started via oversleeping until mid-afternoon. First stop was to the Blarney Inn for the EUSA organized Treasure Hunt. We got there late - but since creativity was rewarded for providing answers, we sat at the pub entering bad pick up lines into the responses. Officially we came in last place, but the guy running the show seemed to take personal interest in our responses. No matter though, the first place prize was only a massive bottle of Jameson (we should have tried harder). At some point, we left to the Spar (the equiv. of 7-11 over here) and bought a bottle of Merlot. Then we got coffee cups and lids. Then we hit the streets. Note: deep fried pork sausages are amazing.

There's gotta be 50 different versions of this image floating around the nets. This is iteration 51. Full party minus photographer Monica.

After leaving the coolest ass in Ireland behind (employee shirt tagline), we headed towards O'Neills for live music. The best thing about O'Neills is that it feels like home during the holidays. There's people all over the house that you don't know, but it doesn't matter. Everyone is busy doing their own thing: eating, drinking, chatting, waiting to meet someone, listening to music, etc. No one bothers to keep track of what's going on, there's no "game" involved. When you're at O'Neills, reality is an illusion caused by alcohol deficiency (see below).

Photo credit goes to Patrick Dorsey. The place has numerous rooms (like a house would) and plenty of new places to sit at each time. If you thought American clubs have complicated layouts, then you have never "made love in this pub," because after briefly meeting with Monica's parents, we headed towards Fitzsimons for the rest of the night.

Fitzsimons is a four story hotel/bar/night club/event venue with public access to the roof terrace. It's rumored to be the most popular hot spot amongst the locals. The place was relatively full on Thursday night, claustrophobia-inducing ridiculously full on Friday night (but that comes later). Thursday night, was mostly uneventful. I'm frequently relegated to being a wingman, saving my EUSAmates from various different types of creeps. It's different going to a club when you've got someone waiting for you at home. But I'm glad I can be of help to my friends, and it remains entertaining to people watch in the club. The music typically is either house or trance, spun by an unknown DJ of the night. On Thursday, the DJ was dropping house remixes of popular hip hop songs, and Milkshake by Kelis. On the whole, I found the place to be thoroughly dance-friendly.

I also found the locale to be much less homophobic than at club at home. Metrosexual is the key to attire and disposition here, which I found to be much more chill. I didn't have to think about whether or not the drink I had was fruity (even though I ended up with a Corona), or whether people would judge me on my clothing/behavior. The atmosphere of tolerance is truly a refreshing change. People also dance, on their own, with or without anyone else to dance with. Indeed it felt like I was dancing with the crowd than any particular person.

When we came back, we burned the image of Technoviking into our skulls, punching our way to slumber.

Fast forward to yesterday.

Yesterday, I ventured into City Centre to purchase bus tickets. However, I got there too late and the office was closed. I'll make another attempt today. Afterwards, I played American pool, except with snooker equipment. As in, snooker cues, snooker sized pool balls, and a snooker table. Everything works differently. The balls are super light, so they make every table feel really fast and they make every rail extremely bouncy. The pockets are narrower (to accommodate the smaller balls) but the corners of the pockets are not pointed, they're rounded. That means you have to make every shot a spot on shot, otherwise it'll bounce away from the rounded points. It was a good exercise in power and accuracy control. I even beat a local that challenged me to a game towards the end. His name was Derrick I believe. The tables are coin operated, as in you drop a coin in a control box, and the light turns on. When the light turns off, your time is up. And there's someone watching to make sure you're not just playing with the lights off.

I then spent the next several hours, wandering, finishing Ender's Shadow, and looking for the Church (an actual church converted into a night club, cafe, bar, and restaurant). That lasted from about 7 or 8pm until about 11pm or midnight, when everyone else showed up. We ended up going to Fitzsimons again because the crowd at the Church was late 20s early 30s, a bit old for a bunch of undergrads.

At Fitzsimons, things quickly escalated and got ridic. First of all, the place was packed like when Benny Benassi was at Ibiza, DC this past year. Only problem was, Fitzsimons has more floors, but less space on each floor. While optimal for the club downstairs, it made traversing the space elsewhere impossible. After checking my coat in at the front, we proceeded into the fluid environment of a trance dance floor. I lost myself in the crowd multiple times, randomly bumping into the people I came with here and there. But then again, that's the only way to trance out. Unfortunately, we started losing track of people and a suit jacket by the end of the night. But luckily we found the people. My suit jacket that I checked in, still no word on it. The Garda are on the case. My best guess is that I dropped the ticket at some point during the night and someone took it, and my jacket, and left the club. Good thing I took all the important stuff out of it prior to checking it in (Tiff's Palm). All I lost was my completed copy of Ender's Shadow, an apple, my Armani Exchange Sunglasses (the most expensive item total), and my Jacket which I got from good will. Losing the jacket sucks because I'll have to replace it, which will be much more costly than the price of the jacket that I lost. The coat check lady told me to wait until the end of the night to retrieve the coat, but she said to her coworker in mandarin (which they probably assumed I didn't know) that she remembers what I checked in, and it's not there anymore. By that time, everyone had left to track down missing members of our group. So I walked across a footbridge over the Liffey, and caught the first taxi I saw at sunrise.

I came back, spoke with some friends from home, then met my party as they returned, with everyone in the group. It was a somber way to end a fantastically eventful night.

Retropost: The following are photos from Dublin Castle and the Charles Beatty Museum from a few days ago. If you're wondering why some photos seem to be of so much higher quality, it's because I have a second camera system (Canon EOS 20D) that I shoot with every once in a while. It's old, but it's sensor is like 4x the size of a digital compact (not megapixels, but actual physical size; both my digital compact and my digital slr shoot with the same number of pixels) thus the crisp clear images.

Mother and child playing in the courtyard.

The view from the rooftop garden.

The lobby in the museum. I love the inclusion of water in this interior space. I feel like lots of places would benefit from the use of water, such as... between the sidewalk and roadway opposite of the UVa bookstore on Emmet St.