Will be starting a new course in January.

   Over the last year, I have made more applications for jobs, internships, college courses and Fas courses, than I could ever imagine doing in a lifetime. I have even applied for internships as a cabinetmaker or I have applied for placements that were looking for improvers or third year apprentice’s, (I’m a fully qualified cabinetmaker for Krypes sake) just so I could get back to cabinetmaking. I’ve applied to get into Art College (although I do have to admit my portfolio was very weak as I didn’t put enough work into it) I have even applied for an internship as an archaeological draughtsman. Every morning I get up and check the job sites and my emails, in case there is something out there for me. For every few applications I make, I will either get an email or letter stating that they are considering my application or they are sorry as my application is unsuccessful. How I don’t feel down in the dumps is beyond me at this stage.

   Well I have a bit of good news for a change. I received an email the other day that started “Congratulations - Your application has been accepted”. Now my first thoughts were a new Viagra campaign, Russian brides or maybe the Spanish lottery again (although they normally send you a letter by post.). No none of these. Wasn’t even a spam or spoof email. It seems I have been accepted into a course in DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology). So as you can imagine, I was over the moon with this good news. I ended up texting everyone that I know, telling them all my good news. For once, I thought, things are starting to go my way. Mind you, if I had put the work into my portfolio, I would have had a chance. So in fairness, it is only my fault that I didn’t get to do animation or illustration. ANYWAY, as I was saying, things seem to be going my way again to a degree.

   The course in DIT is only a very short one that will last only four weeks. But hopefully in them four weeks I will learn or at least begin to learn Photoshop and illustrator. These are the programs I have wanted to learn, but as they are so expensive, I just didn’t have access to them at all. In fact, these are the programs I wanted to learn with Fas earlier on in the year and I even went for an assessment to get into the class, but did not get I as it seems, you need to know how to use the programs before you can learn to use the programs. I wrote about this in May under the title “Sorry for not posting a blog” and I wasn’t very happy about it. But now I will get the chance to learn how to use these programs. Now if I could only afford them as they are very expensive to buy.  

   So once I do the course in mid-January, I will be back making job applications once again. I just hope that things will be better next year.

Christmas in Donegal

Well it’s nearly two weeks till Christmas. The time of year that you would look forward to when we were kids. Christmas decorations, lights and music all over the place. You go into any shop and you just can’t escape the fact that Christmas is round the corner.

In fairness to the shops, the Christmas season represents almost two thirds of the yearly turnover, depending on what type of products that they sell of course. The other shopping seasons are Easter which comes third and believe it or not Halloween which is the second biggest shopping season for of the year. I know most of us tend to think of the shops being greedy and all they want is profit. Well this is true to a degree although when you find out how much rent and rates they pay, it is easy to understand why. I just wonder how profits will go this Christmas season as most people just don’t have the disposable income and like me, they may not even have a job. To say things are bad I Ireland at the moment is putting it lightly.

It’s strange as we normally get really mild winters in Ireland, and it has only snowed a few times over that last 20 years or so. That’s not to say we don’t get snow as we may have it for a day or so. But it is rare that we get snow for any longer than a three or four days. Mind you I do remember not being able to go to school for a few weeks back in the 1980’s. This was more to do with the school bus not risking driving down our road due to the frost and snow. I always remember it was brilliant as we didn’t have to go to school and there was a real sense of freedom about that. Funny as you get older, snow and ice is nothing but a pain and all I want is for it to go away. Last year was the same, we had snow that lasted a few weeks and the country more or less came to a standstill. I hope it doesn’t snow this Christmas although I’m sure we will have a wee fall. Here is a photo that I took of Ramelton Co.Donegal in the year 2000. I took it with a digital camera and it looks ok as it was taken in auto as there were very little controls with the camera. It would make a good Christmas card, although it is a bit boring. I can’t believe I only took one photo as I would not have had the same limits as if I had a film camera.

In some ways I am lucky that I am still single and don’t have any kids or a partner to worry about. But then again I really envy my friends that have a family or even if they don’t they have a partner to share Christmas with. My nearest chance of a partner was going out with Slingback girl this year and in fairness, in a way I think it would be better than being single. But then again, maybe not.

I will be going home to Donegal this year for Christmas as I normally do except for last year as I was snowed in and could not get up to Donegal. It was my first Christmas away from home which kind of means I have finally grown up, which is about time as I am over 40.

My mum always goes out of her way to make it a good Christmas, with turkey and ham and all the trimmings. She really does make a brilliant Christmas dinner despite me telling you all in a past post, that she wasn’t a very good cook. She always buys a big turkey despite the fact she doesn’t like turkey or chicken for that matter.

Not sure how Christmas will go this year as my poor mum was sick with shingles and it will take her a few month to get over this horrible sickness. If you haven’t heard of shingles, well it is caused by the same virus as chicken pox. So if you have ever had chicken pox, what happens is the virus hibernates and maybe 50 or 60 years later will reactivate into shingles. My poor mother was sick for a few weeks and she was unable to sleep. It was only after she didn’t sleep for over a week that the doctor gave her sleeping tablets and even with these, she can only sleep a few hours. It must be pure torture. I only found out she was so sick when my dad rang me and it takes a lot for my dad to use a phone. I hadn’t been home for months and was planning to drive home that week when my dad rang me to say mum was so sick. I’m glad I found out as it would have been unfair of me to go up as all my mum needed was peace and quiet. If I had of gone home, I would have been an unnecessary bother to them.  I just hope she is well enough for Christmas as it could take anything up to six months for her to recover fully. Just have to make sure she gets a hassle free Christmas as much as possible.

Anyway, to everyone out there, I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a prosperous and happy new year. Hopefully we will have a better year in 2012 and maybe I will be able to find a job and a girlfriend as well. Girls with slingbacks need not apply.

To my good friend Jimmy, I hope you will not have to weight to long for your new hip replacement. I’m sure once you get this done you will be like a spring chicken and I expect you to be running the Dublin city marathon next year. Hope you and Monica as well as the rest of your family, have a brilliant Christmas and an even better new year. God bless to everyone out there and that means you as well “Sound Auld head”  

I will take my camera up with me and take loads of photos. Who knows, we may even have a wee bit of snow in them.