[Skerry's Scrapbook] Musings of an English Student

[Engghaen]

Oh. My. Lord. I'm like seriously going to write 10x as quickly as before. See the new kitty! See the new kitty! Thanks Skerry, maybe I'm going to reach the seemably unreachable goal of 25,000!

[Skerry]

I'm a genius, right? No, I didn't go looking stuff up online to try to find it. I'm in my first year in college and we have our first essays due in a few weeks so our peer mentor sent us the link as an incentive to write them. It's a class idea though. I think there might be a puppy version as well though. Bump up the word count to 200 or something if you really want to push yourself. Every 200 words, you get a cat. 500 or 1000 words is just cruel.

Thank you by the way, Abstract. I shall have to skim through your scrap at some stage The name of mine is very apt though. We do a lot of musing in college level English

x

[Engghaen]

This is what the idea is from, if anyone happens to care.

[Skerry]

Yes I was aware of that already but I mean come on... kittens!

[Engghaen]

they own more of the rare thing called 'cuteness'.

[Skerry]

I wish I could make myself do my college essays with it though. I just don't know what I'm doing and all I can think is, these are due in December 13th. When that happens I think this:

[Engghaen]

Oh, man, I recognise that. And the cute panda makes it 100x better.

[Skerry]

Right well today I shall have a random outburst about college related stuff. College is great, it really is and I'm lucky enough to be in a college that is in the centre of everything.

So I go to Trinity College. Now it's highly doubtful that people know a lot about the colleges and universities in Ireland but I can assure you that the one I go to is one of the best in the country. Well...the best but there's no need to brag, right? But yes anyway, it's in the city centre so when we have not in lectures and tutorials we have lots if places that we can go, especially to eat. Eating and sitting around doing nothing are the college pastimes (during the day at least).

Food is everywhere. There are a few different entrances to the college and different ones give you easy access to culinary delights, not all are cheap unfortunately for us but you have to make do. There are a number of McDonald's in close vicinity, an Eddie Rocket's, a Captain America's, Gourmet Burger Kitchen (2 that I know of) and a number of others. Dublin is good for fast food.

 Today I went to this great place that is a minute's walk from the college called KC Peaches. No it does not specialise in sweet treats as I thought (although they're there too) but in fact provides good fresh food. It's AMAZING!

You can get salads, you can get soup but you can also get a wide selection of hot food that you put into boxes or put on a plate. Pasta dishes, rice dishes, vegetarian dishes and the like all set out in nice metal trays do that you can spoon it all into a certain sized box with a certain price and voilà, good food. It is considered expensive though unless you are very efficient in your box filling. As long as it closes they don't get suspicious.

I can get very enthusiastic about food. 

x

[Skerry]

Right my insight into my mind today will happen fairly early today because soon I shall have no wi-fi

Yes today I will discuss some things that I know people say about the Irish. Any additions or questions would be good.

1. The red hair image

Irish people are not all red heads. The hair colour honestly isn't that common and just because the Celts are reported to have had red hair and the Irish are descended from them, they don't really have red hair. Don't get me wrong there are some red heads but they aren't common. Out of a year of 180 people, there were a handful, 3 that I can think of. Not that common which isn't surprising because 1)red hair colouring is controlled by a recessive gene so it's overridden by other dominant hair colours most of the time and 2)the Irish have a very mixed bag of genes.

Ireland has been inhabited by the Celts which is where the language, music and other cultural stuff came from but we also have places that were Viking settlements and Norman settlements. The major thing though is that a number of more "civilised" areas were settled by the English and Scots. Just look at the English alone there and you've got Briton, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Viking, Norman and god knows what else in there. So yeah we have very diverse genes. 

For instance, the town where my grandmother is from (Skerries) was a Viking town. Her maiden name was Grimes which comes from Grimm, which is part of the Viking influence. Another part is the blondness. A lot of people with those surnames or whose families have lived in the town and the surrounding area are blonde and blue eyed. It's very true.

2. Drinking

Yes, the Irish drink. A lot. It's a somewhat well deserved reputation seeing as drinking is very big here. You go to a christening, a wedding, a funeral or a party and you will find people getting absolutely locked. However, Irish people do not spend all their time in pubs as one misguided Canadian friend of my aunt seemed to think. People do drink a lot at social events and the pubs are frequented but we do not live in the pub.

When I think of more to add to this little rant, I shall. That's all I've got for the moment.

x

[Harrier]

See, I've always loved the Irish culture, be it ginger or beer/ale. I like the history that they have. My mother's side of the family has Scotch/Irish roots but it's never been something we delved into (genealogy has never been huge on the Moore clan).

That aside, were there any good legends you grew up with? You know how the states has things like Big Foot and the White River Monster and that thing in the Bayou down in Louisiana.

(c) Absy