Blogs from Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland, Europe - page 99

Seminar: Strategies of Analysis (same one as before) Topic: Globalisation and Empire (My) Summary of the Topic: Globalisation is an inescapable phenomena that is pervasive and prevalent; it is all aroud us from the social to the political, from the micro to the macro, the personal to the communal. It is an all-encompassing term that gestures at a kind of homogenisation of the world (some critics view it as an 'Americanisation' of the world), a levelling of differences, of communal individuality and uniqueness. Globalisation breeds what some other critics have called a new Empire - an Empire that challenges and possibly dissolves the autonomy of the State and re-defines concepts of Nationhood and Nationality. It is Empire of everyone and no one, an Empire led not of a particular nation-state and certainly not of old-imperialism. Discussion ... read more

My recent visit to Dublin in the middle of August has a different purpose. I was invited by a friend to be interviewed and will be featured in a Filipino local magazine. The mag is currently circulated in Dublin catering to Filipino community. Without hesitation I decided to agree to visit Dublin and stayed overnight. I took the opportunity to know the family and joined them in a morning walk along a popular waterway. It was a lovely day and I really enjoyed their company, including the family dog - happy to swim for a wood stick! I also had the chance to visit a newly developed subdivision/village which is really an ideal place to live - everything is there, from school to public transport. After my appointment with my lady friend, I decided to join ... read more

There will be no photos for this entry (although I certainly wish I had) but a humorously terrifying recount. Alright, terrifying is exaggeration but appalling would be the mildest adjective I would select. This happened last Tuesday for a Postgrad Seminar called "Strategies of Analysis", i.e. Critical and Cultural Theory, something I'm familiar with. First year PhD students are required to attend this class alongside MPhil students. So I was asked to lead the seminar considering my familiarity with some of these topics. The topic for that seminar was "Postcolonialism and Orientalism in Performance". Well and good, given that MPhil students, from various parts of Ireland and the international community now enrolled in Trinity's School of Drama, Film and Music, have little or no exposure to Critical Theory, the class went pretty slow (yes, I was ... read more

Yes. Everyone's been asking about how a lowly paid student-coolie lives and what his living space resembles? Well, according to my supervisor, the quarters that I'm in - Goldsmith Hall - is a dog house. A little larger than a doghouse that is. As you can see, it's meant to be an apartment but it really is resembles those testosterone and estrogen infested Halls of NUS. You enter the 'apartment' to see a corridor and alongside are the 4 rooms, two toilets, and a Kitchen / Living Area. So yes, that's how the 'apartment' looks. The room is a shoe-box of shelves and cabinets dully placed and unimaginatively designed (in fact, many modern Dublin buildings look really really ugly). So there ... that's my living space; a place I'll call 'home' for at least a year ... read more

After leaving Edinburgh on Wednesday we drove north to Aberdeenshire and spent a couple of days chilling out in the Scottish countryside. We stayed with Andrew and Debbie booth on their farm and had a great time. It really is a beautiful part of the world up there - very rugged and a lot like parts of NZ. We left Scotland on Saturday and caught the ferry to Belfast where we had a brief stop-over to watch the ABs beat up Romania. Then jumped back in the car and drove to Dublin where we have spent the last couple of days enjoying the hospitality of that crazy Irish ba***rd Kevin Muldowney. After two nights out in Dublin and many, many, many pints of Guiness we are now feeling a little fragile today. If Kevin starts moving ... read more