Marking Time

Well, we’ve collected the van and started to fill it with all our worldly posessions. We set off tomorrow for Burgos, followed by San Sebastian, and then up the west coast of France to Cherbourg. We’ll take our time, we’ve got nine days to make the ferry, so there’s plenty of time to ramble.

I can’t wait.

The indications are that the Irish economy is picking up and we are on the road to recovery. Employment growth is strong and tax receipts are up. So maybe the timing of my return is good.

So why am I not jumping with joy? Well for a start I tend to take economic predictions and statistics with a grain of salt. The figures rarely give the full picture and are usually meaningless when it comes to drawing any conclusions about root causes and future potential. Case in point, nobody has really made a convincing analysis of why the Celtic tiger boomed, then slowed down, and now appears to be recovering. These things just happen.

But beyond the simple economic statistics something deeper and more profund is stirred within me. Growing up in the tough times of the eighties, I always felt that Ireland could be a great place if only we got a break. We had so much potential that was smothered because we couldn’t grab on to the bottom rung of the ladder. After all, look how well we do when we emigrate to other countries. There’s no stopping us.

Well we got the break in the late nineties and it made damn all difference. Well, that’s not exactly true. There was a difference. When I look back to my parents’ generation I see how limited they were in their choices. For many of them emigration was the only choice. In contrast, my generation saunter around the world, taking ‘a year out’ to travel to Europe, South East Asia, and Australia. They can go wherever they choose.

And that’s the difference. Money buys you choice. It does not solve all your problems but it gives you the means to - if you choose. It seems to me in Ireland today we are not making good choices. Rather then using our new-found wealth to solve problems and build a better place to live we are using it to cope better with the problems we already have. We seek refuge and comfort in short term fixes but seem incapable of a larger vision. Our wages have increased but we still struggle to control our lives with the pressures of house prices, childcare, depression, alcoholism, social disconnection, and more, all pushing in on us. We meekly bow down and accept that ‘that’s the way it is’.

Maybe it’s due to the generation gap. We have an impossibly young population who have wilfully disenfranchised themselves from the political process and left it in the hands of the minority older generation. The older generation, many who lived through the worst of times, cannot believe how good things are relative to their time. They cannot see what the problems are and why we should strive for something different.

But we have to strive for something different, something better. I no more chose to live in affluent times than my parents’ generation chose to live in frugal times. These circumstances were bestowed up on us by chance. It is what we make of them that matters.

Are we making the most of our circumstances? Are we making the right choices?

From an old log…

Sometimes my mother would make some sandwiches and a bottle of tea to take to my grandfather who would be out in some field or other mending a gate or repairing a gap in a stonewall that had been knocked by a wild bullock or one gust of wind too many. This was the only time I was alone with my grandfather and it was usually spent in silence. He was a man of few words, gentle, wise, principled, with simple, straightforward beliefs.

Those silent moments with my grandfather were comfortable, contemplative, almost like meditation, as if through his silence he was heightening my awareness of the world around me; the birds whistling, the distant hum of a tractor spreading fertilizer, a mother calling her children, cattle lowing, the warm summer breeze ruffling the leaves, the schlump sound as he took a swig from the bottle of tea. Talk less, listen more, learn. I do not remember a word that passed between us but I learned lessons that I have carried with me ever since.

–What is your nation if I may ask? says the citizen.

–Ireland, says Bloom. I was born here. Ireland.

Now is one of those times of last times for me.

- Last time I have breakfast at that cafe
- Last time I go to the English language library
- Last time I say goodbye to friends I should have spent more time with
- Last time I walk this street or take that subway
- Last time I sit and write in this park
- Last time I get up at 6am (for a while anyway, I hope).

I’m a little sad but I know it’s time to move on. The next time will be a time of first times.

If I see one more copy of Dan Brown’s ‘The DaVinci Code’ I’ll scream. I must have seen at least 150 people reading it on the metro in the past three months. I saw three today alone.

It’s not a good book (I admit it, I read it - but only because a friend gave it to me). The idea is very interesting and is enough to get you started but the promises of intellectual intrigue and serious secret stuff are quickly broken as the whole thing turns into a tarted-up car chase complete with soap opera ending.

So what keeps people reading it? Well, I think the secret is that the chapters are so short. There are 105 chapters in 450 pages and some of them are less than a page. This keeps you turning the page. You know it’s rubbish but what harm can one more chapter do, it’s only an iddy-biddy 3 pages.

I guess this really is writing for the attention span of the MTV generation.

Updated my CV again in preparation for the move back to the real world. I have nothing new to add, just some editing, re-ordering, and prioritising. I also added a printer-friendly style-sheet.

As part of my attempts at reintegration I’m refreshing my knowledge of programming languages. I’m doing some Java and J2EE exercises at the moment. As I wade through the J2EE API it’s occuring to me that the software problems we are trying to solve haven’t changed that much in the last 10 years. The tools have improved -the J2EE handles many things that would have been done by hand ‘in my day’- but the problems and domains haven’t changed much. The MVC features strongly, seperating spec from implementation is important, security localisation, etc., etc. essentially the same problems coming up over and over again.

So why are there still so many bugs?