Bittersky.org

A few things:

* I had a great two weeks when I happily ignored everything else.
* So many things to catch up on..
* The weather sucks.
* Two essays and a resume await.
* I need to take IELTS and revise a bunch of law papers in May.
* Dad is making me pay for a new HDTV.
* I am hopelessly in love, this has never happened before.

“Are you traveling alone?” I was asked this question again when I checked in for the flight to London at the airport. I said yes and talked more with the girl. People who work at the HKIA are always extremely friendly. I like them.

Anyway, during the 12 hours flight I didn’t sleep much primarily because I didn’t feel well. I watched quite a few films: Spider-Man 3, Evan Almighty, Freedom Writers, Peter Pan and Little Mermaid. All of them entertained me greatly, especially Peter Pan. There were so many underlying themes going on and it was brilliant.

The plane arrived at London Gatwick about 30 minutes late. As someone had told me that I might miss the plane to Dublin, I ran through the way to Immigrations. I was slightly irritated because I was asked too many questions and was thought of as a possible illegal immigrant, and I had always been treated nicely by those officials in Scotland. You would think illegal immigrants would not do something as stupid as going through immigrations with a genuine passport.

By the time I got through, there was a rather static long queue at the Ryanair counter occupying the whole check-in zone. 15 minutes before supposed departure of my flight, I was still in the middle of the queue. We were informed of delays a few times. I was knackered, and worried because I had no way to get in touch with Michael at that point. In the end, the plane departed at 1:20am which was 4 hours late.

I fell into a coma on the plane and woke up to find myself nearly in Dublin. All passengers were tired but it clearly wasn’t over for us yet. We waited at the baggage reclaim area for another 20 minutes before getting the luggage. I walked out at 3:30am, I think. And the first thing on my mind was to get a seat, calm myself down and try to stop coming up with plans to avenge Ryanair.

Michael came and greeted me after a few moments. We walked outside and waited for a taxi in the cold. It was about 20 degrees colder than in Hong Kong but I didn’t care too much - I was too busy complaining about the delay and how long we had been waiting for a taxi.

We got to the hotel and yes, we couldn’t get in! I must say, though, this wait was a lot shorter than the ones I have had on this very day. Hello Dublin, thank you for providing me a bed. Good night.

To start with, I owe someone a favour:

This sign means to stop the car, the arrow is not pointing at the direction the car should go. I was the only one who did not know what it actually means before I nearly got someone killed. We are laughing about it now, but I can recall freaking out at that moment. The hysteric laughters were only to hide my nervousness and endless embarrassment. I cannot believe such silliness was forgiven.

I can remember someone I used to care a lot looking at a short piece of my writing. He read it aloud, and asked me what it meant in a questioning manner, as if I was trying to conceal something or hide things from him. I found it very insulting. Explaining wouldn’t be a problem (although, without a basic understanding of each other any explanations would be useless), but it never felt good to be suspected. This was a trifle I had ignored which had caused some unpleasant consequences. Trifles tell you a lot about people, and I have grown to trust observations. Friendship and/or relationship wise, if you don’t get along, you don’t get along. And getting along is really the most important thing of all. If you argue all the time, it will not work.

Why am I saying all this? I do not know. Maybe I enjoy being random or cryptic (not so in this case)? I have recently realised the importance of keeping track of your thoughts, regardless of how silly or embarrassing they are. Here it goes.

It has been a week since I came back to Scotland from my spring trip to Ireland. I have been doing school work, watching South Park and seeing my friends a bit. While I appreciate Aleida’s comment on my last entry on my adventures in Northern Ireland, I’ve decided to delete it and write another entry with a few pictures because it was quite unorganized, boring and messy.

This is the Botanic Gardens in the city of Belfast. I was sitting on a bench, talking to my friend and watching the kids playing football.

These are pictures from a place called Silent Valley in Downshire, Northern Ireland. It is where the water in the area comes from. We were surrounded by green trees and grass, nice small houses and clear water. I got my ankle hurt when trying to climb the mountains but it was worth it.

There was so much to see in the city of Dublin. I don’t even know where to begin. This is one of the many landmarks, the spine in O’Connell Street in the city center.

A beach in Malahide, just outside Dublin. The unpredictable Celtic weather, to our surprise, was not in effect. I am still in love with all the pictures I took that day, the colours of the sky blew us away.

Of course, there are a lot of other places that I visited but I’ve learnt that when an journal entry about a trip is too long, it gets boring and repetitive. Therefore, I’ll end this by saying that I enjoyed Ireland very much and I was very thankful that the leprechauns did not kidnap me or make me drunk. I cannot wait for another chance to visit again.