A haircut

I got my haircut yesterday. Not the most exciting way to start a blog, it's true, but then maybe today just isn't the most exciting day to start a blog? Anyway the view was nice, which is something. Or is it even nice, really? Actually I can't decide. There's something half-finished about the Grand Canal Dock. Probably because, in terms of development, it actually is half-finished. The U2 tower, which was supposed to be a landmark development at the far end of the dock (left side in this picture) never got past the drawing board. Some people will be happy, I'm sure. In its absence, the far end of the dock maintains a kind of inner city Dublin "charm". I'm damning with faint praise now, I feel, and not without good reason. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with those buildings, I just feel they really don't do anything for the canal basin.

I'd always kind of envied people who got to go about their daily lives in the apparent 'glamour' the city centre (not inner city, vitally - you see how different those two terms are?). I'm sure I had an inflated sense of that, a sort of "grass is always greener" thing from someone who grew up in deepest, darkest suburbia, but on a certain level I was right. For now, at least, it is nice. There's something about the bustle which makes even the laziest stroll around the corner feel as if you've actually gone somewhere. I am only here for three months though, which accounts for part of that. Almost as if I'm on holidays, but a holiday where I'm only half an hour from home and where I work nine hour days five days a week (even on bank holidays).

Come the first of September I'm moving back home (home-home, as it were), about 10km west-south-west, for the above mentioned last semesters. I'd love to stay where I am, but that's not really an option, for all sorts of reasons. I make it sound a lot more dramatic than it is, I'm sure it's fair to say.



This is the barber shop. It's pretty tiny, as you can see from the picture, and I found myself getting in the way while just sitting waiting my turn. It's also expensive by my standards. The main difference between this €19 haircut and my usual €8 one seems to be that they chop slower in the more expensive places. Same end result, just takes longer. Oh well, what's another tenner, in the greater scheme of things. Right?

As the title suggests, I'm ramping up a new blog my final year in college - the last two semesters I'll ever sit through. Well, perhaps the last two semesters I'll ever sit through. Frankly, who knows? The way the economy is I might well stay up in this little ivory tower of mine for some time yet. Might be the safest place for me. For all of us, even. Speaking with my amateur-economist's hat on I'd say that might not be the most sustainable model in the world. But when has an amateur economist ever been right?