monster last post (all words photos to follow)

So let's start with the good news, I officially have a masters in global health! Huzzah! Getting there was quite a challenge but hey, I've got one. During the last couple weeks of September I basically lived in the post-grad reading room and of course it was GREAT weather. Le sigh. C'est la vie. I have to say I've never really spent that much time writing in my life (and I really hope I don't have to again) and I truly felt like an academic! I got that pain in the neck where stenosis happens and the tingles go down the arm. Of course I scolded myself for not taking breaks just like my ex-coworkers would have but it's hard when you get in the groove you know? I used my freakishly strong hands on myself though (uh that sounds weird but just keep reading) and undid some knots at the base of my skull and it did help. Three years working at a private physical therapy clinic truly paid off! Thank you PT Works...!

The last week that I had in Ireland I basically chilled out and just enjoyed what little time I had left. I hung out with folks that I was going to miss (and I can confirm that I do miss them) and spent some time outside Dublin by myself one last time. I went to Enniskerry to the Powerscourt Gardens and it proved to be a good idea (even it was one of the most humid days in Ireland I feel). It was absolutely gorgeous! I'm definitely going to miss just taking a city bus to things like that; things with a ton of character, incredibly vivid colors and deep history. The Powerscourt Gardens has a beautiful mansion/manor (I never know what to call them things) that of course had the beautiful ivy growing on it that was turning the brilliant autumn colors. Even the bus ride there and back was filled with sights that I knew to keep in my head for as along as possible. Enniskerry town was nice to be in because it reminded me of my time that I spent with my very generous friend/classmate at Christmas time as we had Christmas Eve drinks there. Absolutely great times to remember...

Thursday night was my big last hurrah/goodbye party with friends (but definitely I wish there had been some that were missing that had already gone back to the States). We went to the pubs that I frequented (no I did not become an alcoholic, everyone has their favorite stuff right?) starting with The Quays Pub. The Quays Pub is in the heart of Temple Bar (the area) which means it's riddled with tourists but ALSO Irish folk who are interested in gaining international friends. They have live music every night by different acoustic artists who play everything from The Beatles to Bruno Mars... basically crowd pleasers and songs that people love to sing along to. On any given weekend in The Quays, I'd say at least one hen party goes through there, if not two. We then went to Hogan's which is where my (now ex) flatmate and I met (chorus of awwww's here please). It was a sentimental but fun time as our party dwindled down to myself and 2 friends. From then on the night just became mostly the three of us wandering the streets of Dublin and me mostly in my head mentally marking things and recounting memories in my head (and aloud to the chagrin of my mates). Friday the 30th was recovery and "make sure I don't have to pay the 60euro fee) day until the quiet last night. It was a perfect night of last goodbyes.

Now I'm back in California, melting from the heat and wondering why I left Ireland. I'm quickly reminded that it's because no one wanted to give me a job and I'm having the same issues here! Again, c'est la vie. Ah well, when I feel like "writing" again, meaning when I feel like staring at this screen for longer than 30 minutes again, I'll post up a photo version of this long, wordy post. TTFN (for my non-Winnie the Pooh lovers, ta ta for now!)

Electric Picnic!

So finally I am able to write about my Irish music festival experience. It proved to be quite the experience and I loved every second of it! Meghan and I got to Stradbally Estate in County Laois on early Friday afternoon. We (well mainly she) set up the tent and it proved to be a bit more work than we expected.

There she is with the finished product!

Friday proved to be great music-wise. Started the day off with some little known bands but that were pretty good. We saw Shouting at Planes, The Lost Brothers, Willy Mason, Foster the People, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, M. Ward, Santigold, Sinead O'Connor, Interpol and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes! See? Pretty darn good and that's only some of the people that were playing that day! My favourite? I'd say Santigold and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. Santigold had some awesome backup dancers and she was just having so much fun on stage! It was definitely infectious. And then of course Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes are just amazing musicians (I mean comon there's TEN of them!)

Then on Saturday started with Le Galaxie (who I've been wanting to see for such a long time), Adebisi Shank, Toots and the Maytals, OMD, Lykke Li, Health, Arcade Fire, The Chemical Brothers and Public Enemy. Those were the acts that I caught. I know it seems like less but I pretty much watched the whole sets for people on this day rather than bouncing around like crazy. I wanted to absorb the artists as much as I could. Ha. OH also I had my first ferris wheel ride! The thing spun around and it made me super sick... and made me feel old because I was like, "Oh no... I can't take spinny rides anymore." 

Sunday was interesting because usually the music selection dies down at festivals on the last day (from what I've seen anyway) but it was crazy good! I watched Favourite Sons, Oh Land, Japanese Popstars, the Go! Team, The Drums, The Family Stone, Beirut and Pulp. I missed Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and James V McMorrow but hopefully I'll get to see them some other time. I spent Sunday night in a caravan... my first time ever in a caravan! It was very cramped but at least I wasn't freezing like Saturday night. Haha. 

Overall, it was a super fun weekend with some super awesome music. I wish I could come every year. It kind of reminded me of Coachella with its sense of hippiness and happy people... but I was surrounded by Irish folk. I wasn't a minority just because I'm Asian, but because I'm from the US as well! Haha. Interesting experience overall. And now for some photos!

Ms. Sinead O'Connor!

Foster the People! So so good!

Santigold with her awesome dancers

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Toots and the Maytals!

OMD... yes I know I'm a crazy 80s kid haha

Lykke Li

Wuhoo!

Arcade Fire :)

My hand was shaking too much from excitement haha

Public Enemy... meheh

The Family Stone

The Go! Team

Beirut!!!! SOO SOOO GOOD

The Drum :)

Ahhhh Pulp... hahhha

Pintrest and a promise

H'ok so. I will write about my crazy weekend in another post but since I have not a lot of time left for my thesis I will instead post my "pintrest" account so you can ogle my photos. They aren't that great but also I really like the site. http://pinterest.com/iheartzidane/ enjoy (I hope you do anyway) and I'll write soon about Electric Picnic!

An extension of the last post

Okay I'm sorry. It's just unbelievably frustrating. My question to you is why become a health worker if all you believe about people is that they are ignorant and cannot understand anything you say? Maybe it's your condescending tone that makes them not want to listen. All they, the person in pain and in need, hear is, "You are so dumb and I cannot believe I'm wasting my time on you. Could you just hurry up and die so that I can move on to my next person that could maybe survive?" Well would you like to go to a place where you are constantly publicly berated for basically who you are and the opportunities that were never offered to you? It's no wonder that so many people in the world prefer their traditional healers. I sure as hell would (except my acupuncturist at home is kind of a jerk to me but guess what? I stopped going to her... consequences).

I'm so tired of hearing about people becoming health workers, and this is global mind you, and then being annoyed that they "have to" care for the sick and the needy (and more often than not, the poor). Isn't the whole point of becoming a health worker to help these people? Isn't the reason why a person chooses the difficult path of education to become a health worker to be able to try to heal the sick and help them lead a healthy, fuller life? Am I completely naive in this? Am I alone in this?

Unfortunately I do know of a good percentage of folks that choose medical school or another health care path merely for the money and status. That drives me insane too.

This is all stemming from me reading the 2005 World Health Report put out by the World Health Organization. Want to know one of the prime reasons why women and children (at a rate higher than men) are dying around the world? EXCLUSION. What do I mean by that? Any barriers to accessing (any kind of including traditional medicine) health care like poverty (in bold because that's a huge one and because it includes illiteracy), gender (another huge one e.g. in India a girl is up to 50% more likely to die between her first and fifth birthday than a boy), culture (including language) and geographical location. What set me off this time were these quotes, "When, for example, in a busy urban maternity hospital in India, the nurses in the labour ward do not complete patient case notes for low-caste women, that deprives them of the quality safeguards given to other women. Poor and anonymous patients .... get inferior treatment, especially when scarce resources are reserved for richer patients." (I'm going to pull a Seth Meyers and say, "REALLY?!?!? Really you so-called carers of the sick? Just because the woman is put into a low-caste you would deny her the care she deserves BECAUSE SHE'S A PERSON?!) and the other was this, "In rural areas of the United Republic of Tanzania, for example, children from the poorest part of the population who sought care for probable pneumonia were less than half as liekly to be given antibiotics as richer children." HONESTLY?! What is the justification? "Well I won't get paid..." TOUGH. Do you get paid for other things? Yes. Do these CHILDREN have to go to work to get paid to be able to pay you (you greedy jerk) so they can live to see their fifth birthday?

I get it. Health workers have families too. Health workers need to look out for themselves. But you know what? Just because you now have the "status" of being a health worker doesn't make you some super awesome human being. You are still a homo-sapien sapien just like everyone else. Act like it.

Man I'm bad at this

Okay so sorry again for the neglect but the dissertation/thesis whatever you want to call it is kicking my arse, to put it semi-delicately. But actually that's why I'm updating. To vent. I guess doing my thesis is part of my "Irish shenanigans" since study is the main reason why I'm here. Anywho, to the point.

I just had to put down a study that I was reading for my thesis because I was getting really upset. This has been happening for the past week or so now. It seems as if the terrible, disrespectful attitude by health workers, like 99.9% of them Western trained is world wide.

I guess I should back up a bit.

Basically what I'm doing my thesis on is what I was going to do in the first place bar the actual data collection part and extending the literature review. So the official type of thesis I'm doing is a research protocol. My literature review consists of two parts: 1. How has the introduction of a Western health facility has affected the community (and how it has affected the views/opinions of traditional birth attendants)? 2. Is the training of traditional birth attendants a plausible solution to the human resource for health crisis/possible way to decrease the maternal, neonatal and child (MNC health) mortality/morbidity rate?

Confused? Basically I'm comparing/contrasting Western health workers to traditional birth attendants. Now the reason why I've been getting more and more upset and why I started this post the way I did was that in a lot of the studies that I've been reading, the women are quoted saying that in the Western facilities they are getting treated badly and that's why they don't go or why they choose to give birth at home. I would too if someone, especially someone of authority and power, was yelling at me and telling me that I was dumb or ignoring me completely because they thought I deserved to be in pain because I didn't seek out their help earlier. Really? Yeah I loooooove being yelled at and told that I'm stupid in front of tons of people on top of the fact that I'm in excruciating pain and a watermelon is trying to make it's way out of my hoo-hah. For example, in the study that I basically threw down because I was so annoyed there is a nurse that was quoted yelling at a teenager while she was in labour, "You didn't shout like that when the men were on top of you." I mean give me an effing break lady... Look you may have your opinions of when people should start having sex or whatever but jeez louise the kid is in pain and God forbid she dies the last thing she's going to hear is some condescending, jerkface of a woman yelling at her? A lot of the studies I'm reading say that women either can't be bothered by going to a Western health facility because of the way they're treated or it's too expensive (poverty at its worst) and/or the fact that traditional birth attendants are more respectful of the woman's wishes and understand more of the context but still command respect as a health professional. My question is why the eff can't these Western health workers see that to reduce MNC mortality/morbidity rates?! Can you see my frustration?

I mean I'm not saying that traditional healers and traditional birth attendants are the only true practitioners of medicine but there's a reason why women still choose to go to them after all this time AND why that medicine has persisted through time. Yes the "gold standard" is usually Western medical practices which is fine but I still stand by the fact that the "gold standard" for how to treat people and how to approach medicine is executed by traditional healers and traditional birth attendants.

So there.

Let's go backwards shall we?

For those of you who are new to my style of blogging because I'm so bad at keeping up with blogging and life I recount backwards. Only seems natural since those are the memories that are freshest. Also the most recent memories are the true Irish shenanigans. The tales to come later are ones from home...

So it's now July and mostly what I've been up to is writing and stressing out about my thesis. Which will basically be the tune that I will be singing for the next two months. Ah well. C'est la vie... Just a small step towards the career goal right?

ANYWHO onto more fun things... GIGS!

The most recent gig that I went to was the absolutely fabulous Janelle Monae. She was absolutely amazing. The show itself was an amazing treat. I've always said the best shows not only have the artist at their very best but a true entertaining bit as well. Treat for the eyes as well as the ears if you will. Because of this until now the Green Day/Jimmy Eat World double headliner that I went to with a bunch of my friends during undergrad and the Jason Mraz/Makepeace brothers/Bushwalla show I went to that had the undertones of magic involved with Justin Willman (formerly known as Justin Kredible) are the two best gigs I have been to... bar Janelle Monae. She had the same kind of theme as in her music video for "Tightrope" which was very cool. I didn't get any really great photos as my camera ran out battery but this is what I've got:

The ever so fabulous Janelle Monae

A couple days before that we went to "Live at the Marquee" in Cork City and what a freaking cool venue! Basically it's a huge tent but still outdoors and definitely felt like I was at a festival or something. We saw the great Fleet Foxes and they were fanTAStic. They are all so talented and it was great to see them display their talents live!

The guy in the beanie is my favourite...

While I was in California I went to Soul Slam, basically Prince vs. Michael Jackson night, and had an absolute blast as well. No photos from that night as I was busy dancing up a storm with my fantastical sister whilst her awesome DJ boyfriend laid down some great tunes.

BUT the night before I left for California Meghan and I went to watch The Tallest Man on Earth. Contrary to popular belief he most definitely is not the tallest man on Earth but he is absolutely a FANTASTIC musician and ... get this he's Swedish! When he sings he sounds pretty darn American but then he talks and it's like "Oh what the deuce....?" One of my favourite songs of his is "King of Spain" .. give it a listen. Pretty good stuff.

So ends post #1 about the six week hiatus I took from the blog. The food that made me gain the weight I lost will be next!

Sorry for the neglect!

My goodness gracious it's been seven weeks since I've updated and so much has happened since then! I've been to a few gigs, traveled across the Atlantic and the US to go home, came back to Ireland and finally finished my term two assignments... Doesn't sound like much for almost two months but the three weeks I spent back in California was a crazy whirlwind.

So this post is very short but I don't want to crazily inundate you (my very few but important reader people) with my shenanigans but rather I will update more and more by the end of this week about what's been going on. Until then a few photos:

Trudy the cat. Possibly the greatest cat after Maru.

San Diego, CA. How I miss you

Doughboys in Los Angeles, CA. "Dirty eggs" with grits and cornbread. One of the best breakfasts I've ever had.