Mafia Wars, FarmVille, Cafe World, Dragon Wars, Vampire Wars, FishVille. Just some of the games whose notifications are overwhelming the home pages of even the most socially awkward of Facebook users. A quick walk through any college library will reveal scores of screens with the tell-tale signs of various farm animals, waiters and roller-coasters lighting up the area for all to see. Even the most casual of Facebook users find it difficult to escape from the clutches of the ongoing Social Game revolution and quite a few have found themselves in a perpetual cycle that consists of moments of pure therapeutic goodness, swiftly followed by spells of inconsolable guilt as you realise that you’ve planned an entire day around your harvesting cycle / cooking times. You solider on though. You’re forced to, lest a friend leapfrog you in the leaderboards.

It can’t just be me.

In fact, I know it’s not just me. I’ve invested (read as: pissed away) days into these games. In Mafia Wars I was a latecomer and was trying to play catch up on those trendy early adapters whose lives had already changed for the worse. The final nail in the coffin of my Gangsta’ career came when I stumbled in the door one night and found myself without any energy to complete Bank Jobs and the like. Out came the credit card. As a complete degenerate gambler (certainly when drunk anyway), I’m not unaccustomed to taking out the credit card at 4am and having a desperate punt on anything from the X-Factor – which I don’t watch – to 40 game accumulators across every sport on offer. I’ve never woken up feeling as guilty after losing money on ludicrous betting as I did after spending €70 on Gold Coins! I wouldn’t mind but the eventual effect it had on my character was akin to upgrading the engine in a Mini… that’s in a race against a F16 fighter jet. I vowed never to play a game on Facebook again and I admit that I briefly felt somewhat superior to those I could see in the libraries feverishly clicking away their lives because I had the good sense to break the addiction.

Then Cafe World came along.

I happen to work in the hospitality industry so I justified my first foray into the world of restaurant ownership as an investigation to see if it was “authentic”. Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel for excuses! Much to my delight, the game was about as authentic as an autographed photo of Jesus. I had hoped for micro-management of costs and the freedom to create your own meals but instead I was given cartoon characters that flipped burgers on a moldy old stove every 5 minutes. There seemed to be nothing going for the game – which was good, given that I was desperately hoping that I wouldn’t get sucked into a world of misery for a second time. I was just about to abandon ship and return to normality when I spotted the leaderboard at the bottom of the screen. What followed was something that could only be described as the most peculiar time of my life as my online existence deteriorated into trying my utmost to try win what was to develop into a bitter feud between two restaurateurs.

There was no prize. Not even pride was on the line as I didn’t know the person I was entangled with that particularly well. For some reason the mere sight of a big number was enough to motivate us to plough hours and hours into slicing and dicing day in, day out. At some point, the process of roasting and toasting various meals was no longer fun. My restaurant started to look more like a factory than an eatery as I tried to make my formerly beloved creation more efficient in a desperate attempt to hold onto my lead. My moves were quickly matched. It can’t have been much fun for my competitor either given that I was starting to plan my “cooking” around my day of lectures and work. I’m ashamed to admit, but I will, that I was once asked to go into work because someone called in sick but I declined purely on the basis that my 6 Roast Beefs would be spoilt and I’d surrender my lead. It had to stop. For the love of God it HAD to stop!!

And then I got word. “I surrender” was the gist of it. I was skeptical though. I was only too aware of the possibility of being tricked into leaving my guard down and being left helpless as they rode off with the prize (which was what again?). It turns out that they weren’t that sick and twisted though (had they done that I would have been positively bouncing off the walls for weeks!). I could return to my normal life i.e. the one that didn’t involve logging into Facebook at every available opportunity to see if I could better utilise my fictitious cafe.

Never again.

Mess. Definition please. A state of confusion and disorderliness. Welcome to my life.

Last Saturday confirmed all my suspicions. It’s 2:30am and the music has stopped, the lights are on and I’m as hungry as a size-zero model in a McDonalds for the first time in their life. I step outside the Forum and it’s raining cats and dogs. My fancy dress plan was initially going to be a crude attempt at my role model and idol, Captain Morgan. It didn’t work out that way though.

I had dug through the end of my wardrobe and eventually rustled up a Death costume from yesteryear. It was nothing to get excited about except for the hood that covered your entire face to create an air of mystery which admittedly granted me the freedom to dry hump (amongst other things to be fair) everyone in sight, all whilst remaining anonymous. Hoods are dangerous though.

Cats and Dogs are bouncing off my face and the only thing on my mind is a chicken burger freshly harvested by some Polish slave worker in Hill Billies. My friends are all creeping about outside the Forum, either catching up with old friends or going in for the kill on the haplessly unaware! I wanted no part of such debauchery though and instead opted to pull over my hood, put my head down and run into town where I could get all the breast I wanted. And then I could go get chicken.

I probably got a hundred meters before childhood memories suddenly came flooding back. See, when I was about 3 years old, and this is one of my earliest vivid memories, I was oddly environmentally aware. I had just finished a Loop The Loop ice-lolly and wanted to dispose of my lolly pop stick in the safest possible way so I broke away from the tight grip of my mother and ran down towards the nearest bin at the bottom of the street. Proud of completing my civic duty, I turned around to my mother to wave in delight. My mother got quite animated, obviously immensely proud of me. I woke up twenty minutes later.

As it turns out, the only thing between me and the bin was a lamp post.

In retrospect I think I got away quite lightly. I did kill a tooth though. How do you kill a tooth? Simple really. You run as fast as you can towards a bin, turn around and wave to your mother and then look back just in time to wrap yourself around an iron pole and knock yourself unconscious and sever the nerves in your gums.

Fast forward seventeen years and I’m once again hurtling towards a pole only this time I have a fucking black veil across my face which gives me the same eyesight as a 90 year old World War II veteran. I know the road though and manage to maneuver my way around a few obstacles. I think I’m in the clear and put the proverbial foot down. I notice three people eating chips outside the Ballybricken Chipper. It’s the last thing I notice.

“OOOOOOOOOOHH” is all I hear in chorus as I suddenly come to a stand still. Actually, a “stand still” is a very generous description of myself. A collapsed mess would be more apt. I pull the veil back over my head and see a pole standing over me. One of the avid chip eaters from across the road comes over to see if I’m okay while I can still hear the unmistakable ring that’s created when Pole meets Skull. Either that or they were going to rob me. I’m conscious though and they go back to their fish and chips.Bastards with their food. I send a text to my friend which simply read “fucking Pole. I’m in a bad way”. When he arrived, fists clenched, he demanded to know where the dirty foreigner had gone. I should have saved face and cut my losses by admitting that some greasy Pole started on me and attacked me for no reason. Instead I told him the truth. To summarise, it pretty much went like: “I’m a fucking retard who runs into iron poles for the craic”.

It’s then that I notice I’m bleeding. I’m so preoccupied with with wiping my face and trying to keep up with my friends (who I was ironically running away from in the first place) that I then walk into another pole. If I was trickling blood in the first place, I was pumping at industrial pace now! I was bungled into a taxi and sent home. It was probably for the best but I ended up not getting any food which was the reason why I turned into a unsighted Usain Bolt in the first place!

I took a photo of myself which kind of made me look like some kind of rape victim but thankfully I got a text the next morning that said I wasn’t raped but went into a Pole instead. Had I finished that double Morgan’s and Coke that was knocked out of my hand before I left, that text probably would have been appreciated much more.

It’s now Thursday and most of my face has healed. After about a day of washing, I managed to get rid of all the caked in blood to reveal the actual size of the cut. I probably could have done with a stitch or two but I think I can live with another scar. It’s not like I was going to become Nivea’s next big thing by brandishing the man tan on national TV! To compound the idea that a stitch would have come in handy is the fact that I now have blood trickling down my face again. Apparently random people love picking at random peoples scabs. They should just get their own to be fair.

I can’t get away from the fact that it’s another scar and another embarrassing story to go with it! The last scar I earned goes about halfway down my shin after I mistimed a jump between two walls while running and took a healthy chunk out of it. I swear that the next scar I get is going to be for something heroic like falling out of a tree after rescuing a blind cat. Knowing me I’ll probably just clock another pole – I’m an expert at this stage!

I’m writing this post in the comforts of Rosslare Port of all places. Saying that it’s from the comforts of the place is probably a bit too generous though given that they’re still proudly displaying that they were the best port back in 1990 and the decor bears all the hallmarks of a place that hasn’t since a lick of paint since that year. Having finished work in Dublin, I decided to really prove myself a point and try make it into college for my first lecture. The only available bus sees me stop off at Rosslare first and it now looks as if my bus was 30 minutes early. Of course I have no concept of time on the bus having spent every five minutes of the journey testing the toughness of the glass… and my face.

It looks very likely that I won’t get any more sleep before college and I probably have a day of vegetation and snapping out of sleep deprived trances to look forward to. I may not take in a single word that a lecturer says (not that I usually do) but I will go home tonight being awfully proud of myself because last year when I finished working in Dublin for the weekend, I didn’t go into college for a week – and that was to collect my grant cheque!

Of course I’ll only be proud of myself until I get home and have the smug grin melt from my face (a possible fun hallucination perhaps?) when it registers with me that I’m also working this evening. I may very well plough through it having demolished the proverbial wall a long time a go… or I’ll die trying. But first I’d better make this fucking bus lest I be stuck in the 90s for another few hours!!

I just came across this study after browsing the epicenter of social media news, Mashable, for the first time in about 2 years.

Some people have described the results of the study as jaw-dropping. It found, among other things, that 57% of people believe their activities on social-networking sites are narcissistic in nature. Is that really “jaw-dropping” though? Many social networking sites encourage participation through regular status updates and lets face it, most peoples lives aren’t bubbling with excitement and edge-of-your-seat drama, so they inject a measure of creative storytelling to the mix.

Does that say something about the people who use social networking sites i.e. the fact that people twist and contort the facts of their lives to appear as being more interesting? I wouldn’t necessarily classify this as being narcissistic though. Certainly, if you just look at one side of the coin (in this case the online aspect) then we could quickly come to the conclusion that everybody is seeking out that lime light with their own selfish agenda. However, these traits don’t translate over to real life interactions though, that is to say that the vast majority of people don’t over-exaggerate every detail of their lives when interacting with them in-person.

Facebook, as an example, is a social playground. When we start assuming that everything that happens in this playground is an accurate representation of the characteristics of “Generation Y”, things start to get skewed. Yes, the internet is serious business, but at the same time it shouldn’t be used to stereotype an entire generation given that we still do exist outside this particular medium of communication.

Okay, I know that part two of my Oxegen trip report is still “due”. The first half of it was far too long, so I’ve conveniently decided to wait a few months so that I’ll forget all the non-important stuff and only include a mind blowing account of the remainder of the weekend. If only.

For now I’ll skip forward a few weeks to the present time. I’ve just made it home after waiting half an hour in an Indian take away for my end of night food. Indian food is world renowned for it’s unique flavour and it’s interesting to note that Indians are far more popular than Chinese in England, in restaurant terms, which is perhaps the result of the Chinese getting to Ireland first and getting a firm grip of the place before the Indians eventually came to our shores.

“I’ll have a Vindalloo” would usually be my instinctive request if I ever found myself at an Indian takeaway as drunk as a wino on Dole Day. I had a brief look at the menu though, and was overwhelmed with the numbers. Options 1 through 60 all looked the same to me until I caught glimpse of the big notice underneath the conventional menu which offered a Doner Kebab roll and can of coke for €5. Yes please.

A half an hour passed and all my friends got their food – traditional Indian curries and the like. I was still sat there talking about cricket of all things to the sole member of staff. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if Ali at the counter sent Mohammad in the kitchen over to the Istanbul across the road to get a few slices of Doner meat. During this time I wondered what the hell Doner meat was. I’m glad I was too drunk at the time (and probably still am) to even begin to comprehend just how little meat goes into this “meat”.

I eventually got my meal, and I use the term “meal” extremely lightly, perhaps to the point where I don’t even classify it as a meal and more so call it a challenge to the stomach. My stomach passed. Thusfar.

I’m back from the temporary bog that is currently Punchestown for almost 24 hours now and even though that should be ample time to recover and really appreciate the whole thing, I still can’t figure out and decide if it was the most breathtaking and electric weekend of my life, or if it was the most depressing and boring crock of shite that I’ll ever have the privilege of spending €250 to see. This blog will mostly be me trying desperately to recall the highs and the lows of the weekend and is more for my own benefit in helping me make heads and tails of the entire experience. Hopefully you might be able to muster up an awkward smile or chuckle at my expense at some point though.

The “fun” all started on Wednesday when I went into work and realised that I was rostered to be on until 5am which would be cutting it fairly tight to catch my 6am bus had I been ready to go but was borderline pisstake given that I hadn’t even found a bag to pack my stuff into! I managed to swap a shift with someone else which gave me a few hours packing time to play with but meant I was forced to pull an all-nighter on the eve of Oxegen. Probably not the best of starts I could have hoped for.

I just about managed to catch the 6am bus after spending my last moments at home desperately trying to transfer my chosen poisons for the weekend of Vodka and Buckfast into plastic bottles. Once on the bus I had to fight with myself to stay awake. An odd slap every so often to the face seemed to do the trick though. The journey did get that little bit easier to cope with once Gift Grub came on the radio with their Oxegen special and all the weather reports and commentary on the radio seemed to indicate that it would be a great weekend with little to no rain. I think I came off the bus with a smile as wide as my face, thinking my decision not to bring welly’s would be vindicated.

How little I knew.

While I was standing around in the freezing cold in Enniscorthy waiting for John to come chugging along in his overloaded Zafira, I thought back to a flyer that I saw in Waterford Bus Station which advertised a special offer of €10 return to Naas. “That could have been useful”, I thought to myself as I happily paid €10.80 for a single journey down the road. I really wished I opted to travel by bus the entire way when I saw John pull up in his people carrier that was practically bulging at the sides, like a fat child who gorged their way through 7 hamburgers, thanks to the tents, sleeping bags, clothes and beer that was packed inside it. I struggled to get into it and there was still 4 people left to clamber in!

If ever there was a moment where I honestly thought “fuck my life”, it was when I sat in the back of that car with a can of Tubourg practically half up my arse and a bag of cans falling onto my head every five minutes which always woke me up from whatever little sleep I was getting and meant I saw the two people in front of me with their tongues down each others throats. I nearly got sick.

Once we found our way to the venue (and believe me, it was no mean feat after passing through the same village three times), we looked for a suitable spot to set up camp. Thankfully – but at the same time frustratingly – one of the guys who I traveled with was a camping expert. I was thankful because I’d never pitched a tent in my life but frustrated because every prospective site we went to was inspected with Ray Mears-esque precision. We eventually set up shop a stones throw away from the Thursday Night Stage and the Xbox Live Stage. Hmmm, the site may have ticked all of Ray Mears’ boxes but his checklist obviously didn’t have anything that asked whether you have the slightest fucking hope of getting some sleep throughout the whole weekend! We were there to stay though as none of us fancied lugging our gear around for another 2 hours while watching him roll about the grass checking for thistles and shit.

As it transpires, pitching a tent is embarassingly easy.

Anyway, once we had our “settlement” up and running there was nothing left to do other than open up the cans, sit back, relax and wait for the music to start. First up was a 80s covers band from Germany. Hearing some of Rock and Rolls greatest ever productions being sung in a distinct German accent was a bit disappointing though, but a few cans later the sound of “Highway Star” was enough to draw me out from our makeshift courtyard with my 2L bottle of vodka and coke and into the chaos that was unfolding in the mosh pits in the field opposite us. I came back with my arms lovingly wrapped around my bottle which had somehow survived the madness unscathed which was more that could be said of my body that emerged with a cocktail of bruises.

On my meandering path back to my tent I couldn’t help but notice that a 6 man tent was being pitched across the way from us in what was a “No Camping Zone”. For some reason, I took particular offense to the fact that I couldn’t now walk straight from our tent to the stage and instead had to take a light detour around this gigantic tent. I figured that I should send them a friendly message… by running through their tent. It wasn’t pegged down, so I thought that I could run straight through it. I’m pretty sure it will materialise as a video on YouTube in the near future, but basically I sprinted across the road and jumped into the front of the tent in the hopes that I’d carry on and come out the other side. Unfortunately for me, there was someone on the other side of the canvas and and I just bounced off them and sent them flying. I stumbled away without a clue of what to do because I didn’t for a second think my plan would fail. There was some awkward moments as I first claimed I couldn’t see the tent due to it blending in with the grass and then changed my story to simply wanting to come over and make an entrance and say hello. We shook hands and somehow I was off the hook. We were to receive poetic justice a few nights later though…

The rest of the tribute bands were pretty decent. There was an AC/DC band that did a great cover of “Let There Be Rock” that once again saw me in the middle of some madness with my bottle of drink being clung onto for dear life! Later on there was a strange band that was playing hip-hop and rap songs from the 90s. Rocking out to an all-white band who are pumping out the likes of MC Hammer with disturbing accuracy was pretty entertaining, not to mention surreal!

When that was all finished, we went off to the fun fair where I haggled with this girl who was selling tickets to a ride she didn’t want to go on. I kind of shot myself in the foot when it turned out that no-one I was with wanted to go on it either! My bottle had very obviously depleted at this stage as I not only went on it twice by myself, but then went and spent another €10 to go on it again. I’m such a weirdo. I can’t really remember how I got back to my tent but was somehow perplexed by how I managed to neatly fold my clothes and put them in the corner yet can’t remember how the fuck I got back to my tent!

I didn’t have time to worry about such anomalies though because it was Friday and it was an early start! The first band I wanted to see was God Is An Astronaut, who were playing in the Green Spheres tent. I wanted to get there early and ended up catching the last 20 minutes or so of the Dirty Epics set. They’re a fun little band who I’ve seen play in the Forum in Waterford a few times before. They play infectiously catchy indie pop songs and try their best to get the crowd going, which is more that can be said for some of the other bands who were playing over the course of the weekend! I managed to wriggle my way up to the front for God Is An Astronaut and they didn’t fail to impress. I’m pretty terrible at remembering the names of songs of sets so all I can say was that I was blown away. It served as the perfect gig to pump me up for the rest of the weekend and I came out of that tent thinking that not even the rain was going to get in the way of me enjoying it! Is it too far-fetched to suggest that this unstoppable feeling that God Is An Astronaut brainwashed into me was what kept me away from the Welly Exchange stall??

Our next stop was over to see James play on the Main Stage. All of their songs seemed pretty alien to me and because we were over to the very right of the stage, sound was quite patchy and the volume ultimately depended on what direction the wind decided to blow in. I was told that they were some big band in the 90s but it wasn’t until they played Come Sit Down that I started to get into it. It also happened to be one of their last songs so it was one of the less enthusiastic performances that I saw over the weekend but they’re a great band to kill time with… if that’s of any compliment at all. It probably isn’t though. I also thought they were a bit gay. Just an observation.

I then went exploring and happened across Therapy? who were playing on the O2 Stage. I only caught the last twenty minutes of their show but I immediately wish that I had told James to fuck off and left earlier to catch the entire show. I hadn’t listened to much of their stuff in quite some time and admittedly a lot of the stuff outside of Troublegum would be as familiar to me as a fist up my nose. I tried my best to fit in around the hardcore fans by humming riffs every now and again as I shimmied my way as close to the front as I could. I’m actually surprised at how well this worked throughout the entire weekend. I shimmied my way to the front of pretty much every act I saw and no-one seemed to mind. Of course when I did get up near the front I’d have nearly bitten the ear off anyone who even dared get past me!

I caught some of Lily Allen on my way back across the arena but told myself that I’d only stay and watch if she was either having some kind of wardrobe malfunction. She wasn’t. I managed to catch the last few minutes of Fight Like Apes who were playing to a pretty full tent. I know that the pissing rain probably had something to do with some smaller bands playing to massive crowds. Fight Like Apes are basically Ireland’s answer to the plethora of electro-indie bands that have been imported across the shores over the years. I really did enjoy what I saw of the gig and was surprised that even people near the back knew the words to the songs. I was creeping around back there in anticipation of Mogwai who were due to play right after.

To express how disappointed I was with Mogwai, I think I’ll talk a bit more about Fight Like Apes, the band I only saw because I wanted to be early for Mogwai. I think they have a very bright future ahead of them. Their music is catchy and upbeat but if I’m allowed one word of criticism it’s that they try a bit too hard to be “random”. I’m all for getting the crowd going but they all they achieve by climbing scaffolding and banging chairs off barriers is distract us from their music – which is quite good.

It was around this time that I had to use one of the toilets. I had managed to get over to the arena when it opened at the beginning of the day when I had to use the ATM. They were spotless then but fast forward 7 hours and take into account that the only food that could be bought comprised of nothing but fat and grease and you have a completely different story. I decided my best course of action was to just queue up behind a girl. Guys only use Portaloos for one reason, and it’s never pretty! My hypothesis was somewhat proven when I saw a guy come out with a big dirty grin on his face and have a girl go in after. Within seconds she ran out and got sick all over the ground! The girl in front of me was armed with bleach and baby wipes, so I was safe as houses. I did leave with a big grin on my face though. God only knows what happened to the poor soul who went in after…

All that was left to do for the night was try get in a good spot for the two headlining bands, Blur and Snow Patrol. Snow Patrol were up first and it was the third best gig I’ve ever seen (right after Tool in the Point in 2006 and God is an Astronaut in Electric Avenue last year). The atmosphere was electric with the entire arena packed with every single fan singing along to every song. I was so caught up in the experience that I even threw a girl up on my shoulders and somehow managed to not drop her even though she was trying her hardest to kill us both. As for Blur, I was torn between seeing them or 2 Many DJ’s. I’ll admit that I was more of an Oasis man during the 90s but the very fact that this could be my only opportunity to see Blur live meant that I chose to stick around. I wasn’t disappointed.

On our way back to our tent we were absolutely gutted to find that someone had set up a tent in the 4ft wide empty square in front of us. Just like that our courtyard was ruined. When we woke up the next morning though, the occupants were to give us all the biggest surprise of the weekend…

(Jesus this is a long post, I’ll try have Sat and Sun’s blog up soon)

In years gone by, I’ve eagerly anticipated Oxegen each Summer, purely for the experience. This is the third year in a row that I have a ticket but it will also be only my first time ever attending it. Be it friends dropping out, getting an offer of twice the face value of the ticket or being in a financial vice grip the week before the event, things just haven’t ever gone as planned. With about 11 hours left before I scurry down to the bus station, I just hope there’s no proverbial spanner thrown into the works!

I’m due to get a bus to New Ross and from there I’ll get a lift up to Punchestown with a friend… in a full car. MCD, the promoters, have been really pushing the whole idea of “Car Pooling” this year but I think that whoever had the brainwave of getting 4 people to stuff themselves into a car along with rucksacks, tents and slabs upon slabs of beer should be shot! I’m trying my best to pack light, but even still, I think I’ll have to bring all my childhood Tetris skills to the table if I don’t want to find myself in a position that even a contortionist would be proud of.

The Oxegen forums were the first place I looked to for advice on what to bring. Some people have even made checklists of essentials and you have to pity the poor women who have made lists which are about quadruple the size of that of the guys. I wouldn’t even bring some of the things that have been suggested if I was moving country, let alone going away for a weekend. I’ve even seen a full-sized mirror being suggested! I eventually found a somewhat realistic list of bare essentials and made my way down to Tesco to try and stock up.

Ranking highly in my list of essentials is alcohol. I’ve decided to go down the route of drinking Buckfast. It doesn’t really cover myself in glory given it’s reputation, but on the other hand I don’t want to polish off a bottle of cheap vodka and end up covering myself in something that’s certainly not glory (but very chunky and full of carrot like bits) on one or more of the nights. Next on my list was Duck Tape. When someone comes flying through my tent and tears the arse out of it, I want to be able to have some chance of being able to go into MacGyver mode and fix it. I then went looking condoms.

This is where I got a bit apprehensive about throwing all these items into the one basket and buying them in my local shop. Buckfast, Duck Tape and Condoms. Riiiiight. There’s nothing I could possibly do to change the very blunt statement that those three items sitting beside each other make. I debated with myself for a few seconds before deciding to leave the Durex for later as I quite like being able to shop in the City!

I am going for the music though. Honest.

Heatwaves always take the entire Irish population by complete surprise! I mean, we’d consider a good day to be one that involves, at most, 15 minutes of sustained sunshine before it fucks back behind grey clouds and proceeds to piss on us for the rest of the day. Although in these past few days, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Ireland was undergoing an accelerated process of continental drift and was now located somewhere beside Africa.

So with the sun shining down on us, we excitedly root around in our wardrobes for that pair of shorts that we all know is there somewhere. We then look for the suncream that we’ve probably had in the house since 1996, although trying to get anything out of the bottle sounds like some unfortunate soul whose just had a curry that’s been spiked with industrial strength laxatives!

We then feel as if we’re ready to strut our stuff and show our faces in public, complete with the Factor 50 still very visible on our noses! Sure we need factor 50… and lots of it, otherwise the mere talk of sunshine would be enough to bring out the freckles in us. Not only are we proudly showing off our white noses, but we all brandish legs that look more like milk bottles than limbs. All our foreign friends may be sniggering at us but we can at the very least boast that it takes us less time to get dressed in the morning as they’re still wearing about 17 layers of clothes!

The question of what we can do in this glorious weather soon pops up. After all, Ireland isn’t exactly known for its vast array of sunshine activities. This does make it relatively easy for us to make up our mind though and soon enough half the country is flocking to the nearest beach with plastic bags full of beer and snacks – everything we could possibly need to enjoy the day (and what’s left of our suncream of course!). We might be at the beach, but there isn’t a hope in hell that we’ll be going swimming. Oh no, no, no. Swimming is only meant to be done in temperature controlled pools that are laced with chlorine. Although in fairness, swimming in the Irish sea isn’t all that pleasant as there’s this ever-present fear that you’ll swallow some nuclear waste from Sellafield or at the very least get a mouthful of sewage that was just released from that well thought out drain that’s placed at the end of the strand.

The next morning we wake up at like 7am because it’s so fucking bright in the room. By some kind of miracle, the sun is still shining! Never in a million years would we have entertained the suggestion of the possibility of two days of sunshine. We’re not prepared though. We look onto the floor and we can make out the sweat patches on our only pair of shorts from across the room. A trip into the shops is on the cards after it becomes all too apparent that we don’t even have enough suncream left to protect our beloved noses! Of course shopping for suncream is pretty much alien to us. We know we can buy it in Boots because we’ve seen ad’s for it on British Television, but we don’t have a clue where exactly it is. So we carefully walk around the nearest store, going down every aisle and meticulously look at everything to be sure you don’t miss it. After a while you notice not the suncream, but the weird looks you’re getting from the old women around you. You’re a bit miffed at first but soon realise that you’ve accidently wandered down the Pregnancy test aisle.

It’s only after you leave the store having found and paid an extortionate amount of money for the suncream that you start to wonder what the fuck were 60 year olds doing down the Pregnancy Test aisles!

Once again we go to the beach, because after all there’s fuck all else to do. Actually, let me rephrase that. There’s fuck all else you can justify doing. You can justify playing the Xbox for the better part of the day when it’s pissing raining outside, but it’s harder to convince yourself that you’re making the best use of your time doing that when the sun is splitting the rocks.

This time when we get to the beach, all of our jaws drop. The beach is in a state. Instead of treading on sand, we’re tripping over beer cans! Immediately we call the radio stations and complain. “Why can’t the City Council clean all this up?” we all wonder. We point out that when we last went to the beach it was perfectly clean. We fail to mention that we last went to the beach a year a go and even then we left behind all of our rubbish. It wasn’t Liam in the luminous green City Council jacket that cleaned up our mess on that occasion though, it was the ocean.

Heatwaves. In Africa they kill people. In Ireland they just make us realise that we’re filthy animals who expect someone else to clean our mess.

Gulp.

That heading almost makes me quake in my boots. I’ve now reached the tender age of 20. For some it’s a milestone, a time when they reflect on what they’ve already achieved in life and look forward to what the future has in store for them. For me though, turning 20 is nothing short of most pronounced and unmistakeable wake up call I’ve ever experienced.

If we rewind a few years back in time, I can see myself as this enthusiastic and promising teenager. Sure, I spent more time off the rails than I did on them, but I always had potential. And dreams of splendour. If I didn’t make it as a professional footballer, then I’d always have a prolific writing career to fall back on. I felt that the world was indeed my oyster. But fast forward past those all too brief moments of teenage adolescence and as well as wondering where the hell the time went, I can’t help but think bluntly to myself; “Right Adam. That plan didn’t work out so well. Fuck…”

On the other hand, so what?! I’m sure that no one emerges from their teenage years smelling of roses and free of regret. Although suffice to say, my proudest achievement is surviving my turbulent years of adolescence without getting my face kicked in! If I can keep that up for another 20 years I’d be very impressed with myself!

No really, I am. Wednesday saw the start of the madness with the M.A.D Ball taking place in the Forum, Waterford. Where most college societies have black-tie balls in hotels, the Media and Design society elect to have a giant fancy dress party instead. I’m not in the Media and Design society, in fact I’m not sure if there even is such a society but when the words fancy dress, not optional and forum are all in the one sentence you can be pretty certain that I’ll be there somewhere.

I had decided to go as a Gorilla, the Cadbury’s Gorilla at that. I collected the costume on the day and bought a few fistfuls of Cadbury’s chocolate to stick into an mountaineers satchel that I found in the house. I found my Guitar Hero drum sticks and the look wad complete. I wasn’t able to try it on before the ball because I was meant to be in work. I really wish I did though. Actually, I really wish I thought the whole thing through!

It really only dawned on me when I got there that I was going to be like a lobster in a pot for the entire night! The suit itself was made out of 100% acrylic, which isn’t exactly the best fabric to allow for air to flow around. I only realised just how dire my situation was when I started drinking as I’m pretty sure I was sweating out the alcohol on the spot. I had about 6 drinks and nothing but sweat pouring out of me to show for it and even that was concealed under layers of synthetic fur! Being able to actually drink was an achievement in itself though as I struggled for a good 5 minutes trying to maneuver the glass into my mouth without snagging my mask and having it spill all over me. I then remembered that there’s such things called straws. I was Method acting. Obviously….

People soon caught onto the fact that I was like a portable patio heater and if they were cold after coming up from the smoking area they’d just latch onto me for a minute to warm up. I didn’t mind though because after all, you don’t dress up as a gorilla to go unnoticed! With alcohol sweating out of me at a ridiculous rate, I decided to really go for it and get some doubles in the hope that at least some of it would be absorbed into my body and not my costume! Also, the possibility (however slight) of actually being able to say I had Drunken Monkey sex was something I had to shoot for! I had just bought another drink when someone comes up behind me and wraps their arms around me. Gorilla hands aren’t the best at holding onto glasses. The girl apologised, but that honestly didn’t stop me from wanting to go all gorilla on her ass!

I took that as a sign that alcohol just wasn’t going to work for me for the rest of the night so from then on I just drank water which I suppose did ensure that I wasn’t going to collapse in a dehydrated mess on some street corner on my walk home.

I did get some free bananas in Centra though. That makes it all worth it!

Cadburys Gorilla

On the subject of being mad, I spoke to my course leader during the week about the possibility of repeating second year of Marketing in September. I’ve been all over the place with college this year and put simply am in dire need of divine intervention so to speak! I have two realistic options available to me. I can either go hell for leather between now and the repeats in August in an attempt to try pass the 10 or so subjects I’ll have to do. I can fail up to 2 of those and carry them over to third year. The advantage of doing this is that if I am successful, I can go into 3rd year and not waste a year. The downside is that in order to give myself any chance of passing them, I’d have to sacrifice working for a good chunk of the Summer.

Unfortunately work equals money, money that I’d need to be able to pay to repeat should I fail more than 2 exams. My other option is to just write off this year and focus on September. Major downside to that is it’ll cost the bones of €5k to repeat and I’d also lose my grant for the year. Now if the prospect of a degree and a job aren’t enough to motivate me then surely having my entire net worth invested in my education should be enough to make me put in the work second time around!

I think it’s worth mentioning that I can avoid the fees altogether if I register for exams only. Say if I give it welly between now and August and manage to fail 3 subjects then that means I have to repeat just those 3 subjects next year. If I go that route it means I can’t officially attend any lectures which would effectively mean I’d spend a second year running without going to classes. I don’t really want to do that because I feel that if I’m off the wagon for too long, I’ll never get back on.

Am I crazy, mad even, for preferring to repeat the entire year over every other option available to me? Am I crazy, mad even, for thinking that this option is the only one that allows me to finally do things right and not stumble and struggle forward having to carry subjects and repeat exams every semester? Is paying €5k my only chance at a clean slate?