Archive for the 'Irish culture' Category

Crime in Ireland: where do you go from here?

Published at March 5, 2008 in Polish and Irish, Irish culture, Polish Comm, Polish Emigration and Ireland. 37 Comments

The brutal attack on two Polish lads who died in the hospital is the most clear example of the “dead end” of changes in Irish society. I don’t know what was the picture of the Irish society 10 or even 5 years ago, but the newspapers provide me the information about the scale of changes and the growing crime and brutality among the Irish society, especially teenagers. According to the Irish Independent (Tuesday 4 March 2008)  knife crime in Ireland had  risen 300pc in four years. The scale and the brutality of the crimes and attacks committed by the Irish teenagers is also horrifying. All the suspects involved in the attack on two Polish lads are in the age of 14, 15, 17 and 19. They youngest o them – 14 years old girl was arrested couple of days ago. The other four teenagers were held by Gardai being involved in a murder of 21 year old man near Grand Canal in Dublin.  I remember many such stories that were described in the Irish newspapers in the last 2 years.

The nationality of those two Polish lads had probably nothing to do with the reason of the attack. There was probably no reason at all. The young thugs were just looking for trouble and looking for the target. How many thugs like the ones who killed my two compatriots are still walking down the streets of Irish cities and towns? According to the all crime reports that were published in the newspapers in the last two years I dare say there is many of them.

How many of the decent people – Irish, Polish, Lithuanian, English or other nations – have to be killed by young thugs to open the eyes of the Irish society, Gardai and the politics?

Some of the readers of my blog are cross with me  becasue of my opinions (that are critical sometimes) about Ireland and Irish people that I present on my blog. Many of them always complains on my compatriots. It is true – we are far from perfect, and there is many Polish troublemakers in Ireland for sure. You can believe or not in the stupid rumors that we hunt swans etc (swans are not in Polish menu), you can accuse us of making troubles, taking your jobs etc. but why many of Irish turn the blind eye on the growing problem of crime and brutality in their own society, or maybe the 300pc rise of the knife crime is also our Polish fault? The crime among the teenagers is really big problem. Can you imagine that those teenage thugs will be adults one day?

By the way, in the same issue of Irish Independent there is more crime stories: one is about 27 years old man who killed his girlfriend and another story is about two mothers who hid cocaine in the childs’ buggy and about the shootings in Limerick.

Have you seen the great film “Boondock Saints”? Do you remember the first scene in the church and the homily of the priest?
“Of course we must fear evil men, but there is another evil that we must fear more… and that is the indifference of good men.”

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Carlow Castle - the example of indolence and incompetence of Carlow Council

Published at March 2, 2008 in Irish culture, Carlow and Ireland. 1 Comment

In the latest issue of Carlow leading newspaper - The Nationalist - there was an article about the Carlow Castle issue. One of the biggest tourist attractions of the town has been left without proper tourist facilities (car park, easy access to the site), covered with litter and in darkness during the night. I have described Carlow Castle in one of me first posts on my Polish blog 2 years ago. I mentioned the large number of the broken bottles that were covering the yard (or interior of the building). It seems that Carlow Council noticed that 2 years after me. Also, they have noticed that there has not been lights in the Castle during the nights for the last 8 months. Indeed it is very hard to notice that because of the surrounding estates that were built up recently. This is the worst thing that Carlow Council could do to the castle. It is surrounded by a ugly modern estates that almost completely wiped out the castle from the town’s landscape. The castle is almost invisible to the newcomer - somebody who doesn’t know the town. The modern estates are placed too close to the castle that the surrounding around the ancient building are not attractive to the tourists at all. It seems that the Carlow chancellors have forgotten about the simple fact - the monument is not only the castle but its vicinity as well, and now - thanks to the Carlow Council - there is nor historical surrounding nor facilities for tourists around the castle.

I remember, it was only 2 years ago, while I was walking down the Graigcullen town’s park or walking down the Castle Street I could watch the beautiful shape of the castle but not any more. The parts that remained visible don’t help the overall ugly look of that part of Carlow town’s landscape.

Dear chancellors - it is a pity, but it is to late to cry. You did nothing when the land around the castle was sold out to the developers, you didn’t prevent the destroying of the town’s landscape and cutting off the castle from the living organism of the town. In my opinion The Carlow Council’s policy in that part of the town was as much devastating to the castle as the ideas of the mad doctor Middleton (who nearly completely destroyed almost untouched structure). The light won’t help much. The castle will remain abandoned by tourists.

It is obvious that Ireland needs more and more development and it is changing rapidly. I am just afraid that there is not too many people in charge who care about the Irish heritage. I wish you all not to wake up one day when you are not able to get back part of your soul that is being sold these days.

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Polish drivers vs Irish ones

Published at January 6, 2008 in Poland, Polish and Irish, Irish culture and Ireland. 25 Comments

Couple of times, on my blog, I mentioned that some of us - Polish emigrants - have inferiority complex typical for emigrants, and it is usually expressed in complains. Since I came to Ireland I have been listening to Polish drivers complaining on Irish ones. In fact Irish drivers are not the best in the world, and even I have seen so many times how Irish people drive their cars. Hover, it doesn’t mean that Irish drivers are worse than Polish ones. Let me say, we are both bad drivers, but we are not the same bad drivers, actually Polish and Irish drivers are like a two pieces of jigsaw, that could create one excellent driver.

Irish drivers lack of the imagination and awareness. Sometimes they seem to drive the car while sleeping. The most terrible behaviour on the country roads is the driving the car, truck or tractor in the middle of the road, having the whit line just in the middle between the wheels. On the country roads that bend like a snake it is very dangerous, especially when many Irish people drive fast new cars (consumption in Ireland is very high - typical for the society that used to be poor), so there is a lot of accidents. The next bad habit typical for Irish drivers is almost complete lack of knowledge when the indicators should be used. It is so often visible (or rather not visible) on the roundabouts. Yet another typical bad behaviour of Irish drivers is parking cars wherever they want to stop. Once - in Birr - I saw old lady who stopped her car on the junction, just before the traffic lights. She just turned off the engine, and went to the shop leaving the car on the regular strip of the street.
Those examples are quite typical and happens regularly. However Irish drivers have one feature that is not typical for Polish ones. It is a culture of friendly driving. Irish drivers let the other drivers go, do not challenge each other, do not try to prove who is the best. Many times being stock in traffic jam I saw the drivers who let go others who were leaving car parks, or driving across the main street. Being pedestrian I like very much the way how the Irish drivers treat people who are passing the street. Many times I just stopped close to the crossing zebras, thinking about something and then realising that the traffic just stopped. Usually when I come back from Ireland to Poland I have to take care about myself, especially when I am crossing the street. In Poland drivers don’t stop when somebody is closing to the zebras. Pedestrians are to wait, not the drivers. No body reduce speed if there is no body crossing. People on the pavements are not taken under consideration of the Polish drivers.  I saw many times when cars were taking over each other while driving through the crossing places. Actually Polish drivers treat driving as a challenge. The other drivers are the enemies, and one has to show them who is the best, so Polish drivers speed a lot, take over (sometimes 3 cars at the same time) etc. Polish drivers know nothing about the culture of friendly driving, so don’t expect that somebody will let you go if there is a traffic jam. No body will care about you. Living and driving in such reality  you have to be at least good driver, so we are, but comparing to the Irish drivers, we are not better at all.

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Gdansk will pretend Dublin

Published at November 25, 2007 in Poland, Irish culture, Dublin and Ireland. 6 Comments

I know that some of you was curious why did I stopped updating my blog. The reason is quite simple. I was very ill (bronihical tubes infection) and I was also have been very busy with my new job. I am ok no, so my blog is going to update my blog as often as I can.

It seems that Poland is going to be much more linked with Ireland, helping the Irish culture, and the Irish film makers to make the film about James Connolly (staring Peter Mullan) . According to Onet.eu, Gdansk is going to pretend late 19th and early 20th century Dublin, because the city itself is too modern nowadays, and Gdansk is the one of the few port cities with the original late 19th and early 20th century warehouses made of red brick, very similar to the ones that used to dominate the landscape of the banks of the Liffey river. The film is going to be the most expensive in the history of Irish film industry, and it is going to be partly financed by Irish government and SIPTU (which was founded by James Connolly), as a part of 100 anniversary of Easter Rising.

I like very much the idea of making part of the film in Gdansk. Maybe one day, Irish film makers will visit my home city - Lodz, which is also very old and in some parts reminds Dublin.

kick it on kick.ie

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Archaeology job is over

Published at October 8, 2007 in Archaeology, Irish culture and Ireland. 28 Comments

Due to so many things that happened during the last 2 weeks I forgot to mention that more than 1 week ago I have quit archaeology company, after more than 1,5 year of my presence in that business.

What can I say about working on archaeological excavation sites in Ireland? For sure there was more pros than cons.

Methodology of excavation in Ireland is completely different to what we have learnt in Poland, and I must admit that our - continental (not only Polish) methodology is much more efficient and systematic than the methodology I experienced in Ireland. Unfortunately lots of our energy and time is being wasted due to the way of digging in Ireland. It is clearly visible on wide sites (couple of hundred square meters). In Poland we divide field to grid of 10 square meters boxes and then divide people to couple of teams of 5 people. Each team cleans surface, explores the archaeological features in the box of 10 square meters, thus having 4 teams of 5 we can very fast explore and record about 80 square meters per day. After each day we have an exact number of 10 square meters boxes of the site completely explored, planned and closed and we don’t need to care about them later. In the Irish methodology we have to clean whole surface of the site (sometimes it is hundred square meters). Usually we need from 1 to 3 days to clean the surface, but quite often it rains and the surface once cleaned is completely disturbed by rain water and it needs another cleaning.

Next thing that was very annoying is the attitude of so called “archaeologists” of National Road Authority (some of them don’t know the basic methods of recording the site). It is obvious that carrying on the works in the heavy rain is completely pointless. You can not clean the surface (which is usually clay), you can not draw the plans and quite often you can not see anything interesting. For many of the National Road Authority inspectors it is not so obvious. They demand to keep people on site sometimes even under very heavy rain. If they were a real archaeologist or if they were at least people with some experience on field they would probably know that people present on site under heavy rain were rather pretending of working than doing something real. That was really annoying, when sometimes we had to dig or to clean the surface under heavy rain only because some ignorant of National Road Authority was going to visit the site.

In Ireland many things, especially the comfort of the work depends on Site Director, his or her experience and attitude to his or her staff. I will describe two completely extreme examples.

Almost half of my time I spent working in Irish archaeology I was working for one very experienced and open minded man from England. He is a person who knows what he is doing and who stick to his plans more or less. He knows his staff well, people’s capabilities and limitations, what is very important he has never been pushing people, trying to use their available power in the most effective way and not wasting time for trying to force anybody to do something that he or she can not do. Most important thing. He knows that most of the site assistants have Master degree in archaeology, and they are more or less experienced people. Work under his orders was very comfortable and easy, and - as far as I know - he has never limited the challenging task to the small group of people. On the contrary he has been trying to give every person of his staff something really interesting to do.

My other site director - an Irish girl - was in the extreme opposition. On her site there was never time and will for discussion or suggestions. Chaotic decisions and orders were changing all the time. All members of the staff were completely annoyed, especially when her decisions were completely irrational and were showing lack of experience in directing the group of archaeologists. Even more annoying was the fact that she was blaming us for her wrong decisions. If someone pointed her out her mistakes was lost completely and could forget about any promotion. Of course I was one of them - when I told here that the camera batteries were not charged. Pushing people all the time, changing moods couple of times per day and limiting the challenging tasks to only small group of people (I don’t blame them) made her staff very nervous and stressed.

The thing completely not understanable for many of us is the way of promotions in many of the archaeology companies. Unfortunately there is many examples when your promotion depends on how fast you lit the cigarette of your boss. There are people in many companies who were site directors in Poland, people with a great field experience who haven’t been promoted for year or two, and at the same time they are people without any archaeological degree, with some experience gained in Ireland who were promoted very fast. The best example is an archaeologist without big experience, who couldn’t speak proper English nor fill the context sheets who became supervisor very fast. I knew also an Irish girl with bachelor degree without any experience except the one got during the studies who became supervisor very quickly.

Some of you probably suspects that I wouldn’t complain if I would be the one of the party. Not at all. There is nothing personal, I was quite happy with my latest promotion and I knew that I got it due to my experience and the work I did. I am challenging myself to acquire in my life as much as I can, but only by my own work and time and energy I devote to the things and not by personal relations, protections or simple “ass licking” (sorry for being vulgar).

So what is good in Irish archaeology firms? I like very much quite easy attitude of the company to its employees. I had never had any problems with holidays, trips to Poland nor with having a day off immediately. Polish archaeologist are usually in much better situation than other Poles employed in Ireland who can not have many holidays, and thus they can not visit Poland so often as we can. Most of the site directors and supervisor are rather easy going people and they don’t make the problems to anybody, so even if you are out of the party and you have no any hopes for being promoted nobody will never make any problems to you. Of course there are exceptions everywhere, however I can not comply on that.

Thanx to my site director I have gained some experience in using new digital equipment that is rather unavailable on excavations in Poland and I could take a challenges that I had never had in Poland due to the lack of equipment or limitations of the budget (due to the new car of the bosses).

The most important advantage is the conditions of work compared to Poland. My friends in Poland are working 10 - 12 hours per day (8 hours of supervising, drawing plans and sections, taking photos and exploring interesting objects and 4 hours of paper work in the office), 6 days a week for 500 - 600 Euro / month. In Poland, usually we do not have cabins on site nor proper place to eat our lunch (usually we do it in the van), our toilet is the nearest forest or bush. And, what is the most annoying, our salaries are often delayed, because one of the bosses is just about to buy a new car or simply to keep our money on his or her account for a couple days to increase the income.

After all I am quite happy with my experience in Irish archaeology and the number of good memories is much bigger than the number of bad ones.

One week ago I have started a new job in the growing IT business.

kick it on kick.ie

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