Financial Depression?

Great.

From of the Vault of MADtv

If Oprah, Barbara Bush, Nancy Reagan, and Betty Ford were to actually do a rendition of The Vagina Monologues, I sincerely believe it would be this uncomfortable. Enjoy...for old times sake.

Bad Backpacking Scenarios

Since being back in the states, aside from getting a job and working on PhD. applications, I’ve also been trying to catch up on movies. I must say, though, that it’s been a pretty arduous experience, because I can’t re-start my NetFlix account or go to the theater that much until I start my job on the 27^th of this month. Luckily, my friends and family have helped me through this dilemma, and for that, I would like to thank you guys for fixing me with your movie fixes. Without those fixes, the withdraws would have been much worse.

Of course, the first movie I saw was Turistas: a really bad horror movie about backpackers in Brazil who become unwilling organ donors. Yeah. It wasn't good for any of us who watched it, and it was extremely odd for me, after just coming back from a backpacking trip, to be watching a movie about a backpacking trip gone horribly wrong. Actually, it made me think of all the horror movies that I have seen of a backpacking, road, family, any kind of trip gone horribly wrong. Here are some classic examples you may remember:

1) Wrong Turn (2003)-A hiking trip goes horribly wrong after a car accident leaves 6 people trapped in the woods of West Virginia, which is inhabited by bloodthirsty, inbred cannibals.

2) Deliverance (1972)-Not necessarily considered a horror movie, but it's about a whitewater rafting trip that goes horribly wrong when "city boys" patronize vengeful, sadistic, possibly inbred "hillbillies."

3) The Hills Have Eyes (1977)-A family road trip goes horribly wrong when they take a "short-cut" off the main road and get into an accident that leaves them stranded in the California Desert. This part of the desert is inhabited by none other than a family of vicious, bloodthirsty cannibals.

4) The Hills Have Eyes (2006)-See above description.


5) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)-A road trip across Texas goes horribly wrong when a group of young travelers embark upon a house inhabited by a family of bloodthirsty cannibals.

6) The Texas Chainsaw II, III, The Next Generation, the 2003 remake-See above description.

7) The Evil Dead (1981)-A trip to the isolated wilderness goes horribly wrong when five college students find and play an audio tape that unleashes evil spirits and eventually turns all of them (with exception of trilogy hero Bruce Campbell) into demonic, zombie-like creatures.

8) Jeepers Creepers (2001)-A trip back home from spring break goes horribly wrong for a brother and sister when a flying demonic, flesh-eating creature stalks them to the death.

9) An American Werewolf in London (1981)-A backpacking trip across the Yorkshire Moors goes horribly wrong when two American college students are attacked by an unknown creature--killing one of them and turning the other into a werewolf.

10) An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)-A backpacking trip through Paris goes horribly wrong when an American student gets bitten by his werewolf lover and becomes a werewolf himself.

11) Wolf Creek (2005)-A road trip through the Australian Outback goes horribly wrong for three young travelers when their car breaks down, and they get picked up by a vengeful "Crocodile Dundee" like character who, after feeling the travelers' somewhat patronizing attitude toward his stories, hunts and kills them one by one.

12) Hostel (2006)- A backpacking trip through Europe goes horribly wrong when a group of young travelers are lured into a Slovakian hostel that makes extra money by torturing and murdering young travelers for the amusement of rich business men.

13) Hostel II (2007)-See above description.

And the list goes on. There seems to be a certain message in these movies: Don't travel! Or at least don't be a cocky traveler. Apparently, being an annoying/naive tourist in horror movies can be just as dangerous as being a horny high schooler and/or camp counselor in slaughter movies. Still, writing about these horror travel scenarios makes me feel like some of my travel experiences were, well, somewhat boring. Unfortunately for those who are reading this blog, I did not run into any cannibalistic inbreds, vicious human hunters, demon-like zombie creatures, werewolves, or flying flesh-eating demons. Thus, in order to make my "less exciting" travel experiences even remotely as entertaining as the above mentioned horror movie trips-gone-wrong, I decided to spice things up a little bit. Enjoy:

Note: Though inspired by true events, in respect of the victims and their families, some names and circumstances have been altered.

1) The Drunken Rope Bridge Massacre

A trip to Northern Ireland's Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge takes a horrible turn when the tour guides are driven to insanity by daft questions about Steak and Guinness pie. They viciously turn on their tour groups by forcing them to drink pint after pint of Carlsberg through a beer funnel before leaving them stranded to walk the wobbly rope bridge on their own.

2) Demonic Horses

A peaceful trip to the Blarney countryside turns bad for a young family when once tranquil horses become possessed by an evil spirit the locals call, Blucher. Things take an even worse turn when the horses lure the family's impressionable son, Jimmy (Tippin Jonas Dakota), to their gates, sneeze on him, and cover him with Elmer's Glue. Jimmy is now left stuck--body and soul--at the crossroads between heaven and hell. Will Jimmy ever escape their evil clutch? Will Jimmy's family be able to save his soul before it's too late?

3) Pixies from Hell


A trip to a fairy glade turns sour when a group of young hikers get eaten alive by a family of inbred, cannibal pixies.

4) The Graveyard Shift


A trip for three young college students takes horrific turn when the ghost of "Bluidy Mackenzie" forces them to become actors who promote bawdy Graveyard Theater for the upcoming Edinburgh Fringe Festival.


5) The Curse of the Wishing Steps


A trip up the wishing steps takes a bad turn when a young female backpacker encounters the Djinn from Wes Craven's Wishmaster instead of the Blarney Witch. Her childhood wish of becoming an actress is horrifically granted by the Djinn, and she soon finds herself playing a non-starring role in Wishmaster V: Djinn takes Blarney Castle.


6) The Substitute 5: Hostile Principles


The Substitute is back, and this time he owns a hostel. Former mercenary Karl Thomasson (Treat Williams), upon forced retirement, leaves America to open a hostel in Ireland. Thomasson soon finds, though, that owning a hostel is not the peaceful job he thought it would be. As travelers frequently abuse his second most important hostel principle of not messing with the fire extinguisher, Thomasson finds himself questioning his most important principle of what not to do in a hostel--and that is, Kill Someone. How far will Thomasson go to put his principles in action? Will travelers learn to follow the rules before having to face the hostile consequences?



And...that's it for now. I know, readers. I know. You don't have to thank me.

Back So Early?...Or So Late?

Hello. Remember me? Yes? No? Maybe? Well, since I haven’t written a blog post in about ten-billion years (rough estimate), I thought it would be a good idea to re-introduce—or introduce—myself to some of you readers. My name is Jacqueline Bazarte. Most people call me Jacqui. Some people think I made up the spelling of my nickname (Jacqui), but of course I didn’t. You can blame my weird nickname on my parents’ love of French spelling. Actually, if you type in “Jacqui” in a Google search engine, you’ll get about 13 million hits (rough estimate) of people named “Jacqui”—making me and my name feel less unique. Aside from having a nickname that’s actually not so strange, I’m a hoity-toity recently graduated creative writing major who obviously loves adjectives and dashes. I graduated and got my MFA from the University of Mississippi—the future site of the 2008 presidential debates (USA! USA!). I also like parenthetical expressions (in case you haven’t notice). The last update some of you may remember from me was that I was leaving to work in Ireland for a short period of time. Well, it turns out that it was shorter than expected. Why? You’re going to have read the rest of this post to find out.

I assume that most of you can already gather that I’m back in the States. There are a few reasons for this. The first is that my part-time job at an art gallery quickly turned into an on-call job. This quick turn-around was very much due to the fact that the whole of the Republic is at a beginning of a recession. Thus, it didn’t matter how excited my employer was about my CV, it didn’t matter how good of job I was doing, it didn’t matter how much he and the other employees liked having me on the team. He just simply didn’t have enough hours or money to give to a newcomer in a small business. It was understandable, very frustrating I must admit, but understandable. Truthfully, I think it was very frustrating for all of us. I was frustrated by barely getting any hours and then nothing. My employer was frustrated, because he couldn’t give me any hours. The employees were frustrated by the threat of getting cut hours, so who got the cut hours? The newbie of course. Well, that’s the way it works with most businesses—in or out of the states. The only thing I wish is that the employer didn’t call me if there were no hours to give, but you know.

Of course, the job-hunt problems didn’t begin or end with this particular job. The main reason I took the bare minimum part-time hours was because there were no openings anywhere else. I sent CVs not only to employers in Clifden but also Galway City, Dublin, and Waterford. None came to avail. There were employers who didn’t get back to me, but I did get a lot of direct responses from walk-ins. These either included one of the following:

1) “Sorry. We are not hiring at the moment. I just got to warn you. It’s going to be very hard, love.”

2) “Sorry. We are not hiring at the moment. Things are so slow with the dollar being so low and all. Please give us a try again in August or September when the season will hopefully pick-up. Cheers.”

3) “Sorry. We’ve done all our hiring for the summer. There are a lot of students who need jobs. Good luck, dearie. It’s going be really hard.”

4) “Sorry. We’re a family owned business, but you can try this other bed and breakfast. Can’t promise anything, though.”

5) “Sorry. We see you have editorial skills, but this publishing company is looking for an accountant. We don’t have time to train anyone, but we appreciate you’re interest anyway.”

6) “Sorry. We are not hiring at the moment. Things are pretty slow with the lack of American travelers. We expected more tourists, but with the dollar so low…”

7) “Sorry. We need someone who can work longer than 4 months.” (The program allowed 4 months of work and one month of travel.)

8) “There is employment, but a strong knowledge of Gaelic is required.”

9) “Sorry. We are not hiring at the moment. If you have one, you can give us your CV and we’ll put it on file. I’m sorry to tell you, though. You’ve come during hard times. The Celtic Tiger is long gone.”

For those of you who have done this work abroad program before, you may remember that one of the recommendations of finding a job is to go to the local pubs, because you’ll find a lot of job openings by word of mouth. Well, I did just that and spoke to some older locals. The response was pretty much the same:

1) Oh dearie, I’m sorry to tell you, but you’ve come during hard times.

2) The Poles took all our jobs. Now there is an economic boom in Poland.

3) There aren’t many of you Americans traveling. You should thank your President Bush for making your dollar so low.

4) The Celtic Tiger is long gone.

So I would like to take a moment to thank America (including the work abroad program) for having such up-to-date information about the economic situation in Ireland. I remember all the information I read about Ireland (including the info provided by the work abroad program) before leaving went something like this: “Go to Ireland and reek the benefits of the Celtic Tiger” or “Upon coming to Ireland, participants will reek the benefits of the Celtic Tiger by easily finding a job.” I found, much to my surprise, it to be a very different story once I started to do the job search in Ireland. I guess it should have been a bad omen alert when, during the orientation in Dublin, participants were told that, after being cancelled for a year, the Ireland program just got restarted and the Garda was still unaware of its revamped existence. Even my employer was shocked to see that the work abroad program was still describing Ireland as still having the great “Celtic Tiger” boom. “Quite misleading,” is what he said and preceded to tell me that the immigration website warned travelers that, if they’re looking for a job, they should expect not to find one. Good to know all this after I get to Ireland. To be fair, though, the Canadian and Australian work program equivalent had the same description of Ireland’s job situation. Many from both programs had to go back early as well.

As for what caused the recession, it doesn’t seem, after speaking with many Irish employers, to be just one thing. It is true that I met very few Americans while traveling through Ireland—and Europe, for that matter. And I was staying in hostels the whole time—where there can be up to 18 people staying in one room. Besides travelers from the Isles and the mainland, most of the people I did meet where either from Canada or Australia. Also, with the 1 US dollar equaling 0.72 euros, I think it is pretty safe to say that dollar is weak and is affecting US travel, which in turn affects foreign economies that thrive on tourism. It also didn’t help that the US program gave a shorter work visa in comparison with Australian and Canadian equivalent. Both programs gave participants a one year visa, while the US gave participants a 4 month visa (plus one month of travel). It is also true there are many students to compete with for jobs in the bigger cities and many family owned business who are not looking to take on new employees in the smaller towns. Most of these employees are Irish citizens already having to face cut hours themselves. Thus, they have to take care of their own instead of giving jobs to in-coming Americans, Australians, and Canadians, which is understandable. Since most already feel that the Polish have overtaken most the jobs, it seems the last thing the Irish want to do is to give jobs away to more foreigners—especially during a start of a recession.

Despite these frustrations, I do not regret going on this trip. I mean, sure I was frustrated by the job situation, but I eventually handled it the same way a lot of my American, Canadian and Australian program counterparts did: travel Ireland and the rest Europe. This is exactly what I did—from Galway to Budapest. I must say it turned out to be a rewarding and educational experience. When making this trip, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for—except a change and break from America. Well, I definitely got more than that, and I am glad to say that I’ll be sharing all of this experience (and more) throughout the duration of this blog.