Guest Post: Oscar

Hi, I’m Oscar, I’m 8 and a half years old and I am Théo’s little brother. I’m going to tell you about my life. I love music! I play guitar and piano. The thing about guitar is that it’s the thing I play most in my life. I have a guitar lesson every Thursday. I don’t know how many songs I can play but I think a lot. Now, the thing about piano, is that I started in 2010. I have a piano lesson every Monday. I am better at playing guitar because it’s strumming and putting your fingers around and normally in piano you don’t learn chords first.

Every day after school, I skate outside with my friends. I’ve been skating for two and a half years. I find it fun because you can go up and down ramps and go very fast. There’s a lot of tricks but I can’t do most of them. I like to make up tricks with my friends, like the One Foot Pop Shove-It, the Hippy Jump, the One Foot Fingerflip and the Pogg. There’s also Tech Decks. I like Tech Decks because you can do more things on them. Tech Decks are fingerboards.

Some days when I go to school, I cycle with my mom and dad. Cycling to school is fun but I don’t like coming back because there is an uphill and that’s the only way we can get to our house. I have to get up early if I want to cycle to school. Normally I would do it on a Thursday. But when I do it on a Thursday I have to leave my guitar at school and bring it back on Friday. I also like to cycle with my friends. I have two skateboarding ramps that used to be owned by my brother Sam. We go up them on our bikes and I’m the best at doing it because I go the highest and can do some tricks like getting my feet of the pedals! My two friends have BMX’s but I’m not jealous because I have a gear bike. When I cycle in France, it is fun because we can see lots of nature, mostly sunflowers. I find we pass a lot of vineyards, although it depends on where our holiday house is (Théo’s note: We exchange our house with people all over France, so we get different “holiday houses” ).

I love reading. I am reading the Harry Potter series. I’m on the last one, the Deathly Hallows. The thing about Harry Potter is the magic would be so cool to have. It would make life easier. I started reading the Harry Potters in 1^st class and I’m now going into 3^rd class. I find Harry Potter funny because of Ron Weasley. I just love reading!

Last Saturday, we went to our cousin’s marriage. I danced a lot. I played a song on my guitar for my cousin during the ceremony. I was very tired the next day because I went to bed at 5:30 in the morning! That was my earliest bedtime (Théo’s note: He’s made that joke so many times!) ! There’s another cousin that I haven’t seen in a long time that was there. He goes to Japan and America for his work. I had lots of fun with him. When he came out of the car, I jumped up and hugged him! My mom made a joke to pretend it was his birthday, even though his birthday is in April!

(Théo’s note: This is a guest post from my younger brother Oscar, dictated to me, we’re on a long car ride and I thought it could take up a bit of the time. This is the result. I think it was pretty good, don’t you?)

I now declare you Husband and Wife!

I know, I know, I haven’t written a blog in months, but I’m just going to go ahead and blame the Junior Cert. I know that I can’t blame it completely because it’s been long over but it got me out of the swing of blogging and never got back into it. I’m sorry!

But anyway, If you didn’t know about it, which is pretty unlikely, owing to the fact that my readers are probably all family, I was at my cousin’s marriage 2 days ago. It was an atheist wedding, so we didn’t go to a church. They wanted to have a symbolic wedding anyway, so they decided to have it in the bride’s parents garden, which is amazing. It is a huge garden, as her father was a farmer before. It has a view on a horse centre and, right at the end of the garden, a huge, towering oak tree. . This tree was going to be the centre of the wedding, and also the person who does the speech the priest normally does.

The tree that gave a speech

As you probably already know, Oak tree’s don’t talk most of the time. But this one did, but only young people could hear him/her. Who do we know who is young? Oh, wait, me!  My cousin had asked me to be the “translator”  for the tree, which was a really cool job. The text was a really nice one, which I’ll put at the bottom. It’s in French though so, have fun! I had to read it really slow, with lots of pauses to make it look like I was translating. It was also into a microphone which made me discover that I prefer my voice when I speak French to my voice that speaks English!

My big brother played a tango song in a group with the guy who wrote the text, who was just a tad bohemian, his girlfriend, also bohemian, and our uncle, slightly less bohemian, but smokes a pipe, so very cool! My little brother played I’m Yours by Jason Mraz during the ring-section thing. (My knowledge of marriage terms is amazing, I know) You can see that here (It was wway before and he’s gotten better since!). I might publish my big brother’s seperately later.

And then of course, the party. I was at the kids table with a bunch of smaller kids, my 13-14 year old cousin and another Théo, which was fun! We messed around the whole night, going around room under the tables, asking someone we didn’t know to dance (I asked a granny to waltz with me, she was happy, I think, but the others chickened out) and asking random people for their autograph’s, which was quite fun! There were a couple of games, a nice dinner, and a hell-load of dancing (hell-load, I like it!) We got home at 5:30.

A : Il y a bien longtemps que le vieux chêne a commencé de pousser sous le même soleil
qu’aujourd’hui.
Il a commencé de pousser il y a si longtemps qu’à cette époque, on savait encore que les chênes
parlaient, et on prenait parfois le temps de les écouter.

Celui-ci parle encore, mais si peu fort, qu’il faut de jeunes oreilles pour entendre ce qu’il a à dire
aujourd’hui, à nous, à Florence et à Pierre.

Si « L » veut bien nous répéter ce qu’il entend, et Florence et Pierre venir près du vieux chêne, nous
pourrons savoir ce qu’il a à nous dire.

Marche nuptiale

L : Le chêne dit qu’il est autant de la famille que les pierres de ces murs, que cette terre sous vos
pieds, et que la jeune femme qui se marie aujourd’hui, et qu’il a vue quand elle ne marchait pas
encore. Il dit par contre que cet homme-là qui sourit près de cette jeune femme, lui n’est pas tout à
fait d’ici, ni de cette famille. Mais il dit aussi que ce n’est pas la première fois qu’il voit un étranger
venir ici, et devenir de cette famille, et qu’il sait peut-être mieux que nous comment cela doit être.

Car cela fait plus de cent et cent printemps qu’il voit cette famille vivre, plus de cent et cent
printemps qu’il écoute aussi secrètement les oiseaux qui se posent sur lui, et le choisissent parfois
pour faire leur nid. Il dit qu’il ne connaît pas encore bien ce jeune Pierre qui veut à son tour vivre
sous ses branches, mais peut-être que Pierre, lui, connaît bien la jeune femme. Et que s’il se trouvait
des hommes pour l’écouter, il leur conseillerait de tâcher de savoir si, comme les rossignols sur ses
branches se reconnaissent sans se voir, par quelques notes de chant lancées dans le soir, Pierre peut
reconnaître, les yeux clos, les mains de la fille que le vieux chêne a vu grandir.

A : Je crois qu’il serait facile de donner raison au chêne :

Reconnaissance des mains. Por una cabeza.

L : Le vieux chêne dit qu’il veut bien donner de son ombre au couple qui s’est reconnu. Qu’il y a
bien longtemps aussi qu’on ne l’avait pas écouté et qu’il n’avait pas autant parlé. Si d’autres que lui le
souhaitent, qu’ils parlent à leur tour dans leur langage d’homme, qu’il écoutera avec plaisir, et sans
trop faire craquer ses branches, ce que les proches ont à dire au jeune couple, et ce que le jeune
couple a à se dire à lui même.

Lecture de textes
échanges de voeux.

Le lecteur me dit à l’oreille et je répète :

A :Le vieux chêne dit que cela est bien, et que sous ses branches et en son nom, nous pouvons
unir Florence et Pierre.
Alors, Pierre, Florence, au nom du vieux chêne, et de tous ici présents, je vous déclare mari et
femme.

Échange des alliance/musique (I’m yours)

L : Le vieux chêne dit qu’il a encore une dernière chose à nous dire. Qu’il sait qu’il y a très
longtemps, pour que tous se souviennent du mariage et voient sous leurs yeux grandir cette nouvelle
vie à deux, les jeunes mariés plantaient un nouvel arbrisseau. Il dit que si l’on veut bien l’écouter

encore, Pierre et Florence devraient retourner un peu de cette terre ancienne, et y planter leur arbre,
comme ils ont sur ce sol donné racines à leur mariage.

Plantation de l’arbre/fin de la cérémonie (comme un manouche sans guitare) »
For does who don’t know what it means, you can try google translate, or you can learn French, really fast. You choose. I’ll give you a clue, it’s very romantic!

Mo phoist i nGaeilge

Tá an gaeilge an habair is conspóideacha san Teastas Sóisearach. Is fuath liom an habair seo. Tá sé deacair agus ní feicim an phointe. Tuigim an cúis go foghlaimid Gaeilge ach ní tuigim an cúis go raibh orainn scríobh scéal agus litir deacair. Ní thog sé sonas againn as an gaeilge.

Tá súil agam go bheith habair níos éasca le foghlaim é an gaeilge. Ní raibh phointe le scrúdu ró-deacair é. Is é an scrúdú Gaeilge an scrúdu is deacair san Teastas Sóisearach. Tá súil agam nach bhfuil scrúdu gaeilge orainn ach beith measúnú leanúnach i gaeilge níos easca le an scrúdú.

D’féach mé ó na samplaí thuaslaite nach taitníonn an gaeilge mar teanga le áon duine. Ach shíl mé go raibh teanga suimúile é agus tá sé deas chun a bheidh abailte teanga difrúil a caint. Tá sé uathúil mar níl siad abalta Gaeilge ag caint i aon tír eile. Tá stair iontach leis an teanga agus tá sé uathúil.

Ní raibh mé cinnte go raibh fonn orm ag foghlaim gaeilge mar a dtéann sé roghnach í bhlian a chuig agus a sé. (mais é do thoil é Enda Kenny!). Mar ní athrú siad an scrúdú, Ní déan mé é. Ní déan mé é freisin mar a raibh fonn orm staidear abair eile, abair usáideach.

 

Cad a shíl tú é? Scríobhfaidh do tuairimí i nGaeilge, chomh fada agus is feidir leat!

(Psssst! http://translate.google.com/#)

 

Religion in schools

Religion and School

Hi. Sorry I haven’t written in a few weeks but I think that, because of the Junior Cert, I’m going to change from once a week to just blogging irratically. A little long between posts but it means that I have a little less on my plate. We are sorry for the inconvenience </suck-up voice>.

Last Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, the school decided to have an Ash Wednesday ceremony. I found this horrible. It wasn’t so much that they gave this ceremony in a school that is not meant to be Catholic, more that students who did not want to do it were forced to stay. VEC schools are meant to be non-denominational. Forcing students who didn’t want to stay and recieve the ashes to stay is against the VEC policy, I think.

Now the school seems to think that this is OK because the majority of people in the school are Christian. But that’s like saying that if the majority of people in this school have done Irish from an early age, students who didn’t do Irish should be forced to do Irish or at least stay in the Irish class. Now, while most students would stay in the Irish class, they would probably be free to do another subject (Example my friend, Tommy who took up French for a short while during religion.)

The school also claim to do this for health and safety reasons. But this is in the same school where a different friend couldn’t get safety goggles to wear during technology and came out of the class with red eyes from the sawdust. It seems the school cares about health and safety only when it suits them. This doesn’t seem right to me, does it to you?

 

Transition Year

Today, after 5 minutes of ridiculously unneccesary tension, we found out that everybody who applied, bar those that were already spoken to, was accepted into TY. This was a great relief, as if I hadn’t got in my mom would have transferred me before you can say Ski Trip. Knowing that my brother spent 70% of TY dossing in the ICT labs, I have decided to have a clear image of what I want to do during the entire TY year. I’ll probably use this blog as a checklist.

Read “The Count of Monte Cristo” in French.

This is probably my most ambitious plan as, not only is it a gargantuan book (I love that word!), the only book I have ever read cover to cover in French was “Le Petit Prince”, which I read as a childrens novel rather than a “hidden meaning” type of book. Still though, it would be an invaluable help to my French for leaving cert. I also want to read it because it sounds like an awesome book and I don’t want to read a translators version of the book rather than the authors original text. If that works, which it probably won’t, I’ll move on to “The Three Musketeers”.

Do truckloads of charity work

This makes sense. TY is really the year where students give something back to the community. Now, regular readers probably know of how much I hate putting animal welfare over human welfare so I most certainly won’t be volunteering for the ISPCA. The charity I’m definetely volunteering for is the Simon Community, who work for homeless people in Ireland. I figure that it seems like a horrible life to be homeless and I would like to do my bit. I hope they allow 15 year olds though, as there might be insurance problems. If I can’t volunteer for the Simon Community or I feel that I could volunteer for more than one charity I will either go for Red Cross (though I can’t do more than basic first aid, and still…), a third world charity (as long as it’s not one of those charities that try to convert the people they halp to Christianity), or perhaps in fundraising for support of one of those diseases (I think that the school places a big importance on these as some students and teachers are affected [indirectly] by it).

Do loads of extra-curricular

Now this is a bit of an obvious choice but I think that joining groups is an important part of TY. So I’ll probably join Gaisce, Lego Robotics and anything else that takes my fancy. I’m already involved in the student council so I’ll keep doing that, obviously. Since I’m not going to have much homework, I’ll be able to do more stuff outside of school too. I have a friend who wants to take up triathlon so I might join him, even if I will lag behind but, it’s having fun that counts, right?

Well, that’s all I can think of for now, should keep me occupied for a few of those ICT classes! Sorry I haven’t blogged in yonks but I’ve been busy with homework/study/procrastinating from the previous.

Recap on my earlier “Attention seekers” post

Hi guys. Sorry I haven’t blogged in ages. I’ve just been really, REALLY lazy lately. I was thinking about my “ ” post when I realised that it really isn’t just Lady Gaga. While she is annoyingly “unique” (stress the inverted commas) people have been doing that for ages.

Take Goths and Emos (Emoes? I’m gonna stick with Emos).  I know a couple of people I would class in this category and have had some discussions about this with them. Some of the stuff they do is ridiculous. I’ve heard stories about Marilyn Manson which chill my bones and are being stated as absolute fact. And this is really scary, Excrement eating, gay sex on stage, freaky-ass stuff. I never got a good answer when I asked why he did this other than “to make a different statement”.  This stuff is scary.

Know while Marilyn Manson is an extreme example and the stuff they say he went through are probably true so you can understand his freakiness. But there is one guy in my school who could not be counted as a goth who has “gone through a lot”. I’ve been to his house and it doesn’t seem that his life his that bad. When I asked a friend about this, who is good friends with our subject, he told me that this guy suffers from a syndrome making him a bit socially awkward. I think he just defined what every teenager has thought they had, loosely, for centuries. If bad Disney shows have taught me anything, it’s that every single teenager goes through weird social awkwardness. They also taught me that if you try something completely stupid and illegal to fix a problem but learn a lesson at the end of it and say sorry it’ll be fine, but that’s beside the point. Our goth guinea pig seems to have a great deal of friends, to tell the truth. Yet he still came into school on a colours day  wearing a fishnet vest over a slipknot T-shirt and black, PVC pants that were laced at the front. He also thinks that satanism should replace Christianity because Christianity is evil but I’ll address that misconception at a later date.

It’s also that type of person in my post, making bad inside jokes loudly to get people to look at them. They’re pretty annoying but their annoying-ness is old and I really stopped caring anymore. They kinda fit into this song (Music starts at 1:01). That sort of person shows up at PE, ruining the game by cheating to make themselves look cool.

 

Get my point?

Inferiority

Lately I’ve been going to a lot of things to do with politics. Mostly it was things for young people like the student counsel and Comhairlé na nÓg, a sort of child parliament, a lesser version of Dáil na nÓg. I had lots of fun there, on account of it being in thomond park and the truckloads of free stuff we were given. But what I found was funny was that sense of inferiority that you can be given.

A couple of 6^th years had been asked to come to the student counsel the other day, just after the time when it was only me and a couple of friends I had forced to join. Being superior, they were, subconciously, given twice the say everybody else was. No one else was speaking so I gave as many points as I could, keeping it away from being a 6^th year student counsel meeting. I think that the reason everybody else wasn’t speaking as much was a sort of feeling that older people are wiser and thus anything you say will be seen as stupid. I try to keep away from this feeling as much as possible, locking it in a corner and throwing away an imaginary key. It managed to break out yesterday

I was at a Fintan O”Toole Speech (oh how very grown up of me!) with a friend when the floor was opened. I wanted to speak about how maybe we should stop blaming the government so wholeheartedly and take just a smidgeon of blame for ourselves. It’s not like we spent the last ten years carefully putting our money into a safe place and worrying about the future. I also wanted to mention that blogging would be a good way to get out political opinions in a large forum thing they were looking for. So I took the microphone, stood up, and suddenly realised that I was the youngest person there and everybody else was so extremly more worthy of speaking politics. So I had a really tiny panic attack and gave my point in the most concentrated form possible, forgetting about the whole blogging thing I wanted to talk about, and thrust the microphone into the microphone holders hands. When I look back at it it was probably either the fact that I was called “This little lad” and the patronizing look O’Toole gave me when he saw me standing there. He did give me a nice speech in response to what I said, so he probably didn’t think I was inferior.

Do you get the inferiority complex?

 

Protests

Protests piss me off. The government do everything they can to try and get a country out of the recession yet any change they try to make like, say, tax levies to people who can afford it or pay cuts, mass protesting ensues. The government aren’t doing a bad job or anything, they just inherited the country at the wrong time. If anyone is to blame for the recession, it’s us. We’re all naturally greedy and it’s not like anyone put all their money in the bank and didn’t spend a coin during the celtic tiger (it pains me to say those two words, economists say them so much)

It’s not just recessionary cuts. Take, f’rinstance the French protests over the retirement age. They had the a really low age for retirement and were only brought up to the normal age. But people won’t stop screaming about it! What I find really funny is that most of the protesters are teenagers, who don’t have to worry about retirement until 50 years, when it’ll probably be brought up because healthcare will be better. It’s stupid!

The government aren’t doing a bad job, there just doing the best they can, making a couple of small sacrifices along the way!

 

I know, I’m protesting about protesting.

How Spanish could be useful…

Spanish is boring. I’ll go right out there and say it. The teacher repeating that Artes is art just sends me to sleep. But, no matter how useful Spanish can be for, well, going to spain, I ind it useful for another thing.

Since Spanish is so mind-numbingly easy the students who stuggle in other classes find this class easy. So they begin to call out answers to show how great they are at this. I’m guessing that it’s some primordial want to be respected for everything but there are sime students who sit at the back of the class and shout out translations to any phrase the teacher reads out. This is really annoying but I can see why a student would do it. One of them, I know for a fact, is slagged quite often for the fact that he is a year or two older. So he tries to feel good about himself by shouting out answers to show that he excels in Spanish. So I hate it but understand it, which I hate. The paradox makes my headbrain hurt!
Another student has started doing it even more than the first. He shouts out literally every answer the teacher looks for. It drives me crazy! But one day, he got one wrong. The word was fuegos artificiales which means fireworks. The student only heard fuegos so he said fire. The class started laughing at the idea of a fire show. The teacher, annoyed at the fact that he shouted out again, told him not to shout out and, anyway, he got it wrong. The student took this as the teacher trying to get the class to laugh at him so he sulked for the rest of the class, refusing to do any work. It was kind of strange realizing how much he wanted other people to like him. He doesn’t seem to care for much else as he is one of the people who slags the first guy the most, impressing others by putting someone else down.

It’s not that I don’t understand this feeling because it’s not like I’ve never done it. I know that when a word is hard and I doubt anyone else will get it because we haven’t covered it but it sounds like French so I can get it I will shout out the answer, just to make myself feel good about this. But I think that this is the same way that some people I know learn as many trivial facts as they can to keep people thinking that they’re insanely smart.

Do people do it in your world, outside of school?

Sorry this post is late but I forgot to publish it. New post tomorrow!

Is speaking in Rhyme a horrible crime?

I don’t know why but I have begun

To speak in rhyme, just for fun

I’ll do this for maybe an hour at a time

Sometimes I’m stuck saying random words, lime

My rhymes are stuck staying only in couplets

So that I won’t have too much to say

Eventually my rhymes begin to annoy

but doing it is something I really enjoy

It’s a challenge to get it in a quickfire way

To keep me from just saying random words as I may

It’s a lot of fun to do this with friends

and keeps you from making them go round the bend

I did it once, at home with a pal

And it helped to bring up our bored moral

The next time I did it for a while, at scouts

So I was rhyming, through our groups shouts

But now I decide to finish, this time

Don’t forget to put your comments in rhyme!