The memorial left for victims of the Library Gardens apartment balcony collapse
We’re Irish. We stick together, when we encounter each other far from home. Back in Ireland, we might have all sorts of issues with each other, as any family does, from time to time. Abroad, it’s different. Abroad, we’re a family. The affinities are clearer. They’re low-key important.
Joseph O’Connor, Lament For Berkeley, Sunday Independent
Alternatively…
Francis J writes:
I really hope it has changed but In my experience no one treats the Irish worse abroad than the Irish….
Pic: Jeff Chiu
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You’re so right. The worst foreman is an irish one. The rudest barman is an irish one. I’d say Joseph O Connor is morto at that tripe. Enough. Let them rest.
Yeah, and my J1 summer was nothing to write home about either.
Ha. Too true. Going to Ibiza last year someone told me not to buy anything off an Irish person. They weren’t wrong.
Yokes were all duds?
Who is Francis J? Did it take him three days to come up with this comment?
Basically, what I’m saying here is what the fupping fupp is this tripe, Broadsheet?
+1
Yeah, who IS Francis J in the first place? Link?
O’Connor needs to remove the rose-tinted glasses. I think he’s essentially wrong. I avoided the Irish as much as possible when I lived in Australia and never really felt that sense of unity he writes about. In fact, A sense of unity can be found with any nationality abroad if you’re open to it.
It’s almost as if neither of those sweeping generalisations is completely true.
You got it one
Ha!
I was about to write something prolonged and descriptive of both my positive and negative experiences abroad with my fellow countrymen.
But then you came along before me and ruined it by being more succinct.
Article is pure trash.
“To be 21 and with your pals. Is there any better feeling? To look out at the stars, and to think, for one fleeting, miraculous moment, that you could stir them around in the sky.”
What is the stars? what is the stars?…said the Paycock
The Irish in New York do look out for each other in a spirit of solidarity. None of you on this little website appear to have got out of this country much
Most of the people posting on this little website live outside of Ireland as far as i can see
Maybe but that’s not what I mean
They’re still stuck in peasant Paddy mindset
Yep keeping our fingers on the BS pulse
New York, very exotic and culturally adventurous for an Irishman
Gobspoos
It’s that defensive posture as automatically reacting to criticism from which the hunched peasant image emanates
Joe, you live in New York, where practically every Irish person that’s ever lived has either worked in or visited. Come back to me when you’re hanging with the locals in Timbuktu.
I’m living by jay sis in Paddyland at present
It’s not unique to Irish. Some expats feel they must compete with other expats. End up socially excluded though.
Patriotism is for idiots! It makes no logical sense. Everyone falls out of a vagina somewhere, we’re just lucky to be from a country without horrible poverty and war.
Tribalism the cause of many evils
+1
everyone falls out of a vagina somewhere
Um…. don’t actually know where to start with this statement.
That’s one that should have been redacted.
Generally avoid the Irish when I’m abroad. We have a terrible, terrible rep in most countries. We’re generally lazy, don’t show up to work and when we do we are generally binned from the night before. I got this viewpoint from many business owners all over America on my J1 and my professional career. I was warned not to drink and drive in Austria by a concierge who ran out to me as I went to drive into town (Having not and having no intention to drink) We’re a mess of a nation but cover it up with ‘the craic’. NYC Times hit the nail on the head in my opinion, we just can’t look at the reality of the situation we have created abroad and in ourselves.
Avoided the Irish when I was in Oz. They were and are an embarrassment. Drink, drink, drink….
Very true
#notallirish though
But, but…. THE CRAIC!!!!
50 shades of vomit.