today our canteen closed and about 30 people left the premises for the last day. it is getting emptier and emptier in my place of employment.

i just noticed that the last entry was the hundreth entry. and a very optimistic one it was too.

last night i dreamt i was in new york. how i wish i was. i would really love to take the month of july to go travelling. the trouble is the free time i will probably have (new employment or no will dictate this) is in peak tourist time. so if i want to go somewhere i’ll just have to accept the higher airfares and heat and crowds. september would be my preferred time but i’ll probably be in my new job by then.

on my list of i’d love to go there……..
1) usa, san francisco, visit san francisco and then hire a car and meander down the californian coast
2) usa, new york, visit new york and then hire a car and meander up the coast to boston, cape cod and then on up to maine
3) italy and visit milan, parma, bologna, florence, rome and from there hire a little car and meander up the italian coast through places like civitavecchia, orbetello, piombino, cecina, livorno, la spezia, genoa, turin.
4) south africa, cape town, the garden route
5) majorca, explore the island, then ibiza explore that. bbc’s holiday programme last night clearly demonstrated that there is more to these islands than nightclubs.

ah, i can dream.

for nearly five years someone close to me has given his all to working on peace and reconciliation between the serbs and albanians in kosovo. i visited the country and witnessed some of the hatred although it was a spoken hatred and did not manifest itself in violence.

when you have spent five years of your life working with people, taking steps forward to building a new life for all Albanians and Serbs how do you reconcile yourself to this happening…

it all seems so pointless. young boys chased into a river, one still unrecovered and this is what results? why were they chased? what crime could a child have committed?

irish troops posted in kosovo were involved in these incidents. many westerners were evacuated to safety. The irish media reported what was going on but it was sanitised. i don’t remember seeing pictures like these on the news here.

You have to wonder is there any hope for us humans. It seems to me that we are never going to stop fighting each other, ruining lives, burning houses, killing, maiming, terrifying people into fleeing their homes.

In western so called civilized society, we are supposed to be embracing ethnic differences. Yet in Ireland, there is so much racism, there is now a concerted ad campaign on our tv channels urging us to embrace our differences. broadcasters against racism it is called.

will we ever learn to live with our neighbours? and have respect for who they are and their beliefs?