According to the census, it is. But what proportions are from Mainland China recently, arrived here for decades etc? It's not detailed enough. You cannot really lump all Chinese together.

Chinese dinner etiquette is not just nice to know, it's a must-know. It's like someone not knowing how to use a knife and fork in a restaurant properly and making a fool of oneself.

It's very hard to explain to people how important it is, you are eating with chopsticks, and to most non-Asians, it seems just as an annoyance if they don't know how to use them. It use to be Asians were thought to be barbarians for not knowing how to use the knife and forks by their western counterparts, and vice-verse. It's cool that it's the norm to know how to hold and use the chopsticks nowadays.

I invited a rake of my friends to a Chinese dinner at my local Chinese restaurant. Most were Irish and also included a HK friend and my cousin. Three of us decided to use chopsticks and bowls, and the rest using knifes and forks with plates. When the food arrived, I was speaking for a few minutes to my cousin and turned around and I noticed that everyone grabbed as much food as possible to their plates. It was meant to be communal for all to share, but there was hardly anything left for my cousin, friend and I! So we looked like an ass that night. Heehee. Oh well, I should probably learn to explain how communal sharing of food works at a Chinese dinner.

New provisional licence rules pushed out till 30th June 2008. That's a bit crappy, it was suppose to come into effect tomorrow midnight. My hubby was counting the amount of people with L-plates driving by themselves today, whilst I was driving around Limerick. I remember the biggest gasp of awe, shock and horror was from my Singaporean friend, who heard a HK friend of mine failed her driving test and drove back home by herself! He cannot fathom the idea at all. My hubby also said Jeremy Clarkeson could not believe the way our provisional licences worked when he was on RTE recently on some show (not sure which one, I don't watch Irish tv shows that much). What about all those L-plate drivers driving on the motorway? Never mind the usual drivers (full/provisional) who talk on their mobiles, do make-up etc., and not a Garda in sight. *breathes and tries to calm down.

First ever IBC meetup, originally uploaded by whykay.

Ok, we were expecting 1 more person to turn out, we waited till 10:30pm, but I was knackered from a night out last night. So hopefully we have a bigger get together next month. :)

I think I mentioned this a long time ago... anyhow, it's about Cork-Shanghai's twinning of cities and 9 Chinese couples got a blessing down in Cork. I was all part of a Chinese tv show called "Dating On Saturday".

It was organised to co-ordinate with Shanghai's famous 'Rose Wedding Festival' which each October sees thousands of weddings and related street entertainments. [...] They will now enjoy a six-day tour around Ireland including stopovers in Limerick, Clare, Waterford and Dublin.

Read more here.

Bank of Ireland are trying to encourage more Chinese (as well as Polish) to use their e-service after a multi-million Euro investment.

This is fantastic! Here's their demo site, if you want to try it out: 365 online demo.

Plus here is a link to their Chinese brochures and applications.

My hubby mentioned that he saw this in The Irish Times a few days back, but forgot to tell me. Anyway, he found the link to the news story on RTE. Here it is anyway: RTE video clip - First Chinese graduate called to the bar

Interesting read, some funny bits, and some that I know of are true. Good to know the cultural differences. Check it out!.

Interesting, check this out. What do people think of how the images perceive both cultures? Some maybe stereotypical, but some are true as well, in my opinion.

Discuss at IBC forum.

There was alot of discussion in the IBC forum about meeting up. It did not go according to plan last week, as there were clash of days that people could not meet up.

So I created a poll for the week of 15th-21st Oct:

Here is the RSS feed from Poll Daddy (updated hourly): IBC meetup days RSS feed

Further discussions at the forum topic

Really, tell me what you think when you see this quote?

Luo Lei's parents were able to help his campaign by taking the class for a trip on the modern monorail system - which is managed by his father's police department - and by giving him gifts to hand out after his final speech.

And...

Cheng Cheng ensured that his classmates shouted down Xu Xiaofei before she had even started to speak, and she found it difficult to recover.

All this for trying to get elected for class monitor in a Chinese school¹. There was alot of underhandedness when I read how a class of 8 year olds go about their campaign.

I wonder how this differ from class reps/monitor being selected in Irish schools? This just reminds me of the Simpson's episode when Bart ran for class president against Lisa. Does that kind of dirty campaigning in schools really happen in US?

¹ Please Vote For Me is part of the BBC's Why Democracy? season and will be broadcast on Sunday 7 October at 2000 BST on BBC Four. - Democracy in a Chinese classroom

...hahaha, they are all the same, wherever they are in the world. Japan's Agriculture Ministry's employees caught editing wikipedia articles on Gundam.

I especially like this quote:

"The Agriculture Ministry is not in charge of Gundam," ministry official Tsutomu Shimomura told the Associated Press news agency.

Another 20 multi-denominational schools are due to open next year.

It's a sign of the rapidly changing times in the 'new' Ireland. Next year up to 20 multi-denominational schools will open compared with only two Roman Catholic and one Protestant primary school.

This is great news. I have no problems with the current schools though, as I went to a Catholic school from primary level. Getting into primary school initially was difficult and some discussion was needed back then, at least I was baptised. Once I got in, it was grand. In secondary school, they were quite open for folks coming in, we did not have to attend religion classes, it was a free class (which was brilliant for doing homework). One thing though, every morning the headmistress would have a morning prayer every morning. I thought this was normal until I told my husband. He went to a private school that did not have any prayers forced onto people. I suppose I grew up having to say prayers in class, and listen to prayers over the announcement system (great way to nap for 10 minutes), and have mass twice a year and it felt a norm at the time.
One thing though, I remember having to visit a nun who gave alotted slots for leaving cert students in her class to practice oral Irish. After I did my practise, she was trying to encourage me to have my communion and confirmation made after doing my leaving cert. I felt really pressured, but I thought nought of it till now. And she seemed really friendly at the time, I'm infuriated just thinking about right now. How dare she! Anyway, back to the point of this article...

Ireland now has more multi-ethnic students, a worrying sign though is a school that was recently opened are all blacks because these students could not get places in established Irish schools. Of course, Minister for Education denies that it was racism:

Ms Hanafin also said local authorities were partly responsible for the situation because they provided planning permission for new housing developments without checking that the necessary social infrastructure, such as school size, was in place.

A blame game this might be, but at least something came out of this, even though an all-black school was opened to highlight the problems with trying to enroll into Irish schools, particulary Catholic schools.