Today: Friday, March 12, 2010

Robert Carry

Article list

What happened to gender equality?

Last update: 10:50 | 03.03.10

Two women are sitting in an office eating Maltesers, discussing the caloric content of their snack. “Only 180 calories?” says a blonde 30-something. “I don’t feel naughty at all now!” With that, she stands up and flashes her

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Give a chance to the disadvantaged

Last update: 11:00 | 25.02.10

Robert Carry: From the Home Front All sections of Irish society have been hurt by the death of the Celtic Tiger and the arrival of our ever-worsening recession – some more so than others.

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Screening is the best solution

Last update: 00:10 | 18.02.10

Robert Carry: From the Home Front It’s two years since I applied for a one-year working holiday visa for Australia. And rather than being the straightforward, exclusively online affair I was expecting, it turned out to be a little more complicated.

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Trouble in paradise

Last update: 16:50 | 10.12.09

My stint in Aus-tralia came to an abrupt end recently when an opportunity to spend some time in my old stomping ground of Thailand presented itself – how could I refuse? A mate of mine I’ve been very close friends with since we were kids was

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Meaning from tragedy

Last update: 13:43 | 12.11.09

Last week a phone call came from the editor of the Irish Echo, a Sydney-based newspaper geared towards Australia’s massive Irish community, which I had freelanced for on occasion. There was an important press conference about to get underway, he said,

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Race: a thorny issue

Last update: 09:26 | 05.11.09

I was on a bus here in Sydney a few days ago when three Indigenous Australians – also known as Aboriginals – got on. The two men and one woman looked middle aged, were shabbily dressed and clearly drunk. They mumbled loudly between themselves and

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A storm in a teacup

Last update: 04:24 | 22.10.09

A popular Austral-ian TV variety show called Hey Hey, it’s Saturday made headlines recently when it included a segment featuring a group of people from various ethnic backgrounds with Minstrel-esque black facepaint impersonating the Jackson Five. It prompted

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Exploitation, Oz style

Last update: 02:47 | 17.09.09

Just over a week into my new career as a vineyard pruner, things were looking grim. Our merry band had been promised several months of continuous work on a number of vineyards, but we were soon close to finishing our first plot and details beyond that were sketchy.

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The hard work begins

Last update: 15:59 | 10.09.09

Pitching a tent in the dark wasn’t quite the gargantuan challenge I expected it to be, even following my late evening’s adventures after getting lost on the way there, so I was soon nodding off ahead of my first day’s work on an Australian

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Danger in the outback

Last update: 13:34 | 03.09.09

My job search soon led me to discover I was living in a parallel universe in which casual farm labourers earned more than journalists. It seemed a career change was in order, so I secured a position working on a vineyard without too much hassle, and once I had

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Toiling in the fields of Oz

Last update: 12:59 | 27.08.09

Perth’s backpacker-land is flooded with Irish people, and although personal experience is not always a representative sample, I was forming the belief that the Irish/non-Irish ratio was greener in Perth’s Northbridge than on Dublin’s O’Connell

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The work search begins

Last update: 01:52 | 13.08.09

It’s 8am on my first day living in Australia, and I’m dragging my luggage through an unfamiliar neighbourhood in search of accommodation. It’s a strange feeling having your life in a bag and not knowing where you’re headed, but in my

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A rotten welcome to Oz

Last update: 17:32 | 06.08.09

The last flight of my long journey finally touched down, and at last – after stopping off in England, Thailand, Cambodia and Singapore – I was in Australia.

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Singapore’s knocking shop

Last update: 13:04 | 30.07.09

I suffered a disorienting start to my time in Singapore, the little rich kid and multicultural poster boy of southeast Asia. It began when I booked a room in Hotel 81 on the city’s Geylang Road, only to find that there were in fact eight Hotel 81s along

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Weirdness abounds in the ‘Lion City’

Last update: 12:50 | 23.07.09

My visit to Phnom Penh’s city dump, while upsetting, was not enough to put me off Cambodia, and as my flight to Singapore trundled down the runway I was determined to return for something longer than a holiday.

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Living horror in Steung Meanchey

Last update: 17:54 | 16.07.09

Steung Meanchey, Phnom Penh’s city dump, surely won’t top anyone’s list of must-see attractions in Cambodia. But with 4,000 people living there, I felt sure it would make for an interesting story. So I talked my reluctant, slightly alarmed

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Phnom Penh’s dumping ground

Last update: 12:09 | 09.07.09

I had one day left in Cambodia before I flew on to Australia to try my hand at being an immigrant, and Stueng Meanchey was the last place on my list of places to visit. My motodup-driving friend Narun was confused and alarmed by this, because Stueng Meanchey

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Paradise lost?

Last update: 15:50 | 02.07.09

A lengthy journey by motorbike and make-shift ferry brought me to Mekong Island and the home of my Cambodian friend Narun – an orphaned Khmer Rouge survivor and former soldier turned motodup driver and family man. Most Cambodians survive on less than a

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