Dream Log: July 6, 2001

I was somewhere with my colleaques from the Electric and Health Laboratory and a television was on. Suddenly there were news from Northern Ireland because there had been a massive explosion. IRA had exploded a catastrophical bomb in Shankill killing over 200 and injuring approximately 3000 people!

First, tv-cameras showed a demonstration near the place of the slaughter. There were people with red-black banners and modified Irish flags: the flags were black-white-orange and green-white-black. Some had also original Irish flags. A presenter told that these were people who agreed with IRA and came to show the support for them. According to the telly they wanted British bastards out of there.
It wasn't the case, really! Angrily, I noted that these were against violence. I knew this because people with red and black flags were syndicalists and their consistent policy has been against the violence of this kind and more importantly they don't see that the full Irish independency is a solution of any kind! I became angry for media and how they manipulate people. I told my colleaques what was really going on. It was hard to see why they had to do that and represent these catholics, anarchists and ordinary people as nationalist extremists.

More was to come. The actual march of IRA symphatizers did take a place near Crown bar. They came some where from Brunswick and turned to right in the Crown corner continuing along Great Victoria Street. There was a small flash in tv from this march but it wasn't intentional. Cameras were interviewing syndicalists and far away on the background were these crazy extremists.

I came to Konetalo computer lab at Tampere University of Technology. My friends Salminen and Määttä were there already with some nobodies. First, I didn't notice them nor they did notice my arrival. I logged in and then I heard all too familiar voice by Salminen. He made his usual silly voices, the ones he makes every time when Määttä tells a poor joke.

I said Salminen that it's kinda coincidence that you both are here. His face was little bit changed - there was one dark, quite big spot on his chin and he looked bit older. I said that first I didn't recognize you but he responded that it was ME who was hard to recognize.

However, a tour seems to be going through the same place. And in this tour are my parents. So I go back to the bigger tourist town nearby, planning on going back to my own life soon after. Unfortunately, I am roped into taking a bus tour with them, and, oddly enough, find myself taking care of two little girls: One is the six-year-old whose family I stayed with for three weeks on my spring break back in March, and the other is my twelve-year-old Down's Syndrome cousin, who I am meeting again for the first time after two years.

I never do get back to that seaside town.