Girls Aloud Made Me Made Me Love Them

If you were to ask me which song most defined my Belfast experience it would have to be "The Promise" by Girls Aloud. You should really watch the video while trying not to hate it and simultaneously trying not to love it.



I've heard this song at least a hundred times since I landed here, none of them of my own free will. Unlike that shitty Kid Rock song and all of Katy Perry's songs which refuse to stop being popular here, this Girls Aloud song has entered my ear and begun to control me like the yerks from the Animorphs books. I don't like it or respect it, but it has turned my hatred for it into a grudging affection, even though it sounds like a hybrid of No Doubt with the Spice Girls at their euro-trashiest.
This video is also a good barometer for what the music scene is like here. In a word: shit. But Stockholm Syndrome has set in and I'm beginning to understand my captors and sympathize with them.

Runner ups:
The Saturdays - Up.
This song is a boring version of "Disturbia":



Who Da Funk - Shiny Disco Ball:
You may think this is the trashiest of euro-trash and you wouldn't be wrong. But don't get too snooty, Jack; the atrociously-named Who Da Funk are from the US. I feel dirty by association.

Photojournal vol. 2

Hey dudes,
I'm posting more photos now of my initial Belfast arrival.
This is where Pat took us to the Catholic side of the peace wall.



A memorial




This house has a trampoline behind it. My guess is so bricks thrown over the wall will ricochet back over. Or, you know, to bounce on.

Pat took us to a Catholic church where he gave us 5p coins to dip in the holy water. This church's holy water, he said, was blessed by the Pope in Italy and shipped over specially. We're supposed to buy jewelry boxes to send home to somebody sick. I meant to do it, but didn't...




The Bobby Sands mural - according to Pat it's the most famous mural in the world.

These are all from a wall of other causes and people that the Nationalist Northern-Irish support (or don't).













Next... Derry!