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June 11, 2005

The Three Types of Wait

I hate waiting. Waiting for trains. Waiting for people. Waiting for Godot. I hate it all. Waiting rooms especially. Take the Dentists for example. You go to the Dentists for your appointment at 4.15pm sharp. If fact you arrive a little early as to be on time but regardless the dentist is never ready for you on time. In fact time almost stands still in waiting rooms. All the posters are from 1970’s Colgate campaigns, the magazines are ageless copies of the National Geographic and the seats are a peculiar mix of old and new. So for starters the environment is just plain strange. Then comes the waiting. Now for those of you unfamiliar with waiting there are several kinds.

The agonising wait, the terrifying wait and the Irish Rail induced mind numbing wait. The terrifying wait is the one that comes with your dentist appointment. Most people don’t like going to the dentists. They may not be pathologically horrified at the prospect but they’ll at least find it an uncomfortable thought. The dentists, knowing this full well to be the case, came up with the terrifying wait in order to strike fear into the fearless. First of all, and most importantly, is the waiting rooms proximity to the dentists surgery. One room away is the norm. This allows for the most spine-chilling sounds of all to be within an ear-shot of waiters - the dentists drill. Bom, bom, bom! I’m reliably informed that modern dentists practises will just have the drill sound piped into the waiting room through speakers for that surround sound effect. This goes hand in hand with your appointment not being on time. They figure by letting you sit there an extra twenty minutes listening intently you’ll crack sooner or later. And most do.

The next kind of wait is the always in fashion Irish Rail induced mind numbing wait. Quite simple really. Your trains late, you’re stuck in the station and there ain’t nothing you can do about it. Staring at the sky is quite popular as is continually checking your timetable and looking at your watch in an attempt to somehow rectify the situation. Scientific studies have shown it doesn’t. The only thing to be said about the Irish Rail induced mind numbing wait is that it’s a collective one. A waiting experience shared by a fraternity of commuters. Its almost beautiful. Almost.

The final and in my mind the pen ultimate in waits is the agonising wait. It’s the wait for something in which the outcome is uncertain. It’s the interview wait. With the dentists wait you know you’re going to end up with a drill in your mouth, with the train wait you know its eventually going to arrive but with the interview wait you just don’t know and it was this one I experienced personally this week. After finishing my spell in journo college I took a year out and realised one thing - I wanted to go back! Not to the journo academy of course. I had already completed that, but just back to college and that easy going lifestyle in general. To quote a song from Avenue Q, a Broadway show I once seen in NY, “I wish I could go back to college / in college you know who you are. / You sit in the quad, / And think “Oh my God! / I am totally gonna go far!”/” Film production beckoned.

I had an interview in Coláiste Dhúlaigh at which I would have to sell myself. My getting into the course rested on my sole ability to do this. So I made my way up to Dublin to where I had not been for several weeks. I caught the shopping bug instantly as I stepped into Henry St. Shopping duly absorbed me until the point where I realised I only had a half hour to get out to Raheny. In my haste I ran down by the GPO, on past Eason’s, over the O’Connell Bridge and jumped into a taxi opposite the number 90 bus stop. This was my first mistake as my Dublin driver told me. We we’re pointed in the exact opposite direction of Raheny. We’d have to drive half way down the quays before we could turn and then drive all the back up again. My second mistake was my God awful pronunciation of Dublin place names. “Driver,” I said “I need to get to Raheny!” Now readers who know a thing or do will realise it’s pronounced RA-HEE-NEE and not RE-HA-NEY as I so boldly announced. So after a few minutes the driver eventually copped on what had happened. Fast forward a furious drive through Dublin until we arrive at Coláiste Dhúlaigh in Raheny.

Inside I’m shown where to sit and then it begins - the waiting. It doesn’t help that the other applicants beside me are yapping away about how hard this course is supposed to be to get into. The guy in front of me is next in. They interrogate him for about twenty minutes or so until it’s my turn to go in. This is it. This is the interview. Now call me naive folks but I genuinely didn’t expect half of the questions they threw at me. “So why should we give you a place on this course?” Because I’m great, is what I kept repeating in my head but was wise enough not to say out loud. “What other courses did you apply too?” It was only then when it dawned on me that I hadn‘t applied to any other courses and hence everything rested on this blasted interview. “What is your favourite film?” Now that’s easy. It’s You’ve Got Mail, that delightful Tom Hanks / Meg Ryan New York love story. But I can’t say that of course. Any mention of You’ve Got Mail at an interview for Film Production is bound to end in tears. I say the French film “Amelie” instead. It’s just as big a love story as the more main stream You’ve Got Mail but it’s got that Art House thing going for it. Finally the interview is over. I didn’t think it went to well, but of course, in grand agonising style I have to wait for a letter to tell me if I got it or not. Two days later it arrived. The wait was over. I got in.

Trains, Buses & Automobiles by Liam Geraghty appears every week in the Kildare Nationalist.

Posted by LiamG at June 11, 2005 01:30 AM