Kiss me...

So, as I think the whole world knows March 17th was indeed St Patrick's day. Living in a country other than Ireland now I think it's kind of weird that most other places seem to celebrate it to a much greater extent than Ireland. I mean I don't ever remember Belfast having a parade with a large amount of inflatables or having to queue for 6 blocks to get into a bar. As for the green beer...what's wrong with Guinness or Harp...at least they're the correct colour and actually Irish, imagine that! However I will admit I miss having the day off and watching the rugby.
I think what annoys me...like massively annoys me is this thing where everyone tries to prove their Irish. This isn't an annoyance which stems from me being 100% Northern Irish, nope, this stretches to all the sort of claims like this whether it be Irish, Spanish or Australian. I think it annoys me more because I live somewhere which is classed as a 'new' country and therefore a lot of people have immigrated here as supposed to being born here....myself included.
My peeve comes to a head on days like St Paddy's Day. Last year I heard someone proudly claim they were 1/12th Irish....yeah...and I'm 1/18th Apache. Seriously...that is how ridiculous it sounds. I don't even understand how you can be 1/12th something...how do you even work that out! I mean it doesn't annoy me if someone was to say oh my parents are Irish or my grandparents are Irish...even great grandparents. It's this 1/12th, 1/9th 1/whatever...what do you base this calculation on?!!? Clearly if you're telling someone you're a fraction Irish...you're not Irish. Like I said this goes for every country not just Ireland. I don't understand why people do it. Are they unwilling to say where they were born? Is there a need to belong to more than one country? I just don't really get it.
It gets better when they start to run through the shopping list of countries that a fraction of them belongs to. It usually goes something like 1/12th Irish, 1/9th Norwegian, 1/6th Japanese...I don't even know how they calculate this. To me it sounds like one of those ridiculous claims on Jerry Springer...I'm having an affair with my mum's brother's sister's best friend's uncle's hoover and want to marry it. I honestly don't get it...however next time someone says it to me I am tempted to say I am 1/6th Mexican just to see the looks on their faces at my blatant lie.