Blogs by Night

Looks like rain

2010-09-21T00:18:00.001+01:00

Sometimes it just comes as if from nowhere,
The rain.
Both a translucent veil falling over the window of our vision,
And an equaliser in the truest sense of the word.

It caught him by surprise.
Standing by the bus stop,
Tapping his toe gently,
Waiting for a bus destined to arrive late.

The rainfall hits him,
He doesn't move,
Only shifts his head upward in a look of acknowledgement.
Like seeing an old acquaintance in the street,
Unexpected but inevitable.
Nor does he shift a mere three steps to avoid it,
He shuns the cover offered by the shelter.
Instead he accepts the rain, embraces it.

The young couple sitting on the bench in the shelter look at him,
Curious and bemused.
They will later
(In the sanctuary of their studio flat)
Wonder over his motivation.
Is he taking the rain like a mild purgatory,
Feeling the echoing needles of water hit his head,
Like judgmental spears of penance?
Is he letting the waves of precipitation wash over him,
Cleansing him literally and metaphysically?

There is a look on his face.
Not fear, not beseeching self-pity,
Not anger.
Yet no smile on his mouth,
Nor wistful nostalgia in his eyes.
Grey as the clouds from whence comes
The rain.

The couple will wonder,
Look, gauge and analyse the lines on his face.
But it's like they're outside,
Looking into his perplex cubicle of isolation.
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

Break my rusty cage and run

2010-07-23T01:30:00.000+01:00

Trapped.

By the pressures of work,

By the demands of society,

By the cruel necessity of money,

By relationships going nowhere fast.

Each one another bar in a moment that

Seems determined to bind and constrict,

Not embrace and bless us, nor enfold us

In serendipity and boundary-less fortune.
"Like a cat in a bag / waiting to drown"

No, not so morose, yet not so detached.

A bird maybe, gazing from imprisonment.

Chirping wistfully at the expanse of world

Commencing from not even two feet away.

Cruelly somehow allowing vision of all yet

Access to little. Cursed cage of restriction!

Yet might this cage not be a rusty one? Why not test those hinges... bend those bars....?

"That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet"

2010-07-20T00:59:00.000+01:00

It has long been a feature of mythology and science fiction that many a creature can be weakened by the knowledge or speaking aloud of its name. The idea that the name holds a mystic power, almost like a spell.

"You have me at a disadvantage"
"He doesn't even know my name"
"Creature, I name you... Carrionite!" (Ahem, that's just for you, EJ!)

A name can help us find someone, can spark conversation, can condemn someone. Can be spat out in spite or murmured in a verbal caressing wonder. Can define someone, describe something in wonderful rounded tones or harsh consonant sounds, represent hope and optimistic plans. But surely the by far the most beautiful uses of names is for people...

What is in a name?

Maybe we don't think of it as control. Maybe we think of as a new connections created. What is life if not the people in it?

Wales and Paul Anka

2010-06-29T00:19:00.000+01:00

Now, I know I've not been writing very much. And I keep making excuses for it, so I may as open with a few more:
- I'm a lazy bugger
- I've been busy/going out nigh on every night/watching a LOT of television on a varying scale from awesome (The Wire) to oh-god-why-do-I-watch-this-again? (Smallville).
- Lastly, and most importantly, I'm been finding myself disappointingly devoid of inspiration.

It happens, and so easily and smoothly if you let it. You pass up plans due to work exhaustion. You depart from a party because you have work the next day. All too simply, work and 'life' (that which we live to earn money: that most fickle of mistresses) get in the way. For this reason, sometimes it's nice to get away, even if it is just for a weekend; to have that time with your friends in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but time, alcohol and companionship; with bracing fresh air and a night sky refreshingly devoid of pollution and instead sprinkled with a thousand twinkling stars. A weekend away in Wales a couple of weeks back could not have come at a better time for me. Work was beginning to pile on, making me ever more jaded and lethargic on a daily basis. Quite simply I needed the time away. No reports, no spreadsheets, no e-mail.

Now this isn't to say that Wales is a back-end country with nothing going for it. Cardiff and Swansea are amazing cities with a fair degree of urban life. But we rented out a 14-man cottage near Cwmyoy, basically in the middle of nowhere. An epic cottage with a sound system that could select any or all of the rooms in the house, a massive kitchen with a long rustic wooden table and an Aga oven. And we loved it. As a city boy born and bred, when I take a holiday or short break, I have only a limited amount of appreciation and awe for buildings, especially those similar to ones I have previously seen.

Rather I take greater pleasure in seeing mountains, lakes, wildlife. In other words, everything one doesn't habitually see when working within London's 'Square Mile'. We heard no sirens, we had no internet (both a blessing and a curse given my addiction to it, and the dependence on it) and even very little mobile phone reception. Instead under the circumstances we had little else to do but just sit, talk, drink and enjoy each other's company: it was great. We did take a couple of mini hikes up the hills (we WERE near the Brecon Beacons after all) and a road trip to Brecon proper which basically ended up being a pub lunch and a quick walk around, but this didn't bother any of use too deeply.

Instead we drank, we played poker, we listened to a variety random CDs including this beauty which I bought immediately I returned to London: "Rock Swings" by Paul Anka. It blew my tiny mind! A dozen or so pop and rock songs covered by this retro crooner (and favourite of the Gilmore Girls, ahem), and maybe it was the Captain Morgan talking, but I really got a kick out of it!
I also got a kick out of the highly indecent and boundary-crossing banter with which I shall not besmirch your gentle eyes :)

When I was dropped off back home on the drizzly Monday evening, physically drained despite having guiltily slept in the car ride back (so much for being good road trip company!) I felt for the first time in several days the unfamiliar sensation of solitude. However the lingering undertone was one of having broken free of the 9-5 box. The reminder of possibility was enough for me. All it takes is a couple of hours' drive, a trunk full of alcohol and a handful of thoroughly decent people.

Play me out, Paul.

"Frank said it / I did it my way"

The one where I run out of things to say

2010-05-14T15:44:00.001+01:00

I never thought the day would come! But like a drained well, a closed tap or (oh damn you, self-fulfilling prophecy) another water-related metaphor, I want to write, I YEARN to write and nothing flows out.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to pretend I’m a particularly masterful wit of our generation. Half the time when I blather on, it’s about things that mean nothing to 70% of people, and 70% of the time I have to explain to half my verbal victims that about which I’m talking because I assume people are in my head and will instantly get my pop culture references, a la Gilmore Girls (huh, I never quite finished that series). But even with that blunderbuss method of speaking, every so often I’d make an interesting point, amusing story or something just so abstract in its content that it would be entertaining. Skip forward to the present day and almost like a war veteran (slightly hyperbolic, yes, but the book I’m currently working on is Charlotte Gray) I find myself more often than not stunned to monosyllables when people ask me questions, though somehow I retain the ability to be a good question-asker and listener. I guess I had to find my role in social situations somewhere else, right?

Not for me though, is the excuse of war. No comrades dying, nor being snatched from England’s green and pleasant lands, nor futility of the human condition exposed (though I still think one of the rings of hell contains the London Underground at rush hour). Instead the causational trigger for my reversion to a more silent movie-style approach to life is merely having started full-time, non-contract employment. Now while it is true that I rarely see any value in the work I do (every time I check the prices for the reports we write, my mind boggles) but it would be remiss for me to blame that for the manner in which I speak, surely? Never mind that I sink hours into Excel spreadsheets, and then pie charts based on data within those spreadsheets and then paragraphs of mindless text analysing the pie charts based on Excel spreadsheet data. Never mind that I can feel my mind slowly but surely devolving into merely organic mess that fills the space between my ears. Never mind that in my vigorous attempts to have things to get me through the day, I find myself literally every night in a pub or playing at working out in the gym until my stomach protests at lack of supper, leaving knackered every day, albeit of my own accord.

No man has a right to use such trivialities as an excuse for becoming more and more boring as days go on, but I certainly do. I hope this slump is merely that, a slump, but at present the future looks bleak and particular devoid of interesting anecdotes. Though of late I have:

Seen She & Him live in concert: It felt a little alien going to a concert where half the audience was justifiably sitting (I hate it when people sit down with their arms crossed at rock concerts) and just swaying. But I really enjoyed it, and fell deeper in love with Zooey Deschanel. So freaking adorable.

Finally bought 120 film for my new Diana F+ camera: though I had to resort to Amazon. The pictures better be as darn funky as I hope or that camera will end up gathering dust on my shelf. I never ever thought I’d shake my metaphorical fist at digital photography.

Nearly finished Charlotte Gray: incidentally a great book. Picked it up because I really enjoyed Birdsong and was told it was in the same vein. To extent it is, it encompasses the same wheelhouse of ‘real people in the backdrop of war’ rather than war itself, and Charlotte Gray and a few other protagonists are portrayed wonderfully. Though I don’t get quite the same magical wistfulness that Birdsong gave me, despite the grittiness of the setting.

Like riding a bike..

2010-05-05T01:09:00.000+01:00

It happens so easily.

You fall in line with the crowd, mindlessly treading water as you merely try to survive the rush hour.
The current irresistibly compels you along and you, ears plugged into your iPod, succumb to its direction.
Walk on the left side of this barrier.
The office walls close in, your very world wanes claustrophobically and it seems a curtain falls on your horizon.
Clock in. Clock out. Bill your hours.
How many spreadsheets can a man tabulate, before you can call him a drone?

Does this have to be the way? Why can one not regain their creativity? Relishing the beauty of their everyday life in the unexpected nooks of the city, reading books instead of rehashed free daily newspapers, attending concerts and not training seminars. How hard can it be to be the salmon, ever struggling upstream?

How did that phrase about bikes go again?

Blossoms

2010-04-28T02:15:00.000+01:00

First look at this

So you'll understand why I'm posting this:

Because finding your tranquility is sometimes just as easy as walking through your back garden. Thank goodness for Spring. It's hard to feel stressed or irritated at the increasingly monotone nature of working life when your friends are funny, the sun is shining and the greyness of the city is alleviated by the colour thrown about your day-to-day, like so many islands in the sea or oases in the desert.

Sorry I've been so lazy/overwhelmed/tired and thanks to those who haven't given up on me (you know who you are, AH and EW). Proper writing to follow as soon as I can kick myself up the arse hard enough.

I love juxtapositions

2010-04-08T02:08:00.003+01:00

I love it when there's a ukelele in a rock band.

I love it when a child is the best thing in a predominantly adult play.

I love it when you find a Japanese park in the middle of the very English West London.

I love it when someone is actual civil and helpful during rush hour traffic.

I love it when you hear a French accent pierce the severe halls of the British Museum.

I love it when you hear a Maths graduate wax lyrical about the subtle joys of Erik Satie.

I love it when you find a blooming flower in the midst of concrete and litter.

I love it when an old person uses Twitter.

I love it when you see your teacher/boss/parent drunk.

The little things in life that challenge your expectations, that shatter your prejudices, that remind you that you don't know everything about the world.

Mind the Gap

2010-04-05T03:49:00.000+01:00

“Mind the gap… The next train will arrive in 3 minutes."

The tannoy rings, devoid of either excitement or resentment. A deadpan voice revealing nothing. The afternoon rush hour. The grey Tube platform where one is surrounded by paradoxically crowded solitude.

After an equally mechanical series of beeping, a departing train sends a ripple of air along the platform, temporarily suspending in mid-air anything that isn't weighty or strapped down and fluttering them about like so many manic marionettes: Coat straps. Abandoned leaflets (Free trial of... !) Her hair.

It almost resembles like a slow motion scene from a romantic comedy, her hair moving like a brown silk wave, at the same time random and enticingly arranged. She is looking away, the profile of her chin the only teasing aspect available to me, and standing to close to the edge of the platform there is no better vantage point that avoids the universally implied social contract to not be a creepy pervert. Deciding that the train of thought borders on pathetic, my hand reaches inside my jacket pocket and fishes out my worn copy of Chekhov plays and flicks to my bookmark midway through the Cherry Orchard. Mere seconds after, the object of my observation reaches into her bag and takes out a book of her own.

As she does, she turns toward the opposite platform, displaying an adorable button nose and deep brown eyes that even from afar seems to hold a glint of mischief. As with the dozens of others on the platform, her delicately small mouth is locked in a semi-frown of weary focus. Overall I find the face very pleasing, with a slightly elfin cute look that I find so captivating and distracting. My attention is drawn to the book in her hand, worrying slightly as it is a black hardback about the size of the Twilight books that are seemingly breeding in bookshops across the country. If it turns out to be "New Moon" the magic would dissipate, an electric moment evaporating to leave the mediocre uneventful commute home that otherwise occupies that hour. An inward sigh of relief: it is Anna Karenina. I smile slightly, gently approving her choice of travelling literature.

She must spot this out of the corner of her eye, and looks up slightly but not completely so that she is slightly peering through the swept aside fringe of her dark chocolate hair (Lent clearly cannot end too soon). The pragmatist in me finds this amusing, the romantic in me finds this fantastically endearing. She in turn looks at my book then back up at me and returns a smile. It appears to me that the dim lighting increases slightly, a deeper orange glow almost like springtime rays of sunlight beating down making the building swell and sharpen in the most optimistic way. Two book lovers with a brief connection across the concrete concourse.

Yet scruples and convention states neither of us step toward each other, no moves are made to start a conversation in such a situation. The divide of mere feet might as well be miles. Out of earshot: out of access. The leftmost edge of my peripheral vision, unwilling to break the elusive gaze, spies a pair of headlights and my feet feel a faint but growing rumbling in the platform. Still the look is held, holding until she seemingly realises with a jolt that the Tube carriages thunder toward us are for her homeward bound journey. She takes a few steps toward me (a mere few taken on my part would have taken us to handshake proximity) and boards the vessel.

The doors close with a cutting finality. For all its wheezing and lethargic action, the doors sliding shut recollecting a steam press I saw as a youth, slamming together with a clunk of finality, putting to an abrupt end any potential precursor to a meeting. Our eyes meet once more through the scratched and smoggy windows (as the train chugs its way past me on its initially slow and almost taunting warm-up run) before she averts her gaze. Is it embarrassment? Is it coyness?

And with that, as suddenly as I had started to fall for her, the tube gathers speed and leaves the station.

"Next train will arrive in 2 minutes."

The Pursuit of Happiness

2010-03-30T01:16:00.002+01:00

(First off the bat, how surprised are you that I was irritated by the typo in the Will Smith movie title to which I am now reacting? It's not even relevant to the story!)

Did you know that Paulo Coelho (aka 'him wot wrote that Alchemist book') has a blog? Sure he's not one of my favourite writers, nor would he be on my top ten writer/blogger wishlist (No. 1 - Oscar Wilde; no. 2 - Gabriel Garcia Marquez; no. 3 Bret Easton Ellis... don't make me go on...) but the fact remains that the man's got mad wordsmithing killz and so I was very intrigued to stumble across it. Check it out.

Anyhow, the post that set me back on the on/off path that has been blogging is his latest post, provocatively monikered "Joy is like sex". Huh. After my mind, which has been pretty darn filthy of late, allowed me to silent chortle while wondering if the 'like' was superfluous and extend the metaphor in both puerile and semi-intellectual manners (was so tempted to write some these up!) I read it and it smacked me right in the mind hole. I won't attempt to paraphrase the whole lot in any detail, I don't want to do Senor Coelho any injustice and I want you all to read it, but the crux of it is this: "Joy is like sex – it begins and ends." In this case, 'joy' being happiness. The state of being happy.

Quite honestly, this is not a concept of which I had previously thought. I honestly struggle with trying to 'find happiness'. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a prologue to a suicide letter, but rather just one of the many mini-crises I undertake every so often. Maybe that's the point, and why the blog post spoke so much to me. I think about it every so often: interspersed with what I had previously classified to myself as flights of fancy or distractions. My bids to be entirely selfless for extended periods of time ended in frustration, my admittedly docile attempts to be hedonistic lose steam a lot faster (the latter feels rather less comfortable than the first). My interests make me dive to the deep end of obsession then want to get out of the pool mere minutes later. I wonder 'why?' so very often I'm surprised still find the time to live my life. And more often than not I lose interest in a perfectly wonderful girl a few dates into a relationship (in a lot less terrible way than it sounds, hopefully y'all know me a little better than that by now).

But perhaps that's OK. Not for everyone is that blissful nirvana that puts a permanent grin on their face for years until they pass away, no less joyful than the decade before. Perhaps not for me is the deep-set satisfaction of having a raison d'etre to sink my teeth into. No, instead for now I shall satisfy myself in the knowledge that I am not alone is this seemingly futile search for the elusive lifetime of happiness, and keep on searching. Keep hopping along the stepping stones of pleasant conversation, shelter under the boughs of family and friends and find solace in the sunsets and beauties that the world occasionally tosses my way.

Che sera sera.

p.s. I've missed writing! Yeah, sure I might 'write reports' for a living now (they're treating me with kid gloves though and not giving my much to do, I feel like I'm going to claw my eyes out with boredom sometimes!) but it is nothing like the joy I get from writing what I want, when I want, just for me. I'm going to write more these days, if only as cathartic relief and another rope to the lifeboat of happiness. Thanks for the kick up the arse, ALH! x

Cool stuff wot I bought

2010-03-18T03:44:00.001Z

Because I bought this stuff and reckon they're all pretty nifty in their own way, because I'm suffering from a severe case of writer's block, because I wanted to try out the camera on my phone and because I wanted to show that not everyone agrees with the Oxford comma.

Books! Oh so pretty books! Because I'm tragically behind on Chekhov reading (I've only read Uncle Vanya! For shame...) I found this Collected Plays in one of those quaint little second bookshops that somehow still subsist off Shaftesbury Avenue. When they're in good condition I quite enjoy the idea of second hand books: knowing that someone's read and loved that book before gives me a sense of continuity. This is the same reason I like giving people great books as presents. Besides, based on the publishing notes and the handwritten note in the front (I also love that too!) this book is older than my parents. Weird.

And yeah, I had no idea before I wandered into HMV like a lost puppy that Tim Burton had published a book! Not a book per se so much as a dark twisted collection of short children's stories and pictures. Think twisted.... hit Quentin Blake? Think darker.... hit Roald Dahl? Darker still... Love it.

Y Tu Mama Tambien, which I named checked a while back as a cheery film, is still worth a namecheck. It's one of those films that documents an experience

And the other one? Because if you have an ounce of fun/childishness/hair gel left in you, you love 80s movies. I bought this mainly for Ferris - RIP John Hughes.

Have I bigged up Kina Grannis yet? If not, check her out if you like Colbie Caillat et al, wonderful acoustic singer from California. You can almost hear the sunshine in her voice.

The other one is a collection of Schubert pieces transcribed for piano by composers including Liszt! For someone who had these names forced upon them during classical music training, this is music geek heaven!

And also this. Needs no intro, the blaggers' guide to Art!

I think I do retail therapy pretty well, hmmm? Apparently better than I write at 4 in the morning. Hope you're all doing well, you beautiful people!

Thnks Fr Th Mmrs*

2010-03-11T04:00:00.001Z

I've been insanely busy for the past week or so, averaging more than an interview a day, blowing my meagre money on people's birthdays and drunkenly falling asleep and leaving my phone on the night bus. Yup, I'm that cool.

During one of said interviews, I was given 30 minutes and an article to précis and add my own thoughts and 'commercial awareness' (one of those very management-speak phrases for 'actually reads the newspaper and isn't a socially-retarded hermit'). Not to be too immodest but I find those sorts of things fairly simple which meant after triple-checking what I had written I had some 15 minutes to play with, and after texting someone with plans to meet for lunch after, I ended up idly flipping through my old texts. This being my replacement phone due to aforementioned Sambuca aftermath, these were very old texts, ones I had received during my China trips in 2008.

This was a very surreal experience: I am not often prone to such self-indulgent delving into reminiscent revelry, least of all during an interview, but I was running at least mostly on caffeine and this was the final stage of the interview at any rate. But there were enclosed in those texts plans to meet up at our old haunts, texts from a short term flame, emotional outbursts from my homesick counterparts.

For a brief moment, if only a couple of minutes, I was back there. I wasn't a bored suit in a pokey conference room in central London, I was a fish out of water experiencing southern China.

As I mentioned at the top, I have been attending shedload of interviews, which brings as part and parcel of the process a shedload of questions about myself and my past. Now, I am not one of those interview machines: you know the type, the type of people who wouldn't get ripped into by Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross (can you tell I finally got around to watching the Oscars?), the type of people who get coffee and steak knives. I'm very realistic about my shortcomings and hesitate to emphasise my meagre strengths. So whether or not they find my honesty refreshing or endearing I told them that in real terms I am something of a blank canvas career-wise, having been in no role for longer than four months, only a handful of letters to my name and the ability to manipulate words. Which is fine, I have been through four years of higher education and taken a year out.

Some would find it depressing that at the age of twenty-three I have condensed my life into a curriculum vitae, that it so readily fits into two sides of A4. But that is not all I have been doing with my life. If by some misfortune (knock on wood a thousand times over!) my life was to end tomorrow that would not be what I remember. I would remember the people, the sensations and most importantly the memories. The time I literally laughed so hard I fell off a bar stool. That time my friend slipped over the same bit of banana peel thrice in one day. The book I read on the beach that almost drove me to tears. Sitting on a balcony with an ex as the sun rose on a morning after. A laughter of hundreds of children. Sweating with hundreds of others at a massive outdoor Muse concert.

I have not made it much of a secret that for a while now I've been hitting my quarter life, post-grad crisis stage. When you hit a wall in that x-year-plan you set for yourself it is all too easy to question things, the reasons why, the very existentialist crisis that has plagued greater minds than mine for centuries. (FYI, try a bit of Kierkegaard, it'll blow your mind hole. Screw the more depressing guys.)

To be flippant, minimalist and peppy, maybe this is the big 'Why?' The pursuit of great memories, and the creation of those instances for you and your loved ones. The creation of a flipbook of life-defining moments that exist like a imprint on our souls and that have lead us to where we are today. Not just the 'Kodak moments' mind you, 2-D photography can be manufactured, heck, make great friends with James Cameron and WETA and you might even be able to swing it in 3-D (oh yes, I'm all current and whatnot) but the memories, laden with the way the moments made you feel. If the human soul exists, intangible as it is, surely it is expressed in empathy and emotions, enhancing our experience of the present beyond recordable media and colouring our recollection of the past.

So I implore you (and myself) not to get too caught up in the long term. Obviously as mature adults it is important to always have one eye on the future, but this should not be at the risk of the present. A life not enjoyed and lived is one diminished and wasted. What will you remember when you think back on what you have done?

*Because my mind inexplicably turns phrases (all the time) and goes on tangents, when I thought of this concept, I thought of this song and the post title. And because in a really perverse way I find some of Fall Out Boy's stuff pretty catchy.

Also I'll try to write better soon when I'm not running on fumes but it's been a while since I have written 'for me'!

Rice Bags

2010-03-02T17:38:00.001Z

The thing about rice bags (beside being an ever-so-slightly race appropriate metaphor) is that they're designed to be tough. I mean, these bad boys aren't terribly thick but they have to carry kilos of rice, withstand being lugged and chucked around onto vans, off vans, onto forklifts. Because they're tough, your less well-equipped martial arts schools fill them to the brim and use them to train kids to punch. Rocky used slabs of meat, these kiddie-winks use rice.

The rice, with its sheer numbers, provides a reactionary force to the blow, resistance to whatever circumstantial abuse the bag might be subjected. But the rice has nowhere to go, and eventually the punches take their toll on the bag which has to be replaced before it bursts.

Maybe we're like these bags. Maybe the rice is our history, our abilities, the nitty gritty of life in which we surround ourselves like blankets. Maybe the bags (are they flax? are they plastic?) themselves are the tenacity and natural human resilience on which our race relies. And maybe, sometimes the punches start to take their toll and the bag starts to fray and lose its structural integrity.

You have one of those days. Every passerby seems irrationally filled with resentment. These days start to pile up.
thud
Your friends are distressed. You try to help them, they say you are, but the words sound hollow in your throat. Actions are required, not cliched platitudes.
thud
That job you'd been waiting for and could almost touch with your grasping fingers gets back to you three weeks later to tell you the position is no longer available, not because you're not good enough, but because sometimes life just sucks that way.
Thud
You return to the hospital which you thought and hoped you'd left for good just over a year ago. The fear, as if lying in wait, returns. The colour co-ordinated wards and the pictures of pandas, rainbows and dolphins designed to lift spirits do nothing to distract you from the waiting. The pacing. The worrying.
Thud.
Surrounded by people but still the solitude and darkness flows around you, playfully swiping at your limbs.
Thud.

A Date with Destiny

2010-02-25T03:02:00.001Z

There's something you should know about me, if you didn't already: I analyse everything. That's why I can't fall asleep at night, think about cave paintings when I'm walking in the rain and think about the back stories of strangers on the bus. Everything and anything. But a recurring inner discussion that I have is that of destiny, fate and parallel timelines.

First of all, perhaps on semantics alone, destiny and fate are not the same thing, though they are often used interchangeably. (Much like jealousy and envy. Look it up if you're as pedantic as me!) Destiny dictates a event that is predetermined or the power behind this predetermination. Fate, rather more pessimistically, is a course of events that must happen or the agency that dictates this, often with negative connotations of death and ill fortune. Yup, pretty much semantics with an upbeat/downbeat twist. On my understanding, destiny means that we will hit certain events in the future but the present up until those points is still in flux. Fate means that everything is laid out in advance and we are just along for the ride. Think car ride vs train journey.

But the key and shared element, that of predetermination, is what fascinates me. Is this a valid concept, or just the bread and butter of New Age-ists, lovesick people, films of varying quality and Lost? Some people like to believe in this to cheer them up when life has kicked them in the nether regions. It can be reassuring to know that something better is coming along in the future or that there is no way a certain chain of events could have been avoided. There's a certain easing of stress in the laissez-faire, che sera sera way of living that can be a positive thing, avoiding overthinking the future and focusing on the present that can lead to a double-edged lifestyle of hedonism/being ill-prepared.

For my part, I don't overly like these concepts. I'm not going to poo-pooh these theories out of hand, I have no proof either way and have done no rationalising beyond my recurring by idle thoughts on the matter. But I'm somewhat hesitant to believe in Fate as it completely belittles the significance of our free will, something which separates our souls from our primal instincts. I only wish I could cite some Jungian principles at you at this point, but suffice it to say, I value this aspect of our psyches very highly. There is a slight degree of leeway when it comes to Destiny that I could get on board with: the idea that the while the ending is written, the journey that takes us there is still up to us. As it said in the closing line of La Haine, "L'important c'est pas la chute, c'est l'atterissage".

And if the future isn't written in the stars, if Fate does not dictate all of our paths in minute detail, what about the little decisions that make all the difference in how our lives map out? What if I had never left the house early that day and missed my bus to the airport? What if I had chosen a different university and met a completely different set of people? What if I have taken a different route to the station and bumped into a different person? (Think the Butterfly Effect. The concept rooted in Chaos Theory not the terrible Ashton Kutcher vehicle.) Fate answers all these questions with a simple and somewhat belligerent "You wouldn't have. You were always going to do what you did." Tell me that isn't a little grim. Destiny on the other hand, is a lot more glass-half-full. The feather in the cap of romantics everywhere (pleeeurgh at Serendipity, hurrah at Love in the Time of Cholera) it is endlessly more positive. But then we go onto parallel timelines and/or the inherent paradoxes behind time travel and the effects of our decisions. And then, unless you're an expert in quantum mechanics, this is the point where you stop or just go insane.

Even LOST gets confused about this: doesn't this just blow your mindhole?

A film that handles this well is Sliding Doors. Very British (yay!), very cheesy and romantic, but it makes pretty good use of the concept and contains elements of my random musings above.

What do you think about Fate and Destiny? Do you believe in it?

And now to completely destroy any iota of respectability behind my reasoning, here's some cheesy 80's-esque pop music, the only good thing in this entire movie (is Drew Barrymore just a massive film jinx post-ET?) I thought of it purely for the line "A twist of fate makes life worthwhile..."

Guest Blogging!

2010-02-21T12:34:00.000Z

For today and the remaining Sundays of Lent, I'll be contributing to the exquisitely crafted "Katrina & The King". Check out today's 'Simple Sunday'.

Maybe

2010-02-16T02:04:00.006Z

Maybe it's the sun disappearing over the horizon long before the time of day at which I used to enjoy sitting in the park to just immerse myself and feel a part of nature.

Maybe it's the biting winter air, so charming when you have a pleasant destination to reach but an all but literal slap in the face when you have nowhere.

Maybe it's the inability to catch a break of late.

Maybe it's the slow but sure loss of my smile, apparently one of my defining features.

Maybe it's the draining quality of putting on a brave face constantly.

Maybe it's the dull constant weight on my chest that won't go away no matter how many beautiful films I see or magnificent pieces of literature in which I attempt to hide myself.

Maybe it's the sensation of bitter solitude despite the smiling faces and sympathetic words of wonderful friends.

Maybe it's the fact that though I know in the back of my mind that this cloud will pass and drop its silver lining at my feet any time now, I wish it would hurry the fuck up.

Maybe it's a culmination of the above and me being a whiny bitch today that makes me feel like this:

Send me to Costa Rica!

2010-02-14T23:43:00.002Z

This is an entry for a trip to Costa Rica, supplied for gratis by Nomadic Matt and Gap Adventures, details here. Yes, I found and wrote about it in literally the eleventh hour, but use the link to write an entry yourself if your timeline allows!

-----

“Why do you want this trip, and what do you hope to get out of it?”

I would venture that on this Earth there are few more breathtaking sights than the sun rising over Ayers Rock in central Australia. Even the backdrop, an all but obscured horizon seems almost designed to perfectly foil the world-famous rock formation with its beautiful blended colours. When the rising or setting sun hits Ayers Rock, it causes a change in colour over time so that the Rock hits a thousand shades of colours including a dark chocolate brown, a desert sand yellow and an almost throbbing deep orange.

The sun has a magical power over every place in every country: despite being a constant, an equaliser in the most worldwide sense of the word, the images and sensations it brings people will vary dramatically depending on the season and scenery. It is this variety, this ineffable sense of being on a completely different world just from the shimmering, optimistic touch of the sun over the jungle, mountains or even an urban skyline that makes life so extraordinarily versatile for those willing to seek it. I have seen the sun illuminate Ayers Rock, the green valleys of Iceland, the peaks of China's Tiger Leaping Gorge, and the glittering Lake Geneva. I have been awestruck time and time again by the beauty of natural wonders all around the world and am a better and more open person for it.

But for all this I have never been to Central America, nor ever seen a sunrise over the tropical rainforests or beaches in that part of the world. After the (literally) half of 2008 I spent out of my beloved UK, I have not left Europe and finding my life somewhat stale now for far too long a time, a breathtaking and idyllic change of scenery might be just what I need. I hunger for the change of people, the reminder that the world is much larger than just London (as much as I love it), the re-awakening of my travel bug and for living life to the fullest as an inhabitant of a wonderful and varied planet rather than a drone in the corporate life I seem destined to join.

I need and want this experience to shake up my life while I am still young, not tied down and uncynical, to take a thousand more colourful photos and see just what Costa Rica has to offer. I would relish the exotic array of flora and fauna, drown myself in the luscious Arabica coffee and bask in the wonderful culture so different to my own. I hope to immerse myself in a world thousands of miles from England, write and share wonderful blog posts about how the experience moves me in a way I have not previously known and rediscover the majesty of a waking up to an entirely new sunrise.

Dear iPod

2010-02-14T03:23:00.002Z

Dear iPod,

For some five years now you have been my faithful companion. Though many a coloured, more intricate and more capable replacement has made a play for my attention and your spot in my inside left pocket, I have not succumbed. Rain or shine, smoothly or skipping, charged or not, you are my iPod.

You were by my side in different countries, during a thousand different sunsets and sunrises and amplifying the greatest moments and my widest smiles. But you were also a comforter in my most painful pangs of solitude, spells of heartache and tumultuous of times.

You are the creator of memories, the transcender of time and location, the background to parties. You have been a conversation starter, an ice breaker, a teaching aid. Breaker of writer's block, never-ending source of inspiration, morale boosters during long runs and losing hockey games.

Oh, holder of playlists, master of songs, vessel of emotions - you provided me with music all these years, so now I write this ode to you, my electronic friend. I pay no need to the fact that you are scratched here, there and everywhere. I don't care that your 18gigs have long since been woefully inadequate. And yes, you seem to have a wonderful knack of witnessing the destruction of more set of earphones that I can even recall. But this is my meagre understated 'thank you' for sticking by my side.

You're in my Top-Rated. (Sorry I couldn't resist!)

Yours in years of gratitude,
Stephen

------------

Things that have caught my eye of late:
- Brilliant post on book nerds by Lauren Leto
- Stephen Fry being a genius mac-daddy on QI here
- A decent guitar tab to "Here Comes The Sun"
- A short and simplistic game with a brilliant and overly saccharine concept?

Story Time

2010-02-08T04:58:00.000Z

Going to throw out an abstract idea that I came upon while walking in the rain the other day:

Every person has a great story to tell/is living a wonderful story/is hoping or working towards an ideal story in their head.

Think about it. There are many things that make homo sapiens unique from other creatures. Opposable thumbs, use of advanced tools, but I think the most wonderful (if intangible) difference is the soul and intelligence to tell stories and pass them along. Now let's not get into arguments about animals, primates etc. I think they have souls and varying levels of intelligence, and for all we know, they tell each other stories. But not nearly to the same extent.

Ponder if you will, the Lascaux Cave Paintings. These bad boys are apparently some 17,000 years old. Yes, most people are more interested in the controversy over the dots and dashes (star patterns or hunting tally) but for my purposes, I want you to take a peek at the hunting pictures.

Firstly, note how awesome they are considering the age! Much better artistically than I could probably ever do even though I have millenia of wonderful art I have been exposed to since then.

But also, do you think the cavemen thought "You know what, Bam Bam, I'm going to draw a deer today. Just because our cave walls look a bit boring and drab. I'm going to give it a makeover"? I expect not. Either they wanted to chronicle their exploits for later cavepeople to read or express themselves artistically. In any event: sharing their story for later generations.

I suppose we then moved to vocal story-telling traditions to spread news and important stories, no thanks to the more empirical thinkers such as Plato trying to kill these traditions! Then the handwritten manuscripts, then the printing press and so forth. This is secondary school history, I don't have to tell you this. But the net effect remains the same. Man throughout the course of civilisation has sought to record stories (history) for posterity and future generations.

Most key to this ramble is that this exists now, in oh-so-many forms. People telling stories over coffee, parents reading bedtime stories to their children, and the millions of books that now may or may not be evolving into e-books and the soft-copy children of the Amazon Kindle and the iPad. The desire for most individuals to be in long term relationships could be interpreted as the need to have someone with whom to share one's life story. The desire to make something of one's life: a craving to leave behind a legacy that will last beyond the point where the individual deceases. A story that will endure and be worth telling in the future. Most demonstrably, personal bloggers as a phenomenon are the most directly indicative of people who desire to tell stories to a wider audience.

What do you think?

Oscar Nominations and other such trifles

2010-02-04T04:38:00.005Z

So the Oscar nominations are up HERE and how did I find out? From Twitter of all places. Disappointed in the news for not breaking this news to me sooner.
No great surprises really, all the characteristic tell-tale signs are there, for that, read:

- The box office smash nominated in every possibly relevant category (Avatar)
- The worthy, more critically lauded film that will end up undeservedly and bitterly disappointed (The Hurt Locker)
- The underdog that might surprise everyone and steal the show with its unassuming grace (Up in the Air! Go Best Film, Reitman, Clooney, Kendrick/Farmiga! Run with it!)
- The film that will be rewarded because of its renown (Avatar)
- The breakout acting nom's that will get everyone to stand up and cheer (Sidibe/Precious, Meryl Streep*/Julie&Julia, Mulligan/AnEducation, Waltz/InglouriousBasterds, Bridges/CrazyHeart**, Freeman/Invictus)
- The recognised film that I don't agree with (controversially, I didn't love Inglorious Basterds as much as everyone else!)
- The animated film that will only win 'Best Animated Film' and a technical award despite being (deservedly?) nom'd in a bunch of bona fide categories (Up - firmly taking up Wall-E's mantle)
- Films cruelly omitted by Oscar (Moon?! 500 Days of Summer?!)***
- Films reminding me that I haven't seen nearly enough good films this past year (Precious, A Serious Man, An Education, ANY of the foreign film nom's)
- The clear front runner as it currently stands (Avatar)

NBs
1) I did actually enjoy Avatar, but not as much as Oscar would have me believe. (See Slumdog Millionaire last year)
2) I may again be showing some "Up in the Air" bias but you will not get me to retract it!
3) I am pleased that there is a lot of variety in the nominations this year though to give the AMPAS credit where it is due.
4) *Because it feels weird not giving Meryl Streep her full name. If nothing else she's earned THAT!
5) **Oscar LOVES giving a long overdue award. See Scorsese, 2007.
6) *** For more emotional responses (can you believe it?) check HERE

p.s. I've FINALLY started my Shakesp-year project! (Ahem proper title still in the pipeline.) Tumblr account HERE and will be started up soon. First step: The Tempest.
p.p.s. Because I've been terribly remiss and not blogged for ages there have been a few occurrences that I've not written about! In brief: Nation, the Pratchett-adapted play; South Bank second hand book stalls for the first visit in ages; being booked in for three interviews (count it!); working on another A-Z; figuring out Google Wave and actually making use of it!
p.p.p.s. Oh Nation counts as one of my twelve plays, right? I also plan to see another one in the next two weeks. Yes it's all grossly delayed but it feels to weird not completely abandoning my New Year's Resolutions.
p.p.p.p.s. Last FM is rocking my socks this week.
p.p.p.p.p.s. So is BBC Radio on the iPlayer
p.p.p.p.p.p.s So is the 'pirate' language function on Facebook.
p.p.p.p.p.p.p.s. Too. Many. Bullet points. I may actually have ADD.

Okay, enough about me. What did you make of the Oscar nominations?

My First Guest Blogging Post!

2010-01-27T17:09:00.001Z

Wahey! The fantastic Novelista Barista has posted my guest post on when I went to China in 2008. Read it here and support me and her wonderful blog.

A-Z of Cinematic Uplifting

2010-01-26T02:02:00.002Z

So, some scientists have deemed this day, the last Monday of January to be the most depressing day of the year. Which makes sense if you think about it: all the holiday spirit has run out for sure, the cold/rain/ice/early sunsets set people on edge and it's another manic Monday after all.

But why, say I, do we give in to the scientists? After all, they all laughed at Christopher Columbus, when he said the world was round. In a similar fashion, being still in the residue glow of "Up in the Air" (I have told every man, woman, child and vaguely intelligent-looking sentient creature how much I love that film) I sat there like a geek and compiled this. My (drumroll please) A - Z of films that will make you happy/inspired/proud to be alive/at the least not regretting you watched these films. Lights!

Amelie - A classic bit of J-P Jeunet, you will believe one person can find and cause a disproportionate amount of happiness for the world around her. Plus how can you hate any film that includes an orgasm montage?!
Big Fish - One of my all time favourite movies. Guarantees soul cleansing tears of pure joy unless you're dead inside. The shining happy heart of Tim Burton movies. (Honourable mentions: Billy Elliot/Bucket List.)
Casablanca - Just an indescribably wonderful film, the characters are brilliantly portrayed with character nuances in all the right places. Bogart is intense yet vulnerable, Bergman just defies you not to fall in love with her. Beautiful. This film has its rep for a reason.
Die Hard - "Yippee Kay Yay...." All the blokes know what I'm talking about. Everyman adventure spectacle. Plus Chandler, Joey and Ross love it.
Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind - Quirky to a fault (come on, Charlie Kaufman wrote it, duh) but so endearing. An ingeniously cast pair in Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey.
Forrest Gump - Because life IS like a box of chocolates. Tom Hanks + Robbie Zemeckis, was this ever going to be anything other than genius? A rollercoaster ride through Forrest's life, you'll laugh and cry with him.
Garden State - Zach Braff penned, this is heartfelt, understated and cathartic. I expect many people have felt like the ironically-monikered Largeman, and for them, this is the anecdote that may skew their points of view back to the positive.
Happy Feet - Happy penguins. Dancing penguins. Dancing penguins to disco covers. Wake the heck up and SMILE!
It's a Wonderful Life - As Christmassy as turkey, crackers and passing out after dinner, James Stewart uses his guy-next-door to heartbreaking, lifechanging and soul-raising effect. A festive must. Capra + Stewart earn their keep once more as a partnership.
Jerry Maguire - It'll have you at "hello". Like so many films on this list, you go through the terrible crushing lows, but the high at the end is completely worth it. Tom Cruise in one of his best performances, and Cuba Gooding Jr at his Oscar winning best! Plus one of the few films where Renee Zellweger actually endears herself to me.
(To) Kill a Mockingbird - Not as completely happy as some of the others, but one of the greatest films I have seen, and certainly one of the best law-related films I have seen. Wonderful book, wonderful film. I would highly recommend both, if only to restore your faith in humanity, democracy, brotherhood and the law.
Lion King - Hamlet + Disney at its best + Hans Zimmer + Elton John. If you have a soul you'll love this film. Everything the light touches will be your kingdom. (Honourable mentions: Lost in Translation/Love Actually)
Mary Poppins - A very British film busting through the adverse effects of the stiff upper lip and 'children should be seen and not heard' tradition. Julie Andrews is a wonderful triple-threat and Dick Van Dyke is chirpy and addictive, despite the abysmal cock-er-ney accent!
(My) Neighbour Totoro - All the charm and childlike wonder of Disney with a quirky Japanese twist. I love the Studio Ghibli films and if you like Disney and broadening your horizons, I daresay you will love this too!
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Jack Nicholson and his kooky supporting cast make this adaptation an acting tour de force, fully bringing out all the charm and character traits from the book. No matter the ending, the scenes of the asylum inmates finding their confidence again under McMurphy's anarchic approach will bring many a smile to your face.
Princess Mononoke - another, more famous contribution from Studio Ghibli. Rather more adult than Totoro, but no less impacting, wonderfully rendered and captivating.
Quantum of Solace - Ugh. I needed a 'Q' ok? Maybe this isn't the best example (Casino Royale/Goldeneye/Dr No would be better) but James Bond films overall are just massive example of high-octane action! Like Die Hard, a vicarious trip through macho ubermensch victory!
Return of the King (Lord of the Rings) - I personally prefer 'Fellowship' but this makes the list as the completion of this epic journey, a thank-you for sitting through 10-12 hours of sheer slog through Middle Earth for which we receive you get the mother of film pay offs. More battles than you can shake Anduril at, all the characters' stories get tied up suitably and perfectly, and thus ends with no small degree of satisfaction and emotion one of the best film trilogies we'll ever see.
Singin' in the Rain - An all-singing, all-dancing fun-filled journey through the things that make this genre of film great. One of my favourite 'cheer up!' films, and now I pass this along to y'all. (Honourable mentions: Shawshank Redemption/Sound of Music/Slumdog Millionaire)
The Truman Show - Again, Jim Carrey? Who'da thunk it? Dulling his comedic side to make him more genuinely vulnerable and universally loved, set to a wonderful Phillip Glass soundtrack, another journey through an everyman's life that will have you rooting for Truman every single step of the way.
Up in the Air - Understated but outrageous beautiful in its own way, this film reminds us that it's never too late to make the dramatic life change to help yourselves and those around you and that reaching and falling short is better than setting your sights lower. (Honourable mention: UP!)
Vanilla Sky - Though I actually prefer the hispanic original (Abre Los Ojos) this return to the Crowe-Cruise partnership again reaps wonderful results. Think the Truman Show with a more philosophical and askew approach. If nothing else you can look at Penelope Cruz and the brilliant cinematography.
Wall-E - For a film where the main protagonists are robots and the first half hour includes not a word of dialogue, there is a huge amount of emotional content here. Wall-E himself is clumsy and ditsy, but his zest for life, even among the refuse of the husk of Earth, is infectious and through his tribulations and triumphs, your heart dips and soars with 'his'.
X-men - The only 'X' that came to mind! This film and Spiderman show how comic book movies should be made, the perfect blend of geekiness, SFX and personal backstory makes this film perfectly enjoyable, and less depressing than its superior sequel and travesty of a third-parter.
Y Tu Mama Tambien - A coming of age Mexican film with a great soundtrack and an even better cast. Exploring the end of boyhood and skirting on sexual tensions, this film isn't groundbreaking, but one of those films and sucks you along in the fervour of its swirling colours and lifestyle and you'll go along gladly, with a massive grin on your face all the way.
Zorro (Mask of) - 'Z'? You think of one. Ahem. Unabashedly popcorn, the Californian setting with Antonio Banderas (for the laydeez), Catherine Zeta Jones (for the fellas) and Anthony Hopkins (for those grumble about young upstart actors), this adventure makes you feel like a child sitting too close to the telly :D

p.s. Give me a break. It's hard to find things for Q, X and Z, darnit!
p.p.s. You totally saw it, didn't you? I was bound to mention Up in the Air.

Dealing with Mediocrity

2010-01-20T02:21:00.001Z

As you may be aware, Jim Cameron's epic blue-skinned opus has sent thousands into a depression tailspin. Honestly, just Google "Avatar depression" and look at the page of stories that comes up. Heck overexcited journos have even dubbed it a syndrome. CNN has a more balanced account here.

In a nutshell, people having watched the beautifully rendered colourful paradise of Avatar's Pandora for hours (anyone else spend the latter half of te duration quietly squirming in their seat?) returned to their concrete jungle existences and were upset by how drab their real lives were in comparison. Who are we to stay if it's irrationality or the sterling work of their CGI artists (I usually consider them technicians, but here I think you can forgive my variation) that has led to this? And I will only slightly judge people for this reaction. It was a pretty bloody beautiful film, one like Finding Nemo, Raging Bull and Big Fish before it where nearly every frame of that movie is aesthetically pleasing enough to hang as artwork in and of itself.

And heck, I was 'suffering' with a mild case of the life-is-mediocre/shoula-woulda-coulda/I-am-but-an-insignificant-ant thoughts today. Let me elaborate:
- I wake up to my CD alarm playing music from Mumford and Sons. Those guys are freaking geniuses: like Fleet Foxes, recalling a time of cheery folk sounds, perhaps even uber-British traditions of minstrels telling stories through the ever-beautiful medium of song.
- Completed and sent off a profile of Franz Schubert I had to submit for a media internship I have applied for (bit of a career about face but sounds amazing and there's no better time for it). Again, massive overachiever! By my age (23) the guy had already composed the whismsical Trout Quintet, 6 spectacular symphonies and literally tens of thousands of bars of amazing Romantic-period music. Melodic genius.
- Read "A Hundred Years of Solitude" on the tube in (I refuse to abandon this masterpiece for my Shakespeare quest, I will merely push it back a few weeks when I have completed it) - again, Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Deservedly garnering a high reputation, his beautiful wordsmithing ("...she found herself upset by gusts of bad humour and she tried to get rid of the shadows that were begining to wrap her in a straitjacket of cobwebs") and creation of the magical realism style of fictionwon him the Nobel Prize for literature. Literary Colombiano genius.
- In the evening, I was lucky enough to win tickets to an HD screening of "Jaws". I don't need to wax lyrical about Spielberg's tour-de-force, but needless to say, a handful of the screened shots in silhouettes most notably, the intense level of performances by the three principal actors and the expert handling of the scenes and cinematography are more than enough anyone awe-struck. Movie genius.
- Watched highlights of the Golden Globes when I got home. Now I haven't seen most of the films being awarded for Drama prizes ("Up in the Air" and "Precious" for example have just been released over here, definitely intend on watching the former, possibly even tomorrow) but from nearly all accounts and the reverence they were held in is enough to convince me that I will all but certainly love these films and definitely respect their craft. And they showed clips of Avatar, enough to give a less cynical mind a syndrome? :p Modern day geniuses.

Surrounded by proof of such brilliance in the course of literally one day, how is one to cope? During periods of inactivity (read walking home, insomnia-racked bedtime, answering the call of nature) I am prone, I suspect more than most, to rapid, anxious and bordering on frenetic wonderments on the meaning of life, life on Earth, my part in this huge cycle and most importantly personal introspection. And the cold hard truth that hit me again and again harder than the cold hard gust of the not-yet- Spring winds is that try as I might, chances are exceedingly high, all but that I will not reach those dizzy heights, or aiming lower, achieve any filmic, music or literary opus that will be revered and remembered after I'm worm food. And this realisation is an unwelcome pang in the soul that keeps returning. Now I'm not a panicky type of guy (for the most part) so I don't freak out, tear off my clothes and hair and run shrieking through the streets of the London. The other side of my constantly-in-devil's-advocate-mode-consciousness fights back and calms me down.

And it is those arguments and resolution that I will leave you with now (say whaaat? He's finally finishing up?)

- Adjust your expectations - yes, unless you're lucky enough to live in the foothills of the Alps, next to the Great Lakes or in the shadow of one of the world's great mountains, chances are the horizons of your daily life is nowhere near as beautiful, idyllic, dare I say it, perfect as Pandora. But we have to get over it. And screw it, if you know where to look, chances are your world has just as much beauty in an entirely different way. It is the great photographers and artists of the world that know where to find these types of scenes. Don't just envy them, emulate them, learn how they see the world and if you want to combat 'Avatar Depression Syndrome' get the heck out of your house and open your eyes. The screening of Jaws I went to today was held in the London Aquarium on London's South Bank (PR stunt and alos pretty surreal/freaky/childishly AWESOME to be watching the film while 2 feet away is a tank full of sharks. Little baby ones that could just about rid you of your hand) and the walk there and back reminds me as always how much I love walking along the Thames at night. London, when it's quietened down, filled with the semi-hushed and reverential people also in love with this city, even sexier when they're expressing it in accents, and lit by colourful lights is just a pleasure. With sights such as the one on the right (only prettier and NOT from a cameraphone's POV) who could say otherwise?
- Never stop striving - Yes, for most of us, in the scheme of things we will not achieve long-standing greatness. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't give it a bloody good go! To bastardise a perfectly good saying, Pandora wasn't built in a day. No, it was built in years and years, and with a team of likely hundreds of hugely talented artists, visionaries and organisers. Epic films, books and music albums often take years to write and many failed attempts to reach that book. Even Spielberg (sorry, Stevie, love your work, honestly massive fan, but I'm using you to inspire here, ok?) hit 1941 and Hook on his way to Jaws, Close Encounters and Schindler's List. Sure, on balance he was one of the greatest film directors we'll ever see, but everyone makes mistakes. And we cannot allow these setbacks to define us, to hold us back. It is how we deal with adversity, the manner in which we pick ourselves up and carry on that makes us great within ourselves. Shout out to Lance Armstrong here! Be realistic, but don't stop believing. Hold on to that fee-ee-ee-eeeeeling. (Ps, congrats, Glee!)
- Seek glory in the little things - Friends, family, the unique and heartmelting sound of a baby laughing, being someone's first kiss, being someone's last kiss, that promotion you've worked your butt off for, completing the marathon, wiping someone's tears, pulling back a friend from the brink, appreciating the achievement of others, helping someone in need, seeing something truly beautiful, witnessing/being that random act of kindness that brightens up mediocre days, teaching a child to grow, hitting that home run. Love.
- LIVE. Don't sit at home moping. Don't wonder what could have been. When you're on your deathbed (*knock on wood* YEARS and YEARS from now!) let your last thought be "I never achieved this" or heaven forbid "If only I had done that". When that white light hits you, may your final breath be "I enriched my life. I bettered lives of those I love. I improved the life of the people around me. I tried my damnedest to the best I could and I'm proud of what I've done."

(Wow. I've just been typing non-stop to the point where my knuckles are feeling abused. My knuckles, what the heck? Anyhow I hope I made some sense and said some interesting things.)

How many words IS a picture worth?

2010-01-17T01:58:00.001Z

I return from the pub, with my ears rendered pink from either the cold air (snow's gone, chilling winter breeze has not) or the cheap pints of generic beer, and a hankering to write something down. Anything. Read others' blog posts. Decide all are on a superior level/on a topic I know little about. Google "blog post inspiration" (geek alert). Find THIS WEBSITE, complete with amazing ideas ("Host a Carnival") and just plain grim ones ("Write your own Epitaph"). Settle upon "put iTunes on shuffle and say what a random song reminds you of".

But that's pretty pedestrian, so as a variant, I scrolled around my iPhoto on random and decided to type what I can about the first photo I laid my cursor on with my eyes shut. This one:

Now watch me type about this photo until I run out of words. Or (more likely) before the beer high runs out and I just want to sleep/watch Peep Show until tiredness bitchslaps me onto the bed. Chances are I'll make a liar out of Fred R Barnard.

Firstly, I'm rather glad this picture came out of my oh-so-logical photo-picking process. While there are many photos of which I am more proud of, there are also a myriad more that I would probably have just ignored and not put up here. Like the picture of the pavement a mere couple of page scrolls up.

Secondly, this was taken during this leg of my Gap Year. Rubbish blog post though, it was just my lazy copy and paste from a Facebook message. Now I'll stop padding and start describing.

This is the view from a bridge overlooking the main river that runs through in Guilin, Guangxi province, south China. Though you couldn't tell from this photo, February 2008 was at the time the worst winter China had seen for some 50 years. Initially my little group of culture-shocked young'uns (so alien a situation to be in, where I was the oldest and most mature! Pity these kids people. Pity and fear for them) and I had intended to fly into Guangzhou first before making our way up the South West but changed our flights to arrive in Guilin instead. Mere days before we had been advised that the airport was crippled by snow (think England two weeks ago), that flights were sporadic and that people were sleeping in the airport trying to get transportation in or out. We learned this was the case from fellow travellers later on. So on balance I think we made the right decision!

The city of Guilin itself is very modern, to the point of feeling rather artificial. The main road through the city is highly modern, stone paved, very wide and exceedingly clean. Unlike some parts of China, people actually use the rubbish bins! One suspects cynically (and probably accurately) that all is catered specifically for a tourist crowd. Indeed the main features of Guilin are its proximity to other popular locations, its two bus/train stations and the province's airport. Yet the shops are irrefutably Chinese. The stalls selling lamps, stamps, prints and other paraphenalia are clean and look newly built, where you would expect and hope for signs of use, quaint indicators of tradition and loving patches of repair.

The photo itself is from an unfortunate section of the river from an anecdotal point of view. Further down the river are the famed 'Two Pagodas', publicised in all the travel guides and subject of many of the city's postcards. What they don't tell you is that they, like the rest of Guilin, look distinctly younger than 10 years old, either newly built or ruthlessly reconstructed. Continue along the other side of the bridge and you hit a section where the banks have small stone sculpture or elaborate murals on the walls, again very recent but very beautiful to look at, and very Chinese. Photogenic insertions for the cameras of tourists no doubt, but this only slightly detracts from their elegance.

The bright colours result from the combination of my desire to experiment with my camera's light settings (water + bright lights + little movement = pretty pictures, don't you know) and the slightly garish garden lights placed along the riverbank. Even the riverbanks have wide stone pavements, which make them ideal for strolling along but again, having sought a more 'genuine' experience, this was disappointing. In the background is a brightly lit building, I suspect from a commercial district, being as it is surrounded by other such buildings. You can see for yourself how clinically perfect the trees look, how symmetrically trimmed the shrubberies, how clean the pathways are and even the street vendor looks like his equipment was newly issued. All in all, Guilin is a beautiful place, but beautiful in the sense of a well designed new car rather than the rustic snapshot of China we had desired, though we were to be later satisfied on that later on that trip.

-----

And there we have it folks. Again, you'll forgive the lack of editing, the waffly and cliched writing and the self-indulgence. It also appears to me that I haven't spent much time talking about the actual photo. I'm not sure this post will survive the night and suspect I'll put it out of its misery tomorrow in the cold light of day. Night night!

Haiti, Charity and Twitter

2010-01-14T17:19:00.001Z

Seven years ago, I was studying GCSE history. Many facts remain from that year, but only one terrible quote made it verbatim through the minefield of my scrambled memories since then. In 1938, Neville Chamberlain made a statement that will forever tarnish his memory. In reference to Nazi Germany invading Czechoslovakia, he claimed, "How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing." And as horrific a concept as that was, isolationism was the way in those days. People were still scarred by memories of the Great War and reluctant to repeat such atrocities for a foreign country. Heck, modern historians cite the isolationist approach America took in those days (though of course now they are arguably the largest national provider of foreign aid, sending 6000 military troops to Haiti for instance).

Don't worry, I'm going somewhere with this. Nowadays, such an isolationist attitude can no longer reasonably exist. We have countries built partially on the backs of immigrants now, with telephones and computers and link them back to their homeland. We have international news stations and the internet blasting us with information (let's not get into an argument about media bias just right now) from around the world. It is increasingly impossible for a modern and informed inhabitant of Earth to not know about the major goings-on halfway around the world. The increasing success of charities like the Red Cross and Band/Live Aid can be attributed in no small part to the advertisements and TV shorts of suffering, starving and suffering children from Africa and other Third World or developing countries. Emotional blackmail, yes, but entirely understandable in a media culture where things must needs be sensationalist to be heard.

Images like these (Not for the easily distressed). It would take a heart of steel-reinforced stone to not be even slightly moved by the images we see on our screens. And so we reach the modern day. The 7.0 Richter disaster hit Haiti not 48 hours ago and awareness of this issue is already widespread. Definitely more so than if this had occurred even a year ago. And the most unlikely purveyor of the news? Twitter. The interwebz are indeed aflame with the tweets of thousands, which means an unprecedented number of people exposed to this news, pictures and the ways in which they can help. Say a thousand people tell our their friends, who twitter their friends, etc. Before you know it, a million people are made aware. Plug in the search term "Haiti" now and your results page will be filled with tweets on the news from the last half minute. The admittedly ADD viral nature of Twitter is nevertheless not to be underestimated.

And if everyone exposed to the news gives but a paltry sum, it'd be a massive help. Hannah wrote an hugely enlightening blog post HERE (thanks HK) about how Haiti was hugely underprivileged before the earthquake. Obviously now their need is greater than ever. There is a national scheme in America, where you can give $10 by texting HAITI to 90999. I encourage Brits and other non-Americans to check out similar schemes HERE. After all what is $10 (£6.50)? Two cups of Starbucks? Three beers in London? Lend your thoughts, prayers and currency to the cause people, it's enough to break your heart.

In the strangest of moods

2010-01-14T01:52:00.002Z

Another set of bullet points today, my friends:
Feel free to leave as honest a set of criticisms on the previous two posts. As ever, inspired by Birdykin's archives and the influx of creativity from Alex at Kind of That Girl, I just wanted to get something down. Almost entirely unedited (spelling and punctuation of course, you should know how fastidious am I with these) they will be raw but maybe it's better that way.

Finally went to see Avatar this evening. I meant to see it last week but ended up frolicking in the snow instead. Frolicking sounds like I'm a lamb or a 1950s child. Ended up having japes in the snow. That's hardly better. Anyhow, I really enjoyed Avatar. Certainly it was very long, mediocre and unimaginative in its writing and as cliched a collection of dialogue as you could ever ask for. But the sheer creativity of the colours, the creatures, even the foliage was just breathtaking. I'm sceptical about how much of that can be attributed to the frankly irritating pair of Joe 90-esque 3D glasses we have to wear, but nonetheless, a three-hour-stretch well spent I feel. Goodness knows I love films with a good sense of colour, spectacle and cinematography.

Being a TV Geek, I'm:
- Underwhelmed with the amateurish, almost cover-version-feel of the British version of So You Think You Can Dance
- Underwhelmed with the return of Hustle
- Happy but underwhelmed at the return of Chuck
- Excited by the imminent comeback of 24
- Hopeful about the sudden spike in quality of Scrubs
- Ditto but to a lower key with respects to Heroes
- Still remembering the 100th episode of How I Met Your Mother, complete with musical finale
- Missing Glee and Dr Who (David Tennant era)
Wow that's a lot of TV-linkage.

It snowed again today, but not enough for snow days but enough to make it annoying, slippery and vaguely dangerous. I'm over it now.

If I have any sway over any of you whatsoever, donate some money to Oxfam/Unicef/the MSFs/other NGOs that will help the situation in Haiti. Only what you can spare. Thank you.

The Colour and the Shape

2010-01-14T01:32:00.000Z

With a mild sense of childlike wonder, he enjoys the crunch of the settle snow under his brogues as he strolls along the pathway. Goodness knows there is enough cynicism in the world without letting the little wonders go unnoticed. He deliberately takes his time, he is no hurry and the rhythm to his gait sounds almost musical to his ears. No symphony would soundtrack his life at the moment though. At best, a busker playing his battered guitar for pound coins in the biting cold air. Passing a bench he stops in his tracks and decides to stay his journey for a while. Sitting (the cold reaches through his woollen coat) he places his gloved hand in his laps and just watches.

Watches the passers-by, shopping bags in hand and a pace that spells the impending start of a soap opera; the birds, seemingly oblivious to the slippery surfaces, hopping around the grass and tarmac; watching the few remaining curled leaves from the whitened oaks flapping around in a futile struggle against the stiff breeze. He so rarely takes the time to just watch. Though he has just left work, the season dictates that the sun should set at this time but this is not a fact at which he (today at any rate) laments. On the contrary, it is timed perfectly. The sky, already blackened like burnt paper at top of his vision, blends seamlessly into quite fantastic merged oranges, pinks and purples over the tree tops. As the streetlamps have yet to turn on (should the council be getting on that, he wonders) the trees devoid of their customary green signs of life yet stoically solid as ever maintain a sharp silhouette against the paint palette sky, the long boughs almost like long posed limbs reaching up towards the stars.

Hard to feel pessimistic about the world when such a sight is before your eyes. For a moment he forgets it all, the dead-end career situation, the sense of ennui that already is beginning to seep into this perfect moment, the cold that turns his breath into train-puffs of moisture in the air before him. Find the wonder, he resolves, find the wonder and keep it in your heart.

Ignoring the ache the cold has (already?) wrought upon his thighs, he rises to his feet once more and continues the walk home.

Adrift

2010-01-14T01:11:00.001Z

Paddling solo against the ocean current
he struggles to remain afloat
without the flotsam and jetsam of life to cling to
memories of trite words of encouragement
do nothing to increase buoyancy
abandoned
helpless

Breathe.

The sun sets, taking with it the colours and hope
once shining and foaming crests of waves
darken into intimidating shadows and sentinels
his heart sinks but his body cannot
yhe dark seas must remain below
watching
pulling

Breathe.

Surrender is not his way
his arms flail
pale imitation of swim strokes
tired eyes scan the horizon
no ships
no land
waiting
hoping

Breathe.

Another award, another set of red herrings

2010-01-08T23:43:00.001Z

Thanks Alexandra of the TellTaleBlog.com! Check out her blog, very human, very funny, very cool photos (can you tell I've been having photo envy of late?)

The Rules
1. Thank the person who nominated me for this award
2. Copy the award & place it on my blog
3. Link to the person who nominated me for this award
4. Share 7 interesting things about myself
5. Nominate 7 bloggers

7 Things about me that you may not know
1) I have a big head that is, no jokes, too big for your average hat. That's why I don't wear caps.
2) I have three scars from three different countries that stemmed from alcohol. And were incurred within a 6 month period.
3) I play the violin, piano, and am trying to teach myself guitar. "Stairway to Heaven" was the most common sound from my room for a good solid week when I first started.
4) Aside from illness/jetlag related incidents, I couldn't tell you when I last fell asleep before midnight.
5) I'm not the world's best singer but I am a karaoke fiend. (Oriental much?)
6) The first tape I ever bought for myself was "It's Like That" by Run-DMC v Jason Nevins.
7) Little kids love me and I love kids ("the appropriate amount... as allowed by law..." Quote alert.) So after I have become a corporate sellout for a few years or so, I hope to be a teacher.

7 Beautiful and Deserving People (who didn't make the OTT 5)

Alexandra "Falex" at KindOfThatGirl - recent blog find and 20SB friend, this girl is beautiful inside and out. She sculpts words and that's hot.
Sarah Nicole at Live in Imagination - definitely one of the girliest blogs on my Google Reader, but she is so sweet, likes cool stuff and is partially responsible for half my Christmas presents this year. Cookies!
Allison at A Bit of Allison - actually Allison may be even girlier. Just as cool though and just as creative.
Kat at Unfettered Youth - Don't be frightened by her tight writing and rapier wit, she's a very pretty lass with a heart of gold underneath (I think...?)
Conor at the Pizza Box - Ahem. *Manly slap on back* You're alright lad. You're alright, you beautiful lunk of Irish.
Kiley at Hello Kiley - Dazzling smile, awesome taste, wonderful personality.
Sam at Simply Sam (Love ya, but NOT going to include the bazillion asterisks!) - Great photos and taste in photos (seeing a theme?), the cutest smile (seeing another theme?), and she's SO on point with her knowledge and passion for advertising. And that's cute too. Check out her advertising blog too!

Hugs and stuff to you beautiful people!

-----

- Gave my cousin a LONG and COLD walking tour of London today, and it was a slightly surreal experience seeing London through the eyes of a tourist. It's not like I customarily hang out in front of Buckingham Palace! And I didn't realise how freaking awesome is London is. Even more than I previous thought. Wish I brought my camera with me though, she didn't really care about the cool little things that I saw and the way the sunset hit the horizon and the Thames at an aesthetically pleasing angle.
- The National Gallery is free, awesome, and not just filled with portraits. We spend hours in there and I bought a print of this for that bare spot on my wall.

Voted 'Britain's best painting' on a popular poll, ladies and gents, the breathtaking "The Fighting Temeraire".

- I am more sturdy of foot than I thought, even in the face of extreme road-icing. And not in the yummy sugar coating way.

- David Bowie is a crazy, eccentric and slightly prancing maniac. But in the 'bloody-hell-how-irresistably-cool' way. If you haven't got a copy of "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars", why the heck not?

- What terribly cataclysmic world disasters would have to occur for Zooey Deschanel to want to bear my children?

"Oooooh, the weather outside is frightful..."

2010-01-08T09:30:00.002Z

Blue sky + Orange streetlighting = ooh, pretty!

Macro-tastic shot of pretension

Thanks right. We built a (mishapen) snowman! And I succumbed to the "Let's jump like an idiot" school of Facebook photography.

So the British news was all a-flutter the past couple of days with the snow. "You know, it wasn't even very deep" says every other snowed under country in the world, and you would be right. But despite being more than heavily accustomed to rain and cold, England is not used to coping with snow. The admittedly rather shallow snow (not quite half a foot my neck of the woods but reaching perhaps a couple of feet in particular and non-prepared areas) was not dealt with and schools, average-Joe workers and to a lesser extent workplaces shut down for the day(s) and instead everyone larked around in the frozen precipitation. At least in places where it hadn't demoted itself to the hazardous black ice.

Not all fun and games though, trains, buses and even planes were cancelled because of the snow, Gatwick all but closing completely as a result. I had some relatives who had their flight from Salzburg moved a day later. And from Zurich.

But look how cool! Britain from the sky

In other news:

- Check out the photos at WarmPears. Truly spectacular, I defy you to do anything but love each of them
- The wonderful Alexandra at the TellTaleBlog.com has gifted me a 'Beautiful Blogger Award'. Yeah, it's another less-than-fully-masculine award but heck, I'm going to milk this stage where every award is a significant event in my blog-life. Will undertake the challenge later.
- The more observant amongst you may have realised I've changed the name of the blog. It's just shorter and easier. Plus the webaddress is the same, so very few, if any, sheep will get lost along the way!

I'm OTT! (And other non-sequiturs)

2010-01-06T00:34:00.001Z

According to the wonderfully eloquent and, er, Irish Conor over at the Pizza Box, I merit this award! Yeah, it's got a woman with an apron on it, but I'll take it anyway! One could even argue that it's fitting considering a lot of my new followers seemed to stick around when I started showing pictures of cookies.

Oh, and while I'm at it, definitely go and check out Conor, he's got a wonderfully honest way about his blog.

Now I have to answer a few questions to earn my keep for this award:

part 1: answer questions with one word:

1. Where is your cell phone? Next to my Macbook, between a book and a champagne cork. Not entirely certain how that latter got there. How to put that in one word? "Here."

2. Your hair? Black (also short and depressingly annoyingly straight)

3. Your mother? Kooky

4. Your father? (very) Chinese

5. Your favourite food? Sushi! (make it fresh and with a lot of wasabi on the side!)

6. Your dream last night? None! (Though the last one was an epic combo one involving different scenarios where people were marooning me or looking after me in hospital. Port does weird stuff to me!)

7. Your favourite drink? Whiskey (alcoholic) / Mango juice (non) [Unfortunately the two do not mix]

8. Your dream/goal? Happiness

9. What room are you in? Bedrooom

10. Your hobby? Reading/film-watching/procrastinating

11. Your fear? Solitude

12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Lawyer/writer/teacher

13. Where were you last night? T'pub

14. Something you aren't? Tall / intolerant / Pope

15. Muffins? Conor stole my 'Poker Face' joke opp, so I'll just say "Yes (please)!"

16. Wish list item? (Any freakin') Job

17. Where did you grow up? London, England

18. Last thing you did? Narnia (as in watched the film. Not a patch on the book, but still, Liam Neeson as Aslan! So proud that I missed that innuendo opp)

19. What are you wearing? T-shirt / Trackie bottoms / Favourite hoodie

20. Your TV? No (not in my room anyhow)

21. Your pets? Goldfish (pl)

22. Your friends? Varied. One of the best and worst things about my friends is that I have circles of friends, and circles rarely overlap! Which makes for variety, but a pain in the ass trying to catch up with them all!

23. Your life? Bridge (as in the bit in songs between verses/choruses. In flux. Waiting for the next bit.)

24. Your mood? Peaceful (listen to some Remy Zero, toasty and warm while it's snowy outside)

25. Missing someone? A bunch. I'm currently in a period of trying to resolve this where I can.

26. Vehicle? Polo.

27. Something you're not wearing? A black lacy bra. (At the moment)

28. Your favourite store? Second hand book stores

29. Your favorite color? Blue

30. When was the last time you laughed? When I saw someone fall over and faceplant into some snow. I helped her up after I hasten to add!

31. Last time you cried? Erm, I teared up during the end of Dr Who on New Year's Day? Shut up.

32. Your best friend? Probably one of the 4 chaps I've roomed with in the past 4 years.

33. One place that I go over and over? Cubana's (Cuban bar in Waterloo, London. Go there, Conor!)

34. One person who emails me regularly? No-one emails me anymore, I get Facebook messages! A-R T is the most recent offender.

35. Favourite place to eat? Park (on the grass, between the shade and the sunshine, summertime. End of exam time optional)

part 2: pass the award on...

Ah! TOUGHIE! I've been following a bunch of people of late, all wonderful in their own ways. Also not sure any of them are really 'over the top', just superlative bloggers! Anyhow, I'm going to bite the bullet and shoot for:

1) Hannah at As Simple As That - not entirely sure her style really constitutes over the top, but her posts ALWAYS but always make me think.

2) Andrea at Caffeinate Me - At the same time one of the bravest and most shy bloggers I've been reading

3) Emily at Emily-Jane.Net - Just the sweetest lady, and we share more than a few interests!

4) Lindsay at Birdykins - One of the most poetic bloggers you'll read, each post a poem that lingers on your soul for a bit after you close the page.

5) Sebastian at MrSeb.co.uk - He's crazy, sorry 'off centre' and I like that. Also, he takes the photos I wish I could take.

And there you are! Congrats to the winners, and enjoy! Check out their blogs!

Without sounding hollow, I genuinely wish I could give more shoutouts, everyone I follow and KEEP following are award-worthy, but these are the first brilliant ones to come to mind!

-----------

p.s. Maybe it's appropriate that I got the award with a sodding apron on it. Look what I made for my visiting gran!

p.p.s. Why can't I stop listening to this?

p.p.p.s. Snow? Again? The crossroads near my house looks like a blank piece of paper and it's still going. Would run out and make a snow angel except:
1) I'm on my own. Playing in the snow on your own is tragic.
2) It's the middle of the night.
3) I don't want to red run over.
4) I also don't want to freeze my bollocks off.

p.p.p.p.s. The Complete Works of Shakespeare came through the post. Uh oh. Looks like Lord of the Rings has a bigger angrier brother. With thinner pages.

Goodbye Noughties, hello.... Tensies?

2010-01-04T18:27:00.009Z

I suppose history will remember it as the 'two-thousands' and 'twenty-tens', but what will we call them?

So despite my admittedly short-lived determination to resist, I am instead succumbing to the "New Year" post that is doing the rounds on the blogs I have been reading. To be frank, many of the topics have been on my mind anyhow: any period of inactivity/momentous occasion leads to a higher level of introspection.

In one of my half-baked, spur of the moment theories, I think even-numbered years are better for me! 2009, while containing an awesome first half, was not so nearly as spectacular as 2008 (or even 2006, or 2002) for the sole reason that I was coasting. Something I am especially prone to do and a habit I have resolved to banish (or realistically minimise) this year. Heck, decade. It's just a number I know, but it's another number and hopefully another reason to live this year rather than just subsist. In 2008 I lived in three different countries, and while I might not be able to travel as much this year, this should not stop be from attempting to recapture that joie-de-vivre, the joy in experiencing the things around me rather than just taking them for granted, rather than merely walking by.

It wasn't all bad though, in 2009, I:

- Met a bunch of truly 'different' people, because who wants all their friends to be the same, honestly? But I will have to continue my effort to retain friendship ties, because to lose the sense of connection and experience once shared is tragic, especially when it can so easily be avoided.

- Finally saw the Louvre - certainly, the extent of the artistic genius was lost on me slightly, but it's one of those experiences no European really has any excuse for not witnessing. There are shedload of similar things I need to see in Italy soon.

(p.s. Sure it's one of the most famous paintings in the world, but no-one ever mentions how the Mona Lisa is the size of a freakin' A4 piece of paper.)

- Started playing the piano again - Yes, it was a backlash to people hearing "Clair de Lune" and thinking of Twilight but however it got me there, I hadn't really taken the time to play the piano more than idly for a couple of years, and this again is something I would like to keep up.
- Attended the theatre four times - Why this number isn't higher considering I'm a Londoner is anyone's guess.
- Went to my first live rugby match - Truly more of a gentleman's game than football.

(this photo belongs to my friends GH, I can ask permission if you want to use these or others of the match)

And because life is more about the present and future than the past, I intend to do these things in 2010:

- Take a truly beautiful photo. Sure I take ones like this and the one to the left, but I want to take a really good one. May require a proper camera.

- Read the complete works of Shakespeare. Will be tough, but I got the bug while watching Hamlet, and I might as well read this now while I still have two young non-bespectacled eyes!

- Go to the theatre/open air theatre at least 12 times this year. I'm a Londoner. No excuse not to really, and goodness knows that Futurama doesn't count as high culture.

- Start running again - I was making such rapid progress, quickening my pace and being able to run for longer without getting completely knackered. But even faster than I got swifter, I got worse again. This time I have to keep it going!

(Couldn't resist the opportunity to think of synonyms for... er... speedy. I'm such a word and punctuation geek: is it any wonder that I love this book?)

I also intend to make a dent on my Life List (name changes bi-daily) which I'm still in the process of prefecting. But ones currently on the list which I will try to knock one or two off:

- Go bungee-jumping

- Become the most knowledgeable person I know about a subject. And a real one, of the type that would go on Mastermind, something like 'The films of Hitchcock' rather than 'The Moves of Pikachu circa Pokemon Red'. And this might be tough, since I went to a good school and a good university I have a bunch of polymath friends.

- Get paid for art/creative piece of my own making - this could be busking, selling a poem, story, article

- Be part of a 'flash mob' event - Because honestly guys. How fun does this look?

- Visit every continent (so far only have Europe, N America, Asia and Oceania knocked off)

- Make an 'Amelie moment' - where I truly help someone without ever letting them know it was me. If you don't get the reference you should really watch the film.

- Watch every film on the BFI/AFI/IMDB top 100 list

- Read every Book on a reputable top 50/100 list

(One of these two might be doable this year if Shakespeare doesn't knock me out too much)

Any other suggestions for the rest?

Media Overload - Christmas/'Cultural' Edition

2010-01-02T04:01:00.002Z

So my Christmas period has been a blur of food, chocolate, relatives and shopping (the penultimate informs the latter, which I may or may not bore you with later on). But it has also been a wonderful burst of media. Wonderful, unique, feel-better-for-having-seen-it media and because I still have some sleep to catch up on after last night's heavy duty drinking (still maintain my no hangover record though! Seriously. Water. Miracle cure.) I want to wax lyrical for a spell. I get the distinct feeling that if I don't get a little something down now I might go for a while without writing again.

Hamlet (RSC production)

So this Christmas telly period has been fairly David Tennant heavy. Along with guest presenting Buzzcocks, appearing on QI and cameo-ing on a bunch of TV shows, he played the titular role in this gem of a piece aired by the BBC on Boxing Day. Featuring the Royal Shakespeare Company cast from their 2008 production which I never had the fortune to catch, most notably (new knighted!) Sir Patrick Stewart as Claudius/The Ghost, it was an excellent television play, despite some gimmick with CCTV cameras that I never quite understood. Every part played to a more than satisfactory standard apart from the Cornelia who I felt was played a little too angsty even for Cornelia. David Tennant was an extraordinary Hamlet, flitting between hilariously manic, pensive, depressed and devilish fury. However, he also portrayed all these as Doctor Who and I will admit it was fairly difficult to detach him from this role. And I had forgotten how many common English phrases had derived from this play. "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" anyone?

This has led to another addition to my still-being-completed Year List/Bucket List/Life List. I have ordered the complete works of Shakespeare and I will complete it by this time next year. This traditional word but modern props interpretation really reignited my passion for Shakespeare in a way that merely reading it in a classroom did not in school. I can't wait to reread Othello, innuendos and all!

Ballet/Billy Elliot

BBC4 also showed a filmed production of Swan Lake in its entirety. I tried, I really did, but I can't get into ballet. I thought I would be able to, the Tchaikovsky music is epic but after a dozen minutes or so, I just saw admittedly very disciplined women in tights dancing in line. And most of them too skinny to really do anything for me.

Billy Elliot (filling this year's quota for Christmas Day ultra-British-preferably-Working-Title-film) was much better. It's hard to argue with any film that features music by the Jam and the Clash. Should I have capitalised those The's? And where did Billy Elliot learn to tap dance?

Les Miserables

What with out of towner relatives over for the Christmas period, I felt I would be remiss if I didn't take them to a show. Plus I have a penchant for live entertainment and hadn't seen Les Mis myself. Unexpected bonus, obviously, it's not like I suggested it to them or anything. Ahem. (Another 2010 aim is to see a play/musical/open air production at least once a month.)

It didn't disappoint, though being rather lengthy it dragged in places. But:
- The songs I knew prior (Confrontation, On My Own, Do You Hear The People Sing?, I Dreamed a Dream) were all performed to satisfaction and not overly 'ruined' for me.
- I was bemused/slightly put out that half the theatre practically stage whispered "Susan Boyle!" when I Dreamed a Dream started up. One has to wonder if a lot of the audience were there for that song primarily.
- The little girl who sang "Castle on a Cloud" (Young Cosette/girl on the illustrated pictures) was cute as a button, but didn't stick around for the curtain call. Bedtime?
- The spinning stage was cool and made a lot of sense especially now that Les Mis has been demoted to a smaller theatre.

Dr Who

You know, I'm only slightly ashamed to admit how much I was looking forward to this. Yet ashamed enough to semi-critically discuss the cultural impact rather than just gush like a fanboy.

It seems my generation loves a revival. James Bond (twice). Countless TV shows. A large handful of comic book adaptations. But none was so quintessentially British as that of Dr Who in 2005. Starting off with Christopher Ecclestone for one series, It was David Tennant (he of the omnipresent media appearances of December 2009) who took the role and seriously ran with it for three series. And at least for me, as he took the role so seriously and gave it such presence, in the same way that Pierce Brosnan will always be my James Bond, so shall Tennant be my generation's Doctor. Not that the ludicrous plot was hideously important or believable (even in comparison to normal standards?) or even as epic as some of the lower budget Christmas specials, but I shall not ruin it for anyone who may not have seen it. (That's pretty much directed at you Emily, if you're still reading me!)

What I will say is that it's perhaps a beautiful end to screenwriter and creator of the Dr Who revival Russell T Davies' stint as handler of all things Doctor simultaneous to Tennant's stepping down. There's a nod to the Donna-storyline of the last full series, a massive if temporary promotion for her Grandad Wilf, a shedload of self-referencing and a huge range of high-octane (as far as BBC license-payers' wallets will allow!) action and emotions that David Tennant is given to play with. Key moments though, actually come after the main story, with the Tenth Doctor's final actions, cameo-ing key players from the revival storylines and such puppydog loyalty displayed by Grandpapa Wilf that my eyes teared up a little. I could actually have done with just the last half hour of the second part if I'm honest.

"I don't want to die" is Tennant's last line as Doctor. Many of us may feel the same way, but in a lesson taken (and perhaps should be shared with Scrubs) maybe it is best to leave things on a high. Thank you David Tennant and more importantly thank you Russell T Davies.

p.s. not sure I'm going to even watch the new Doctor to be honest. He looks dim and "Geronimo" is not nearly as cool a catchphrase as "Allons-y!"

p.p.s. Also coming to an television end, as quietly and understated as it began is Gavin and Stacey. 'Stacey' is hot, 'Smithy' is that annoying but endearing friend everyone has, and while the plot has never been groundbreaking, the characters are so very real and I have enjoyed its run.

p.p.p.s. Normal, non-geeky, posting shall resume soon. Happy New Year everyone!

One Bout of Insomnia Until Christmas!

2009-12-24T06:11:00.001Z

Little snippets of me on Christmas Eve!

So I've been keeping up with at least one of my pre-emptive resolutions for 2010, the one to be a better friend and actually meet up with people in person rather than sporadically sending them stuff on Facebook. I:

- Stayed over at the Uni Physios' place on Thursday night -- during which London had its first day of proper snow (whee!) I see them so very little when I used to see them almost every day for two years, plus they're among the best going-out buddies I have! As in bona fide clubbing and just drinking on the South Bank of the Thames until we end up laughing like crazy people. All my friends are awesome to hang out with, but most of them are more the hang-out-indoors-and-drink types. If you have neither social milieu in your repertoire, you're pretty quickly ditched. Unless you're particularly funny/sweet/awesome.

- Hung out with other uni friends on Saturday and Sunday -- most of whom I do admittedly see at least once/twice a week, but a couple of whom popped into town especially (for MS's birthday on Saturday and Christmas dinner on Sunday. LB really outdid himself this time, especially considering how many people came to drain his kitchen. Incredible.)

- Popped on the train to Birmingham where I spent the latter half of Monday and most of Tuesday with peeps from my China experience. Considering how for months I spent literally every day with these guys (and others with whom I've lost contact with even more profoundly) even to the point of sharing an uberbed* with, to now see them some three times a year is ridiculous. Sure, we reside in different parts of the UK and have our own lives to contend with, but to drop a level of friendship as it were in such a manner is still something of a strange occurrence in my mind.

Birmingham had its own German market (do they have a particular monopoly on Christmas cuisine of which that I was not aware?) Very cold (the snow was worse in London, cars held up in traffic, people falling over left right and centre) but the bratwurst and kirschwein (I've been converted, much better than Gluhwein) was warm and the lights were so pretty!

Also they had £2.50 ($5) margheritas. London bar prices suck. They were cheaper than the beers!

*think four singles pushed together. A strange time when sleeping over became the norm and taking a bikecab back to my own, admittedly better-air-conditioned flat was out of the ordinary. I miss bikecabs and the wind rushing through my hair. Any attempt to implement such a scheme in London would probably result in death though

- Met up with a couple of school friends in the pub today albeit, briefly.
- And for a few others I didn't get to properly chillax with (I hate that I use that word now) I drove around and dropped cards and cookies off on Friday. Will definitely see them soon though, probably after New Year's to be honest.

Each experience involved offloading of cookies (hey, you know these weren't the only ones I made! There were other batches!) I think they were a success, though it would be a more substantial present if I actually made the cupcakes to go with them as well. Maybe I should get some assistance next time. Also heavily involved was mulled wine. I probably would not drink it by choice any other time of year (similar to how I will only drink red wine when politeness requires or with dinner) but while its around, mmm. Cinnamon-y.

Other random thoughts:
- I like trains when it's a lengthy journey. In fact, I like all long voyages - there's a certain childlike excitement I get from the sensation of stepping on a vehicle on one area and alighting in a completely different locale. Planes are cooler (no-one can deny this, if only because, again, the child in me loves passport stamps) but the whole pressure and smell of aeroplanes leave me slightly ill-at-ease the whole time. Coaches can be tolerable with friends but too long and you get arse-ache from the chairs and I can't read on coaches/cars without feeling queasy after a while. But trains... amazing. If nothing else, trains have the massive windows which I've always perceived as giant picture frames in which the pictures move (very quickly!) from one wonderful landscape to another. Once you have left the factories and concrete jungle of the cities. While I was travelling to and from Birmingham this was emphasised by the coat of undisturbed white snow coating the rolling hills and rows of trees like a blanket.
- Finally watched Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" video today. So very strange. Also every time I see a Lady Gaga video, I can't help but think though she'd blatantly be into really weird stuff and probably scare seven shades of the proverbial out of me, she'd probably be amazing in bed. If she took off her weird hats and stuff.
- I listened to the Band Aid song a few days ago. "Do They Know It's Christmas?" I know it's a deliberate and blatant in your face musical tearjerker, like the videos they show at Children in Need events (those ACTUALLY make me want to cry sometimes, and I'm not really a crier. Something about children in distress really upsets me) but I should really make a point to listen to the lyrics more closely. For all the minor things that threaten to 'ruin' the Christmas experience, like arguments over turkey preparation or squabbles over who gets the remote, people around the world, Africa being the main example, have it a heck of a lot worse than I do. There are probably people within a mile of me that have it a lot better than me, and many who have it a lot worse. The grass is greener and all that. But this is not what Christmas should be about - we should be appreciating the time spent with family, the food, the telly, the (general) sense of well-being that rests on people at this time. And for those fortunate enough not to be struck by family tragedy around this time, suck it up and enjoy the privileges that we are lucky enough to have the benefit of. This last applies very much to me in particular, I am no hypocrite!
- "There won't be snow in Africa this Christmas-time" - cheap, terrible segue. Sorry. Wishing for snow and the possibility of a white Christmas is as much a part of the time as mince pies and stuffing, but we rarely do think about the reality of the situation do we? We forget that after the initial staring out the windows, the oohs and aahs and the snowball fights comes the traffic jams and most importantly the hazardous ice gauntlets that the snow kindly leaves in its wake! I had to walk in the road today just to keep my neck intact so icy were the pavements! Humbug. I still think snow is pretty awesome on balance though!
- This time tomorrow, it's Christmas! It took the aftermath of the cookie distribution to really hit me, as I couldn't make it to any carol services this year!

Merry Christmas, my happy little bunch of readers :D
I must apologise for the all over the place nature of my last post for a while (probably) but it IS 5.30 in t'morning.

Cookie Epilogue and other thoughts

2009-12-19T11:03:00.001Z

From a mass of ingredients to warm lumps that occupy my oven, to decorated cookies of awesomeness that occupy my fridge

As great of a journey as that was, if I never see/make/taste/burn/distribute another cookie for at least a week, it'll be too soon. In the interests of comprehensive backstory and decreased confusion, I have been and still am at the mercy of the economic-depression-fuelled-unemployment monster. And it's Christmas, not that the television and high-street shops haven't made you aware of that since after the summer solstice. So, went my scattered thought-process, how to distribute pressies amongst my chums this holiday period? While I might not be the most financially-blessed person of late, what I do have is a bunch of time of my hands, hence the cookies.

But what was a wonderful child-like adventure back on Wednesday soon became a delirious blur of butter, chocolate and sugar. I made enough cookies for 7 presents. That meant 5 batches of cookies, which equals, no jokes, about 5kilos of ingredients. Pre cooking. And hours, hours of baking. I'm getting wartime flashbacks! And with my vague efforts at being presentable, I refused to give out any cookies that were sunken in/broken. Those ended up in my belly. And spoon-licking is less fun the fifth time around!

It was worth it though. There's a sense of achievement to be had from making that many edible and arguably presentable items and everyone who tasted them claimed they were awesome (whether or they thought it in reality is something I shall not dwell upon!) It must be how craftsmen and carpenters feel! Only less sweat-of-brow-from-effort and more sweat-of-brow-from-oven-heat. Nonetheless. No more. The rest of the people who aren't getting financially-evaluated presents are getting cupcakes. Only Miss Dot has put up ANOTHER awesome sounding cupcake idea, so which one to choose?

Miscellaneous thoughts that strike me on this vanilla-extracted-aftermath:

- why is it I've been giving out so much sound advice these past couple of weeks? It has been occurring to me, and not for the first time, that I'm much better at giving advice than taking my own. Maybe I should meet myself. But that would require a Back to the Future type time paradox. Wouldn't that be strange/mentally-scarring/awesome?

- Christmas in less than a week! Bring on the over-eating, awkward family moments and bad television! (If they don't show two of "Miracle of 34th Street", "Jingle All the Way" and "Love Actually" I will be bitterly disappointed.)

- I'm grateful for the new followers/people who take the time to comment on the blog. It's not the reason why I wrote it, it was born as a diary for me, but I won't say it isn't nice to know people are reading it!

- I feel bad at the ghetto-abuse given to Imogen Heap, but I can't stop listening to this song

- Every holiday season is gold for festive card makers/cake makers/shops isn't it? At least in England, many national chains expected to make a loss this quarter are nonetheless expected to make a profit for this season.
- I liked mulled wine. Mmm.

Diary of a Good Day

2009-12-17T05:35:00.001Z

So today I'm going to try and put you through the sensations of my day. Bear with me folks. Warning: will be very self indulgent today.

10am - Wake up in the morning. (Shh, employed people. I would probably prefer switching shoes with you, but while I have late morning opps I'm going to milk them :p)

This song is playing on the radio. Some would call that a good omen, plus Walkin' on Sunshine is overplayed and overrated as a morning song. And I had a great night's sleep too, which for me is a great rarity: in fact I managed precisely 0 hours of sleep the night previously which might lend itself to the previous fact. And explain why I started typing this at 4.30am.

10:15am - Check e-mail and jobsites. Awesome, a job I have been waiting for a while has opened up with an opportunity! I will not jinx it by mentioning any details, but I am psyched about this! Apply as soon as possible.

10:20am - Open the curtains. It's SNOWING!

Yes, it won't last beyond 4-ish, and yes, it also makes it nose-pinchingly, Jack-Frost-nipping-at-your-toes-ly cold outside, but my thinking is, if it's going to be annoying cold outside, it may as well bring some snow along with it.

For some inexplicable and probably juvenile reason, this fact amplifies my sense of well-being and puts a massive grin on my face. Unabashedly wide. Think baby who's just had jangling keys in front of his face.

11am - Finish up job e-mails etc and refuse to besmirch a day that gives off such good vibes by giving it job-hunting allocated time. Goodness knows I've had enough of that stress these past few days to deserve a day off (or so I convince myself). Get hit by pang of conscience nonetheless and tidy up room, sort out paper waste for shredding and recycling. The radio still persists in pumping out corkers, including Christmas songs that don't make me want to throttle a reindeer.

11.30 - Head out to Postal sorting-office to pick up package that didn't clear customs without requiring a charge. (Minor grumble grumble) But it's the package my brother and I ordered from Threadless! All is forgiven. Their T-shirts rock. But given that I am coated in a thin layer of barely settling snow, perhaps the climate is not quite suitable yet. Hmmm. Also, losing sensation in ears, but they still function enough to hear the Blue Oyster Cult from my iPod. Aw my loyal friend. Certainly you have so little space that I have had to uncheck half my iTunes, you are black and white and are older than all my pairs of shoes, but you have stuck by me stubbornly and stoically. I am thankful for you.

12pm - Stop by supermarket to pick up baking supplies. What better a day to make a dent on the cookies and gingerbread cupcakes I intend to give as presents this year? (Check out the blog recipes, they're brilliant! And thanks to Sarah and 'Miss Dot' for discovering them for me.)

12.45pm - Get home with supplies. Hmmm, that's quite a lot of stuff. Slightly daunted as I have not baked for about 3 years. But how hard can it be?

1pm - Not that hard! It's basically stirring things in very big bowls. It's actually even quite fun, and my iTunes playlist of Christmas songs are even making me feel fairly festive!

1.30pm - Ok, a LOT of stirring. Perhaps my fault for putting the butter in the fridge instinctively. Microwaving it still left lumps. As did (more accurately) my impatience.

2pm - Put in first batch of cookies. (Cupcakes can wait for another day.) Schoolboy error one: put blobs of batter on the baking paper too close together. How will this end?

2.01pm - I wait for cookies to turn from, let's face it, scatological lumps, into edible deliciousness. Already the house smells nice, and the spoon of batter I'm licking while watching lunchtime repeats of Friends tastes good. Bodes well! Pang of realisation. Baking, listening to Christmas songs and watching Friends in the middle of the day? Where are my testicles, again? Shrug, and continue to lick the spoon.

2.07pm - Ah. This is how the error will manifest itself. It what looks like many chocolate amoeba tried to merge and mate with each other. Still smells nice though, and easily salvaged by one table knife and surgeon-like (ha!) abilities.

2.30pm - Cookies left to cool, I decide I don't need a real lunch. It will suffice for this moment in time to 'test' some of my cookies and watch the Gilmore Girls. Hmm, cookies are warm and awesome. Hmmm, I love Lorelai Gilmore, Rory is a bit too prissy at the moment.

Again, where is my Y-chromosome? Glad I'm playing football tomorrow. Also resolve to over-imbibe beer. And possibly find some DIY to do. Ahem.

5pm - Feeling foolish at having wasted 'good day' in front of telly, return to kitchen. Forgot to buy chocolate/chocolate chips for decoration (incidentally, definitely the most fun part. You melt the chocolate in a sandwich bag, cut a small hole in the corner and go all Julia Child on that bad boy!)

5.05pm - Phone rings and it is potential employer (not the one I applied for in the morning). Asks me how I am, and genuinely today can say I feel wonderful. And yourself?

5.15pm - He is still asking me questions. Is this a phone interview? Aren't they meant to warn you when you have a phone interview?

5.30pm - Still asking questions. Definitely a phone interview. Any other time, I would be slightly nervy: interviews bring out the worst in me, but today I am high on joy and Christmas. I am bulletproof.

5.32pm - "So what do [company name] do, as far as you know?" Panic. Slight panic? No, significant panic. Bumble like Hugh Grant (why do I sound more posh when I'm nervous and/or on the telephone. People tell me I have a phone voice. Not important! Focus on matter in hand!)Aha, my laptop is open. Google to the rescue! Maintain composure though. Smell the cookies! Also, it is for a job I applied for. Not a career. Would not be the end of the world. Salvage interview. I think. I don't care, I still smell cookies! Plus it's nice to actually a get a reply of any sort from a company, make a pleasant change from the usual stony silence the other dozens of companies have thus far given me.

6-something pm - parents return from work. Offer them cookies like a child first thing after school. "Stephen, these actually really taste delicious!" Glad at the praise, hesistant reaction to the emphasis on "actually". Humph.

The rest is immaterial family standard fare. They went out to dinner with other parental types and I bought more baking supplies (including about chocolate for decoration and about 6 packs of butter. Checkout lady presumably presumed it was my New Year's Resolution to double my weight) and watched TV. Gotta love Spooks. It's like the British lower-budget cousin of 24. Quiet night in preparation for long weekend ahead.

Ooh, and saw another advert for Sherlock Holmes. This film had better be amazing or I will be bitterly disappointed and be even more convince that Guy Ritchie hit his prime way too early. Apart from RockNRolla. That was pretty good.

Fin.

p.s. DISCLAIMER: author is not actually a 10-year-old girl.
p.p.s. If you stuck through this post all the way to this point, bless your little cotton socks and I hope you feel this good every day :D
p.p.p.s. Seriously, but seriously think about checking this site out. A weekly shrine to brilliant beautiful films, and what a great bunch she has lined up! So in love with this blog.

Everyone has a story to tell

2009-12-15T03:07:00.002Z

Certainly an adage commonly spouted by travel writers and cheesy journalists, but every so often you meet someone who reminds you that cliches have become so for a reason. Everyone has a story, and if you're lucky, you'll meet someone with an epic one.

More often than not, this will be someone you meet travelling. After all, the type of places that world voyagers tend to frequent are not as different (for the most part, most of us are not pathfinders or trailblazers) as you might think, and will depend on travel guides and previous recommendations. Like the time I met a Portuguese law lecturer in Thailand who was teaching in Macau. Or the investment banker who chucked it all in to travel the world for three years on his belated quest to 'find himself'. If you've been travelling, you know the types. But not every great 'I met this bloke' anecdote has to begin with a pretentious, "While I was backpacking across Western Europe..." (Get this reference without googling it and win a high-five from me!) I find it infinitely more special when you meet someone with an awesome back-story on the bus. Or a park bench. Or, if you're really lucky, a launderette.

Now, the thing about London (central London mostly) is that although it's filled with some of the most amazing people you'll ever meet, between those people, taking up space and consuming oxygen, are a bunch of complete twats. For every 'Good morning' cheerily piped into your caffeine-and-sleep-deprived face first thing in the morning, is a snarled 'get out of the way and look where you're going'. I like to believe that on a weekend, or even just at the evening, in their own element, these people are charming and generous individuals. But catch them at King's Cross station at 8.30 in the morning and they become brooding ogres. Cerberus guarding the gates of Hades. You keep an eye out, walk fast (at London speed. Londoners and, from what I've heard, New York-ers will know exactly what I'm talking about), don't obstruct public walkways or exits and you never ever talk to a stranger who doesn't address you first.

OK, slight hyperbole there. But as we are, with our Yuppie/Generation Y/Smart-phone culture, everyone's listening to their mp3 players, or reading their copy of Twilight, or burying their faces into their Daily Express. Just go on the Tube (the London subway system) at peak commuting hours to see what I'm talking about. God forbid we interact with each other, aside from the socially acceptable "Excuse me. I'm getting off here." And I'll admit I'm just as guilty. I will be that one in the corner listening to my iPod, oblivious to the sounds of world around me.

But London isn't always that bad. At other times, if you look approachable enough you might just encounter that elusive sight: someone smiling at you. That's your in. These are nice people who will give you the time of day, and should you engage them in conversation you can have a nice chinwag. Just don't chase them down the street if they're walking away already. Unless they're hot.

On a night bus I encountered a Turkish couple who upped and moved their life to London because they thought it looked pretty in films. While sitting on a bench in Covent Garden, I had a nice chat with a French girl doing a masters degree who had spent a year interning at a think-tank in Basra. In a launderette just today (it's far too cold in London these days to even think about drying clothes outside or to sap precious heat from the radiators by clothing them in your heavy and damp apparel) I met an Indian man who had pretty much mirrored my trip across South West China, just twelve years before. Uncanny.

So break that most ridiculous of city taboos. Just say hi to someone, test them out with a smile, break out of your bubble of isolation and silence. Because that might just lead to the best half hour of your day.

How about you guys? Have you met anyone just in the street who had a story to tell you?

"Describe yourself in 200 words."

2009-12-15T01:30:00.001Z

[A poem I wrote a few years ago, pissed off with job applications, and fished up today. Because some angst just comes back to haunt you.]

How does one express their essence,
Their being,
In a box?
If a picture is to represent a thousand words
Are you restricting me
To a fragment of a photograph?

I resent your games,
I resent your inhumanity
I despise its necessity
I mourn my compliance.

Does this mark the beginning of my spiritual death?
Am I to henceforth put across my thoughts to a word limit?
Will my ideas be similarly censored?
My inquisitive nature, stunted?
My wonderment, cast aside?

I shall seek refuge in the ideas of others,
In the poems in which I once found possibility,
And the music which gave me hope.
I shall hope that I shall maintain the capacity to dream,
To protect the part of myself that sets me apart,
I am not the sum of my grades,
Nor the text on my curriculum vitae.
I am the life I have led,
And the life I have yet to.
This you shall never know,
This I shall hang onto.

Within this box, I present my current thoughts.
And wonder how anyone can sum up their lives in the same number of words.
This I yearn to write but dare not.
I am conforming.

Postsecret.com

2009-12-13T17:39:00.000Z

PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death and God from Frank Warren on Vimeo.

How much do you want to hug everyone in this video? Also, I don't care if you're a girl or a guy, if the bit at the 4-minute mark doesn't melt your heart, you're dead inside.

http://www.obsessed-with-the-internet-why-why-why.com

2009-12-13T03:41:00.002Z

If you clicked that hoping for a website, I pat you on your head, silly monkey :) No, rather this is another journey of self-discovery, on the e-path to e-nlightment. So that last one doesn't really work. Shush.

What's the first step you're meant to take when you're a member of [Insert-deplorable-vice-here] Anonymous? Oh yes. I'm Stephen and I'm obsessed with the Internet. It's true.

Exhibit 1:
So I go to the cinema, laugh/cry/feel uplifted, have drinks with mates/rip film apart/place film on pedestal, return home and what is my first instinct? Check Imdb. (This is the part where you chant 'freak' at me.) I mean, nary an hour or two will have passed since the film ended and yet, I want to know the 'trivia'. The 'goofs'. And if I or my friends were undecided on the judgment of the film I might also pop over to RottenTomatoes to see what critics have had to say. A similar process may occur once I have finished a book.

Exhibit 2:
Yesterday, the power went out on my block. Only for fifteen minutes or so mind you, but still. Power cut. My first thought? Not make sure the alarm doesn't run out of battery charge and set itself off at 2am. Not worry that the freezer might soon become home to a cornucopia of thawed out meat and melted ice cream. But rather oh no, now I can't send that e-mail I wanted to send! Shocking. By the time I'd located the torches etc and convinced myself the e-mail could wait 'til the next day, the power came back on. And quite honestly and very tragically, I let out a genuine and audible sigh of relief. Then went on Facebook.

Exhibit 3:

I use the internet for 90% of my life. I will now Wikipedia something rather than asking someone else. I will go upstairs to Google a restaurant's phone number when chances are I have it scribbled down somewhere in my Filofax. In my bag. Next to my foot. I use sites like Wikipedia and Google as everyday verbs! Slay me now. And though I will never need to know this in life, I also looked up the etymology of the word "wean". 16th Century and Germanic in origin I'll have you know.

Exhibit 4:

Also, as the internet has become like an extension of myself, I use it to emulate my mental let's-clumsily-and-randomly-jump-from-topic-to-topic style of thought. (Not just when I'm not sleeping! Like now.) I went to Imdb to check out a quotation from "The History Boys" that made me thoughtful a few days ago. In a strange Six-Degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon (incidentally I rock at that game) manner I managed to end up playing Samorost. Via Youtube and Rocketboom.

Now I have no intention of taking drastic measures, or weaning myself off the internet anytime soon. I mean, I still have a regular social life and talk to 'real people' in person more than on Facebook. And goodness knows that for every two (don't lie. say ten) pointless things I do on the internet, I do something productive. Like send off hideously long job applications to companies that don't want me. But if Y2K had been real, I would probably be a very different person today.

Ahem. [Scurries off to Wikipedia the Y2K bug.]

p.s.
- In other news, my first article for FrequencyMagazine (an online music magazine) has been put up. Whoo! Check it out
- Sorry for getting all link-tastic. I'm not being sponsored by any of these websites (more's the pity)!
- Based almost solely on "Gavin and Stacey", I love Welsh people.
- I can't sing, but I'm seriously thinking about putting "Audition for X Factor" on my Bucket List. (Still a work in progress)
- Do I abuse parentheses and hyphens?

Youtube makes me smile.

2009-12-11T03:59:00.001Z

So I like Glee! Shut up.

I mean, the stories are ridiculous, and I deplore the use of auto-tune. But the ensemble songs are just freaking awesome. And I pretty much love Lea Michele and her voice. Certainly she's not the hottie in the 'conventional' sense, but she is pretty and that voice! Mmmm.

Haha, could easily have been me some twenty-years ago! My parents still whip out the old home-videos of me singing as an ickle one when they have visitors for prime humiliation. Missing teeth and all.

Geek tastic.

This lass is just hilarious.

I am London

2009-12-11T02:45:00.002Z

I am Nelson's Column, the 50-metre tribute of a nation of great military action and historical worth, overlooking Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, the City, my domain. Surveyor of the people, symbol of the people.

I am the urine ridden underside of the great bridges, the smell of the desperation of the homeless, the cardboard cities of the hopeless.

I am the optimism, the modernity, the integration, the mangoes sold by first generation immigrants at the height of winter by the sides of the roads. The camaraderie, the joy, the group of school children pouring onto the streets after seeing Wicked.

I am the small-minded, the indifferent, the cynics, the people that deliberately bump your shoulder as you walk along the crowded streets at rush hour offering barely a grunt of acknowledgement as they scurry to or from the great Square Mile rat-race. Who knows? Who cares?

I am the stoicism, the bravery, the commuter travelling after 7/7 to oh-so-Britishly stick two fingers up at the terrorists, the last bastion of chivalry as the drunken and lost maiden cannot find her cab at night. I am the person who opens the door for you. I am the charity volunteers. I am the "Bless you" after you sneeze on the bus.

I am the survivor of the Great Fire, the Blitz, the terrorists bombings, the faint memory of a past that was not so shining and flawless.

I am the London of Love Actually.

I am the London of Sweeney Todd.

I am the last Tube, the organically alive, pleasantly tipsy and squawking post-bar crowd, the laughter, the Johnny Cash tribute busker singing Ring of Fire in your ear as you go home on the Northern Line.

I am the last night bus, the post-club crowd, the drunken, the rowdy, the retching, the reeking of McDonalds, the litter, the smell of too long a period without a shower.

I am the raw energy of youth, the 2012 Olympics, the football in Hyde Park, the joggers at Regent's Park, the arts students on Carnaby Street looking for inspiration, the galleries, the open air events, the Old Vic theatre, the National Theatre, the Globe theatre.

I am the pessimistic nay-sayer, continually poo-pooing the downfall of the great nation, the tax payer, the scribe of grumpy and lonesome Letters to the Editor, the abandoned, the forgotten.

I am the contradictory, beautiful, terrible city that gets under your skin.
I am home.

"Reading magazines and counting sheep to pass the time away"

2009-12-09T05:12:00.002Z

Ah... Feeder. Anyhow, that's the opening lyric to their song Insomnia, and incidentally, this is the first picture that appears when you type insomnia into Google images. Creepy, n'est-ce pas? Not tired, you?

I've been in bed for about 3 hours and still my mind refuses to shutdown and let me sleep. So after fishing up the ol' Macbook and draining the news websites, my Google Reader and BBC Radio 4 of stimulation I decided to be terribly ADD and look up famous people who are/were insomniacs. And type up my findings self indulgently in a manner that distinctly resembles tripe. I won't edit it though. Maybe it will be vaguely funny in the morning. That, or depressing. In conducting internet research, it amused me how each list felt compelled to think of synonyms for insomnia to avoid repetition. According to their lexicon, I currently have difficulty sleeping as other people would, refer to my failure to enjoy a good night sleep, suffer terribly from the insomnia, and have the ability to sleep during only four or even less hours at night. Also, while Google might render up a number of websites offering such lists, they all seem to have rehashed essentially the same thing. Lazy!

As a result I refuse to produce another copy of this list. Though I did come across a few strange remedies they used. Mark Twain, staying at his friend's house, felt the need for fresh air so threw a pillow through a window, which seemed to do the trick. He later found out the 'window' was a glass bookcase. Groucho Marx used to call strangers up in the middle of night and insult them. Hmmm... Best not. Besides I have no idea what my voice sounds like right now. Probably like a snotty growl more than anything else.

Know who else was an insomniac? Charles Dickens. What the dickens? What the deuce? Stewie Griffin. Peter Griffin. Peter O' Toole. Tool Time. Tim Allen. Woody Allen. Annie Hall. Rebecca Hall. Vicky Christina Barcelona. Gaudi. Gaudy. Ugly. Grim. Bleak. Hard Times. Charles Dickens. Ahah, we come full circle.

It's nearly 5:19. 5:19 is the name of a song by Matt Wertz. If you type in Matt Wertz at Googlism, the funniest response is "matt wertz is an animal and thats fo shizel i drove 2 hours". That makes a bunch of sense to me. If I drove 2 hours I could be in Birmingham. England, not Alabama. The population of Birmingham Alabama is estimated at around 229,000. The population of Birmingham, England is over 1,000,000. I'm going to Birmingham in a fortnight. In French, a fortnight is quinze jours if I remember correctly. How boring is that? But quotidien looks and sounds a lot better than daily. And it can mean newspaper.

Why is no one else awake at this time...?

Lists - All the cool kids are making them

2009-12-08T20:35:00.001Z

Because I can, and because I like to think of myself as sometimes wry and dry of wit, I'm going to make a list of reasons why I am going to make lists this week:

1. Because as well as being composed of a number of other deficiencies, I am short of attention span. Fast to be enthused by something but almost as fast to ditch something newer, shinier or prettier.

Case in point. A few weeks ago, I read 4 books in a week ("Nocturnes" - K Ishiguro, "To the Lighthouse" - V Woolf, "Kitchen" - B Yoshimoto, "Brick Lane" - M Ali. Just in case you're interested and they're all bloody good books.) This week I have started three and completed zero. Not because they're unworthy books, in fact I'm sure they're wonderful reads, but sometimes when you're reading about white whales, you decide instead you want to read the Gandhi book that's sat on your friend's bookshelf, then a couple of days later decide that Sherlock Holmes might be more fun.

See what I mean? Tangent. Anyhow, lists might get my array of rapid and unfocused thoughts into a semblance of order, and subsequently magically convert me into a semblance of an organised homo sapien.

2. Because Santa Claus is. Mariah Carey just said. "He's making a list, he's checking it twice." Then he's coming into town. I wonder if Santa would care for a gingerbread latte with me, since he'll be in town, and they're delicious.

3. Because of late I've been reminded of the concept of Bucket Lists and their variants. Like the Morgan Freeman film. Like my friend who wants to take me bungee jumping in February. And this Nicole lass (check her out, she's got a pretty good one here). I have suspected I coast along life when left to my own devices, but no longer! Time for change! I'm not sure whether to make a Life/Bucket List or a mini To-Do-In-2010 List. Maybe both?

4. Because I'm listening to "My Year in Lists" by Los Campesinos.

5. Because I'm a product of the accelerated, constantly bombarded with information from a plethora of sources and media, rarely stationary and consistently curious state of society at the moment. Generation whY? if you will.

6. Because of "The Twelve Days of Christmas"?

Chicken Soup for the Soul (Youtube edition)

2009-12-08T03:42:00.004Z

So had a bad day today, everyone's allowed 'em, right? And when it's too cold and rainy to go out outside again and risk antagonising the snot monster that threatens your very sinuses, hit the YouTube!

Sure I'm about five times the target demographic but this song cheers me up!

And this kitten video. I fear for my testicles.

At least this one contains a real human man!

Josh Groban is actually a pretty funny guy, who knew?

Upper Cut to G7

2009-12-06T06:13:00.001Z

So last night I went to one of the more random events I have attended for quite some time: chessboxing. Yes, you read that correctly.

It's exactly how it sounds, a sport where the... erm... fighters? Players? The two men undergo 8 rounds of alternately chess and full-contact boxing (though ultimately they work on a point system, knock-outs, apparently, are comparatively rare). You win the bout by inducing checkmate or on a technical knockout in boxing. If there is a draw at chess, either via the game itself or if there is a comparative deadlock situation and both players agree to forego the chess in round 7, it comes down to the boxing. Confusing, no? You soon pick it up, indeed HR and I did by observation and irritating the people around us with questions.

Which leads me neatly on the next curio of the event: the audience. Now, having absolutely no exposure to this game at all previously, I half expected the observers to be either massive, built-like brickhouses and/or grossly obese, tight T-shirt wearing boxing fans or shy retiring bespectacled chess fanatics. As it stood, while there were people who fit this description present, it was more like any pub in suburban London. Middle-class, mostly older than us, almost exclusively Caucasian and almost all as baffled as we were. One could conclude that they had heard about it in the Guardian, Time Out magazine or some other publication, more accustomed to reviewing the latest performance at the Royal Albert Hall. Rather amusingly there was also a better male/female ratio than you would expect at a boxing bout or chess match(!) This lent an air of not taking this terribly seriously: we were here to see community theatre, not Hatton-Mayweather or... a chess match. As such I actually enjoyed the evening.

Through circumstance, we had to miss the first bout and about half of the second, and I spent a chunk of that at the bar, so I took it as a chance to try and understand the game. Pretty standard boxing, and more mundane chess - ended in a checkmate that seemed inevitable. We spent a lot of the time gently mocking the whole situation we found ourselves in - people paying money to support friends (presumably) or watch a game which confused them but they thought might make an interesting enough anecdote at their next wine and cheese party. (I don't know where HR got the idea but I agreed purely on the premise that something that different would be a great sight to behold.) The level of professionalism held by the venue didn't really help. Unfortunately the picture above is misleading - I didn't have the foresight to bring a camera with me, perhaps tempered by the hope that I would be in a cramped dingy underground venue (it was dingy and sub-terrain!) surrounded by massive boxing fans baying for blood. This was no national level event. Not for these chessboxers would there be sponsored chessboxing tables. No, instead we got (presumably magnetic) standard chessboard rested on a folding table (likely previously use to prop up someone's G&T while watching Newsnight), and a bloke hiding in the dark with a laptop mapping out the moves while the screen cut out every so often. And perhaps key to the hilarity is that HR and I found ourselves in the venue that we used to frequent on the unofficially but somehow widely known underage indie-rock drinking nights when we were wee slips of 15 and I thought that Stella Artois was the great beer of beer connoisseurs (nowadays I know it better as the chav-ish beer of pot-bellied wifebeaters). I actually let out a ha! of amusement and reminiscence when they played the Libertines over the speaker system during the break. On the plus side, I enjoyed the ticket - simplistic, but somewhat stylistically akin to the old school boxing matches.

Also the between-matches entertainer was actually mental. A skinny black man in a pruple velvet suit and feathered top hat busting out 70s dance moves (I was fairly appreciative) and terrible cover songs, who either came from a circus background, novelty pubs or a reformed busker/tramp at our estimation.

The second bout we watched was infinitely more exciting. There was Sasha from Berlin and Daniel from Pamplona, who actually looked the part, unlike the previous two, one of whom was built spryly like a sprinter, and the winner who very much looked like a chess player rather than a boxer. The chess was tense, for spells the crowd was convinced that one or the other would win, and indeed there would always be one with one minute less on their chess clock (there is an allotted 12 mins total over the rounds) so there was the possibility one would run out the clock. As it was, there was a very level playing field in Round 7, exactly the same pieces on the board, both protecting themselves well to the point of risking repetition. To my, and everyone else's relief, they elected for the chess draw and instead to settle it in the boxing ring. When the folding table and chairs were packed away. The boxing side of things was much more interesting. Throughout, Sasha was more technically proficient, better footwork, more combinations, but had a rubbish guard. The Pamplona fighter, in contrast, had zero footwork, but more passion, instead satisfying himself with swinging admittedly solid hooks at his German opponent. What with Sasha's lack of ferocity (for the most part, there were spells for each where it got tense) and Daniel's lack of style or technique, neither would have made it as pure boxers. However, the game was called on points and the facts that Pamplona landed more blows and genuinely put on more effort and a better show led to his declaration as winner.

The third match was a massive disappointment in more than one sense of the word. The first chessboxer they brought on was a massive Pole from Warsaw with the encouraging nickname of 'the Wardrobe'. Then, they bring on a ludicrously obese man 'the Red Kite' who looks more like a lardier version of the man who taught me driving. The chess was mundane, nothing at all happened, then: the boxing. Which was worse. I had hoped that:
- Firstly, the chessboxing bouts were structured like all fighting tournaments, in which as you move along the fightcards, you get the better matches. Indeed the second one we saw was much more entertaining than the first.
- Secondly, that the Red Kite would put up more of a fight! Certainly he was built more like a boxing glove than a wardrobe, but you get overweight boxers who are a bit past their prime and retain the ability to throw a beast of a punch. Foolish me - there's overweight, then there's so rotund that I was glad the folding chairs were made out of metal.
The Red Kite turned out to be a chessboxing fraud. Not only was his guard and footwork terrible, he didn't throw a single decent punch and kept tripping over his feet and falling backward. He threw in the towel (better than he threw punches!) midway through the round. What a disappointment and anticlimax!

I learned three things as I walked out of the memory-ridden club while the punters danced around in the vacated ring like a wedding crowd at 10pm: Chessboxing is funny; I never want to watch a chess match; in chessboxing, the touch-move rule is as sacred as the offside rule.

Random thoughts you leave you with:

- If you idly flick through the 'Next Blogs' on Blogger, probably at least 70% of them are dedicated to newborns or newlyweds.
- Still digging Mumford and Sons. They have the same old time, almost minstrel-esque storytelling style to their music without losing the feeling of the contemporary, which is why I prefer them to the Fleet Foxes. Not that FF aren't worthy of a crate of praise in their own right.
- They've started showing Live at the Apollo again. Whoo! I wonder if I'll turn up in the audience shots...
- Took another photo through blearly eyes this morning because I happened to wake up grossly early entirely unintentionally. I'm putting it up because I love the colour of the sky but disappointingly the foreground is too light to be a convincing silhouette but too dark to be a proper feature. Boo.

- The weather has finally caught up with me and my nose is starting to emulate the Trevi Fountain. Double Boo. I can but hope I get fully better in time for next week, I can't be ill when there's so much stuff to be done!

A Christmas Mix CD from me to you!

2009-12-06T03:17:00.002Z

"Blast this Christmas music! It's joyful and triumphant."

In my personal quest not to emulate Grinch this holiday period I have compiled a Christmas Mix CD also, inspired by Emily Jane. It's rather more chilled out than her indie offering, with an eclectic mix of peaks and troughs, covers and originals, oldies and contemporaries, perfectly timed to JUST burn onto a CD. If you like it, link back to this post and spread the joy! And if you are made particularly particularly cheery by any of the songs, do consider buying some of their other stuff, I have no compunctions whatsoever about recommending any and all of these artists highly.

Merry Christmas guys!

Ho ho ho!

-----

1) Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! - Frank Sinatra
2) Fairytale of New York - KT Tunstall
3) Last Christmas - Jimmy Eat World
4) 2000 Miles - KT Tunstall
5) Winter Wonderland - Kate Havenik
6) Silent Night (A Capella) - Boyz II Men
7) All I Want For Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey
8) Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town - Mariah Carey
9) Carol of the Bells - The Bird and the Bee
10) Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) - Death Cab for Cutie
11) Maybe This Christmas - Ron Sexsmith
12) Christmas Song - Catherine Feeny
13) Christmas - Leona Naess
14) Merry Xmas Everybody - Rooney
15) Mistletoe - Colbie Caillat
16) Frosty the Snowman - Fiona Apple
17) It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year - Andy Williams
18) Sleigh Ride - KT Tunstall
19) God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Bright Eyes
20) Driving Home for Christmas - Chris Rea
21) I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas - Bing Crosby
22) Happy Xmas (War is Over) - The Fray
23) Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Frank Sinatra

[Recommended track order]

Christmas Music

2009-12-04T04:15:00.001Z

I'm going to be hugely lazy and instead today link you to a wonderful indie mixed CD I found on Emily Jane's blog. As I said to her in my embarrassingly gushy comment, I am a huge fans of the traditional Christmas songs covered in a different way. Songs often tend to lose their charm when you hear them in every major shop and TV advertisement. This way you get the Christmas feeling with a twist that keeps you involved. Not that there's anything wrong with the 'classics'

Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas Is You

Ah, for the days when Mariah Carey was sweet. Great song - I defy you to hear this and not sing and/or dance! It's Christmas! You can't have at me for liking the saccharine chunks of festivity! :D

EJ has inspired to perhaps compile a Mix CD of my own for friends and all two of my readers :P Keep a lookout! And until next time, I don't want a lot for Christmas....

Media Overload

2009-12-04T03:59:00.003Z

So for the past few months I have been unemployed. That's right, just another casualty of the economic downturn, not that I enjoy making excuses for myself nor dwelling on that fact. Now, I have days where I'm exceedingly pro active in applying for every job that might conceivably take me; and others, like today and the latter section of yesterday, where the only useful thing I do is try out recipes (see below) and spend the rest of the day immersing myself in media to the point where I might conceivably need a monocle (I may just have seen an advertisement for Monopoly). So here's what I've been interested in of late in between applying for scores of jobs and twiddling my thumbs waiting to here back from said institutions:

Scrubs

This is my cue to request you all imagine the melancholy piano cue music they use for poignant or otherwise sad moments on the show. The hardcore fans will know what I mean - duh duh du-duh duh duh duh duh... etc. I was underwhelmed by the first two offerings of the new season (now in its 9th), despite expecting very little. In a bid to retain the fiercely loyal fanbase of seasons past, they have retained JD, Turk, Dr's Cox and Kelso, and Denise, that grumpy (yet strangely attractive) blonde doctor from the past season, albeit in diminished roles. Zach Braff, back to in order to aid the transition, is as quirky as ever but now a father and very much meant to be a role model for the new intake (indeed, the "Scrubs" title screen has a sub byline of "Med School" underneath) is now just vaguely pathetic and immature rather than endearing. Blink-and-you'll-miss them cameos from Elliot, the Janitor and the Todd raise smiles in the first episode before they vanish back into the night. The hospital has now changed building also, further adding to the detachment from the previous structure. There are three main new characters in the med student intake, a cocky son-of-major-sponsor Cole, dark and Cox-ian former med school drop out Drew, and in the starring role, Lucy, who would have done perfectly well as a back up character formerly but I currently have doubts whether she will be able to carry the show as JD did in the past. I like the character and the actress (Kerry Bishe) in a pretty and dorky ingenue role which seems rather cynically to be a blend of JD and Elliot, with the former's strange outbursts and need for a role model (enter previous JD) and the latter's latent insecurity. But her daydreams are not as wacky nor well themed as JD's and there is only so far sweetly smiling will carry you. I have loved this programme from the outset so I will continue to give it a chance, but based on initial opinion and the fact that the show was already on a downward slope before JD 'left', I am thinking that perhaps they should consider stopping the dead-horse-flogging. Seriously. Even Friends knew when to end on a high note, and they were infinitely more inventive with their scenarios and old fashioned situation comedy.

Augmented Reality

I might be a few weeks late to the party on this revelation but this is the future of media I reckon! The talented bunch at Rocketboom.com did a pretty good explanation that I can probably not improve upon.

The bottom line is that camera-enabled computers, laptops and smartphones will soon be able to have a whole new slew of features, such as slideshows, enhanced maps, and probably even games with minimal new software. The easiest and most comprehensive the general public could try out if one is particularly interested in this concept is the 'Virtual Echo' over at the official website for the TV programme Dollhouse (on its deathbed currently *sniff sniff*). You print out a logo on a piece of paper which enables you to play around with an admittedly not very interactive display of Echo's personas, but you can move the screen around a lot and for a half minute it feels thrillingly (and geekily) like you're Tom Cruise in Minority Report.

My Sassy Girl

This is a 2001 Korean romcom flick with a slight twist, based on a hugely popular Korean online romantic blog. Think an older Asian cousin of (500) Days of Summer (who says analogies have to make sense?) This has achieved massive cult and box office success in South East Asia, which is how I know of it despite it being all but unknown over here. I initially resisted for that exact reason. It's a very popular romcom, and those generally have a tendency to make me feel not unlike someone shoved a caramelised rainbow down my throat. But in its Asian setting, its unabashed kooky nature. Given the current reception of (500) Days, this film was a while ahead of its time, and the script is clever enough to keep it engaging over its lengthy run time. Certainly, this film has its flaws: the setpieces feeling forced and incredible (the Girl's script ideas and the soldier scene in the middle partily springing to mind), the comedy can sometimes be very Asian (huge dependence on slapstick and social awkwardness to the extent that some may wrinkle their noses) and the story arc jumps to and fro so much it might give you plot-whiplash. But the central relationship is played sublimely, the comic timings are on beat and such as they are, there exist some very clever (if a tad predictable for romcom cynics like myself) plot devices. I would definitely recommend it, and doubly if you're Asian and/or a romcom fan.

For IMDB addicts - My Sassy Girl
and those who want a second (very worthy) opinion - JapanCinema review

p.s. I hear universally that the 2008 remake with Elisha Cuthbert is a wash out. Beware.

The law/human rights gone wrong?

'A 66-year-old church elder convicted of indecently assaulting a child will not be sent to jail because his obesity means his health is "precarious"'

Where do we draw the line?

Source: BBC News

World AIDS day - fight AIDS in Africa

2009-12-02T17:11:00.003Z

It's a great cause, look it up. It's our responsibility as dwellers in the privileged half of the world.

Ten on Tuesday

2009-12-02T03:32:00.002Z

So in my quest for gimicky reasons to write, I stumbled upon this "Ten on Tuesday" on Stephany's blog. In a nutshell, it's quite simply answering ten questions. And it's still technically Tuesday in America! Here goes:

1. What was the last concert you’ve been to?
I was lucky enough to catch Muse at the O2 a few weeks ago. For those of you not aware of this, the Millenium Dome built for the millenium in London nearly a decade ago was transformed into the O2 centre (sponsored by the O2 phone network) with an arena, a cinema, a club and many restaurants. I hadn't actually been to the arena in the O2 before and was surprised how it was smaller than I'd imagined, then remembering it was indoors as PART of the dome structure, confounded by how much they'd actually managed to fit in.

Muse was, as expected, awesome. They never disappoint, and this time had raising platforms to add to their usual laser show and screen projection tricks. The latter were particularly impressive, one looking like a man slowly drowning artistically (trust me on this oxymoronic point :P) while the band rocked out. Now, I'm not much of a fan of the new album as compared to the previous offerings, but still, it works pretty well live, and they had enough of the old favourites to keep me jumping!

2. Is it easy to make you cry?
No. But the things that DO make me cry are pretty strange. "Big Fish" the film makes me cry happy tears. Seeing/living a traumatic event won't make me cry, but talking about it afterward might, at least in the past. I haven't cried for a long time now.

3. Do you ever feel like people underestimate you?
Underestimate me at first, yes. While sometimes I suspect I don't give the most impressive and standout first impression, I believe I make a very good second/third one.

4. Name 7 completely random things that you like:
Goodie! Lists! :D

Sunrises - They can make any sky better, and give a wonderful tinge to any plain landscape or horizon. also they make clouds look like blank canvasses rather than harbingers of bad weather.

Random acts of kindness - Wherever possible, I like to think the best of people in general. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a pair of rose-tinted glasses welded to my face and I know there are some genuine bastards out there. But seeing acts of kindness in the outside world, with the proviso that they must take place between strangers and be more substantial and less to-be-expected than opening a door, make me smile inside and keep off the slow and winding path into dark misanthropy.

Hugs - Who doesn't like a good hug? I like good hugs, and so, I hear, I give good hugs. Mmm...

Singing - I can't sing, but if I could I'd be failing as a professional singer at this very moment! Karaoke is awesome, and Guitar Hero has become a whole lot better since they introduced the mics :P

Acoustic covers of songs - Quite a large part of me enjoys a good harmony, a neat and unusual cadence, a prudent key change. Hearing a song stripped down to its musical roots without the layering on of production, relying only on the musicians and their indomitable spirit makes most songs sound more passionate to me.

Smiles - Smiling makes everyone look nicer, more approachble and endears themselves to me. People should smile more.

Discovering a really good book - Life can be dreary at times and a good book allows us to live a variety of experiences vicariously.

5. What’s your favorite reality TV show and why?
Like Stephany, I love So You Think You Can Dance? The dances (for the most part) amazing, they have brought on some amazing choreographers, and dancers are FIT :P Not the most manly of favourites, but shush, I like it. I don't generally care for reality TV though.

6. What is your favorite hair care product?
*Rolls eyes* The shower?

7. What’s your favorite song at the moment?
This bad boy. "Maybe this Christmas" by Ron Sexsmith. (Take the time now to laugh the name.... bit more... now let's continue) I only just got back into the Christmas songs today, being advent and all that, and I realised I have a fair amount of festive tunes on my iTunes! This is an oldie but goodie, one of my top-rated Christmas songs.

8. What’s the number one thing on your Christmas wishlist?
An iPhone? Other than that, I'm lucky enough to not really want anything with any great longing. Winning the lottery might be a nice idea.

9. Have you ever lost your cell phone?
On the day of my 18th birthday, I left my mobile phone in the changing room at Gap. When I realised and returned to check if it was there, I found out some honest soul had handed it back in. Wonderful.

10. Did you attack the hordes of shoppers for Black Friday?
I guess the equivalent would be the Boxing Day sales? Only braved it once of my own volition and I suspect a few times trailing alongside my parents when I was a wee boy.

"Winter Song"

2009-12-01T10:50:00.012Z

So, December 1st. I guess that means it is officially not too early to put up trees and listen to Christmas songs!

Here's a gem of a Christmas song. "Mistletoe" by Colbie Caillat.

I have it as part of the "The Hotel Cafe present Winter Songs" album. I believe it's quite a few years old, but still brilliant. The singers (all female, I'm not sure if that's purely coincidental) each bring a little of themselves with varying success to make this more than a mere karaoke pop compilation. Unlike this. Miley Cyrus? Really? If you look at the previous CDs in the Very Special Christmas albums, it'll make you shake your head and yearn for the past :D Far be it from me to question the current musical zeitgeist, but methinks the music industry were scraping the barrel a bit here! Get the Winter Songs album instead. Cover it in fake snow, make an event out of it.

2009-12-01T10:30:00.005Z

Sunrises (and sunsets) can make anything look awesome.

Just... don't zoom in too much. I took the photo in a hurry, the birds were flying at quite a speedy pace, and I was keen to get them in the shot!

So, I had a brief affair with the shiny mistress that is Tumblr. I was tempted by the prospect of easier, less labour intensive blogging. I was courted by the shiny colours and giant icons. But while there is a certain novelty to be held in 2 click blogging, and for certain things, such as photographers, perhaps it is a better vehicle. But rather like Twitter it is too myopic and lacking in depth. And more importantly, it is not as geared or aimed at the bloggers, that is, the people who write down thoughts and aspirations, rather than reblogging cool links. While I might be more suited to Tumblr with my dedication and blogging longevity, I wish to be a blogger. And Blogger the site allows me to read and surround myself with real bloggers as an incentive, and incentivisation is what I need if I am to develop my writing, etc. Ironically I am very aware I am writing in a less than succinct manner, but this will happen if you inadvertently and for no reason whatsoever pull an all-nighter. That's right! I did it again.

It's been a long time

2009-10-06T04:34:00.002+01:00

Not written since May?! Really? Ludicrous.

Will seriously have to get back on the writing, tomorrow if possible! In the meantime, here's a pretty scenic picture with colours.

"What Can I Say"

2009-05-02T11:07:00.005+01:00

Can you tell that I love clouds and sunsets? The song today is from Brandi Carlile, whom I believed I've bigged-up before, but still, most definitely worth a look-in. Feeling a little bit under the weather today (may have had a bearing on the picture) and not feeling particularly verbose so just a short one.

=> Links you should check out:

Days With My Father: A beautiful and touching photojournal from a son about his father in the last, but glorious, days of his life.

JapanCinema.net: a blog reviewing Japanese films (duh) This guy actually knows what he's talking about, and is nice enough to include clips you can check out if the review whets your appetite.

=> Would it be flippant to say I'm bored with swine flu? Don't get me wrong, my condolences go out to those who have lost friends or family to this ailment, but for people to be afraid to leave the house for that reason outside of Mexico... is that really proportionate? There's nothing that makes me take something less seriously than having it shoved in my face and it fast becoming a cliche.

=> When running in the bright sunshine at 2pm, wearing a dark long-sleeved T-shirt is not advisable.

=> French accents on women are just mmm...

=> I need to leave the country and soon. I'm getting more than a slight twinge of ennui with London, especially when the weather's grey and gloomy. It's actually pretty nice when it's sunny and you're in the park.

"Part of Your World"

2009-04-30T21:47:00.004+01:00

Obviously the song of the post is from, ahem, the Little Mermaid. Because anyone who still has a soul loves the classic Disney movies!

For some reason I'm in a rather cutesy mood so dug up this picture of a random Chinese baby from last year. Adorable, huh? This little one resides near the famous Longsheng rice terraces in the Guangxi province. The rice terraces (which we nearly didn't get to visit due to the horrific winter in the region) are in an area comprising a few rice terrace regions and villages full of locals dressed like the women in the background. The baby, obviously had no idea what I was trying to do, so her(?) older sister whirled her around to face my camera and then proceeded to hide. You can still see her glove if you look hard enough!

Hmm, is it a little tragic to be dwelling on the past? I'm not really, just nothing I'm doing these days renders up such photogenic picture opportunities...

Thoughts for today:
- Further to my ponderings about the diversity of the world... presumably at one point, if you believe in Pangaea and the migration of the peoples and all that, we were one large community that spread out. So, presumably, as a social and intelligent species, we at one point spoke the same language? (This is pure personal conjecture, I'm fully prepared to accept that I could be 95% wrong!) Which makes it all the more fascinating that the languages are as starkly differing and sounding as, say, Italian and Tagalog. Amazing.

When people ask you the hypothetical question, if you could have any power, talent, wish, etc. I've always thought, while it may not be the *most* intelligent use of a wish, you could do a lot worse than requesting the ability to speak and understand all the languages on the planet. And what language sounds the best? At present, I'm rather partial to the sound of French, but scouring the world for the perfect accent would be a very pleasurable, if lengthy, quest indeed!

- So, I'm trying to start running again. I had a brief foray into it pre Christmas, which was pretty much starting from scratch, and was surprised how comparatively quickly it improves as long as you do it regularly. Of course since then I have done precious little exercise at all, so have a lot of unfitness and excess mass to work off first! Pretty much starting from scratch all over again, but with high aspirations. I figure it's all a matter of motivation, so I intend to attend organised training runs, for example, Niketown in Oxford Circus organise some. I had to miss one this week because a class overran but went on a short circuit with F.H. anyhow, and was just terrible. I'm going to have to put in a lot of work if I want to improve at a reasonable rate! Hopefully I'll set myself an attainable goal soon: something to work towards.

- Have just discovered more MAJOR gaps in the Spotify catalogue, but also a few gems. My gem for today was discovering the Muse HAARP album, which was a live recording of the Wembley gigs in June 2007, one of which I went to. Score!

- With a slight pang of regret, I have realised over the past few days that I have been guilty of one of those sins I thought I would never have committed: judging a book by its cover. Though I do not necessarily place too much weight on first impressions, I do so with the first few meetings and then extrapolate and deign to think I KNOW that person. Poppiecock. I do have fairly good instincts about people, but I have found a couple of instances of being wrong of late, and for that I must readjust my faith in that ability.

"Simple As It Should Be"

2009-04-26T23:42:00.003+01:00

I thought I borrow an idea from (oh the shame of it) One Tree Hill, where I pilfer some talented songwriter's title of a song to sum up the content that follows. "Simple as it should be" is a brilliantly chilled-out song by Tristan Prettyman on her album "twentythree". No prizes for guessing her age when she wrote it! With the rise of Spotify, there should be a way to link people so that they can hear the song I'm talking about; wouldn't that be absolutely marvellous?

While I'm on this point, I'm going to briefly wax lyrical about the benefits of Spotify. Now, the interface is far from perfect, and I've not yet been driven to abandon iTunes but what is wonderful about Spotify is that, as long as you do not seek something too obscure (more's the pity really!) then you can try out entire albums and major sections of the back catalogues of artists to whom you've not listened before. I don't mind telling you that I will have to have heard at least three songs from an album and liked them before I consider buying it for real, as opposed to downloading a singular song. Now I can hear it all! I've had Spotify since before the day it became massive in London (the Londonpaper, the free newspaper given out in the afternoons, had a big feature on it the next day!) so, probably a few weeks, but already I've bought two albums off the back of Spotify which I otherwise might not have. Ok, I'm not being paid for this so I'll stop now!

The picture, by the way, is another from about a year ago, from Wenchang, Hainan island again. Wenchang is in the North East of the island just in case you're interested, and a very mini town! I say mini, it's probably as complex a town as Birmingham in terms of roads, but just smaller and more Chinese (go figure). I went to visit a couple of friends, so in that way it was nice, but I can imagine getting very bored with the place very quickly. Anyway, this photo is one I took leaning over their balcony while the sun was setting and I liked the look of the clouds.

My wonderment of the day is at the uniqueness of the human race. Now, there are some six billion of us homo sapiens wondering around the planet. With that many people, you'd think, surely, that there's be some overlap? Someone, somewhere, must be pretty much a dead ringer for you and act in a very similar manner? Not so: if it were to be the case, we would presumably have heard about it by now.

If nothing else, we have a range of countries! Over 200 if I'm right! And races! In a geeky child-like way, I'm quite excited by the fact that even when I'm sleep, there's someone across the world living their life, speaking a completely different language and maybe even wondering about other people in the world too. Even the phenomenon of different languages is pretty cool in itself. I might explore this wonderful idea at a later date, but for now, it will suffice for me to state that it is excellent.

Another last year photo and flash back

2009-04-13T16:24:00.005+01:00

A photo from around this time last year, Haikou, China. This is one of the classes I was teaching English to, all of which were 50-something children in number! A daunting prospect, and making it a little harder than expected to keep attention and discipline going, but undoubtedly fulfilling. For the most part, I was accompanied by their original English teachers (that is, native Chinese teachers who learnt English in school and teachers' college). Now, I never understood why they paid the Gap year scheme what was likely a ridiculous sum of money for our services. Fair enough, they want to utilise native English speakers but when the level of English being taught was so basic, their level of English, which was passable at least in my opinion, they would have been more than adequate. When you're teaching them how to say "mango" and "banana" in some of the younger classes, sometimes you can't but wonder if bringing in overpriced native English speakers is overkill.

But some of the classes were unbelievably cute! Little chubby faces and kiddy voices. I also found that the cute ones tended to be the cleverer ones too, or maybe I was just blinded by adorable face. From my observation, the teachers were almost always amazingly friendly, helpful and definitely hideously underpaid. One must take into account the exchange rates and the price of living in that area of China but nonetheless, for the time they put in, some of them while raising children... I felt sorry for them, especially having got to know them and their good hearts. The classrooms were freakin' huge as well. The smaller females teachers incapable of projecting their voices or yelling had little microphone and speaker headsets they used to help. I found it absolutely necessary at times to actually walk around the classroom to ensure that I met all of their eyes, especially when kids at the back were being noisy. They also got very excited when games or points were involved, so I used that fact to keep them involved, adding a competitive angle to half the class so that they remained keen, especially the classes just before or after breaktimes.

Couple of random facts:
- Apparently teaching English is considered a woman's teaching role, in a profession already deemed to be quite feminine, the male teachers more customarily teaching PE or kung fu.
- One of the less friendly teachers introduced me as "Miss Gao" (translation into Mandarin) so many times I couldn't be bothered to interject and correct her after a point. The children like to yell you name and wave at you when you walk through the playground to go home so for ages I had some 120 kids yelling out "Miss Gao" on my way around. That was... weird.
- Being of Chinese heritage but not actually from a 'Chinese' country or with the ability to speak Mandarin was unbelievable to them. One of the cuter questions I got asked to me during my first week was whether I used chopsticks or a knife and fork to eat my food. Bless.

One's essence in writing

2009-04-13T16:12:00.004+01:00

We may never be fully able to walk a mile in someone else's shoes, or know what life is like for them, especially if we don't know them personally, but I think blogging as good as it'll get without being bilaterally personal.

I like the idea of Twitter and initially found it very interesting, but now wonder about its real place in a social networking market including the likes of Facebook. If blogging is like reading someone's diary, Facebook is like leafing through their letters or wallet and Twitter is like poking them every half hour or so and asking "what're you thinking?" Ideally, the way it works is that you check it very regularly throughout the day and you can see what your friends and 'friends' are thinking without actually having to ask. It is the status bar on social networking sites given a free rein to go nuts. It is social networking for those with short attention spans. Who really has the time to check it really often if they're not a student/self-employed or have a really IT-based job? For me personally I don't like that fact that you can't really keep up with it by checking it once or twice a day unlike other forms of media. Have more than a dozen friends who are active on twitter and it soon becomes nigh on impossible. The idea is great, but in practice maybe not the thing for me.

But blogging is so much more free. It gives the writers a blank canvas to work with, and no word restriction. And as said, it is pretty much a diary, or at least as much of a diary as the writers like to share with the world. With all that freedom, people do make the most of it, either with a regular flow of short articles, like a very fleshed out Twitter, or less regular longer posts. Either way, it does resemble a diary, and it is so much easier for readers to map out their thoughts chronologically.

Now for me, I'm rather lazy. Once I get typing it comes out, but it's taking that push to start writing. Also my life is only interesting at times, and for the most part can be rather repetitive and mundane, at least from an outsider's point of view. But nonetheless I do like reading those of others, and by doing so, getting to know people with lives different from my own. It's interesting, maybe a tad voyeuristic, but what aspect of social networking isn't these days?

I really am the most terrible procrastinator

2009-04-09T01:58:00.003+01:00

Exactly what it says on the tin. Let me give you an example of precisely how lazy I am. I have had, since Monday morning, a list on my desk of 7 tasks I need to do, of varying difficulty. I have since then completed precisely half of one. Disgusting isn't it? I have managed in the meantime to watch an entire season of Skins (don't regret that), read the beginnings of two *different* John Grisham books (not as inspiring as I had thought it would be), and spend probably two hours a day on Facebook (*do* regret that. in hindsight I wonder how that's even possibly, the vast majority of my friends are working or doing something interesting/constructive with their lives so there's not that much to monitor!) Despite it now being 2am, I will force myself to do at least 3 of the tasks before bed. After having typed out my thoughts of the day.

- The lives of the kids in Skins are GRIM. Sure they have fun, and they have each other, but sometimes, in fact, a lot of the time it's pretty dark. Now, obviously it's fictional, but as with all the best television programmes (not that I'm particularly classifying it as such for now) there's more than a sliver of truth to be found.
My kudos of the day goes out to psychologists and in particular those for young people. They, more than 'grown ups', I would imagine, feel every lacking element with an acuteness greater than their older counterparts. Whether or not due to melodrama and hyperbole, nonetheless to them, troubled youths around the country are living their own little hells, and with fewer options available to them than to adults. They can't escape, find jobs and move out, clinging on to every outlet they have with the tenacity as they would a liferaft at sea. I won't fool myself into thinking I'll care this much even this time tomorrow, but whenever I remind myself, or find myself in an opportunity to help, I will. Maybe if and when I do become a teacher in later life.

- This time last year I was still in China, though it feels like a shorter time ago. Every day was itself a mini adventure, and I was still enjoying the sensation of meeting and discovering the lives of new people. Although I am not pro active enough to seek this on a current basis, when I am forced into the situation, I really enjoy it. I yearn for that experience and look forward to when I am in a position to replicate it.

- Of particular interest to me, surprisingly to me as well, is the news that Coca Cola has bought a minority share in innocent (lower case intentional) drinks. Now if I seek the silver lining, it's merely a part of the corporate system, a minority share, and will help raise the profile and circulation of these healthier drinks. But I will feel regret if the hand of Coca Cola moves to influencing innocent's perhaps overly cutesy but undoubtedly honourable business plan and mourn the loss of another free spirit in an increasing cynical and bottom-line orientated market economy.

Well-intentioned, ill put into practice

2008-11-01T22:30:00.006Z

Continuing in my series of photos... Still January 2008. Not entirely sure what this bowl shaped thingie is, haha! But I think it's some kind of religious thing. Located on the grounds of a shrine near Ding An county, East Hainan island.

http://www.roundtheworldexperts.co.uk/World-Trips/Under1000/trip07.php?gclid=CPDLouKC1ZYCFQWIlAodeg4t2w

How cool would this be?! An around the world trip for less than a grand, London, to LA, to Fiji, to Auckland (New Zealand), to Hong Kong, to back home again. If I ever get the chance (and money!) I REALLY REALLY want to do this. As small as it was, I really caught the bug for travelling and seeing different parts of the world while I'm still young and haven't lost the wonder for the world.

- Currently watching Heat on BBC2. This film is amazing, it's just past the infamous Pacino-DeNiro in a cafe . You can tell it's Michael Mann, same gritty and stylistic but not John Woo faux-balletic style slow motion shoot outs; same aerial views of LA by night with a car driving down a yellow lit, lonely street; same high intensity cop; frenetic action scenes. Just brilliant. The cast are all without exception excellent. And Robert De Niro and Al Pacino give performances worthy of their reputation, the excellent blend of sensitive and hard man, loud and quiet and more raw energy in their silent stares than most modern actors.
(and Hank Azaria, Amy Brenneman, young Natalie Portman and 'David Palmer' are from 24 in it, haha!)

- I have signed up for the NaNoWriMo, where entrants write a 50,000 word story in a month. I'm not sure if I can do it, I'm not sure if I have the time and/or the self-discipline. But I have always wondered if I have the mettle for writing, and this is as good a time as any, and maybe there'll be a support network to go with it. Time will tell, but I need like 4,000 words by tomorrow night and I'm currently on 170! :P

Random photos. Why don't I post any?

2008-10-29T22:53:00.004Z

The lit courtyard of a shopping mall. Sure, it's a mall, but the lights are oh-so-pretty! - Haikou, Hainan, South China. January 2008

Tomb of Hairu - Haikou, January 2008

Pathway into Evergreen Park - Haikou, January 2008 - Reminds me of warmer times...

The weather outside is frightful

2008-10-29T21:52:00.003Z

So, the economy sucks, politics still springs up scandals like there's no tomorrow on both side of the Atlantic, it's frickin' freezing outside and I'm piled up with so much work that I may as well NOT have a 'reading week'.

But it snowed yesterday! Albeit rather briefly, and settling only enough to amass a depth of about an inch. But still, it did bring a smidgen of magic to my otherwise rather mundane lifestyle. Spending the day doing Practical Legal Research is hardly an engrossing use of the hours. But ah well, has to be done! But I should really go on a walk soon or something. All I'm currently seeing of London is the inside of restaurants and bars, and on occasion tube carraiges and buses. But it's so damn cold...

Also, the new James Bond film is coming out! I'm actually rather excited about this: I rewatched Casino Royale a few days ago and forgot how polished and slick it is! Daniel Craig will never be my Bond, Goldeneye is still my favourite and so by extension Pierce Brosnan.

In the last month, my playlist of new music has been dominated by:
- Kina Grannis = recently signed up-and-coming acoustic singer/songwriter... this is fast becoming the bread-and-butter of my music taste, isn't it?
- Kings of Leon = SO much better than the last album!
- Jimi Hendrix = fine, not really NEW music, but I'm rediscovering him!

Find the joy

2008-09-27T17:21:00.004+01:00

That's my goal. In a time when opening the newspaper is just a informant of misery (the economy sucks! The environment sucks! The political structure of the world sucks!) I challenge myself to think of something RIGHT with the world, just so in my mind, I can justify the inherent goodness in mankind. Ok, maybe that's a little melodramatic, but I just mean that life's not long enough to wallow in self-pity right? I turned to music for my attempt today, plugging in 'happy' into the search bar of my iTunes, and picking the first song that my eyes sprang to, "Happy Kid" by Nada Surf, I played it then remember how it was actually a somewhat depressing song, about someone being a happy kid with the "heart of a sad punk". Fail!

Jason Mraz does make me happy though. I recently saw him play a gig at the Royal Albert Hall, which was a tad surreal. It was a good set, though not enough old songs for my liking, though he did a couple of amazing covers of "Build Me Up Buttercup" and "Three Little Birds". He had a few brass musicians and a gospel choir backing up his usual bassist, drummer and Toca (harmony and bongo maestro extraordinaire!) But it irritated me a little how a lot of people were just sitting down and not even moving. If you're just going to do that, you might as well not come, just listen to the CD!

"You and I Both" is a great song that makes me happy :)

Time

2008-09-15T12:29:00.003+01:00

Time is a strange thing isn't it? It goes so fast when you want it to last, and when you want the time to pass, it seems endless. Now, for the most part, I'd say I've had a good past year, but it hasn't half gone quickly! This time last year, I was about to escape a boring dead-end temp job, but saving up to go travel. That's such a strange idea to me, to think that the moment was a year ago, when it seems so, perhaps a mere couple of months.

Maybe that's what makes life worth living, what can constitute our raison d'etre: anticipation. Whether it's anticipation of the next day, anticipation of seeing someone you love or just anticipation for a life-altering experience in the near horizon, I'd venture we all need something to look forward to. A life that's static and filled with nothing to look forward to is amongst my worst nightmares. But it's never too late to break out of that funk.

But, you know, that just goes to show that cliches do hold true, I suppose that's why they're cliches. Time does fly when you're having fun, and time really is fleeting, it really can be gone in a blink of an eye. I'm sure the people with not a lot of it left would appreciate more than the most of us who take it for granted. Surely we owe it to them to make the most of ours.

(Wow, that was really was a pile of the most awful drivel. But I spent a couple of minutes typing it so it's staying.)

More thoughts I'll leave you with:
- Some buskers are genuinely extremely talented. Sure you get the odd insane person on a tin whistle that gives the profession a bad name, but then you also get the guy on the acoustic guitar in Covent Garden that makes you stop and listen because they have a quality about them. You can normally tell how popular they are by the number of phones that are taken out to film them(!)
- I really enjoy meeting new people. They constantly remind me not to judge books by their respective covers and that a moment shared is that much more precious.
- Nick Hornby is and writes like a North London lad and that makes me happy.

Brief thoughts

2008-09-07T16:00:00.004+01:00

In bullet point form, 'cos I'm lazy and I suck.

- When I was out there, I thought I wanted to come back, but now I wish I was back in Singapore. The weather, and the innocence of life, right now, I would trade for the greater independence of thought and expression I yearned for.
- Law is a tough bitch of a mistress and I hope I can stay the course.
- postsecret.blogspot.com actually breaks my heart a little inside. People write in on postcards their secrets, in a one-liner, and send them off where they're put on the 'net. As a result people feel the freedom to send off their deepest secrets, those weighing on their mind. Now sometimes it's a sexual thing, but oftentimes it's an insecurity or complex so deepset than when they reveal it, I ache FOR them. I have had (to an extent still do) have more insecurities than I know how to deal with, and I handle them by a large capacity to compartmentalise and push them to one side. For those less able to do so, such outlets are ideal, and it's both liberating and immensely saddening to read other people's.
- I sometimes worry that I 'feel' more due to books, films and songs than I do about my own life.
- The thought of the 'butterfly effect', the phenomenon, school of thought, whatever, freaks me out when I think about it too much.

Thoughts from Singapore

2008-08-17T17:39:00.004+01:00

I really am quite an incorrigible sloth. It has been nigh on two months since my last blog post, and for no more excusable a reason than my own inability to motivate myself to do things that don't necessarily require to be done at that very minute. Nevertheless I shall make the most of this no doubt merely momentary pang of guilt to write.

Singapore is quaint. I can think of no word more appropriate right now to describe it. Yes, it's one of the most modern cities in South East Asia, and terrifically economically active considering the sheer size (or rather lack thereof). I'd hypothesise that this is due to mainly the economically-minded nature of the government, ever keen to invite the foreign businesses into the city-state, realising that it is the fastest way to inject capital and enterprise into the country with minimal effort on Singapore's part. Also, it has seemingly taken on a role as a kind of hub from which, at least law firms, like to operate out of as a base in South East Asia. The tax is low, and doubtless the government offers other incentives in a bid to encourage this.

But I digress. Despite the developed and ever-changing nature of the country, there's something rather old-fashioned about the place. It's as if, while the world around it evolves, and Singapore likewise adopts the changes in technology and trends, its heart remains old-fashioned. I'm not entirely sure how I come upon this theory.
Maybe it's due to the highly Asian nature of the country. It's a fairly Westernised country, though the people are some 97% Asian, principally Chinese, then Malay and Indian. So as a result, the old-school family values are still in force so to speak.
Maybe it's the air of slight naïveté. Yesterday, the Prime Minister of Singapore gave his annual national rally (which, by the way, is freaking LONG! 2 hours of alternating between pats on the back, new minor improvements to the public services that were announced with such aplomb, and policies for self improvement – not to mention he then gives the speech in Malay and Mandarin!) during which a key part was how the Singapore birth rate has dropped over the past 40 years, leading onto a conclusion that the people need to date more, marry sooner, and have more kids. Fairly simple premises, one might thing, except the first part is apparently something of a key stumbling point. People just don't seem to date as much anymore! To such an extent, apparently, that the public services are taking affirmative action. Some of the schools and polytechnics (like the vocational colleges back in England, though more academic than those) offer elective modules that are pretty much dating and human relationships 101. I guess in England we take for granted that we know how to meet and talk to members of the opposite sex, though obviously the success rate will vary greatly(!) I'm not entirely certain how this comes about, just that it does, and to my knowledge there is no such formalised education on the matter. The STATE has started its own dating agencies in addition to the private ones in effect, and there is talk of bringing back the Asian mothers' matchmaking schemes. Awww bless...?
Maybe it's the love of simple pleasures that has an air of radiating innocence about it. The average Singaporean family will crave the same material goods as any other in the modern world. Toys, footballs, DVDs... But key among their interests, Singaporeans would almost undoubtedly state food. This is most definitely a Singaporean phenomenon, with families, adults, teens and even kids will enjoy travelling a little further away from their usual circles of activity to grab a certain dish. They will drive for the sole purpose of purchasing that extra juicy durian (a pungent fruit with spiky skin and a Marmite-esque hate-it-or-love-it following), or sampling that delicious fishball soup their friend suggested, or that bee hoon (a kind of noodles) with the extra je-ne-sais-quoi about it, or that satay that brings back fond memories. It also makes the food market terribly competitive, and keeps the prices reasonable for the most part. Which is great for any tourists with hefty stomachs and a willingness to experiment.

Any mention of Singapore in these days would be lacking something if it did not mention the table-tennis. Olympic fever has truly struck the nation, the papers, the McDonald's promotion, the dominating the terrestrial television channels, it's all there. And with that comes the national pride, which this year above all recent years has peaked spectacularly. Singapore fielded a comparatively small Olympic team of 23, with a few key hopes. (I'm going to ignore for now that a not unsizable proportion of said athletes were born in China. Hmmm.) Tao Li, an 18-year old swimming sensation, the table-tennis players and the badminton players. Now, most of the athletes tried their damnedest to bring home a medal but were swept aside by more experienced, and larger countries with greater numbers and resources. But Tao Li managed to come 5th in her finals Butterfly swimming event (I forget the distance) and break an Asian record, to Singapore's delight. But the heroines of the week, and possibly year, were the women's table-tennis team. The trio of Li Jia Wei, Feng Tian Wu and Ms Wang (whom my family monikered the 'Auntie', after her rather more motherly appearance despite her young age) who fought their way to a Silver medal, and notably Singapore's first medal in 48 years, their first since the country gained independence. They were fairly easily swept aside by China in the finals, but apparently were China's longest match, and by no means just laid down and surrendered, putting up an honourable performance. Nary a day would go by since about a week before the Olympics when mention was not made of Li Jia Wei either on the TV or radio, or by people around me. The three are the Singaporeans of the moment, their faces have been everywhere today, and they are being quite rightfully lauded as national treasures. Kudos to them, I say. If not for the sporting achievement, then for bringing a nation together, giving them something to feel proud of and for reminding them that despite the size of the country, it doesn't mean you can't shoot for the stars. It was rather a strange experience yesterday, the gym and pool I went to with my family was cleared out when it got nearer to match time and the hawker centres were quiet until after it was over, aside from the middle aged men who huddled around small TVs making an enormous ruckus.

At some point later, I will probably type a brief and vague critique of some of the things I've noticed here, but I'm rather fond of the country at present and my Singapore side is rather loathe to say anything too scathing about them today :)

On a more personal note, I'm now on my second law firm internship. Now this one is a deal more interesting than that which I undertook last month. I'd venture that being a larger firm, they are able to offer more resources, in this case, an actual station to work at, and a mentor to shadow and work alongside, as well as better opportunities to go to court and sit in on meetings. On a more juvenile note, I think another contributing factor is that I'm not the only intern this time. I get to unwind at lunchtime and wax lyrical on the mild stints of boredom and occasional spikes of exciting work. And procrastinate with the others with the e-mail thread that is intermittently active. Ahem.

As a little parting memo to myself, perhaps it would be an idea to finally participate in that NaNoWriMo thing I keep finding random mentions to on the internet. For the benefit of any random readers who accidentally stumble across my mumblings, the above is an internet event that happens every year, and, though I forget what it stands for, basically calls upon people to 'write' a 10,000? 100,000? word 'story' in the course of a month, if memory serves, in November. They don't have a bar set for the quality of the work, the aim is merely to get people writing. Such a purpose, I hope, might actually spur me into writing a bit more, and satisfy that little feeling in the back of my mind that I could possible be an OK writer if I put my mind to it. What better way to test it than reading my own mini-novella? I only worry that I might be legitimately too busy to do it, but I shall endeavour. I hope.

When I grow up, I want to be...

2008-06-23T11:52:00.003+01:00

When I'm employed, and come into my own as a proper, well-adjusted adult and all that jazz (I don't reckon I'm JUST quite there yet. For one I don't have a job!) I don't know who I'll be. I am by no means certain of what kind of father I'd be given the chance. But after observing people recently, what I want to lay out now, for my own benefit is who I do NOT want to be. Wouldn't it just be fanastically film-like if I turned out to be a right twat later in life, find this, and see the error of my ways?

- I do not want to be someone defined MERELY by his career and salary. Obviously, with any intense and demanding job, this will be harder, as employment will take up the lion's share of one's time. But there is no reason why it should be the case that anyone has NOTHING else in their lives. I want to still keep in touch with the art scene: such as I am right now (which is rather limited to be frank). But I don't want my only exposure to things that are non-work related to be something I accidentally read about while on my way to the stocks section of the FT. Work to live, not live to work.

- I will not be one of those people obsessed by money. There is a world of difference between being careful with your money, and being an overly tight-fisted bastard. Never in my life do I want to end up stopping doing things I want, for and with the people I love, because of money if I am 'of means'. There is a great uncertainty about what this life is about, and how to make it worthwhile. I am of the opinion that part of it, is spending time with others, and influencing them and inspiring them for the better. Being a hermit goes against this.

- I NEVER want to be narrow minded. I despise unmerited racism, classism and belittling of others for superficial and unimportant reasons. Books are more than their covers, and so forth!

I daresay this list can, and probably will continue. But I should leave Starbucks now, despite the free internet! I've been here almost 3 hours, and that's not good! I'd like to write about Singapore a bit, dear blog, and shall do so at a later date.

My current fad

2008-06-06T00:43:00.005+01:00

I don't mind admitting that my concentration with respects to anything is for the most part fleeting, my attention span limited and my likes changeable. All I can truly hope for that in my half-hearted and never-ending quest for that song or film that will completely change my life or sum up the current state of affairs in a manner I could never achieve, that I will take something from it that I will value for the longer term.

Or linked memories. "Hey Yah" by Outkast will unfortunately always remind me of 2004, A2 exam year. "By The Way" by RHCP will always aid recollection of 2003. "La Nueva Belleza" by Jason Mraz will forever make me think of the time C.G. and I just couldn't find the strength to revise anymore in 2007 and quite apparently did ANYTHING but. The bands that will hold my allegiance, the Coldplay's, the Jason Mraz's, the Muse's, the Joshua Radin's, The Weepies's, the KT Tunstall's and the Nada Surf's of this world... They will hold special places for me. As will the films, the Shawshank Redemption's, the Big Fish's...

While I've just mentioned Coldplay (thank you, I am the master of terrible segues... on that note, could anyone more linguistically minded tell me why there's no accent on that word?) they've a new album coming out next week! "Viva la Vida" it's called, apparently based on the title of a Frida Kahlo painting? At this instant, I'm listening to a preview of the album on Myspace.com. As I did with "Rush of Blood to the Head" I can't tell whether I like it or not. A few tracks, most notably the titular song, "Violet Hill" and the intro song "Life in Technicolour" stand out for me but I suspect the rest will shine as brightly upon a second listen through. I have to make darn sure to get it in time for the 14th though, when I'm due to leave England's green and pleasant lands AGAIN! Going to have to miss people all over again.

Feel I must make a mention of the new Jason Mraz album. That guy is just a wonderful singer/songwriter with such an amazing variety of songs, that'll make you want to alternately want to skip around the room and stare out the window at the sunset. In particular, "I'm Yours" from the album has to be at present one of my favourite songs, it's so cheery and cute that you can't help but love it.

Also, I recently saw the film "The Bucket List" starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. What follows is the comment I felt compelled to leave on imdb.com. Not so impressive or coherent I know, but I did write at a wee hour in the morning.

Before this movie, only one other movie has made my eyes water, and that was Big Fish. I think what made that happen was the idea that Albert Finney's character in Big Fish found fulfilment in his son's acceptance of his ways and in the embracing of the characters in whose lives Edward (I think that was the character's name?) had made such a profound impact. In the same way, here that these two men found fulfilment in each other touched me profoundly.

The film is in its own way so very simple. Nothing spectacular happens, and in a way nothing needs to. As you can predict, it doesn't take a genius to gather from the plot that Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman (in not quite career-summing-up breakout performances, but more than adequate and moving turns here) die, and it's in the simple yet deep things that make their life worthy, and enables them to "find their joy" before they finally succumb to their inevitable deaths. In the quest to complete their Bucket List, they seek, in a way that's only fantasy for others, to wholly and completely tie up their loose end before they kick the bucket, and the sheer closeness they achieve through the sharing of their combined destinies and rejoicing in both their similarities and differences. I found Morgan Freeman's character was a little more fleshed out, in that he got given more nuances to work with, but Jack Nicholson was on form in the same vein of more mature movies he finds himself excelling in.

In all, a good film, certainly worth a watch and Morgan Freeman, Jack Nicholson, and the scriptwriter have here a movie of which to be proud, and that will mean a lot to many people.

Teaching commences Monday...

2008-03-01T04:25:00.003Z

So there's a massive chunk missing from the blog, I haven't written about Dali or Kunming. Will probably do so at a later point, apologies :P

So I've finished travelling and been placed at a primary school in Haikou with a girl (incidentally, Catherine, the one I went travelling with over February) and other pairs and triplets have been similarly relocated (with the exception of 3 who are staying in the hostel). We've been put in a flat which I can't decide whether is nice or not. The bedrooms and living rooms are quite nice, although there are pencil drawings on the wall, but the kitchen and bathroom are pretty pants. The kitchen has no fridge or oven, just a microwave, which I don't think works properly, leastways the dish can't spin, we'll have to get that fixed, a rice cooker which I think works, a kettle, which does, and a single hob which doesn't. It's a shame, was looking forward to making omelettes and so forth! It'll hopefully get fixed very soon though. The bathroom has a gas powered shower (which is operated off a gas tank which we have to remember to turn on and off on pain of having a cold shower), a sink, and most depressingly of all, a Chinese-style toilet. Guess I'm going to have to get used to it now!

The area I'm in isn't too far from the hostel, probably about 15mins by car, but it's just in something of a random area in which we've never previously been. It's just around the corner from a BIG market, with the biggest array of open air fresh food stalls I've seen for a long time: lots of fresh fruit, veg, fish and meat. And eggs, obviously. Very important. And just down the road are lots of shops and banks and this internet cafe, so all in all, apart from the random location, not a bad area in which to live! (Wow, this no preposition at the end of the sentence rule is making me write in a rather weird manner, no?) We start observing English classes on Monday, and presumably start teaching proper as soon as possible. I have been given my schedule, it turns out I will be teaching 7, 8 and 9 year olds. The icing and cherry on the massive cake of apprehension is the fact that we have been told the classes will be between 50 and 60 kids large. Ouch. If the kids actually listen to me, it'll be a laugh. At least it'll be an experience, right?

The most noticable thing is the lack of other people around. Myself and Cat were just watching a DVD on our rather large TV last night, and when it ended we were at something of a loss of what to do! Guess that'll be why our predecessors went out most nights, helps kill the monotony? Will keep my fingers crossed that all goes well!

2008-02-19T11:10:00.001Z

Anyhow, Team Old Towners are fricking hardcore! We walked along the Tiger Leaping Gorge about a 2 and a half bus ride from Lijiang. It was quite a hardcore walk/climb: we hiked for the better part of 5 or 6 hours yesterday and 4 or 5 hours today. Today was pretty easy comparatively, but part of yesterday's trek was mental! It was an uphill section called the 28 Bends (though various other maps call it the 24, 26 or 30 Bends). Needless to say, there were a lot of bends and it was a tough, sweat-inducing, bend-cursing climb. But the views all along the way are incredible, and genuinely recollecting of Lord of the rings, from the green pastures, the waterfalls and the blackened, mist-laden, Mordor-esque mounts. Every so often we stopped to catch our breaths, take photos or just absorb the beauty.

Overnight we stayed at the Tea Horse Guest House, which for location alone made it one of the better places we've stayed at. Yes, the room was fricking cold and there WAS an electric wire hanging over my head while I slept, but when you've been climbing your little legs out, anywhere with clean shelter, a picturesque location and a generous menu including beer, your expectations are slightly lowered. We also met some nice people along the way. I, and later the others, Will somewhat begrudgingly, got up early to watch the sunrise over the peak of the Jade Snow Mountains, which stand at around 5700m, worth it completely, even if I was freezing my butt off first thing in the morning. There was also a caged monkey in the back near the simple squat toilets and basic shower facilities, a dog which barked JUST when we were trying to sleep, and a cardboard box in which there was a dog and its two immensely cute puppies.

Today's walk was a little easier, being mostly downhill but only slightly less breaktaking. After a bumpy rocky minibus ride to Qiao Tou, the starting village of the route, we got another minibus back in Lijiang, much to our reliefs. It was an amazing excursion, but it feels good to rest the legs :D

LiJiang

2008-02-17T15:04:00.002Z

[Again extracted from a Facebook message thread. Sorry, can't generally be bothered to type it out twice!]

The Old Town-ers are in Li Jiang which is beautiful. It's so pictoresque in a manner reminiscent of old European towns (Alsace for example) or Canada, in that it's modern, and in its cleanliness and the facilities that it is POSSIBLE to find, but still very much aware of its roots and its place in its natural and mountainy beautiful surroundings. It's old school without being grungy and traditional without being backward.

Our hostel is near the heart of the Old Town, which means even a short trip to the post office is a worthwhile voyage. This morning we saw some Naxi ladies in costume (though they mostly seem to remain so irregardless) dancing in circles! Random, eh?

We went to a village called BaiSha today and the nearby monastery with its awesome decor and frescoes. We have just been generally absorbing the atmosphere of this most beautiful of towns (so far) and trying out the local Naxi food (Naxi bread, cake, sausage - something akin to black pudding, yak meat, yoghurt and fried goat's cheese).

Tomorrow we intend to go to Tiger Leaping Gorge which should be awesome! Though we just heard a rumour Lijiang is going to be hit by snow soon which is fairly worrying! Everyone apart this one American couple (omg, another Chineseman who doesn't know Chinese! Met an Aussie girl in Chengdu too! Don't feel as stupid anymore! Score!) says it'll be nice though, including tourist offices and websites so we're probably going ahead anyhow :D

Chengdu 1

2008-02-11T11:06:00.001Z

Team Panda (just thought that up, sounds pretty hench to me) has just arrived in Chengdu after a 26 hour train trip. It went pretty quickly considering, perhaps because we slept for some of it, perhaps because of the immense bant (me and Himesh and our after hours subtle abuse of Guilin) and perhaps because we were in a soft sleeper carriage. It's fairly basic, but like the First Class of Chinese trains. We felt like we were on the Hogwarts Express. Well maybe just me and Himesh.

The place we've just checked into (the Loft no. 4 Factory) is pretty cool, basic, but it looks like a converted factory, so youthful, and perhaps most important, we have found an in-house bar which has Tsingtao for 10kwai and JD and coke for 16. We know what we're doing tonight!

Yangshou

2008-02-07T10:34:00.001Z

On our last full day in Guilin, we went on a Li River cruise, along the river that runs between Guilin and Yangshou and a myriad of other places besides. It's such a pictoresque place and I have no regrets for doing it, if only because in that two hours, I got a wonderful selection of pictures, such as one imagines when one thinks of China, as in the paintings most commonly found on restaurant walls. But I couldn't help thinking that:
- It would've been a sight more deep blue and bright green in the summer months
- The cold and lack of warmth in the boat marred the experience a TAD
- After a time, mountains do start to look rather same-y :P
Also the guide left us in the middle of nowhere between Guilin and Yangshou just pointing in a direction. A little worrying for a short space of time! :P

Yangshou Tales:

Chinese New Year was ok, a little boring actually. We had dinner in a very Chinese place (through pointing and my very stunted pidgin Chinese I'm being the spokesman of the group, I don't know if I'm getting better or I'm just very good at pointing) where we had the local specialty, beer fish. It was ok, but I've had better in Guilin. People were letting off fireworks near the riverfront, but just small families, there was no massive firework display as such! We tried hard to find a good place to get a drink, but failed! Everywhere was just too empty, too crowded, too pricey or too outright gay! Not sure any of us bar Will wanted to go into the place with the gay grinding guys with cowboy hats. He claims he wanted to bail when he saw them.

We ended up, at the stroke of midnight, in an OK place with dice and a couple of Aussie girls we met at Guilin. Had some jokes talking about the differences between our two fair countries (we're POMs, they're crims), dissing various accents (apparently I sound like Hugh Grant, and I retaliated with a stinging comeback about their appalling syllable elongation. Well not so much much elongation as creation. Dammit, 'ear' and beer' have ONE syllable each!) and general bant-astic times. But the Aussies hated the Buble, which was a shocker to say the least. Not pleased. We met some other randomers from Israel and Germany who were nice enough. The phrase from Fight Club came to mind, they were perfectly satisfying 'single serving friends'.

Today, we got up a deal later than we had to and walked the 8 odd kms (it was meant to be like 6, but we got lost along the way. Ahem. Chinese roadsigns are misleading!) to Moon Hill, so called because at the very top, the loop of the hill or mountain resembles an upside down crescent moon. It was a pretty tiring trek up, but well worth it for the views, and we rather tragically felt a few Lord of the Rings comparisons. Felt obliged to yell "Buble!" off the top. Obviously mine echoed the most... Will's was just plain feeble. Lots of wonderful scenery along the way, I was a terrible, and probably immensely annoying, camera slut, taking photos of absolutely anything I deemed even slightly photo-worthy.

Tomorrow should be awesome as we're going to the Longsheng Rice Terraces. Though we do have to meet outside the tourist office at 7.20 in the morning and the trip is 3 and a half hours there. Better charge the old iPod, eh?

Guilin 2

2008-02-04T06:10:00.001Z

[Again extracted... sorry, I'm lazy! Michael Bubles are... pretty self explanatory :P Say his name slowly... I'm not 21, honest!]

Anisha/Wolmar/Ali - We have heard Yo Mei Yo and also that 'Round, and round, and round we go!' song as well. Also, the music in the hostel is muy shite-io. Saxophone covers of 'classics', Mariah Carey (not even the good ones) and just not good.

Our fellow hosteliers are pretty funky, met a couple of Aussie girls (now in the unforgiving clutches of Paul), a New Zealand girl and gal, a couple of guys from Macao (the portugese one was lovely but would not shut up and leave me alone! :P)

We're having a lazy day today, got up at 11, and will just have a walk around later... it's a little warmer today which is pleasant. Yesterday, we had a very very good day (at least in my opinion, but I would venture the others agree). In the morning, we grabbed a few of those breakfast kruller things and waited for a bus to the Reed Flute Caves, which were brilliantly lit up with different coloured lights. Like nothing I'd seen before, though Paul has seen better! Obviously... Photos to come on later. We also paid 10kwai each (down from 20... skanky bastards) to see apparently 1000-year-old turtles, though we remain sceptical as to the age. We just ended up feeling sorry for them however, they were just sat on a rug or in small ponds or tanks. They all looked unhappy, still or at best lethargic. Never again do I want to pay money to feel sorry for entrapped nature.

After lunch we took a bus the other way to FuBo Hill, which wasn't nearly as high as the Ding An mount we climbed, but still impressively surrounded by little hill/mountains (or as we unanimously agreed 'Surrounded by Michaels/Bubles *). There was also a little cave thing to walk around, including a cave of a thousand Buddhas (the Chinese seem to love that number), and there were quite a few carved into the rock, a little alcove with a Buddhist candle-lit shrine, and some curiously located Chinese calligraphy carved into the cave wall faces.

* Himesh remains irritated by my incapability to use acute accents over the 'e' in Buble

We came back and chilled in the hostel (Himesh and I played pool with the New Zealanders, the girl was a definite 7/8 :P) and then had dinner in a nearby restaurant. We all had rice (and of course, stomach of the bottomless pit Will had another fried rice in addition) and Cat had a rather spicy beancurd, Will a rather unsatisfying beef and celery, and me and Himesh had the spectacular, local delicacy, actually-made-my-day-complete, 'Beer Fish', a really tender white fish fried with a beer sauce. Came back and played Shit Head (some things don't change) with Paul, Aussie girls and a London copper named Glen, who is admirably taking a 5 month trip to see half the Pacific ring seemingly! Then got accosted by the newly arrived Macao peeps, and the Portuguese one called Diogo was so sodding friendly I felt incapable of telling him to sod off!

Guilin 1

2008-02-02T16:07:00.002Z

[Extract from group facebook message]

First night in Guilin

Team Guilin are doing well. We had what sounds like the least complicated ride in, not to rub it in anyones faces. Cab to the airport was fine, though I was stuck in the middle. Things were crushed that nature did not intend to be. Flight not delayed, and hey, isn't the airport a damn sight nicer to look at than it did when we arrived, eh? Flight itself was short and pretty fine, though I may have wasted the window seat by completely conking out before we'd even taxi'd, waking up about halfway handily to Catherine telling me they were handing out unexpected sandwiches... in your face, Easyjet! They also gave out what I'm told were REALLY nice coffees but I wasn't feeling it at the time. Also fell asleep right after that. We were wheeling back in when I woke up and Catherine laughed in my face when I asked if I'd missed the landing.Guilin is very cold, but not as bad as we were expecting. No signs of snow etc and we are told we'll also get some sunshine soon! It is also a lot more developed than I'd envisaged when we sat in the hostel missing you all more than we cared to admit. It's like Hong Kong but with wider streets, cleaner, and just a rather interesting place by night (we have yet to see it by day). We had a pretty easy and scenic cab ride in, with only a very minor confusion with address on the driver's part. Turns out he'd taken us a mere block away.

The hostel seems nice, if a little on the rustic side, with a brick and wooden panelling finishing reminiscent of a ski lodge. Unfortunately, it has all of the cold and none of the open fires and heaters. In our shared 4-bed dorm room, we've made it rather more manageable with hot air spewing out the air conditioning unit. It's got white people in too! Mental... we briefly chatted to a couple of Aussie girls and an Israeli guy whom I strongly suspect was gay and... let's say lonely. After a rather overpriced Dan Chow Fan (egg fried rice to those not in the know ;p) and soup noodle we returned to hostel. Cat and Guilin (immeasurably pleased to be back in his namesake and spiritual home) are sleeping and I'm here typing like a FB addict with Himesh reading over my shoulder and playing pool with Paul, who is as ever a veritable font of interesting stories(!)

Quick one.

2008-01-24T10:46:00.001Z

[Written on Sunday for Cathy]

So it's been a pretty weird weekend. We (the group of other volunteers on the same scheme as me) went to a different part of the island for a bit of a trip, left yesterday morning and came back in time for lunch today. Saw a nice bit of scenery both days: on Saturday we went to this Temple (I'm still not ENTIRELY certain whether it was Buddhist or Taoist) located on a mountain, which meant the walking to the top bit was a little tiring but the views were AMAZING. The actual temple and some of the features (gaudily painted buildings, stone stairs and water features) we heard, were actually a mere several years old, which slightly detracted from the pictoresque charm of the place. (Ancient Buddhist temple, from the Oriental range, available now from an Ikea near you!) Slightly mortifying though was the fact that my camera ran out of juice, pretty much as soon I took it out, all the views were, in that way, wasted on me. Bummer. Will have to instead resort to stealing off others on Facebook, the classy way, eh?Today we went to this lake, which was really pretty, and definitely worth a few photos (Dammit.) but you know how it is, after a while, it just becomes an expanse of water. Skimmed a few stones, ooh'd ah'd then left. Must have spent a good 3 hours in the old minibus these past few days. Awesome.Last night we went to a bar and picked up a stalker! Now, group leads to immense fascination everywhere we go, from random outcries of "Hello!" every now and then to just plain outright staring. But there was this guy who was royally royallly pissed off his head, he spilt beer over someone, fell over and nearly overturned a table. And then when we tried to leave he was a little overfriendly... paying for the pool games a few of the others were playing, and kept following us and offering to buy us dinner and paying for our hotel rooms and so forth. Our native guide (ha!) advised us it would be a bad idea to do so... hardly something we needed telling from the state of him. One of our number, a 6'9" beast of a guy, kept wanting to lamp him, despite/due to being pretty inebriated himself and we had to tell him not to. One of the girls was crying (albeit for good reason, which I will not going into now), one of the guys was... in a bit of a state too. Anyhow, stalker came INTO the courtyard of the hostel and tried to hunt us down, which freaked out the girls no end, to the point where they were frantically locking their doors and locating penknives, which would've been hilarious were they not so upset. He left, later after Martin (our guide, a brilliantly patient and helpful man) calmed him down and convinced him to leave. So, bit of an interesting night really!

Songs that won't get out of my head:
- Apologize - Timbaland and One Republic
- Turpentine - Brandi Carlile
- Can You Feel The Love Tonight - Lion King OST

Things I'm missing...

2008-01-16T05:53:00.001Z

It's been a fair uneventful time in Haikou these past few days. We have, for the most part, been having lessons in Chinese (handy!) and teaching (pointless). I have finally opened the little book I brought with me and am now making some attempt at writing a diary. Yes, I may have written only 2 entries, but I'm making an effort! I just think I'd like to have something to read back later on when Hainan is but a memory, something more tangible than fleeting recollections. Though what I classify as noteworthy is fairly limited, though it'll be the little things, the banter, the nights out and the in-jokes that I'd really want to take away with me. Thus far anyway - once I hit China proper in February, THEN I'll have some disgustingly cool memories to take away with me. On that note, I've realised I should really take my camera around with me more...

I have also experienced a little of the awkwardness that I was afraid of getting before I came out here. Shopkeepers expect me to speak Chinese and me, my fellow travellers and the shop assistance all get a little disappointed when I fall completely short. I have also once been laughed at (I felt about 2 feet tall) but overall they're alright with it.

And so, as I have nothing great to report (do you really want to hear about the time I went to the shopping mall and bought peanut butter? Little tragic that shopping for little things is now our life...) I'm going to instead list out things I'm missing about the little island I call home:
- Rather depressingly, the ability to mess about on my iTunes. I have my playlists by mood and so forth, and my moods are changing now I'm out here and I'm having to go back to old ones. IT may sound a little sad, and I daresay it is, but music has always been a part of my life and so the altering of my ability to thus control it is a little frustrating.
- The green of non-tropical trees, grass and plants. Around the area of Haikou we're staying in, there are mainly main roads and heavily neon-ed buildings, but there are certainly no shortage of trees but they're all palms, and there is a street where there are about 12 flower shops where the bouquets are wonderfully colourful, but somehow artificial in their beauty. I miss the deep, darker green of the trees around Victoria Park, not that I could name them for you.
- All you guys. The people here are all pretty sound, though as I may or may not have said, I'm starting to see the divisions forming, not in any kind of harsh or spiteful way, more the sad yet inevitable ebb away... But I can't help but think this experience would be all the better if I had just one or two of you out here. As is rather predictable, I keep seeing and hearing things that remind me of London (to me, London is the Londoners, ie you, rather than, say, the tower of Big Ben) and that gives me a short pang of longing for the familiar voices and faces. For example, I met a couple of the group who have heard and love Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours"... that's not the most common song, so obviously I think of a few of you (you know who you are, if you're reading this, KN, CG, SH...)
- The feeling of complete safety just walking about on the streets. It's rather strange. I'm not at all scared walking about, just a little ill at ease and feeling as if I have to keep alert. In some ways, Hong Kong and Singapore prepared me for this experience but I felt alright there, as if I could get by if I needed to (Singapore more so... the language definitely helps) but here I feel perpetually like a stranger.

We're going to a temple on a mountain or something like that this weekend and staying over for the night. That should be interesting and worth a story or two... I shall keep you in the loop :)

p.s. Nick, if you read this, I bought seasons 1 and 2 of "How I Met Your Mother" on fake DVD for like one quid, how cool is that?!

Wo xi huan Hainan

2008-01-09T16:28:00.001Z

And so my little stint in the Motherland continues!

We started the Mandarin classes today. I had a little of an advantage when it came to the initial pronounciation sections, as I obviously have more of a wealth of experience to draw upon, what with the exposure to words and so forth. But as we're now on the process of learning the phrases, any advantage I had has now swiftly disappeared. I still feel the obligation to be at the top end though, it'd be a shame if I wasn't... it's meant to be my mother tongue and all that.

The days here as the same time, oxymoronically (or just moronically? It's late and I've had little sleep!) seem to go really quickly and really slowly. The days seem to extend quite a lot and so as a result we get a lot packed into the days, although a little less so now, as we start to fall into the lesson schedule. Thus far, we've visited, as said, Holiday Beach, Evergreen Park (again reminding me uncannily of Singapore), the tomb of Hairu (apparently one of the early chieftains of Hainan), a few shopping malls here and there, and a couple of small things here and there.

And gone out a fair bit also ;) It's not completely our faults the beer is so cheap, nor that locals insist on buying rounds of drinks and ridiculously priced chips in the clubs for us! Upon requesting that they allow us to get a round in, we get rebuffed and besides which we have been told it would be considered bad manners and poor form to reject them. They're not all ideal though... last night, we returned to 'Allen's Bar' after a terrible terrible mockery of a KTV (karaoke) attempt in the place actually just across the road from us. W.V. we suspect, may have gotten his drink spiked, and as a result was... 'ill' throughout for a long time, to the extent that I felt compelled to stay up with him for until I was sure he was OK, but it wasn't too bad as I did have company for it for the great majority. But that's not the kind of thing Palin would write about is it? :P

What he might have written about is how far the pound stretches out here (the local cornershop sells a crate of 12 700ml beers for a slip over 3 quid), how the locals are for the most part friendly, more than keen, though shy, to talk to us as they would love to be able to tell their peers they spoke to a foreigner. Obviously with me this is a tad less of an issue, though I'm pretty sure I nevertheless bemuse them with my level of English.

I'm not overly certain what to write anymore, which is something of a strange occurence. Due to laziness, sleep deprivation (10 and a half hours in the past few days!) and not a small degree of lack of commitment, I'm obviously adverse to type up the entirety of my day's content, but the more I can write now the better for later, I suppose. And of the experiences I have undergone on a day to day basis, what becomes newsworthy on a daily scale?

However, I AM excited by the:
- prospect of teaching, strangely. I may end up with the opportunity to share a class and take a few adults for a conversational class tomorrow.
- the travelling in February. Myself and WS and CH have decided to travel to Guilin and the surrounding area by train for the few weeks we get off during the Chinese New Year (though they refer to is as the "Spring Festival" here) break. It should be more useful and give rise to more useful stories at a later date, what with the prospect of the awe-inspiring scenery, the Chinese New Year celebrations, and a lack of purpose-filled itineraries. We shall see.

"The Great Firewall of China"

2008-01-07T00:22:00.001Z

You have to go via a proxy to get to the BBC website! What the heck? Though I'd hope not to the same extremes, surely there is in that something reminiscent of the Second World War, where people on precious stored radios listened to the BBC World Service to get news about the progress of the war. Obviously that's again being somewhat overdramatic, that's just the brief vibe I got upon receiving that particular bit of information.

So it's Day 3, and my interest is still not waning! Woo! Currently sat in a darkened internet cafe surrounded by highly excitable Chinese kids playing Warcraft III and yelling each other in relation to it. It's an improvement on the other night, I suppose, where there was a man sitting in the corner watching porn and... well, he was quiet, and his face intent and his hands not on his keyboard. Ahem.

Not really been doing anything too hardcore at present, nor have I really been trying out the old Mandarin, but I expect that will swiftly change when we get chucked into schools. We're about to start the learning, of teaching skills and basic Chinese language, and that should be pretty useful. I'm feeling a little too overconfident about the teaching part, I guess my Kumon experience and other stuff has given me more than the average amount of exposure to teaching kiddies, but I expect the scale and so forth of what we're about to do is somewhat different. I have at least lost the feeling the small feeling of dread I had just before I left. Everyone is really nice and it's all fairly close knit. It's actually somewhat reminiscent of Fresher's Week: especially due to the communal dining room we all hang out in and spend the majority of our spare time in the building in.

Had a couple of excursions here and there also, taken a few photos, and still a little uncertain how I'm going to get them onto the old facebook but that's not really an issue. The 'Holiday Beach' about 20 drive away is really nice, but yesterday we only spent a little over an hour there... we intend to go back on our day off on Sunday, should be a laugh.

The whole place reminds me a little of the less developed areas of Singapore, the same sense of the urban being plonked into the middle of a tropical rural area, with the (albeit planted) tropical trees around, the villagers around... it's a very varying area though, with the environment changing from mile to mile down the main roads. The locals treat us,mostly the others obviously, with the expected level of awe. It seems as if they'd been blessed the presence of a unicorn or something. Some are friendly and curious and say "Hi" to us, and grin the widest smile when we respond positively.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?

2008-01-05T01:40:00.001Z

On a random note, is there a living person who actually knows all the words to this song off by heart? Or the full national anthem for that matter? I'd like to hope that there is, that somewhere exists such a bastion of the Britain of the old school, for it would surely be a shame if not.

So, I actually had a good New Year's Eve this year. I can't even remember what I ended up doing last year, the year before that I was ill with the mumps, and the year before that I was on a plane over probably the Middle East at the time.

Anyhow this year I went to a friend's house for a New Year's Eve party (Thanks L.B. if you ever get around to reading this! It was a truly awesome night) and it was nice to spend the night with a bunch of friends, and more food and drink (muhaha... strawberry vodka...) than could ever realistically have been consumed on that night, and to be honest most likely another one too. I'm going to stop short of giving a full play-by-play account, because it did get rather convoluted and, indeed, confusing at times (eating chocolate while wearing Arctic gear game? Sounds a great deal more fun than it is... the game where winning can in fact just feel like losing). New Year's is renowned as being one of the biggest overhyped letdowns of the year, and ha, to be fair in terms of an ACTUAL New Year celebration it wasn't the most successful. We somehow ended up with two separate countdowns (one from the TV and one of L.B.'s own inebriated imagination) but M.S. made a gallant effort with her inspired provision of party-poppers! But it was a brilliant knees-up, that is not in doubt. Ring of Fire, Guitar Hero 3 after drinks... it was just very very fun! :-)

On Wednesday I had a farewell curry after work. Curry was fine, had a drink and the customary go on the It Box. And tonight, I went and watch "Enchanted" (which, I'll agree is somewhat kiddie and cheesy, but a part of everyone has to love the Disney. Plus, Amy Adams is hot! *shrugs*) and attempt to have a quick sneaky bevvy before I had to go home and sleep (clearly, that's not working out so well, I have to be up in 5 hours! Screw it, I have all of the flight to sleep, I suppose). But that wasn't the point I was trying to make. What I was attempting to get across is the strange feeling I got those times somewhere between my gut and my chest... the same feeling I got in a much smaller measure when I left work for the last time earlier on... I suppose it was preemptive homesickness. Perhaps not in the strictest sense of the word. As much as I love being a Londoner, the Finchley house for some reason hasn't really felt like home for... a while at any rate, and I certainly won't miss the weather... the cruel bitter cold that stubbornly refused to bring at least the consolation snow along with it. But I will certainly miss the people (most of them at any rate)... each of the farewells, some of them over the phone, some of them rushed yes, felt a little like I was a cup, and with each goodbye some of the liquid I was holding was being poured out. At the moment, when the reality and enormity has finally hit me for real, I feel somewhat merely half full (but not half empty!) and it'll take a little bit of time to get back up to full... fullness. A friend tried to tell me that this feeling is fleeting, that while parting may, as it is said, be such sweet sweet sorrow, I shall get over it in a couple of weeks. I don't personally believe this, and half of me wants to believe this is true and the other half not, but only experiencing it will tell, I suppose.

Pardon my melodrama, it is rather late and I am rather tired from my long week! Farewell sweet England, with its green and pleasant lands, and the wondrous people living therein. In less than 30 hours I shall be halfway across the world, and if this blog is lucky, perhaps a little less fond of hyperbolae ;-p

I shall try to keep you posted.

Random musing of the time - should I be like a child or a superstitious sailor and give this blog a name?

Song that won't leave my head - it WAS Muse's "Knights of Cydonia" but now it's "That How She Knows" from Enchanted! It was so thoroughly implanted after the film ended that I unpacked my iPod and put the song on it :P So I'm a crazy insomniac, what else is new? :P

The clock is ticking...

2007-12-30T23:36:00.001Z

By this time next week, I will be on an tropical island in temperatures of around 18'Celsius. Mmm. Certainly won't be too heartbroken to leave the weather that has given me the blocked nose of the past few days... seriously been so bad that blowing my nose made me sound like a kid who had just bought a tuba. And then shoved a shedload of kazoos into it.

But I will miss the people down here. Because of the early departure (it was a necessity to be there for the 7th Jan) despite my best efforts I won't be able to see everyone. Tomorrow and New Year's Day I can pretty much call a bust, and though I'll be taxiing at Heathrow just shy of midday, having to get there early etc means that that day's out of the question also. So that leaves me three days to see the people I've managed to inadvertently avoid for ages (damn you elusive physios! most notably). And I still have to work on those days, though I'm not TECHNICALLY meant to work on Friday. I'll try and get that day cleared. And still have to pencil in the time to grab a couple of last minute things.

Moral of the story and note to self: Stop bloody leaving things until the last minute! I'd pledge to make that a New Year's resolution but I a) don't really believe in the effectiveness of that concept at any rate and b) know that this last-minute syndrome I have is something of a part of me, and one that I doubt would alter for something as niggling as a resolution. Ho-hum, I'll just live with the stress! :P

It's been recently hitting me, the sheer enormity of what I'm about to do. For the better part of four months, I'll be in a strange country without the safety net of people I know, where my mother tongue of 21 years will be a luxury, and where democracy is something they merely read about. Perhaps. Maybe that's censored too!

Bottom line is, as exciting as this undoubtedly is, it's also going to be a baptism of fire, a real training ground, a veritable spring of motivational metaphors and similes to the same end: I'm going to have to experience a helluva lot of personal growth and find a new level of self-sufficiency. And that's pretty scary, but I'm looking forward to the chance to prove myself like never before.

Piddling, back-of-my-mind-type wonderments:

- What am I going to put on my iPod? Silly and superficial and unimportant? Yes, but I'm not going to be able to change it for 4 months, I want to be good stuff! Recently got my grubby mitts on the Weepies album and a couple of Belle & Sebastian, which I'm looking forward to delving into, as well as some classical stuff. (Dutch violinist, Janine Jansen playing the Four Seasons by Vivaldi! Should be great!) But this means I'll have to uncheck a whole lot of other stuff... How fortunate I am that such unworthy problems are among my biggest dilemmas.

- Yet again, a book makes me feel silly. Metamorphosis by Kafka, seems to me thus far to be entirely about a man who turns into a giant bug. For all its RL Stine (Goosebumps are the bedrock of modern literature! Or not.) comparisons (thanks to H.R. for that wonderful conversation tangent in the pub!) I really don't get it. Is there some allegory I'm missing? Does this metamorphosis give rise to a commentary on the human condition? Either I'm an idiot and Franz Kafka is wasted on me, that really IS what the book is all about, or I should stop trying to read books carefully at 2 in the morning.

- The more I think about it, the more I would really like to use the old acoustic guitar as a teaching aid in China! I hope I can find one to use and think of a song that wouldn't get me arrested. The early Beatles stuff is fairly innocuous, right?

- How am I going to get my photos sorted out out there?

The Ghosts of Christmas Past

2007-12-27T22:09:00.001Z

- For me, Christmas Day overall consists of family, food and cheesy I-could-never-watch-this-any-other-time-of-year television programmes and films. Time was when the older movies were staple... you could bet money that they'd show "Sound of Music" and "It's a Wonderful Life" on at SOME point during the day. Now, as much as I love "Finding Nemo" (it ACTUALLY gets better with each, albeit necessarily infrequent, viewing!) it's not the most festive. And you'd probably have to be eight or anxious to get your kids to pipe down for a bit to sit through such quasi-festive drivel as "Santa Clause 2". Wow, I've just realised how much this is merely the mad ramblings of a couch potato. Not exactly the most compelling reading, I expect. And on that note, why isn't the Queen's Message more widely advertised! I had to resort to Youtube to watch it this year, as I couldn't find it on the telly. What is the world coming to? :-P

Also on that note, festive drivel that I will GLADLY endure is "Love Actually". Sure, it represents the overly whitewashed, Hollywood Rose-tinted glass version of London in an overly rom-com manner but there's a lot of guilty pleasure to be had in the star-studded cast ("Ooh Keira Knightley!") , the ability to point out parts of London ("Ooh the South Bank") and the ability to post out the myriad flaws in the plot ("Ooh, the inappropriately foul-mouthed and lacking in decorum tea-lady working in 10 Downing Street!") But hey I do actually love it. See what I did there? I hope not. I'm ashamed.

- I've had to start idly think about what to bring to teach the lil' Chinese kiddies. Found a wonderful resource in a Facebook group in which people who are actually out there teaching. I think it would be rather amusingly and cute to make them sing a song. Then one fast realises that it's harder than one thinks to use a song that has nothing that could possibly be controversial, though I expect I'm being paranoid. But would they be 'down' with songs that contain fornication, suicide, imagery that could be misconstrued. More importantly, am I listening to the wrong type of music?! ;-)

I would just love it if I could get ahold of an acoustic guitar in the school. That could be awesome, and Youtube-able! Awww, little Chinese kids singing KT Tunstall... Muhaha!

- My Mandarin still sucks. I'm going to be the equivalent of those tourists (perhaps stereotypically, mostly the Americans I'm afraid) who come over here and want to visit Lee-ster Square, South-work Cathedral and Covenant Garden (though incidentally I believe that was the original name). But I'm nevertheless excited, especially for the opportunity to travel during February! I just feel like there's an immense amount of freedom, strangely handed on a plate to me. I'm under no illusions that this freedom to travel wasn't present before, but now I'm being all but forced to travel around an exotic continent. Nice :-)

- Today Benazir Bhutto, a Pakistani politician was killed in Rawalpindi. I wouldn't claim to be an expert of Asian politics, but from general knowledge I know it's a great blow to Pakistani democracy. Just go to show that while in some of our Western societies our precious democracy is taken for granted while countries like Pakistan often struggle to restore it.

Ah well, it's the weekend now.

2007-12-22T00:03:00.001Z

So, I get into work today to discover I'd been robbed. Operating almost on entirely on autopilot, I waved hi to a colleague, sat at my meagre desk and switched the computer on. With iPod still blaring in ear and my mind not entirely on the day ahead I note that staccato quasi-ringing sound that can only signify a Windows error: the computer cannot detect a functioning mouse. What the hell? Someone nicked my mouse! Turns out our lil' row of cubicles were visited by a strange thief... they nicked my mouse, and actually somewhat amusingly, from our tin of Celebrations, leaving nothing but Mars Bars and Milky Ways. So we had a strange, we can presume slightly podgy? thief who apparently has certain tastes. But seriously now, I wasn't that bothered, it be strange if I did, but I was certainly amused by our little kleptomaniac friend. The irony was then that IT support then required me to log on and put in a request via the intranet, needless to say, sans mouse that's a LITTLE tricky.

I have still not done a great deal of work, due to a series of events not ENTIRELY designed of my own... the ordering program we used decided I was no longer a valid user, meaning I had to use a colleagues log-on details. We also went out as a team to get some McDonalds in. It was strangely rather nice, we bonded a little more over greasy chips and sauces that seemed to desire escape to freedom.

When you're not working in an office 9-5 it is, from my experience, pretty easy to look at people with their workplace related anecdotes and think "Woah, these people have no lives..." But when it comes down to it, this IS their lives. The majority of the waking hours spending in the company of office colleagues, in the backdrop of the little cubicle or desk that is your temporary prison. This is where the majority of your daily notable activities (though not necessarily the most exciting) will occur, and thus be the source of your tales of daring escapades. And if you're lucky, the tales you're able to tell others will be interesting and indicative of an exciting career.

We also spent a rather lengthy extent of the morning writing out Christmas cards. Yes, we left it rather late, and yes, I didn't know most of the people whose cards I was signing but in the single-minded intent to GIVE (albeit minimal on my part) does lead to the Christmas spirit I should have been feeling earlier. The sense of winding down a little for the festive period, the greater appreciation for the commercial and domestic changes... maybe the spirit is hitting me at last.

Also of note over the past few weeks is the insanity of the London Underground. You never quite feel the sheer animosity of it all until you have experienced it in the rush hour. It's a completely different kettle of fish from the leisurely tube rides you might take before or after a night out when you just perceive it as the most convenient way to get to B from A, but a whole other when you have to battle a dozen strangers to get a a minimal space on the tube, either risking sardine-like squishing, hazardous door crushing, high pitched screamings or being thwacked numerous time upside your unsuspecting head. It does also have the tendency to bring out the very best or worst in our beloved Londoners. The slightly odd looking hippie with the massive and vaguely worrying bag will help you clear a space so you're not standing in a space smaller than your head, and that otherwise sweeting looking old lady will suddenly attempt a Laurence Dallaglio impression and rugby tackle you at the kidneys in an effort to eke a little more space in a way that baffles the average spacial awareness. The Tube is not a Tardis people! I handle it by blanking out the inhuman exodus around me and just listening to my music. It may make the rat race a little more mindless but heck, it helps preserve my mind.

The Weepies are currently rocking my iTunes list. And I appreciate my re-delving into the lyrical mastery of Jason Mraz. Only a few days until Christmas. And I actually care now!

Random thoughts

2007-12-17T01:37:00.001Z

- Today was the day of Liverpool v Man Utd, followed immediately by Arsenal v Chelsea, which made for an interesting afternoon of Premiership football! Not least because I had lunch at home, went to the pub, and when I returned home after said matches, it was dinner time, pretty much. So in essence an entire afternoon taken up by football! Nice. Somewhat predictably (to me, at any rate) Man Utd and Arsenal both won 1-0: they were both good matches, albeit filled with blunders by all four teams.

Which brings me onto this musing: what crazy fool invented football?! Yes it is justifiably one of the world's favourite sports, but think about it. Which bored-out-of-his-skull individual from the Middle Ages decided, Hmmm, wouldn't it be such a lark if I took this pig's bladder and stuffed it? Ooh, ok. And if I kick it around? Hmm. Now I'm thinking it would be great to split up into teams and kick it from one village to another!

The mind boggles...

- "It's Christmas time / There's no need to be afraid..."

Christmas. This period must mean such a lot to different people. The businessmen of the world see an excellent opportunity to cash in on the pressure to buy presents, cards, food, trees and all the trimmings that such an international holiday entails. People unfortunately endowed with loneliness or tragedy see it as a time that accentuates their tragedy, made envious by the happiness of others, similarly for people less well off, or in generally less fortunate areas of the globe. Take the people of Africa, most demonstrably the focus of the Band Aid campaigns to increase awareness of and aid to the impoverished areas.

I'm not sure entirely where I'm going with this, but what I want to remind myself and anyone else who may stumble across this is to hopefully remember what Christmas is all about. It's about celebrating the birth of Christ, about what Christ brought to the world and the lessons he taught. In a nutshell, it's the second most important Christian holiday.

Even for those not Christian-inclined, or religious at all, one can take something from the times... we can remember the feeling of Christmas, the morals, the desire to give of oneself to help others and not think purely of ourselves. For example, one of the more celebrated of the Christmas stories is surely Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. This epitomises the essence of Christmas by demonstrating to Scrooge, the protagonist and narrative tool, the attributes and sentiments that he is lacking, without being necessarily Christian in its teaching.

Now if this holiday has somehow become about who has the biggest tree, then perhaps it is time to take a much needed step back, but other side effects, like the songs, I must admit to enjoying immensely. I myself am not feeling terribly festive as of yet... at some point along the way, ironically, when I stopped having the decorative and commercial side shoved down my throat, I myself starting losing sight of what Christmas cheer is. Perhaps a side effect of the Christmas lights being put up in autumn sponsored by Hollywood hits? Perhaps when I, rather Scrooge like, stopped giving out Christmas cards because I was giving up on giving them to everyone (I may still make a slight effort this year)? Who knows. For my part I know I won't feel terribly in spirit 'til perhaps Christmas Eve. Maybe I do in fact rely upon the commercials, the baubles and the little fluff-lined hats. All I can do it try my best, consciously attempt remember what it's all about and not ruin it for anyone else. The songs help, but maybe I just like the cheesiness.

= Well I have to be up in five hours for a job that's not terribly satisfying and not the happiest workplace! But hey, it's paying for all the stuff I need to get to China, and it's a reason to get out of bed. Heck, with the warmth of the bed and the coldness outside, I would be very inclined to stay in bed had I nothing to get up for, haha!

In the meantime, I dragged up this link I sent to other people on Facebook last year. It's a rather cute little Christmas game: saccharine to the point of tooth decay but I imagine that's what the people want at this time of year :)

The point is to choose what order to select the little squares to make the perfect little story... Enjoy!

[Edit, took down game... the tinkly sound was getting on my nerves!]

First Post

2007-12-02T11:00:00.001Z

I figure I'll set this up so I have some kind of resource to record things down when I go to China (mmm, such a delicious hotbed of excitement mixed with intense fear...!) and heck it might help while away the crazy wee hours in the morning when no-one else but me seems to be awake.

Never overly sure just what to write for these things to be honest... I do know initially I'm rather reluctant to completely spill my guts to the immensely scrupulous sense of privacy held by the internet(!) So to the superficial I think!

- The Golden Compass, as a film, irritated me. Now, the books were FAIRLY fresh in my mind, considering I caned them the week before (ah... sweet insomnia...) and so the ill treatment of Mr Pullman's books was more acutely noticed for it. I did enjoy seeing certain aspects on the screen, in particular the armoured bears and the daemons were rather well represented, though aspects of the technology (spark fueled quasi carriages?) were something of a curio. My main quibble was the pacing, how it was all rushed as if the screenwriter merely wanted to tick off all the little boxes. He didn't miss any of the major events, aside from the glaring omission of the last chapter which we must attribute to American test audiences, giving an overall effect of a child telling the story back ("And then Lyra saw a bear.... then she told him where the armour was... then the bear found it... then they went towards Svalbard...") albeit with spectacular effects. The best parts of the film, not least Sam Lloyd's excellent portrayal of Scoresby and Daniel Craig's weighty interpretation of Lord Asriel, are merely displayed then discarded 'til later, which is as frustrating as it is tantalising to the potential the sum of the film's parts could have been.

Though I believe I read somewhere that this film cost three times as much as Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, and I know without even thinking on it, that I infinitely prefer the latter.

- As you may or may not know of me, my music tastes for the most part spans from one obsession to the next :P Currently my favourite artist is a singer/songwriter from Seattle called Brandi Carlile. I really cannot recommend her too much: her voice can range from the dulcet tones of her exquisitely written ballads to the blasting half yodel thing she pulls out sometimes. To some, I imagine it must be grating, but I merely find that endearing. Seriously, check her out, though for the most part it's rather difficult to locate her stuff over here... I have an American friend to thank for 'hooking me up' and, perhaps embarrassingly, Grey's Anatomy to thank for introducing me to her in the first place. They featured a number of her songs although I believe at the time she was unsigned...

- Reading Brideshead Revisited makes me feel stupid. I consider myself FAIRLY well read (not as well as some I know, including H.R. who is ridiculously well read, but definitely more than the average) but the style of writing adopted by Waugh at times makes me reach for the dictionary (words like sacerdotal in context are fairly easy to guess the gist of, but I would rather KNOW what a new word means) and at other times gives me the feeling that I am perhaps punching above my weight (ha, the metaphor clearly shows I still have Ricky Hatton on the brain), that I feel a little overwhelmed with the casual references to writers and artists only half of whom I know about and a further quarter have heard of. I haven't felt this inadequate reading a book since my last Virginia Woolf venture. Certainly her imagery is superlatively eloquent and beautiful, but the sheer density of the stream of consciousness rather makes me believe that I could drown in it.