So I went to lunch to read my book, and a man asked if he could take my spare chair. He sat down opposite me and then spilt white wine all over me. He didn’t apologise either, took my only napkin and used it to ineffectually mop up the stuff on the table, just pushing it further toward the table-edge and my soaked lap saying things like ‘oh did I do that?’.
I didn’t even have anything to stem the flow on my poor soaked trousers. I rushed to the cash registers, as this particular cafe - like all London cafes - don’t keep napkins around handy, but safe-guard them at registers and then issue them singly to customers as if they were gold leaf. So I rushed over, reached around said register and grabbed a wad and stormed out.
I’m so annoyed. Not only am I in sticky-trousers-all-day–hell but I stink like a booze bitch. I hate Londoners. HATE YOU ALLLLLL!
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Technology ages, dunnit?
I resent the fact that I'm in office today, on one of Britain's only sunny days of the year, writing about technology that noone will be using in 100 years.
I wish I was in the Sun reading my book - Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle - which is about Isaac Newtown and the Royal Society. I love this book...
I wish I was in the Sun reading my book - Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle - which is about Isaac Newtown and the Royal Society. I love this book...
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Office depression
Wish I knew how to post music on to this blog, cause someone sent me a funny forward about the office environmenet.
This blog is about London again - and this pressure to up the pace here, and really milk this opportunity for all it’s worth. This visa is a stickler. I’m only here for an indefinite amount of time and I feel this pressure to always enjoy the whole abroad experience. It's not always like that. The holiday spirit has almost dies, and I'm left having to be responsible and sign a lease, take over bills, manage a house etc. Also, I'm not playing with the bad crowd anymore and going out to clubs. Instead I'm an office drone, feeling guilty about a mid-week drink, and trying to earn enough to cover the bills.
OK - time out, girl, stop sweating the small stuff and start aggressively pursuing your dreams:
1. A glitzy career - Fake it until you make it.
2. a big fat holiday in south america
3. a nest egg saving to return with - and never feel dependent on anyone again.
I want to be counted. I want to be passionate. I want to be RICH.
I hate my job. the positive is I'm being given an opportunity to help configure and contribute to the external blog. My goal, while over here, was to build up my resume so I can take home industry-based experience. But I don't think I'm ruthless enough, to wear the suit and be cut-throat. Whatever, because I didn't get any of the jobs I've gone for and i'm stuck as a serf in a marketing firm.
Yet an ex colleague has passed on my CV anyway to her new boss - and I could become PR bitch soon!
But my heart is just not in it. It still amazes me that millions of people go into a building and shuffle papers everyday and somehow it means something. These things that are so urgent will be forgotten in a week.
Take a step back, and the office is like a play. It has its own set of dramas, which are completely out of touch with the real world and they distract us from what's going on in politics, or world strife etc. The office has its own set of characters. the bitchy villainous back-stabber, the despot boss, the hapless clerk, the lovers tryst etc...
I'm so fucking bored.
blog of the day: http://findtui.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Badgers and mushrooms
George and I disagree about the long-term effects of drugs on the brain - but even he was surprised, and had to concede my point, when he woke us both Monday morning by bursting into a made-up song about badgers.
Found this site today. Looks helpful:
http://www.indietravelguide.com/
Found this site today. Looks helpful:
http://www.indietravelguide.com/
My space, your space, our space
London can be a trap. I spend so much energy on the day-to-day, tube-to-work, hand-to-mouth drudgery, it's hard to lift my eyes from feet and plan for better times (in sunnier climes). Lately I've felt restless, like I want to go home and get a mortgage, or start my own business.
Nomes echoed my thoughts yesterday, when she said she was sick of the survival mode in London, and she wanted to go home to Australia and 'build something'. What she wants to build wasn't clear or elaborated on, but I understood exactly.
Don't get me wrong. London can be fantastic, but finding the gems can be a scramble as you face bastardly opponents at every turn. Living here is a bit like trying to scratch your intials in marble with nothing but toothpick.
Nomes is particularly bitter, as she is being evicted this weekend - all last minute no notice. Yet another case of not having any rights as an underpaid immigrant in this city. She's a legal immigrant and yet she's still having trouble trying to create something of herself in this place.
It went something like this. She moved in with a girl she considered a friend and a colleague. She never signed a lease, and was sub-letting the room in the house. She thought that this girl and her were fairly close. They shared chocolate on the couch most evenings. Back home - eating chocolate and drinking wine on the couch is considered the domain of best friends. Not here, evidently, as this girl, inexplicably, turns to Nomes and says 'You have to move out by the end of the week because my sister is moving in'. You wouldn't treat a dog like that.
This is the same girl that turned around to her friend with cancer and said 'i can't be your friend anymore, because you're too negative'.
Nomes is not in a panic. She's quite calm about it, being a 6-year veteran to this kind of treatment had helped her roll with the punches. What troubled me was that she was questioning herself for geting into this situation, instead of this country.
'I think I melt into people. I thought she was my friend and I wouldn't do that to her, I assume people will treat me the way I treat them. I keep making that mistake over and over again.'
Please, Nomes, don't let London turn you into a drone. It's a big city and, like all big cities, it attracts the cold and heartless. But there's plenty of great stuff and great people too! (Everyone I speak to says looking for the good is too exhausting to bother).
She said it best when she said it was a cultural difference based on deprivation.
'People here feel deprived of everything. Sunlight, fresh air, fresh food, good money. What they do have, they hold onto fiercely and feel no guilt in taking things away from other people. Everyone in the city is in survival mode. At home, we have such an abundance, we feel nothing about sharing it. What's it going to hurt us, because there is plenty more. But here, everyone's out for themselves.'
Sadly, I can see the Australia she left behind only 6 years ago is different to the place I left only 2 years ago. There's less of the little Aussie battler, and 'she'll be right, mate' attitude, and more blatant racismm unacceptance of cultures, and paranoia about threats. I blame Howard. Squarely.
Anyway - off topic - but not really - this whole wanting to build something brings me onto the popularity of MySpace. It's a global phenomenon where's there's space for everyone! Lily Allen is being hailed as the next bright young thing over here. Personally, I tend to counter claims of 'next big things' with a healthy dash of cynicism, but I do admit she's got something. She's a londoner, she;s young, she'd got some good tunes and she's managed to build something of herself at the 'tender' (although she doens't seem that fragile to me) age of 21.
I'm now straddling the older generation, and Lily is the next gen, and she's got a better handle on what MySpace means:
"If you make music, as I and many others do, and want to share it with people, on something like this (myspace), people pick up on it and news spreads fast, theres nothing you can do to stop it , it's just the way things are these days. From my point of view , and the reason I am saddened by [Caroline Sullivan's Guardian article] is because people (maybe of an older generation) cannot differentiate between hype (in the old school sense) and genuine interest (from genuine punters), maybe not record buyers but music lovers all the same. The passage I find particularly confusing: 'Of late, the whole thing has snowballed, and Allen - daughter of comedian Keith - now finds herself the focus of great expectations without actually having done anything.'... saying I have 'done nothing' suggests that making an album, sharing it with you lot and gaining a fanbase (1,300,000 plays) counts for fuck all, and that, I feel, is a little on the ignorant side. ... We live in very different times now, we have the the internet and it is an amazing promotional tool, it saves money and time, and if people can't see that's very exciting, then I feel sorry for them."
Nomes echoed my thoughts yesterday, when she said she was sick of the survival mode in London, and she wanted to go home to Australia and 'build something'. What she wants to build wasn't clear or elaborated on, but I understood exactly.
Don't get me wrong. London can be fantastic, but finding the gems can be a scramble as you face bastardly opponents at every turn. Living here is a bit like trying to scratch your intials in marble with nothing but toothpick.
Nomes is particularly bitter, as she is being evicted this weekend - all last minute no notice. Yet another case of not having any rights as an underpaid immigrant in this city. She's a legal immigrant and yet she's still having trouble trying to create something of herself in this place.
It went something like this. She moved in with a girl she considered a friend and a colleague. She never signed a lease, and was sub-letting the room in the house. She thought that this girl and her were fairly close. They shared chocolate on the couch most evenings. Back home - eating chocolate and drinking wine on the couch is considered the domain of best friends. Not here, evidently, as this girl, inexplicably, turns to Nomes and says 'You have to move out by the end of the week because my sister is moving in'. You wouldn't treat a dog like that.
This is the same girl that turned around to her friend with cancer and said 'i can't be your friend anymore, because you're too negative'.
Nomes is not in a panic. She's quite calm about it, being a 6-year veteran to this kind of treatment had helped her roll with the punches. What troubled me was that she was questioning herself for geting into this situation, instead of this country.
'I think I melt into people. I thought she was my friend and I wouldn't do that to her, I assume people will treat me the way I treat them. I keep making that mistake over and over again.'
Please, Nomes, don't let London turn you into a drone. It's a big city and, like all big cities, it attracts the cold and heartless. But there's plenty of great stuff and great people too! (Everyone I speak to says looking for the good is too exhausting to bother).
She said it best when she said it was a cultural difference based on deprivation.
'People here feel deprived of everything. Sunlight, fresh air, fresh food, good money. What they do have, they hold onto fiercely and feel no guilt in taking things away from other people. Everyone in the city is in survival mode. At home, we have such an abundance, we feel nothing about sharing it. What's it going to hurt us, because there is plenty more. But here, everyone's out for themselves.'
Sadly, I can see the Australia she left behind only 6 years ago is different to the place I left only 2 years ago. There's less of the little Aussie battler, and 'she'll be right, mate' attitude, and more blatant racismm unacceptance of cultures, and paranoia about threats. I blame Howard. Squarely.
Anyway - off topic - but not really - this whole wanting to build something brings me onto the popularity of MySpace. It's a global phenomenon where's there's space for everyone! Lily Allen is being hailed as the next bright young thing over here. Personally, I tend to counter claims of 'next big things' with a healthy dash of cynicism, but I do admit she's got something. She's a londoner, she;s young, she'd got some good tunes and she's managed to build something of herself at the 'tender' (although she doens't seem that fragile to me) age of 21.
I'm now straddling the older generation, and Lily is the next gen, and she's got a better handle on what MySpace means:
"If you make music, as I and many others do, and want to share it with people, on something like this (myspace), people pick up on it and news spreads fast, theres nothing you can do to stop it , it's just the way things are these days. From my point of view , and the reason I am saddened by [Caroline Sullivan's Guardian article] is because people (maybe of an older generation) cannot differentiate between hype (in the old school sense) and genuine interest (from genuine punters), maybe not record buyers but music lovers all the same. The passage I find particularly confusing: 'Of late, the whole thing has snowballed, and Allen - daughter of comedian Keith - now finds herself the focus of great expectations without actually having done anything.'... saying I have 'done nothing' suggests that making an album, sharing it with you lot and gaining a fanbase (1,300,000 plays) counts for fuck all, and that, I feel, is a little on the ignorant side. ... We live in very different times now, we have the the internet and it is an amazing promotional tool, it saves money and time, and if people can't see that's very exciting, then I feel sorry for them."
Friday, May 19, 2006
Rancid old blog
Yes, Claireygirl, you're right: it's been too long.
What can I say, I have been working damn hard and have no Internet access at home, plus my life has been marked by dramas in the past month. It will have to be bullets.
* I'm back wth George. ("whaaa...?" I hear you ask. Yes, it is odd and unexpected. What can I say? I didn't really believe - with the way he treated me - that he did love me at all. But in this round his character has been rewritten and he seems more in touch with his emotions. Also, we've both avoided "charlie the cunt", as I'm sure most our arguments were under the influence.)
* I nearly got evicted. The drama is still ongoing, as I'd only just moved in. Very long story here!
* Work is going big guns. I'm angling for sponsorship and promotion and also hunting on the side.
It's May and it's raining. I'm homesick again. English summer is such a little tease, maybe deigning to show a bit of ankle under a petticoat of constant rain. Aussie summers, in contrast, are hot, sweaty sluts with nights of tangled sheets, the incessant whine of mosquitoes and cicadas, tropical storms, a think funk of humidity.
I've taken up running, but it's a cruel, cruel sport. While I love see progression in myself, I'm truly impatient when I get too puffed.
Gosh, it's a quick old blog today. Only 10 mins to write this malarkey, and i'm already cutting it short. We must catch up again soon.
What can I say, I have been working damn hard and have no Internet access at home, plus my life has been marked by dramas in the past month. It will have to be bullets.
* I'm back wth George. ("whaaa...?" I hear you ask. Yes, it is odd and unexpected. What can I say? I didn't really believe - with the way he treated me - that he did love me at all. But in this round his character has been rewritten and he seems more in touch with his emotions. Also, we've both avoided "charlie the cunt", as I'm sure most our arguments were under the influence.)
* I nearly got evicted. The drama is still ongoing, as I'd only just moved in. Very long story here!
* Work is going big guns. I'm angling for sponsorship and promotion and also hunting on the side.
It's May and it's raining. I'm homesick again. English summer is such a little tease, maybe deigning to show a bit of ankle under a petticoat of constant rain. Aussie summers, in contrast, are hot, sweaty sluts with nights of tangled sheets, the incessant whine of mosquitoes and cicadas, tropical storms, a think funk of humidity.
I've taken up running, but it's a cruel, cruel sport. While I love see progression in myself, I'm truly impatient when I get too puffed.
Gosh, it's a quick old blog today. Only 10 mins to write this malarkey, and i'm already cutting it short. We must catch up again soon.
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