i am Schrodinger's Cat...

i'm quietly freaking out right now. back before the end of last year i had a meeting with a pimp to discuss a contract for a housing company out in West London. it looked ok - money wasn't awesome, but acceptable. he thought i was going to be a great fit so i went for it. days passed, other interviews came and went, i did a couple of short contracts and the year ended with no news. game on after NY and i got word that the job was still live, but they'd decided to take it Perm. this generally means that i'm out of the running because no fucker in this town wants to look at a Working Holiday Maker for a perm job, so: shit. wait, what? they're still keen on me? well fuckery. fine by me!

days became weeks and they were taking their sweet fucking time with it, then suddenly they want me for a phone-interview. no problem, i say. the pimp sends me a cheat-sheet with some useful info and i take the call in the kitchen with my laptop in front of me and all my notes spread out. i hit it long, straight and into the crowd for a clean 6. i'm up for a second-round, face-to-face interview, which is confirmed the following week. i'm in there early, looking smart, and i spend the next hour Making An Impression - i've got the answers, i get on with the guys, we joke, we laugh, it's fucking textbook. technical skills? spot on. business process and procedure? i could re-write their books for them. personality and integration? don't even ask. i AM this fucking job. when will they have a decision made? end of the day they'll be in touch with my pimp. i'm fucking stoked.

the day ends and my phone's not rung. the next day's Friday and i'm pacing back and forth in the office in Leicester Square. phone rings at 6PM saying that they love me, they want me, they've already written off everyone but me and some other guy (there are 2 roles going, so i'm not stressed at this), and it's likely he won't accept an offer anyway since he won't take the cash they're offering. awesome. so What The Fuck? they had a candidate reschedule to the following Tuesday and they want to ponder some stuff over the weekend. ok, ok. Tuesday. i'll know Tuesday.

today's fucking Tuesday. i dived on my phone both times it rang to hear the wrong voices from the wrong agencies talking about other jobs. i play it cool and score a send-down (my CV's going in front of the client) for something i don't give a fuck about, but will take if offered since any backup is good. where the fuck is my pimp? i'm climbing the fucking walls here!

basically, this job is next-to fucking perfect. if it were in Central it'd be a dream. we're talking a modern infrastructure which needs a few upgrades, in a team which is rebuilding itself and needs fresh ideas on how to move forward from a hands-on techie who likes to get in and dirty. technology i know and more i want to play with, no sandpits to dance around which means everyone plays with everything. bunch of decent-seeming blokes working to make their world better and a slot for someone who wants to spend the next 18-24 months kicking arse and taking names, and they're offering £40-45k for the priviledge. this sitting at the top of my CV and i'm writing my own ticket - 2 years to ride out the bear market and the sort of role that makes pimps wet themselves. 2 years to get thoroughly sick of London, or not. 2 years to make some cash and work out what the next 10 have in store.

that's what's sitting in my head at the moment while i sit here in a box waiting to know whether i live or die. will the lid open to see me liberated with a golden ticket, or is the isotope going to decay and release the poison that prevents me from ever seeing daylight? i can't see outside the fucking box and my fingernails are stuck to the walls where i've tried to claw my way out. because i'll tell you what: i'm getting really fucking sick of this. this is the one. this is the job. this is the tipping point. if my phone rings tomorrow morning and i get a "i've got some bad news for you," i'm booking a train ticket to Scotland and going backpacking. i've got it all planned... in as much as i'm making a plan. i'll get to Edinburgh, wander around until i'm sick of the idea then find my way to Inverness (probably) for a few days, before moving on to Glasgow (maybe) and then back to London (unless somewhere else interesting blips on my radar). no idea how i'll get around but i know there'll be options. part of the adventure is working it out as i go along and running without a schedule. louise is working, and taking time off when she's not sure as to her future wouldn't be the best move for her (it's looking really good for her in this job, but there's still that uncertainty), but that doesn't stop her from meeting me up for a weekender somewhere - keep up the "travelling together" idea we always discussed before we got on that 'plane.

when i get back here i'll put another week or two into job-hunting again... if i've got the heart for it. as soon as i'm sick of it again i'm thinking Ireland, in the same style as Scotland. i've got the cash to do it. being loathe to spend more than absolutely necessary has meant that my slush-fund is healthy. the short-contracts i've covered have paid enough to keep me in rent, food and entertainment for the month and this has been a huge stress-relief.

of course, if the gods see fit to smile upon this damned soul then i'm looking at weekenders and a bit of settling in. maybe go for those music lessons i've been thinking about starting for far too long now? maybe find a nicer place to live with room for visitors? put some cash together and try to convince a couple of persons to come and pay me a visit and see some of this town? either way things go down i have an idea of how to move forward and that in itself has put a real spring in my step in the last few days. even failure has is opportunities. once again, Chinese New Year is going to be my marker for the end and the beginning. as much as i've long-considered Hope to be a tortuous whore of a feeling, i seem to have some at the moment so for the time being i'm going to go with it.

one way or another i seem to be entering a period of Change. i was flicking through my photo collection with someone or other and they commented that i've pretty much not changed much in the last 5... 6 years? the clothes change as they wear out, but they're still black and similar. the goatee's as it has been for over 10 years now. the pony-tail grew out and stuck for more than 6 so far. am i still thinking the same, "running over the same old ground, year after year"? have i been standing still while the world moves around me? maybe i'm overdue for some re-evaluation and re-consideration. what else should i be Giving Up while i'm in the process of a Slash & Burn? the process has been becoming attractive the more i start to think about it and the results? well, we'll just have to see, won't we?

my liver looked up and screamed "save me!", and i looked down and whispered "no"...

i've heard more than a few times people claiming that London's got a drinking problem. i never really gave it too much credence to be honest, until i was having a conversation with... um... someone - i forget whom, could have been anyone - who was saying that because you've got a strong reliance on public transport and so (relatively) few people drive, it's really easy to sink pint after pint because you don't have to drive home. certainly, there are plenty of places to get a drink in the city... in just about every area i've been in so far. it hasn't helped that "going out for a drink" has become one of my main passtimes since i came here. it's the social aspect. you meet up with some people, you find a pub or a bar and you sit around over a few beers.

friday night i was out for tea with Cam's Vegan Meetup group and where did we go afterwards? the second-nearest pub (the nearest was too full) for a few beers. saturday night? out with louise to meet up with some of her friends. we met at a pub. then headed for a house-party. then another pub. sunday? pub, then a Walkabout.

i was supposed to be going to a movie session at Adnan's on Saturday, but cancelled at the last minute. there were a couple of reasons for this, but primary of them was thus: louise and i had a rough-patch leading up to NYE. we've sorted the worst of oyur shit out and are not getting along great again, so when she invited me to come and hang with her friends i thought that in the interest of better relations i really should go along for the ride. it was a good night which ended in a rowdy pub in Chiswick which was having a pre-pre-Australia Day party. we went pretty hard, which was dumb, but fun, although we still got back to base-camp at a reasonable hour.

why was having a big night Saturday dumb? because we both knew that Sunday was going to be fucking stupid. Australia Day was something we'd been looking forward to for ages. this year it was on a Monday which would have got in the way of having a particularly huge time, but the Walkabouts (an Australian-themed bar chain i'd managed to avoid until now) were doing it big on the Sunday to compensate. we had a plan to start in Covent Garden, meet some people, then head for the big Walkabout in Temple, on the Thames Embankment. get back to base Saturday night, get a late-night burger into us then get some sleep and be ready for a Big Fucking Day.

great plan, right?

i woke up in the morning to the sound of Louise throwing up into a plastic bag because the bathroom was occupied. she'd been ok the night before, but come morning and she was NOT in a good way. i went over, donated a hair-lacky to the cause (i've always got 3 in my hair which means there's always one i can spare) and rubbed her back until she was done and went back to bed to lie down. after waking up a bit i popped downstairs and picked her up some chips, a couple of small baguettes and some hommus - bread to settle the stomach, hommus because it's light and easy to keep down. she ate, felt a bit better, advised that she was good to go and we made our move into town.

we started easy - louise with a coke and me with a beer which i sipped. Alison, on her last day in town before flying out, and her friend Anna met us up and we footed it down to Temple to meet up with Daniel and his crew. when we got there it was Australian flags and accents as far as the eye could see, good music and a great vibe. i migrated to Snakebites and louise onto Vodka+Redbulls really fast. i honestly don't have a blow-by-blow for you, and you don't need one. as the hours ticked past we went round after round after round. we got to know Daniel's mates. Cam showed up and joined the fun for a while before heading off. louise made a stealthy escape not long before Allison and Anna, and Laura got in somewhere around 8:30ish. by this time i'd been drinking solidly for about 5 hours and Daniel and i had started swiping unattended drinks rather than heading to the bar. i found out later that she helped me to the tube station ("what are friends for?" she said later when i thanked her) and i seemed to have made it home ok from there, although i must have tripped over something somewhere because i'd grazed my knee - i didn't remember. what's that? i didn't menion eating anywhere in there? that would be because i forgot to, for the entire day. shit, you say? shit indeed.

i'll tell you what though - it was a GREAT day. still, i've made the executive decision that after 2 bouts of memory-loss in a month it's time to slow down and i've taken myself off the booze in any real way for the next little while. it IS way too easy to be drinking here. of course, that was going to happen on Australia Day regardless, but it's a habit i'll nipping in the bud here and now. i've been trying to steer my social events towards cafe's rather than bars for the last little while now in the theory that this will reduce my alcohol consumption some and this has been good so far, but i can see a serious shift towards diet-coke in my future. not that i have any intention of giving up booze wholesale, but a limit of 3 pints to an evening may be a good idea instead of the... um... i lost count at 8 or 9 on Sunday. hmm...

Giving Up (is not as bad as it sounds)...

i've been meaning to write something for days, but the thoughts in my head were a jumbled mess of crap so anything i wrote would have been worse. on monday i was going to write about despair, but i realised i needed to harden up and quit whinging. yesterday i was going to write about being irritated, but i realised i was irritated by the most trivial bullshit and was being ridiculously unreasonable. things are going well... or well enough that i need to be looking forward, not down. tonight i figured i should say SOMETHING, so i set myself the time limit of a rapidly dying battery and sat down to at least say what i've been up to.

the weekend was fun. after my Argos Experience i met up with the Internationals for coffee. Moonbug came along with a new arrival from Perth - another Paul i'd met years ago in Perth but never got to know very well. we wound up with Australians on one half of the table, and Other Internationals on the other, with me sitting in the middle trying to keep track of both sides. a contingent moved to a nearby pub and i hung around there for a pint until i decided that i was feeling just too crappy to stay out and left. i spent the rest of the evening eating chinese food and talking to people on Skype and cruising the net. a thought struck me the other day and i'd grabbed a piece of cardboard that was lying around and started sketching some ideas for another tattoo. i keep picking it up, adding to it, changing it, remodelling it then throwing it away again. i'm starting to get the elements the way i want them in my head, even if the final details are still a little fuzzy, so i worked on that for a bit.

Sunday came and i was feeling much better after having a comfortable night's sleep. after having fun with my new poi i met up with Laura for tea which was pleasant - shooting the breeze while eating cheap vegan buffet before wandering aimlessly the streets around Piccadilly Circus, winding up in Leicester Square in time to catch the briefest glimpse of Kate Winslett when she showed up for the premiere of her latest movie. i ditched the Canadian at 7ish and headed for Charing Cross Station to meet up with Adnan, Marti and Alice (a French girl i'd not met previously) and we cafe-hopped, drinking coffee and discussing arthouse cinema until 10ish. well caffeinated and with a spring in my step. we dropped Alice at Trafalgar Square, before walking across the river where i parted company and walked back to base-camp for no better reason than that i was in the mood to walk.

i swung into Leicester Square on Monday to find out that there was now a betting pool on who was going to be next to get a job. after inputting my stats into the formula i came out with 170-7 odds - the words odds in the room, and thereby the one everyone's put their 5p on. me, i put the penny i found in the street on the way in on Daniel if for no better reason than that betting on me was a sure-fire way to jinx myself. i have the 2nd-round interview for the permanent job i've been working on for the last few weeks tomorrow. the phone interview i had for it last thursday went well - the feedback was excellent. tomorrow's the do-or-die and i'm throwing everything i've got into it - every dirty trick, any coaching i could get from the pimp, any pre-planning and fore-thought i can do. a lot's riding on me getting it, and i'm not talking about the betting pool. if i don't get it i'm going to quit job hunting for the next week or two and go travelling - Scotland for a start, then... who knows? i figure i'll wander and go where the wind blows. it's liberating to Give Up.

Giving Up has been weighing on my mind. the approach i've been taking to a lot of things has been Not Working, which means that it's time to Give Up on a lot of my ideas, plans and pre-conceived notions. if your strategy is failing then it's time to rethink your strategy and if there's one thing i'm getting pissed off at it's the constant stench of Failure. it's been so long since i've Failed in anything near this Epic scale and i've not dealt with it as well as i'd have liked so it's time to Give Up on what i thought i wanted and focus instead on what i Need. it's time to pull a Descartes: erase my framework and rebuild it anew. the way i've been playing things has not been making me happy, so why the fuck am i persisting with it? why not just pack a bag and go somewhere - book a train ticket there and work out how i'm getting back later. the idea sits well with me and i'm more than happy to trust my instincts and go with it. my instincts have usually served me well over the years so when they're screaming at me i'll listen.

i left Leicester Square today with Hilltop Hoods playing in my ears and a spring in my step. i'd applied for a couple more jobs, but my heart wasn't in it, so i didn't put too much thought into it - i just bummed around drinking coffee and chatting with the other job-hopefuls until it hit 5 and i got bored enough to get out. talking back past Trafalgar Square with my coat flowing in the breeze and a spring in my step for no reason other than it felt right... for 5 minutes i remembered what it was like to feel Untouchable. i'll see how tomorrow goes - i should know the result by friday which means that this weekend i'll either be celebrating or commiserating, but at least i have a direction for what comes next one way or the other...

joy in motion...

the thought hit me while i was chatting online like a fast-acting poison from a shakespearean play - in through my ear and infecting my head. it was an old memory, and old hobby i've not indulged in for far too long. i knew i could still do it. the muscle-memory remains, but i'm so out of practice i knew i'd be rusty. fuck it. now i wanted back in, so i did a quick search online and found out that the only store in the UK that hasn't gone purely online was up in Camden Lock Market so i got dressed and bolted for the tube.

2 hours later i was in a park i'd found in Holborn back when i had one of my first job interviews called Lincoln Inn Fields, spinning my newly-acquired poi around my head like a madman, listening to a playlist i'd constructed on the go playing fast beats off my PSD. i can still do it, but at the same time i've lost it. the moves are there but the art of stringing them together with grace will take a while to come back to me. i kept tangling the strings together on the complicated changes, but i wasn't caring. i started slow, moving pattern into pattern until i was warmed up, waited for Less Talk More Rokk to come on, pretended i was performing again and went off.

and by fuck it felt good - the buzz from cranking some dance music loud and slipping into the groove. play, adjust the strings, play, adjust some more until the length was right for the low tricks and play some more until my arms turned to jelly. i used to be able to spin for hours before i got tired - it's just muscles i've not used like that for years. i kept playing, trying out some patterns i'd never got around to perfecting back in the day, smacking myself in the face and avoiding hitting small children and dogs, until a grizzled old guy gruffly moved me along so he could lock the gates. the idea of parks that CLOSE is a little foreign to me, but it's not my park so who am i to argue?

i hit the street and wandered east towards Leicester Square until i found a Costa on the southern (less fashionable) end of Regent St to sink some caffeine - it came out in a soup-mug with two handles it's so fucking big - so that i could do some writing while i waited for Laura to finish shopping before we meet up for a drink or food or something.

there's a park across the road from base-camp - an old cemetery-turned-children's playground next to the church, but it's grassy and i'm thinking that would be an ideal spot to get some practice in and exercise when i'm feeling stiff and sore. i'll build my arms back up to strength and with any luck my knees will continue to behave. i'd forgotten how good it felt to jump around and weave patterns in the air. give me movement and bloodflow, give me speed and grace, give me fire and peace. give me back a little of what i used to love and memories of when my car smelled permanently of kerosene, from back in the days when my world used to burn and spin...

this is not the shopping experience you were looking for...

today, after hearing about it more than a few times, i was a recipient of the Argos Experience. Argos is probably best described as all the joys of catalogue-shopping, but with the added agravation of having to actually leave the house. the way it works is thus: you head into the store and walk up to one of the desks upon which there is a catalogue, a terminal and a notepad. you flick through the catalogue and find what you want. today, for me, it was a doona. every item has a unique 7-digit code which you can punch into the terminal to see if the store has one in stock. odds are they don't have it, but there are a range if similar items you can try. once you've found one that fits the bill and which the terminal says they have you write the code down on a piece of paper and take it to a cashier and pay for it. once paid you're furnished with an order number which you take to a third desk where the pickers find the thing and give it to you. simple? sure. why not.

i was more than a little irritated before i even walked into the store. i'd been out to Primark (purveyors of all things cheap and nasty) a couple of days prior and picked up bed linen to replace the stuff i'd been kindly loaned by louise's cousin way back when we first moved into base-camp a couple of months ago. i'd just been paid for the first time, and sorting that out has been high on my agenda. unfortunately i ran afoul of a) the fucking bullshit customer service you get in cheap-arse stores and b) the British aversion to the cold, which is why they had only 2 weights in doonas: Really Fucking Warm and Survive A Nuclear Winter. these weights are designated by TOG ratings. i now know that 15 is as high as it goes and i wish i'd been wiser prior to purchase otherwise i'd have walked the hell out of the fucking store instead of grabbing the last queen-size TOG 13.5 doona they had in stock. que a couple of days later once i'd washed the doona cover (i like to wash these things before i use them) and tried to sleep under the damn thing. last night i woke up every half hour or so in a sweat, overheating and boiling in my skin. this morning's trip to Borough Markets was set aside and instead louise and i walked into Brixton.

it was a beautiful day today - warm (by comparison to lately) with a sunny sky, so i took the opportunity to wear short-sleeves and get some sun on my pasty skin. we checked a few things out in Brixton before entering Argos and by this time what little sanity i had left after the night before was wearing thin. after flicking through the catalogue and trying the codes for anything cheap that fit the bill (i'd figured on getting a TOG 7.5 doona on the theory there was no way i could overheat under something described as "summer" weight) and finding that anything that fit my needs was "not in stock" i was so frustrated i was about ready to take my head in my hands, tear my face off and stick it to the wall. fuck it. i picked the cheapest, close-enough option and paid for it before waiting at the pick-up area while pushy motherfuckers waved their tickets at the harried staff. through great fortitude i managed to not drop anyone to their knees and beat their brains out on the counter before i was handed my item and bolted for the door.

i hate to say that this was a fair indication of my day thereafter, but i'll save that for another post...

view from the 53 to Whitehall...

at going-to-work o'clock in the morning, sitting on the 53 to Whitehall and the greyness has covered the world in a mottled featurelessness which is probably as much to do with my continued lack of sleep as it has to do with the decorating. when i arrived with pre-made dough for scones in my bag i had 28 Days and Cog playing in my ears. this morning it's Something About Airplanes by Death Cab For Cutie, the peaceful melancholy of Champagne From A Paper Cup complementing my mood nicely while i sit here with my Eee surrounded by salary-men and school-children with the windows fogged up. the bus takes an hour or so to get to Elephant & Castle, where i'll change for one of the 4 different buses that'll drop me right in front of base-camp.

i spent the night in Woolwich after a do at SiJ's place because, with nothing to do the next day and an hour-plus door-to-door trip back to base i decided that i just couldn't be bothered leaving at 10 to catch the train and crashed out instead (SiJ has a spare room set up for guests). of course, that isn't to mean that i got particularly much more sleep than normal but then today that doesn't matter much. i completed another contract yesterday - 3 days running around again for Louis Vuitton. i'll not complain in either direction: i'm glad for the work, but at the same time i'm glad it's over. getting up at work-appropriate hours hasn't helped my sleeping patterns any, so i'll let them go completely and at least get some sleep in the next few days, even if it is at entirely the wrong times of day.

last night was really very nice - sitting around chatting until far too late. i'd made the dough for scones the night before, trialling a method which exchanges milk and sugar for lemonade, the dairy-free margarine making it vegan in accordance with the audience. the vegans have been feeding me a lot so it was nice to take a bring-and-share with me. spending the night out seems to help to break my time up and keep things interesting so i'm going to be more open to the idea in future (i usually prefer the familiarity of my own bed if it's reachable since there is a comfort in familariy).

my intended trip to Bristol is off for the time being. spending my days working and getting back wrecked every day led me to forget to actually organise anything, and by the time i thought of it again the timing had slipped again. i've made plans to hang around with the Internationals on Saturday and maybe Sunday which should keep me appropriately entertained and i'll look at wandering more seriously in a couple of weeks. there's an additional bonus to that particular plan, which is that there's every likelihood that louise will be out of a job then and will be keen to go wandering and while short trips on my own would be good, if i'm going to head to Scotland for a week and a half i think i'd prefer to have the company. in the meantime i'll be back on the job hunt... just not today because today i completely and totally Can't Be Fucked. i'm going back and i'm sleeping and lying around and maybe doing some more writing if the thought occurs. my motivation's slipped but since i've just had a bit of work i think i can afford to let it go for a day as a reward for hard work. i'll head back to Leicester Square tomorrow and be productive again.

by special request (this one's for you, Shadow)...

London after the rain is a filthy bitch. as you'd expect - the scum floats to the top and the grime sinks to the bottom, leaving the murky middle for the rest of us to move through.

walking to work along Regent Street in the rain is generally pleasant until you look down. my big, waterproof boots protect me from all but the worst of what i could walk through, which is good when the puddles are broad and black - black from the dust shed from bus tyres, the grit from the centuries-old stones gently rubbing together through thermal expansion and traffic, gradually wearing themselves down like an octogenarian's teeth, soot from the fires and exhaust we use to get around, keep warm and cook our food... it all pools in the depressions in the road and the gaps between bitumen and pavement. London after the rain is like a socialite after a big night - tired, ragged, lip gloss worn off, perfume washed away and mascara run, underwear soiled or lost, miserable and desperate for a bit of cash to get home. forget the cold which is crisp and soul-destroying, but a perfect reminder that you are in fact alive, ignore the gloom where you can better see the lights and slide comfortably through the shadow. walking the streets when the rain's gone and the puddles are drying is when this place is at its most depressing.

but when it rains... when it rains the city gains a lustre you'd never have anticipated. there's a feeling of life from the movement of water... the city's having a shower and it's singing while the scum washes down the plug hole and into the Thames. i love it when it rains around here. it's so completely unlike the downpours and storms and violence you get back home. Perth gets its semi-annual thunderstorm in January. from what i'm hearing i just missed this year's one. Canberra has its Spring and Autumn rains where the drainage ditches fill with water for those brief days, then dry up again for the rest of the year. here the rain's gentle. sometimes it's heavy, but even then it doesn't feel like it's battering you down. usually it's a caress that barely leaves you moist and even though you know it's full of the dust and detritus that you'll soon be stepping over in the street i never find myself getting upset when i'm caught out and it feels clean, not dirty.

i've been having one of those odd weeks where inconsequential things take on the strangest meanings. i had one of those "American Beauty" moments when i got back to base one night - the thick frost on the skips along the street glittering like a million tiny diamonds and i had to get a photo because for 3 seconds it was The Most Beautiful Thing i'd Ever Seen. grey buildings under a grey sky over grey people walking grey streets: a comforting backdrop to my stark black attire. the pebbles on the beach shifting under my feet while i stood in the freezing cold wind of night watching the waves lap the shore: a charming moment in time that could never be captured in a photograph.

i wonder sometimes how clearly i really see the world, but i can't help but enjoy the view sometimes. one of the benefits of having louise around is that i can gauge just how far i am off the deep end by how seeing how confused she gets by me. not that i let her reaction change things. i like it here - both the town i'm in and the mental overlay i can't help but give it...

this is a test of the emergency broadcast system...

tei'm not entirely sure i'm happy with this - starting up a fresh blog, hiding it from the world. the entire point of starting an OPEN blog was to share. creating a hidden one (or even more amusingly, one that i'm pretty sure people will be able to find but not access) means that there are things that i have to hide. no, that's a silly train of thought. i have plenty to hide... it's just that i have this insane urge to write it down for some reason. there've been far too many times i've gone to say something here and had to stop, think, and rewrite, obscure, hide, obfuscate, obliterate, ignore, destroy, erase. the problem with honesty is that at some point you're going to piss someone off and it's hard to play politics if you're constantly pissing people off willy nilly. i'm also self-aware enough that there are some things that i feel i just have to tell SOMEONE, and that too is contrary to best-practice.

i've been thinking about this for a while - ever since i wrote a heavily-veiled Phase Shifting entry a couple of weeks ago. i had to say something... remaining silent was driving me to distraction, so i turned writing into a game it so that i could say what i want but i'm pretty sure no one knew what i was on about... and if they worked it out then what the hell. half the fun of the game is leaving clues for people to find and seeing if anyone pieces them together. i'd originally intended on creating a new account from scratch - an unrelated email address, a different name, nothing connected to anything anything anyone knows about or can trace (unless they manage to track my IP's), but i thought about it this evening and figured... why go to all the effort? sure, it would have been a fun game to make it difficult but at the same time possible to find this thing, but then eventually word gets out and there i am censoring myself again. there are only two and a half people on the "allow" list for it at the moment, although neither of them know it yet.

the best benefit i can see so far is that if i do bash something out in Futility i can always modify it and double-post it, thereby doubling my effective output. sure it's cheap, but not as cheap as your girlfriend.

at some point soon i'll start writing shit down, but right now i'm going to sleep. louise just got back from Spain and is busily passing out, and i was only staying up so that she wouldn't wake me when she came in. i have work in the morning. yay. boo. whatever. goodnight.

Snippets #8: on on multiculturalism (why can't we be friends, why can't we be friends)...

since i came here 3 months ago i've been making friends with people from all over the world. so far some of my best friends here include a Pakistani, a Dutch Canadian, a Korean Australian, a couple of Germans (one of whom was born in Bulgaria), a number of Australians and football team's worth of Brits. when the Randoms group last met up there was a French woman, a Danish lad, a Scot and an Irishman. over the weekend i've hung with all of these, plus a couple of Turkish and American girls. a lot of the conversations we have winds up being "Comparing Notes" - i'm interested in hearing about different parts of the worlds and who better to ask than someone who came from there? sometimes the conversations move on from that and sometimes they don't but somehow no one gives a crap about nationality. i've never seen anyone get narky - prime example: Greece and Turkey have been getting pissed off at each other for centuries. today i was drinking coffee with Adnan (Pakistani) and Marti (Turkish) and mentioned that my grandparents were from Greece. not a blink, not a frown, nothing.

Australia prides itself loudly on how it's an open, multicultural society but it seems that most people who move there keep to their own community groups, and they seem to bring a lot of their rivalries along with them. not that it's perfect here - the fighting in Gaza has caused protests here in London, complete with fights between pro- and anti-Israeli groups. my flatmates are Chinese and Malay and two of them haven't even bothered to learn any English. they have no interest in integration, which personally shits me to tears. for the same reason that i didn't want to move into a house full of Australians. i meet plenty of them around the place without trying and i'm as happy to hang with them as i am with anyone else who's good value.

the greatest joy of being in a different country is getting into the swing of the local culture and colour, even when a lot of that comes from a fuckload of other people who aren't from here. hell - it's one of the unexpected benefits of being here. it's proof, too, that if people see past the logo on the passport and deal with the person in front of them that we can all get along. that person may be a complete saint, a total cunt or anything in between, but you'll never know that if you judge by the accent...

let's go to Brighton on the weekend...

i'm sitting on the train for London Bridge with The Cure playing in my ears for the first time in longer than i can remember and in the best mood i've been in for ages, waiting at the platform in Brighton and it's been a huge day.

i didn't get back to base last night until 3AM on the dot. the day had been spent doing the regular job-search thing, looking for new jobs to apply for while the rejections rolled in from the interviews that had come before. i booted myself out and trolled through the 2nd-hand book stores on Tottenham Court Rd and managed to find a cheap copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra which i took to a nearby cafe and started reading while i waited for the 8PM meetup. the random group of internationals i've been hanging with on and off was meeting to see Waltz With Bashir near Leicester Square and i didn't want to head back to base just to come in again and regardless: louise was supposed to be getting some sleep so it wasn't worth disturbing her.

the movie was attended by some of the usuals - Adnan, Laura, Paul, plus a few newbies from parts various. the movie itself was artfully done, but left everyone emotionally drained and we hit the pub afterwards (The Crooked Surgeon, where louise and i had gone on NYE) for a couple of pints. louise joined us there with her luggage and we sat around until we got kicked out, then found a cafe in Soho and drank coffee as the remainder became 4 became 3 became me and louise sinking coffee and killing time. at a little before 2AM we headed for Victoria Station where her train was leaving for Gatwick, grabbing a pastie once we arrived - the first i'd eaten since the night before. by 2:30AM i was done - wretched and tired and ready to fall asleep where i stood so i got on a bus for home where i ready my book a little and crashed out... or at least tried to: i don't think i got to sleep until close to 5 after tossing and turning for an hour or so.

the clock hit 9:01AM and my laptop woke up and screamed In Flames at me. i'd hoped to get up a little early so that i could hit Brighton before the vegans and get a bit of a solo look around, but that didn't happen, so i jumped a bus and headed for London Bridge where i'd thought the rest of them were leaving from... only to find out that they were meeting at Victoria and taking a separate service. oh well. no matter. i picked up a return ticket, hopped on the train and off i went, screaming south-bound into the cold. it's only an hour to Brighton from London Bridge - a couple of stops in London before running express the rest of the way. i'd planned on reading my book for most of the trip, but then i saw the scenery and put the book away. as we got out of the city it seemed to get colder. frost covered the ground and the trees - pure white crystals clinging to brown branches, patches of white on the ground and the rooftops. just a light dusting in the stillness of the mist, cold and calm and enchanting.

it was just as cold in Brighton as London had been when i'd left, but cleaner, crisper, fresher. i beat the rest of them by no more than 5 minutes - some of the same old faces, plus John who's some sort of lighting engineer, Patrick who's in medicine and Eve - another Googler. Eve and i got chatting and i immediately comitted a faux pas by asking if she was Canadian. No, Seattle, i found out. crap. oh well, you TRY to be polite... we headed down streets with more personality than a schizophrenic while we all chatted, got the vegans booked into their hostel, then wandered the streets looking for lunch then the beach.

pebbles. smooth, round rocks. a variety of volanic types i can't specify past their origin forming a steep slope down into the water which was lapping calmly against them. as is my habit, i wandered down and dipped (in this case, a boot-clad) toe into it so that i could add the English Channel to the list of other bodies of water i've done this in (i misjudged the inbound wave and got wet half-way to my knees. i was incredibly glad i'd worn my waterproof boots because my feet were never anything but perfectly warm afterwards...) and we wandered around taking photos of each other, laughing and joking, enjoying being full of good food, out of London and having absolutely nowhere else to be. i was loving that i only barely knew where i was and was more than happy to follow one group or another around the place. people seemed to know where they were going, so i didn't have to and really: just how lost could i get?

Brighton is an odd assortment of things - sprawling, civilised seaside town, permissive hippie/vegan/alternative-sexuality hangout, playground for the wealthy and the uninspired, with tiny two-abreast alleyways, interconnected pedestrian malls (or at least streets which are treated as malls) full of music and book shops, arts and crafts, loudly advertised vegetarian cafes, pubs, restaurants and so on - anything someone on holiday might want to amuse themselves. it's referred to as "London-by-the-Sea", which is true only in the same ways as Bateman's Bay is thought of as being a far-flung suburb of Canberra. being only an hour away from London CBD it's commutable, and there are people who do it daily. it's also a quick, easy and pleasant place to get away for a weekend or longer, without the hastle of having to really plan too far ahead. i could have crashed the night there without a problem and still been back in town tomorrow for anything i might want to do with my day. i didn't... as much temptation as there was (and there was much), but that's beside the point. it's nothing like anywhere in London i've been to so far - it's happier (even in the cold), friendlier and cuter - the perkier younger sister to London's matronly spinster. it's a place that seems to takes itself only as seriously as absolutely necessary so as not to slide into the ocean, and it has an infectious vibe that gets into you and says "relax. no, seriously. have a pint, take a load off, forget your troubles, forget monday and just... chill."

wandering up the beach we hit the Pier and wandered around the rollercoasters and other rides and the air was full of laughter and frivolity. no arguments, no irritations, nothing to bother us, just good times and friendly faces. a group of us split off for coffee, i joined the group for the pub and wound up talking about art with SiJ, John and Patrick (sending a quiet prayer of thanks to Rapunzel for giving me a grounding back in early 2008 without which i'd have been lost), although they lost me completely when they moved into discussing Bacon which to me is something delicious and commonly associated with grilling rather than paintings. after a pint or two the groups joined and split and joined and split again, people heading off to various pubs and restaurants in the area.

i wound up in The Eagle (we were led by Fluf - a Brighton local who knew the best places to go), a dim place with a warm vibe and a tank full of tropical fish where i had another pint and the "Roast beef and horseraddish hash cake with greens and red wine gravy and a poached egg" which was just insanely awesome before SiJ grabbed me by the arm and declared that she wanted to go for more beach. what the hell? i thought to myself and after asking directions a couple of times we were standing back on the pebbles watching the waves lap on the shore, each time followed by the rattling sound of a thousand tiny firecrackers as the waves pushed the rocks up and down. we stood there for a while, arms around for warmth, chatting away and enjoying the lights on the Pier and the quiet, peacefulness of the scene. soon enough we fetched back back up in The George (a vegetarian pub) where we'd been earlier. by the time my party returned it seemed we'd missed a couple of drinks because Eve was pretty far gone, and the lads weren't far behind her. sadly, time was ticking away and in order to make sure i got a train out i said my goodbyes, declined the 7th, 8th and 9th offers of crashing space and legged it up the road to the train station and was in a seat 10 minutes later with one of my favorite old Cure albums playing - getting to finish listening to "In Between Days" which had been playing in The George when i left.

words can't express how much i needed today. interpretive dance would lack the subtleties and song would need to use two languages at once. maybe an extended, pacing, yelling rant would cover it, but that's hard to project into a keyboard. once again i'm wrecked, but i don't feel as directionless or hopeless as i did 24 hours ago. sure, i still have my sleeping problems that aren't going away any time soon, but it's been care- and stress-free and completely fabulous. i don't even mind the train ride back into town because at least it's given me the time to do some writing so that i can try to get to sleep an hour or so earlier. of course, i don't really need see the two russians who are drinking from a bottle of wine and making out like poorly paid amatuer porn stars across the aisle from me, but APART FROM THAT and the pressure above my eyes i'm the closest i've come to relaxed in far too long. thankyou Moonbug and thankyou Vegans. today was completely and inexpressibly lovely.

with no regard for health and safety...

by the time i staggered into basecamp i was destroyed. it took me a couple of minutes to fumble myself free of all the odds and ends i've found myself wearing or carrying on a daily basis, most of which i managed to do before i fell into bed, although this didn't make me feel much better. i'd got about 3 hours of sleep the night before after sitting around until past 6 in the morning waiting to get tired, then being awoken by my phone ringing again and again and again starting at about 9. it didn't stop ringing or beeping or buzzing until just before 6 that evening. somehow wednesday was the day that half the pimps in London woke up, looked at their calendars and decided that today was the day they'd finally get me a job, or drive me to the brink of exhaustion trying. by the end of it i had 2 interviews lined up for today, plus a phone hookup and a TBA potentially later in the afternoon. good news, except that they all to call at the same bloody time, getting more and more insistent that i forsake all others in favor of them and their pet underpaying client.

finally i had it all straightened out and headed back to base where louise and i had planned on grabbing tea down at the nearby bar/restaurant, a semi-swish little place called the Oval Lounge. i was about half-way there when my phone beeped again, but this time it was a Canadian, not a pimp:

"Grab a drink?"
where and when?
"Dunno... Any ideas?"

i gave her a call rather than bounce messages back and forth and we agreed on Euston which was easy enough for us both to get to. since i needed to catch the tube up there i maintained my base-ward course anyway to let louise know i was going to ditch her for the evening, threw my book in my bag for the train ride and bolted. she was nice enough to lend me her Oyster upon which is aTtravelcard: pay a fee, get free travel for the time period, which saved me a stack in fares for the evening.

by the time i hit Euston Laura had already done a recon and decreed that there was nothing much in the immediate area, so we headed for Kings Cross instead where we found a nifty little place called The Big Chill with groovy music and comfortable wing-back chairs by the heater. i was still running on adrenaline - i'd been banned from speaking for 2 minutes back at Euston because i wasn't making any sense, but my cider and a nice sit down calmed me nicely.

we wound up sitting around there having an odd, but interesting chat over a couple of pints - my job opportunities, her trip to Amsterdam and so on, although at one point we were discussing personality profiling and i was accused of being "too smart for [my] own good", and knowing it. this is the second time my relative intelligence has come up in conversation (the word "genius" was used the first time, which i loudly refuted), and it's made me a little uncomfortable both times. i can't help but feel that she's either winding me up, or buttering me up, i'm just not understanding the motivation. certainly, i'm unsure as to the relevance. i know i'm brighter than the average monkey and i'm partial to keeping similar company. Sandra used to remark that i have no time for fools and with this i wholeheartedly agree, but going into it smells too much of the arrogance that i generally try (although often fail) to avoid. i get the feeling that there's something i'm supposed to prove, i just haven't worked out for sure what that is. still, it was good company in a nice pub and i'm finding her to be great value... although still something of an enigma.

i hadn't eaten in some time and i really needed to get back to base before i fell asleep somewhere inconvenient, so we ducked out, grabbed a quick bite to eat and yawned farewells as we hit our respective train lines, soon after which i can afoul of Oval Station's 10:30PM closing time and wound up walking back from Stockwell. now, you'd anticipate that i'd make use of the Travelcard and catch a bus, but i was in no mood for this so i legged it instead, enjoying the crisp feeling of the wind blowing off the wet streets, letting it clear my head a little while my legs threatened revolt.

this is where a sensible person would talk about how they fell into bed and went straight to sleep, but then i've proven time and again that i'm not, which is why i wound up reading my book until 1AM or a little past. suddenly it was 8AM and louise was yelling at me to wake up while i opened my eyes and tried to breathe mattress. i'd looked up the maps for where i had to be today the night before, so i took the time to memorise the turns i needed to take and write down the directions in my notebook before i jumped through the shower (literally - i get about 2 minutes of warmth from the thing most mornings before it's spent), got dressed up in my interview-best and hit the street. it took about an hour to get to Woolwich Arsenal for the first one, which went as well as i could expect, then another to get to Green Park for the second which went almost as nicely, grabbing a tax-deductible lunch and coffee at the station while i waited for the train. the serious work of the day done, i fetched up at my usual haunt in Leicester Square and talked tech with Daniel and a new bloke from Melbourne.

the afternoon passed slowly while i chased down my contacts and waited for feedback that never came while my ephemeral energy waned, and i was back in comfortable, around-the-house attire at a little past 5. most of the evening was spent chatting online while re-watching half of the first season of Dexter. i wasn't in the mood to pay too much attention - i just wanted something on in the background and after reading the books i was keen to remind myself of what they changed for TV. now it's nearly 2 and i really should be sleeping. i know, however, that i won't wind up sleeping until after the clock strikes 3 so i figured i'd waste some of the time blogging. i'm getting through my book too fast and when it's done i'll just need to get another one, so the longer i can draw it out the better. i might try my luck at he 2nd-hand bookshops down Tottenham Court Road though. there's some Camus i've been meaning to read (especially his anti-nihilist essays), and i should probably wrap my brain about Thus Spoke Zarathustra at some point before i die. i might be able to get some of that cheap...

i'm very much looking forward to the coming weekend - tomorrow night's movie should be good and there are plans to grab a coffee or a beer afterwards, then Brighton on Saturday. i'm still sketchy on what i'll get up to on Sunday, but i have do have some ideas in mind so we'll just have to see how they pan out. at some point i should sleep, and try to do so about 3 hours earlier than normal. the tireder i get the less i concentrate, and the poorer my decision-making becomes. i was lucky today that i've got most of my responses to interview questions well-rehearsed, so i was able to come across as bright, enthusiastic and confident but i know i can't keep up the pretense forever. of course, i completely refuse to schedule in sensible sleep when my body point-blank refuses to play the game so we'll just have to keep punishing each other until one of us submits. there's always the possibility of sleeping through half of Sunday, but i'll be damned if i do that when i could be out having fun elsewhere. i'll sort something out. i usually do in the end... or, you know, i fall in a screaming heap and have it forced upon me. one way or the other i'll get some sort of resolution, i'm sure...

getting out of town (with mixed success)...

a week or so i hatched a plan to head up to Scotland for... well, around nowish, actually. as evidenced by the fact that i'm sitting in the kitchen of my flat while louise tries to get to sleep and not in a backpacker's in Edinburgh would indicate how well that worked. it's not a big thing - the timing was wrong anyway. soon afterwards i was reminded that she was headed to Spain this weekend to meet up with some friends from home and so, realising that sitting around London on my own for a weekend would leave me somewhat miserable i hatched an idea for a long-weekender over in Bristol, including a day-trip to Bath (which is nearby), leaving Friday and returning late on Sunday. while i was umming and ahhing about it louise mentioned that she was hoping that i'd hang around the city with her on friday night since she has to be on a train to Gatwick at 3AM for her flight out at 7ish and so, being a good doormat i figured i'd shift things back a day and leave on Saturday instead, returning Monday. ok. no problem. easy done.

spin forward to today when i was planning on booking my buses and a hostel bed for the time i'd be away and i get a phone call. the guys at Louis Vuitton want me back next week - asked for me specifically - to do a big move they've got planned from Monday through to Thursday of next week, and of course i'd be an idiot not to take it. the cash isn't great. hell - it's barely even good, but then 4 days at £15/hour is better than nothing so off i go again. that means that a trip to the West Country is out of the question now until at least the weekend after.

fortunately for me, Moonbug and her happy vegan gang are headed to Brighton this weekend: they're planning on doing an overnighter and i've received an invite. i'm honestly not really in the mood to spend 2 days in Brighton, but there's always the option of getting down there (it's only an hour by train and they leave regularly through the day) and coming back at night on the last service at about 11:30PM, which is what i'm planning on doing. they're a fun crowd - it's the same lot as i spend xmas with, plus a party last Saturday, so i know i'll be well entertained in their company.

in other positive news, Adnan's back from his trip to the States and has been running around like mad organising events for the Meetup group. this week it's a trip to see Waltz With Bashir on Friday night, so i'll go catch that. louise is going to grab some sleep in the evening and catch us up in Soho after the movie, so i'll cover that responsibility before heading back to base, catching some sleep, and trying for an early run into Brighton on Saturday morning so that i can explore for a bit before meeting Moonbug's crew when they arrive at 12:30PMish. of course, i'm not sure how early i'll make it but i'll give it a shot. all i need to do now is find something to entertain me for Sunday and there's my weekend all sewn up.

once the week's gone, i can always do my Bristol run on the Friday, spend the following weekend in town and organise some sort of Australia Day bash, then look at tackling Scotland with louise once her contract's over at the end of January. see how that all works out? of course, it won't wind up being anyway near what i'm planning, but at least i Have A Plan and right now that's enough.

i really need to get a change of scenery. after 3 months in London i'm starting to wonder where the whole idea of "go travelling" went, and how instead it turned into "pick up, go somewhere else and sit around with my thumb up my arse". having some cash coming in soon means that i can relax a little on the job-front. this extra 4 days is of course a bonus, and it means that i can take time out here and there without so much of the financial-guilt that was stopping me from wandering further afield in November/December. i'm not particularly worried about getting to the continent just yet since that's a) more expensive and b) more effort to organise. just getting out to see more of the UK is more than enough to keep me entertained at the moment.

since new year's i've been sitting around in a bit of a daze. i'm spending half my time sitting around feeling like my head's full of cotton wool, and the rest wanting to sleep. i'm craving sleep like a uni student craves Fruity Lexia, and like many students i've met i've been getting arguably far too much of it - often in the realm of 10-11 hours a night - and it's getting in the way of more productive activities. perhaps this is a side-effect of my habits in the last couple of weeks of December, but either way you look at it i've been getting annoyed. hell - today i woke up at 2:30PM, looked at the time, thought well, fuck it, and bummed around the house for what little was left of the day, fixing some niggling bugs on my Eee and finishing the last of Stargate: Atlantis before louise came home and we cooked tea. i'm hoping that getting out of town, even if just for a day, will help to clear my head.

in other news, it's gone freezing fucking cold here, although i'm pleased to say that i'm finally equipped for it. on top of my lovely jacket i've been wearing the woolen cap i picked up ages ago, the scarves louise thoughtfully gave me for xmas, and yesterday i lucked upon some cheap (£3), warm gloves. i'm officially loaded for bear... although i'm guessing that i'd still die if i wound up in Finland or Iceland (to especially cold places on my hit-list). i'll just have to leave them until the spring. it finally hit home when i was in town yesterday, hopped off the bus and found myself being snowed on, then noticed that the fountains in Trafalgar Square were full of ice. it's going to be a long, cold winter, but walking in the snow for 10 minutes made it worthwhile - it was the best i'd felt in days.

the next couple of days are likely to involve a resumption of my job-hunting. a couple of days here and there getting underpaid to do monkey-work aren't really going to cut it in the long-run. i really need a nice solid 3-month contract doing real work before i'll be feeling adequately human (not to mention financially secure) again. i also, desperately, need to get out of my own head for a bit and i'm hoping that a couple of weekends' fun and games, with some solid work in the middle, should help with that.

at least louise and i have been getting along a whole lot better since NYE. we hit the town after i got nicely pre-drunk and had an absolute ball... from what i remember of it, anyway. one minute we're making tracks from a bar near Liecester Square, then the next thing i remember is waking up in bed with with a sore knee and no idea how i'd injured it. from what i was told later, there was a crowd-surge after the fireworks which pushed us against a barricade the police had set up. somewhere in there i got knocked down and did myself some damage, and louise managed to get me home safe through the crowds. without much further mishap. this has renewed my faith in her more than a little and i'm glad of it. i hate to say it, but things seem to be looking up in a concrete way for the first time in... well, a while. we'll just have to see how it goes, i guess...

Snippets #7: on pointless trains of thought...

join me, if you will (and if you won't you're welcome to fuck right off) in a quasi-rhetorical question.

say you're engaged in a Game in which you Play a Role where there are no save points so you can never revert to a previous instance. in this game there are many NPC's (Non-Player Characters). some are important to the plot and some spew irrelevant banter, but you don't know which is which until you talk to them. after talking to one of the Names (irrelevant NPC's don't have names) for a while you come to an optional conversation topic - a Side Quest we'll call it. you don't have to take this Side Quest - the plot will move along quite happily without it. through interraction and intuition (the game designers went for a high level of conversational realism) you know that regardless of how you direct the flow of the conversation it's always going to end in exactly the same way, so do you bother to actually initiate the Side Quest?

ok, now what if you happen to know that the game designers were canny devils who hate to see their hard work ignored like this and they designed the game such that if you DON'T take the Side Quest your character will take a permanent hit to their Constitution stat which will only be recovered once you complete the Quest, but if you DO you'll lose the use of the NPC in future missions? the Achievement awarded is the same either way because you let the Game trap you in this sinister little fork, so you know you're going to end up with the "You Fucking Wombat" Achievement (worth 10 Gamer Points and the derision of your peers) whatever you do.

if you say "Don't" i'm curious as to your reasoning, if you say "Do" then fuck you - what do you know? and if you say "Quit the Game before you get the Achievement so you can at least avoid the black mark on your Gamer Tag" can you please tell me when the fuck is Deux Ex 3 coming out? Invisible War was borderline-craptastic and last year's teaser trailer left me more excited than a 16 year old sneaking into his first strip-show...