Glacons

love-life

2005-11-28T21:03:00.000+01:00

Not that I write as much in here as I used to, but when I was writing a lot, one of the themes was love-life. So here's an update.

Since the days of whingeing about how hard it was to meet anyone, some things have changed. First there was Odile, French, 23. That lasted about four or five months before we got tired of each other. She was a spoilt princess. I didn't match up to her last boyfriend, a 45 year old Iranian millionaire.

A little bit of time passed before one weekend there was a fling with a very nice girl called Carmen, Spanish, 26. Unfortunately, she lived 6 hours away. Seeing as I had known her for only 3 days it was unlikely to last. And it didn't.

Isabelle is French, 32. We've known each other for about 18 months or something thereabouts, through work. We first kissed 1 year ago but she got scared and ran off. She apologised and told me that she does that a lot. So we have spent the last year being friends, having lunch. Clubbing on the odd occasion, or going to the beach.

Two weeks ago, we both went to a conference in Lisbon hosted by our company. I was presenting, she was supporting. We spent a good couple of hours sitting next to each other, very close, working on stuff.

Our mutual friend Patrice made a point of embarrasing us, calling us 'les amoureux' and generally stirring it up with the L word. By Friday we were both behaving like nervous teenagers anticipating their first (our second) kiss.

Sunday was the first day we were both back in Toulouse. We met up and went to a very English Salon de The. Things got super flirty and went from there. One week and a day now. Passion and fireworks. Sensitivity and early morning cuddles. Intimate confessions and mutual acceptance. Great stuff.

I just hope she keeps her twitchy feet under control.

More strikes

2005-11-22T19:16:00.000+01:00

I see at BBC news that the French rail workers are striking again. Apparently they are striking in protest against plans to privatise the French rail company SNCF.

Not that anybody actually has any plans to do such a thing. The transport minister Dominique Perben apparently said, "I put in black and white what I have said on several occasions over the last 10 days: there is no plan for the privatisation of SNCF".

This reminds me of an interesting conversation I had with my French friend Fabien the other day. He scoffed at the British railways for having such old trains, giving this as a reason for why SNCF is better.

Well firstly, he obviously hasn't been to the UK for a while - the trains are getting newer. And secondly, what matters most? The age of your trains? Or whether your trains are actually being driven in order that passengers can be transported from A to B at the times advertised?

Free trade and competition are practically articles of religious faith in the UK. Definately not the case over here. Protectionism and laziness seems more the order of the day sometimes, although I would love to hear alternative explanations from my French friends.

Disgruntlement

2005-11-07T23:24:00.000+01:00

Don't know quite what to say about all these riots and car burnings that are reported to be happening all over France. I haven't seen anything myself, but then I live in the town centre. The estates of tower blocks where these things are happening are located as far away as possible from the town centre.

I've thought for a long time that the location of these places is pretty symbolic. It's very much as if these blocks were constructed where your average 'native' Frenchman could pretend they didn't exist. Well away from all cultural amenities, well away from everything except the noisy motorways and the stinking factories.

Racism exists in my own country as well as here, it is true. But I think it's instructive to reflect about the ethnic mix of the company where I work at the office both here in France, and in the UK. Definately, compared to here, there is a much better mix of ethnic backgrounds in the UK side of the company. And the mix is spread all throughout the levels of the hierarchy. I would personally conclude that the minorities have more restricted opportunities here.

But racism is a two way street. It's difficult not to carry hate in your eyes when you experience prejudice on a daily basis. But if you carry it and look at people with your hatred, you are only perpetuating a viscious circle, provoking the reactions you don't want. Hatred is not an effective way to challenge and change prejudice. You just end up looking like an angry malcontent. The sort of guy that politicians like Sarkozy can stick a label on.

And then there is the clash of religious versus secular societies, and all the identity issues that go with it. I'm not gonna take either side. We could do with a bit more moral guidance and less materialism at times, in the same way as many other countries could with a bit less pointlessly restrictive judgementalism. No society or culture is perfect.

Certainly blowing each other to bits is not the answer, whether that is with laser-guided missiles or with petrol bombs.

Post-war diaries

2005-11-02T19:25:00.000+01:00

I have just finished reading a book called 'Our Hidden Lives'. It's the diaries of 5 people living in Britain during the period 1945 to 1951. A bit like condensed blogging from another time.

The diaries were written as part of a project called 'Mass-Observation', in which 2000 people sent regular journal entries into the project HQ, to be recorded and analysed as a type of anthropological experiment. There is a website about it here.

The period selected by publication in the book is pretty intriguing. Britain and the world are emerging from WWII, the Labour Party is making the theories of socialism reality in the economy of the UK, the Jews are moving into what was then Palestine to create Israel, the Russians and Americans are on the verge of starting the cold war, and Britain is starting to become a multi-cultural society with a crumbling empire.

One of the funniest things I read though, was a throwaway comment by middle aged housewife Edie Rutherford. She remarked, "Strange that in a cold climate like this curry isn't popular".

Curry is now the favourite national dish!

Cigarettes and Alcohol

2005-10-29T13:11:00.000+02:00

So, the BRitish government is changing the laws governing the consumption of both alcohol and cigarettes.

Cigarettes are being banned except for in pubs that don't serve food, and clubs. This is supposed to be a major effort to improve the nation's health.

Meanwhile, alcohol 'licensing-laws', the laws which decide when and where alcohol can be sold, are being extended. This will mean round the clock drinking, and is apparently an attempt to tackle the British binge-drinking culture, replacing it with a more relaxed 'continental' attitute to alcohol.

The cigarette ban obviously seems like a step in the right direction health-wise. Extending the licensing hours is so obviously just going to be like pouring petrol onto a fire.

I guess that when you ban smoking, you are making a big dent in your tax revenues. You have to fill that hole up somehow don't you?

The load gets lighter...

2005-10-26T19:23:00.000+02:00

This afternoon I went along to my bank in Blagnac, and sat down with my account 'advisor'. I asked her how much I had left on that loan that has been a real pain in the ass. She gave me figure. It was less than I had in my bank account. Result = no more loan. Yippee!

I got home this evening and looked in my post. There was a collection of flyers advertising pizza and the like, and one letter. It looked a bit special and had definately come from the UK. I opened it up and sure enough, it was from the Student Loans Company. Balance paid in full, account closed. Yippee times two!

Now except for a little bit of credit card that is a piffling piddle in the previous ocean of debt, I am Mr Debt Free of Toulouse. I have to tremendously thank my parents who sorted out that financial operation.

All that debt was largely the result of 1) Drinking beer at university, and 2) Credit card financed consumer consumption. I have learnt my lessons on spending, I can tell you.

Anyway, now for that mortgage ;)

Cocaine

2005-10-08T13:08:00.000+02:00

The BBC are reporting that Boy George, 80s musician and general fading star, accidentally invited the New York police to his appartment and got himself arrested for possession of cocaine. Accidentally my ass.

Meanwhile, having organised an press conference to get his point across, Robbie Williams commented on Kate Moss' use of cocaine saying that it was her business and people should leave her alone (poor Kate). Oh yeah, there was a something about his new album and T-Mobile who sponsor him but I'm sure that was incidental.

Personally I prefer the line from Rebecca Cheshire of the Addaction drug treatment centre, who said: "Rock stars and models can afford to go to rehabilitation clinics but the average person cannot. Teenage girls look up to Robbie Williams as a person to emulate and he has not considered the effect of his comments on the wellbeing of his fans."

am I blogging?

2005-06-13T21:58:00.000+02:00

I notice that I started this blog nearly a year ago, in July 2004. At that time I needed a blog to help me get thoughts down on paper somewhere, to give me a place where I could get the bottom of some very personal things. Those of you who were here will have seen some of my moments of both darkness and light as I worked hard to unravel the subconscious mysteries of my cultural conditioning and family background.

Aside from just being busy, the main reason I have been doing less blogging recently has been that after my trip to Japan at Christmas, and after dealing with some loose ends of cultural clutter, I have felt that I have largely solved the riddles that were puzzling me. So blogging has been unnecessary from that point of view.

But the other reason I haven't been blogging is that a great number of things have been on my mind, and I haven't been ready to write about them.

By solving the riddles of my own identity, I have come to appreciate that we have systems within our cultures from which we derive our identities in relation to the people around us. I have come to consider that our countries themselves also have identities, and their identities are formed in relation to other countries. Our personal and national identities are supported by our consumption of goods and materials, and our consumption is ultimately supported by the planet.

When we mentally possess our identity as a fixed set of ideas this is always against the backdrop of a continually changing reality. When we compare our ideas about ourselves to reality we will always get some discrepancy. The conceptual level of our identity is what I have come to understand to be 'ego'. The reality of our identity I prefer to leave a mystery in order to reduce my ego. The consequences of too much ego can easily been seen either in office politics or in international politics: fractionalism, obstructiveness, conflict and war. Ego-identity is competitive and not co-operative.

When I look at the world around me, I see it integrating itself at a frenetic pace. Everything is becoming connected by either a phone line or an aeroplane, an international regulatory organisation or a supra-national collective. We are all trying to either stay or to become rich, and the numbers of us trying to become that way are rising exponentially. Our wealth will ultimately only ever be derived from the planet that we live on.

It seems clear that the planet isn't going to provide sufficient resources for us all to get rich Western style. Without a shift in our paradigm, we will see inevitably conflict for resources and a hardening of national identities as we participate in conflict. Take a look at the current politics between China and Japan if you doubt what I'm saying.

How are we going to raise all nations out of poverty without either ruining the planet or blowing ourselves to bits? How can we learn to co-operate together in a world without political hegemony? There are no easy solutions, but for me, identity and the processes and systems behind it are critical issues in solving these problems. We are all going to have to take a look at ourselves and give something up if we want to survive.

I have the same burning interest to get to bottom of this mystery as I did to get the bottom of my last mystery. The news is then, that this is what I will now be blogging about. If Glacons was previously about discovering the bit of the icecube that was hidden under the surface, Glacons is now about why an icecube should choose to melt into the watery whole, and how it could do it. It's a strange mixture of the political, theoretical and practical, technological and spiritual.

the French NON

2005-05-30T22:12:00.000+02:00

Needless to say I find it a bit disappointing that there was a NON of 55% to 45% in the French referendum on the European Constitution yesterday. But in some ways it's not surprising.

The reasons for the non must be many, and I'm certainly no expert on them. I haven't actually met a French person who was against the constitution so I've not really had the chance to clarify why there was such a strong no. Nevertheless, the reasons I've picked up on seem to point to the fears of being overrun by Turkish immigrants who will steal jobs, and by being invaded by a 'liberal' Anglo-Saxon economy where social benefits are cut back. Then there is apparently a large number of people who voted against the government and the president in order to register a protest vote out their general disgruntlement with French politics. Another factor is that the point of the constitution and of the European Union generally has not been well explained and so people aren't buying into its development. I think this is true all over Europe. Until I started reading the constitution, I certainly wasn't certain what the Union was looking like. What I have learnt is this.

European integration started after WW2 as an effort to pool economic resources, with the logic that if you integrate your countries economies and make them dependent upon each other then there will be no war. Things have steadily progressed and now it is clear that, embracing 25 countries and with a common currency and a collection of institutions and procedures, Europe needs some streamlining in its decision making processes. Another significant factor is that we face political and military hegemony from the US, and are seeing a dramatic increase in the influence and power of China. European nations which once ruled the world now face the possibility of marginalisation in world politics. It is against this backdrop that the leaders of the EU are working to build a power block that will be of sufficient size to compete on the world stage. Similar efforts are underway in Asia and in South America, although we are by far and away the trailblazers in this process.

For me, the simple truth is that our best future does lie as part of federal Europe. I am happy to accept this idea. But I know that this will never be achieved until we can figure out how it can happen without overly traumatising or even destroying our national identities. Our nations have long histories of which we are proud. How can Britain, which ruled over half the globe until 60 years ago, be happy simply co-operating in a power share arrangement? How can France, which started a project with its neighbours as a means of self-protection, be happy as the project threatens to engulf it? I don't know, but some of the answers lie in the direction of a science of culture and identity - something we currently lack. Other answers lie in improving our understanding of the project, dispelling the thousands of myths and fears, and explaining why it is our best chance for self-preservation and improvement. There is also a strong need to increase interest in the democratic process, so that the people of Europe participate and sense that they are represented by this Europe, and so that scaremongers and racists can't hijack politics with their opportunist populism.

I'm sure that some of you there reading this will be squirming and feeling that I'm stupidly idealistic. But since I am a Brit living in France and working in the first European company, everyday I live and experience the benefits of European integration.

In the 1970s the European aerospace industry comprised of a handful of tiny national companies compared to the American giants of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. In the same way that our individual nations today lack the size and clout necessary to stand up to the giant nations and are grouping into the EU, four national aerospace companies of France, Germany, Britain and Spain slowly came together in a co-operative venture under the brand 'Airbus'. A headquarters was established where representatives from each nation formed the employees and headed up the high level functions of the new venture, including marketing, finance, training and support - basically all the functions which required contact with the customers in the outside world. The synergy of different talents and ideas that is present in such a cultural mix has driven Airbus forward to the point that it is now market leader and McDonnell Douglas has been driven out of business. The national companies still hold considerable power in the company and although their identities have changed, they still retain an identity of their own, distinct from any other. If they had stayed apart, its unlikely they would even exist.

It's because of this industrial rejuventation that I am comfortable with the idea of European integration. As long as we can combine our talents and ensure our federal government is truly run by a mixture of cultures and nationalities, and as long as we involve ourselves in the government so that our voice is heard, then surely us Europeans can find that this is the best way to retain our prosperity and influence in a world of giant nations. We do actually have a lot of common interests despite our differences in perspective.

We've done our stint at global domination and are ready to see a different world, a world in which nations co-operate and communicate peacefully and in which resources are shared. The EU model is by far the most developed in bringing this world into existence.

More so than the domineering US or the developing and hungry China and India, we are concerned about such issues as environmental change, sustainable development, third-world poverty and disease. Aren't these are the issues that humanity needs to face?

With our long long history of engaging other cultures and languages, having already made all our mistakes on the world stage and resolved on diplomacy, aren't we uniquely qualified to bring out concencus and solve conflict?

My personal faith is that together us Europeans can really make a difference to this world. I hope that France's NON will cause us think for a moment, and to wake us up to this possibility for our future.

Thomas and Karine

2005-05-15T13:40:00.000+02:00

I reckon that a good measure of being established somewhere is when the people you know there start inviting you to their weddings. I was very happy to get an invite to Thomas and Karine's wedding a few weeks back, but hardly imagined what a wonderful day it would be.

The settings for the ceremonies were very intimate, chosen as they were to be in or around Karine's hometown about 30 minutes outside Toulouse. The sun shining upon the rolling hills of the open countryside, the reddish brown earth of the ploughed fields, just added to the pleasure of the day.

This was the first wedding I had been to in France, but it's difficult to describe it as French wedding. The pattern was according to the French tradition, with the ceremonies starting at the townhall, going on to the church, and finally for drinks and food at a restaurant to celebrate. The guests however were a real melange of nationalies, Danish, French, Spanish and English and probably a few more that I didn't notice.

The coolest thing was the mix of wedding traditions this brought, including the brilliant Danish 'Cutting Of The Green Socks'. It seems that way back in Danish history, when a guy wanted to declare his love for a girl he did it by wearing green socks. As soon as he and his lady got married, the wedding guests would cut the toes off his green socks so that he couldn't go around chasing any more girls. Of course, that would never be an issue with Thomas, but cutting his socks was a good laugh nonetheless.

I had a great day, seeing their marriage and meeting all their family and friends. It was really a privilege to have been invited. Watching Thomas and Karine, so obviously sorted and happy, I felt proud to be their friend. Congratulations guys! :)

As for my own love life, I think I shall keep you all in suspense a little longer. Needless to say, I now have one and it is going very well :)

madrid

2005-05-10T18:51:00.000+02:00

Blogging does seem to be taking a bit of a back seat these days. I have to confess this is partly due to having a lack of stuff that I want to write about. I have a load of ideas swirling around in my brain but now is not the right time for them to be thrown out into the world. I'm not even sure blogging is the best way. But anyway, that's only one reason for not blogging.

I've been away again, this time to Madrid for a long weekend with my Spanish friends. Needless to say I had a great time and it was wonderful to see my mates at home in their country and neighbourhoods, to meet their families and see their appartments and stuff. Jacqui and I also went down to Toledo for a day to meet Jorge. Toledo is the old capital and was a real eye opener - a mix of Christian, Jewish and Muslim cultures that I have never seen before in Europe. Here are some photos.

Finally, the other reason I've not been blogging so much is that I've been spending a lot of time with a particular person and hence have not been at home too much. It's early days but things are pretty good so far :)

Must dash. Catch up soon with news of my GISBE parcel that arrived today, and also, Thomas' wedding on Saturday! Good luck mate!

the beast of blagnac

2005-04-27T19:28:00.000+02:00

It's a bit jammy that I'm having some training at the aircraft factory this week, and so I had all the passes I needed to secure my entry onto the runway for the first flight of the A380. This beast took off from Blagnac airport in Toulouse at 1030h this morning and I was there, one head in a crowd of tens of thousands.

The plans to build the A380 were the first things I learnt about Airbus, and it that that persuaded me to leave England and take my University Industrial Year with them in Toulouse, back in 1996. Watching the whole project coming together has been quite exciting over the last couple of years, whether it was pieces of the aircraft itself, the gargantuan factories it is built in, or the boats and planes and roads that were needed to transport the massive sections of its 550 passenger holding, 600 ton bulk.

I was watching from less than 100 metres away as the beast ran past me on the runway, with me frantically jumping up and down and cheering and shouting "aller! aller!" as loud as I could. It was only a second or two later when the A380 started to rotate into the climb. Seeing the thing lift itself into the air was truthfully a very emotional moment, containing a large share of amazement and a fair dollop of pride. A huge cheer went up from the crowd, with arms flung into the air and smiles a mile wide spread across our faces.

Without a doubt, it is on days like this that being European, experiencing the fruits of European cooperation, is just bloody fantastic. I shall certainly not be voting British National Party in the UK General Election next month.

Flickr Photo Album

a night in

2005-04-22T22:45:00.000+02:00

I see some of you have been wondering where I have been, and I'm not surprised since I notice it has been nearly a whole month. Thanks for the concern and the questions, but no need to worry, things are cool over here. I've just been stupidly busy, tis all.

It was the Tuesday after my last post that I flew out to the UK for a day of technical meetings. I was supposed to leave at 1630, but the flight got cancelled so I grabbed the company credit card and booked another flight to Gatwick instead of Bristol. This one was scheduled for 2130, which was going to get me the UK at 2230. I was of course overjoyed to know that it was delayed for an hour. Arriving at Gatwick at 2330, I then grabbed a car and drove the 100 miles up the M4 to Bristol, arriving about 0130.

I left Britain again on Thursday morning on the 0630 plane after getting up at about 0500. I went straight to work and slogged it out all day trying to get loads of stuff done since knew I only had one complete day at work to prepare myself for the troubleshooting trip I mentioned two posts ago. Saturday I chilled out, but Sunday I went snowboarding which again meant getting up at 0500 again.

I was in bed on Sunday night by 0200, after completing my taxes and packing my rucksack for a weeks holiday back home. The plane left at 0730. It was on time. I got to my parent's place about 1100 and spent the next few days chilling, drinking with old mates, checking out my sister's new house, celebrating my parent's 32nd wedding aniversary, mucking about with my neice, and eating too much curry and Easter chocolate.

Friday saw me travelling the breadth of the South, going down to the English surf heaven of Newquay for the three day stag weekend of a guy I lived with at Uni. I have very few pictures due to not trusting my drunken self to carry my camera around. But believe me, you really don't want to see the ones I do have. Neither my mate nor the strippers were a pretty sight naked.

By the time we left the caravan park on Monday morning I had eaten another curry, three English breakfasts and a kebab, and drunk about 20 pints of beer, numerous Vodka Red Bulls and all sorts of other rubbish. I felt great. After sitting at Gatwick for most of the afternoon, I got back to my flat in Toulouse around midnight.

Tuesday morning I got up early to pack my suitcase before going into work. While I'd been in the UK my colleagues had called to say that my troubleshooting trip had changed - I was leaving a day earlier than originally planned. This meant I had only 16 hours back in France before leaving again. Managing to get a bit of work in before leaving, I got to the hotel in Farnborough about 2000. I used to live in Farnborough so there were plenty of people to see, but I decided to spend the night watching TV and dining courtesy of room service.

The next morning saw me out on the airfield, both under and inside the aircraft. It was pretty cool being there like that - I left the town in a run down old Citroen to move to Toulouse, and came back in royal jet. We instrumented the fuel tanks and completed successful tests on the ground. Then we went for a squiggly flight around South West England, around and around, climbing and descending. I was in the cockpit for takeoff and landing, watching the pilots pushing buttons and levers, listening to them taking directions from air traffic control. So unbelievably cool, if you like that sort of thing. The next two days were taken analysing data, hypothesising, drawing up action plans and writing presentations to explain our ideas to the airline. I managed not to eat a single English breakfast at the Holiday Inn, despite the sausages and bacon smiling at me every morning just beyond the fruit salad.

I flew out to Dallas on Saturday afternoon to catch up with the jet which was going there for it's 5 year service, costing over 2 million dollars. Saturday afternoon wandering around downtown, eating Mexican and looking at Kennedy's fateful grassy knoll. Sunday was iPod shopping day down at the mall, with melon for breakfast, lunch at Souper! Salad!, and steak for dinner.

Monday, I was up at 0700 to check my emails and have a call with the guys back in Europe who were working the last couple of hours of their afternoon and had therefore already had a morning to consider my plan. I met up with the guys from the airline and went to the aircraft, now being fiddled with by the guys in the shop. I gave my presentation, and we scheduled another test for the next day.

That night we went to Al Biernats restaurant where we had some wonderful food. The others had steak but I had delicious Yellowfin Tuna Sashimi Salad. I munched it happily while joking with the crew and watching affluent Americans relaxing in the huge stylish hall, a decorated mix of classical columns supporting domes painted colorful and geometric modern. Driving around the city in a cow horned taxi I loved the States, it's imagination and its energy, its activity and vision.

The next day saw me donning a set of overalls, gloves and shoe covers and climbing backwards into the aircraft's fuel tanks through a tiny diamond shaped hole in the belly of the beast. Although ventilated with an air cannon, it still stunk in there as I listened for noises and looked for movements. The inspection proved useful and I asked the guys to remove a couple of parts, chatting with them in their thick Texan accents y'awl, warming to their cheerful and relaxed nature.

Tuesday night was calm, just steak again for dinner with the airline technical manager, a man with a wealth of knowledge about planes and ex-pat life. Wednesday morning I packed my bags and headed back off to Dallas For Worth airport in a cab driven by Dr James, a man of tall stories and dodgy trousers. He might have had a silly name, but it was the Embassy Suite's Bell Captain who won the prize on the trip, with his black and white hair making him the very aptly named Mr Napoleon Badger.

British Airways business class may have wonderful seats that recline until they're flat, but sleep was fitful and light as my mind churned over the experiences of the last couple of weeks and filtered out the noise of air rushing past outside the cabin at hundreds of miles per hour. Two films and two airline meals later at 0730, after some chat with Carol from Texas Instruments, I was at back at Gatwick again for the sixth time in three weeks. Like an old friend who wanted to spend a bit of time with me, she kept me there for a few hours as I waited for my 1400 connection back to Toulouse.

Toulouse. My home. Nothing much had changed. The awful driving was the same, the parking just as bad.

Less than an hour and a half after opening my suitcase, I was back out the door and off to the pub to watch the Jacqui Chan Band. Almost everyone was there. So many people I was glad to see and to joke with. Tonight after another day's work and a couple down the pub, I was going to go back out again. After all, it is Friday night. I hope you won't think me square and boring if I tell you that I have decided to stay in. I'm chilling out at home for a change, catching up with y'awl.

biking

2005-03-26T21:32:00.000+01:00

Aymen rang me this morning, and asked how I was in his usual sunny voice. I told him I had a pain in the ass. For some reason my butt was aching this morning, two days after going jogging with Thomas. Not that anything funny happened, you understand.

Anyway, slight bum pain didn't stop me spending an afternoon cycling along the Garonne today. The four of us covered over 46 clicks. The bike I hired from the town hall wasn't exactly the right one for the job. That's it in the front of the picture.

It could've done with more suspension and less granny basket. But hey, the super padded saddle protected my tender bottom from too bad a bashing as we thundered up and down the track.

it's an outrage

2005-03-25T21:37:00.000+01:00

I have had to complain quite strongly. I can't believe the way they're treating me. I am going to be forced out of the King's private jet, with it's gold double bedroom and platinum executive lounge area, and into a first class seat on some disgustingly normal plane belonging to an airline instead. I'll be like, with other normal peasant people and stuff.

For one work reason and another I have to accompany one of the most luxurious and bespoke planes in existence from the country of its owner, who owns the country and the plane, fly to London and then take another plane to Dallas. The whole thing will take a week before I get back to Toulouse. Hopefully I'll get a free moment to visit Southfork Ranch.

This is my first trip like this for work and I'm dead chuffed. Work is going so well at the moment. The change of department back in December has really paid off.

Oh and yeah - I got a letter this week saying that my application to become a Chartered Engineer has been accepted. Although I don't intend to use the letters much, and not that they are of an awful lot of use, it is nice to know that after 10 years I will finally be Mr D FamilyName CEng MRAeS.

oblogations

2005-03-22T22:44:00.000+01:00

So I signed up for the BlogXchng webring, which is the brainchild and result of apparently considerable effort by Angela from Miss Sassafrass and Ana whose blog I don't know. I promised Angela I'd give BlogXchng a promotional plug, so here it is. In their own words...

BlogXchng is a free service designed to promote blog readership and community through a WebRing and Email Xchng. The focus is not on site hits or popularity contests but instead on helping readers find blogs that appeal to their own personal interests and life experiences and creating a comfortable atmosphere so that they may join in on the discussion."

And with my best dazzling white smile I can tell you from personal experience that the thing I like about BlogXchng is that as many days a week as you like, it will email you the address of a new blog or two to visit, according to your likes and interests. Since I'm a bit on the lazy side exploring blogland, this is pretty handy.. like being an couch potato blog surfer. Pass me those crisps and a can of beer, new blogs here I come! The flip side is, people come and visit my blog too.

So anyway, off you go and sign up now you bloggers. Chop chop.

And as for Vivi's Great International Secret Blog Exchange, I have to admit I have been a bit slack. I have atleast bought the gift, and to the exact specifications of my correspondent in Canada too. But I haven't sent it yet, mainly due to sleeping on Saturday mornings.

a bit more Japan

2005-03-21T23:42:00.000+01:00

Well it's just flying off the keyboard now! Here's another couple of paragraphs from the Japan story.

SPRINGING

2005-03-20T23:45:00.000+01:00

Seriously nice hot summeryness around here this weekend. Beers in the beer garden down the pub after work on Friday, and outside cafe's yesterday afternoon, watching the shoppers walking past. Today it was a stroll along the Garonne with Thomas, past the student bongo players wafting their rhythms across the river, and past the scruffy urchins scavving money for beer and to feed their dogs.

After my fridge got its first clean a few weeks back, my windows got their turn today. With all the brilliant sunshine outside and stuff, I noticed that the quality of light coming through the glass into my front room was more than slightly jaded by a thick layer of street grime and dustyness that has built up over the last two years.

I'm not used to the idea of having to wash your windows. In the UK there was always some bloke that just appeared once a month or so. The Windowcleaner, we called him. He'd just start cleaning the windows, so the first you knew of his presence was usually when his face suddenly appeared at your upstairs window. I bet he always had a story to tell when he went home, if he wasn't so shocked by the things he saw that he fell backwards off his ladder into a pond or onto a privet hedge.

st patrick's day

2005-03-17T19:35:00.000+01:00

So I'm blogging early 'cos tonight is gonna be along one. Starting in about an hour I'm off with Oscar to some basque bar for some drinks before we go to band practice for a couple of hours. The Jacqui Chan Band has sorta tentatively let me in their group to do a couple of Travis songs and stuff which is pretty cool. I'm actually sitting here singing right now practicing my line-up and terrifying my neighbours.

Anyway, after that finishes at midnight I'm off for St Patrick's day celebrations at the De Danu pub, where I was last seen looking like a bearded freak.

I asked my boss for the morning off so that I don't have to turn up with a viscious stomach churning and head spinning hangover. "Fine...", he said, "...as long as you don't mind moving your Annual Interview to the afternoon". Hmmm, maybe this wasn't the best way to start a discussion about the future of my career ;)

Japanese night

2005-03-16T23:41:00.000+01:00

I started this evening with a Japanese lesson, which I admit I sometimes need to force myself to go to after a day at work. But I do really like submerging myself in the language so I try to make the effort. Tonight I was lucky, and for some reason a group of five university students were brought by at the end of the class for a little bit of 'internationalisation'.

We did the usual polite introductions, and then dived into drinks and nibbles. They were all quite chatty and open, and one guy was particularly informal which is brave for a Japanese in these sort of settings. But it was the guy who announced that one of his hobbies was taking pictures of trains (yes, a real trainspotter!) who was paradoxically the most interesting. We had a good chin-wag about culture, how he thought modern Japanese culture was spiritually void, and how he wanted to live abroad, stuff like that.

Anyway, spurred on by that experience, I finally finished the next installment in my Japan story.

I've had a couple of comments from friends recently. One said that they wanted more personal feelings about stuff. Another said that they wanted less descriptions of buildings. All I can say for the moment is 'trust me'. If you are interested in the story and my personal feelings and experiences, you guys need to know the stuff I am writing about. These are early days and I am scene setting, so that my experiences will make sense. I will only apologise for taking so long to complete an episode ;)

Old school

2005-03-13T23:41:00.000+01:00

It was really an Old School weekend the last three days. My sister Hannah, oldest friend Nick, and ex-classmate Harrinet came over this on Thursday for a bit of skiing, dragging Nick's fiancee Holly and my neice Alexandra along too. Our friend Owen was supposed to come too but shamefully easyJet cancelled his flight, bastards.

This was Alex's first time skiing so I was quite excited about mucking about in the snow with her. We put her in for a couple of lessons at ski school and she reported that she had a great time. Give her a few more lessons and she'll be flying down the piste following the instructor as part of one of those snaking lines of kids, doing a fine job of annoying the feck out of the snowboarders.

It was good hanging out with everybody. It was a chance to get to know Holly a little better, which isn't a bad thing since I will be best man at her wedding to Nick. Unfortunately Nick was too good at snowboarding for me to find any funny stories that I could use as material for the speech. Harrinet was a good laugh, playing along with the teasing cheerfully. I have to mention that it was Harrinet's mum that turned me into a curry addict at the age of 11. I used to go around her house just up the street from us as often as I could to gorge myself on Eritrean spiciness.

I was well impressed with Les Angles. Without a doubt, the most beautifully scenic resort I have been to yet in the Pyrenees. It's set to one side of a wide open snow covered plain with another ridge of mountains to the far side so that the views are great, and the resort is below the tree line so that the whole place is filled with the contrast of green on white. They've got a great snowboard park too where I managed not to mess up a single jump, although obviously I have no proof of that ;-)

We made an important discovery this weekend though. It seems that the French have stolen and mutilated the British cultural icon of Monster Munch. Not only are these pale imitations flat and ghost shaped instead of the familiar thick monster paw style, they don't even have pickled onion flavour! It's a travesty I tell ya.

Flickr Photoset

death of the nineties man

2005-03-11T00:20:00.000+01:00

I bought my teacher Yoshiko a beer a few weeks back when or Japanese class was out at karaoke. It only cost 5 euros, and being British I was happy to buy it for her under the 'round' system, where beers bought are returned either that night or at some point soon. I'd say that it's generally considered bad form to count the beers and complain if you end up out of pocket. The point of rounds is that over time, you come out even. Over time, your mutual trust and friendship develop and grow.

The thing that struck me about Yoshiko was that at the end of the night, she expressed guilt about not having any change to pay me back. Of course, I told her that an Englishman doesn't worry about that, and I was happy for her to buy me a beer the next time we were out. She obviously went away without feeling any better about the situation, since when we were at the theatre the next week she made a point of paying for my ticket. As it happened, she ended up paying the exact amount she owed me even though I had completely forgotten about that one beer and couldn't have cared less about the money.

The whole way she had consciously remembered the amount and took the very next opportunity to repay the debt reminded me that this behaviour is in fact very very Japanese. It's strange how long you can go on living next to something, never understanding it, always wondering why it exists and why it's so weird. I never understood why the Japanese had to clutter up their lives and language with such complicated systems for indicating whether someone was giving or they were receiving, and how much. But this week I think the point has finally sunk in. Relationships are all about giving and receiving.

Events have shown me recently how a relationship that becomes unbalanced in the giving and receiving department is an unhealthy relationship. When a person gives and gives without receiving, they damage themselves to a point where the unsatisfied part of them that should be receiving starts screaming and shouting and generally demanding attention. So, keeping balanced seems to be key to harmony. But there's another factor, which is making sure that the exchanges happen at the right level. There are many levels over which we share our lives in relationships, including materially, sexually, emotionally and intellectually. Sometimes people try to swap something from one level for something from another. Sex for material, for example. Such exchanges wouldn't work for me, it wouldn't be fulfilling. But there are a lot of relationships out there that seem to function in that way.

In my own history of relationships, I have a history of doing a lot more giving than receiving. Regular readers of Glacons will be aware that this is the sort of thing I try to get to the bottom of. I never accept these things as some sort of unchangeable aspects of my character, I see them as conditioning that needs to be explored and replaced with something that will bring greater fulfilment. I have thought about it and figured out that since I grew up in the eighties and nineties, I was impressionable at an age when feminist ideas were making a lot of noise in British society, changing a lot of norms and inventing new concepts for femininity and masculinity.

I guess these concepts could be summed up as Career Girl, and Nineties Man. Career Girl was go-getting, leaving the kitchen behind and never to pick up a hoover. She would be happy to earn more than her husband, parading herself around town in her BMW and giant shoulder pads. Nineties Man was getting in touch with his emotions, being way less macho and a lot more caring. He would be happy to change a nappy and walk around the park with the baby in the pushchair. Of course it's plain to see now that these stereotypes are simply an unimaginative role reversal, rather than a genuine development in our coexistence.

Some people were exposed to these ideas in a context in which they were ridiculed. As far as my life goes, I was given a mother whose father who had been as emotional as a brick. Not only did she totally agree that men had to be more emotional, she had a massive emotional deficit to make up. Quite a number of times she has said, 'I always thought that my children would want to be cuddled all the time. But when I had you, that was the last thing you wanted.' My apparently obvious reluctance to be her teddy bear was not strong enough to get through her need though, with the result that I became conditioned into giving despite myself. She got a bit lecturesome the other day about this pattern in my life. I laughed ironically and told her that her lecture was a bit rich considering she'd set that train in motion. She laughed and said, 'Well, they always say that your parents will fuck you up!'. So there's another little bit of family history aired and cleared.

No matter how stupid the concepts of Nineties Man and Career Girl are, I reckon the upheaval in gender we have set in motion in our society is in the long run going to be of benefit. In most societies, women are economically dependent upon men. My own experience in Japan shows me that what this often creates is a situation where men are chosen for their material prospects and their status, and women are chosen for their beauty and subsequent role as a trophy wife. Clearly this is a classic case of exchanging material for sexual.

Over the last century, women have secured the cultural changes that were necessary to allow them to establish themselves with much more equality in our society. Now the sexes are free to build relationships where there can be a fair exchange of giving and receiving on all levels. That's obviously a good thing. But we'll only get there if we forget about the inherrent unbalance in the Nineties Man and Career Girl model, with his pathetic wimpiness, and her bitchy greed.

mother's day

2005-03-06T14:32:00.000+01:00

French mother's day is on a totally different day to England, which of course means that we don't get reminded about it. Luckily I saw something on the internet which gave me the nudge I needed. I would've been in real trouble if I'd missed it too, since I missed her birthday last week.

I used to be highly cynical about these sorts of things, days of enforced gift giving. But my attitude has mellowed since the days when I was a stroppy teenager. More and more I'm coming to see the importance of making gestures in your relationships, whether they're scheduled or spontaneous.

It's easy to bugger up a relationship if you're not careful. Trouble is, there are so many ways to mess up. Taking without giving, responding with judgement and criticism instead of openness and acceptance, wanting someone to be your idea of what they should be and failing to recognise them for who they are, making people objects in your world rather than conciously making yourself more and more aware of their own world, raising people's expectations when you're not sure you can fulfill them, forgetting to treat people's emotions with respect.

I have been complaining recently about how I feel I've been treated. But I have to be honest and admit that my own behaviour is not exemplary or faultless. I can think of a number of people who I could have treated better over the last few months. I'll have to think of some suitable words or gestures.

snow relief

2005-02-27T22:38:00.000+01:00

Sunny skies and fresh powder were the order of the morning today, and not before time too. This weekend was spent up in Luchon on a work skiing / snowboarding trip. And I can tell ya, it was exactly what I needed.

It was the first real chance I've had to try out my new board, the Hammer Twilight, for which I just can't say enough good things. I have bought it with Flow boots and bindings and the combo has set my riding style up a treat. My previous board would vibrate at the nose at speed making riding quite unstable, but this one just holds the edges and burns and carves down the piste at stupidfast. Brilliant. It was so much fun.

I also gave some lessons to 5 people. Basically everybody was still learning to turn and people usually have exactly the same problems with that so the advice is simple to give, together with a bit of encouragement. I was talking to three of them on the coach on the way back and they all said that I had helped. That makes me feel good, to have assisted in someone's development.

The combination of my own improvement and helping others has really calmed my heart and mind. It would have been a really hellish week if it wasn't for certain good friends being available when I needed them. Anyway, this week feels like the right one to get myself back into a calmer and more tolerant state of mind after tending to the casualties from the battles I've been fighting recently.

bio crazy

2005-02-24T01:10:00.000+01:00

Normally my work email inbox is filled with spam adverts for viagra in the morning. Today though, my friend Jacqui had sent me something which made her laugh. It made me laugh too.

Apparently she happened across a delivery van advertising it's wares on it's panel sides. This company wasn't selling anything mundane like newspapers, or even something thrilling like snowboard equipment. Nope. This place was selling France's world famous delicacy, snails. The particular niche these guys are trying to penetrate is biologically reared snails.

If these snails are reared freely in the open air, as their website advertises, how on earth are the other snails farmed?

Does it mean that for each snail on this farm that is sitting in the open air on crispy green vegetables, there are snails in other farms squashed and cramped into a little gastropod prison?

When these bio snails chat together over a nice chunk of dandelion leaf, do they extol the virtues of their new found liberty, like "Well you see you Sammy, me lad, in the olden days us snails were just a part of the system, without any freedom to slither. But now, now we can slip our sticky way across all of these here lovely lettuces. You know your uncle Sid? He crossed a whole two lettuces in one day last year!"

Absurd.

My Gravatar

2005-02-21T21:00:00.000+01:00

So you may have noticed that for some reason my comments boxes have little pictures in them these days. Don't ask me why, I didn't put them there, but it turns out that they are these things called Gravatars. Basically, after creating your account, you choose a little square picture and upload it to this site. It then appears all over the place automatically.

I chose my image from a couple of photos from Japan. Here they are...

I took these photos toward the end of the holiday as I was riding the Keio line train with Ralph, going back to his place from a trip to eat some Thai food in the Kichioji area of Tokyo. I got very excited when I saw these signs, and whipped my camera out immediately. Basically they're posters from the train company telling the commuters what sort of behaviour is expected of them. The top one is controlling sitting positions, the bottom one is controlling the use of mobiles.

Look at that imagery. In the top one I love the way the guy sitting with his legs casually draped into the carriage is made to stand out by being black in contrast to the yellow of the politely cloned masses, all of them arranged identically with their feat neatly tucked in, their bags and hands tidily folded on their laps. Only the angles of their heads are individually arranged, although they are all facing in the direction of the bad bad person selfishly arranging his legs.

Colour contrast is used again in the bottom image to differentiate the bad guy, with the hand and mobile phone clearly standing out. I'm only about 30% sure that the message on the mobile says something like 'Your conversation on the journey. It's a real annoyance' (Japanese speaking readers please feel free to correct me in the comments). Look at the way all the good commuters are singling this social criminal out by giving him the evil eye. Boy there are a lot of cold shoulders. Don't talk on your mobile!

Those neat positions and cold stares and shoulders exist in reality, not just in these pictures. I remember riding those trains for two years and gradually learning to read the signals and feel the ostracism which at first I was completely oblivious to. I remember myself in the first year, teasing a salary man who dropped a stinker by asking loudly in front of my friends and in my best Japanese, "Has somebody farted?" (I learnt all the most important words). By the end of the second year I had lost all spark of life and had become a nice little well behaved clone, trimmed and constrained like a bonsai tree into the idea of what I should be.

I guess that's all very well for protecting people from the annoyance of someone's feet being in a slightly different position than you are used to, or from saving you the trouble of being reminded that other living people who have friends and families are sharing the train with you. But it's a daily denial of variety and of ourselves. It's a mental burden to squeeze yourself into a corsetted appearance. It produces miserable and unfriendly human beings.

So I guess I chose my Gravatar as my way of being that guy with his feet in the aisle, valuing my sponteneity above their fussy appearances, and hoping that they'll get the message.

preen mode

2005-02-20T12:34:00.000+01:00

You can tell when a person isn't doing anything useful at work when they start marching quickly around the corridors. Polished black shoes pick up speed as their owner leaves his desk, and by the time he has reached the crowds milling around next to the coffee machine he's stomping heavily in an effort to convince us of the urgency of his mission. In his hands there will be sheets of A4 paper, flapping in the breeze of his march down the hall, visible proof that he has Something Important To Talk About.

His pace and the number of sheets of paper he's holding are trustworthy indications of the importance their audience holds in the company hierarchy. He's not going to march down the corridor advertising his reflected importance if he's going to meet just another slave like me or you. But if he has been summoned by a manager, well just you watch him strut, shoulders thrust back square and head lifted proudly.

If you get the chance to look closely at his face when he zips past you, you can see the furrow on his brow twitching as he rehearses his subject in his head, preparing lines and getting ready to dazzle people with his knowledge. Around here there's nothing like a fine display of memorised facts for establishing your reputation as A Professional and thereby earning the credit you need to secure your promotion. Like a peacock's tail, you can bet that these guys will grab whatever opportunity a meeting gives them to fan open their entire accumulated knowledge, whether it's relevant or not. And once you get one of them started, it becomes a competition. They wouldn't want to miss out on their chance to proove their superior suitability, would they? Never mind what they were there to talk about in the first place, whatever it was the customer wanted. Actually, that was quite trivial and the problem was solved in the first minutes.

Now, half an hour later, they're still stuck in preen mode and frustrating the fuck out of the rest of us who don't give a shit. Us non-French who just want to go and sit back behind our desks, surfing the internet.

congratulations nick and holly

2005-02-17T18:39:00.000+01:00

The air was as icy as the Frosty the Snowman eating a glacier sandwich on the peak of Mount Everest this morning. As I wandered along my street and out past the river I noticed that it was so cold that individual snowflakes seemed to be just appearing out of thin air, like they were being teleported from another dimension. You must think this sounds a bit stupid, but I swear, there was only one snowflake every 5 metres or so, and certainly there was no flurry of snow falling from above.

Anyway, I don't know whether it's the temperature or other things which have given me this headache. My brain now feels like it had been picked up and rolled out flat by three legged midgets who are now getting busy poking its taught surface with spiky pitchforks. That's why it's great to get some good news.

My oldest mate in the world Nick emailed me this afternoon to say that he and his brilliant girlfriend Holly got engaged on Valentine's Day whilst on a little trip to Barcelona. The two of them are really uncannily suited, and they clearly and genuinely care about each other, so it's a relief to see two people making some good decisions in their lives. Congratulations, my friend! Looking forward to being your best man :)

gay penguins

2005-02-17T00:08:00.000+01:00

A zoo in Germany has some gay penguins, according to the BBC. Apparently there are six male penguins and four females. Of all the potential couple combinations there could be, it turns out that all the males have paired up and are now sitting on stones in the vain hope of hatching little baby penguins.

Frauline Kueck from the zoo says that, "We don't know whether the three male pairs are really homosexual or whether they have just bonded because of a shortage of females". I have to admit I share her confusion, since if I was one of those six male penguins I would most certainly bolt from the gay group and get busy making more than my fair share of real eggs. Wouldn't you if your species was in danger of extinction?

Anyway, just to stir it up a bit and see what happens, the zoo has decided to add four more females. So that'll be 8 girls and 6 boys. Sounds to me like if the girls weren't lesbians already, this'll only make it worse. But whatever, apparently some undisclosed 'gay groups' from all over the world have been protesting at this unwarranted intrusion upon the sacred sexuality of those chutney penguins.

I really don't care if a person or a penguin is gay or straight. That's entirely their business. But surely, when you find yourself marching up and down outside a zoo waving a placard and banging on about the rights of gay penguins, and you yourself are not actually a penguin, haven't you got to wonder whether you've got a bit of a Daffyd Thomas type of identity crisis going on?

Tokyo Turbocharge Part 5 - Up to Shinjuku

2005-02-15T23:34:00.000+01:00

I finally got around to writing the next thrilling episode in the story of my life in Japan. As usual, it is over here on my other blog. Brace yourselves!

tagged and it

2005-02-14T20:19:00.000+01:00

It's been a long time since I was running around a playground in schoolboy shorts chased by girls. I haven't got a bowl cut anymore, thankfully, but it seems that the game of 'it' hasn't gone away. Vivi tagged me at the weekend and now it's my turn. Watch out, I'm coming for ya!

1. What's the total amount of music files on your computer?

I've got about 10Gig of music files on my computer, including Faithless, Archive, Badly Drawn Boy, and of all things, George Brassens. It's all sitting in a directory next to tv stuff like Pimp My Ride and The Magic Roundabout. I confess to blatantly ripping the whole lot off eMule, but in my defense I have actually gone out and bought CDs by all the artists above, except for Brassens because that was more of a get to know French music thing.

2. The last CD you bought was...

The last CD I bought was Londinium by Archive, at the same time as I bought No Roots by Faithless. Told you I'd bought them.

3. The last song you listened to before reading this message was...

Well that was a few days ago now but I am pretty sure that I was listening to Coldplay's Parachutes album so it'll be one of the tracks on there. And before you ask, yes it was on burnt CD. But I only downloaded it five days ago, so give me a break alright?!

4. Write down five songs you listen to or that mean a lot to you.

Hmmm... I'm gonna have to go and sit down next to my music collection and think about that one. Back in a mo... Right, here we go:

* "Pilots" by Goldfrapp. Actually it could be several songs from the Felt Mountain CD because it's one of the best pieces of music I have ever heard. But I choose Pilots because it has an amazing power to reach right down inside me, relax my mind to a state of zenlike calm, and make my whole body zip and tingle.
* "If Lovin' You Is Wrong" by Faithless, because it's a steamy supercharge of a sex song that's great for stripping and biting and starting an afternoon in bed to.
* "Little Fluffy Clouds" by The Orb, because it sums up my years at college spent sitting in fields or in the back of cars smoking pot and eating magic mushrooms.
* Some piece of classical music I don't know the name of, because it's on the Classic FM CD I was listening to in a darkened room in my parent's house, holding my neice only 1 hour after her birth with her dark eyes scanning me and her spirit brilliantly visible.
* "Driftwood" by Travis, because it's one of the songs I was singing tonight at band practice with Oscar, Jorge and Ishmael (I've been out and come back again).

5. What three people are you going to pass this baton to and why?

The first person I tag is definately Angela from Miss Sassafras because she loves stuff like this, and she is dead friendly.

Coco in Tokyo is the second person I want to tag, because I like to have a picture on Japan and she is the best Japanese blogger I have found.

And as for the third person, I'm gonna choose Thomas Le Danois because I actually know him in real life and he's sorta, you know, not a bad bloke and all that.

Over to you guys! :)

chase moi je te fie, fie moi je te chase

2005-02-12T17:49:00.000+01:00

There's an old Eurythmics song from the '80s called Sweet Dreams that goes like this...

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world
And the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something

Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused

Hold your head up
Keep your head up
Movin' on

There aren't a lot of words in the song, but there's a lot of truth. It seems to be a hot topic at the moment, since both NML and Chinkel have mentioned such things recently, not to mention the film Closer being on at the cinema. And then there's all the people around here doing pretty much exactly the same.

I don't know what it is about us humans but we seem to be drawn to things and situations that cause us pain. We always want only what we can't have. When someone is treating us badly it makes us run more towards them, with all the intelligence of flies buzzing towards the beautiful blue light shining its deadly rays above the burger grill, ready to get zapped. And not just once, but again and again.

NML's post above discusses 'Bastard Syndrome', women who go for bastards. But the opposite exists too - 'Bitch Syndrome', to steal her terminology. I could write a whole essay on the subject, but here's a vast simplification: If girls with Bastard Syndrome are always sleeping with certain bastard men in the vain hope of being cared for by them, then guys with Bitch Syndrome are always caring for certain women who they hope in vain to sleep with. Those bastards and bitches always know how to keep the right level of hope burning to keep their victims coming back.

Does anybody have any examples of a relationship without manipulation, judgement or self abuse, but with mutual openness, flexibility towards change, playful mischievousness, humour, and of course, tons of kinky sex?

corporate cash-in

2005-02-11T19:15:00.000+01:00

You've got to admire the gall of my mobile company, Orange France. This afternoon their whole network went down, which caused havoc with my lunch plans. My friends were supposed to be at the work restaurant but were late and trying to call to let me know to go ahead. Meanwhile there's my stomach grumbling louder than all the old and grumpy bushy moustached French blokes do when we get a new software tool or management directive.

Eventually of course, we all met up and ate, had our free expressos and went back to work. It was while I was back behind my desk that my mobile started working again. I realised it was working again when it buzzed and beeped to let me know I'd got a text. It turned out that it was Orange themselves.

Seeing as the network had been dead for a couple of hours, I expected to open it and get a 'sincere apologies to our customers' type of thing. But the message I got went like this:

Want to meet new people or have friendly conversation on Saint Valentine's day. QUICK! Dial CHAT with your mobile (0.34 euros per min plus contractual charges).

What a lot of cheek these people have. I especially love that 'QUICK!' bit.

Fortunately, my sense of self worth depends upon much more than whether I have someone that I can call a girlfriend, whether someone else is there to tell me they love me, or whether I can boast to the boys about how I got laid last night. So the 14th should pass as any normal day. I'm not sending any Valentines, and am not going to be pining away beside the post-box to see if I receive any.

Not that I've got anything against the idea of Valentine's Day, that is. If there was any particular person around that I had a connection with, it would be an excuse to do something extra romantic and extravagantly exciting. You know, like getting a video and some pizzas and staying in. All the restaurants around here have got soooo boring.

Yo tengo una cita

2005-02-10T23:42:00.000+01:00

Once in a while someone else starts living the ex-pat life for the first time, and this week it was the new guy who started in my office. I'd spoken to this guy before since he worked at the design office in Bristol. Now though, he's sitting a few desks down and coming to lunch, carrying himself with a completely unadulterated Britishness. That's fine by me, in fact it's great. The contrast with the rest of the Brits is fascinating.

Out of nine people we are four Brits in the office now, and all of us have been here some time. Three years for me. The amount of adjustment and change that happens to you in that time is quite significant. It wasn't until the new guy mentioned that "Everybody around here speaks atleast two languages" that I remembered what it was like back home, and how much I take for granted the variety of experience I have over here.

In every working day I will speak a mixture of French of English with people of any European nationality - French, English, German, Spanish, Italian. And then there are the clients, who are literally anybody anywhere in the world who happen to fly one or more of our planes. Finally there are the evenings. Mostly it's bars and parties, but yesterday I was in my Japanese class with Yoshiko, and tonight four of us were around mine to do some English/Spanish language exchange.

We started off easily, with a bit of Thai curry, and then moved straight into improving Jordi's English vocabulary by watching Little Britain. It might not be suitable language for him to use with his clients or his girlfriend, but he'll be finding it a lot easier to follow humour that's for sure, which is always the hardest thing to understand in another language. When Little Britain was finished, we moved onto Spanish, with Jordi teaching a little bit of 'I am going to..' whilst Chambao was playing on the stereo.

For the last two years a good chunk of my friends have been Spanish and it is shameful that I haven't taken the opportunity to learn their language already. When people become really good friends, it seems to me to be more than just a matter of being polite to learn what you can of their language and culture. It's a matter of interest and enjoyment, equality, mutual understanding, comradery.

lost tackle

2005-02-08T20:24:00.000+01:00

It's just as well there are two Scots in my office and not two Welsh, or it would have been a hellish scene of gloating yesterday. As it was, I waited until today before the first funny emails came through about England's loss to Wales at rugby at the weekend. Translating from French, it turned out the focus of the story was actually about a rugby fan rather than a match.

Apparently Geoff Huish, a 26 year old reported to have psychological problems, had sworn to his mates that he would cut his bollocks off if Wales won. After the match he went home, got busy a knife, turned up later at the pub wearing a kilt and carrying his dismembered scrotum, then fell over in a pool of blood.

As it turns out this guy was actually Welsh, which some might say explains a lot. But this morning when I read the article the French editor gave the distinct impression that the dood was English. My friend Sandrine, being French, didn't have much to say on the nationality matter so she used the opportunity to demonstrate the idiocy of men. I responded in my best French, saying that the main issue was not his sex but his psychological problems, and that there were plenty of completely mental girls around.

Atleast that's what I would have said if I had written 'filles' (girls) and not 'fils', meaning sons. A bit of an own goal there. You can imagine Sandrine's mirth.

cast me as a criminal

2005-02-07T23:30:00.000+01:00

I was round Thomas' tonight working on our plan for financial and lifestyle liberation. He kicked me out about 2245h with some lame excuse about work tomorrow and stuff, so I left and trundled my way back along his street down to the boulevard. The four laned expanse was almost empty of traffic as I approached, and the shutters were being closed at the windows of the grandiose buildings lining it 5 floors high on both sides.

Across the street I had to make a choice of walking down the safe route or into the 'hood surrounding Place Arnaud Bernard. I chose the risky option just so I could see what was going on down there at this time of night. Sure enough there wasn't very much, although a couple of guys crossed into the street about 5 metres ahead of me at one point.

Their talk was in French but loaded with slang I don't understand seeing as I don't go out of my way to learn how to talk like a wannabe gangster. The tone was unmistakeable though, completely tough-nut, you know like, "and then I told her, bitch, you don't wanna be fuckin with me - I'm one scary mutthafukka!".

He clearly felt the need to prove what a bad boy he was because he turned around from his mate and asked me for a light. I said no, of course. He responded by reaching into his pocket and pulling out his own light, then sparking up a big fat spliff. He made sure to take some big deep puffs and blow then over into my path where I would walk through them, and I suppose, notice that this one bad street dood was (gasp!) smoking illegal drugs.

As he and his now silent mate carried on walking up the street he, well, I would say he 'launched' into a rap, but what with his rhyming and rapping skills being a bit sparse, it was more like a limp. Although I remember that he was inventive enough to stretch the accent on 'spliff', emphasising the french ee sound. Much better that way to rhyme with 'poleece'.

batchelorhood

2005-02-04T17:26:00.000+01:00

I knew it was time to clean my fridge when, while trying to get a couple of icecubes out of the top compartment this Monday, I managed to break off the whole of the plastic flap due to a fight it had with the small iceberg that had frozen itself solid between three tubs of icecream. I've been putting off doing anything about my personal antarctic since I moved in, which was over two years ago. Tuesday night I stayed in especially to sort the bugger out.

My plan of attack was to empty the contents first. Out went one soggy carrot and two browning mushrooms, a tub of Very Lazy Garlic, and four plastic tubes of jam stolen from a hotel breakfast. I reckoned the Colmans Mustard and the Branston Pickle could survive a few days in the cupboard, and the jars of green and red Thai Curry Paste always smell so rancid I was sure only the most psychotic of microbes would want to spend any time in there scavenging chilli and fish paste for an existence. The two different cheeses and the three boxes of cheese aperos cubes needed to stay cold so I stuck them out on the window sill, three floors above the passing traffic. The ice-cream had to stay seeing as it was well and truly wedged in with the ice drooping down on the sides of the boxes.

The next step in the cleaning process was easy. Turn off the fridge and wait.

It was Wednesday evening when I came back home from work that I began to wonder whether I should have put something on the floor around the fridge, like a towel. A puddle stretched from the fridge to the door and back again, covering the tiles and dragging little bits of fluff and pizza cheese out of hidden crevices. I dumped a couple of tea towels down to soak up what they could, and decided to drag the icecream tubs out since they were leaking their melted contents across the surfaces of the vegetable compartment. Of course, as soon as I touched the Ben & Jerry's, the whole lot fell out in a big yellow dollop all over the floor.

At this point I was in a bit of a rush to get to my Japanese class so I just mopped up the stickiness with the teatowels and ran out the door leaving the mess behind me. I was in a rush on Thursday night too when I came home with some ham and half a baguette to have a nice jambon et chevre sandwich. The floor hadn't got any worse this time even though the ice had all melted. Those towels were doing their job mopping up the leaks as I stepped over them and cut the cheese and ham and stuffed it sideways into the crusty demi-baguette. After taking a bite of the sandwich, I looked at the ham and cheese that was left over and thought that there was no way it was going to last until I finished cleaning the fridge, so there was only one thing for it. I turned it back on and put the cheese and ham inside.

Of course, when I got home tonight the inside of the fridge was just a big a mess as yesterday, with the added bonus that the drip tray now held a bulging centimetre thick sheet of ice instead of the previous puddle. Actually that has worked out pretty well 'cos now I've just dumped it in the shower to melt away, saving me the hassle of mopping up another mess.

Anyway, Friday night after work hardly seems to be the right time to deal with the mess so I'm off out to eat at a restaurant with a mate. The chores can wait until tomorrow, after I've slept off my hangover. Bon appetit!

bah... smeg!

2005-02-03T18:45:00.000+01:00

Well that'll teach me for complaining about the powers that be around here. I got home yesterday to find a letter in my post box in a very official looking envelope, all stamped with the markings of the Haute Garonne authorities. You don't get a letter like that just for them to wish you a belated Happy New Year, so it was clear that every millimetre of paper ripped open to reveal the dreaded contents was taking a me little closer some horrible news.

At first I wondered whether it was those two unpaid parking tickets from the summer. But no.

When I noticed the word 'impots', I thought they may've been sending me a demand for unpaid taxes. Since I paid them all up in September I was comfortable with this option, and nearly even had a moment of gallic indignation. But unfortunately for me, steeped in my cultivated ignorance of the French tax system, it turns out I have to pay up over a 1000 euros. Within 2 weeks.

If you live around these parts, you might catch me walking back along the canal one morning, limping painfully, clutching my bruised buttocks and dressed in black leather and chains.

Oh the shame.

WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE STOP THE MADNESS?

2005-02-02T17:20:00.000+01:00

There are days over here, weeks even, where I really wonder how the feck we manage to keep this place running. For a human, living seems to be a permanent exercise in handling mis-communication, mis-perception, people sitting on their asses, egotism and fuck ups.

Monday night I left work to find that the town hall had decided to a build cycle lane outside the front of our corporate headquarters. This road leads only to our front gate, Toulouse airport, and some crumby business hotels. Having never seen a cyclist dragging a suitcase along behind them, the only possible explanation for this that there is some disgruntled resident complaining about the traffic our company generates, whilst simultaneously lapping up the double-digit rise in the value of their house.

Or perhaps the explanation is that the town hall is just bored and have a budget to spend. This might be the case since when driving to work on Tuesday morning I got stuck in a massive traffic jam backed up all the way onto the ring road. When I eventually reached the roadabout leading up to work I found the reason for this horrendous traffic jam - the same dumb ass Town Hall had decided to block half of the other route around to the front gate. This time they were cutting the trees. Apparently an urgent priority that required another diversion.

So after getting into work late, I found a pile of shit had landed on my desk. Actually there is always a pile of shit on my desk since cleaning up other people's shit is my job. But this was different. In the process of cleaning up an elephant size shit heap, some poncey-ass manager in another department had decided to add another cart load. We argued and argued and escalated to the upper eschalons, but still this dood was labouring under a complete illusion and we couldn't convince him of his error. How could we? We were never educated at the elite Ecole Polytechnique, so we couldn't possibilty have a valid point, could we? Grrr. As a result of this guy, we now get the chance to make ourselves look completely and utterly incompetent twice when only once was necessary. And make more work for ourselves while we're at it.

Anyway, as we were arguing over the phone with the hour ticking later and later past the time I was supposed to meet Oscar in town to buy some snowboard equipment, Oscar rang up.

"Sorry mate. Can't make it. Complete madness over here"

"Don't worry Dan. I only rang to say that they won't sell me anything anyway. There are two people in the shop but none of them will take my money. They say the right bloke isn't there."

Ok then. Let him spend his money in another shop.

The good news is that this morning I got to go into work a bit later than normal. Because of the frickin' traffic AGAIN! The jams were even worse than the morning before. And why? The Town Hall had decided to shut off half the road leading up to the roundabout by dumping a higs pile of rubble in it. That's three roads out of four off this roundabout they are mucking about with.

What the fuck do they think they are achieving? People aren't gonna stop driving their cars to work since most people live too far away to ride a bike, or they have to take their kids to school by car before hand. The only result is gonna be an increase in air pollution as all the cars line up for an extra 20 to 30 minutes every day, churning out dust and fumes. And a lot of pissed off citizens experiencing commuter hell where none need have existed.

I tell you, an idea is a dangerous thing if it's put into the brain of a fuckwit.

Checking the length of this post I see my little rant has gone on for quite a while. That's a real shame. Now I won't be able to bore you with all the fuckwitty things I been up to myself recently.

Tokyo Turbocharge Part 4 - Narita

2005-01-27T01:02:00.000+01:00

Today is a Tokyo Turbocharge day, which if you are following the blog means that the latest installment in the story of what happens when an English guy goes to Japan is here.

And if you're not really in the mood for words, here's a link to the entire flickr album of photos from my trip to Tokyo.

shopping for an identity

2005-01-24T19:09:00.000+01:00

One of the things that I find the most amusing about living abroad is what I see when I go home. I can sit for hours in the streets watching people, figuring out what they think of themselves and what they want other people to think about them.

A friend of mine who lives in an affluent area of London stuffed with Audi driving professionals laughed with me recently as we discussed this sort of stuff. He told me that before Christmas he saw a big flat back delivery lorry driving down his street in Clapham. Stacked up in the back was a small forest of christmas trees, their pungent and prickly pine branches wrapped tightly in plastic netting. The lorry stopped first at a pub, and dropped off a good numbers of the trees which before long were lined up outside behind a sign selling them as 'Traditional Christmas Pines', 20 each. The lorry made a second stop in the road, about 50m down at a Chinese takeaway. The enterprising restauranteur had decided to capitalise on his street front to make a Christmas buck, and he was seriously undercutting his rival up the street by selling those 'Xmas Trees' at only 15 pound each.

Now you'd think that the guy selling them outside the Chinese would have cleaned up. But my friend told me that he walked down the street a day later and saw that the outside of the takeaway still looked like some strange urban forest against the bricks and graffiti. On the other hand, the pub had managed to flog all of their trees except a couple of the scruffiest, and this despite the fact that they were the same trees delivered by the same company, being sold on the same street, at a price a third more expensive than the nearest rival.

As you can tell from this little story, the people of Clapham, as with the people of many other parts of London and the world, are known to be very image conscious an more than a tad materialistic. I can just imagine Mrs Adrienne Brake - barrister, Range-Rover driver and mother of 3 - seeing the two offers for trees on her street. In her mind she will 'paying a little more for something better', something 'more traditional', something of 'higher quality', all characteristics she is hoping to pin to her lapel like badges saying 'This is me - better, legitimately established, higher quality'. But she doesn't know our little secret, the secret that makes all her consumer rationality look like the entertainingly superficial ego wanking it really is. It's the same sticky tree as the one down the road, and her ego just cost her a fiver and exposed her prejudice.

Anyway, this story reminded me of an article I read in The Guardian a while back. It's about what our choice of supermarket says about our position in the British Class System. Now it seems to be a bit of a national myth that the Class System doesn't exist anymore, but one read of this should convince you that it is still live and kicking. I find two aspects of the article fascinating - how we manage to accumulate such intricate self-images in relation to other people and to material objects, and how we walk around blindly allowing ourselves to be manipulated by calculating marketeers who've got us pegged right up in tight into their demographic pigeon holes. And this doesn't apply simply to our choice of Supermarket. Cars, newspapers, mobile phones, brands and styles of clothing, furniture, the location of our house... for almost any category of material thing you care to mention it's possible to grade each article in the category in relation to where it puts its owner in the Class System. Go on, if you know the national newspapers of Britain, put them in class order. I bet you can do it in less than 30 seconds.

And as for me, I shop mainly at Sainsbury's. According to the article, "the most likely Sainsbury's shoppers are Ben and Chloe, the 'urban intelligence' archetypes, who represent 7.2% of UK households. Young, well-educated, cosmopolitan in their tastes, liberal in their outlooks and unlikely to have children, many Bens and Chloes live in inner-city areas and have high levels of disposable income".

Please excuse me while I go and stencil 'Mr Urban Intelligence' on my forehead.

Blog reorganisation

2005-01-22T19:25:00.000+01:00

Ok people, I guess you may have noticed that I am sort of writing a story. But I reckon this isn't quite the place to do it, 'cos its gonna go on for quite a bit and I'm sure that would bore you silly. I'm determined to do it though, since there is a damn good story bursting out of the last 6 years from Japan until now, and as far I am concerned it is one of the two potential paytickets I am playing with to achieve financial and lifestyle liberation. This feels like the year I get lucky.

So, if you are interested, I am going to be putting the draft down on the net at the blog I have created for the purpose, Tokyo Turbocharge.

When I say that it is a draft, I mean just that. It's a place where I can put words down and try to build up the ideas and themes. I may create another blog with an edited version that reflects the growth of the novel in my mind. The words will undoubtedly get cut and pasted all over the place, and whole new sections and styles added.

I would be very interested to have your comments on the content of whatever I write, how it reads, how the imagery works in your mind, what mood it creates in you, and anything else you feel like saying.

And as for this blog, you should be getting much more culture related content from now on, and less stuff about snowboarding and general life, unless you beg me to bore you with endless stories about airplanes, working, parties and snowboarding trips and stuff. Cheers :))

Tokyo Turbocharge Part 3 - Ohayo Nihon

2005-01-20T19:46:00.000+01:00

Back in '98, JAL business class passengers had a choice of sitting in a smoking or a non-smoking seat. I chose smoking. Sitting in that tube with a bunch of chain-smoking noodle-slurping Japanese business men for 12 tedious hours turned out to be a bit of a stomach churner, but it's true what they say about smokers being sociable. About 40 of us were shipped out to Narita that evening but by the end of the flight it was a hardcore gang of four stained-nail Brits that had made the most progress in alleviating boredom and nerves. Dave and I had The Programme sussed out from the start. Our cynicism towards it began after our interviews when we were only selected to be in the list of reserve candidates. As 'reserves' we had automatically been categorised as losers of some sort, so we were of the mind to just exploit The Programme for all the money and travel experience we could get. Dave had been a TEFL teacher before in Italy and Spain, so we shared some passion for submersion in cultures abroad. We thought this passion was going to be of help, but as it turned out, it was going to be the death of us.

We got our first taste of what was in store when we stepped out of that plane and headed out into Immigration. A vast hall was laid out before us in various shades of metal grey and white, the floor covered with a hard-wearing plastic surface cleaned endlessly spotless by a man, the colour of whose dark combed hair matched the blotches splattered like flicked paint across one of his cheeks. He was armed with a shiny wheeled trolley holding mops, buckets, brushes and a bin, and dressed in a pea-green shirt & white trouser combo that had creases ironed so sharp they could have cut diamonds. The atmosphere of the hall demanded a hushed reverence, and amongst the gleaming surfaces our jet-lagged bodies were a contrasting scruffiness. The ceilings hung low over our heads, shining their strip-lights down on us brightly as we stood in the queue waiting in line to present our visas and passports to the uniformed officials.

My line was one of eight queues arranged in parallel along the long and narrow hall. I stepped over the line segregating the previous passenger from myself and approached the solemn looking Japanese who was going to admit me to his country. I said hello and smiled, slightly embarrassed not to know a single appropriate word to use. He looked back at me seriously from his enclosure behind a sheet of low glass and reached for my passport, a rectangle of red and gold in my hands.

"Instructor for one year", the Japanese guy said.

"Yes. One year visa."

I just kept my mouth shut after that and let him get on with his hectic page flicking, picking up, pressing and then putting down of a collection of various plastic rubber stamps. He gave me back my freshly processed passport and said "thankyou". Again I smiled lamely, then walked past his booth and down onto a flight of stairs to descend to baggage reclaim.

Tokyo Turbocharge Part 2 - Goodbye UK

2005-01-18T20:30:00.000+01:00

My ride to Heathrow airport on the 18th August was in the back of the 'Ford Fiesta Beige' - Nick's old beaten up banger. We drove across town from Clapham, past the trendy residents sunning themselves brown on the turf of the Common, or chilling with a pint of beer on benches outside the pubs whilst black cabs and routemasters pumped out street grime. The summer's national football anthem 'Vindaloo' was still on the radio, even though we had watched England go out in the second round in a 2 all draw to Argentina, followed by the national ignominy of the French thrashing Brazil 3-0 to win the World Cup.

Whether the check-in scales were broken before I put my bags on them I don't know, but it was just as well they didn't register any weight. A giant suitcase stuffed with clothes and CDs and books and a three-man tent, a 60 litre rucksack and then a 5ft long bag holding my complete snowboarding kit meant that I would have been more than a little over my luggage allowance. The lady at the counter gave me a wink as we joked cheerfully about my good luck and then handed me my business class boarding class, freely supplied by the Japanese Government.

Nick and I went upstairs to the Terminal 3 shops, and weaving between the crowds of all races and colours, ended up sitting in a gruesome pastiche of a pub constructed in the corner of the building overlooking the gates and the planes. A couple of weeks earlier a friend had asked me if I was nervous about leaving and I looked at her with a blank expression on my face. I wasn't at all nervous at the moment she asked me that question. As far I was concerned I was off on a gigantic adventure and there was not a single sinister gremlin whispering sticky doubts into the space between my ears. But that final afternoon after a final morning of final phone calls to my family and to Nicola, my nerves had started to crack like a sheet of overloaded ice, revealing underneath them a black black pool of the utterly unknown and terrifying.

To say I didn't know anything about life in Japan at that point isn't entirely true. I did know how to count from one to five, ichi ni san yon go, and I was aware that I would have to wear slippers a lot, so I'd packed a couple of pairs of flip flops to cover that little culture quirk. At the Programme's Pre-Departure Orientation three weeks earlier I had received the theoretical knowledge that I would greet people by bowing, and without eye contact. And I had received a contract from some place called Yono city in Saitama Prefecture giving me all the fleshy terms, in Japanese. I was able to figure out that Saitama Prefecture was basically northern Tokyo, although all my efforts to locate Yono-city on the map were frustrated. So as I waved goodbye to my oldest friend and boarded the JAL 747, I actually didn't know where in Japan I would be living. More than that though, I didn't know anybody. Literally not a single person.

Tokyo Turbocharge Part 1 - Summer 98

2005-01-17T19:04:00.000+01:00

What happens to a human being when he is without the life-support of his culture? Who does he become? Can you distill the fundamental essence of a person by stripping away the layers of perception and understanding in which he grew up? These are big questions, and there's no theoretical solution. So when I was 23 and reckless with myself, I went to Japan to submit to practical answers.

The summer of 1998 was good by English standards. The bright days elongated into an endless dazzle, the sun beaming its warm rays across the abundant green hills of the South East. On university campus us final years revelled in our completed degrees, drinking beers, flinging frisbees and shooting supersoakers under the infinite blue of our late-setting North Atlantic sky.

I felt like a shooting star that summer, blazing across the face of my culture, holding a searing passion and stunning success. And looking into Nicola's eyes, something had lifted deep inside my psyche, as if the landscape of my soul had been illuminated by a new light. Moving to London with Super Discount on my play list, it seemed that nothing could stop me. I was throbbing with cultural integration, with circles of friends expanding in number, size and intimacy, and job offers landing on my doorstep at the rate of one a week.

It was during those hot hectic weeks packed with tube riding and Bengy's breakfasts, sitting behind my desk in an open-plan office off Oxford Street, that I got the phone call from the Japan Exchange & Teaching Programme. I never wanted to be an English teacher. I was ambitious to be the Engineer I'd always been training and studying to become. But my curious mind had been teased by 12 perspective bending months in Toulouse a year earlier and I was itching to see beyond Europe's confine, yearning to stretch myself to the limit of the cultural frontier. Given the choice I had between adjusting to the North of England or adjusting to Japan, I took the easy option.

back to the future

2005-01-12T20:20:00.000+01:00

Travelling is something I seem to do a lot of. Only three days ago I was on a plane jetting back from Tokyo through the icy skies above Siberia and China. In a blurry trio of cultures and languages, Aymen and I slogged the 14 hours back from the other side of the planet, via Paris to our familiarly wintery London.

Yesterday I was up again at 4 in the morning, heaving my luggage brimming with Japanese presents out into the drizzly English Eastbourne morning. Fortunately the jet lag made this ungodly hour seem almost like an entirely normal time to get up.

I wish I had some exciting stories to tell about the road trip adventure with my christmas present, this year's Guiness World Record holder for the world's tiniest camper van. But as you may guess, the story consists mainly of road, road and a bit more road. Actually, there was a boat involved too.

Normally I seriously dislike the Daily Mail newspaper, but they had a brilliant 10 pound (15 dollar?) deal for a ferry trip across the English channel, so I guess it's the price I have to pay for putting up with their irrational ranting once in a while. Strikes me as ironic though - the most europhobic British newspaper encouraging travel to the home of the enemy.

The trip took about 30 hours, including 8 hours sleep. I settled down last night in a rest area off the A20 about half of the way down France near Chateauroux. At first I was thinking of just having an hour's refreshing nap, but since it would have been rude not to fully acquaint myself with the van's sleeping facilities, my little doze turned into a full 8 hour sleep.

That van is damn comfy to sleep in, which is good news since I have the whole of Europe to explore. I do have some reservations about whether it'll manage to cover that much ground before chuffing it's last smokey breath though. The back door brandishes a little sticker saying '4 Cylinder 1 Litre 5 speed' as if those are some sort of engine credentials to be proud of. Not exactly what I would call 'transcontinental' but hey, it's only got 25k on the clock, so far.

down to Kyoto at lightspeed

2005-01-07T09:25:00.000+01:00

Aymen and I jumped onto the bullet train on Tuesday morning after it's steaming nostrils and sharknosed face hummed menacingly up the platform. It whipped us off to Kyoto so fast that all the 300 km imbetween were just a splodgey hazy blur seen from our windows.

When I was here I lived in Saitama, the suburbs of northern Tokyo. Nothing but buildings and roads and railways dumped like lego bricks onto the Kanto plain, stretching as far as the eye can see in every direction. No trees, no parks, no culture. Just grey buildings and shops covered in neon and noise.

Kyoto makes Japan feel like a real country for me. This ancient capital houses the country's infinitely rich cultural heritage, and frames it within the bounds of a foresty green valley. The contrast of Japan's historical spiritual depth and refined aesthetic beauty with the modernity and technological power of modern Japan is so sharp it could cut diamonds. It's the factor that makes this country so infinitely fascinating.

meiji jingu

2005-01-01T17:03:00.000+01:00

There's always a thing to do whenever there's a special occasion in Japan, and on New Year's Day the thing to do in Tokyo is go down to the Meiji Jingu shrine. Once Aymen had finally got his ass out of bed, we headed off to get our fortunes and say some prayers for the coming year.

The place was heaving but the thronging crowds were kept under calm and orderly control by the ever so neatly uniformed police. I managed to eat some old chump of octopus baked in a batter ball and sprinkled with fish flakes, known as Takoyaki.

Chika translated my fortune and it turns out that this year the gods recommend I trust my instincts and follow my heart. Ralph's gods told him to get on with climbing the mountain that lay before him, "Schyeah right! The story of my life!".

turning Japanese

2004-12-31T05:01:00.000+01:00

Between jet-lag and a hangover, and on an empty stomach waiting to be filled with a Spicy MOS Burger, it's pretty tough to string some words together right now. Aymen and I finally stepped off the plane 12 hours after we left Paris and since then have been whirling about around Tokyo from Shinjuku to Shibuya and back again.

Hanging out here with Ralph and Chika feels so easy it's almost like I never left, except they have two mega-cute kids, Reggie and Mimi. For the moment I am loving the swing of this place, surprised to find how it all comes back so naturally - the chatting, the train catching, the street navigation. A part of me turned a little Japanese over my two years here and it seems it has become hard wired.

Aymen is so blown away with Tokyo that yesterday he had sensory overload and had to shut down with his eyes closed on the train back around to Shinjuku to go to for some food and karaoke with Jerry.

Anyway, I'm off out again. Check out these pics from yesterday. Move your mouse over the image to get the pop-up description. Happy New Year to you all!! Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu!!

the big three zero

2004-12-26T17:11:00.000+01:00

Some people get all panicky when heading towards thirty. If I have been getting panicky I haven't noticed. Mind you, there has been a lot to distract my attention. Firstly, I am now the proud owner of a camper van.

It's so tiny you can hardly believe that it actually is a camper van. But is has a fridge, a cooker, and space for a smallish double bed. It's in perfect condition and has only done 25000 miles even though it's about 16 years old. It's gonna be so much fun in that this summer.

Other that that it has been the usual sort of Christmas thing, with the presents and the food and stuff. Alexandra has been running around all over the place and is a little ball of energy, although our friend Kate's daughter Lilly came out best on camera.

I have to admit that my birthday does usually feel a little flat. Everybody is away, exhausted, hung over, or busy with family, so it very rarely contains a big celebration of my birth onto the planet. This situation needs a remedy, so I reckon I'll have a big party when I back to Toulouse.

But atleast I did do something for myself today - I told Tomomi (ex gf) I don't want to see her when I am in Japan. I was always doing what I didn't want to with her. Throughout the relationship I never got the feeling she could appreciate me. Since then I have had only more and more reason to be convinced that the main thing she liked me for was for being a potential passport to overseas.

The way I see it, there are two ways to be attracted to someone. You can be attracted to someone because of the status they offer, material benefits they bring. Or you can be attracted to someone just because you appreciate them.

Japan, being quite a sexist society, is full of the first type of relationship, with women needing to establish themselves through their choice of husband. This basis for a relationship completely neglects the inner person. If wealth, fame, power, or any other form of social status is what has attracted your partner, they're not going to be interested in you as a person. There's no heart to heart bond formed.

It feels right for me today to assert my intention to have better than that. I know better that that does exist since I have glimpsed it before. And because I have learnt to appreciate people. I admit that the chances of two people meeting and appreciating each other at the same time, managing to see past their own assumptions, cultural preferences and prejudices, does seem to be slim. But has anybody out there had that experience?

I'm talking about the experience where you can see each other, all the broken as well as the brilliant bits. In the act of seeing each other in that beautiful broken way, quivering with fear of rejection, and then showing you still want to be with them, the broken bits seem to melt away.

The time it happened to me, it opened up aspects of myself I never knew existed. So opening up the chance of experiencing that again is my birthday present to myself.

bonnes fetes mes amis

2004-12-23T14:09:00.000+01:00

Ahhh... I am sitting here this afternoon, stuffed after a big lunch with Sara, just whiling away the last few hours until I head back to Blighty. Everybody is leaving here and there's a buzz of happy laziness in the air as the Spanish and the Germans and the French all wind down in their own Christmassy ways.

The Spanish are hopping into shared cars to head off to Madrid or Barcelona. Many of the French are driving too, some as much as 9 hours North to Alsace. Many of the Germans are taking the company shuttle to fly off to Hamburg. Me, I'm flying off too, with easyJet to Gatwick. Then it's the train. The whole thing costs only 60 quid and takes 3 hours, assuming no annoying easyJet delays.

I was out last night with some friends saying goodbye. After that I wandered through town and it seems that there are some desperate people out there, trying to get money to buy presents. Three lads came up to me and tried to persuade me to practice a football tackle. It was a totally blatant ruse to grab my wallet out of my pocket and I told them in a cheery Christmas way to feck off.

Knowing Toulouse girls, I'm not surprised these boys were feeling the need to get some money together. Fabien from my Japanese class and I were complaining last night about how materialistic the girls are around here. I'm pretty sure that if you didn't present your Toulousain girlfriend with anything short of a diamond ring you'd be out the door and in the cold as soon as all the family obligations were complete.

As for me, I have few obligations this year. Just a relaxing time with the folks, then my 30th birthday on the 26th including a piss up on the streets of my childhood in Eastbourne with my old mates, no doubt bumping into some random faces from school. New Year Aymen and I are gonna spend in Tokyo with Ralph and Chika and Jerry, and maybe my ex Tomomi, although I'm sure how I feel about that one. But whatever, I can hardly complain can I? New Year's in Tokyo - what a tough life ;)

Finally there will be a little road trip back to France from the UK around the middle of Jan, taking the ferry across the channel with my newly acquired camper van. Yeehay ;))

Happy Christmas, Felix Navidad, Joyeaux Noel to all my blogland friends!

toulouse christmas

2004-12-20T23:39:00.000+01:00

What with going snowboarding every weekend, I've been desperately behind with my shopping for Christmas and was getting a bit concerned when my boss said that I couldn't have the day off today. Not to worry though. He let me nip out early, so Tanya and I trundled around the town centre for a couple of hours.

The streets have been done up pretty well, and although my camera ran out of battery before I got quite the shots I wanted, I'm sure these will give you the idea. There's a great christmas market covering the whole of Place Capitol at the moment, with stalls selling all sorts of stuff ranging from candles to foie gras. Tanya and I couldn't resist tucking into some Tartiflette and Mulled Wine. Hmmmm, yum :)

Having sorted out presents for some people is making me feel quite a lot more Christmasy. I'm leaving here with easyJet later in the week and have quite a Christmas planned. I would love to say that the highlight will be being with my folks back in the UK, but actually, I think it is going to be that 10 day trip to see my friends in Japan I have got lined up. Oh yes.

christmas gifts

2004-12-19T22:48:00.000+01:00

It being the Christmas period I suppose gifts are all the rage, but this weekend Christmas came a bit early in Toulouse. I guess you may have noticed the flashy new blog design. Well, this is all thanks to the talent and generosity of Mai, who also redesigned ViVi's blog.

Mai and I, complete strangers until a week ago, separated by the Atlantic, emailed each other a bit after her work on ViVi's blog. I explained the theme of my blog, then she put her creativity to work and came up with this masterpiece. I am so chuffed!! You're brilliant Mai.

For the rest of this weekend apart from this evening, I've been up in Andorra for some skiing and snowboarding with about 60 people from my company. Last weekend I got some training to be a snowboard instructor, and this weekend I was let loose on my first victim. I spent the weekend teaching Sara, who had never seen a ski resort before let alone snowboarded.

A few years ago I would never have devoted so much time to someone else when there was good boarding to be had. But I've been doing it for about 8 years now. After a while, fun though it is, I get quite bored of hairing down the piste as fast as I can. Teaching is a way for me to develop myself further as a boarder, not only because it means learning teaching skills, but also because it gives me the chance to learn new boarding skills too.

My instructor training last week didn't involve learning theoretical skills rubbish though. The lesson consisted entirely of making us snowboard backwards for the weekend, even sending us up the dreaded buttons lifts that way! Going backwards is a bit like a right handed person trying to write with their left hand, so I can tell you, I spent a good few days of last week in pain.

Anyway, it was all worth it to see the joy on Sara's face when she made her first run on Saturday. She was a brilliant student, always following my suggestions, physically very co-ordinated, standing very naturally on the board and even managing to put together some turns before I'd mentioned anything about them. That's almost unheard of!

Despite all the aches and pains and bruises we of course managed to enjoy a good dose of apres ski. The best bit was leaving the pub and everybody falling over and sliding down the hill and stuff. I managed to kill a dustbin at one point, and only narrowly avoided some poor kid whose butt slider we borrowed.

There was one major casualty that I have to report, and that was my snowboard boots. They've done a good job for the last 6 years, but when I looked at them this morning they really were hardly even glued together. They're now heading for some Andorran furnace.

the world's biggest status symbol

2004-12-16T23:13:00.000+01:00

Life does on the whole feel very fortunate these days. If you've ever had the feeling that your current life is somehow a shadow of the one you could be having, then you might be able to imagine how it would feel to get some light shined on in there, busting those shadows.

Apart from the contents of my last two pasts, my professional life has taken a big upswing. I've said before that I'm not a big career builder. The reason I have a profession is to bring something out in me. After some years in the doldrums, I am suddenly having a flourish where energy, quality and decisiveness are back in the game.

Just to add a little extra passion, we got some pictures through today of the prototype of our new aircraft type rolling off the production line. Take a look at this absolute monster.

Can you believe the size of that thing?! Its wings are so unbelievably wide they just stretch and stretch until they're out of the picture. It's scheduled to fly within four months. Hopefully we'll all be invited to be on the airfield to watch it.

toulouse morning

2004-12-09T20:51:00.000+01:00

So I mentioned that my car has broken down. I haven't got it fixed yet, and one of the reasons is that I am actually really enjoying taking the bus into work. The number 66 leaves from St Cyprien - a ten minute walk across the river.

I love meeting Toulouse like this in the morning. There is always a darkened hazy light settled over the river, blanching the distant buildings, threatening to keep people in their warm beds. But not those who I pass, dressed up in their long coats and scarves, walking briskly into town to sit with coffees and pens in their papery offices.

By the bus stop I can grab a quick Pain au Chocolat, and watch the world in their cars pass by the St Cyprien fruit and veg market. Fortunately the ride is rarely boring because there's either a friend from work to chat to on the bus, or the free Metro newspaper to read.

But there is another reason why I haven't fixed my car.

I am getting, for free, a camper van. Complete with double bed and kitchen facility. I am so so so happy about that. I go away out of town a lot, especially with snowboarding, and now it's gonna be dirt cheap.

Summer's gonna be fantastic. I fancy three weeks driving around Italy with that someone I'm crazy about, stopping near camp sites and sneaking in in the early morning to illicitly use their showers.

I love living here.

a very strange place

2004-12-08T01:08:00.000+01:00

I'm in a very strange place, looking down a road I haven't been on for over six years. It used to look so enticing, so desirable, so necessary that I'd have given anything to walk there along that road of dreams and hopes.

And it has mostly been looking the same way. Yet my eyes have glimpsed something I don't like.

It is lurking almost out of sight and I have to strain to see even its shadow, hidden at the haunted edges of my thirsty craze.

Whatever it is I want, it isn't down there in that place of distressed insufficiency.

Nick

2004-12-06T23:44:00.000+01:00

Reading ViVi's post today persuaded me to write about my mate Nick. I was mulling over the idea of posting about him because he was in my dreams last night.

In this dream, we were outside our houses in the road we grew up on and where our parents still live. I was looking towards the road when suddenly a group of dancing showpeople popped up all dressed in glittery costumes, performing "You're the one that I want" from Grease, of all things. If that doesn't sound strange enough, Nick was dressed in a tight blue lycra outfit.

Before you start accusing me of anything Thomas, Nick's girlfriend Holly was also in the performance ;)

Since we were born only two doors away from each other and 6 months apart, I have known Nick longer than I have known my own sister, Hannah. Nick was my pal for adventures out on the fields building camps and tree houses, and on the railway lines looking for and hiding from trains, and building dams in rivers and running away from angry cows. Like you do.

I'm definately very lucky to still have Nick as a friend. I see him quite regularly since London is only 1.5 hours and 60 euros away from Toulouse by plane. We went on holiday together this summer to Sri Lanka and Qatar where we had a great time, with not even the slighest hint of a disagreement on the itinerary. Cheers to Nick! :)

snow and singing

2004-12-05T20:24:00.000+01:00

Bit of a varied weekend this one. Friday night was a party organised by my Spanish friends for about 200 people. The place was packed, and there was whiskey everywhere. The highlight of the night, or atleast the bit I can remember, was the debut performance in public of The Jacqui Chan Band. Here they are.

I would write more except that my memory is a bit vague after they left the stage. I know I came home in a bad mood though, hence the rather short post from Saturday morning. Maybe it was the whiskey. Anyway, having the mother of all hangovers, I stayed in bed until 6pm yesterday, and then went to Tanya's for some food.

Today I got up and actually did something. My first day on the slopes this season, was a major success. The sun was out, the snow was fresh and powdery. I was burning it up and doing the odd 180, although they were pretty rusty I have to admit. Here's a picture of Si trying to spray me with snow.

2004-12-04T05:29:00.000+01:00

fill 'er up

2004-12-02T23:37:00.000+01:00

Everything's been braking recently. Last night I walked out of my Braking Systems team office and jumped into my car only to find half way through the trip home that the brakes themselves had broken. Fun!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee along the circular up behind some weavy traffic narrowly escaping death, smoke pouring from left hand side as some seriously screechy differential braking action goes on with my left foot touching the floor pushing out the last drop of brake fluid from a gaping hole somewhere in the system onto the now slippery roads of Toulouse. Pant pant, sweat sweat, heart a thump a thump. Slooooow slooow slow down, breath, breath calmly. Use emergency handbrake braking technique.

Needless to say I was catching the bus in this morning. And I was so glad that my car decided to choose this week to give it up. And that the bus drivers chose this week to go on strike. Oh yes, so glad.

Anyway, I've had enough of brakes breaking, and not braking. That's why this morning I walked into a new office and started the first full day on my new job. My official job title is now 'Aircraft Fuel Systems Engineer'. That's the bits like the fuel tanks and the automatic centre of gravity control and stuff. I know that sounds boring but actually it isn't. You believe me right?

My new team consists of two Scots, two English including me, one Italian, a Moroccan, a French, a Spaniard and a German. Smart :)

revamping the union jack

2004-12-01T22:35:00.000+01:00

I noticed on the Little Britain link I followed from Chinkel's website the other day that they had a competition to design a new flag for Britain. There are some pretty good designs in there. I especially like the Full English one. So good it's making me hungry. The All New Characterless Britain was also quite amusing in a cynical way.

I thought this competition was quite a good idea but unfortunately it had finished by the time I found it, so I decided to make an entry anyway and post it up here instead.

Looking at all the flags of the world I actually do quite like the way all the lines are arranged. I mean, please indulge me and forgive any offence, but the French flag and the German flag and the Italian flag and the Irish flag, and loads of other flags, are just a boring arrangement of three different coloured lines. Then there's a whole fiesta of flags that are just different coloured versions of the cross on a background theme.

Yup, as far as I am concerned, the arrangement of lines is a plus and it can stay. Not only does it look good, make the flag distinct amongst its friends the other flags of the world, but there are also some historical reasons for that form which it would be appropriate to respect. The only thing I could really change then, was the colours.

I had a little fiddle around and came up with this.

I quite like that, me. Not only is it the colour of all the lovely grass we have over in blighty, the green is also 'British Racing Green' and so evokes memories of classic Jaguars and other cultural motoring icons.

If that wasn't good enough reason, I can think of two other benefits from changing the red bits. One, because the St George Cross is now associated only with football. Two, because it's not the Scottish bit, so they can't complain ;)

What do you reckon? Shall we go for it? Non Brits, don't you think it would suit us better than that old red, white and blue thing?

the fourth plinth

2004-11-29T20:59:00.000+01:00

Trafalgar Square might be not be the first place tourists would think of when asked to name a London landmark. But still, anyone who has spent a bit of time in London wil recognise that the Square is a vital part of the centre of the city, geographically tying together various cultural elements of modern and historical British life.

From its centre we can radiate outwards to Buckingham Palace, or to Parliament Square . On the North Side of the square you can visit the National Gallery, or wander up Haymarket either to the theatres or to Piccadilly Circus and on into the bars, clubs, restaurants and strip joints of Soho.

Sitting in the square itself, you can look upwards past the pigeons and into the cloudy grey skies where your eyes will meet the man whose efforts made the Battle of Trafalgar worth building a monument for. It was at this battle in 1805 that Admiral Lord Nelson defeated the combined Spanish and French fleets, assuring Britain control of the world's seas for the next 100 years and setting the scene for the peak era of the British Empire.

Three other figures have statues in the Square, all of them people you'd almost never have heard of, all of them intimately involved with the growth of the British Empire in Indian and Asia. Yet these three men, seated on plinths at three of the corners of the square, are missing a fourth illustrious comrade.

The fourth plinth, pictured above, has never been permanently filled. Even now there are no clear ideas about who or what to put up there, and so it has become a home for all sorts of opportunistic marketing exercises, and temporary displays of contemporary art.

Whilst I don't want disparage the obviously great cultural contribution the "Hotel For The Birds" has brought to the British nations and people, I can't help feeling that all these ideas are completely off the mark. Whilst it is slightly more noble than a Ford Fiesta covered in pigeon poo, even the idea of a statue of Nelson Mandela is still just not cutting it for me as a serious candidate for permanent residence.

The whole of the Square is dedicated to victory, glory, conquest, empire. The period of empire has left an indellible mark on modern Britain, shaping our diet with tea and curry, shaping our society with immigrants from the former colonies, and shaping our language with words like pyjamas, ketchup, gingham and tattoo. And yet the empire is no more.

The empty fourth plinth seems to me to capture that essential problem we seem to have as a nation - the problem of moving on, away from past grandure into something unknown. As it sits empty it is a comment left unsaid about our history, and as it is filled with the temporary and the ridiculous it is a diversion from the business of our future.

I can't think of any more suitable way for Britain to move on historically than for a statue of Mahatma Ghandi to be put up there on that patient spot.

Not only is Ghandi one of the most revered historical figures or recent times, he was also the most influential figure in the effort of colonised nations to achieve independence, thereby bringing empire to an end.

In placing Ghandi on that plinth, Britain would be admitting and symbolising even in our very infrastructure that the empire is the past. We would be accepting the changed face of the nation that has resulted from that period of history, humbly denting the image of white supremacy. It might even help us find the confidence we need to take our next historical steps.

Given the choice, which would you take? Ghandi? Sarah Lucas' pigeon poo car, which apparently would be "a recognition of the abandoned car culture of less salubrious areas of London."? Or something else salubrious?

french kissing habits

2004-11-27T16:46:00.000+01:00

It didn't take me long to get used to the kiss on each cheek we have over here as a greeting. I am talking about greeting girls of course - I'm not having any of that kissing boys lark that some French guys do.

The map below stolen from a newspaper and photoshopped reveals the interesting fact that there is no standard French pattern for the number of kisses kissed. Some regions go for only one, others for three or four.

It looks to me a bit like most of the places where there are only two kisses are on the borders, whilst the deeper into France you go the more kisses there are. I wonder if there's a reason for that?

Whilst Toulouse is certainly lacking a couple of kisses compared to other regions, the people on the edge of Poitou Charentes seem to be getting the worst deal with their one miserly kiss. It's not on land border over there, but there are some ports in the area seeing as it's next to the Atlantic.

Hmmm, what do you reckon? Why the differences?

it's the week for it, apparently

2004-11-25T20:38:00.000+01:00

So after Gav and Yoko, Owen and Jo, pictures of couples and romance being in the air and stuff, a mate I haven't seen in about 8 years sends an email out today, all happy families and pictures of babies. Any more, anybody?

Jon is obviously well up with the habits of an ex-pat though. Another one of us Blogger / Flickr clones. Some fantastic photography from New Zealand. Look forward to catching up with you at Christmas Jon.

romance d'automne

2004-11-25T01:17:00.000+01:00

gav and yoko, owen and jo

2004-11-23T19:55:00.000+01:00

You know when you see two people together and are just struck by how right it seems for them? This weekend my Australian friend Gav popped over from London with his Japanese wife Yoko. This was the first time I'd met Yoko, and I was quite touched to see them looking so happy, and to see how well life is working out for my friend.

I first met Gav in Tokyo in 1998. He was one of a gang of five or so of us who always used to go to this little foreigner friendly bar called Makkas in Urawa. We used to spend those early days together drinking Asahi or Kirin beeru, playing cards and generally exhausting our culture shock grievances.

I haven't always had good things to say about Japanese women, which is a massive generalisation I know but understandable considering some of my experiences. Lets just say that a western man in Japan tends to attract some rather materialistically motivated people. That's why it was so good to meet Yoko and be reminded of what I find great in the Japanese character.

The Japanese mode of expression can be so delicate and subtle, so dispossessed of a verbal form, that it is often lost on more boisterous Westerners used to throwing ideas and concepts around freely, debating and challenging each other. Yoko reminded me of this way of communicating, but showed me it in a style and with a humour that was clearly her own. In my limited experience, that's not something I saw achieved very often in Japan. Gavin was totally right to describe himself as a lucky man.

Just as I was feeling warmed to see one happy couple, my mate Owen emailed me today to say that he had just been on holiday to Thailand where he asked his eerily well suited long term girlfriend Jo to marry him. I've known Owen since I was 6 and words cannot begin to describe my gladness that I have this rock solid gentle funny man as a friend. If anyone deserves happiness it's Owen. Congrats Owen and Jo :)

beaujolais nouveau

2004-11-19T19:04:00.000+01:00

Our neighbourhood tramp was apparently a bit pissed off with people stealing his gig last night, since when I bumped into him in the epicerie he was buying not a bottle of wine, but a bottle of coke. He said he didn't fancy drinking that evening, which was quite amusing considering that the whole of France was spending the night on the streets knocking back the wine.

Far be it for me to pass comment on the quality of any wine, I'm certainly no expert, but the French themselves tell me that the Beaujolais nouveau festival is basically a piss up organised for the purpose of offloading a sea of otherwise unsellable wine.

Certainly I'd say that last night's offerings were a little sharp. Not very good for the head either, if drunk in the quantities I drank it in. Although I did actually get out of bed around the normal time, by the time I had finished stumbling still drunk around my bathroom, I had decided it might be wise to take a half day holiday.

Ug!

the start of the surf season

2004-11-19T17:21:00.000+01:00

They say every cloud has a silver lining and around here it that is certainly the case. We've had some pretty bad weather recently, but atleast this means that the Pyrenees have had a ton of snow dumped on them. See all that fresh white powder!

Apparently Ax Bonascre will open tomorrow which has got to be the earliest start to the season I have ever seen. Ok, I've only seen 4 seasons here but still, snowboarding before the end of November is quite impressive.

I won't be going this weekend however, since my Aussie friend Gav is coming over with his wife Yoko. This means I get a bit more time to figure out how I am going to pay for my holiday in Japan over Christmas and a new snowboard complete with boots and bindings.

Hmmm... I do like this Hammer Private. At the end of last season I gave it a test drive and spent a happy couple of hours scaring myself shitless going stupid fast. Now if I can just find that credit card...

english yobs, french snobs

2004-11-18T15:51:00.000+01:00

Standing in the blustery arms of strange air, the English and the French face each other. Each army bustles in the dim twilight with the pitching of defensive camps on top of opposing hills, the enemies surveying each other with hostility across the grassy expanse of an open valley.

The English are gathered around their fires to keep warm and burn chunks of slaughtered beast in the roaring flames. The best spots go to a few talented ancestors of Lennon or Albarn who are keeping spirits high by strumming instruments and banging pots, just as they would back home in the pub, yodelling anything as long as it rhymes and is about whipping French ass. The quartermasters are kept busy rolling out barrels of beer to the men who get busy playing drinking games, lying under makeshift holes tapped in the side, ale spilling freely until exhausted.

Meanwhile, across the valley, the French soldiers are seated away from the flames as an army of cooks tend to the boiling of vegetables, the making of sauces and the braising of steaks. An army marches on it's stomach after all, and what with the gallic noses being bathed in smells of home, their General fully expects them to be fighting hard for their own corner of La France tomorrow. The soldiers ravenously wait in the dark, talking to each other about tomorrow's demise of English scum. Wooden crates packed generously with straw are cracked open and the timeless shape of wine bottles is revealed twinkling in the moonlight, ready to be passed around.

The wind blows around the valley, carrying the drunken but tuneful sounds of the English camp across to the ears of their French foes, and the lifting the scented aromas of garlic and herbs back to the underpriveleged noses of the English. As each side talks, as each General stirs hatred and sells propaganda, the soldiers grow instinctively to despise what they know of their enemy. The uncourtly music and beery yelling of the English is transmuted by the French mind and discourse into the ignorant howlings of a barbarous rabble, indulging in drunkeness and reduced to facing death without dignity or honour. The English for their part cannot believe the French are going to the impracticality of preparing what smells like a banquet. What arrogance and pretence, to luxuriously cart all the ingredients, cooking kit and crew around when it's weaponry and soldiers that are needed for a battle. But the battle's tomorrow, and the English turn back to their beer to squeeze some final pleasure and revelry out of what will be for many their last night under the twinkling stars.

In the morning at the crack of dawn, the armies are raised and readied. Sharpened swords are sheathed and unsheathed, the harnesses of cavalry saddles checked and double checked. Signals are watched for and nerves grow tense, as do hatreds, kindled and rekindled, ancient wounds remembered and bitterly sworn for avengement.

With cries and yells the two sides launch at each other in blind fear and fervent anger. Men are cut in two, disembowled, de-limbed, beheaded or blinded, left lying in pain with the shrieks of their friends and brothers ringing in their ears as death watches on, notching his stick busily. Blood runs so thick on the ground that the grass is as crimson as the last gasp of sunset.

Hours later, the survivors have gathered behind their lines sullied, stained and exhausted. The general and his lieutenants, where still alive, huddle in tents to digest the implications of the slaughter. A side won, a side lost. Terrain has been ceded, bounty gained, reputations established or destroyed. Just as the dust is settling two lone messengers stir it back up into the aggrieved air, racing off on the strongest horses to the national capitals, keeping the politicians informed.

As time passes by, viewed under the frozen stony gaze of monuments of remembrance for the heroic dead or for victory's glory, the stories of the survivors become gossip and cultural folklore. The habits and qualities of the enemy seen from afar across the valley become ridiculed stereotypes. Music, beer and roudy good cheer is contrasted against cuisine, conversation and dignity. Each set becomes a more rigid identity against the emotional undercurrent of a hundred thousand grieving hearts.

Once chosen, the identity grows, but growing misshapen and distorted against it's cultural cousin. Dignity over-emphasised becomes snobbish arrogance, good cheer yobbish loutism, each extreme prevented from finding integrity through embracement of its opposite by the mental walls of patriotism and political identity.

Hundreds of years later, events and thoughts and cultural shaping forgotten and consigned to deep within the subconcious, the nations continue their contrasting lives.

a creative day

2004-11-17T01:00:00.000+01:00

This afternoon Thomas emailed me about the new Toulouse Wiki he has set up. This seems like a great idea for gathering all sorts of living and changing information about Toulouse and stuff to do in Toulouse, so I added a couple of things and will be adding some more whenever I get a moment.

This evening Dena came around for our final art lesson before she goes back to the states. After managing to fill the room with a dense fog of burning olive oil, a testament to my cooking skills, I got down to my assignment of 'bringing out the engineer in me and exploring the theme of inside and outside'. Don't ask me, I'm not the one who makes this stuff up :/

Anyway, here's the result. Not sure I completed the assignment, but I thought I'd put it up here for you all to laugh at anyways.

c is for Chartered

2004-11-15T18:51:00.000+01:00

It's over 11 years since I started down the road to the not so glamorous profession of engineer. Even though most people in the UK would associate the idea of an engineer with fixing cars or washing machines, it's the profession I chose and I'm glad that it is.

There has always been something about technology that has fascinated me, and from the earliest of ages it has been part of makeup. It was a logical progression to choose my role in life based on my passion and interest, even though I can hardly say that it is still my passion. Dealing with technology on a daily basis means it is now my responsibility.

I guess that's what makes today so significant, since this afternoon I sent in my application to have my level of responsibility formally recognised - to become a Chartered Engineer. Becoming Chartered is basically just a way of establishing your level of experience and competence, but it also means you can put the letters CEng after your name.

Now I'm not big on status symbols, and I'm not going to suddenly start thinking that I'm superhuman simply because some organisation blessed by the queen has given me permission to have a poncey business card. But what will make me glad about being Chartered is the knowledge that I am a part of a worldwide community of people who can shape the world we live in, who can open up new possibilities.

Man has always interacted with nature with inquisitiveness, creativity and imagination. In that sense engineering and technology are expressions of the same drives that give us art and religion. Like all these things, there is no denying that we don't always use our ability for the best. Environmental destruction and weapons that could blow the planet to smithereens are clearly not in our interest.

Still, having been to some of the poorest countries on the planet and seen desperate poverty in action, I can only thank and respect the ancestors who helped to drag us out of the mud, away from disease and hunger, and who built the systems of communication that now bring our species together.

Despite the fact these things were achieved on the back of greed and exploitation, and even though the benefits are not yet universal, there is much there that is admirable, and much that is beneficial to mankind.

In our time, we are seeing the need to shape what we have created into the life of the planet in a way that is sustainable, and which assures our happiness and dignity, not just our wealth. There are going to be a lot of challenges to overcome before we achieve this, but I for one am glad to be an engineer at the time when we face them.

entente cordiale

2004-11-12T13:34:00.000+01:00

Take a quick look at this list of wars between England and France. Apparently, since Guillaume conquered England at Hastings in 1066, there have been no less than 28 separate wars. How crazy is that?

Given the choice between blowing each other up or not blowing each other up, I freely admit that I am glad we live in an age where we are learning how to achieve European co-operation. Today I read in the Guardian that the 2007 Tour de France is likely to start in London, and not in France at all. Cool.

Taking the theme of international co-operation a bit further, whilst I was looking for images to include on this post I came across the one below, with the American Trek team winning the TDF in 2001, with Lance Armstrong in the 'maillot jaune'.

I guess the surrender monkeys are good for something then, even if it is just organising nice bike rides. Looks to me like with all the wars that they had with the English and stuff, they just got plain tired of fighting and instead took up nice friendly healthy pursuits that don't involve killing.

scribbles

2004-11-11T23:57:00.000+01:00

Whilst I was back home recently, my neice Alex announced that she was going to draw a baby. She's been getting into her drawing recently, and even writing letters too. The results of her 'baby' effort, done on the back of an envelope, are just too funky to go ignored. So here they are.

Gordon Arthur Davenport

2004-11-09T23:55:00.000+01:00

A real family occasion today, with my mother's brother and my cousins Ross and Louise. My grandfather died two weeks ago at the age of 89 after 4 years of illness, and today was the funeral. Since Gordon never liked organised religion my mum decided that we'd do it ourselves.

I haven't been to many funerals but this one was certainly the most intimate and truthful - a personal, honest and heartfelt testimonial to Gordon's life.

Gordon was a private and reclusive man, so much of his story has disappeared along with the incisive mind that contained it. The vague details of his life I know are a combination of influences from a past which seemed today to finally drop into written history. They illuminate only a little of this intelligent but stern man, who was to me at the same time the most fascinating and the most difficult to reach of all my grandparents.

Gordon was born in 1915 in Croydon, South-East London. His father had been in the Norfolk regiment during the 1st World War, and it was in Norfolk that his parents met. Gordon was the oldest of 4 brothers. Sadly the family disintegrated under the strain of the loss of the youngest child, and the emotional conflict appears to have scarred Gordon's ability to trust.

At the age of 12, in 1927, Gordon won a scholarship at Whitgift Middle School in Croydon. This was a fortunate step since Gordon's educational routes had previously been limited by his family's poverty. No doubt it was this poverty, together with the Great Depression and then the Second World War, which caused Gordon to be such a frugal man.

Despite his utter refusal to make any purchase beyond that which was justifed by practicality, he never failed to be generous or to help his family financially. It was in his generosity and in his fairness of generosity that I could tell he was a principled man. We know most significantly from the story of his life that he was against war. When the 2nd World War broke out in 1939, Gordon registered as a conscientous objector, a choice which caused him considerable difficulty in integrating into post-war Britain.

Since he wasn't a soldier during the war, he was instead involved in the country's efforts by driving ambulances organised by the Quakers. It was this vocation which was registered on his marriage certificate to Rona Adair in 1942.

Gordon and Rona had met at the Tolsworth Manor Youth Hostel in Caterham, Surrey. Rona was the Head Warden of the Youth Hostel and Gordon sometimes the Assistant. They both shared a great love of the countryside and of walking. In Gordon's house today, there were still pairs of walking trousers that Rona had thoughtfully made for him for their camping holidays in the British hills and mountains.

Beyond Rona's own death in 1991, Gordon never failed to walk. Right up until his liver failed and he started regular dialysis 4 years ago he would be out on the South Downs almost every day, whatever the weather, hiking for hours at a time. Even under dialysis he would still drag his ailing body around Eastbourne. Two Christmases ago, when his car failed to start for a trip into town to buy his great granddaughter Alexandra a rocking horse, he didn't call a taxi. He just trotted off for the 3km walk into the town centre, and trotted back on the return, carrying the clumsy box.

It was in his relationship with Alex, who called him Great Gordon, that we noticed an ever so slight change in temperament. The total frostyness became edged with just a faint dab of appreciation for Alex, which rubbed off a little onto other people. He began to smile and joke on occasion. It's hard for me to describe how these limited glimmers of his hidden humanity gave me hope and appreciation for Gordon. My mother more so than me.

In these later years of his life, it was her who looked after him the most. By necessity, their previously distanced and estranged Father-Daughter relationship developed into one of much more mutual respect. My mother helped whilst respecting Gordon's need for independence and privacy. In return, Gordon's stern and authoritarian attitude, which so marked her own childhood, softened.

For myself, I am glad that I managed to see him on the day before he died, lying in constant pain in a sterile hospital bed. The last month had been getting harder and harder for him, his mind clear but his body fading away. He knew it was time and was not afraid to discuss his options or to give instructions.

As I said goodbye I took the risk of touching his arm. He didn't jump away as I expected but reached back to me and looked at me in the eye with emotion, decades of stern glare gone and just Gordon the man, in his naked human state, looking at me and I at him.

All the best, Great Gordon.

recently I have mostly been...

2004-11-08T23:21:00.000+01:00

...in England (again), so I haven't had a chance to blog. I have been busy gathering stuff to post though.

Noemi left on Thursday to go back to Madrid, and we spent the evening down some Basque style bar eating tapas and drinking sangria until 3 in the morning. I said Noemi has left, but this is about the 5th time she has left since I have been there. When you coming back Noes?

After leaving work and going to watch the 'Jacqui Chan Band' practicing a few songs in a dingy hole out by Jolimont, Friday night was spent at Tanyas. Larry had come over from London to see her and so we went around for a curry, and stayed. I apparently turned green around 4 in the morning after one last cigarette, and then decided I would be wise to stumble my way back home. I still managed to be up for sausages beans and mash in the morning though.

I arrived back in the UK on Saturday night and haven't been doing too much apart from sleeping, eating and reading. Tonight I put my 4 year old neice to bed. We had a cool conversation just before she dropped off.

"Uncle Daniel, do you like cuddly toys?"

"Not really Alex. I'm 29 and a boy. Boys don't like cuddly things very much. We prefer toys that are gadgets like digital cameras, computers or cars."

A quizzical look came over her face as she digested this response, and then she said, "But computers don't talk do they".

To which my sci-fi brain said "Well, not yet no. But one day I expect your computer will ask you things about what you want to do, and you'll tell it what to do."

"Don't be silly Uncle Daniel, computers aren't magic."

up on the bridge with the captain

2004-11-04T17:45:00.000+01:00

Ten thirty is a pretty crumby time to be leaving the office, but that's what happened last night. Actually it was the second time I had left the office that evening. The first time was about 1830 and I was literally just parking the car when my phone started jumping around inside my pocket.

Part of my job is to do 'standby' on occasion, which is where you get called in to work in the middle of the night to help out an airline in need. We usually get called for what is known in the aviation industry as an 'AOG' or Aircraft On Ground, i.e. your holiday not happening.

Resigned to being hungry for a few more hours, I pulled off my tie and turned the car around. Ten minutes later I was at the company gate, climbing over the passenger seat to flap my badge against the reader, which is always standing on duty on the inconvenient side of my English car.

The people who called me weren't the customers themselves. We have a special 24hr hotline number that they call. The engineers the clients speak to on that line then call me if it is anything to do with the hydraulics, the landing gear, the brakes, the braking system, or the steering. I hopped out of my car and went up to see these guys, grabbing a muesli bar out of the vending machine on the way.

I wasn't aware that they had been decorating up there, but when I arrived I found that their office had now sprung a security door. Flapping my badge again, I let myself in.

No sooner was in than I was transported 500 years into the future and a distance of 78.2 light years out into the galaxy Zog. The flashy bastards, not content with having their own rest and relaxation room, had done their AOG control centre up to resemble the bridge of the USS Enterprise.

As I stepped cautiously into the room, watching out for Klingons marauding around with phasers set to kill, I saw two steps rising from the floor to my left. I took the first and a set of electronic double doors opened in front of me with a shhhe-woosh (you know the one, you trekkies). I found myself in front of two parallel rows of wireless workstations, tiered so that the ones at the back overlook those in front, NASA Style.

All of them were facing the walls, and what walls! Directly in the centre of mission control there was a huge screen displaying an image of the world, its flattened representation covered in darkness or illuminated by the sun according to the location. All the major cities were marked, and also all the locations of the places which needed our help.

On the walls surrounding the world, we had displays of the email hotline - all the messages that were coming in crying for assistance, asking for answers about their misbehaving mating flanges and bleed nipples (you gotta love English technical vocabulary).

Now I won't bore you with the details of what I did, except to say that it was a Frenchman who handed me my mission, a German who gave me the answer, and a Philippino who was our customer. God knows what various tourists and businessmen from all sorts of nationalities were on the plane, but it gives me pleasure to live and work in a hub of this diverse and co-operating world.

me me me

2004-11-02T19:07:00.000+01:00

So I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was reading 'Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. There are a load of reviews on Amazon that can fill you on the many angles this book covers, but the one I liked the most was the philosophical side.

Pirsig starts by noticing that there is a big difference between Eastern and Western modes of thought. The East expresses the fundamental metaphysical unity of the universe, while the Western philosophy is based on the separation of subject and object, as per Greek philosophy, giving us our rational scientific mindset and language.

The main idea of the book is the concept of 'Quality'. Bear with me now, this gets a bit tricky. Pirsig says that "Quality is a direct experience prior to intellectual abstractions... [it] is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the sense that there is a knower and a known...".

This leads to a re-evaluation of the way we look at the world. Pirsig's basic contention is that we ourselves impose the division of the world into subject and object. It is a division that does not really exist. What exists is Quality, from which we are undivided.

Now I'm not going to go into trying to explain what Pirsig perceives Quality to be. That's the subject of his second book, Lila, which I would like to read because I'm fascinated by this idea that objects and subjects are, outside our perception, undifferentiated. If objects and subjects are undifferentiated, then how does that effect the object that I call 'me'. Apparently I am not what I think I am. I am actually not a 'me' at all.

This sounds crazy of course. It's clear from looking at my hands tapping on this keyboard that there is something very differentiated about this lump of molecules. But on the other hand, the ideas feel good. So many of the world's problems are caused by our insistence on ourselves. You don't have to look as far as today's politics in America to see that. It is plainly right under our noses, at home, at work, in the street and on the roads.

What is it about that annoying colleague who is constantly trying to get a promotion? It's his ideas about himself, in relation to a social hierarchy. What is it that is so funny about comedies like 'The Office' or 'Little Britain'? It's their ridicule of people's ideas about themselves. Wherever there is an 'I am' or a 'we are', we see stupidity, we get conflict.

A bit more than 3 years back, I had a seriously difficult time. I'd previously been in Japan for 2 years and during that time I was very isolated for the most part of the day, free to wander in my mind. When I wasn't isolated, I was standing in front of classes of 14 year olds being paraded like a celebrity chimp, repeating Japanese stereotypes of English people as if I was a human tape recorder.

Experiencing this bizarre contrast of drudgery and local celebrity had an intense effect on my self-image, with my ego clinging to images of a successful future profession, and simultaneously lapping up the elevated status of privileged guest. Being so far from the normalising influences of home, and pushed further into fantasy by painful doses of daily prejudice, this cancer of conciousness grew beyond me.

While I was in Japan, this fantasy world could exist. When I got back to England though, reality made itself felt.

I can remember episodes of life's confrontation of this walking imaginary person, and I can remember the lies I told myself to protect the fantasies. I can remember life getting gradually more insistent, starting with gentle knocks and getting harder and harder, until finally the whole edifice of my life crumpled and I was left in a trembling personal void where I knew that nothing I thought about myself was true. A concealed layer of previously subconcious motivations had opened up before me.

Since that time I have been unravelling this layer, peeling it back to find other layers, following the trail and going deeper and deeper until... until this idea that 'my' life isn't quite what it seems. Here, what I am calling 'life' is what Pirsig calls 'Quality'. It's the best explanation I have found so far for what happened and where the remedy seems to be.

vielha

2004-11-01T23:26:00.000+01:00

The good news this weekend is that the snow is not just coming, it has arrived, and I have been walking in it. On Friday night eight of us drove up to an appartment we had rented for the long weekend in Vielha, Catalunya.

There was no special reason for going other than it was a long weekend and we thought we should get out of town. Plus, Sara, Oscar, Noemi and Jorge being Spanish they fancied getting back home. I was the only one who didn't speak Spanish, so you can imagine that I spent a good deal of the time with a puzzled expression on my face.

We basically took it very easy. There was a fair bit of lounging around the appartment drinking, smoking and singing. Jorge was playing his guitar and we terrified the neighbours with a lot of English songs like Travis, Robbie, Radiohead and stuff. It was really good to sing. I haven't had the chance to do it much since I left Japan and Karaoke behind over 4 years ago.

As far as Spanish music goes, I got introduced to Chambao, who are great - sort of flamenco chill out with Spanish vocals, which always sounds exotic.

We did a couple of hikes, one on Saturday in the sunshine, and one today in the snow. Whenever I am in the mountains I become very peaceful, and just gaze at the white mountains, splashed as they were with autumn leaves and red berries. Or maybe it's because I need to get more exercise that I didn't feel like talking very much ;)

See complete photoset

customer service a la francais

2004-10-27T23:13:00.000+02:00

I guess it is another stereotype of the French that they are rude and surly when serving you. As usual there's some truth in this, but it's not entirely true. I think it greatly depends on the type of business.

In most shops and restaurants, the service here is maybe a bit slow, but not usually rude. If you go into any French bureaucracy though... oo la la! Ask any person living in France for a story about a visit to Le Prefecture and you will see any pleasant atmosphere in the room dive straight out the nearest window as they start spitting expletives out as if they had filled their mouth with rotting nastiness.

I would say that there seem to be certain characteristics of French administrative organisations that are quite pernacious. The main one I can think of is a focus on the requirements of their processes, as opposed to the requirements of their customers. The customers are expected to fit inside the process and like it.

I suppose that this is quite typical of most bureaucracies, but the problem is that the bureaucratic mentality does seem to spill out a bit. The strangest example I can think of is when I went to a popular and busy restaurant with my family, Le Entrecote.

We were standing in a queue waiting to be seated to tuck in to our portions of steak and chips french style, and had reached the front when the busy head waitress whirled across my path and commanded me to 'avancez-vous', meaning move forward. I stepped forward a few paces, thinking she wanted me to make room for more people behind.

Suddenly one of the girls (never men) cutting up the steak informs me that I have to get back because I am bothering her chopping. So I move backwards again, a little confused, only to be harrangued by the head waitress again for not having moved forward.

"But I did..", I said, "..and your waitress told me to move because I was in her way"

"No no no monsieur. Advance over THERE!", she informed me, pointing to a little gathering space hidden behind a wall.

Clearly she had assumed I knew about her special customer organising system, and was quite annoyed that as an object to be processed in it, I didn't know my place.

The funny thing is that I work in Customer Services myself, and originally came over here with English attitudes which are generally more [insert your own annoying business jargon to describe an appropriate attitude, I refuse to put it on my blog].

I am ashamed to say that in the two years since I have been here, the bureaucratic French attitudes have slowly crept into my psyche and I sometimes find myself saying things like, "c'est pas moi ca" ("that's not me, that").

I guess it is inevitable that a person picks up different cultural methods. I think I shall call this 'culture creep' - the subconcious and unintended change from one attitude to another as a result of prolonged stay in a different culture.

Some of these things will be good changes I suppose, but in terms of customer service, I think these lazy and deceitful attitudes really would be best avoided. So I have decided from now on that my customers will get only the best service.

And I will stop my car for anybody waiting to cross a pedestrian crossing.

a rainy reunion

2004-10-26T23:18:00.000+02:00

It's nearly two years since I left the UK and roughly the same amount of time since I have seen a lot of my friends from Uni. Fortunately there's always someone who eventually gets around to organising a reunion and this weekend we all rolled into our old uni town of Guildford, just as we did a little over 10 years ago as freshers.

I'm glad the reunion was held there since it gave me a chance to pop in and see some other friends too, starting on blustery Saturday afternoon with Kev and Katie. I lived with Kev when I was a trainee here in France in '96, went to their wedding, and have now had the privilege of holding their dark and fluffy two week old daughter Florence.

After buying some Cornish Pasties with Kev to feed a famished Katie, I shivered my soggy way up the steep Farnham Road to dump my bags at a B&B, avoiding the torrents of rain pouring down in the gutters, dragging mulchy autumn leaves along in its race to the bottom of the valley.

I met the Uni gang down at The White House pub by the river around 5pm. A really good crowd turned up with names too many to list here. Of course it was great to see everyone, but I was very pleased to see Rose, Tricky and Steve in particular.

After a short stint up in the lower bar at the university's student union with a varied gang of strange musicians whose party we gatecrashed, we all headed down into town on the old route and ended up in Bar Med. By the time we got there most of us had had a fair skinful so it seemed like a fine place.

Amongst us there was only me and one other guy, Tom, who were single. All the others have more or less been together since university and are married or getting married, sharing houses and stuff. I don't have anything against this at all. Far from it. I am pleased to see so many stable and happy relationships.

The problem is that without fail a sense of loneliness always overtakes me when hanging around with these guys. As my friend of 29 years Nick said when I popped in to see him in Clapham on Friday night, "Well they haven't been away abroad so they're more established". God knows why, but I seem to be a different breed.

Nevertheless I had a great time with them all, bopping away bad club style and guzzling pint upon pint. Luckily, Sunday I woke up without too much of a hangover and managed to get down to the station to scoff an English breakfast before meeting Jennie.

Jennie is my friend and pottery teacher from when I lived in Aldershot at my last job before coming here. We went for a good stroll in the forest with her dappy dog and found some nice Fly Agaric mushrooms and stuff. Amazing what a great easy time we spent together just wandering and chatting, two years later.

I have to say that the flip side of what appears to be a life of extended singledom and ex-patriation seems fortunately to be the gift of some excellent, lasting and durable friendships. The sort of friendships that stay ripe, never have a moment that they go past and then fade away.

The same goes for my family, who I popped in to see later on Sunday and all of yesterday. Great Gordon is in the DGH and I went to see him. As I left I touched his arm and he reacted with an emotional gesture. Since Gordon is a man who has spent his life stoically hiding all emotion and flinching at physical contact, this was precious moment.

Flickr PhotoSet

hold your horses

2004-10-22T17:03:00.000+02:00

My network at home is actually still down. It only had a quick spurt of activity the other night apparently. To get this show back on the road, I will have to sort out an ISP and phone line, which could take a couple of weeks.

This is a bit frustrating since my head is bubbling with ideas of stuff to write about. On the other hand, I also need to think about the best way to tackle the subjects, so this break is probably quite fortuitous.

In the meantime, I am doing some reading instead. Some months back, my friend Owen lent me 'Zen and the art of Motorcyle Maintenance', by Robert Pirsig. I have just gotten around to reading it and am very impressed so far. I'll give you a review when the I'm all ISP'ed up.

This weekend I am off to the UK again. This time, to catch up with some old friends from uni, see a mate who has just become a dad, and to pop down to see my folks. Thank God for easyJet.

le tour eiffel

2004-10-19T23:26:00.000+02:00

Well the good news is that apparently my neighbours have sorted out our friendly neighbourhood network. And the bad news is that I am knackered so the amount of serious blogging effort I am going to put in tonight is next to nil.

Atleast I have a good reason for being knackered though. I got up at stupid-o-clock this morning to take a flight up to Paris for a meeting with some lawyers. Got back into work about 1630 and was busy catching up with emails when I got a call about going up there again on Thursday.

Not sure I can handle all those limp cups of tea and cheap wafery biscuits Air France hand out. But the Eiffel Tower was pretty nice to drive past today.

excuses

2004-10-18T18:38:00.000+02:00

Please excuse the lack of postage going on over here. My free internet access has temporarily blown a fuse and until it gets fixed by my neighbour, I won't be doing much. That'll teach me for teasing Thomas.

In the mean-time, if you are in the mood for a lesson in angry namecalling, you can content yourselves by checking out the interesting responses to the Guardian's Operation Clark County idea which I mentioned last week.

There are some here at the Guardian, and here at Perfect.

scoffing sausages and stereotypes

2004-10-15T01:35:00.000+02:00

A while back one of my French friends repeated the old line about how terrible English food is. I told him that if the French promised to stick to making food, the English would stick to making music.

It's pretty strange how these two sibling countries in the European family can end up with such different strengths and weaknesses. One explanation may be that historically we have mostly been enemies, so anyone found appropriating aspects of the other culture ran the risk of being called a traitor and dragged around town behind a fast moving horse. That would put me off cooking.

But of course, to some extent these ideas are stereotypes anyway. So last week I suggested to Sandrine, Thomas and Fabien that we test them out but having an evening eating English food and listening to French music. They came around tonight.

I decided to treat my guests to a good plate of bangers and mash, complete with Red Wine Gravy and Branston Pickle. I can only report that they managed to finish all the sausages and mash without being sick. I guess Fabien saying he would marry me counts as a compliment of sorts, even if it did put me off my food ;)

On their side, Sandrine and Thomas brought around the Eiffel Tower of a CD stack to add to Fabien's 152 mp3 albums saved on a portable hard drive. I would list all the people we listened to but that will just bore you, so I'll sum up by saying that we started off in the 50s with Georges Brassens, and ended up in the present with Spook and the Guay and Zebda, both bands which come from Toulouse.

I think it's fair to say that English music has to have a good tune. As long as the words rhyme and the music is catchy, no problem. The lyrics can mean absolute jack. What I learnt about French music though is that it is the lyrics that are the important focus. They are expected to provide a message. The actual music is often a neglected support for the opportunity to make a point.

The music of Georges Brassens is as simple as you can imagine. Just a gentle and quiet dum dum dum rhythm, with very few instruments. His singing was the main focus.

Monsieur Brassens, who was friends with Victor Hugo, disliked authority so much that he wrote a song about a well endowed gorilla who escaped from the zoo and vented his pent up sexual frustration on an over zealous magistrate. I'll tell you about the song where Margot keeps a kitten on her breasts another day.

Strangely enough, we didn't listen to Jean-Michel Jarre, who was one of my biggest influences as a kid. And neither did we listen to the more recent Air, or Daft Punk.

Recipe for Mash:
Boil the potatoes until they are dead. Drain and add butter. After the first vigourous mashing. Add lots of a fungent dry cheese like Cheddar, some creme fraiche and a big spoonful of mustard. Carry on mashing until your arms ache.

Recipe for Red Wine Gravy:
Fry the sausages in lots of oil. When they're cooked, add a heaped tablespoon of flour into the same pan. When the flour doesn't look like flour anymore, pour in half a glass of wine and mix the gunk around. When it's all mixed add a stockcube, more wine, some water etc. Slowly with the liquids though - glass by glass at the most. Eventually you'll have something that tastes and looks like gravy.

breathe deeply

2004-10-13T23:15:00.000+02:00

Let me introduce you to my deep friends Ralph and Chika with whom I shared love, laughter, torment and confusion in Tokyo between 1998 and 2000.

American Ralph and Japanese Chika are married, and have a nearly four year old boy called Reggie and a two year old daughter called Mimi. Chika was diagnosed with recurrent cancer yesterday.

If you believe in God, please add my friends and their family to your daily prayers.

want to influence the US election?

2004-10-13T11:32:00.000+02:00

The Guardian has an interesting article today about how it is possible for non-US citizens to influence the coming election. My favourite idea is this one, where they send you the name and address of a swing voter in crucial marginal counties.

The idea is that you write the undecided voter a letter to explain how current US action effects you, how it effects people outside the US, and then expressing your reasons for preferring one of the candidates (i.e. Kerry).

I'm already signed up, and will be sending my handwritten letter off this weekend.

Although not a direct influence, BetaVote has an interesting site that has gathered around 300000 votes from countries all over the world, voting for either Bush or Kerry. Currently Kerry has 88% of the world vote.

peak oil

2004-10-12T23:09:00.000+02:00

So we all know that the War in Iraq was about oil right? No debate there any more. But why invade Iraq for oil? So that some elite Americans can get rich from the war money and the oil itself? Or for some other reason?

Well I am sure that some Americans are getting very rich form the war. And I am sure that some Americans will eventually get very rich from selling Iraqi oil. But I think the reason that Iraq was invaded was more to do with securing the oil.

The fact is that since the industrial revolution, our technologies have required power from extracted hydrocarbon energy sources. We started this way of life with coal in the 1800's, but in the post-war period we changed the foundation of our industri-techno civilisation to oil.

Oil now supplies over 90% of the world's energy needs, not to mention being the base product used to produce plastics, artificial rubbers, road surfacing and fertilisers.

Can you imagine a world where we can no longer produce or drive vehicles, have plastics for consumer goods, or enough food to support our industrially enlarged population? Would you rather not imagine it?

Well the good news it that industry experts predict that oil will be available for decades to come, atleast to the end of the century. The bad news though, is that highest ever point of supply is due any time now, between 2004 and 2015. After this time, the demand for oil will outstrip supply and prices will soar.

This state of affairs was first predicted by Hubbert in his Peak Oil Theory. The implications for our society are immense.

The long and short of it is that without action now we could see the end of industri-techno civilisation. We need to start planning the implementation of existing alternative new technologies right now if we are going to maintain anything like the same lifestyle, and we need to research and develop completely renewable and abundant sources of energy and power production.

At the moment, America seems to be choosing the short sighted competitive option. I hope that us Europeans can be a bit more progressive and do what is needed without resorting to violence. We have over 60 years of cooperation under our belt that may make it possible.

If you are interested to learn more, or are thinking that this is just a lot of old scaremongering, wikipedia has a good set of links for you to read.

bowled over by London

2004-10-11T21:48:00.000+02:00

London isn't a place I am only passingly familiar with. I have lived and worked in London, at periods visited London almost every weekend, frequently rolled around drunk and eaten kebabs in London, sat poe-faced on the tube in London and woken up dazed in London more times than I can remember. But something about this last weekend over there with my Spanish and French friends was different.

Living abroad is giving me a much deeper understanding and appreciation of my home, the people and their ways, its culture, social structure, street design and the environment, its place in world history. Everytime I go back I see things in a new and refreshing light, and in a way that reminds me so deeply of my roots.

I remembered London as a fairly drab place full of miserable people. But on this occasion it was completely the opposite.

With the Egg and the Gherkin up by the Tower on both sides of the Thames, the incredible futuristic grandeur of Westminster tube station, and a general splattering of well designed buildings, the country seems to be dragging itself out of its depression about lost past glories.

In the shops people were chatty and open. I just love the simplicity with which I can slip into easy chat with people, sharing a common language and humour, a deep understanding of the sensitivities and nuances around which I should navigate. In the streets the whole world was in to stay or to visit. Multicultural London is really a wonder.

With my friends Tanya, Sara, Oscar, Jenny, Noemi, Cindy, and of course Larry who generously let us stay at his place down on Docklands, I had a fantastic weekend. And I mustn't forget Nick, Owen, and Gav who joined me in the pub for some Sunday afternoon beers. Cheers guys!

See complete Flickr PhotoSet

the last few days

2004-10-08T01:10:00.000+02:00

So I have spent the last few days just doing stuff, and not bothering with blogging. I generally just needed to sleep and think, digest, watch some tv, order some books and take some art classes.

Tomorrow I am off to London for the weekend. Tourism, friends, curry, clubbing, mushrooms maybe.

how to flirt in esperanto

2004-10-05T01:17:00.000+02:00

A few weeks back my American friend Dena, tried to tell me about the dubious psychology of the French guys who chat her up. I thought she was exaggerating at first, but she insisted that she really was being hunted by a pack of complete mental cases.

To prove her point she took out her mobile phone to show me an example text message from a guy she had met once, "My vorld 'as been alive wiz passion zince I met you. I merst zee you again my beautifuel Americaine". This started my curious mind thinking about the cultural differences of different male flirting styles, and I've come to the conclusion that there really is quite a contrast between the English style and the French style.

It seems true to say that the language of latin romance relies on very flambuoyant and dramatic turns of phrase that conjure startling beauty and cause the laws of physics to fail. Maybe this works fine in French, and amongst French romantic expectations. But when translated into English, I'm not sure that it is quite the right style.

Even the most goodnatured English girls I know would fall about laughing if they heard that their "eyes had captured my heart", whilst the more suspiciously inclined would go white as a sheet, stiff as a board, and make a hasty departure after being told that "my nights are sleepless as I can think only of seeing you again".

This is just "a bit too much", as we say. There are definate hints of obsession in this language when heard by an English mind. They create a distinct sense of unease and distrust, a sort of combined "either he's trying to get into my knickers or he's a stalker" type of reaction.

Us British seem to be much more comfortable with insults and teasing to provide us with a sense of intimacy. I suppose the idea is to find a specific characteristic about your someone, usually a habit or personality trait, and to say that you like it. But in English this statement must be indirect, and coated in humour. Hence teasing and insults.

Zoe might not agree with this analysis I suppose, but I reckon her her blog is about the best living example you are going to find of this style of flirting. Her boyfriend Quarsan reportedly comes out with such flowery compliments as "You look like you've been air-brushed on photo-shop" when presented with the results of Zoe's expensive makeover. For her part, her whole blog is called "My boyfriend is a twat".

The point is that the English generally distrust feelings which are verbally expressed, and prefer their silent demonstration. Behind the teasing there is always a subtle reality which can be understood within a glance.

So if that is how the French and the English flirt, what about all the other cultures out there? What have I missed about English and French flirting? There must be loads of stuff to say. Get commenting people.

a gentle stroll

2004-10-03T22:34:00.000+02:00

If ever there was a weekend to NOT have a violently flatulent bottom, this was it. I guess it could have been the four pints of guiness on Friday night that set me off, because when I got up on Saturday morning to head off to the mountains I was managing about one stinker a minute.

Eight of us, three French, three Germans and two Brits, left Toulouse for a weekend of 'randonée', or hiking. We hadn't been in the car longer than 10 minutes and I had to wind the window down.

It took us around 2 hours to drive from Toulouse to the car park at the bottom of the trail to the 'Peak d'Estats' on the border with Spain. I managed to behave myself but I can tell you that it was painful.

We started hiking up from the car park at 1180m, but had to stop only 10 minutes into the little jaunt since our bodies were a bit shocked. When I say 'our', I am excluding Holger. Holger is an ex-soldier and the mastermind behind the weekend. He eats mountains for breakfast.

My gastric turbulence wasn't much help in propelling me up the mountain, so it was lucky for my legs that we stopped for lunch in the sun about 90 minutes in to the hike. Nobody had brought any glasses so we had to make do with drinking wine from the bottle.

It took us about another 90 minutes to reach the 'Refuge du Pinet' at 2224m. There are quite a lot of Refuges in France. They provide basic food and dormitary accomodation to people hiking about in the mountains and stuff.

We had a dorm to ourselves, which was equipped with two rows of 5 beds stacked on top of each other like a massive bunk bed. Knowing that hot air rises, I thought it would be best if I went on the top so that's where I dumped my stuff before heading off to the facilities.

The meal was basic but tasty - sausages and onions with pasta. After we had all eaten one of the guys working in the Refuge took his guitar out for a sing-a-long with us and the fourty Catalonians also staying there. I'm not lying when I tell you that we sang 'Blowing In The Wind' by Bob Dylan.

Today we got up before dark, and after a rather disturbed night. This time though it was the wind outside the Refuge that was the culprit. After our breakfast we set off up the trail for our 3 hour and approximately 2000 vertical metre climb to the Peak d'Estats (3143m).

I can hardly begin to describe the pain of this experience. Although I haven't been getting much exercise recently, I didn't have a problem with my breath or anything. I just had massive problems with sore feet. Plod plod, pound pound, skip skittling on loose shale, the ascent was just tough on the poor things.

The pain was diminished by the amazing view that confronted us when we arrived at the top. We were at the highest peak in the area surrounding us so we could see for miles into Spain and back to France. We just sat up there laughing and joking and enjoying it, eating cheese, sausage, cake, tuna salad and rabbit paté. Since it was the first time a few of us including myself had climbed above 3000m, Sebastien opened a bottle of champagne. It didn't last very long.

There was a four hour descent after this, all the way down back to the carpark. Something I had eaten on the peak caused my stomach to return to its state of near volcanic activity, so I walked at the back of the pack in fairness to my friends.

By the time we reached the car park atleast half of us were stricken with the gait and expression of a starving three legged dog. Having got home via McDonalds, which usually kills off any sort of healthy activity in the stomach, I have just about mustered the energy to write this post.

Now though, it is time to limp off to bed. Does anybody have an overnight blister cure?

lasers

2004-10-02T01:51:00.000+02:00

Check out this fantastic scene from the river today. Like I mentioned previously, the Printemps De Septembre arts festival is going on in town. Tonight there were lasers dividing the sky and the river as if Toulouse was a cake to be cut into slices.

I know it hardly looks real, but I assure you it was. This is no Photoshop job.

apero

2004-09-30T23:59:00.000+02:00

After what I wrote last week about the atmosphere in my French office, I thought I'd better update with today's developments.

My boss, another guy and a trainee are leaving the department and so they organised what is called an 'apero', or 'po' for short. A 'po' can be held for many reasons including promotion, departure, the birth of child or a forthcoming marriage. The general format is for the celebrant to bring lots of drinks and nibbles into work, arranged them on a table or desk, and invite everyone to what ends up as an office drinking session.

On this occasion, the first of atleast four corks was pulled around 11am, and it wasn't much more than midday by the time we were all half way through the second bottle of whisky. You can imagine how productive our afternoon was.

Having drunk a couple of beers, my boss made the obligatory speech. He wasn't exactly gushing sorrow or weeping tears of sadness, thank God, but he certainly showed some emotion about moving on.

I wasn't really surprised because since he moved to his new job a few days ago, he has made a point of popping around to our office, going to lunch, and even initiated a personal email conversation with me like any normal friend who was bored at work, like about girls and stuff ;)

Thomas put up a post about another aspect of French socialising at work. His company sounds a bit more extreme than mine, but it is very true that eating dinner, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes fulfills an important social function over here. I quite like this. In fact it's one of the most positive aspects of working life.

Where I work, we get subsidised food in the company restaurant to the extent that we pay only 3 euros a day for a full three course French lunch. And after we have satisfied our appetites, we can then saunter through into the cafeteria where we can serve ourselves with as many completely free espressos as we like. This is definately pleasurable social time.

the way we look at others

2004-09-28T21:42:00.000+02:00

Growing up in the UK in the 80s and 90s, racism and prejudice were very topical issues. A colourful variety of peoples from all the places us Brits had colonised were invited to come over and take the jobs we didn't want to do ourselves. In process of their integration we picked up on the civil rights ideas coming out of America in the 60s.

I was fortunate and the notion of not being nasty to people with a different skin was practically demonstrated to me by my parents through our close friendship with a family of seven exiled from Ethopia, their father still imprisoned for "crimes against the state", their mother speaking only rudimentary English.

Despite this education though I have still come to find even within myself that there's a particular ignorance that the safety of numbers fosters. It is a perceptual laziness which is induced by our absorption into a cultural commonality, and that prevents us from appreciating the variety of human differences.

It was in Japan that I first experienced prejudice from the point of view of a minority. I learnt there how helpless you can feel when shouted at and told to go home by drunken yobs. I learnt there how angry it made me feel to be sent out of a bar for not being Japanese. And I remember my utter disbelief at being negatively stereotyped when the governor of Tokyo outrageously said that "Atrocious crimes have been committed again and again by sangokujin and other foreigners. We can expect them to riot in the event of a disastrous earthquake." [also see Joi Ito].

I left Japan after two years, completely void of emotion. I was totally sucked dry of any ounce of human warmth and needed to find a tolerant shelter where I could heal myself from the effects of prolonged exposure to prejudice. Instead, I found a country where our own politicians were playing the same game of manipulating the people's fears and prejudices to serve their ambition for power.

To avoid having to painfully listen to such inhuman and hateful nonsense, I left England and came to France. Of course, France has more than it's own fair share of depressing headline gathering prejudice. But I can insulate myself against it here by not having a TV, and by not suffering majority pressure to unthinkingly hold bigotted opinions.

Nevertheless, in the daily lives of us ex-pats, there continues to be a general background noise of the perceptual laziness I described above, as Thomas mentioned today. It shows itself in the policewoman who insisted I get a French driving licence despite me holding a perfectly valid European Union one, and in the stores that will refuse me credit on my professional salary while giving it to any old French bum.

It is in these daily trivia that prejudice really exists and needs to be tackled - right at the person to person level, at ourselves. Politicians may perpetuate and manipulate our prejudices, but it is we permit this by refusing to admit to ourselves that it is we who are prejudiced.

And before we smugly feel like we have understood the matter as being related to a clash of nationalities and skin colours, let us Brits not continue to deny that we do still judge each other on the basis of class, as Adam Tinworth experienced recently.

People are different and that is a valuable fact, since it is only by understanding our differences that we can truly learn about ourselves. Another fact is that we humans need inclusion as much as we need water.

How can we be surprised to see the people we reject behaving with bombastic animosity towards us when in the coldness of our prejudiced judgement we deny them a dignified humanity?

It's time to sort this out people.

hmmmm.....

2004-09-27T23:46:00.000+02:00

There are some times when this blog really needs to be more anonymous, and tonight especially is one of them.

Writing a simple post about tonight isn't gonna happen because tonight wasn't so simple. Even writing these two sentences has taken me twenty minutes.

I'm stuck for public words, so here are some simple adjectives. Charming, gorgeous, shy, inquisitive, leaving, attraction, surprise, happy, mobile.

Toulouse calling

2004-09-26T23:41:00.000+02:00

It has been a photo weekend this weekend. Last night there were loads of cool lasers shining into the sky down at the river for Le Printemps De Septembre, so I suggested to Thomas we take some pictures to decorate our blogs with.

Unfortunately the lasers were off tonight, but there was still a lot of other great stuff. I tell ya, that tripod I bought yesterday is pretty handy for stopping all the shaking coming from my hangover hands ;)

Thomas has been blogging for quite a while, and works in IT. He is a wealth of useful knowledge about excellent free stuff you can do on the internet.

This weekend he introduced me to Skype, a free downloadable software you can use to call people over the internet. If you fancy a chat, get yourself Skype and just call me up. You can easily find me in the directory - I am the only the only 'glacons' in the world.

saturday about Toulouse

2004-09-25T15:14:00.000+02:00

You might have gathered that I've been getting a bit pissed off with things around here recently.

So after being admonished by Karine last night, spending an excellent evening down the new Irish pub with her and Thomas. And after having a gentle afternoon today drinking tea and eating cake in Place St Georges with Farina and her gorgeous friend from South Africa, I thought I'd remind myself of some of the reasons why I love living in this city. Here's what I found...

What a beautiful and quirky city Toulouse is. How lucky I am to live here in comfort.

Some of the people are not so great, but that's the same everywhere in the world. I should get used to it. Some of the people are fantastic, and fortunately they're the ones I can call my friends. I should keep my eyes on that fact.

What more is there to say?

seulement

2004-09-24T17:35:00.000+02:00

the office, french style

2004-09-23T20:59:00.000+02:00

You may not be too surprised to hear that working life in France is not the same as working life in England. Not only are the keyboards arranged differently, so that to type a number you have to push the shift key, but people are organised differently too.

Perhaps the most striking contrast is the attitude towards developing a social friendship with your colleagues. Basically, you don't. In the nearly three years I have worked in France I have only been out with the team once, and that was a flop.

This contrasts markedly with the British attitude where the social element of work based relationships is mostly seen as very important, and is encouraged by regular and spontaneous trips down the local pub after work.

I asked one of my French colleagues about the logic behind this cultural phenomenon. I am sure there are many, but basically he said, by French logic, having friendships at work means that you won't devote 100% of your work time to your work. The flip side is that seeing your colleages socially means that work will encroach into your private life and steal time from your family and 'genuine' friendships.

In contrast, English logic considers that the more people get to know one another, the easier it is for them to work together and the more people generally feel motivated to actually bother turning up to work every day to do their stuff.

In England, work is experienced as a tedious annoyance that is made bearable by the fact that you have some friends there. In contrast I often get the impression that in France, work is a duty to be taken seriously.

As an English guy, accustomed to my native cultural norms and expectations, the French type of office culture is disappointing from the social side. I find it particularly strange how life can be so simplistically divided up into different boxes.

A person is a person for me, so the work context of my work based relationships does not figure in my consideration of whether I would like to a colleague socially. I simply experience the relationship in its context, seeing a colleague as just another person who could be either liked or disliked.

If I get on with them then in my world it is normal for the context of the relationship to expand into a social one, assuming their reciprocal expectation. As it happens, since the vibe I get from most of my colleagues is a vibe of polite distance, I don't warm up to them.

To put this whole thing into perspective I really need a much greater understanding of the other aspects of French relationships. If you don't form friendships at work , my French friends, where is it that you form them? Does this mean that working friendships aren't necessary to you? What happens when you actually quite enjoy the company of your colleages?

Answers on a postcard please.

attention seeker

2004-09-22T17:33:00.000+02:00

Give someone a inch and they'll take a bloody mile. Atleast that how it seems with my old banger, and I'm not talking in the sense of actual distance travelled.

I've had a suspicion for ages that whenever I take this dusty lump of dented metal down to the garage for some fixing up, it gets all happy with the lavish oil replenishing attention and starts demanding more.

Only last week, after taking the thing down to have it's legally required checkup at the cost of 270 euros, I was telling a friend that I didn't like taking it to have any work done because random unrelated things always go wrong afterwards.

Sure enough, true to form, I started the beginning of this week with the bugger playing dead at the lights. Bastard!, I thought, whilst braving all the glares of honking road-ragers to jump out and ask a gang of drunken strangers to push me to the side of the congested traffic.

Solution? New battery. Another 50 euros thank you very much.

Not having had enough attention, last night I noticed that the temperature guage was going into orbit whilst I was whipping along the circular. Oh, the ignominy of pulling your English plated car over to the side of the road and opening up the bonnet! Bastard!, I thought again.

Luckily this time it was just some water that it wanted, for which I suppose you could accuse me of gross negligence. Except that I filled the fecker up last week. Thirsty, huh?

All seemed well this morning, but God knows what could happen tonight. I'm gonna start calling the thing Herbie.