London Calling…

In the past I may or may not have ranted about the determined stupidity of my ISP, which incidentally if anyone wanted to know, is Bulldog. If I haven’t written anything down, it is probably because I have been seething too much with rage and frustration to actually commit to using words which might limit my emotions to merely “disgusted fury”.

The actual broadband and phone service itself is almost always satisfactory. It is merely absolutely everything around said service that is utterly and completely pants. For example, I had to set up a direct debit with these people 7 times, the first three of which resulted in one payment going out successfully and then all the details disappearing, two of which didn’t work at all, one of which had 3 months worth of successful payments before vanishing off the face of the earth, and the last of which finally, mercifully, has worked for the last year. Except of course, for the time when they randomly cut me off, presumably because paying 4 bills in a row is suspicious behaviour.

Alas it was pretty much obligatory to pay by direct debit, because when I tried to pay by credit card this was not possible approximately 95% of the time because their system was down. Their system only seemed to be up at random moments of celestial import, like when a full moon falls on the second tuesday of the month. or when a partial solar eclipse was in progress.

I wouldn’t mind so much except for the blatant, badly executed lying. For example, the below conversation:

Me: Hello, you appear to have cut off my phone and internet with no warning whatsoever.

Indian chick: We sent you out an email to inform you madam

Me: You sent me an email, to tell me you had cut off my internet access?

IC: Yes madam

Me: Do you see anything wrong with that statement? Like the fact that my receipt of the email might involve the internet in some way? Besides which, you haven’t sent me an email, because I was able to check it from work and I haven’t received anything.

IC: Well madam we have also sent you a letter

Me: Assuming that I have not received that either, which I haven’t, since you cut it off today, which is a sunday, can you tell me why that is?

IC: There is an overdue bill

Me: But I have a direct debit, its been working for months

IC: Well there is an overdue bill madam, would you like to pay it?

Me: Yes! I would! Please take my money.

—-Ensuing bill stuff and assurances that connection will be restored within 3 working days—-

…..

—-Ten working days and one trip to sweden later—-

Me: Hello, you appear to have either cut off my phone and internet again, or not restored it.

IC: Yes madam there is an unpaid bill on that account and it is blocked.

Me: no there isn’t, because despite your failure to take my direct debit, I paid you 2 weeks ago by credit card, and the money is gone from my account, so there is no outstanding bill.

IC: Yes madam I see you have paid that bill.

Me: Right, so why is it that I do not have an internet connection?

IC: It is a technical fault.

Me: What?

IC: It is a technical fault on the line madam

Me: Em, ok, what is the fault? What is the problem with my line?

IC: I dont know exactly madam that is for our IT team to deal with

Me: well when will they deal with it, I’ve had no connection for 2 weeks!

IC: It will be fixed within 24 hours

Me: But if you dont know what the fault is, how do you know it will be fixed in 24 hours?

IC: because I have removed the block from the account madam

Me: So the account was blocked?

IC: Oh no madam, there was a technical fault.

—-

Since I am moving countries, today I decided to find out what would be needed to transfer the account to a housemate. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Hello, I am moving to another country soon, and would like to transfer my account to another name, what do I need to go about that?

English Guy (???): We can’t actually do house moves at the moment I’m afraid, because of a system migration.

Me: Well I mean its not a house move, I just need to transfer the account

EG: we consider that a house move, because we can’t transfer a contract, we have to cancel it and start a new one.

Me: So you cannot cancel my contract either?

EG: Oh no, we can cancel it.

Me: But you cannot create a new one?

EG: No

Me: Can you create any contracts, or just not renewed ones?

EG: No, we can’t create any at all

Me: How long is this system migration going on for?

EG: We don’t currently know

Me: So for an indefinite period of time you can neither transfer accounts to a new house, transfer them to a new person, or set up any new customers whatsoever?

EG: Yes, thats correct.

——–

I think at this point I almost lost the will to live, and so felt compelled to terminate the conversation. What the fuck? Yes, lets allow our company to atrophy in the process of moving computer systems, despite the fact that the old one was slower and less reliable than writing things down in calligraphy, on papyrus, and sending them off via carrier pigeon

And now to try and convert my phone contract to pre-pay. Stay tuned….

1. I am moving to New York in approximately 6 weeks

Yes, I have decided to leave my beloved London for pastures fresh, or in this particular case, pastures fairly smelly and a tad on the filthy side, but still pretty interesting. This move doesn’t mean I like London any less, I don’t. I love it here. But I am a firm believer in learning from experience, and I don’t intend to limit that experience to just one big city. So I’m off. If I’m not back in 2 years, avenge my death. But eh, email me and check if I’ve just moved to Asia first.

2. There is a reason I took the blog down in the first place

Recently this blog was gone, for about 6 months or so. The reason for this is that through an odd set of coincidences, people I work with became aware of its existence and location. Yeah, I know, I don’t care what people think, why does it matter, I am a great bit pus-filled hypocrite. Right.

Obviously, if I don’t use profanity in a professional email I am censoring myself. If I wear a suit to a meeting instead of jeans I am being fake. I work for a global company, owned by a big company, owned by a huge company, clearly I have sold out.

Of course I have bloody well sold out, that’s what having a job means. I sell my time and my abilities for a portion of my life and in return I get paid. I just don’t happen to feel bitter about it. During the time that I am doing that job, I do not behave in the same fashion as I do at home. In the same respect that I do not put my feet on people’s desks, eat sandwiches in a meeting, play guitar hero, or randomly lie down on couches, I also do not generally discuss my personal opinions or feelings in a professional capacity. Nor do I particularly want those to come up, because I don’t necessarily want to intertwine them with my job.

I get paid to do a job in a professional fashion, and I believe that one should give value for money or get a different job. Since I don’t currently want a different job, I choose to segregate my ranting from my working. I feel no obligation to excuse myself for the things I write here, but I also have no desire to be in a professional situation in which principle will require me to state this. I sell my attitude and my behaviour in the exact same way as I sell my time. My moral decisions are not for sale, matters of personal taste however are another matter.

Everyone sells themselves. The key is to sell yourself for lots and lots of money.

I loved the movie. The first time I saw it I was deeply impressed with the storyline, and the characters and direction were fresh and fascinating. Brad Pitt as an antisocial weirdo’s hot alter ego in low cut jeans didn’t hurt either. Subsequently I also read the book, which delighted me because so much of the script was faithful to the books narrative, though the essential plot seems to be somewhat squished and twisted into movie form.

But sometimes I find it vastly irritating. Not in and of itself, but in people’s interpretations and the depth they see in the shallowest parts of the idea. Fight Club as I see it was a demonstration of how easily society could theoretically be subverted. That in elevating man so far above the level of an animal we have so thoroughly lost touch with instinct and real emotion, that the slightest contact with either sends us into a frenzy of desperation for more.

It tells us we go to soulless offices every day, and never challenge our own personal hierarchy. That we do not understand what we do, or its place in the world, and so we do not really care and cannot bring ourselves to. That the slight snub of a co-worker is a major event in our lives, that we seek to perfect ourselves through obtaining material things, and that in the end, none of these things truly matter. That we allow ourselves not to matter either, and be trampled by the world and all the other pointless soulless people in it. So when we are offered the chance to feel something real, or passionate, it becomes the centre of our lives, an addiction. If we face losing it we will kill, or die, or subjugate ourselves to keep it.

“You are not your fucking khakis�. I’ve heard it so often as a rebellion from materialism, an assertion that who you are is deep inside you, and could never be defined or contained within something you buy, or want, or go to work to do. Newsflash kids, you are most definitely your fucking khakis. Do you really think your underwear, suit, and Ikea couch don’t say anything about you? That they aren’t an expression of who and what you are? If you bought it, keep it, or do it, it’s you. Because you chose it, you chose how to behave and how to live. You chose to work in a multinational, you chose to live in the suburbs, you chose your bathroom tiles and your couch. You chose your life, and if you drifted into it without noticing, that’s your fault, not the fault of society.

Fight Club makes the excellent point that no matter how much you happen to like say, your kitchen table, you don’t need it to be happy. The part people seem to miss is that neither do you need to reject it to be happy. The only thing you really need is the knowledge of what is important, and what isn’t. Astonishingly, thats the part most people manage not to have.

Mostly, the difference is that feminism is conceptually stupid, whereas being a bitch is just conceptually nasty. Besides which, I don’t really see myself as a bitch, I just know I am seen as one by other people, presumably because I’m verbally agressive and I don’t beam sunshine out my arse.

Feminism, as I understand it, is a movement that believes women are superior to men in some way. Possibly every way, I’ve never manged to get that far into the argument. If this is not the case, then they should stop calling themselves something so dumb and be egalitarianists. Or another theory I’ve heard is that feminism is seeking to even things out after the centuries of oppression by men, and therefore the goal is simply for women to have the advantage in circumstances like the workplace.

What a pile of utter drivel. I don’t give a damn what happened previously, you can do the right thing _now_. So why would anyone decide to ignore equality and logic for the sake of some sneaky honourless vengeance? I would be understandably pissed if I wasn’t given a job or a promotion purely because of my gender. But I’d be just as insulted if not more so were I to discover that I had been given something _because_ I was female.

Then there’s the “feminism is just the celebration and empowerment of womanhood” bit. Great, good for you. Have a fucking medal for being born with a uterus. Women aren’t special. Either everyone is special or no-one is. Men and women tend to be differently talented and have diverse personalities, these are inclinations rather than set rules.

I suppose the crux of this rant is that I don’t understand why people are proud of something they have no control over. You can’t be proud of being a woman, or from your country, or beautiful, or smart. You can only be proud of what you do with those things. Anything you are born with is, depending on how you look at it, a gift, or a random chance.

If you’re a woman, and you’ve overcome huge diversity to be where you are in life, congratulations. If you’re a man and you’ve done that, same deal. If you’re beautiful, and make millions as a model, hell even a stripper or a porn star, then you capitalised on what you had. Well done. If you have a 180 IQ and you put together boxes for a living, you deserve a slap. Preferably a slap from someone with half your intelligence, who’d love to be doing anything other than putting boxes together, but just doesn’t have the wherewithal.

Actually, no-one is to answer that question. Except perhaps for the complete twat in the shoe shop in Camden who tried to sell me the aforementioned pair of shoes, or, more accurately, tried to buy me with said shoes.

In fact they were some pretty impressive boots. They had metal bits, laces, zips, heels, flames. They were incredibly comfortable, and easy to walk in despite adding 3 inches to my height. In fact, they are probably the best pair of boots I have ever attempted to purchase. But shockingly enough, they were still not worth whoring myself to some random shoe salesman. I am Dave’s blatant astonishment.

Should any would-be shoe-salespeople be reading this, however unlikely that may be, here are some useful tips which will help you sail through your coming employment-

• If someone wants to try on shoes, do not insist on personally fitting them on if they are quite clearly willing to do it themselves.
• Telling them they have beautiful eyes, while it has the potential to be charming, is nevertheless not pertinent to the sale of shoes.
• Asking someone you have just met out for a drink is both courageous and flattering, unless of course you simultaneously imply that there will be material gain associated, in which case you are in fact calling them a whore
• Refusing to disclose the price of a pair of shoes except in terms of a date with someone clearly not interested in you is not a lucrative sales tactic.

In summary, this general sleaziness led to me going next door and purchasing the shoes from someone who wasn’t oozing slime from every pore. Though at that point I was probably visibly angry enough to ensure a lack of any unwanted attention.

I am impressed by people with the confidence to ask a stranger out just because they, for example, like their eyes. Unfortunately I think this an incredibly stupid basis for being attracted to anyone, and would refuse on principle, even if they were Johnny Depp’s better-looking younger brother. Not that I am regularly hit on by stunningly beautiful people or anything. Essentially though, I see nothing wrong with it, as long as you take rejection well then good luck to you.

The catch is that you have to actually _take_ said rejection when it is given. Sometimes, “no” means “please go anally violate yourself, you disgusting fuck”.

Because you actually feel tempted to participate sometimes. I was tagged by someone to do something stupid, ie. to list five things people don’t know about me, and then tag 5 other people. In the spirit of general participation and momentary boredom, I’ll list 5 things, but I refuse to tag anyone. For future reference, very few things piss me off quite as much as unsolicited chain emails, but on the theory that I had to in fact read his blog to discover I was tagged, I will refrain from ranting about this one.

1. I have played Goldilocks 3 times, in various plays during my childhood. It is one of the reasons I dye my hair red.
2. I am allergic to most kinds of fabric softener, the majority of skin products, many types of make-up, and bubblebath.
3. I have an irrationally severe aversion to double-decker buses.
4. It makes me retch when people play with their chewing gum, I find it extremely physically disgusting.
5. I cannot get into an unmade bed. I will make the bed, and then get in immediately afterwards. I also find it irritating to be in a room with an unmade bed for long periods of time, and will actually ask if I can make someone’s bed if I am in the situation.

So there you go, amazing insight into my psyche, or random load of irrelevant crap? You decide! Because I certainly won’t be venturing an opinion.

Day 2

After the longest bout of sleeping I can get away with as an interloper in someone’s apartment, I drag myself out of bed with a plan for the day. The Plan: Get dressed from fresh clothing in luggage, dump luggage in locker at Heuston station, head back to the city centre unencumbered and meet Captain Pedantic Pants for lunch at the evil empire, then rendezvous with my darling Cheese for adventures in boozing. It was a good plan. I was quite proud of it. Unfortunately like many plans, it was doomed to failure from the first moments of its inception.

This inevitable doom was soon discovered when I went to retrieve some clean underwear and socks from aforementioned luggage. Which was not locked with my padlock. A singularly odd circumstance, which was soon explained however by the discovery that it was not my luggage. I am not generally prone to blind panic, but I had about 5 minutes worth of internal (and a small amount of external) screaming. All the gifts I had bought, all my clothes, all my clean fucking underwear, was quite clearly not in my posession. I rack my brain for possibilities, convinced that I could not have taken the wrong item at the airport, and I realise that I didn’t, I grabbed the wrong bag from the bus. In my half-asleep, in a hurry, on the phone state, I had reached into the hold and simply grabbed a bag the same size, shape and colour as mine, which was sitting where I had put mine before getting on.

At this point, I realised the following things:

• I am a fucking idiot.
• I had completely ignored my own “never make assumptions” rule, and am therefore also a hypocrite.
• I had no clean underwear.
• There was an inch long slit in the arse of my trousers.
• I couldn’t find the key to my own damn luggage.

After a couple of calls to the bus company, I located both my luggage, and the owner of the luggage I was currently in possession of, who was also rather distressed by the situation. I was slightly less than impressed by the fact that my luggage was back at Dublin airport, but the joy of discovering I could retrieve it now far outweighed the inconvenience. So I get dressed in my ripped trousers and used socks, and jump into a taxi, the driver of which indicated that yes, he was ok with having an adventure.

Out to the airport, where I deposited the mystery luggage and re-acquired my own, which was alas locked with the key I no longer had, presumably lost during the previous nights travel. So near and yet so far from a functional pair of trousers. Because of course, the split in the seam of my current pair worsened by the moment as I wore them.

So when I eventually got to google for lunch, avec luggage, sans key, the slit had grown into what could now be described as a rather substantial hole. I have never been more grateful to be wearing a long leather coat. Which I wore all through lunch, for fear of being arrested for indecent exposure, because I could have easily passed a fucking basketball through it at that point. Naturally, my dining partners were appraised of the situation, and highly amused by it, though they failed to come up with a means of opening my luggage when a leatherman couldn’t do the trick.

Back into town to meet Cheese, at which point I sit him down and explain to him that I need either 1) a way to open my luggage or 2) some pants. We agree that the purchase of pants is by far the easiest option, so we get the luas to heuston, dump the lunggage in a locker, and then go to buy trousers and alcohol, both of which we succeed at.

I head to the station about an hour before I have to, buy my ticket early, collect my luggage, and find a nice comfy seat on the train. At which point I reach into my pocket to sort through my change of various currencies, and find the fucking key to my fucking luggage. Fortunately at this point I am too tired to be fully impacted by how annoying this is.

About 5 minutes after the train starts to move I get a call from BigBro, to give me the heads up that he had just spent an extra 2 hours on the express, because a bridge had collapsed somewhere and there was rubble on the track. Resigning myself to never getting home again and forever wandering the roads of ireland with a suitcase full of christmas presents, I was pleasantly surprised when we reached the junction without incident, if a little slowly. All pleasantness soon dissipated however, when the last 30 minutes fo the journey took 2 hours, due to a signal failure about 10 minutes from home.

My sojourn on a motionless train was cheerfully punctuated by frequent phone calls from both the yank and my sister, who was roaring drunk, and I eventually arrived in Limerick at about 2am, at which point she and her (sober) boyfriend came to collect me.

In summary, it took me about me about 32 hours to get to limerick from London, and I spent £76 on flights, £30 on trousers, £40 on taxis and £30 on a train fare. Giving me a grand total of £176, and a total saving on direct flights of about £4.

Rule for happiness no 112: never buy anything just because it is cheap.

I like to think of myself as a logical person. Occasionally though, I have predilictions which might be a little too strongly held to be rational. One of these is that I detest paying a high fare for flying between London and Ireland, and will go to interesting lengths to avoid this. For example, when booking flights home for christmas I decided, to save money, that I would take a plane to Dublin instead of Shannon, and then take a train from Dublin. I only paid about £70 for the flights, and I would get to see some Dublin inhabitants, so I felt quite satisfied with my idea.

 Day 1

The day before I was supposed to fly, London lived up to a fine longstanding tradition, and coated itself in fog. Major transportation disaster, Heathrow cancels all domestic flights (in which for some reason, they include Dublin), and flights out of Stansted are delayed by hours, about half of them don’t leave at all, and so on. Charming. So I leave work at 5.30 for my 9.30 flight, get to the airport an hour later, check in, and promptly spend about 7 hours in a terminal. My 7 hours of deep boredom and annoyance is peppered with occasional spurts of excitement as we change queues and gates several times, however I end up spending about a tenner on wireless internet to keep myself from falling asleep like the people camping all around me.

Finally, at about 1am, we are getting on the plane. Which sat quietly on a runway for 40 minutes before actually taking off. To be fair, the fog is thicker than I was expecting, you could barely see 15 feet, and were it not for Ryanair’s blatant disregard for human life I probably wouldn’t have made it home at all unless I chose to swim the irish sea. So even at the time, despite the crap, I was grateful to just be getting home. Once we took off it was an even shorter flight than usual, and we landed in Dublin at about 2.40, at which point I grabbed my luggage, ran out of the terminal, and jumped straight onto a cheap bus to the city.

Once more I fought to stay awake, and was aided in this by frequent phone calls from the yank, who was of course still awake in Vermont. Aided and somewhat distracted, because when I finally exited the bus in Dublin, I almost walked off without my luggage, accustomed as I am to not carrying any. I dashed back to the bus and grabbed my suitcase from its niche in the hold just in time, and then spent about 40 minutes trying to get a taxi. Eventually, at about 4am, I finally got to the home of my good friend A, utterly exhausted.

After a bit of catch-up and girly chatting I was falling asleep where I sat, so stood up to go to bed, and discovered that there was about an inch of a split in the seam of my trousers, just at the arse. Relieved that I could switch them for something else in my suitcase in the morning, I disregarded this entirely, and collapsed into bed, regarding my longer-than-expected journey as all but complete, with the difficult part most certainly over. 

Hah.

They regurgitated me shortly after finding out that I once ate half a twinkie. Actually thats a massive terminological inexactitude ie. completely untrue. In fact I’ve just been really busy, mostly with work before christmas, and mostly with other things after christmas. And yes, before anyone asks “other things” does have a name, and no, I won’t be discussing him here. Anyone who would like to know about my highly unexpected, very sudden, and newly excellent romantic life, will have to ask.

First off, apologies to anyone who’s recent comments have failed to appear. This is due to the fact that when I don’t log in for a while and trudge through the spam comments, they build up to obscene amounts, and dedicated as I am to freedom of speech, I cannot bring myself to trawl through a thousand ads for online blackjack just to find someone’s contribution. On that note, here’s a tip : I automatically allow comments which come from a previously approved source. so don’t change your name or email address if you want them to appear straight off.

While I was off the radar I did some writing, so I’ll post a few things over the next while as I find them, even though they happened a while back. But in this post, I’ll give a brief summary of how the last few months have gone….

When I got back from South Africa I discovered that work had gone a bit crazy. We were short-staffed, and the place I had been working for in SA now began demanding huge quantities of time and effort. So the months leading up to christmas were, quite frankly, a bit of a living nightmare. I ceased to have a life for a short while, and spent most evenings in work. Not that I had anything better to do. Sadly, as a side effect, I had very little to write about, and even less time in which to write it.

Several things however did happen which I felt like writing about, such as the shoe episode, the intrepid drawn out journey home for christmas, my newly discovered ability to miss planes, the trip to Vienna (otherwise known as “How to lose someone else’s passport - a cautionary tale”), and my attempts to get a new mobile phone from Orange. These and other hilarious adventures will be brought to you as I bother writing them.

Oh, and I’m in love. Truly, no-one could be more surprised by this than I am.

Things I learned on my business trip to South Africa:

• 11 hours on an economy flight is a version of hell I find quite focused and intensive. Dante could probably not have captured this one to its full extent regardless of his brilliance and creativity.
• There is such a thing as a city with no river.
• Johannesburg is an ugly, sprawling, industrial parking lot of a place.
• The sun sets at 7pm south of the equator even in the height of summer.
  
• Monkey gland sauce apparently has nothing to do with monkeys, but no-one can tell me what it’s made of.
• Going from 33 celsius to 1 celsius is an experience I am not eager to repeat.

South Africa is odd. Now don’t get me wrong, generally speaking, I love odd. Things that are out of the ordinary are one of the reasons I enjoy life. Occasionally though, when I am in a place which could almost be like home re: language and food, I find myself slightly perturbed by the small but rather distinctive differences in culture. Like, oh, I don’t know, the free condoms in every toilet. That was a surprise in the building I was working in. More so because I took some before I realised what I was getting, and then it dawned upon me that I had both a packet of condoms in my hand, and no pockets, and was about to walk out of the bathroom on my first day as a consultant there. Hurray for establishing a reputation though.

I have never been ripped off so constantly, so many times consecutively, for being a foreigner. However, I didn’t care in the slightest for two reasons. These were firstly because it wasn’t my money, and secondly because it was still cheaper than any equivalent expense in London, usually by half. If a taxi-driver who would otherwise earn less than a fiver for his days work can make £30 because I’m a rich European, I have trouble summoning any hard feelings. I tend to buy into the philosophy of paying for something what I think its worth.

Having a driver for the time I was working was considered entirely normal, the fact that said driver wore a suit and opened doors for me was probably some sort of bonus, but certainly no-one seemed surprised. When I queued for the ATM, instead of standing the requisite, polite, 3 feet back, people tended to stand 10 feet back. We went for lunch in a different building, but didn’t have to walk outside, because all three of the company buildings had tunnels built between them on the 2^nd floor, which is a normal facility in Jo’burg should your company span such a distance. There are no pubs, only bars, restaurants and clubs. Every working individual with their head above water financially owns a car. Everyone who owns a car speeds.

There are no street corner shops, there is no real town centre. Everything sprawls out from the centre to accommodate the huge shopping malls which are the only safe places to go for shopping in Johannesburg. The food is amazing, particularly the steak. The people I met were great. A larger than usual tip I gave once actually caused a waiter to come up and personally thank me. Money means so much more there than it does here.

What really bothered me though, was the affirmative action policy that so many companies adopt. I suppose in a country so rife with blatant shameless racism I can understand the point, but two intrinsically wrong ideas do not make a right. On the whole, it was an interesting trip, and a fascinating place, but it doesn’t make the list of places I want to or would ever live in.