Here’s a guilty post, coming at ya from the day after boxing day (boxing days, boxing day?). I’m sitting trying to get motivated. I did 17mins of work earlier, unpacking my backpack and putting my tshirts (99% of my backpacks contents) in the wardrobe. I know it was 17mins as I was cooking at the time and had to stop when it was ready. Pre-arranging a stop time is a nice technique to stop you being too productive. You don’t want to hit your productivity peak too early, this was a just a mini warm-up the real actions about to begin annnnyyyyyyy minute now. Well soon. That’s the issue, after my warm up and lunch i’m now mentally stretching and limping up to the main event. But currently that main event involves watching “a place in the sun”, a particularly genius show in which about to be retired English people buy a property somewhere else in the world and retire there. When I say “somewhere else in the world” I obviously mean Spain, which is the only place English people have ever heard of and naturally the place they go and retire to. Because its warm and they sell chips and steak. or something like that. On Topgear the other night there was a joke about Germany it went a little something like this (he was talking about a really nice functional, but not overly desirable car):

“Its like holidaying in Germany. When you go there its clean and efficient and everything just works. But you just don’t go there, you go to Spain or Italy instead”.

I thought about this alot over the past year, before I moved there I never had the slightest inclination to go to Germany, it just wasn’t on my radar. No-one ever says anything positive about it, or anything negative (i’m excluded old people here, who do say negative things but then they say negative things about everything except……the queen or something equally pointless, they’re just not reliable sources of information). I’m pretty sure this is why its such an excellent place to live because as a leper country its hidden like the shire away and not corrupted by the problems of other countries. This was not the point of this post, and not an avenue I want to walk down because its time to stop writing and thinking about germany. I have already achieved the point of this post, which is not starting work for a little bit longer.

I’m trying to mentally prepare for the trip now. I think i’m probably the least excited person thats about to go travelling ever. I’m a little bit excited. Sort of “I just found a pound down the back of the sofa” excited. I’m not really sure why I’m not more excited. Maybe because Annett isn’t here yet, so there is no-one to get excited with. Or maybe because I don’t like to hype things because then they might not live up to my hype, so instead im sub-consciously burying my excitement. I don’t think its this. I think maybe its because I’ve just had a great year feeling incredibly happy and free, and stimulated. So I don’t feel I need an escape from the 9-5 humdrum, as I haven’t had 9-5 humdrum for years or maybe even ever as I’ve always been lucky enough to talk myself into good jobs.  I guess it will come in time, or once we’re there and I get into it. Maybe I also have no idea what it will be like, so with no frame of reference I can’t get really excited about it.

Being in Englands nice. I’ve discovered how much fun ps3’s are, and getting my ass kicked online at Call of Duty and Guitar Hero. There’s a ton of family bonding, games and contests to win. English food to eat. Its very relaxing. There wasn’t really much point to this post. But nevermind. Hope your all having a fun, relaxing Christmas!

I’m back home now in the warm, obligated bosom of my family. Its a tremendously happy time, even my nan has come to stay for a few days. My brother and I are male bonding in silence whilst playing copious hours of pro evo soccer. My thumb limps closer to arthritis with every game. Tomorrow we’ll open presents, play board games, inject chocolate directly into our veins via a drip and have lots of special family time to fuel my future therapy sessions. Blissful.

Heres a great game to play over christmas its call banal-o-rama. The objective is to counter the tedious stories your relatives tell you with even duller stories. The aim being to reach the heighten state of tedium in which you can actually put yourself to sleep, with the shitness of your own stories. My nan had a cracking good go at this today, its the one game she can actually win at Christmas. she must have inches from putting herself to sleep, check out this gem:

“Auntie came round the other day, she saw my big saucepan in the kitchen. She asked if she could borrow it and then she ended up taking both that one and my other big saucepan. After she left I went to start cooking pasta, but i’d forgotten that she’d taken both my saucepans so I couldn’t cook pasta. But its alright I got fish and chip takeaway instead.”

Ah yes, with family story time producing gems like the saucepan-pasta-fiasco of 2007, the next days will pass like a hurricane. I tried to counter, raising the banal-o-rama stakes but I admit I was a little awestruck by her skills. I went for a

“ah yeah, well this morning kev flooded the bathroom when he took a shower. I walked in the bathroom and my sock got wet.”.

A hearty try, but lacking. Didn’t even register a quizzical eyebrow in response. I fear I still have a lot to learn.

Merry Christmas to one and all! Take it easy and be nice to your nan (or nicer than me *

* I am of course merely playing. My nans a star**

**a mon-star

After the emotionally heavy goodbye post, heres something lighter for you, but much, much heavier for me.

I always figured i’d go bald eventually, its one of lifes inevitabilities like bitter disappointment (oh no wait they’re the same) or taxes. I thought it would be a more few years, 60 to be exact, not 2 or 3. Lately when I look at photos of myself where before there was an silent enemy hiding in the shadows, day by day he becomes braver, rising and taunting me, becoming bolder as I become balder. My nemesis…scalp.

I went to get my hair cut last week. An experience made even more embarrassing by the fact that she spent more time trimming my neck hair than those rare specimens still inhabiting my head. Thats the thing. I’m over amply haired in all other areas, I’m basically a hairy little chimp/human hybrid. Everywhere but the place that I would like it. Its a sick joke, I’m someones genetic punchline.

I now feel about it like I used to feel about going to the dentist. You hate the thought of it, its humiliating when you’re there and you’re not convinced theres any need for it beyond helping put the dentists kids through school. Quitting going to the dentist was my choice, soon there will literally be no need for a visit to the hairdresser, no feet stamping act of defiance from me, oh no, it’ll be scalpy doing the victory dance this time.

I have a few options

a) kill myself
b) shave it all off now and be loud, bald and proud (Annett responded to this with “I hope you don’t think this is actually an option”, so for now its the front runner)
c) go down kicking and screaming, until cruel nature has dragged every last hair off my head - rock the comb over or other style disguises.
d) kill randomly selected “haired” men, then kill myself.

Hey its not that bad right? Everybody knows that bald men are more “verile”. Erm, yeah right, everybody knows that bald men are more GRATEFUL. Should they manage to seduce a woman into bed I’m guessing that “virility” cocktail is more like 2 parts haste, one part rustiness. I’ll confirm the recipe for you in a year.

On a lighter note (I didn’t laugh once writing that post, infact I didn’t even enjoy it and I’m very good at finding myself entertaining luckily) traveling starts in 3 weeks. Mental, I’ve read 4 pages about Vietnam so I guess the planning is done. Next step is some technicalities like buying a backpack, getting visa’s and just about everything else apart from reading 4 introductory pages on the history of Vietnam.

One week before the messy breakup that will be me and my first inhabitable love - Leipzig. And not even the option of getting a new haircut to help get over this one

I’d like to write more, but I’m depressed now and its 1:14am.

(or at least it was on Saturday when I wrote this, my mood has recovered greatly, but my hairline still remains the same)

Bon Iver - Skinny Love 

So here it is, the final “so what did I learn from my one year in Germany post”. I’ve been thinking about this for weeks, now. In my head I see my old flatmate Johnny from Uni at one of his American summer camps. He used to talk about how on the last night, everyone would sit around the bonfire holding a “truth stick”. In turn they would share one memory and then reveal how camp had changed them, forever……Shameless deforestation I hear you cry. Johnny told a story for which he was forever then gently teased it goes like this. At the end of camp he took a 6 week long tour trip somewhere, I can’t remember the specifics I know it featured Las Vegas and pissing into the Grand Canyon I guess that gives you an idea. At the end of the trip, I think at the airport he told of standing in front of the mirror looking at his hands and his face in the mirror and thinking to himself “I’ve become a man”.

Many boys have become men for the first time in a mens bathroom. I’m not sure if John was alone in the bathroom, what he was doing with his hands or face at the time, its not polite to ask. Nor is this the point of this post.

I guess I’m ready to have my own mini-reflective moment. Somewhere between the truth stick, and bathroom realizations of manhood here is the cringingly, lame, preachy and ultimately unsatisfying conclusion for everyone watching, you know these moments they occur at the end of American movies, accompanied by flashbacks of highlights narrated by the main characters voice overs and possibly ending in toilets and “I looked down at my hands, and then at my face in the mirror. I looked different somehow, aged by my experiences that summer, a summer I would never forget. I’d become……….a man.

Half the cinema vomits.

Sorry if I make you gag:

Unlike Johnny I was a man before I came to Leipzig, I have the receding hairline to prove it. In fact my experiences in Leipzig taught me the opposite. I was an old man of 23. My key learning of this year is the learning not to care. Opportunity is everywhere, everything I experience a million people have already experience, the more people opt in, the more possible it is to opt out, people everywhere are much the same, but the conditions which with they live are very different. 80/20 is everywhere and effects everything.

Now I live much more to impulse, I’m totally open to everybody, i’ll befriend anyone, I appreciate people 100x more and know how little I need to be happy, which liberates me to have almost unlimited options. Life in Germany has shown me the possibilities of life without the rat race, without concerns of status, the quality of life achievable when the stakes are lower and life moves slower.

Not all of this stuff is new, you see what you choose to see no matter where you’re looking. I guess I’d written my conclusions of Germany before I set foot on the plane, this was going to work because England for me despite all its good points somehow didn’t. Through hard work, coming here on my own with no support network, quite a few lucky breaks, it did work.

I think I’m going to leave it there before this turns into some dribbly, smug, cringe worthy and overly personal splurt. So instead I’ll just say thanks to everybody I’ve met here. I owe you invaluably.