There’s only so long you can be losing the war before its polite to surrender….
That day came two weeks ago. The battlefield was my head, the winner alopecia. I’d been losing the fight slowly for the last 10 years, although far less slowly in the last two. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, many men hide in combover-toupee limbo denial for years. Last time I went to the hairdressers they actually gave me a discount since it was over with so quickly, that was a sign. Watching the video of me giving the talk at Next Conf and barely recognizing myself, that was another.
I asked Annett to tell me when the time had come incase I wasn’t brave enough to make the decision. It seems she had also become comfortable in denial though since she never gave me the ‘the time is right’ nod. I made it easy for her
“In 30mins you’re shaving my head”
The reaction was not what I expected, she burst into tears. I thought that was my job?
Here are some before shots
The atmosphere during was strange, not happy or sad but with an underlying tension, as if we suspected at any moment one of us would be required to kill a puppy.
Here are the during and after shots.
Don’t even start, I know what you’re thinking….
So that’s what a black Moby would look like!
Did he forget to rotate that photo? It’s upside down
Isn’t that one of the bad guys from the Super Mario Bros movie?
Dr Evil has a turkish cousin?
You shouldn’t mock, I’m saving 5 minutes each morning in washing and styling, plus 4 hair cuts and a pot of wax per year. That’s a cool 30hrs and 45eur a year extra in which to spend moping and feeling sorry for myself! Excellent.
Actually I don’t mind it to be honest. That’s good news since I don’t have too many options anyway, which makes me wonder if that’s why I think I like it, it’s a self defense thing. Similarly when were were stuck in that bus in China for 47hrs with almost no food or water I wasn’t hungry or thirsty at all, I think since there was no option to get either of those things so my body didn’t bother to bug me about needing them. Yet now I can’t go more than about 7minutes without it strongly requesting chocolate and a Dr Pepper….denial is a special thing, the toupee and combover guys were on to something all along after all.
This might only be news to you if you live in a hole in the garden, but in life everything seems to happen at once. You drift a long quite peacefully, one day, the next day, the next day la la tedium la la, then BAM just as your getting complacent it drops its shoulder and take a swing at you with all its got. You have little time to do more than try and stay up right and roll with its punches.
Then when its had its fickle fun, the dust settles again. You can look around, work out what just happened and if its resulted in you being in a better spot than before, or if it was your turn to be the bug instead of the windscreen.
I just came out of one of those periods, and now that the dust is settling I can get back to normal, normal being a routine, this blog, photos, music, books, learning German and la la tedium la la. So what’s new? New also comes in threes it seems:
Well I have a new apartment and two new room mates. Steffi and Susi. They are great – friendly, fun and really into having a nice communal shared flat from joint laundry to marathon movie session in the living room in front of the beamer, Its a fantastic WG. They are, although they dispute this – obsessional about cleaning, but once I learn to accept that feeling of guilt that comes from me doing little to support this obsession (beside providing plenty of mess to clean), it does result in a flat so clean you could perform surgery on any of the major surfaces.
I have my own attic room, its epic. It’s not quite the strange lair of my dreams yet, so there are no photos. But it’s getting close. It’s so great to have space and comfortable seating, the attic is huge so I have what feels likes its own apartment up here to rattle around in and house my t-shirt collection.
The second change is that I started a new fun project (with Ami and Pete). This one is selling products for the first time. I think I underestimated how much work it is to create a brand from scratch. So its been a busy few months, but I’m very happy with the result and it should be launching in the next few days. We’re not revealing who is behind it so I won’t link to it here, so if you want to see it and I didn’t already tell you about it just mail me and I’ll send you the link.
I’m aware this post is not attempting humour, I’m hungry and when I’m hungry pretty useless at trying to be funny, or friendly, or anything but grouchy and hungry really.
The third and most major change is Annett got a job. That was the plan and as the hardest working job hunter in the planet, it was just a matter of time, and I think she got the reward for her hard work, landing a very nice job as Junior Project Manager. Only the bit that wasn’t part of the plan was that the job is 7.5 train hours away in Amsterdam. While I’ve only been there once, its a really great city, as everyone attests when you say that she’s gone there, it seems to be a universally liked place. She moved there straight away and is now looking for apartments. Its pretty strange after two intense years of living and travelling together and seeing each other 99% of the days of the year, with only 7 days warning we’re now in a long distance relationship. But this time I have no fixed job so I can travel and spend time there, so I’m confident that will still work and that its not a bad thing for us both to spend a little energy outside of the relationship and have less quantity but more quality time together. Still I have noticed the presence of an Annett shaped hole here in my daily life but I’m doing my best to fill it with work, friends, flat sorting, movies, chocolate. I also vividly remember the excitement and challenge of turning up in a country where you know no one and building a life for yourself, coming to Leipzig is hands down the best decision I ever made so I’m supportive and proud that she’s having her own adventure, even if I’m not really part of it.
I am still happily unemployed, I guess now an office job is not an option for me as I want to travel to Amsterdam one week a month of something similar. Still the sites are doing fairly well, I’m not getting rich but I can just about get by and TeeDirectory is rocking and although its early days I really believe in it if I keep plugging away for another six months I think and hope it will pay the bills.
Now that’s all the news over with so when I’m not hungry I can get back to writing those stranger posts I like so much…
In seems a few people were a little confused by my Facebook status update announcing that I’m moving out to my own place. I’m sorry potential suitors but I’m not single now, Annett and I are still together and functioning in the usual dysfunctional one big argument from self-destruction state we call relationship normality.
It’s been a hard few months, Annett would probably be the first to admit she’s somewhat of an emotional train wreck at the best of times. Lately shes been completely consumed by job hunting. She has no off switch, so this task and the failure to complete it so far, haunts her every waking moment, and turns her into one irritable little motherfucker. I’m an insensitive arrogant delusional dreamer which can also have an irritating effect, like cheap washing powder.
We’ve always argued a lot, its part of how we work, but this is an example of how easy its been to start an argument lately:
me: whistling
her: are you whistling?
me: yep
her: could you not
me: why not? what could possibly be wrong with whistling
her: I’m trying to concentrate, your whistling is annoying me
me: who ever heard of a person who had a problem with whistling?
her: I have a problem with it, its annoying
me: Oh yeah because being a miserable bastard all the time is absolutely not irritating. I’m a kind of happy sort of person, I like whistling I’m not sure I can just stop.
her: If you don’t stop singing this second I’m going to take a blunt object and I’m going to repeatedly shove it into your eye, then I’m going to open the third floor window and with you hopelessly blinded I’m going to push you out of it. Then I’m going to hire a car and reverse repeatedly over your carcass.
me: singing
her: ARE YOU SINGING?!?!
(and repeat)
The biggest problem is that we are absolute opposites in every way. Yeah I know every couple says that because one person likes cheese and the other person doesn’t and instead likes Carrots, or Abba or something like that. But we actually are polar opposites, the only thing we have in common is that both of us have nothing in common.
Here is graph illustrating the full spectrum of possible personalities and our positioning on them
So you can see why we have problems aligning our world views. When times are good those differences are fun, they’re the catalysts for our most interesting conversations which usually end with Annett going “you’re such a filthy capitalist pig” and “I hate the stupid real world” and all those other little sweet nothings she likes to whisper at me before stamping her feet and walking off.
Recent times would not classify as part of those aforementioned “good times”. With no home, no stuff, no plan, no jobs and the fact that the flat we’re temporarily living in now is smaller than the size of your average microwave oven its been a challenge. It’s so small if one person stretches their arms, the other has to duck or they end up with a black eye. In recent weeks we’ve been generating more friction than a sandpaper orgy.
So that is why we’ve decided to ease a little pressure and I’ll move out now rather than waiting for Annett to find a job. This is because I’ve decided to stay in Leipzig, regardless of where Annett finds work which if all goes well will only be Berlin anyway which is just round the corner. It’s very cheap here which suits my sabbatical, my friends are here and I have such few in the rest of the world, the fluke that I found some here is unlikely to be repeated elsewhere and therefore should be cherished. I also have a new mini project starting up with Ami and Pete both of which are in Leipzig (or maybe Berlin in Pete’s case) so I need to stay around here. After five months of travelling together, one year living in a country where you know almost no-one but each other we’ve spent a serious amount of time together and there’s nothing backward or negative about taking a little time to discover yourself again.
I’ll of course split my time between here and wherever Annett is, while I’m self-employed I can pretend to work anyway so that is not really an issue. In the meantime Annett can have the whole microwave oven to herself while she looks for jobs and seeing each other can become something to look forward to again at the end of the day, not something we absolutely can’t avoid and spend the whole day and night doing.
In case you’re wondering I also plan to do shit loads of whistling in my new flat! Oh yeah…
I went to a preview of Watchmen last night. It was terrible. Luckily I didn’t pay to watch it, otherwise I might have had to set myself on fire and run around the foyer in circles shouting ‘you bastards you bastards give me my money and 2hr45min of my life back, you bastards’.
Instead I shrugged, tried to explain to the friends I was with why I yawned the whole way through while they were proclaiming it to be a masterpiece. I failed. So like any self-respecting man resigned to failure, I went to the pub. We sat outside the pub on the street, Queen St in fact which is I would guess the busiest pedestrian street in NZ, it’s basically the main high street of Auckland.
We were the only people sitting outside, myself and my friends Daniel and Jo (who are married, which seemed relevant when I open these brackets, but now as I’m closing them, no longer does). While we drank our beers, we discussed why the Watchman was brilliant, and why I didn’t like it because I didn’t understand but I’m too stupid for its very deep hard hitting, gritty social allegory. Now that I reflect, it was more they who discussed and me who was discussed about, that’s sometimes the way it goes when most of your friends at least 10 years older than you, sometimes you have to “nod” and “uh huh” and wait for the lesson from the grownups to be over. You can get your revenge later when you can put the grownups in a home and never visit.
While this conversation was happening a little Indian man appeared to my left, on the other side of the railing that separated me, and a little further along the railing Daniel and Jo, from the street. This man was called George Singh (the conversation is as exact as I can remember it, although you’ll have to add a little random slurring, sit on your knees and become Indian to get the full effect)
“Let me, I’ll tell you something there are only, only two life truths sir. The first is reflection, reflection, thinking about things, reflection and combat.”
It’s a promising start, he’s piqued my interest I’m a big fan of reflection, maybe he’s a small Indian prophet, come to enlighten me?
“I’m a very smart man” (hang on, should prophets be more humble?), “I’m an actor, my name is George Singh”. Acting?! That’s not a noble pursuit, oh no, I get it now, he’s just another loon. “I’m a very smart man, a great man”, and I’m a pair of Gandhi’s slippers.
“Let me introduce myself”, he’s reaching over the barrier arm outstretched trying to shake Jo’s hand. “Don’t touch him, leave her alone.” says Daniel angrily.
“I’m a very smart man.” Gives up on Jo reaches over to shake Daniels hand now, but his hand is less than forthcoming so he ends up grabbing Daniels arm.
“Don’t touch me. Go away” Daniel and George begin a mini arm grapple, which it becomes clear George is not going to win, being as he is drunk and 4ft. For a man so into combat you’d think he’d be a little better at it, possibly he’s majored in reflection, minored in combat.
“We’re having a private conversation, we don’t want to talk to you go away” adds Daniel. “Daniel, I want to go inside” says Jo. “I’ll have you removed, go away” Daniel is losing his patience. “Daniel, lets go inside” Jo has lost her patience.
“You’re being very rude, very rude.” George is beginning to back away, finger pointed directly at us. “You, you fucker if I see you in the corridors of Auckland, I’ll, I’ll, throw you in the river.” Haven’t seen many corridors in Auckland, we’ve a river but its sort of more, of a well, ocean.
“I can have you killed” George adds in his own version of threatening. Unlikely George as you look barely capable of dressing yourself. “Look how you’re acting in front of your wife. You’re acting like an idiot. You fuckers. Fuck off, I could have you killed”
Mutter, mutter, random threat, mutter, shout, threat, mutter (he’s backing further and further away which doesn’t do much for the validity of his threats, heading up the street screaming some stuff I can’t remember at this point ).
This post is sort of about George, but then not really. He was by far the evenings best entertainment, it seemed only fitting that we would meet on the night when I watched a terrible piece of nihilist cinema in which humans have absolutely no redeeming qualities at best are useful as pretty things to be killed. Society itself is destined to fall apart, the world will be dark and it will rain every day and we’ll all not make eye contact with each other and we’ll pray to some inept superheroes and a naked blue dude who is basically god after getting electrocuted or something in some kind of freak accident. Sure some of these things might have already happen in the UK, but not in the rest of the world where bar a few blips in world history life has only ever got better and better. So why do we have to keep portraying everything as being bad? I don’t want this to turn into an anti-media rant because I can go on all day and I really do think the media are to blame for more of societies problems than anyone seems to realize and the world would be a better place if we turn off the TV, stopped reading newspapers and looked people we met in the street in the eye.
Oh dear it is getting ranty, now I sound uppity and self-righteous which I’m not, I just know what works for me and keeps me happy (just getting a bit of news from the odd blog, no newspapers, no TV, avoiding things that look unnecessarily depressing and just doing what I want whether it makes sense or not and trusting that it will work out okay because why shouldn’t it, I’m a nice person).
What interests me, and what this post was originally supposed to be about is how many wrong turns is my life away from me becoming George Singh? I know I’m only one wrong turn from death, from lying under a bus, that’s somehow different its just a freak accident you can’t control, so you can’t be too concerned with beyond looking left, right and then left again. How many things would have to go wrong before I’m standing in the street drunk, telling people I’m a very smart man? One turn? Two? Annett leaves me (one), I can’t find work because of the media driven global recession (two) – am I George Singh now? Or would it take three, four, five – family killed in freak accident (three), someone makes me watch the watchmen again (four), I never amount to more than a marketer (five) am I George Singh now? Am I worse than George Singh? Would I walk myself through the corridors of Auckland to the river that’s really an ocean and throw myself in?
I have no idea, but I suspect it’s less than I and you think it is and that’s something worth thinking about I reckon. Perhaps more importantly, should I wake up and I am George Singh and should I meet you outside a pub, would you shake my hand, or engage me in combat?
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 *
Growing up adults (parents, teachers etc) often utter phrases like “you can never be the best, there’s always someone else in the world who’s better”. I assume this is to help prepare us for the soul crushing dis-appointment we will face in the adult world. I always laughed at this type of comment. I can say without any doubt that i’m the best in the world at one particular thing. That thing is believing that I could be the best in the world at anything, but mostly things i’ve never done and have no idea of. Even though some-days I can barely manage getting showered. I’m confident that should the pilot and co-pilot of the plane I’m about to board both slipped into tedium induced coma (in my head flying consists mainly of spinning around on your chair and cracking “houston we have” gags), I would be able to glide us down from the sky and land on a shiny penny. After all I’ve seen that movie with Nicholas Cage that involved a plane.
So its with this mindset that I’m writing from the pleasure of stansted waiting lounge, humbled. I’m humbled by the book “things i’ve argued with my girlfriend about”. Its exactly the sort of book I want to write, with one crucial difference its better than anything I could write. It reads like a biography but its fiction. It follows a guy who is as funny as i’d like to be, but am not. He works in IT. Or at least pretends to have a vague idea about IT but still gets paid for it. I actually do work, so again he has a fortuitous position over me. He has a German girlfriend!? I thought I was the only english person stupid lucky enough to have taken on the charitable task of making a German girl internationally date-able (Pete doesn’t count he’s “british” or some other technicality like that). The German disease is not like flu, at least I’m aware of no pills that can cure brutal sledgehammer honesty and obsessive planning?
The book follows their life as a couple (they also have two children). Not sure what else yet i’m only 1/3 of the way through, but looks like it will involved triads (can’t say fairer than triads). But sometimes the likeness between Annett and I and the couple in this book is scary. The way they interact is so reminiscent of our unique blend of dysfunctional function and her mannerisms and saying are so Annett. They’ve spent a lot of the book arguing so far. His weapon is deathly sharpened sarcasm, her’s blunt violence or at least the threat of blunt violence. Annett and I argue more in one hour than I’ve ever argued with any of my previous girlfriend’s in the whole of our relationships, combined. But I’m okay with that, its part of our style. I’m in no doubt that if Annetts Mastermind subject would be “the stupidity of men”. I have a role to play, so i’m okay with reaching for the dunce hat every once in a while. Especially as being annoyed is Annett’s biggest talent, to deny her further practice could seriously damage her world title challenge.
Below is a brief If I-had-to-sum-up-the-first-few-months-of-our-relationship-it-would-be:
Annett:
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“3 legged bastards.”
“If you hate me you could just say so”
“that’s mean/that’s not fair”
“you inbred island monkey”
Me:
“your a freakin’ nutjob”
“Not all men are evil. Some men are even “not that bad”, we employ the satanic ones to create a very achievable benchmark for ourselves”
“are you sure your not a lesbian?”
I’ve wandered off my original point, which I guess is that now I need a new book idea since the anglo-german relationship has been covered at great, much funnier length than I could do justice. So my best in the world theory is blown yet again, I guess the solution is to pretend that all my ideas are completely unique and never try to find those that have already done them, better.
I’m back from hols now, great to back in the ‘zig. Nice to have some downtime, more to come hopefully,
Now I await the fun of the argument this post will produce
Never one for the smaller matters in life, like cleaning, organising, structuring, getting places on time etc. Today I plan to tackle one of big questions – love.
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