So, that's that, then. As I sit here, the house is nearly empty; I'm just waiting for the removal firm to take away the last of my stuff. Someone said to me that it was the end of an era but that sounds too grand; but it's the end of a chapter, certainly.
It's an ending that I wrote and that I wanted and that worked for - and probably even needed, to a large degree. And yet, I can't help but feel sad. Partly it's in my nature but partly it's the nature of the event. I've lived here for seven years or so - that's a fair chunk of time. Although I've never really liked Banbury and while I'm very happy in Hong Kong, leaving here is still a bit of a wrench.
One of my favourite songs is Japan's Nightporter, for many reasons but in part for this lyric, which seems apposite: "the width of a room which could hold so much pleasure inside." I look around these empty rooms and I know that I've been happy here at times - there has been pleasure and laughter here, there has been love and light. And I'm sad to be leaving the place where those things happened, even though I'll carry the memories with me.
But there has also been sadness and pain and loneliness here. There's been isolation and depression and tears and I'm glad to be leaving the place where those things happened - even though I'll carry those memories with me, too.
At the risk of sounding like the cast of Rent, we measure our lives in a variety of different ways and one of those is in the places we live. I've lived in Swindon, Broad Hinton, Faringdon, Banbury, each place dividing my life up into phases. In Swindon, I grew up, got a job, got married, got divorced. In Broad Hinton, I became a villager, did AmDram, met J. In Faringdon, J and I lived together, we split up, my job was made redundant. In Banbury I was self-employed and travelling. Each quite different and distinct phases: each of them had an end.
And that's natural; everything has to end. Nothing lasts forever. I have regrets about things - never trust the person who says they never regret anything, it must the hallmark of a psychopath not to regret the hurt and pain they've caused others - and one of those regrets is that I stayed here too long; I got stuck here. Ellen Glasgow, the American novelist, wrote that the difference between a rut and a grave is the length of time you stay there. It was difficult to climb out of this rut and, as I'm only human, I can look back at the rut - in danger as it was of becoming a grave - and still feel regret at leaving it. It was, despite the pain, comfortable here at times and it was what I knew, it was familiar.
So as I sit here, alone, surrounded by memories and familiar sounds (the central heating has just switched on, there is a train passing outside, the DVD player is humming) I think of how I came to be here - the nearly devastating end of a relationship, many years ago - and where I'm going to. For seven years, this was where I left and where I came back to: this was my home. In 48 hours, I'll be on a plane, flying 6,000 miles. And that plane will be taking me home.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Friday, September 14, 2012
Shanghaied
I've just returned from the future. It's the third time I've been there and each time I've visited, I've fallen deeper in love with it. It's a fantastic place - almost a prototype MegaCity One but without the constant block wars and the whole borderline psychopathic Judges thing. You may know it as Shanghai.
Landing in Shanghai on a rainy Thursday afternoon, I was supposed to be picked up by a car but, mindful of my Beijing experience, I was prepared. I had maps and I had apps. It was a straightforward trip on the maglev to Longyang Road and then a couple of stops along line 2 of the Metro to Century Avenue - from there I had enough Mandarin to get me to the hotel. I didn't want the driver to show up: I was ready. I was an independent traveller, cosmopolitan and confident, making my self-assured way through the world.
The driver showed up.
As it turned out, I was glad he did as my driver for this trip, Tony, was the man for whom the word enthusiastic was coined. Tony enthusiastically (and at full volume from a very impressive car stereo) shared with me his love for Lionel Richie, Celine Dion and Jennifer Rush, educating me in music. In fact, he shared with me his love for all things MOR, including, it must be said, his driving style.
Still, he'd been driving in Shanghai for twenty years (which meant that, by the look of him, he started driving around ten years old) and he got me to the hotel quickly and easily. And, with his shaved head, sunglasses (yes, even in the rain) and flat cap, he got me there in style. He was great and I have confess to a little man-crush there!
The hotel was very nice - clean and the food was good; nothing special but far from the worst place I've ever stayed. I don't have many demands when I'm training - actually, I don't have any demands at all, because no one pays any attention - but if I'm given the choice, I do request a hotel close to the training venue. In HK they've elevated the concept of "close" to a fine art. For me, "close" is anything in five to ten minutes' walking distance. Talk to an estate agent on HK and you'll soon learn that "close" means "built on top of." In Beijing, close means "about an hour away, most of which you'll spend stationary in a traffic jam." In Shanghai it appears to mean anywhere that can be reached in twenty minutes in a cab driven by Mad Max at suicidally high speeds through insanely crowded roads.
I'm conscious that there's only a limited number of times I can tell you that places in China are really big before you switch off completely. However, Shanghai is really big. It's pretty flat and it reminds me a lot of Los Angeles - on the drive back to the airport you pass mile after mile after mile after mile of residential housing and, when the road rises you realise that Shanghai extends to the horizon (and far beyond) in every direction. And then twenty minutes' (very fast) driving later it still extends to the horizon in every direction. A seemingly endless sea of houses and factories and low-rises and shopping malls.
But I love Shanghai in the way that I didn't really love Beijing. Shanghai seems more open, more welcoming, more cosmopolitan in some way. I was only partly joking when I started this entry. I know that China's a one-party dictatorship but, hey, nowhere's perfect and let's be honest, democracy isn't working out all that well in the USA or the UK, is it? At the risk of sounding like a useful idiot, as Steffens said: I've seen the future and it works.
Landing in Shanghai on a rainy Thursday afternoon, I was supposed to be picked up by a car but, mindful of my Beijing experience, I was prepared. I had maps and I had apps. It was a straightforward trip on the maglev to Longyang Road and then a couple of stops along line 2 of the Metro to Century Avenue - from there I had enough Mandarin to get me to the hotel. I didn't want the driver to show up: I was ready. I was an independent traveller, cosmopolitan and confident, making my self-assured way through the world.
The driver showed up.
As it turned out, I was glad he did as my driver for this trip, Tony, was the man for whom the word enthusiastic was coined. Tony enthusiastically (and at full volume from a very impressive car stereo) shared with me his love for Lionel Richie, Celine Dion and Jennifer Rush, educating me in music. In fact, he shared with me his love for all things MOR, including, it must be said, his driving style.
Still, he'd been driving in Shanghai for twenty years (which meant that, by the look of him, he started driving around ten years old) and he got me to the hotel quickly and easily. And, with his shaved head, sunglasses (yes, even in the rain) and flat cap, he got me there in style. He was great and I have confess to a little man-crush there!
The hotel was very nice - clean and the food was good; nothing special but far from the worst place I've ever stayed. I don't have many demands when I'm training - actually, I don't have any demands at all, because no one pays any attention - but if I'm given the choice, I do request a hotel close to the training venue. In HK they've elevated the concept of "close" to a fine art. For me, "close" is anything in five to ten minutes' walking distance. Talk to an estate agent on HK and you'll soon learn that "close" means "built on top of." In Beijing, close means "about an hour away, most of which you'll spend stationary in a traffic jam." In Shanghai it appears to mean anywhere that can be reached in twenty minutes in a cab driven by Mad Max at suicidally high speeds through insanely crowded roads.
I'm conscious that there's only a limited number of times I can tell you that places in China are really big before you switch off completely. However, Shanghai is really big. It's pretty flat and it reminds me a lot of Los Angeles - on the drive back to the airport you pass mile after mile after mile after mile of residential housing and, when the road rises you realise that Shanghai extends to the horizon (and far beyond) in every direction. And then twenty minutes' (very fast) driving later it still extends to the horizon in every direction. A seemingly endless sea of houses and factories and low-rises and shopping malls.
But I love Shanghai in the way that I didn't really love Beijing. Shanghai seems more open, more welcoming, more cosmopolitan in some way. I was only partly joking when I started this entry. I know that China's a one-party dictatorship but, hey, nowhere's perfect and let's be honest, democracy isn't working out all that well in the USA or the UK, is it? At the risk of sounding like a useful idiot, as Steffens said: I've seen the future and it works.
Monday, September 10, 2012
The Expendables 2
During the 1980s and early 1990s, I watched entirely more films than was good for me, thanks to the video cassette. One type of film of which I saw more than my fair share were action movies - pumped up alpha males like Arnie, Sly and Van Damme staring out of the covers in impossibly butch ways. An enterprising neighbour ran a video store out of his garage (goodness knows how) and I rented all manner of age-inappropriate videos in the times before the BBFC got involved with classifying cassettes.
In the height of the "video-nasties" boom, my friend Iain (now a respectable member of Swindon Borough Council, I believe) used to get pirate copies of banned videos and I spent my formative years watching Cannibal Holocaust, I Spit on Your Grave, The House by the Cemetery and the like. It did me no harm (twitch, twitch) and gave me a love of horror movies that abides to this day - I watched VHS recently and it brought some of those old memories back.
In my early twenties, I went through a bit of a body-building phase and used to buy various magazines that promised to show me how I could look like Arnold (never Arnie in these magazines - show some respect), or Flex Wheeler or Dorian Yates. I would hit the sweatiest gym in Swindon and train as hard as I could in the hopes of packing on a bit of muscle - I even trained occasionally with an amateur bodybuilder who was a bit of a celebrity on the local circuit, although he left me in the dust, quite honestly. I still think body builders are the most committed and dedicated of athletes; body building is a punishing sport and greatly admire those who compete.
Anyway, all of this is the sort of stuff I was thinking about whilst watching The Expendables 2. Last year, all the big 1980s and 1990s video stars got together and made a movie, called The Expendables. Some have aged well - Bruce Willis, Jean Claude Van Damme - others less so - in particular Sly himself (who doesn't so much speak as sub-sonically rumble) and Dolph Lundgren, who is looking a touch too Mickey Rourke for my liking nowadays.
The Expendables made money (which was pretty much all that was asked of it) and was generally well received and so they got together and made another movie. I saw it yesterday and was going to come on here and whale on it but when the time came I realised that I didn't hate it. I didn't understand bits of it: why play the theme from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly every time Chuck Norris appeared? Where did the plane come from? But I didn't hate it, like I half expected to.
It was lazy, to be sure, repeating the same "saved in the nick of time by someone turning up out of the blue" trick three times but it wasn't too boring, it wasn't too offensive; it just came and went and didn't outstay its welcome. Should you see it? It's not the worst film you'll ever see but perhaps your time might be better spent re-watching one of those old 1980s/1990s actioners, to see these guys in their prime.
In the height of the "video-nasties" boom, my friend Iain (now a respectable member of Swindon Borough Council, I believe) used to get pirate copies of banned videos and I spent my formative years watching Cannibal Holocaust, I Spit on Your Grave, The House by the Cemetery and the like. It did me no harm (twitch, twitch) and gave me a love of horror movies that abides to this day - I watched VHS recently and it brought some of those old memories back.
In my early twenties, I went through a bit of a body-building phase and used to buy various magazines that promised to show me how I could look like Arnold (never Arnie in these magazines - show some respect), or Flex Wheeler or Dorian Yates. I would hit the sweatiest gym in Swindon and train as hard as I could in the hopes of packing on a bit of muscle - I even trained occasionally with an amateur bodybuilder who was a bit of a celebrity on the local circuit, although he left me in the dust, quite honestly. I still think body builders are the most committed and dedicated of athletes; body building is a punishing sport and greatly admire those who compete.
Anyway, all of this is the sort of stuff I was thinking about whilst watching The Expendables 2. Last year, all the big 1980s and 1990s video stars got together and made a movie, called The Expendables. Some have aged well - Bruce Willis, Jean Claude Van Damme - others less so - in particular Sly himself (who doesn't so much speak as sub-sonically rumble) and Dolph Lundgren, who is looking a touch too Mickey Rourke for my liking nowadays.
The Expendables made money (which was pretty much all that was asked of it) and was generally well received and so they got together and made another movie. I saw it yesterday and was going to come on here and whale on it but when the time came I realised that I didn't hate it. I didn't understand bits of it: why play the theme from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly every time Chuck Norris appeared? Where did the plane come from? But I didn't hate it, like I half expected to.
It was lazy, to be sure, repeating the same "saved in the nick of time by someone turning up out of the blue" trick three times but it wasn't too boring, it wasn't too offensive; it just came and went and didn't outstay its welcome. Should you see it? It's not the worst film you'll ever see but perhaps your time might be better spent re-watching one of those old 1980s/1990s actioners, to see these guys in their prime.
Saturday, September 08, 2012
A small confession
One thing about living with other people is that you learn things about yourself. Some things are completely new and sometimes they're good things. Other times, they're things you might have suspected about yourself and which are confirmed by the presence of other people. Over the last few weeks I've had to come to terms with the fact that I am, in fact, a bit of a snob. And when I say "a bit of a snob" what I actually mean is a massive snob of almost hipster-like proportions. I'd long suspected it but now it's confirmed.
As Plato said (I can't help myself: I'm a snob and a pseud), the beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms, so let's define snob. According to teh interwebz, a snob is "a person who believes that their tastes in a particular area are superior to those of other people" and I'm afraid to say that describes me, to a tee.
Now, before I excoriate (I'm sorry; pseud, remember?) myself I must just say, in my defence, that I think everyone is actually a bit of a snob. Deep down, everyone thinks their tastes are a bit better than everyone else's: the music they like is a bit better, the films they like or the books they read and so on. These things are part of the way we define ourselves - why else would people have such angst about being seen reading "50 Shades of Grey" in public? They worry that others will judge them. In the same way, I've seen people argue that they wouldn't have an e-reader because then no one would know what they're reading. We judge books by their covers and readers by their books.
So, everyone is a snob, including me. But where does snobbery end and a general lack of standards begin? After all, aren't some things not as good as others? Or are all things equally valid? For instance, is this...
...better than this...
...and, if so, how do you judge? I happen to like them both but for different reasons and in different ways. Am I open to a variety of influences or am I just lacking in discernment?
Recently, S and I watched the film Music and Lyrics. I think it's an awful film (formulaic, lacking in depth, predictable) while S quite likes it. Which of us is right? The temptation, being the snob I am, is for me to think that it's me, obviously, and that S just has terrible taste in films. And that's indeed what I was thinking and was generally grumpy about watching it (although I do quite like Hugh Grant).
But then I started to think to myself that I like some equally terrible films: as I've mentioned before, I'm genuine in my love of The Core, which is a movie that makes Music and Lyrics look like Citizen Kane! I'm not being ironic in that; I know, objectively, that it's rubbish but I always watch it when it's on. Does that mean I have terrible taste?
I guess the key is how we regard the taste of others. We all have standards and criteria by which we judge things and those standards and criteria are different to everyone else's. Sometimes there's overlap, sometimes there isn't: I might think something is terrible while you think it's a masterpiece but that doesn't mean my taste is better than yours. I'll try harder to be more accepting and open in the future. After all, as they say just north of here, 百花齐放，百家争鸣 but without the terrible consequences. (Pseud, as I think I mentioned.)
As Plato said (I can't help myself: I'm a snob and a pseud), the beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms, so let's define snob. According to teh interwebz, a snob is "a person who believes that their tastes in a particular area are superior to those of other people" and I'm afraid to say that describes me, to a tee.
Now, before I excoriate (I'm sorry; pseud, remember?) myself I must just say, in my defence, that I think everyone is actually a bit of a snob. Deep down, everyone thinks their tastes are a bit better than everyone else's: the music they like is a bit better, the films they like or the books they read and so on. These things are part of the way we define ourselves - why else would people have such angst about being seen reading "50 Shades of Grey" in public? They worry that others will judge them. In the same way, I've seen people argue that they wouldn't have an e-reader because then no one would know what they're reading. We judge books by their covers and readers by their books.
So, everyone is a snob, including me. But where does snobbery end and a general lack of standards begin? After all, aren't some things not as good as others? Or are all things equally valid? For instance, is this...
...better than this...
...and, if so, how do you judge? I happen to like them both but for different reasons and in different ways. Am I open to a variety of influences or am I just lacking in discernment?
Recently, S and I watched the film Music and Lyrics. I think it's an awful film (formulaic, lacking in depth, predictable) while S quite likes it. Which of us is right? The temptation, being the snob I am, is for me to think that it's me, obviously, and that S just has terrible taste in films. And that's indeed what I was thinking and was generally grumpy about watching it (although I do quite like Hugh Grant).
But then I started to think to myself that I like some equally terrible films: as I've mentioned before, I'm genuine in my love of The Core, which is a movie that makes Music and Lyrics look like Citizen Kane! I'm not being ironic in that; I know, objectively, that it's rubbish but I always watch it when it's on. Does that mean I have terrible taste?
I guess the key is how we regard the taste of others. We all have standards and criteria by which we judge things and those standards and criteria are different to everyone else's. Sometimes there's overlap, sometimes there isn't: I might think something is terrible while you think it's a masterpiece but that doesn't mean my taste is better than yours. I'll try harder to be more accepting and open in the future. After all, as they say just north of here, 百花齐放，百家争鸣 but without the terrible consequences. (Pseud, as I think I mentioned.)
Saturday, September 01, 2012
A mystery solved
In the last few weeks, I've noticed a series of posters appears in the MTR stations. They feature mostly men staring moodily at the camera, dressed in designer suits or dinner jackets, with velvet bow ties and extravagantly pomaded hair.
The latest K-pop boy band, perhaps? A comeback tour for a once famous group?
Maybe campy Macao magicians, a la Siegfried and Roy? Or high-class escorts for the lonely businesswomen of Hong Kong?
Perhaps the Asian answer to Peters and Lee (ask your grandparents)?
No, as it turned out, these are posters advertising the services of teachers. Yes, that's right: teachers. I've probably said it before but I love Hong Kong!
Maybe campy Macao magicians, a la Siegfried and Roy? Or high-class escorts for the lonely businesswomen of Hong Kong?
Perhaps the Asian answer to Peters and Lee (ask your grandparents)?
No, as it turned out, these are posters advertising the services of teachers. Yes, that's right: teachers. I've probably said it before but I love Hong Kong!
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