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Anyone here old enough to remember the original Miama Vice TV show? I saw it on reruns, I think, when I was in my teens. The final scene of the proper big end-of-everything finale stuck with me and I’ve never known why. But every now and then I think of it and it makes me wonder.

It was the scene where Tubbs asks Crockett where he’s going to go next. And Crockett says: “Somewhere further south. Somewhere the water’s warm, the drinks are cold and I don’t know the names of the players.”

We never did find out if he made it, or what happened to Tubbs back in the big bad Bronx. But that feeling of needing to have a fresh situation, to be in a fresh environment where you need to learn or assimilate all over again… I think that’s always stuck with me.

When I was in my early twenties I took a holiday to Hong Kong, mainly to see the sights but also to see the international film festival. It was awesome, and alien, and everything that I needed at that point in my life. I felt like I wasn’t done discovering, that there was more to see, to try, to experience there. Within a year I had passed a CELTA teaching certificate and got 6 months teaching experience under my belt, so I headed back to HK with a suitcase and a one week bed-only booking at a YHA hostel. I got jobs, I got visas, I learnt about the way of life, I went to uni to learn Cantonese… it was a dream.

But all dreams must end. After eleven years out there I was beginning to get bored. I was feeling the drag of the constant changes in visas, the sniping by bosses and the general crowdedness of the city. I made the monumental mistake of leaving HK to return to England. At the time it seemed like a good idea - doesn’t it always? But if I had sat down and weighed everything up, I would have taken a 2 or 3 month break, back-packed around southeast Asia, had a change. And when I had wanted to return to something familiar and routine, it would have been HK. That’s what should have happened. But didn’t.

Instead I returned to the UK and spent time assimilating to the foreign place it had become. People were smaller, more parochial, tiny-minded. Everything was too far apart and public transport was shocking. Food was expensive, rent-related bills a joke. And all my friends and found-family were still in HK. In one fell swoop I had cut myself off from normality, comfortable familiarity, and my favourite people. I lost it all. And it was my fault.

After a stint in the south of England, it came to pass that my job was up for redundancy. There was nothing like-for-like so I was free to take the redundancy payoff and run. I had a choice - go back to HK where I felt I belonged, or try somewhere else. Money not being my friend, I opted for Manchester, the place I had been born but never lived in. And so I hauled my arse 300 miles up the country and started again. I was in a city again, with bright lights, places open till late, neons and crowds and excitement. It didn’t have my friends, it didn’t have my circle: I had done it to myself again. I had cut myself off from everything familiar and everyone I liked.

I’ve been here coming up to 2 years now, and every day I regret leaving HK when I did. That was 7 years ago, and I’m still thinking about that. I still miss the lifestyle, the people, the place itself. But I can never go back (due to a little bit of back-stabbing that I’ve already been over) and even if I could, it wouldn’t be the same place. It’s moved on without me, and I should follow its example.

Sometimes I think about other places I could go to. But it’s a circular argument - if I go to a fresh country to start learning all over again, my friends will still be in HK and England. But if I don’t go somewhere else, what am I doing here? Treading water because I have bills to pay because I’m treading water because I have bills to pay?

You know how people say you need a third place - you have home, you have work, and you need another place that’s not either of those things, so you can recharge from the other two? I’ve tried a few different third places over the course of my life - martial arts, writing fiction, archery, going to the pictures. And while I still have an interest in all of these, it’s writing fiction that’s always been the main one. I cannot seem to get my own original fiction published for love nor money, so I continue with where I got started - fan fiction. I still watch movies and TV, I still end up with muses and I still write the further adventures of these characters. I get reviews and emails, I get thank yous and requests, and this fills a void that getting countless agent rejections have made (and continue to feed).

My third place then - writing - could be done anywhere. I did some of my best work on a repurposed Mahjong table in my spare room in HK. I’ve done some new stuff, for new fandoms, in my old shared house in Manchester and a completely new fandom, muse and story at this flat I moved into just now. I’m doing more writing than ever before, for the things I like and want to expand upon. I could take it anywhere with me, as I have Billy II my MacBook Air within reach at all times, and connected to SugarSync to back me up on a constant save basis.

All I need is somewhere to go, but it feels like the world is shrinking and my best bet is Mars. I’ve missed the Mars One programme and I’m too old, so that’s out. Maybe there truly is nowhere left. Maybe I’m oversimplifying and there are tonnes of places I could yet still find on Earth.

Maybe I just need to go further south, where the water is warm, the drinks are cold, and I don’t know the names of the players.

Now that would be a good place to start.

It’s not you, it’s me

I don’t normally talk about work here, mostly because that’s between me and work colleagues. However, it’s now come to the point where I need to speculate out loud. And because my landlord/housemate downstairs is watching The Princess Bride, I guess I’ll be smiling while I do it.

I'm very comfortable where I am. And by that I mean I go to work, do 8 hours, then go home again. They even let me change my hours to make the day start and finish earlier. Doesn’t help much with the traffic, but it does help with my overall day. I’m free to get on with projects and things I think need doing to keep the day-to-day running of software and background stuff working and all in order. Things like system maintenance, organising upgrades, staying compliant, and also being the only person in the business who can run and deliver payroll to all employees of two companies - I do all this. I know that in the grand scheme of things, I’m just a Corporal Hicks (no offence, Corporal Hicks). I know that I’m not in the team of people who have to make things happen or guide the direction of the company, and I know I’m not important or in fact key to the business. I know all these things, and I thought I was ok with it.


Maybe I’m not. Maybe that’s why I unconsciously ‘push back’ as they call it when people ask my opinion on stuff that I believe is beyond my pay grade. I think this is what it comes down to.

Do you (a) help even though you know it’s not your place, and you don’t have access or knowledge because you’re not in the management team, so everything you say is stuff that they’re asking you to do even though it’s not your job and is way above you so they’re getting it for free, or (b) push back and say it’s not your place to say? If you do ‘a’, maybe you’re proving that you can handle the next pay grade so they can look at promoting or including you more - so if you do ‘b’ then you’re shooting yourself in the foot. But when you know there’s nowhere to go - there’s no position above you, no reason to invent one, and no promotion in sight, then why not do ‘b’?


A long time ago, I was the kind of person who would say that my job description has clear definitions, and I stay inside of those definitions. It wasn’t out of spite, or pay issues, or anything but doing what it says on the tin. If you want me to do more, then write it on the tin. Everyone knows where they stand, people know who to ask to do various tasks because they can look on the tins for guidance, and everyone’s happy.


Then I went through a long phase of ‘well if they ask for my help then I’ll help’ - because we’re all just people, and knowing why someone comes to you instead of picking up the other tin can make all the difference.

Now I’m passing that phase. Now I’m getting to the bitter, twisted phase of ‘why should I?’. Not because of a lack of money or power for me, but more a case of why do I always have to sort this out? It’s not even my fucking job and yet you always ask me to fix this or sort that, as if I get paid for this’. Lest we forget, the more time I’m doing other stuff not in my JD, the less time I have to do what I’m actually paid to do. It’s just math.

So I’m doing ‘b’ more than ‘a’. Will that hurt my chances of promotion? No, because there isn’t anywhere to go. Will that affect my chances of a pay rise? No, surprisingly - I do my JD and the general consensus is that I do it well, with no reason to give me less than 5 out of 5.

It looks like I have an answer, then. Except when I do push back, I get a certain look from my colleagues - you know the look. It’s the look that says ‘you’re not being helpful’. It’s the look that says ‘but I asked you to do it and you always do - why aren’t you doing it now?’. I don’t actually care too much. What is beginning to grate is the maturity of some of the people around me.

A few months ago, I would have said ‘maturity’ as in the stupid, me-me-me questions some people ask me about payroll because they’re actual 5 year olds and think the world revolves around them. Yes, we have a few of those. But in the next 6 - 12 months they’ll find that attitude untenable in the new work environment the CEO is bringing in, and they’ll either be gone or put right, so I don’t waste time thinking about them.


What I care about is the way someone who’s supposed to be my equal, and someone else who’s supposed to be my line manager, come across as immature. And I don’t mean they’re self-centred or selfish or childish or anything negative at all. They’re nice people, they’re normal people, they’re fine. We get on and have a laugh, or agree on why people are being dicks, etc. They really are ok.

What I'm talking about is their attitude to life in general. I don’t care if they go on about shoes they’ve bought or how much they hate their hair today or which ‘pretty’ shirt they pulled out of the wardrobe this morning. I can tune all that inane conversation out very easily. I don’t care about them talking about their boyfriends and what they did last night and what they said and how it was soooo funny because men don’t understand anything and it’s cute and they love them for it. As I said, inane shit = sorted.

It’s the lack of maturity as in lack of experience. They say they’re ‘stressed’ because they have to confront someone, or do something outside of their comfort zone, or think they have a lot to think about.


And it irritates me, I won’t lie. ‘Stress’ is knowing the mortgage or rent is due next week, and even after you’ve done everything you possibly can, you still can’t make it - and you haven’t even eaten yet. ‘Stress’ is looking at your long-term plan for life and knowing it’s all going to go wrong because of the government changing some loophole, or your lack of funds which you can’t do anything about. ‘Stress’ is not having a way to get to work due to money or a bad situation. It is not having a lot to do at work.

I think that’s it - I think I’ve hit the nail on the head: having to work with people less than two-thirds my age, who have very limited life experience and no capacity to think of the bigger picture. I know I’ve been more withdrawn at work lately - talking more to my unofficial other line manager - the one from another department, which my JD kind of makes me keep one foot in. He’s the same age as me, he doesn’t want to talk about shoes, he’s married to someone from another world (perspective speaking). He’s lived and worked overseas for a substantial amount of time, he’s got a small child and juggles that and a job that routinely has more work to do than time to do it. He has perspective and understands the difference between stress and just another day.

Since moving from abroad back to England, I’ve come up against a lot of limited people. Limited in their understanding, limited in their perspective, limited in their willingness to look beyond their own nose. It’s just taken me the last 12 months to realise that working under one of these people, with no idea of why I’m irritated most of the time, is starting to grate.

This is why when I write now it’s straight to the point; the ruthless, logical people survive and the fluffy ones are cannon fodder (gleefully so). Films like John Wick (1 and 2) appeal to me more than others, these days. I’m getting tired of everyone else’s slowness and fluffiness. I’m pretty sure that’s a sign of getting bitter and twisted, with the world in general, not people.

But then I see Star Trek Beyond for the seventh time I’m willing to try, to be a ‘normal’ person and give people a chance, to put up with annoying whiners and get on with it. It sticks for a few weeks. Then I need something else to give me a reason not to get angry with these limited people.

And the next Star Trek film is at least a year away.

I’ve been looking up working overseas again. And again it comes down to not having the right qualifications or certificates to enable a work visa - that old chestnut. It seems lack of university will again be my undoing. This world’s reliance on an out-dated and falsely-regarded education standard is still my nemesis.


And that’s where we leave it, friends. No degrees, no money to get degrees, and therefore no change in sight. Lovely. Just what I need to realise on a dreary Saturday afternoon.

Vote Remain

I’m not joking. If you don’t, tiny-minded parochial xenophobes will vote ‘leave’ and we’ll be out of the EU after the next 2 years of all the umming, arring, writing, rewriting, arguing, debating, negotiating but giving in - ALL AT COST TO THE UK TAXPAYER - as we try to work out how to keep trading with Europe.

Get it into your heads, people. THE EU REFERENDUM HAS NO IMPACT ON IMMIGRATION. It doesn’t matter what you vote on 23rd June, the number of immigrants coming into the country will not reduce - not in a year, not in 2 years, not in 10. Voting ‘leave’ will not change the number of immigrants coming into the country. A good job, too, because after we’ve paid out welfare to these people, we still make a profit of £20 billion a year in PAYE tax, NI and other fiscal by-products out of them.

However, all this might increase the number of emigrés. Who are they? They’re the ‘ex-pats’ who leave the UK to live overseas. They’re literally immigrants of another country. That’s how it works. So when people bitch and moan about immigrants coming over here, not learning enough English, and (1) taking all our jobs whilst (2) taking all our welfare benefits (a neat trick, considering), remember that’s exactly what English people do when they move to Spain, or Italy, or France, or Dubai, or Canada, or the USA. I know, because I’ve seen it. I’ve done it. I’ve lived as an ex-pat for over a decade (except I went to their university to learn the language). And when I came back to the UK, I found it in this piss-poor state: full of selfish, xenophobic arseholes.

Only 7% of UK laws are actually influenced or controlled by the EU. So if we leave, we’ll actually have to pay for UK politicians to try and scrape together their own versions. We don’t even have our own Human Rights Act. Yes, you read that right. We basically nicked the European Convention on Human Rights, spelt a few words differently, and called it a UK law in as late as the year 2000. Yes, 2000. The European Convention on Human Rights was originally made up in 1950. Hmm.

Do you really want people like David Cameron making actual laws? Do you want the bunch of self-serving spongers in the House of Lords and Commons debating the meanings of these laws for the next 10 years? After all, there’s no pressure to actually bring any new laws to replace the EU ones we already had into being. I mean, you do the job quickly and you don’t have anything else to do for the next few years, right?

Maybe they could spend it digging the NHS out of the hole that leaving Europe would case. 33,000 European midwives alone would be put in a really bad situation. Either they leave the UK, and we lose all those necessary and SKILLED carers (because let’s face it, it’s not like we’re short of carers in the UK… OH WAIT), or they stay and have to work under UK legislation that isn’t even in place yet. Maternity rights and protected payments? EU law. Working hours capped to 48 a week? EU law. The fact that your Amazon parcel and your vegetables have no import tax? EU law. But no, feel free to throw that all away. Feel free to cut us off. After all, every man is an island, and doesn’t need help from anyone. Screw the UK farmers who can no longer freely trade with Europe. Screw the people who want to buy imported goods in supermarkets, shops, stores, and online without paying horrendous import fees. Screw being part of something bigger, part of something that aids neighbouring countries and makes pan-world laws like those on pollution, or terrorism. Screw it.


I mean, we pay £50 million a day to the EU, and what for? Well, after you’ve taken off the rebates we get from the EU, it’s actually £14 million a day. Oh, and we get £66 million a day in investment from the EU. But never mind all that - what about these pesky immigrants?

We’ve had more immigrants from non-EU countries in the past 40 years than from the EU. I know - crazy, right? But how come everyone here seems to be Polish now? Fuck off. 0.29% of the UK is from the EU. Yes, you read that right. Not even a third of a percent. But again, this has nothing to do with leaving the EU. We will still have immigrants, and we will still let them in. Because our politicians, rightly or wrongly, do nothing to strengthen our actual immigration laws. And these are the same politicians who will have to negotiate a new agreement to trade within EU regulations. Good fucking luck.

I’m voting to stay, for all the reasons above and for the fact that I work in Payroll, and I see people’s payslips every day. I also sit in the HR office, so I listen to how people are protected by procedure and laws that we wouldn’t have if we weren’t in the EU. I also hear people talk about how they need to stay in the EU or they lose their jobs as translators for France, or sales admin for Germany, or their supply lines from China. Yes, China. Leaving the EU doesn’t just harm trade within the EU, it also jeopardises trade deals with other countries - because we’re no longer bound by EU regulations, which means other countries have no idea how we’re regulated.

Frankly, neither do we.

One thing’s for damn sure: we’re never going to reach a United Federation of Planets like this. And that makes me want to become an ex-pat again. Preferably of another planet.

FML

Such as it is.

I used to have a life - things to do, places to go, people to go with, transport to get there. Now I’m stuck in a spare room with no hope of a real place, nowhere to go to because the buses don’t go there and the only people I can go with are few and far between.

How did it come to this, you may ask.

I moved home. I thought it was the best thing to do. I don’t regret leaving Hong Kong and I certainly will not be going back there. But I miss the life I had. I miss being independent and able to get to places, to do things.

I haven’t found an archery club in the nine months I’ve been back. The only good ones are out in Bumblefuck Boonieville, because that’s where the best land is. It’s also where the transport is not. Not a single bus. No train tracks. Mini buses do not exist. In fact, the only way to get there is by taxi. So here I am, looking at Nerys my compound bow, as she sits on top of someone else’s wardrobe in the room I rent, because taxis start at mortgaging your dominant hand in this country.

Pubs. I remember pubs. I remember restaurants. I remember meeting friends there every Friday night for our weekly catch-up and drinking session. I still drink on Friday nights - because I can’t go out and do those things any more.

I drink more.

I remember cinemas. Actual places where you can walk or take a bus to so you can watch a film. I still watch films, but on a 17 inch monitor. I remember John Carter being taller.

I remember having independence. I remember going anywhere I wanted and getting back when I wanted, when I could up and spend a few hours with a friend on the way home from work, or browse an Apple shop in the never-ending high street till 11pm, or stop and get cheap dinner at nearly midnight. Now I have to get the bus home because it’ll take over an hour, and all the shops shut an hour ago, and there’s nowhere open and no-one else around to go out with.

I remember being able to write. Now I dole out paint-by-numbers shit because everything is so dull and lifeless. The most fun I have these days is getting shit-faced at the weekend. Because everything is funny when you’re drunk.

But I’m moaning. I’m harping on about it all being soooo unfair, when I should be grateful for what I’ve got. I’ve got a bed and somewhere to put my bow, and I only have to take two buses to get to work in the morning. I have a job. I have friends. It’s not all as bad as it looks.

You know what? Fuck off. I’m tired of putting a brave face on it all and pretending I’m ok with keeping calm and carrying on. When is enough, enough? Where do you draw a line and say ‘this just isn’t working’? When you get home from work and you can’t even be arsed to get angry about it, that’s when.

Depression is really only anger without enthusiasm, after all.

I have dreams, you know. I’m still trying to get a book published and I’m still dreaming that next year I’ll magically have enough money to be able to move out, or even - GASP! - get a car. --One that runs!

And then I remember that every time it seems possible, something happens and I end up back at square one. No money to speak of, no life to speak of, just whatever I scribble down on virtual paper - the stuff I send to agents who don’t even finish reading it before politely declining my work.

Talked myself into a bad mood. Haven’t done that in a long time. Need to find something to take my mind off it, something to make it all go away for a little bit.

A mindless action movie, where lots of people die. Perfect. No wait - trying to watch it on a 17 inch monitor too far from your bed takes all the fun out of it.

A few hours pounding arrows into a target? Yes please. No wait - I have no club to go to, and I’m banned from using my bow in the back garden.

Write a few chapters, maybe. I’m still putting book eight together, and there’s that Doctor Who story I’ve been working on since… ooh, late last year. No wait - how do you write optimism and fun when you feel like all of that was choked out of you last week, and all you have left is the bitterness of seeing other people still produce it?

Play on my PS3 - Call of Duty: Ghosts, maybe, seeing as I’ve had it three weeks and barely got through the running-through-the-earthquake bit. No wait - it’s really hard when you’re not allowed the sound very high and you’re squinting at the 17 inch monitor across the room. And it doesn’t come closer - there’s no room for it, irony of ironies.

It’s time like these that I need Nine Inch Nails played really loudly. But I can’t do that - I get told you turn it down. I’m 37 years old, and I’m told to turn down my music because the other people in the house - who own the house - don’t want to be a party to it. You know the worst part? I can understand. If I owned the house, and someone started playing music I detested (Justin Bieber, for example), then I’ll bloody well tell them to turn it down too. It’s what you do when you own a house. But I wouldn’t know about that. What it boils down to is that I’m sitting on my bed listening to NiN through headphones to block out the world, and I feel like a petulant teenager.

Fuck it, then. I’ll have a drink. I’ll be a bear with a sore head tomorrow, but I don’t care. It’s the only out I’ve got.

No wait (and you knew this was coming) - I’ve got no vodka left and the shop shut half an hour ago. And, lest we forget, it’s kind of expensive in this country.

I’ll… just… do something else, then. If I could just think of something.

On Returning to Blighty After an 11 Year Absence

How to relocate to a country you left behind 11 years ago:

1. Close all accounts, utilities and communication channels in your life, related to where you are leaving.
2. Change addresses for local government and council registries in the country you will go to.
3. Un-learn everything you have come to accept as normal in the last 11 years.
4. Learn how to operate in a country of a different continent. WARNING: things that you thought you knew will all have changed. No, you will not be able to pick up where you left off. No, the protocols and methods of local government or utilities that you knew will no longer work like you remember. Good luck.
5. When people say “but you know that, you’re from here and you did it for 25 years before you left”, gently remind them that you’ve been away for 11 years - the length of time many people spent in education in their life.