If one door opens when another door shuts, you have a ghost problem

How do you put your finger on why you like/love a place so much? How do you define what it is that keeps bringing you back?

A few things in the last 10 days have helped me answer those questions, but not achieve my ultimate goal: to understand why I like/love Hong Kong and its permanence.

I'm in HK at the moment, on holiday. I'm busy buying up local films on DVD or blu ray and going to the old haunts and hang-outs. I'm getting souvenirs for people back at work in Manchester, and just people-watching and navigating public transport (mostly on autopilot).

I'm going to dinner with friends and having a great time - we like the same things and having access to the places or clubs they go to is a bonus. I am aware that if they weren't here, my holiday would be very different. I would probably sleep later and miss half the day, but be up all night. I would probably spend one or two days just in my temporarily adopted home instead of going out - and then I'd miss out on being in HK.

Knowing what I do, this may be my last holiday to HK for a while. I'm surprisingly ok with that, as I have had time to deal with it and realise that I need to get all the things I need to right now, as I won't have access to them later. I do at least have a chance to do that.

It's also been brought to my attention that 3 people I come here to see may not be here in a few years. Retirement, ends of contracts, changing politics - all these have an impact on ex-pats and if these 3 close friends do actually leave HK to relocate to a calmer place to retire, then what am I coming to HK for?

And there we have it. Something I once wrote about a long time ago, but am now only just grasping: it's not the place, it's the people in it.

Every time I've left a job and got a new one, I haven't missed the job itself or the town or place it's in. I have missed a select few people with whom I used to work, but nothing more than that. And with the slow rise of social media and connectivity over the years, this is nowhere near as big a problem as it used to be.

With me leaving HK, perhaps for good this time - no take-backsies, no do-overs - and them moving on, then perhaps it was never really the city for me. Perhaps it was the people who made the city, and my life here, so exciting. I could come back here, get a job, start going out and doing all the things I like, but where would I find more people like them? And would I want to?

I've always had a certain flexibility with time, and especially emotions that go with it. I'm not good at emotions anyway, and it takes me a while to understand what I should have been feeling yesterday when something went down. But in the grand scheme of things, time and place are relative and if these people should end up in another East Asian country, then that's where I'll head out to for my next holiday. I'm not good at trying new things because I stop and think it through, and see the ending where I get it wrong or mess it up somehow. But knowing someone is there for me to see, and I have a goal, is different. I should be fine with it.

And I think I am. Perhaps HK is over for me. Perhaps I've got one more visit before everyone leaves and my time here is well and truly done. But what does that mean for the part of me that's still always here? Who am I when you take away the mish-mash of languages and culture and humour and context that came out of me living here for 11 years?

That's the problem I have. Will everything I know and do and say slip away, or change, with the passing time where my subconscious processes the fact that I'm done with HK? What's going to replace everything I lose?

And that's the thing. I may live in Manchester and have access to thousands of bars, loads of nightlife, and lots of different cultures, but I don't have my circle of friends with me to pass the time.

It looks like I'll just have to get some. How and where, I suppose time will tell. Once I have the all-clear from the chiropractor, I'll be looking at several clubs in the Manchester area (kickboxing or wing chun? Private or field archery?) and probably something will come out of that. It won't be HK, but it'll be a newer version of me, I suppose, coming out of what I want to spend my time on. I've been out to Manchester every weekend since November when I moved there, and I've still only scratched the surface of places to go and things to see, so I'm pretty sure there's something waiting for me, something that will become my new favourite thing. Until then I'll just keep on keeping on, and something will happen.

And that's all the news that's fit to print, I think. Until next time.

Soopytwist.

Flights and Compensation

If like me you get on a plane in order to go on holiday, and then sit with barely restrained excitement whilst they do pre-flight checks and it feels it takes entirely too long to actually lift off and leave the country, then you may be sympathetic to my cause in this post.

My sister and I had been looking forward to a cruise holiday, a Star Trek cruise holiday at that, for around a year. We each booked flights, checked our passports and ESTA waivers were still valid, packed up uniforms, holiday essentials and tiny wee instant printers for door decorations and drove off to dingy, expensive Heathrow airport. (Incidentally, I didn’t pay for my flight - I used all my air miles to get a free seat, then only had to pay the airport taxes. This alone came to £250, so thanks, Heathrow, for being the most expensive airport for passenger taxes in the world before they even choose a flight.)

Anyway, we get on the plane and everything seems to be moving in the right direction. To the rest of the passengers the plane is apparently really hot - for me it’s comfortably warm (and I was still wearing a fleece). As the pre-flight checks go on it becomes apparent that we have no air-con. The pilot comes over the tannoy and tells us that we can’t take off without it, and that we’re waiting for an engineer to arrive. 20 - 30 minutes should do it, he says, and then we’ll be off.

An hour later we’re still on the tarmac, still in our seats, because the engineer has been out, seen that something needs a new part, and has no gone off to find the new part. The pilot tells us that he should be back in about 20 - 30 minutes, and then we’ll be off.

An hour after that, people are complaining and getting up and walking about, checking their travel insurance, checking connecting flights, and basically freaking out. This whole time, to distract myself from climbing the walls because OH MY STEPHEN FRY PEOPLE ARE OBNOXIOUS AND JUST FUCKING ANNOYING AND WHY CAN’T WE TAKE OFF ALREADY BECAUSE WE’RE LOSING HOLIDAY TIME, I’ve been playing games on my iPhone with my wireless headphones in (Jabra, not Apple). I’ve been on ‘airplane’ (AEROPLANE) mode for the whole thing, apart from posting an update to Facebook to tell people who were eager to know about the start to my holiday how shit the beginning was, so that had saved a bit of battery. However, as the HOURS dragged on I realised I was down to about 40%. Not urgent, I thought, as we’ll be taking off soon which means I can plug into the power socket anyway. I’d just have to wait until we took off.

The pilot tells us that the engineer doesn’t have the right part so he’ll have to go get one. But not to worry, because it’ll only be - you’ve guessed it - 20 - 30 minutes and then we’ll be off.

Another hour goes by and now they’re handing out tiny bottles of water and snacks that they’ve had to get from a catering truck on the tarmac, seeing as they can’t dig into our flight reserves. People are still complaining but the cabin crew are being really nice to everyone and managing to remain cheerful and optimistic (no small feat considering people are getting arsey - as if cabin crew can do anything about air-con not working at a moving-parts level anyway). It’s fast approaching 4 hours’ delay - and my sister (who used to be an insurance broker for a living) has been Sam Winchestering the internet for compensation guidelines. The snooty couple across from me have been whinging at the top of their voices about how they’re going to be late for their summer home in Miami - the housekeeper turned the pool on two days ago, you know, and now it’s the right temperature, and she’s also stocked the place with food and booze and their first pool party guests are expected to arrive on time and they can’t be late…

Uh-huh.

Anyway, turns out that there’s this little EU regulation called EU261/2004 EC - otherwise known as the Denied Boarding Regulation. This states that if you take off from an EU airport and land at your destination late by at least 3 hours (4 hours for long haul flights), then you are entitled to claim compensation to a maximum of €600.

Nice.

Guess what we did after finishing the holiday and getting back to Blighty? I wrote a letter to Virgin (using the template that Which? give out) and waited. They responded the next day, asking me to use their web-based claiming system instead. This I did, and I received an automated acknowledgement of my claim. Skip to barely a week later, and they send me an email offering me €600 in compensation, and asking me to provide payment details. I’ve done this too - the rest could take 10 working days. However, it’s money well earned by getting the holiday off to a bad start; once we did take off the power sockets didn’t work. And there’s the little matter of my sister trying to watch Kingsman: The Golden Circle and wondering why Tom Cruise appeared to have a 20-odd minute cameo based somewhere in the jungle. When I explained it was American Made and not Kingsman, she tried again. However, it didn’t matter what you chose to watch, all you got was American Made. I didn’t realise how bad the problem was until I got up to go to the loo, and on the way back spotted the same bloody film in varying stage of running time on each screen for every passenger still awake.

That aside, the compensation has been one good thing about the entire debacle. For me, it’s the first time I’d had a noticeable flight delay; luckily we had no connecting flights, and we hadn’t missed our cruise ship because we opted to fly in the day before - precisely for the reason of avoiding problems. So that went well. My sister however was not amused as she has had a history of delays and problems with Virgin. All I can say is I hope this is the only time I’m delayed by 4 bloody hours.

If you do run into the same problem, make sure you claim. I think it’s more psychological than financial; the feeling that you’ve somehow ‘got something back’, when in fact you haven’t at all, does cheer you up.

And that’s all the shit that’s fit to print. Enjoy the weak winter sun while you can and I’ll be back soon with more random stuff.

Soopy twist.

Holidaying in Hong Kong (I)

Here we are again - I'm in Hong Kong on holiday. I arrived late Saturday afternoon, went straight to a friend's apartment, got showered and changed, and then flew out the door straight to dinner. From there we went to the usual haunts: Carnegie's, The White Stag - and then back to my other mate's flat where I'm crashing for the week.

The first thing I did Sunday? High tea with friends (lots of them!) and then the new 'Wonder Woman' film. (The film deserves a complete post by itself.) A lot of tea later, and it was already Monday. That meant shopping for Hong Kong films on DVD, yam cha with a friend, then the pub quiz in the evening. Getting lightly inebriated and trying our best without the aid of electronic devices was a lot of fun I haven't had in a long time. It felt good.

Today - ah yes. I found a couple of books I wanted in the Hong Kong Book Centre in Central - nice to know the place is still there. They had exactly 1 book on Cantonese; everything else now is Mandarin and it's infuriating. However, a couple of other books purchased and I was happy. I rode the tram in and out of Central (one day I'll get on at Sheung Wan and just go all the way down to Shau Kei Wan - just because I can) and thought about watching an HK movie in an HK theatre.

A quick look at the run-down for all cinemas on the island - and for Kowloon - yielded just 1 HK film on release right now. That's right - 1. Do you remember the days when 1 or 2 would come out every week? I do. It seems in the 3.5 years I've been away, the HK film industry has downsized roughly 90%. How and why has this happened? A lot to do with actors' contracts and how money now comes from the mainland. Off they go and make mainland movies in Mandarin, leaving the HK film scene pretty desolate.

I'm not happy about this turn of events. How it's come about I have no idea - except for the clues left by US films that have opened worldwide recently. I'm talking about Ghost in the Shell (2017), xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017), Allied (2016), Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016), and of course Star Trek Beyond (2016).

These films have been backed by giants Huahua Media and some others by the Shanghai Film Group, as well as a handful of American production companies as usual. China currently has a restriction on foreign movies; they can only make up 25% of the market in the mainland. (This may increase to 40% in 2017.) Being backed by powerhouses such as Huahua Media, and a few small adjustments to where some of the scenes are shot or processed, means that movies are no longer subject to this mainland restriction. Hong Kong has no such restriction; they can and do show as many non-HK films as they want, when they want.

The wider implications of this are interesting; if you can now show more US movies in the mainland anyway, and the spread of mainland money and production companies into America means that more movies are free of any restrictions on top of this, doesn't that mean that mainland audiences will be witness to a lot more foreign movies? (Probably heavily censored of course, as in the case of Chow Yun Fat being mostly removed from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, for making it look like 'Chinese' people can be the bad guys if they want.)

Doesn't this also mean that China's film industry may slow down, due to their production companies bank-rolling foreign films, but also finding less of a need to keep blockbusters in the theatres?

So why filtch all the talent from Hong Kong to make mainland movies? Is it the agents' faults, sending their stars over the border, or is it in contracts with studio bosses, or is it just that the films over there are better paid?

Whatever the reason, Hong Kong films are on the decline, just a decade after Infernal Affairs single-handedly saved the local market and paved the way for recent hits such as Cold War 1 and 2 (and where's my part 3, anyway?).

This means that, for me on holiday in HK, I have 1 film to watch, and even that is on limited release because it's nearly at the end of its window. Films don't hang about here - they're changed pretty quickly. Whether or not this is to keep people's attention, or just a case of HK having a population of 7 million and everyone who's going to watch it has done so in the first 2 weeks anyway, is debatable.

I was really hoping for a few HK movies before I have to fly home, but it doesn't look like there are any to be found. I will keep searching, but it's not looking good.

In other news, we have dinner tonight and then I have more sourcing and shopping to do tomorrow before we go to Happy Valley to see the races. Believe it or not, although I lived in HK for 11 years I've only ever been to the races once before, and that was at Sha Tin.

So while I get in all the food and the film shopping and a few work books to keep my Cantonese from being completely forgotten, I'll keep any eye on the cinema here just in case something open Thursday night I can see.

That's pretty much all the news that's fit to print. See - I told you I'd try to blog more.

Soopy-twist, everyone, at least for now.

Catching Up

It’s May 2017 and I’ve done nothing this year so far.

Ok, that was a lie. I’ve actually been to two conventions, one hen weekend, and survived a redundancy cull at work.

Where do I start?

My youngest sister decided a while ago that, due to me turning 40 and the world being A Bit Shit, we needed a really really good con. So she signed us up for the first ever Official Star Trek Cruise. Our Captain was thee Captain, William Shatner. We had so many guests and things to do it was crazy - and we went from Miami (Fee shouts MOYAMI!) to Nassau to Cozumel along the way. We saw shows onboard, we saw talks by ST heroes and some very good nights were had at pretty much all the bars on the ship (tip: buy the drinks package), we spoke to real-life astronauts, real-life physicists, and just had a blast. I wore uniform for a few of the days we were on the ship - the Starfleet uniform I had made for Dragon*Con 2016. We saw make-up artists prepping people for their weekend, people in everything from Gorn heads to full ST VI Admiral’s gear, heard all the message and ringtones in the universe and participated in a few quizzes. We met a UN Ambassador - not bad for someone who started out as a Dabo girl - and picked up a few new friends along the way.

It was epic, and the weather and change of scene and just the whole fandom feeling was comforting and relaxing, compared to the real world where Trump had just been elected President and countries were experiencing unrest and turmoil on a bleakly huge scale. While Norwegian Cruise Lines weren’t the best at organising people getting off the boat (seriously; 3 hours queueing through the entire ship, down one level then through the entire ship again was ridiculous, seeing as Royal Caribbean had the whole thing done in under 45 minutes - with more passengers), and the dining opportunities didn’t really blow our socks off, the event itself went well and we had a bloody good time.

So that was January. I recovered from the fun and excitement of the cruise and went back to work. Time passed, as it so often does, until it was the end of April and my youngest sister’s hen do. This was a short cruise from Southampton to Bruges to Le Harve and back. We got dressed up as Pink Ladies to attend the Grease show, we drank as much as we could and we went ashore to see Bruges (amazing place; would recommend), and seeing as we were diverted to Rotterdam due to the port pilots’ strike at La Harve, we even got to stroll around Rotterdam in the early sun and see the cube-houses arranged on their points like it was nothing. Selfie-sticks were used, souvenir books were signed and drawn in, and it was as memorable as it could be.

Then just two weeks later, my oldest sister, my cousin and I went to the sunny seaside spectacular that is Blackpool. We were attending Rogue Events’ Asylum 16 - the unofficial Supernatural convention. With three episodes left to go from season twelve, there was a mixture of people who did and didn’t want to be spoiled by the guests from the show - but it hardly mattered. They packed in 14 guests a day; Saturday we saw the entire roster, and then Sunday we got to see them again for fresh questions, but in a different order. We didn’t need autographs or photos with the stars, so we saw everything for two days. However, I understand people were unhappy with their autos and photos, as they apparently either clashed with each other or the meet’n greets that were part of their ticket package. All I can say is, between talks I spent fifteen minutes on social media trying to get answers as to where the ‘discos’ were each night. Didn’t find them, assumed they were in the main hall, but then decided we’d rather get on a Blackpool tram and head into the party capital of the beach instead. We went back to several haunts, had some absolutely cracking fish and chips (well, the other two did - I don’t like fish so PROPER STEAK AND KIDNEY PIES ALL ROUND! YESS!), and strolled along the beach. Stunning sunshine the whole time we were there - it wasn’t until we started driving back and we hit The Sarf that it started raining.

As good as it was seeing all the guests and eating and drinking our way round Blackpool front, I believe that was my last Rogue Events convention. There was no organisation and no communication, and although I like to think of myself as a pretty easy-going person, I was getting irate at the lack of information that could so easily have been shared in so many accessible places, both on and off social media (or even their own bloody website).

I’m off to Hong Kong next week - not to live there (again), but for a holiday. I’ve got friends to catch up with and fun to have and I need to prove to myself that I could never work there again and to get over it. Closure, I suppose. Hong Kong, it’s language, culture, and people will always be a part of me now - there’s no getting away from that - but I wouldn’t want to. A part of me, yes. But perhaps by the time I get back and re-assess my life, the thought of it will no longer be a dominant part. Still, the thrill of the idea of being there again hits me at nine at night when I’m checking I have stuff to wear when I get back to the proper heat, at six in the morning when I wake up for work knowing I’ve got to pack 7 days’ work into 3 days at work before I fly, when I set a reminder on my phone for me to check in online. Going through a list of things I’ll need, and realising I won’t need a coat, or a jacket, or in fact anything more than a thin cardie; not needing a power transformer / plug for my smart devices; looking through old shipping receipts and relocation stuff for my Octopus card and then realising I left with my flatmate before I came back to England; finding my old HK ID card and realising it’s not valid any more; opening an old wallet to check for said ID card and finding HK$40 in it… All these things make me happy. I cannot wait to get back to HK and see how much it’s changed - and hopefully, how “it’s a great place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there”. I need to close off that part of my life - some part of my brain never left, never accepted that I didn’t live there and that being in the UK wasn’t just a break but a ‘permanent’ thing.

I think that’s all the news that’s fit to print. I’ll be back at some point - I really have to blog more often. Back in the day it was once a week. Now it’s barely once every quarter. But hey-ho.

Soopy-twist, everyone.

Dragon*Con 2016, and all that it means

We went, we saw, we took a shitloads of pictures. And for the first time in my life, I dressed up in cosplay. And it was awesome.

So. For those of you just joining us, Dragon*Con is probably the second largest fan convention of media and games after San Diego Comic Con. I could be wrong. However, I know Dragon*Con is far better than SDCC, because (1) you can afford the entry tickets, (2) you can actually get into panels you want to see, and (3) there’s so much to do, if you think you’re not going to get into a certain panel, there are at least 3 others on at the same time you can have a crack at.

And, oh yeah, there are at least 3 parties every night that you can flit between. With alcohol.

My mate and I originally went to D*C in 2010, but we knew we would one day go again. We had no time frame. Skip years later, and she now has a fiancé with two teenage kids. I, on the other hand, have had nearly 3 years of living back in England and being close to terminally bored. We decided that 2016 would be the year to revisit D*C - coinciding with its 30th anniversary. Sorted.

Costumes. It took me less than a minute to name my first one. But then I wanted a second, too. So I planned and researched and emailed, and within a few months I had not only sewing patterns for both, but also the details of a professional seamstress - who would shortly be making my costumes for me. Other parts of the finished articles were actually harder to get - boots, pins, badges, earrings, belts, and even a nose. But I did find them, and over what seemed like years but was actually only 8 months, I put together two complete costumes.

Who did I want to go as? Hmm. This is a bit of a story. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin:

Way back in the dim and distant, I was a student. I had no real female role models, due to family circumstances and some old-fashioned attitudes to TV going on around me. Basically, there were no women on TV. Apart from Dana Scully and Xena, things were looking bleak. My dad used to have re-runs of Star Trek (TOS) on during the week when I was very young, and so when Star Trek: The Next Generation appeared during my secondary school years, I was curious enough to watch it (but perhaps not old enough to critique it. That and the fact that I was not yet a professional cynic). I liked it - I liked Tasha Yar as head of Security. But we all know what happened to her.

It would be a long time before Star Trek got another crack at me. In the meantime, I had Laura Holt of re-runs of Remington Steele fame to tide me over, as well as Dana Scully and Beverly Crusher. Deanna Troi got better as the seasons went on, but again, her character was normally an afterthought. The Star Trek Trio of three straight white dudes being the all-important triumvirate had not yet been threatened. We had gone from Kirk - Spock - Bones to Picard - Riker - Data. And still I was attempting to find who I was in a male-orientated, controlled environment.

Just as I was going through my GCSEs (end of secondary school exams when you’re 16, if you’re not familiar with the English school system), there were mutterings of a new Star Trek show. It finally debuted on BBC2 and I got to see a few episodes before my personal life went tits-up. But still throughout the rocky events and familial wars, there was Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I was still struggling to work out who I was and why, and there was no-one around to help with that.

And then along came Major Kira.

She’s pretty much a legend in Star Trek circles. Like her or hate her, you certainly couldn’t ignore her. She had common sense, some tech and survival learning, was a bit of a fighter and marksman, and carried herself like someone who didn’t so much need self-confidence as just didn’t have time for people who thought their opinion of her was important. She did a few things that made TV audiences angry: she was a woman who voiced her opinion as if she were allowed one; she backed up her arguments with facts and reasons like she had thought it through even with her tiny female brain that should have been full of love interests and rom-com shit; she was not afraid to shout someone else down and, by all the gods and all of their brothers, you were not entitled to belittle her ideas or her opinions just because she wasn’t a man. Back in the real world of women being taught to conceal their emotions for fear of being told they’re just being ‘hysterical’, this woman who stood her ground and shouted in people’s faces, who called people out for being dicks, who owned up to making mistakes and spoke to people with the respect they deserved - it was ground-breaking for me. I was 17, and this was all new. It was magical. It was everything.

Of course it helped that the actress playing Kira Nerys was not exactly tall or built like a brick shit-house. Five foot seven she may have been, but she was a hundred pounds of fury and determination. She had excellent episodes where she was mad as hell and not going to take it any more, as well as stories that showed she could reconsider her belief system based on evidence and new discoveries. She taught me how to stand up straight and not care if people looked at me. She taught me I was allowed to take up space when I sat down on public transport. She taught me how to reply to people who didn’t realise I knew I had a right to voice an opinion. She taught me how to divorce indifference from things I just could not relate to; she taught me how to objectively weigh up my options, to step back and try to see things from other angles. And yes, she taught me that respect is not given until it’s earned.

So we had a black dude running DS9 - Commander Benjamin Sisko. He started off as a jagged edge, a weird square peg that didn’t want his square hole. In time he came to understand how to squeeze into the round hole he did want, and that was fine. He also learnt how to get on with his liaison officer Kira Nerys, and they became a closer Captain and First Officer than that of any other series. (Seriously, I will fight people on that point. I think I have at some time or other.) Already we were so far from the 3 straight white dude triumvirate we were used to. Maybe that’s why I gave the show more chances to impress me than TNG.

Whatever the reason, as the series went on it became obvious who else was getting more screen time and was Sisko’s rock, his confidant, his aid in all things: Jadzia Dax. A Trill symbiont, Dax ‘cheated’ death by moving from host body to host body upon that humanoid’s imminent death or through illness. Before Dax was joined to the humanoid female Jadzia, it was joined with Curzon - an ornery old man who loved klingons, wrestling, picking up twins on Risa for a one-night stand, and trying to teach a young Starfleet officer called Benjamin Sisko how to be a man. Right off the bat, we have a very interesting dynamic: the young woman who appears to be barely thirty years old is actually closer to three hundred and sixty, and has been Sisko’s father figure for at least thirty years. When he needs help and advice, he goes to Dax. When he needs to rant about Starfleet, it’s Dax. When he needs to angst about his son, or get feedback on a battle plan, it’s Dax. The symbiont, in various hosts, had been married as a husband and a wife, been a son and a daughter, died in shuttle accidents and lived out to a ripe old age. Dax had seven lifetimes of experience to draw on - and Sisko did just that. He listened to her counsel, he considered her words. Her opinions had weight with him - and as the seasons sped by, I realised not only was she the third point of the triangle, but she was someone I wanted to be when I grew up.

Sitting down and thinking about the two costumes - uniforms - I would wear to D*C wasn’t too hard, then. No other characters have had as much of an impact on me as Kira Nerys and Jadzia Dax, just when I needed them. While the Bajoran nose prosthetic I bought for Kira just would not stick (seriously wtf is that made of?), and I had no hope of copying Jadzia’s Trill spot patterns, I wore both uniforms and I enjoyed the shit out of them. I walked down streets in Atlanta in broad daylight wearing either a Bajoran militia uniform or a Starfleet NEM/DS9 jumpsuit, and I was happy.

And here’s the magic of D*C: I wasn’t self-conscious because I was in costume - I have already been in the happy bubble of exactly no shits given about who looks at how I dress for years. However, when people in their costumes saw me on the street, they called out ‘Major!’, or ‘Kira!’, or ‘Hey, Starfleet!’. And I did it too.

We loved, and we were loved.

There was such a brilliant vibe of appreciation, of sharing, of plain wonder - and it was the best feeling in all the worlds. That’s what D*C is for me: sharing the fandom. And I don’t mean the Star Trek or Doctor Who or Mad Max or Jurassic Park or Harley Quinn or Pokemon fandom. I mean fandom as one single event, one giant mess of people unashamed of loving that one thing in their lives.

We got back Wednesday morning. It’s now Saturday night. I’m nearly over the jetlag, and I think returning to the ‘meh’ness and general malaise that comes with going back to live in a country you’re too familiar with hasn’t quite set back in yet. After all, there’s the DragonCon.tv streaming membership I purchased, so I can see a few panels I couldn’t get to, and some of the excellent TV moments from people who tweeted questions and opinions live. Thankfully or otherwise, Captain Kirk was not climbing a mountain this year.

That’s pretty much all the news that’s fit to print. I did make a list of things that I knew I’d need to remember about the con, but that’s for another post, seeing as this one is already longer than my wish list for Things From Another World.

Until I’m back, be proud of what you love and don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t be.

Peach and lube, people, peach and frelling lube.

Summer holiday

Well that was unexpected. I found myself with three weeks off. More than that, actually. About twenty-seven days. I knew it was coming up, but I knew I was trying to find work to bridge the gap and keep me in money. So how did that work out?

In short: a complete failure.

Work visa: still processing, so no way to get around that by working on the sly. Also? Privates never materialised like the parents promised. No word from Immigration re: my transfer of sponsor, and whether I can actually start with my new employer on (technically) 1st September or not. If not? Bam! There goes my rent.

Tax ‘settlement’: my old boss, being as annoying as she possibly can using parts of irrelevant law to back her up, is making my change of taxable employer a fucking nightmare. Still not fixed.

Submitted a short story to a website for paid publication: returned as ‘too similar to a lot of material we’ve already purchased’. I’m fine with that, it’s a reasonable response, so I don’t mind - until the next eight days of flash fiction delivered to the world via their inboxes is eight different authors’ takes on what could have been the same apocalypse. (Just by the by, mine was nothing to do with an apocalypse.)

Rejection letter by latest agent for my first novel, taking the total to six rejections: A very nice letter though - very nice indeed. I like these people. Pity they couldn’t place my work. I’m beginning to think sci-fi is a rude word in publishing these days (and yes, I only send it to agents who specifically say they want sci-fi. I’m not that much of a muppet).

But hey, it’s not all been doom and gloom, despite the fact that I’m going to struggle to pay the rent next month and eat at the same time. I’ve seen a shitload of movies, including my fourth viewing of The Avengers, so that made up for a helluva lot. Metropolis, Singin’ in the Rain, Lockout (three times), Total Recall (2012 - good!), The Pourne Legacy --sorry, the Bourne Legacy, The Dark Knight Rises, Scott Pilgrim, the entire first season of Longmire, and entire first season of The Finder, and successfully got my flatmate addicted to Franklin & Bash, which means we can watch an episode a day until we run out. (But then, the fact that they’ve not been renewed for a season three means, one, I officially hate TNT as a network for choosing Falling Skies over Franklin & Bash, and, two, we’re down to only twenty episodes in all the worlds. Bastards.)

I’ve written a short story to answer a challenge from someone on tumblr, and then started a new one just yesterday, as an answer to a challenge-cum-story-prompt, from someone who thinks I’ve missed an important fandom. Thanks to The Avengers’ deleted scenes, I know have enough to go on, so I can get to work. You can’t write someone’s personality when they deliberately didn’t have one for most of the twelve minutes and forty-four seconds they were actually on screen.

It looks like I’ve kept a little busy, then. But that’s a lie. I’ve had approximately ten days, non-consecutive, of wondering if it’s worth getting out of bed. There have been more than five days, here and there, where I’ve had to force myself to have a shower and actually join the grown-up world by not slouching round in pyjamas for the week. Everything I’ve read has shown me how I should never bother writing anything again, until suddenly everything I read makes me say out loud: ‘I could write better than that - on a hangover. You know what? I think I already have.’ And then I do some writing. I did spend two days planning and making a mock-up of a city, so that when I get round to writing book six it’ll already be there in the back of my head, and all the details will already have been sorted. So there’s that.

I think there have been about four whisky bottles in the recycle bin in three weeks. That’s not too bad, right? Four litres (whatever that is in real money) in three weeks? Whatever.

That’s about it. I’m actually writing this because I’m trying to work out where the last twenty-two days have gone. Typical that I get nearly a month off and can’t afford to go anywhere - I could have slept on my wee sister’s floor for a few weeks in Blighty. I could have gone to Macau and stayed in one of them really peaceful villa things, overlooking the resort’s pool, writing or reading or just getting a tan for a change. Ah well.

Paris!

I hate flights. They’re a waste of my time and they take too long. Hong Kong to Paris is no exception - but at least this time I managed to ignore the annoying mainland Chinese passenger next to me and get a good six hours’ sleep. Funny thing is, whilst I’m in the air, so many things are happening. A friend and old flatmate of mine is getting married, the whole of the UK is getting ready for the Queen’s 60th Jubilee, and I’m finally finding the time to listen to Cabin Pressure. It’s the time I’m trapped on a plane that I object to - I just want to get there and get on with it. I’m sure everyone’s the same.

And then you reach Paris, and it’s like... You know that moment in Farscape, the pilot episode, where John Crichton stands there and goes ‘I’m actually on a different planet’? It’s that feeling. I’ve never been to France - save one booze cruise to Cherbourg and a few three-hour plane changes - so this is weird. It’s close to something like England, but it’s really nothing like England. For one thing, the cars on the other side of the road is weird. If cars are on the other side of the road, they must be Chevrolets or big Fords or just big American things. But here, the cars are the same as the ones they sell to the UK, just with their steering set to the other side, so it’s… very odd.

Weather’s not so great, but hey, a bit of cold air and a smattering of cold rain never hurt anyone. And seeing as I’ve just come from the 28 degree, 85% humidity of Hong Kong, it’s all good. It’s nice not to be sweating my arse off just going from the train station to the front door at work.

The architecture - brilliant. They’ve kept all the originals and even though houses are falling down next door, they keep up the palatial grandeur of the old buildings. There’s something magical in how old everything is. England does the same, I know - but again, I’ve been living in Hong Kong for nearly ten years now, and anything older than the 1960s gets torn down to make some modern nightmare skyscraper. Old is good.

The fact that not a lot of people speak English is also good, in my view. I did my French exams nineteen years ago - and since then, I’ve never used it. I’ve even replaced it with a more useful language since. But as soon as you reach France and you need to read road signs and general notices on things, a lot of it comes back to you. Surprising, but useful. And so what if people don’t speak English? They’re French, after all. One, they’re not English, and two, they’re French. If anyone’s going to be against speaking English of all languages, it’s the French. I say good luck to them, and I hope they don’t start learning English. How boring would the world be if every destination you went to spoke and used English for everything?

That’s about it, I think. More sights to see.

Soopytwist.

Fishing expedition!

Went fishing today. This is important because, (1), I’ve never actually been fishing before, and (2), I’ve never been out to sea on a small boat. When I say ‘out to sea’, I mean we got on a boat and went 90 mins out from Port Canaveral, Florida. A bit choppy on the way out, we began wreck fishing and I got a crash course in trying to stand upright whilst not dropping an expensive rod over the side. Not an easy thing to do when the boat is tipping you up so you’re looking down 60 degrees at the water one second, then trying not to skid backwards as it tips you back the other way the next. Anyway, kind of got the hang of staying on my feet and throwing the bait over the side a bit. The fact that we were using fish about six inches long for bait should have alerted me to the fact that we were about to bring up sea monsters.

We were not disappointed.

The first thing we encountered, via my lucky line, was an Atlantic Sharpnose shark. It was about two feet long, I suppose, and it actually had eyes like a cat. We took photos, it gave me one last nasty look, and we tossed it back overboard. A while later I snagged a grouper (called ‘garoupa’ round Asia, I think) and it took a mate to hold onto the rod just so I could turn the bloody handle to reel it in. Heavy and very unimpressed, it was not eager to get into the boat and a short battle was necessary to get it on the deck and then into the hold on its bed of ice. It was pretty big though, and I was pleased that I wasn’t completely useless. Mind you, our Captain and fishing guide had set me up in the best spot, so it was largely down to him.

Later on we dragged out two more groupers and a snapper, but the snapper was out of season so we weren’t allowed to keep it. I thought it was a giant red goldfish, but hey-ho. The sea was still a little rough, the motion having an adverse effect on my sister, and we headed in for shallower (and hopefully calmer) waters.

We sailed past Cape Canaveral’s private beach, so a quick few snaps of that made me happy. It was a sunny, funny day out and I think we all enjoyed it. Even though it’s not something I’d normally do, it was all the better because of it. I now have lovely bruises developing on my legs and hands where I fought with fish - but that just means I have war wounds! Excellent.


Having woken up at 3:45am and leaping out of bed like my arse was on fire, and then fishing for best part of 6 hours, once we reached dry land and some Subway refreshments the day really started to catch up with me. Inadvertent naps in the back of the hire car on the way home kept me going, but I was out like a light for 90 mins before dinner. Which, by the way, was great - a Boston Lobster Feast place with really good food.

And so to evening. A dip in the pool in our villa eschewed for the comfy bed and chance to get some of this down (because I know I’ll have forgotten it all once jetlag has faded), it’s been nice to reflect on my big fishing trip and decide that it’s been incredible, massively enjoyable, and a brilliant start to the holiday.


I’ll leave you with a shot of the promo vehicle for the restaurant - a giant lobster on top of a Beetle. Class.

Peach and lube, people!

Made it!

Thank you Chicago, for getting me through Passport Control in a record 55 minutes! That’s the fastest landfall I’ve ever made in the States. Thanks also to the pilot of the Cathay flight, who got us from Hong Kong to Chicago 90 minutes ahead of schedule. Yes, you read that right. Jet streams, apparently.

This means I made my connecting flight and have arrived safely in Orlando. The villa is ace, the weather is great, and so far, everything’s worked out ok. Even my Apple charger attachments fit side by side in the same electrical socket, and my Yorkshire teabags survived.

Tomorrow: fishing. In some big boat. Apparently we’re about to catch Godzilla-fish that take 20 minutes of weight training to land. I’m not so worried about the fishing as the sun on a boat. *adopts Martha Jones voice*: Me, on a boat, in the sun.

Wey-heeeyyy!

Holidays, eh? So worth it.


Peach and lube, people. Peach and frelling lube.

Day trippin’

Sunday - land in Blighty, then go to a barbecue, then stay at sister’s. Monday - go to Cornwall, stay over in a (shitty) Travelodge, do some Devon on Tuesday, then kip at other sister’s. Wednesday - go to Granny Weatherwax’s for’t night, back to sister’s Thursday long enough for a change clothes and pick up another one before going on to Blackpool. Stay over in another really shitty Travelodge, do the beachfront, buy the tat, get rained on, tits near frozen off, then jump in the car and make it to London. Get changed, get to the Wyndham Theatre in Leicester Square to watch Catherine Tate and David Tennant in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, *, have a bloody good time, have your sister flag down the only taxi in London that has a nice cabbie, get back to the Premier Inn (not shitty at all), open your MacBook Air and start typing - with a mojito in one hand and the other one over my ear. Yeah yeah, I know - maybe I just have three hands.

* Further to ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, I have to say it was ace - they managed to get much more visual humour into it than the script called for, but I could see ol’ Bill approving of such visual gags and cheap stunts to make the play go faster. For the people who actually understood the English, it was bloody funny (especially the bloke who played the Captain of the Watch); for those who struggled, there was the silent fun of watching David Tennant and Catherine Tate go through their roles with fun, gusto, and obvious enjoyment. By the way they were grinning as they bowed at the end, I’d say every single person in that production was laughing their bloody socks off on the inside.

Actually, the holiday as a whole has been a lot of fun. Unimaginable amounts of hilarity and relaxation have ensued (both separately and together), and Blighty has been much easier on the soul this time than the last - mainly due to’t fact that it’s now May and not bloody freezing December.

So it’s now Sunday night and I’ve booked in for my return flight via Cathay. Such nice chaps and ladies (“laydeeez!”). Except for the fact that, during my flight here, they woke me up for food. Woke me up! I know! You’re sitting there right now, throwing your hands up in the air and exclaiming: “Woke you up, you say! Bloody hell-fire! How dare they!” etc. However, it were a good job they did, cos I was proper starving. Anyway, I’m hoping for an ok flight back - the usual twelve-to-fourteen hours int air, coupled with me trying to stay asleep long enough to avoid the crying children and wandering adults. At least I have my iPhone (and iPod function) to keep me comfortably numb.

And so to Sunday: Doctor bloody Who exhibitions in Olympia 2, car journeys, spot-the-wanker-driver competitions, etc. Fun, fun, fun - in the sun, sun, sun - especially as I’ve now amassed a total of four new tea mugs for my cupboard for when I return home (Details to follow. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you).


And here we are: Sunday night - telly, vodka, all those good things. After a movie and some amusement, I have to say I’ve enjoyed both Gerard Butler and Craig Ferguson in ‘How To Train Your Dragon’, and copious amounts of vodka. I liked the movie; I laughed, I pointed, I enjoyed guessing the voices. I have two quibbles; one, that the dragon in question, ‘Toothless’, was just a pet and not a friend, and two, that the mighty David Tennant was so criminally under-used. I was greatly amused by the fact that the ‘elders’ (i.e., people who know better; the stronger, harder, much-feared and much-revered ones) sported Scottish voices, whilst the noobs, annoying oiks and kids who needed training had American ones. Nice.


Anyway, a good time was had by all, and the accompanying pizza weren’t bad, neither.


Think that’s about it. Time for bed, said Zebedee.

Tags:
holiday ~ Doctor Who ~ Shakespeare ~ David Tennant

You can never go home again

Well, you can. Of course you can. But it’s never the same. I got on a plane and came back to Blighty for a bit - birthdays of relatives, break from the routine, the whole job-lot - and while everything’s the same, it isn’t.

Cornwall. Never been to Cornwall before. Went yesterday and stayed over. It was alright. A lot of fun on the road trip to get there - and the associated places of interest, both near and far-flung. Corfe Castle and the surrounding village still looks like a place I could live for a bit. Car number plates (the ‘new’ ones) - still can’t get my head round them. I’ve decided to consign that whole mess to the ‘doesn’t matter whether I get it or not, so just accept it and move on’ bin. Oh yes.

Caught the sun today - yay! Real, actual, direct sunshine turning my face a different colour. Bloody hell, I’ve missed that. Not that Hong Kong isn’t bright - it just isn’t the same. Green fields, trees, sheep - horses - horses - and shitloads of stuff that I’d forgotten about. Sometimes, moving back to England wouldn’t be so bad. And sometimes it would.

Caught up with Doctor bloody Who and all that that means. And a place in the winter, for dignity. Or not - as it seems The God Who Is Stephen Moffat kind of let me down a bit with his season six opening two-parter. Not saying it was bad - it just wasn’t as explained or fleshed-out as much as it could have been.

That’s about it - just to let the masses know that reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated and I will be back to blog more as soon as I know what day I’m on. Time’s different on different continents, dontchaknow - and I can never keep up. It’s ok, though. It’s all wibbly-wobbly.


Soopytwist.

Christmas 2010 - Doctor Who style

So I was about to go off on one regarding the 2010 Doctor Who Christmas Special before - but ran out of space. Well, ran out of a will to put every single Doctor Who thought in one post, is more like it. Anyway, here we go - and yes, it may well be spoilery.

Danger! Danger! Spoilers, Will Robinson! Do not read this post if you have not yet seen the 2010 Christmas Special!



So, easy start then: I loved it. Not a lot could detract from the excitement and sheer whacky good fun of Eleven running up and down, breaking laws of being a Timelord and basically making Christmas a bloody good time on telly. I loved the fish, the timey-wimey slant, the little quirky jokes and the fact that it didn’t have a Hollywood ending. Woah, let’s back up and qualify all that.

Breaking Laws of Being a Timelord:

“Crossing into established events is strictly forbidden. Except for cheap tricks.”

Yes. Ten said it, all incarnations of the Doctor know it, but Eleven decides to conveniently subvert his own ideas of what’s ok and what’s not and simply go back and rewrite Kazran’s memory. Nice. He did it with style, to be sure, and no doubt he can justify this to himself by weighing up the amount of ripples made to the space-time continuum as a whole versus four thousand lives on a spaceship that hadn’t yet died (except, fourth-dimensionally speaking, they had already not yet will have died). Quick question - was it the 4,000-odd people on the ship, or the fact that his two friends were aboard - and he had put them there as part of some honeymoon thing? And I noticed he referred to the people on the spaceship. I think I’m right in saying not once did he say he wasn’t going to let the ship crash because his Companion(s) was/were on it. Hmm. Anyway, as a catalyst, the spaceship plot was a good idea - and it did keep Amy out of the way, so I was particularly glad about that. I think he gets away with it. (And I’m reliably informed that Amy and Rory in outfits was rather like Rodney and Cassandra in ‘Only Fools And Horses’.)

Fish:

“It’s going to eat us!”
“Well perhaps we’ll eat it - but I don’t like the odds!”

From fish using fog to swim in the air, to the female shark out to lunch, it was all typical Doctor Who - take the norm and skew it just enough to make it cool, and slap on some skience to make it passably believable. Or, in a word, ace. We know fish, we know sharks, we can relate to them. Put them in the hands of Stephen Moffat and you get anarchy in the physics classroom that amounts to excellence in the ideas department. Weaving all that around the delta-wave patterns of some bird singing her Welsh heart out and you have a heart-warming tale of consideration. But not too thickly spread. Again, good stuff.

Dialogue:

“Father Christmas. Santa Claus. Or, as I’ve always known him: Jeff.”

Oh, it was rich. It was snappy. It was Stephen Moffat writing Eleven at his best - respectively. Just sheer bloody fun. I doubt there was a sentence in there that Mr Moffat didn’t pore over and adjust twenty times to make it just that little bit more amusing (or was gazumped by Matt Smith ad-libbing, perhaps). As a script, it was genius. As a mechanism to show how fab the Doctor can be when he’s not hindered by an annoying Companion, it did very, very well. No words can describe how much fun it is to listen to Matt Smith going off on one as if he’s the victim of the universe’s largest sugar rush, and yet coming off like some absent-minded professor who’s just dying to show something fab to his class because they’ll like it. Some of my favourite lines:

“A big flashy-lighty thing, that’s what brought me here. Big flashy-lighty things have got me written all over them. Well actually, give me Time. And a crayon.”

Doctor: “Clever old Mrs Manto - she only went and won the lottery.”
Kazran: “There isn’t any lottery.”
Doctor: “I know! What a woman!”

“Do you know, there’s a thing called a Face Spider. It’s just like a tiny baby’s head with spider legs and it specifically evolved to scuttle up the backs of bedroom cupboards. Which… yeah, I probably shouldn’t have mentioned.”

And then the follow-up gag which wins above all others, simply for the way Matt Smith delivers the fatal line:

Kazran: “Are there any Face Spiders in here?”
Doctor: “Nah, not at this time of night. They’ll all be sleeping in your mattress.”

And then there was the one that made me go out and make a t-shirt because I loved it so much:

“What do you call it if you don’t have any feet… and you’re taking a run-up?”

And little in-jokes, perhaps regarding a certain other Timelord bird (Timelady?):

Kazran: “I kiss her now?”
Doctor: “Trust me, it’s this or go to you room and design a new kind of screwdriver. Don’t make my mistakes.”

Even the lines that were perfectly ordinary get turned into a prompt for out-and-out laughter when they are spewed from the Doctor’s mouth:

“Marilyn! Get your coat!”

Timey-wimey:

“People think that Time is a linear progression from one thing to another, when in fact it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, uhm, stuff.”

Hard to forget those words. Said by Ten, written by Stephen Moffat. Of course. Which is what Stephen Moffat does best - playing with Time. He can jump backwards and forwards, he can write stories that rely on the wibbly-wobbliness of Time to work - with his stories, Time isn’t so much a backdrop for the Doctor, it’s another character in the play. As it should be, with someone who fannies about in the fourth dimension for fun. So many of the Doctor’s stories forget he’s a time traveller, once the actual landing has taken place. It’s a real treat to get Moffat screwing with timelines and using Time to the story’s advantage, and I hope he has more of these ideas on his laptop.

This is not the Hollywood ending you’re looking for:

The Doctor let her die. He did. Because there was nothing he could do? No - he didn’t even ask, didn’t even check. Because it was the right thing to do? Perhaps. From someone’s point of view, somewhere. Then again, ‘many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.’ (Thanks, Ben.) We’ll never know exactly why he didn’t bother to try and help Abigail - but perhaps we don’t need to. It’s One Of Those Times. It needed to be left. And anyway, he gave her a good way to go. How many other people can get back in touch with a very close friend to ride a shark-cab on their last day? Not bad.

I think I’m all done. (Except for - woah woah woah, Eleven - isomorphic controls? Didn't the Master use them on his laser screwdriver? Just asking...) All I can say is, this was a great episode and it more than made up for the rather lacking latter half of series five. I can only hope that series six is as good.

That’s shallot. Onion. I’m off. Probably back soon in my usual vitriolic mood.

But for now - peach and lube, people. Peach and frelling lube.



Tags:
~ Doctor Who ~ BBC ~ David Tennant ~ Matt Smith ~ Stephen Moffat

2011, and all that that means

‘… and a place in the winter, for Di-hig-nity...’

It’s been weird this year, so far. I’ve not been doing the usual things I do, and yet the more things have changed, the more they’ve stayed the same.

I went to Blighty for the holidays. I never do that. I avoid England because there’s nothing to see there. There are people, granted, but I know most of the places and, let’s be honest, I’m not going there to sight-see, am I? And the places - I know them but they’ve changed. They look the same on the surface, but they’re nothing like they used to be. But then again, neither are the people.

I bought a computer. Last time I did that was about three years ago (not counting 1812, my failed ninja project). Still got the three-year-old. Jarvis, my ever-faithful iMac, now has a fellow clan member in the form of Billy, my eleven inch MacBook Air. They get along fine via Bluetooth and memory stick, and between them they take up most of my time. Like I said, things stay the same.

… In that they change. Now, instead of freezing my arse off in my small room (that belongs to Jarvis), I can be found on my sofa, using Billy to read and re-read stuff I’ve written. In fact, Billy has kind of become my third hand, seeing as he’s always attached to my original two. Even JT, my iPhone 4, is starting to give him shifty, possessive looks. She’ll get over it, I know. After all, PCCW can’t make the wi-fi modem work, so only Jarvis is hooked up to (cabled) Tinternet right now. All Billy can do is look on with wistful sighs as I shut him down to go use Jarvis for all Tinternet shite. It’s a shame, but then, Jarvis is quicker, more powerful and pretty much the real brain in my house flat, so it’s only right. And he’s where I’ve spent hours on Photoshop - mostly swearing and cursing at the bloody thing crashing or just plain refusing to work on me. Yes, the ‘known issue’ of Photoshop Elements 8 not letting Mac users change the frame delay on animated gifs is more than a little annoying. So is its refusal to let me resize or rotate layers without first shifting them in some direction by a few pixels. There is a lesson in all this: why did I bother paying for a legitimate version of PE8 when I should have stuck with my cracked, pirated version of CS4 that always worked? Ah well. I shan’t be wasting my money on another Photoshop product. Adobe fall into the Ben Kenobi category of effective teaching styles.

Cafepress. They’ve also incurred my wrath this afternoon - trying to work out why products don’t show up in your own shop is just a little vexing, especially when you’ve read the ‘help’ pages that don’t seem to pertain to your version of a shop. Then again, they were really fast (a matter of hours) in answering my direct e-mail for help. If only the information they e-mailed me were available in the help section to begin with, they wouldn’t get so many mails bitching about the same subject - I’m willing to bet. Still, mystery solved. It’s all sorted, and a lot more quickly than I’d anticipated. Go team Cafepress.

So I sat on the sofa tonight - oh alright, lounged on the sofa - and watched some telly via Billy and a Moshi Mini Display Port to HDMI adapter, and my nice big telly, Tosh (you get to guess what make she is). And the funny thing was, the two programmes I watched were both from my secondary school years. First was ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’, with the real, actual Holmes playing himself. For some reason, no-one was supposed to know, so they billed him as Jeremy Brett and kept up the pretence for the entire series. Granada tried very hard to fool people into thinking they hadn’t simply borrowed the TARDIS from the Beeb and whisked him forward in time to play himself, but I saw the signs and I’ve witnessed his little slips with my own eyes - gotcha, Mr Holmes. But don’t worry; when I tell people this they don’t believe me, and simply assume I’ve been on the vodka.

Which is odd, because I haven’t been. Been out to dinner with friends, and haven’t actually felt like drinking. Still haven’t been to a single pub quiz this year, and I’m getting withdrawal symptoms. Must make it next week.

Anyway, point was (when I can get to it), the other show was ‘The Pretender’. Used to love it back in the day, and now I’m watching it again and wondering how I forgot so much. Mostly to do with the fact that, while Jarod is perfectly innocent and lovely (in a Sam Tyler kind of way, meaning I could never give him one), he’s also a complete fucking psycho whose ee-vil face is proper fru-its of the dev-il and he honestly can kill people with his brain - it’s just that he wants to torture them by snaring them in some overly-elaborate yet excruciatingly agonising plan mirroring their own misdeed. He’s ace. And then I look at the fact that I’m watching both TV series via a cable sticking out of a brand spanking new MacBook, and marvel at the distance and time between now and when I first saw them, live on real telly. So much has happened in the time that feels so long, that I really have to just stop and think about it, mentally pick through all the highs and lows. And then I realise there’s just too much and I have to say ‘fuck it’ and leave it alone. Such is the way of all things memory.

Cleverest IT Guy password-cracked some old - nay, fucking ancient - Word files of mine this week, and I found the Holy Grail of Where It All Began, my own original book-wise. All the facts I thought I had in my head, all the back-story and history I thought existed nowhere but my own little nutshell of a brain, had actually been set down on virtual paper by me a over a decade ago. Reading them again was a weird experience; the sentences were mine, the characters remarkably unchanged from when I turned them into real people in the latter half of 2010, the storylines exactly as I knew the foundation to unfold. But I don’t remember having written it down.

Perhaps, at the time, writing wasn’t important in the Grand Scheme of Things. Perhaps, at that time, I had a life and other things that kept me occupied. Which means I was writing, but not really obsessing over it.

How things have changed. I coast along in my job - so that I can concentrate on writing when I get home. I get home late Saturday night but stay up later - so that I can read through what I’ve written in the week. I own an iMac and a MacBook - so I can use MacSpeech Dictate to get things down. It’s fair to say that writing is pretty much my obsession, and even distractions like TV shows and work won’t always be in the way. And so it goes.

And so do I. This post, my first for 2011, has been longer than I’d anticipated. I was supposed to say ‘oh, nearly broke my foot but we’ll find out if it’s just a sprain when I’ve had an X-ray later this week’, but obviously I needed to get a few things off my chest first.

So that, my friends, is all the news that’s fit to print. At least for now. Soopytwist.

Tags:
~ Sherlock Holmes ~ The Pretender ~ England ~ iMac ~ MacBook Air ~ writing

I’m back!

Yes, I’m back from Dragon*Con. What can I say, except it’s changed my conventioning life. Creation, you suck. Dragon*Con, you are king. I wish my flights had been direct and the pool had been open more at the motel, but hey, you can’t have everything. Suffice to say, the convention was bloody fantastic, and I can’t wait until next year! All I have to do is find a costume this time… So here we go:



Things I’ve Learned From Dragon*Con 2010
(and a reminder for next year):

Take only 2 t-shirts. You will buy more there.

Do not take toiletries. The hotel leaves you sixteen million refills EVERY MORNING.

Pick up your pre-registration convention passes before 11am Thursday. Everyone else will wait in line for 4 hours. No, I’m not joking.

Buy a Breeze card for the Marta lines.

Take as many photos of people’s costumes as you can - by Saturday you’ll have forgotten who you saw on Thursday.

Do not attempt to remember which hotel is which. Just ask the concierge. That’s what they’re there for.

Get in the unofficial line for the next event 90 mins before the official line starts.

Do not use highlighter pens to mark on your schedule what you want to see. It doesn’t show up under bar lighting.

Energy drinks are not for being tired through being up all night, they’re for bolstering queueing stamina.

Just because there’s a bar on every level of every event hotel does not mean you need to test the vodka. Vodka is the same everywhere. But now I know this for a fact, and I will sleep better for having tested it.

If you’re buying alcohol in a bar or convenience store, take your passport or government-issued photo ID. Seriously. Being refused a beer when you’re over 30 is Not Funny.

When getting autographs or photos with The Stars, if you can’t do owt but squeee, opt to keep your mouth shut. You’ll be so glad you did later.

If you’re hunting for a particular costume, realising that Trekkies are in the Sheraton and Whovians are not in the Marriott is really really useful. Make use of those schedules they give out - hotel awareness is your friend.

Do not be afraid to stop people to get snaps of their costumes - calling their character name and taking photos is The Done Thing. It’s why they dress up, after all.

Keep your phone on ‘airplane’ (that’s ‘aeroplane’ for folks that can spell) mode if you’ve come from outside the USA - and disable MMS if you’re in from HK and don’t want sixteen thousand promotional 3 MMS arriving all hours of the day and night (which you will be charged for). Likewise, keep data roaming turned off unless you’re actively using the net or your mail (NOT ADVISED).

If you have a connecting flight that is a domestic flight within the US, make sure you have at least THREE HOURS between flights or you won't make it. It took me over 90 mins to get through Immigration in Detroit, and another 45 mins to get my luggage and myself through to the next flight. Luckily for me (or is it due to the amount of people who don’t make flights because of this farce?) Delta fly domestic about a million times a day, so I only had to wait another hour for the next available flight. Still made me want to burn down Zuji's offices for selling me a ticket for a connecting flight there was no way in or out of Hell that I could make.

Americans. They look like us, but they’re not us. Don’t be embarrassed if you have to ask them to repeat what they’re saying to you. Three times. Just concentrate and you will get it.


I’ve got to say, I loved Atlanta much more than LA. Peaceful, relaxed, friendly - FRIENDLY - amazingly helpful, smiley, welcoming, nice, sunny, and just so GODDAMNED NICE. Such a change from HK. Maybe I’ve been in HK too long - I wouldn’t want to live in the US (yet), but perhaps HK is starting to get to me.


That will conclude my first Dragon*Con post. It will not be the last. I’ll be back. Just as soon as the clock is the right way up again and I’ve realised which end is morning and which end is night.


Peach and lube, people. Peach and frelling lube.


Tags:
~ Dragon*Con

See you in a bit

Flying to Atlanta in about... ooh... 22 hrs. Still have to go to work, pack a suitcase, and generally finish going through the hyowj programme of stuff that I Can't Miss.

See you when I get back!


Tags:

Dragon*Con

Farscape Phonics and Shiny Things

Was clearing out the crap in my photos on iPhone Dax and came upon a snap I took at work a loooooong time ago. I think this should be filed under Your phonics paper, let me upgrade it for you.




And then there's this bit of news - my purr wee knackered building is getting a new lift! Wheeeee!



And it's Saturday 3rd and I'm not at work - double wheeee! Cos it's mid autumn festival. Ha-haaaa!

Peach and lube, people, peach and lube.

Farscape ~ Hong Kong

I’m back!

Don’t worry - I know I’ve just spent the week in LA and I’ve had the best time seeing famous telly people and getting autographs and photographs etc., but I won’t be squeeeing about it here. It’ll all be over at the Buckets o’ Crazy site. Along with the pics me and my sister took. So relax, everyone, all I’ll go on about here is how crap the Marriott was, and how much better the cheaper Motel6 place was, and how US Immigration suck the big one in terms of getting people through the gate and actually into the sodding country (90 minutes. Yes, 90 minutes. I shit you not. Got back to HK and it took a grand total of 70 to get FROM THE PLANE TO MY FLAT).

Anyway, what’s going on? Oh, yeah - we saw two episodes of ‘Supernatural’ and then we were blind-sided with the fact that the show’s on yet another hiatus and won’t be back till 23rd April. Why Shakespeare’s attributed birthday? Who knows…

On a personal note, was having more feelings of giving up writing fiction, and actually did go so far as to put everything into a zipped file, back it up on DVD and then put it all away. I actually spring-cleaned all writing files from my Jarvis II (my amazing iMac) and determined I was not going to open them up again, that it was all over.

Had my holiday and my fingers were itching after about three days. Got home to my flat at about 10a.m., unpacked, made a hot fresh pot of real tea, had a hot shower, adjusted to the fact that I’d lost 15 hours on the plane (took off on time, was one hour late getting in. I don’t know, and I don’t care, either) and then had to put my clock forward 15 hours too, and it was in Sunday without the benefit of having had Saturday first.

Did my washing, had some noodles (YAAAAAAAAYY!!) and settled down to take stock.

And then I realised I hadn’t changed my calendar from March to April. So I picked up March’s sheet and pulled it off, and underneath I found~~

PHWOOOOOAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRR!

Sorry. I found this:


Not bad, eh? There’s summat nice to come home to, and no mistake. I haven’t seen May’s page, and I refuse to peek. You never know what it might be. It’s one of those tiny ways I like to torture myself re: the possibilities being endless.

Anyway, what was I~~. Oh yes - by 4p.m. I was getting out my DVD of writing stuff and transferring my current Work In Progress back to my beloved Jarvis and re-reading the lot to see where I had got up to. So then I banged out about 2,000 words and realised that all I needed was the possibility it could be taken away, and then I wanted it back. Writing, I mean. So yeah, you can expect more fan-fiction of the ‘Supernatural’ variety in a few weeks, maybe less.

Shopping. I picked myself up Serenity from the Dark Horse Comic Store at Universal Studio’s Citywalk:


Yes, isn’t she lovely? Yes. AND SHE’S ALL MINE.

That’s about it, really. I’m apparently supposed to be having a shower and getting ready for work, or something. I think. Not really sure. Clock says it’s 11a.m., but is that morning or evening? Must be morning if there’s work in the very near future.

Soopytwist.

Tags:
Supernatural ~ LA ~ convention ~ Jensen Ackles ~ fan-fic ~ Serenity ~ Firefly

Don't panic!

I'm nearly home, honest. Just got to catch a plane in about 14 hours. Then sit on said plane for 13 hours. Put my watch forward 15 hours. Get off plane. Get to bus stop. Sit on bus and my Hong Kong morning speeding by to the choons on my iPod. Realise how glad I am to be home. Get to my flat by the bus stop. Make a hyowj cuppa tea. Have a hot shower. Sit down and unpack the goodies I bought from the convention. Call my mates. Watch some telly. Have some noodles (NOODLES! NOODLES! HOW I'VE MISSED YOU!) and get ready fert pub quiz.

Can't wait.

See you all very soon.