So long and thanks for all the fish

For so many reason (the provider, the platform, the hassle with the owner not letting me log in without demanding all my personal information, etc.) I will not be using this page any more.

Everything will continue for me, just not here. You can find me at my Wordpress account instead.

I think I've shifted everything over there so while it is sad that this place is just going to sit here and gather dust, at the same time, I'm not sad at all.

This is Soupdragon, last surviving member of the blog team, signing off Google services.

Supernatural - the legacy

It’s 21st November 2020 and the Supernatural finale happened two days ago. I’m still getting over it, but in order to do that I need to process what happened.

Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!

Here be SPOILERS for Supernatural - the series finale!

So much to unpack here - the episode itself, the reaction from the ‘fans’, the feeling of knowing it’s over after so long. Let’s start at the beginning.

The Episode

In best SPN tradition, the big ending people thought was going to go down was actually resolved in the penultimate episode. This left one more round of 40 minutes to clear up everything hanging. Would we find out what happened to Castiel, would we see Jack again, would we find that monsters and demons and angels and everyone else - were they gone now? Cleared up by Jack reverse-Thanos’ing everyone back into existence? Were the other universes brought back too? AU!Charlie and AU!Bobby - were they back as they were? I hope so.

It seemed that Castiel really was gone - as was Death. Of course the next reaper would become the new Death so that would take care of people on Earth. Sounds like Castiel tinkered quite a bit with Heaven and its inhabitants, causing rebellion, sedition, incitement to tear down walls and have a peaceful Heaven as it should have been. From what Bobby said Jack apparently visited, set some things straight, changed Heaven from a place where you relive your greatest moments into a place where you can make new moments. Logically his would imply a new kind of life - an afterlife of new moments, made outside of normal Earth time. So everyone up there - and Bobby made sure Dean knew his parents weren’t far away - may be gone from Earth, but they’re still going. If Heaven is perfect and you have everything you could ever want, it sounds like the perfect ending.

As long as Dean doesn’t get bored of the easy life.

We see Sam’s life after Dean and it’s a good one. Briefly told in quick flashes, the only weird thing is that we never see his wife. Would it have hurt to add in someone from a previous series that he goes back for, and stays with? But he raises his own Dean, and the circle is complete. Dean raised Sam, so Sam raises a Dean. And when Sam finally goes too, there he is, right back next to his brother. Even the Impala made it - or did it? Was it just something Dean would have wanted, and it therefore appeared (with the original number plates), or did it take on enough of an imprint from its owners that it became its own thing, and was rewarded by getting to an afterlife? People will argue about this for the next fifteen years, I’m sure.

But Dean called it - like he always does. When he told Zachariah he’d ‘stab him in his face’, and then seasons later he did just that. When he said he didn’t shoot the deputy, and seasons later he did just that. When he told Sam his perfect happy ending would be Dean having died relatively quick and bloody in some average fight, causing Sam to leave The Life, have a family, and end up dying old and loved - he did just that, and Sam did just that. It was a good ending, the kind of thing I could see happening. Dean got what he wanted, after all the fighting and arguing and fallings-out and raging against the being who put them all through it. He got what he wanted. And after everything, it came back to just Sam and Dean. And I’m ok with that.

The Reaction from the ‘Fans’

It seems a lot of people were not ok with that. Twitter, tumblr, social media in general - the fall-out from the episode was horrific. At time of writing, I am ashamed of the way some of the ‘fans’ have treated the cast and crew who gave us fifteen years of a show that wasn’t pegged to last more than one. While outpourings of love, of loss, of grief and thanks overflowed between the final filming day and the moments before the finale aired, as soon as it ended it was a different story. People ranted, they swore, they sent tweets to cast and crew saying how the ending was shit, how it was stupid and didn’t make sense, how it ‘ruined’ everything, how it wrote off relationships. Ugly, ugly responses indeed considering the source material and how the fandom has been mostly supportive up to this point. I don’t understand how you can turn on something so quickly, so completely, after hungrily devouring everything given to you in the past fifteen years. Some people have fallen out of love with the show gradually, some have fallen by the wayside, and some have just plain given up with it, and I get that. I gladly cut ties with Doctor Who after the way they wrote Peter Capaldi’s first two episodes made me realise the showrunner was a complete and utter self-centred prick who thought racist digs and jokes about sentient beings burning to death in front of them were ok to air. I gave the show with Jodie Whittaker another chance, since the showrunner had been booted for losing 40% of its ratings. (It’s ok, but it’s not the Christopher Eccleston / David Tennant years.)

What I’m saying is, I understand how people can go off a show and walk away. What I don’t understand it how they can continue to watch it if they don’t like it - why do that to yourself? Why torture yourself by making yourself follow a show you actively despise? Just walk away and leave it, go find something else you do like. Unfortunately, that’s a thing with many shows these days - people on social media are only too happy to leave comments saying how bad something is and that no-one should watch it. I reply to these people now, where I used to ignore them. “Then go watch something that makes you happy”, “then stop watching”, “you don’t have to watch it”, “take control of your life and stop watching if it makes you unhappy”, etc. I get backlash but I literally do not care. Someone has to make the point that no-one welcomes a step-by-step account of how they’re still torturing themselves by posting and commenting about something they profess to hate. I get that “sad is happy for deep people”, but behaviour like that toward people who are still enjoying something is just bollocks and they need to fuck right off and leave others to enjoy something they don’t. It’s everywhere in and out of fandom right now and it needs to die a horrible bloody death as soon as possible.

There seems to be a lot of ‘fans’ chucking their toys out of their respective prams because they didn’t get the ending they wanted. It’s childish and it’s so bloody entitled I don’t even know where to start. Yes I do - these are the kind of people who started or signed an actual real petition to try to get someone to re-write the ending of Game of Thrones because they didn’t like it. How bloody self-centred do you have to be to genuinely believe that just because you didn’t think it measured up, that you get to demand it be redone to be somehow ‘better’? How entitled are you? How far are you up your own arse? Someone wrote that and someone helped edit it. People produced and filmed and costumed and catered and rigged and lit and worked bloody hard to bring it to the screen. And what happened? People turned around and shat on everyone because they didn’t get the death they wanted, or the fight they wanted, or the satisfaction they craved. As Bobby says, “boo-friggin’-hoo”. It wasn’t made for just you - sometimes you just don’t get what you want and you have to step back and let it go. If someone gives you a birthday present and you open it in front of them to find that it’s not what you want or even like, you don’t throw it at them and insult them for it, you accept it and say thank you because that person made an effort. You don’t have to like the present, but you should have the fucking manners and self-respect to thank them and move on. No-one’s asking you to keep the present, or to tell everyone you like it - you don’t have to say you don’t like it, and everything is fine. It amazing how many people just cannot grasp that simple concept.

It’s not the way I wanted the show to go out. It’s not the way I want the cast and crew to be treated. It’s not how a fandom should behave. It’s beneath us and it’s ugly. I am ashamed of the fandom and how they’ve acted - and are still acting. To preserve my own sanity in these trying times of Covid and global madness, I can only conclude that these people are not fans. It’s not much, but it’s something.

The End

On top of all that shitshow, there’s the knowledge that this is The End. No more new episodes. No more new adventures. No more sounds of the Impala’s doors squeaking, that little rattle it made just under the dialogue. No more witty comebacks, slip-ups, dressing-downs, bitch fights, machetes, desperate Hail Marys, strained allegiances and tested friendships.

As I look back over the past fifteen years, at all the fun I’ve had at conventions, writing forums, rewatch parties, it brings happy tears to my eyes. I must be getting old. But those were good times - all of them, even the badly-run Rogue Events conventions, the arguments about spelling on those writing forums, the mismatched time zones during those rewatches. A bad day with Supernatural was better than some of my good days, for so many reasons. It was comfort, it was ease, it was familiarity. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a convention; you need to mortgage most of your organs to be able to afford a ticket to a Creation con these days, before paying for hotels and flights. It’s been a long time since I’ve been part of a writing forum; these days it’s all Wordpress and AOOO but it means it’s fragmented, it’s so open and wide-ranging that it’s no longer our corner of the internet. Instead of one person curating an archive of all the best we have to offer, now it’s just a filter on AOOO. This is not a bad thing, it’s just how things change. It’s been a long time since I’ve done a rewatch; those people aren’t available any more, or their time zone is now even further from mine. The pack has broken up, the people scattered over the globe in a way that only time can do. So gradually that no-one noticed, it all became so spread out, so far between that it wasn’t until I tried to get in touch with people that I realised it was too late.

Where are you when I need you, Hell Bus?

But then I realise: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Yes, the show will have no new episodes. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be conventions till the whole platform itself ceases to be a thing. We still have social media and groups, niche follows and tags. We still have AOOO and FF dot net, Wordpress and Wattpad. It feels like we’ve gone into our fifteenth hiatus, only this time there’s no end date in sight.

That’s the most encouraging thing I think I’ve heard since I watched the finale.

And I think that’s all I’ve got. It’s wet, it’s windy, it’s 12 degrees C and we’re into day 250 since my part of the world went into a Covid spiral of working from home / Tier 3 / national lockdown. However, I have a lot of memories and good times to think about, and I choose to do that rather than focus on the arseholes who have made a dumpster fire out of the series finale. I’m opening my SPN playlist and playing it loud.

Take care, everyone.

Lockdown

Not, unfortunately, the stellar (sorry) Guy Pierce 2012 film Lockout, which is just a fantastic old-fashioned 1980s survival in a prison (a space prison) flick with guns, violence, snarky one-liners and brilliantly acted stereotypes all round. No, sadly not that Lockout.

Instead it’s now been seven weeks since I’ve worked from my actual work desk, and three weeks since I’ve left the house. And by that I mean I have not crossed the threshold of any doors to be away from the touch of indoor flooring.

Everyone keeps asking - “how are you holding up?”. And my reply is always the same: “has anything changed?”


I mean yes, obviously some things have changed. I don’t go to the pictures on Saturday and then meet up with mates afterwards to talk about it. I don’t go to the Chinese supermarket one Sunday a month to stock up on food. I don’t go to the archery range. I don’t drive to work. Other than that…? Nah, nothing’s changed.

I don’t have kids, pets, or anything that distracts me. What I do have is Doom Eternal on PS4, along with other games I’m still battling through. I have Netflix and Amazon Prime, I have Kodi and Hong Kong dramas (The Exorcist’s 2nd Meter is on - finally we have the sequel to The Exorcist’s Meter!). I have a Lethal Weapon fanfiction story that I’m halfway through posting, and I’ve embarked on a 21 day yoga shred class online. And did I forget to mention, I’m still working, just from the kitchen table. So yeah, I’m pretty busy and I don’t need to go out. My housemate is also still working, but their essential worker status means that they can stop off at a supermarket on the way home and pick up bits and pieces.

Also, I work in payroll (for the NHS, no less), so what with April being a perfect storm of all the statutory and contractual changes no-one in ops wants, it’s been a full-on, fifty-hour week for four weeks for pretty much the entire team. We’ve been given time off in lieu, so it’s not really a big deal for me, but for others with dependents it’s been “a nightmare”.

The only problem I’m going to have is going back to the office when we’re finally cleared by our bosses to do so (i.e. when our healthcare professionals have assessed it and made the requisite changes, not when Boris waffles his way through saying… whatever it was he was saying on Sunday 10th March). I know a lot of people will be glad of the return - to be in a place where they feel like a professional, like they’re away from all the home distractions, out of the ‘home’ environment and into a work headspace. I get it - in words. I don’t feel it, but I understand what they mean. And then there are those who don’t work in office jobs and will have been itching to get back to work for the last month anyway.

Everyone seems uptight and upset that they’re being told to stay home. Everyone else seems to be getting cabin fever. I’ve just woken up one day, been told to collect my kit from work and then go home until further notice, get on MS Teams when I’m working and that’s that. I just kind of went “so this is how it is now” and got on with it. There wasn’t any drama to be had - it just happened and we dealt with it like grown-ups. Others in the team had some IT hiccups and others have been trying to balance kids and dinner-time and all kinds of trials and tribulations. I don’t have those. I sit down, open up all the apps and emails and everything else, look at the list of stuff I didn’t finish yesterday, and get to work. I don’t see the difference between doing that at work and doing that at my kitchen table.

I’m happy that I don’t have to mix with humans, that I can get on and do my job without being interrupted by co-workers asking if I want to go for a brew, or having to put shoes on (I find it hard to sit on chairs ‘properly’ and often end up folding my legs under the table, which is hard to do with Doc Martens on).

Going back to an office environment is going to be very hard.

But then, what with major companies now wondering why they’re paying rent or a bank loan for sprawling offices in the real world when they could just let their office staff keep a laptop and stay away, I wonder what changes are coming.

Was it not Captain Jack Harkness who said that “the 21st century is when everything changes”? Is this what he meant? Where leaders of large, influential countries have gone off the rails (some would argue that they were never really on them in the first place) and caused nearly 80,000 deaths at this point? Where still others are trying to impose their brand of order on a territory handed back to them twenty-odd years ago, despite the entire population being against it and willing to stand in tear gas and water cannon to prove it? With this new pandemic hitting the globe and reminding everyone how everyone really is connected whether they like it or not, is this when everything finally starts to shift? Pollution from fossil-fuel traffic in a lot of cities has started to ease up - because of people not using those vehicles. One retired army captain (now a colonel) in the UK has raised more for NHS Charities in a few weeks than most people will ever raise in their lifetime - in a team. People are reaching out over social media, children are receiving tweets and replying by old-fashioned letter-writing. Others are holding street parties from behind their fences. Still more are coming out onto their doorsteps to celebrate the NHS on a Thursday night with songs, clapping, and banging pots and pans. Caremongering is becoming a thing - people helping others to get their grocery shopping, to post a letter, to connect and keep their sanity. All signs are pointing toward a feeling of unity, of wanting to help.

And yet.

And yet.

We have brainless, self-obsessed presidents telling the masses the most baseless, misinformed and dangerous things - and nearly half the country are still listening to him. We have others over-buying and stocking up on household items so that they can sell those items for a profit. People think they can get away with behaving like Nazis again. There are people deliberately scamming others using miracle cures and snake oil replacements for this virus. There are news outlets deliberately spreading lies and paranoia, to widen the gap between classes, between minorities, between neighbours, between humans. The top ten multi-billionaires just keep getting richer, earning more per day than they could spend in a month, and apparently happy to keep it that way despite the people all around them living on food stamps, foods banks, charity hand-outs and poverty.

This is what we are as a species. We are opposite ends of the spectrum, in all things. The only thing wrong with that is how far apart those ends actually are. It’s ok that everyone believes different things, it’s ok that everyone feels differently, acts differently, has a different perspective. This is essential for humans to survive. What’s not ok is how some seek to stop others from being allowed to be the difference. Some leaders need to be impeached (or just removed forcibly with a blunt object), some leaders need to realise the way their country has been run for the past few generations just isn’t going to work any more - times have changed and not changing with them is not how evolution or progress works. Some people need to get a heart, or at least hire someone who has one and then take their advice. I am the last person to say they know anything about empathy or feelings, but even I can stand back and work out what is beneficial and what isn’t to a society as a whole. When you work toward controlling a population instead of serving them, you’ve already lost the game.

Anyway.

Some good news to lighten the mood: NASA is going back to the Moon. To date, one person has definitely been cured of HIV, and while science is struggling to replicate the how, they’re getting closer every day. Volvo is looking to get into the Tesla bracket of electric cars - meaning the battle is now on (properly) for better, longer-ranging batteries and smaller price tags. And on that note, the production of energy from renewable sources is literally terawatts ahead of anything it’s ever been before. Wind farms alone are making an impact on the amount of energy we have to import, including Russian coal and Norwegian oil.

When all this covid thing is over, and everyone goes back to work in stages, it’s not the lockdown or the whinging or the team spirit I’m going to remember. It’s the good movies I’ve seen, the comic books I’ve read, the stories I’ve written and the courses I’ve done. I’ve let myself watch more on Netflix and it’s resulted in me seeing some very good series I wouldn’t normally have tried out. I’ve gone for that yoga course even though I don’t understand yoga (you can still go through the motions like you mean it, though). I’ve had a whale of a time in the rip and tear moments of Doom Eternal and I’ve got my highest scores ever on the arcade levels of Doom 2016.

I know all around me people have been losing their shit and things have been going off the rails, but for me life’s been pretty good. As an INTJ who really isn’t here for Human Drama, I have to say I’ve been enjoying this lockdown as a chance to stay away from people. If there was a way for it to continue, without the horrific deaths or riots or protests (against people trying to keep them alive? Fine. Let them die) then I’m all for it. We just need to beat this virus and make something new out of what comes next. And if a majority doesn’t get rid of the orange-faced buffoon spewing arse-gravy on the daily when next they vote, then we may just have to call on the SAS to do everyone a huge fucking favour.

You’ll be glad to know that that’s it for today, folks. Rant over - time for more good telly.

Soopytwist.

Final image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Betrayal

It's a funny thing, betrayal. I mean it's an odd word, too. Do a quick Sam Winchestering of Tinternet and you'll find things like in the early 13th century it meant to "prove false" or "violate [something] by unfaithfulness". Skip to the late 15th century and you have it as "unintentionally showing your true character", and a hundred and fifty years later, it turns into "revealing or disclosing in violation of confidence".

Lots of "violating" and treason of confidence, there.

Do the circumstances matter? Is there ever a time when it's ok to betray someone's confidence?

Sure. I mean, the GDPR (2018) and most other privacy ordinances have this written into them. Most businesses or concerns who gather or store your personal information are barred from giving it to anyone else - unless a governmental law enforcement outfit requires it in the course of an investigation or to prevent harm. And that's ok. This can extend to others, too - what if you hear something about your friend and decide that they could come to harm because of it? You may then deem it necessary to tell someone - someone with law enforcement or governmental clout - about this information, in order to protect them. After all, this scenario has been used in multiple movies since the dawn of celluloid; "I did it to protect you", etc. Sometimes it's hard to see from their perspective just how that would have protected anyone, but that's another argument altogether.

How about when the information given out would not have saved any lives, or prevented terrorism, or stopped harm coming to someone? What about when the information shared was not done out of a sense of duty, or altruism, or from a position of wanting to avoid implied awfulness to follow? What about when the information was shared sheerly because someone learnt of it, and didn't like their status in relation to what was happening?

This is where we find ourselves.

When you don't have proof of someone betraying you, only eye-witnesses and suspicion, it's harder to work out where you stand with the person suspected of betrayal. When this person allegedly released certain information to The Powers That Be possibly nearly six years ago, you have to wonder why you care at all. Except the fall-out from that is obvious; how can you trust that person again? How can you know they haven't then told other secrets, in the hope that sharing them would boost their own position, ego, or status with the people they gave them to?

The answer is simple in all cases; you can't. You can't be sure that you can tell them anything in confidence ever again. You can't be sure they haven't been telling everyone about your life without your knowledge.

So there's a choice to be made here. When this person is making overtures of continued friendship, when they seem to want to spend time with you and catch up on old times, it comes down to this: were they ever good times? Or were they an exercise in finding information that could bolster their own status?

The background of this person is complicated. This person was in difficulty and I helped them out, multiple times. Perhaps I'm just too soft when it comes to people who need help and I'm in a position to do that. Perhaps I felt for them because of the nature of the aid they needed. For whatever reason, perhaps I believed too much that people would return the favour later. Most people do - they remember that time you helped them, and they either feel obligated or they genuinely want to aid you in return because what happened between you made you some kind of friend.

This is why I have a hard time reconciling what has happened. And then I read this over and think, but you know they already had mental health issues, so you can't be hard on them.

Can't I?

Does this person get a free pass because they have issues? We all have issues, some greater than others. But why should someone who is aware of their issues and makes no attempt to get help for them be allowed to act like they live in a world with no consequences? I believe the consequences should be tailored to how much responsibility they had in what they did. And let's be honest, in this case it was 100%.

The other fall-out is that I can probably never return to where I want to be. Whether they knew what the consequences would be or not, they still disclosed information that was private in such a way that it would benefit them. It's possible they didn't think it through (few people do, in my experience) and therefore didn't fully realise the investigation they would trigger.

I find myself unable to care. I cannot say for certain if they thought it through to what is an obvious and inevitable conclusion. I can't even say for sure that they did what they said they did - it could be a case of all mouth and no trousers. All I can be sure of is I'm lucky to still have my passport and be walking freely around the streets.

I do count myself lucky, because the circumstances of what happened around that time, and how this person told all to someone who should not have been party to it, is a long, drawn-out nightmare that culminated in me being detained by Immigration for an entire day, and myself, my luggage, and the place where I was staying searched, and me warned in no uncertain terms that the only way out for me was to catch my booked return flight to England on time, and then think very hard if I ever wanted to come back to the country in question.

There are mitigating circumstances in everything, of course. But finding out that this whole machine was set off by someone telling someone something they shouldn't, purely to pander to their own sense of importance, kind of makes me a little angry.

It's a very intellectual anger. I'm not swearing in or outside my head, I'm not closing doors harder than I mean to, and I'm not taking it out on anyone else. In fact I think my friends here (the actual friends) are wondering why I'm not going off on one.

Here's the thing: being an INTJ affords you certain clarity. Yes, I found myself in a bad situation. Yes, I shared that information with a select few, and one of them offered me help and I took it. The other took the information and used it for their own purposes, resulting in me being robbed of years where I could have had a life somewhere, denied the chance to perhaps make something of myself in a place where that was possible, and of course now having an immigration door shut for ever more. But it was all six or seven years ago. The actual betrayal affected something else that happened ten years ago, and I'm only discovering it now. It's hard to be physically angry about something that transpired so long ago.

What I am angry about is the way this person knew that I had no knowledge of what they'd done, and still engaged with me in a way that conveyed friendship and helpfulness. The evidently saw nothing wrong in what they did, and they continued to hang out with me and other friends as if they had done nothing. At no time did they feel the need to tell me what went down, and at no time have they ever attempted to broach the subject.

They have, however, mentioned this to others.

And here's the kicker; finding out they've done this to other people I know, while still being their friend.

It's hard to understand how they reconcile one act with another; how can you profess to be someone's friend and therefore want what's best for them, when you act in direct contrast to achieving that? If I said yes, I support you in buying a car for example, and then the next day call the dealership and tell them that I believe you to be a bad risk and not to trust the credit check, how can I say I'm acting out of friendship and not just plain jealousy that you're ending up with a better car than I'm in a position to afford?

Sour grapes have been mentioned. I'm having a hard time discounting that. As difficult as it is for me to accept, I believe in this case someone has acted purely out a sense of jealousy. Doesn't that mean they don't consider us to be friends? I want the best for my friends, and I want them to be happy. If they have better jobs, bigger cars, more expensive houses, fantastic spouses and lovely kids, isn't that what I want them to have? If it's not, why are we friends? What does 'friendship' mean to you if it's tempered by your status in life compared to theirs? How does that even work?

Where does this leave me? Wondering if I bother getting back to the person who's trying to make contact, that's where. The logical thing to do would be to agree to meet for the day, then sit down and just ask them outright, make some sense of why they did it, weigh up if they're lying about why they did it ("I did it to protect you", etc.) or if they sit there and say "yes, I did it - what are you going to do about it?"

The answer to that is simple.

If this is how they think friends work, then by my own definition we were never friends. And standing up, saying goodbye and please don't contact me again is a neat, concise way to draw a line under this whole thing and move on.

Because unlike some people, I do have the capacity to move on. I don't go back to my school years and say how difficult it was. I don't drag up issues from high school and say how I mostly got everything done off my own back. I don't point to literally all the jobs my friends have with their salaries 3 times mine and say how unfair that is. You get over it or you don't. When I do, they won't be able to come with me, seeing as they'll be trapped in their world of complete unfairness and entitlement.

Put that way, I don't think there's anything to draw a line under. That would be like trying to bring closure to a factory that shut down ten years ago. Why padlock the main gates when the place is derelict? Closure already happened, just without you, and a long time ago.

"Too bad, so sad, move on."

Quite.

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.

Fucking done

Everyone knows someone who is a complete sack of arse; a fucker, a complete and utter bastard, someone who is only ‘famous’ on social media for being controversial, or a twat. There have been a few around me before and you just give them enough rope and they’re gone soon enough.

But then there’s this shit-for-brains. They’ve been banned from a messages board. The thing is, is makes them holier-than-holier-than-thou as a result, like suddenly everything they’ve been saying has been validated. Apparently, being banned from a board makes you too cool for school in their books, and they’re right happy about it.

And then they crash another board to gloat about how, because they’re so ‘incendiary’ and ‘polarising’ and just plain all-around awesome, they’re getting a load of their arse-gravy otherwise known as posts and tweets etc. published. As in, in a book. That will be published. And sold. For money.


That. Is. Where. I. Am. Done.

So fucking done.

Some of us having been trying FOR THE PAST 5 YEARS to get an agent and get published. Some of us have actually written a real, physical novel using their little creative brains that has been bled, sweated, and cried over for at least the last 7 years. Some of us have been turned down by no less than 45 different agents, and 5 different publishers direct. Some of us just keep banging our heads against walls and getting nowhere.


But this unclefucker? This steaming pile of camel shit laced with strychnine and topped off with conceited, self-important baboon gonads where their brain should be? They just sit down and people go to them.

Clearly, I’m doing something wrong.

Perhaps in this 'modern' society of people arguing about what’s moral and what’s just fucking rude (yes, you of the tiny, tiny orange hands) I should just go for shock and awe. Perhaps I should be upsetting people. Perhaps I should be ‘incendiary’ and ‘polarising’. Perhaps then I’ll attract enough attention that someone will want to publish me.


Is that it? Is that what you do?

Well, shit

It’s feeling like you’re that well-meant gift that the recipient didn’t want and doesn’t care for, or a piece of furniture that never went with anything else in the house but is too much trouble to get rid of, or that weird book on the shelf that no-one understands and can’t be arsed to try.

1. Work.

The others in the department save seats for each other near the front of the hall for the quarterly business review and party. They don’t ask and don’t care that I don’t have a seat. I get my own. At the back. It’s better that way - I don’t have to talk to anyone.

2. Holidays.

I don’t take them because I have nowhere to go and no-one to go with. When I do eventually have to take my statutory holiday, people at work have no idea that I’ve booked the time off (even though they approved it in the system, so I knew it was ok to not turn up to work) and don’t notice I’m missing for the first few hours. My shift starts before theirs. I sit four feet from them. I am never not in.

3. Websites.

I join up and make an effort to put my best photos on there, my friendliest banter, my most open-minded conversation skills on - and don’t even get trolled.

4. Writing novels.

I send tailor-made letters and submission packages of my book to agents. More than 40 in just over 4 years. Most of them don’t even acknowledge that they’ve received the email (not even an automatic bounce-back). The others turn me down after anywhere between 2 - 4 months.

5. “Where’s mine?”

There comes a point, and mine has been about twenty years in the making, that you have to ask yourself why you’re bothering to keep calm and carry on, and why you’re not just stopping to look around and ask “Where’s mine? How come I don’t have XYZ?”. You don’t do it and don’t do it, because it’s whining and it’s self-centred, it’s conceited and childish. But one day you’ve just had enough and you wonder how anyone else has found what they want - and why you haven’t.

It must be me, right? I must be doing something wrong. I am, I know I am. I know I’m not a participant like all the people at work are. However I also know that a woman at work who is borderline agoraphobic and mostly an introvert has also dated 2 people in the 18 months I’ve known her. How does she do it when she shies away from meeting people in the first place? (This is why I’ve joined dating sites. I’ve tried to start conversations, get ‘involved’ in group discussions, but no-one replies once I start with the polite openings and then the groups themselves peter out. See? It’s me.) She bumped into one bloke at a petrol station. I fill up three times more often than she does and look how many people, let alone eligible blokes, I’ve bumped into. Clue: I’d say you could count them on one finger but you wouldn’t need that many fingers. The other bloke she met through a friend. I’ve had friends set me up before, and blind-date me, and randomly pair me off - you get to guess how many ended up in dating (clue: less than those fingers). I did like one bloke once (and we’re talking close to ten years ago now). Turns out I liked him more than he liked me, so it ended before it had even begun.

But enough moping. Forward, not back, as they say: what do you do?

a. Like more stuff.

Expose yourself to more new stuff, in the hopes that you’ll pick up new hobbies or interests. Yeah, done that over the past 4 years. Now a lot more read and a lot more aware, but still boring to everyone else, apparently.

b. Pretend to like things you don’t.


Not a fan of this. It’s lying and it’s pointless. Say you do find someone due to having a topic or hobby in common; what happens when that’s the only thing you have in common, and you have to confess that you don’t even like it that much anyway? Hmm. Answers on a postcard.

c. Resign yourself to the fact that it’s not loneliness, it’s just How Things Are.

This is looking more and more likely. Talk me out of it, I dare you.

In fact, loneliness I can deal with - I’m used to it. It’s the boredom, the being sick of your own company, that really compounds the whole problem. That and the whole ‘may as well be invisible’ thing, as detailed at the beginning of this article.

It’s getting late. I have to go to bed so I can pretend to sleep, then get up and go to work to do all those essential, tiny things that keep the world going round - all those things people aren’t even aware of. Hmm - sounds like someone I know.

Labels

We’ve often been told that labels, in the context of putting people in boxes, is bad. Mostly true. As in, when we then use those labels to profile or segregate people. But labels in general? What did they do wrong? Isn’t it more the people hearing those labels, and the reactions they have to them, that are the problem?

For example, I say “the employment contract you signed says ‘don’t do the thing’ and you did the thing; why would you not expect consequences?” at work and I’m called ‘harsh’, ‘rude’, ‘not how the department should react’. I’m not at all bothered by what people think of me; what I’m more angered by is the fact that this person will get away with their actions because they put on some false anger and do the Storming Off In Indignation routine. And now it’s put down to ‘you handled it wrong’. When I ask how, I’m told ‘you should have been more tactful’. No, I say calmly, the person should not have tried to do the opposite of what he agreed to when he signed the contract. End of: level 1 disciplinary offence, case closed, move on. I’m told ‘it doesn’t work like that’, and now he’s ‘upset’.

*sigh*

Like I give an unidentified flying fuck how he feels; he broke a contract. Deal with him, get this done, move onto the next problem. This is why our department spends all our time in lengthy, drawn-out debates that take weeks to settle. That particular problem could have been solved in 10 minutes in a private meeting between Arsehole, his manager, and someone from our department. But no. Apparently ‘our way’ is dragging everything out.

Which brings me back to labels.

Arsing about on Tinternet this week has caused me, not for the first time, to stumble over the Myers Briggs personality test (or MBTI). In a rare case of ‘is it actually me and not everyone else after all?’, I took the test.

Basically it sorts everyone into 16 personality types (or labels). This in turn gives you insight into what inner forces drive you to act and speak as you do. I’ve done a few simple traits tests and associated tests before (including MENSA), but this one blew me away in terms of how accurate it was.

My label was INTJ. Or, in terms we can all understand, someone who is introverted, intuitive, thinks and judges. (Not in a judgey way, but in a weighing-up way.)

I’ve read a few different sources on what an INTJ is supposed to be like, and to be honest it’s scarily accurate. It also explains why there is so much frustration at work and on social platforms, and especially in areas that matter like who’s running a country and why nothing’s been done about it. For work purposes, it exposes a massive issue that has always been bubbling under the surface for me, but I never knew it was A Thing and therefore needed to be sorted. Now it’s been waved in my face, in apparently true INTJ style, I can work out what to do about it and then just do it.

It also explains why I get so pissed off when colleagues say things like ‘you shouldn’t say that out loud’ or ‘you need to be more professional’. I AM THE MOST PROFESSIONAL PERSON IN MY DEPARTMENT, UNCLEFUCKER. When was the last time I checked my phone during work hours? When was the last time I showed any emotion at all to someone asking stupid questions? When was the last time I held a grudge against someone because of their behaviour or general stupidity? When was the last time I gossiped? When was the last time I had anything on my web browser that wasn’t work-related? When was the last time I wore something inappropriate? When was the last time I was late, or fucked off early, or didn’t deliver my objectives, goals, or projects? When was the last time I didn’t do a handover, or communicate my research findings, or prepare for the latest oncoming storm?

I see these things going on around me all the time, and it staggers me. However, I keep a lid on it - because apparently calling people out on their lack of professionalism is frowned on - yeah, let the irony of that sink in for a moment. I channel my inner Spock - or rather, my inner T’Pol, seeing as she was completely alien and trapped on a ship full of either idiots, incompetents, or people of less insight and ability to think things through, or of much less life experience. I get shit done and I tune out everything that annoys me. And for this I’m called ‘unprofessional’ because THE ONE TIME I don’t manage to do this and say ‘FFS’ under my breath, my colleague hears it and assumes I’m thinking of resigning.

Yes, resigning. For some reason, she believes I am unhappy in my job. She believes that after one bad day you want to leave. I don’t understand - I genuinely don’t. Whether you enjoy the job or not, you still get paid to do that fucking job, and moaning about how much you don’t like it isn’t helping. Do the job or don’t - but don’t pretend that you didn’t know it was going to be like this when you accepted the offer of employment. I knew exactly what I was getting into when I joined the company, and I still know exactly what the place is, perhaps more so than others. The idea that I would want to leave because of one bad hour (not even an afternoon or day) is to me extremely immature. It also tells me that for some reason, she thinks I’m not enjoying my job. I asked her outright: Does my face tell people I hate them or something? Do I seriously have a Resting Fuck Off Face? She said that my face changes when I speak to people, from FUCK OFF into OH HI HOW CAN I MAKE YOUR LIFE BETTER?, but she worried what others thought when they saw my concentrating face.

*sigh*

Like I give a shit what someone thinks of an expression on my face WHEN I’M BUSY WORKING. What in the actual fuck? What is this, the Face Police? Can’t they all just get on with their work and stop gazing round the room and FINDING things to worry about? I’m pretty sure that’s not in their job description and - you know what I'm going to say next, right? It’s not PROFESSIONAL.

But anyway. Being an INTJ is apparently not an easy life, but now I’ve read things about how non-INTJs react to INTJs basically INTJing all over their workplace, I can see more of her side than before. The problem is the very basis of being INTJ is not really caring about people’s opinions toward you because it’s not quantifiable evidence that anything is ‘wrong’, and anyway, what’s ‘wrong’ with ‘wrong’? How many people in history have been ‘wrong’ at the time, but then later proven right? And not just in terms of facts (Galileo for example) but attitudes themselves (Star Trek, David Bowie, etc.).

It’s tiring being an INTJ, I’m not going to lie. It’s exhausting tuning out all the inane shit that people ‘small talk’ about, exhausting having to adhere to long drawn-out processes when you can see the logical ending and just want to skip to it. It’s tough to keep my mouth shut when I just want to say ‘can you not?’ to people trying to stop me from working through trying to be sociable or generally distracting. I don’t get nearly enough recognition for the number of times I stop myself from saying, calmly and quietly, ‘fuck off’.

I think that’s this week’s rant mostly out of my system. I’m sure there’ll be more, but now I know the root cause, I can make adjustments. And they won’t include spades or plastic sheeting.

Soopytwist.

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.

Rogue Events is no more

For those of you who, like me, enjoy a good convention (“con”) now and again, the news that Rogue Events have closed down will come as a surprise.


Well, it would if you’ve never been to a Rogue Events con.

Ask anyone who’s ever attended one of their cons and you’ll probably hear something like ‘the guests were amazing but JFC they couldn’t organise their way out of a paper bag’. I’ve been to 2 of their cons - both Asylum (the Supernatural ones). They ran others too, for Arrow, Once Upon a Time, Vampire Diaries, etc. I have to say, because I didn’t need any autographs, photographs, meet n’ greets or basically anything other than sitting my arse down and watching guests on stage, I saw lots of good stuff and apart from not really knowing where or when things were happening, it wasn’t too bad.

However, I was witness to the appalling almost-organisation of the whole shebang. For anyone who had bought autographs, photo ops, 1 to 1s or similar activities, it was a logistical nightmare. No formal queueing system, so way to tell what the unofficial queue of self-organising fans was for, no word as to where the evening events were being held or when, charging people extra to see the evening entertainment, not telling people when or where to pick up their photos - and that was just what I saw and heard whilst talking to other fans.

Now that they’ve officially folded it’s left of lot of fans out of pocket - many of whom didn’t have a particularly deep pocket to begin with. The question of whether Rogue Events broke UK law in selling a product they knew they couldn’t deliver is one for the courts, and the insolvency firm who are no doubt already hard at work going through WCM Events’ debts. What that means in real terms for people who bought tickets and now have nothing is that, a few years from now when all the large creditors and overheads have been settled, they may get something acknowledging the debt they are still owed. By then it’s anyone’s guess if there’s anything left to reimburse them with.

Enter Star Fury Conventions. They’ve been running cons for 20 years in the UK, and by all accounts are pretty good at it. They’re professional, organised, and more importantly, they understand customer service and How to Make Money and Help People. Take for instance this whole Rogue Events debacle. As their Supernatural con, Asylum 19, has apparently been summarily cancelled (I say apparently as no-one has had official notification; all there is to go on is the official website), Star Fury’s rival Cross Roads 2018 event has experienced a surge in ticket sales. That would be enough for some. But some bright spark at Star Fury has decided that, in order to help fans let down by Rogue, they will give each fan who had bought an Asylum ticket one free autograph and photo op at their own Cross Roads 2018 event. Yes, you still have to pay for entry. But being able to go to an alternative event and still get some of what you wanted is better than no con at all. And if it makes you life-long fans of Star Fury Conventions along the way? So be it.

I would say I’m sorry that Rogue Events has gone. But I’m not. It’s natural business selection; poor management can only get you so far.

Soopytwist.

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.

Forward not back

A few things.

I’ve always felt very temporary about myself. How best to sum it up? That moment in Heat, when Robert De Niro says someone once told him: “Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner” - that’s how to sum it up. I don’t have long-term contracts. I don’t have a mortgage, or a loan, or a phone contract, or a lease agreement on a car. Everything I have, I own myself - except where I live. I rent a loft and I’m happy with it. Because it’s not mine - I could give notice and leave it behind, move on. And so I’ve always done.

I went to Hong Kong 14 years and 2 months ago. It was supposed to be for a while, so see what happened. It was 11 years of trying new things and being isolated from baggage and stuff I didn’t need and left behind. Every few years I would have to move to a new flat, either through monetary or social reasons. It taught me that everything you have is just Stuff, and you don’t need half of what you think you do. When I got back and found that I had misplaced a whole box of Stuff, I wasn’t too upset. I was more concerned about how I’d made that much of a mistake, not about the Stuff itself. As it turns out, you can replace Stuff if you have enough money and access to Tinternet. So there’s that.

The problem now is that I’m back and I’m bored. I always thought I’d be here for a while, but now I’m not so sure. When I go to bed I wonder about other countries and where to go next. I think about getting a job in the U.S. so I can volunteer at Dragon*Con every year. I think about how easy it would technically and financially be to go to Europe and work there whilst the UK passport is still good. When I’m at work and people talk about problems and the state of the world, I wonder how I can volunteer for the Mars One programme. And that’s where things get depressing.

See, it’s all Star Trek’s fault. We can all strive and work towards the best that we can make things, but there will always be people like Donald Trump or Radovan Karadzic bringing us all back down again. But part of you still wants to accomplish incredible things - to travel, to see, to try, to understand, to get away from everything familiar and experience The New. You wonder why you can’t just bring drinking water to an entire continent overnight, because you’ve thought of a way. Or how you can stop violence against a majority by changing everyone’s minds overnight.

And then it comes back to the reason, the excuse, the barrier: people. One person is great; one person can indeed change the world. But people? They’re arseholes. They’re stubborn, jealous, vindictive, tiny-minded, judgemental gits. And that will never change. You could have the secret of clean energy for the entire planet, and there’d still be someone trying to stop you before you could plug it in. You could have a sit-down with major world leaders and be on the verge of everyone saying “You know, you’re right - why are we even fighting about this? What a bunch of twats we’ve been all this time” and there’d be one person spiking the water with Stella to start a new punch-up.


So I guess I’ll just keep on keeping on. I’ll continue to go to work, turn up the music, lay on the alcohol, and watch Time roll by. I feel like I’m literally wasting (filling?) time until I finally die. I don’t want to, but the idea doesn’t scare me, either. It just fills me with sadness that I won’t have done anything worthwhile before I go. I think if I was on a plane or in a car crash or something where I had 3 seconds to realise the inevitable was about to happen, my reaction would be something like ‘well, shit’. Resignation, acceptance, disappointment. That’s what it would feel like.

In the meantime, I am trying to get an original fiction novel published. That’s going about as well as you’d expect - even though every time I send it off, I’m excited and hopeful. Give it two months with no favourable reply and I’m back to square one.


And so it goes.

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.

The more things change

Recently (and by that I mean cumulatively speaking over the past six months), things at work have been breaking down. Communication, software, discipline, the will to live. All of them have been directly influenced by the departure of a manager. They knew months in advance they would be taking anything up to a year off. They did nothing to, temporarily or otherwise, plug the gap they would be leaving. Neither did they impart necessary information to any of the people left behind.

‘Left behind’. I say that like us staff were forgotten luggage. It’d be more fitting to describe us as ‘abandoned’. Because that is what happened. Left to fend for ourselves, with no instructions, no insight, no experience, no leadership. You get to guess what happened next.

Some of it was good; it brought out the best in some, the hitherto undiscovered talents of others, the ability to share, protect and plan for our own little team and fuck everyone else. Not because we wanted to, but because you can only do so much in your twenty plus hours of indentured overtime a week, and you have to start putting your own department in order before you have any time for anyone else.

Some of it was bad; stress levels accelerated at an alarming rate. The priorities were dealt with and everything else fell by the wayside. Other departments began to get shitty with things not being done how they’d always been done, even though how they’d always been done was wrong and we were putting things right, and processing everything the correct way.

All of this caused friction. All of this caused shortness of tempers, heated exchanges and complaints. It did not, however hard we tried, bring about better conditions for anyone.

At this point I should explain that I feel about nine hundred and three years old. Like Dax, I’ve had many lives - I’ve lived on another continent, I’ve done so many jobs and had to assimilate so many differing situations, be so many different people. Couple that with a writing hobby where you study conflict as a tool to change things, where you have to extrapolate what consequences will follow, where you know that ‘Dances With Wolves’, ‘The Last Samurai’ and ‘Avatar’ share a cookie-cutter. Take all that, mix it with acknowledging how frustrated you are with offering to effect change and being shut down every time, and you stand back and have Dax moment.


Wait, 24 year-old you says. Look at the pattern. We’ve been here before, haven’t we? Back in 2001. And what happened next? Do you want that to happen again?
Ah, says 39 year-old you, but this is different.
Is it? says 36 year-old you. Because from where I’m standing, this looks like Badly Run Business of 2013 all over again.
Do you seriously want to have to stand by with towels and mop up the aftermath again? says 28 year-old you. You and I both know that’s where we’re headed.

This time I listened to myself. Everyone has a line that they draw, that if something happens to cross that line, you know you’re out and it’s time to act. This time I stopped myself redrawing that line. I kept it where it was, and the moment it was breached, me and my faithful companion Billy the MacBook Air got on the net and trawled for jobs. I received offers, I went through them, I attended interviews, and I was offered a job a week later.

Now to another vexation. I told my boss (her title is manager but she’s never done that in her life, so ‘boss’ it is), that I needed an afternoon off to attend a job interview. She was happy I was looking for things. I don’t understand her logic, but she was not obstructive in any way so it made it easier for everyone. I kept her informed of the selection process. When I came in with my letter of resignation saying I was working the whole of February as my notice, she was not surprised at all and congratulated me.

Here’s what didn’t happen next. She knew she was leaving the last day of January. She did not attempt to hire anyone to work in my stead. She left knowing that I was leaving, and there would be no-one and nothing to replace me.

At this point I had two options: be completely fucked off for the staff I was leaving behind and rant and rave about getting someone in to replace me, or simply leave it for someone else to deal with. After all, I was leaving for precisely this reason; things get left for others to sort out, and I was done with being that person who made it their business to sort this shit out, sheerly because no-one knew enough to be able to do it or no-one knew enough to realise it was necessary.

I should also tell you at this point that I was shouted down (literally shouted down, in an office full of my co-workers) by my boss for providing help. I was told to ‘stop interfering’ and it would get done. 1, this made me lose all respect for the person doing the unprofessional and frankly quite childish shouting, and 2, made me change the criteria I use for choosing my battles. Priorities shifted, things were clarified for me, and I decided there and then that nothing could save this company from going to Tartarus in a speeding chariot and it was literally not my job to care.

So I worked my notice. I did everything I was asked to do and more. The staff bought me very generous gifts, considering it would have been them contributing to and making the gifts and leaving card happen. Everyone congratulated me, wished me luck, had kind words to say as I exited the building for the last time. And for the first time in a long time, I felt optimistic.

I start my new job on Monday. Whatever happens and however weird it feels to be working somewhere new, I’m trying to prepare myself by breaking the last mindset of the last two years. STOP thinking ‘do you really expect this place to do anything right?’. STOP thinking ‘why did I think this would work?’. STOP thinking ‘it’s only eight p.m. so I’m not technically staying late anyway’. It’s all behind me, all done, all over with. I won’t have to pay for parking any more. I won’t have to be there until stupid o’clock to get things done. I won’t be having to fix other people’s monumental fuck-ups and make reparation to government departments or offices. It’s all new, all fresh, and it actually feels good to be so optimistic.


Of course, over the next few months as I get used to the job, this will all change. I’ll get to know all of the new company’s shortfalls, all their problems, all their cons. But I’m confident (says 39 year-old me) that I’ve seen how bad things could be, and I’ve come through that ok. The actual worst that could happen now is the company being perfect and going out out business three months from now. Seriously - everything else has happened to me in my work life, and I’m ready for it. I’m just not ready for it to be a good place to work. But that’s something I can happily adjust to.

For now, I’m just going to enjoy the fact that I have something new to work on. It’s going to change my whole life, in terms of how much free time I have, and how much I don’t have to worry about things, and the extra money I’ll have to pay off credit cards etc. due to the modern going-rate they pay instead of the adjusted pounds, shillings and pence I was getting up until yesterday.

It’s a new day, people. You thought Mulder getting his groove back because he shook a lizard man’s hand was uplifting? It’s got nothing on my enthusiasm for getting stuck into a new job on Monday. Nothing.