Moving On, 2020

Yep, I’ve moved again. Yesterday, in fact. From an end-of-terrace house to a second-floor flat.

It’s ace. It’s a long, wide studio flat with two massive skylights and three large windows which means you get sun all day from varying angles - and sun means WARM. Honestly, the carpet is trying to radiate its own heat from the sun patches that move across the floor. It’s fantastic. I know it’s June but when it’s only 15 degrees outside you need all the direct sunshine you can get. On top of the heat there’s that fact that the bathroom as big as my old bedroom (which was big, by the way).

I don’t know the neighbourhood other than ‘it’s good’ (my work colleagues were happy with the location, and they’ve lived locally for over twenty years). However, what I have noticed is the high, nay excessive, number of carry-outs and off-licences. Add to that a very large famous supermarket brand being five minutes’ walk away and I’m pretty happy with it. Oh, and did I mention, it’s a five-minute drive from work. Yes, I know that means I can walk it. I haven’t got round to checking a walking route yet, give me chance.

Sunday was a slog, I’m not going to lie. Half the day packing up my life was torture - I hate packing anyway, and this was pretty much 90% of what I own. The other 10% is about to go to a charity shop, so more than one good thing has come of it all. The removals people turned up on time Monday, they were fast, friendly and cheerful, and my stuff was loaded up in less than half an hour. We hit the road and barely three hours after they’d first arrived, they were off again. I was left staring round at a mish-mash of boxes and disassembled furniture, wondering where to start.

As with all moves, I went with priorities. The bed was assembled first, then the bookcases. The rest of it was literally unpacking stuff and emptying the total of nine boxes (yes, I fitted my entire life apart from furniture into nine cardboard boxes).

And so here we are, having moved in yesterday. Pictures have been hung, TVs and all things entertainment have been set back up, temporary work-from-home stations are sorted again and all kitchen items stored or ready to use.

Now the easy part is done, it’s time for the difficult bits. As soon as I got the keys on Friday I went about changing my address with every company that needed it. Seeing as I’m about 90% paperless, this was a formality. However it has to be done. Then I went to the BBC TV licensing page and declared I do not have the ability to watch live BBC shows on telly and therefore will not be paying a licence fee. Done.

Broadband is ordered, but due to BT being arseholes, their OpenReach will not be performing my installation on behalf of my provider for another fourteen days, because they prioritise their own BT customers first. Fair enough, you might say - but wait. The only people who can physically do installations to any lines is BT OpenReach, so not at all fair, and in fact the definition of ‘monopoly’. Someone should really complain about that. Oh wait - EE, Virgin, and everyone else already have. We’ll wait and see if that means that OpenReach is forced to splinter from BT and become independent in the installation stakes, I suppose. Don’t hold your breath.

Utilities. Fighting to get my name on the utilities bills has been really draining. Sent round and round websites because they can’t man the phones due to coronavirus, trying apps that demand a customer or account number (which I don’t have), trying to open an account and being told there’s no-one to answer the phone and to use the app which tells you to cal - it’s doing my head in. Finally I realised that all I had to do was use the contact form and use the option ‘cannot pay my bill’. It didn’t ask why, after all, it was just an option. Well I can’t physically pay my bill because they don’t know to send me one, so yeah, I can’t pay my bill. I’ve already had an acknowledgement email from each utility asking me to bear with them and they’ll get in touch shortly, so I guess I got their attention.

Been to the Chinese supermarket and done a Big Shop (including a new wok that I’ll be seasoning this very afternoon) and even got a supermarket delivery booked for tomorrow night. I guess they want more deliveries than they do people in store, so hey, it’s all good.

May take a walk around the neighbourhood later just to see what’s what, and also check out where the nearest bottle shops are. It pays to know their opening times for when the supermarket has a queue due to social distancing.

And that’s pretty much all there is. One day when I look back at June 2020, this post will be in the list, and that’s a good thing.

Soopytwist.

Image by Bob Hopley from Pixabay

Meet-ups

I moved to Manchester a little over a year ago. All my friends are in the South or in other countries. This can make you feel somewhat frustrated; you want to go do that thing you like but the people who would have gone with you are not here. Logical choice, then: go on your own or find other people to go with.

I’ve been going on my own for a year. It’s comfortable, and nice, and agreeable to be able to do what you want when you want without constraints. But, as any writer or reader will tell you, conflict causes plot. Without conflict you have no story.

I joined a meet-up app. It lists tonnes and tonnes of interest groups you can join - crocheting, hiking, learning another language, brunch for chats and bants, movies - anything where you need more than one person to make it a thing.

Anyone who knows me also knows that as an INTJ I don’t choose to mix with people because they are People©, and I don’t like People©. Like K says, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it”. However, when you aren’t beholden to anyone else, you can choose to go see a movie but when you wake up and it’s cold outside, you choose to sack it off as a bad job because, well, you can.

I’m also not good at plans. I mean, I can make plans and I can stick to them, but only when it’s at work or with someone else involved - because if there’s one thing I try to achieve it’s to do what I say I will. If I tell you a project will be ready for Friday, then it’ll be ready for Friday. If I tell you I’ll sort something by 4pm, then I’ll sort it by 4pm. However, when I tell myself I’m going to watch a movie on Saturday, I get to that point 2 hours before it starts, check the bus timetable, and then decide I can’t be arsed. I back out. Because at that moment when I made the plan, I believed I was going to follow it through. But now I’m bored and restless, now I can’t make myself do it.

I joined the app. I found a movie club. I like movies a lot and it’s my escape, so why not? However, every movie that has come up as a group + social meet-up afterwards has been a film I’ve either already seen or have no wish to see. Cinema tickets are relatively cheap in the city centre (£5 at the Vue, Printworks, or £6 at Odeon Great Northern, compared to my old Cineworld Poole of £10.95) so I can get an all-day bus ticket and a film for the same price as a cinema ticket where I used to live. Down there I had a Cineworld Unlimited card, so for about £17.50 a month I could see a boundless amount of movies. I only had to watch 2 a month and I’d saved money. However up here, when the tickets are £5-£6, there’s no point getting an Odeon card for £20 a month - and especially as half the time the foreign language films I want are only on at the Vue, not Odeon anyway.

I digress.

I joined the app and finally, yesterday, I made myself go to one. We saw Knives Out, the Rian Johnson comedy whodunnit, which wasn’t really a comedy and not actually a whodunnit - review in another post. Afterwards we went to the official rendez-vous bar; the organiser reserves tables for us and we pile in and drink, dissect the movie or just get pie and chat about other things entirely.

As a format, it’s a great concept. It’s like renting friends for the night - and then when you find the same people turn up to each movie, they aren’t rent-a-friends but actual movie going friends. And eventually, you’ve accomplished things to solve the problem you first started out with: you now have friends you can call to see films or do something else related, and you still get to see films and talk about them with people who share your want to do so.

That was my first meet-up and I’m calling it a success. While it was brass monkey weather outside, and the bus ride home gave me shoulder/neck problems because I hunched into my three layers plus a weather-proof jacket and scarf, the day was a success and I find myself actually looking forward to the next one. It’s probably next Saturday, so it’s all good.

And that’s all the news that’s fit to print. Now to do all the usual Sunday things like cleaning, the washing and making work dinners for the coming week.

Peach and lube, people. Peach and lube.

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.

Wait for the wheel

This blog goes round in circles. I don’t mean literally; that would be ridiculous. No, this blog swings between packed-with-reviews to cowboy-movie-tumbleweeds seemingly in perpetuity. At the moment it’s tumbleweeds; I can’t get anything written because there’s one massive thing blocking out everything else. It’s like a lunar eclipse, with my hopes of getting any other subject down on virtual paper playing the part of the sun.

However, in the wise words of Zhaan, we must wait for the wheel. At the moment all I can see is the moon right in the way of the sun I want, but eclipses can’t last forever and at some point the moon has to shift. One day I will get to see what’s behind it, but at the moment it’s a constant annoyance.

A while ago I lived in Hong Kong and for the final 2 years I was in a state of constant anger. It bubbled under the surface, so that as I walked around the streets I could feel I was hoping someone would give me an excuse to smack them or at least lay into them verbally. I needed a release of anger, a cloudburst every so often, to keep it in check. This blog was my outlet.

I did move away from HK and back to the UK. After a few months I realised the anger was gone. Everything was as it had been a few years before, when I was a much more level-headed person and emotions were thankfully relegated to mostly subtle bemusement at the world.

I’ve been back 5 years now. And up until a few months ago, everything was pretty copacetic.

Well I say everything. What I mean was the important things - my home life, my friends, the availability of things I wanted or needed. My job was ok but nothing to write home about. However it afforded me a car, a flat, and means to go out if I chose. The flat wasn’t in the best of areas as I couldn’t walk down to a watering hole for free, but it wasn’t too far from other things I needed and in fact a 10-screen cinema was 10 minutes walk away (hence the constant movie reviews here).

And then my company made my role redundant. The company was bought and head office already had a perfectly good payroll department for all of their acquired companies. My role was obsolete and I was fine with that; it was a unique role within the company so when I chose not to take any of the other open roles (none of which had any relation to payroll or my qualifications), I got the usual statutory redundancy settlement. I felt it was time to move on, time to find something new.

And so I moved 220 miles up the country to where I had begun. As a person, I mean. My family moved out of Manchester long before I started school and barely spent any time there when I was growing up. I mean, we had the usual summer holiday jaunts to see relatives etc. and to shop, but that was it.

I now share a house within the Greater Manchester area and that is the current cause of the rising tide of anger once again. Like the same wheel that sees this blog oscillate between loved and lost, I’m nearing the same state of repressed anger that I experienced toward the end of my HK tenure. A home is a place you should feel comfortable in, where you can relax and be yourself. I cannot do that here and I doubt I ever will. As it turns out, this is the first housemate I’ve shared with whom I just don’t gel with and can’t seem to make myself gel with.

The logical half of me knows that only half of this is my fault. However, half a solution is not a solution by definition, so the obvious choice it to leave. This means I have to wait until I have the requisite amount of time served under this landlord so that I have the right references to be able to move.

This time next year I look forward to having a place to myself. It’ll be closer to work as well and I’m really enjoying it there; they have plans for me and I have plans for them, so it’s all good.

I knew I could never rent a place here without sharing this time round - I was between jobs (even though I had a contract for my new job as well as the copy of the redundancy statement proving I could support myself completely for 3 months) and between addresses, so basically I was a legal leper until I was established on the electoral roll and utilities etc.

Incidentally, the person who was paid by us to change all these details for us actually did cock-all, so it was a good job I went to the government website and updated my own electoral roll details.

It’s a waiting game, I realise that. It doesn’t help that I have a holiday to HK coming up and I know for 6 months after I get back I’ll be missing the place more than I did the last time I visited. It still feels like where I was happiest, and I still miss it every day. Manchester is a pretty good substitute for now, but at some point I will decide it’s time to move on again, simply because it’s not HK. I don’t know how many times I will go through this cycle until I realise I should just go back to HK, but I already know I can’t get back in through visa channels as they actively keep people like me out.

And so it goes.

“You people are so tiny. And petty.”

Couldn’t resist a Thor quote, there. Well strictly speaking it’s from The Avengers, but Thor said it so whatever. And it sums up what I've been thinking about the last place I lived, so it's all good.

I’ve moved. I know I’ve mentioned it a few times, but I now live in the Republic of Mancunia and I’m slowly getting used to things. I shall expound upon these things thus:

Artics - them great huge things as haul all your shit up and down the motorways? They’re called wagons.

Tea - as in, do you want a cup of one - are now exclusively referred to as ‘a brew’ at all times, not just when you’re tired or hung over.

Big light - as in the ceiling light in the room - is still called the Big Light. I’m thanking my grandparents for calling it that early on in my childhood.

“Are you right?” - I am now fully justified in saying this, as it’s how it’s said up here. Because that’s normal, so everyone who’s been telling me it’s been wrong for the past decade or so that I can remember is actually and in every way wrong. So there.

The drive to work - now only 30 mins, not 60, and actually it’s easier when your part of the M60 is the bit other people don’t know exists. Love you, junctions 22 to 24.

However, that being said, some people use the motorway like it’s a tiny A road through the arse end of nowhere and that’s just dangerous. Please start doing more than 45 mph in the (otherwise empty) inside lane, fuckwits.

The people at work - capable of higher awareness yet tempered with a kindness for absolute strangers that is both baffling and a wonderful thing. I’m almost beginning to see what the Doctor sees in humans. Almost. I mean, they put on a buffet with a superlatively broad array of choices to cater for people with religious or biological food needs without thinking twice - that is so hard to get across to most people, but near a city it’s almost second-nature. It’s great.

At the same time they’re not just nice to your face then talking shit about you once you’re not in the room; if they have a problem they’ll tell you. They’ll just be careful how they say it. It’s refreshing.

It reminds me of why I wanted to move to be within city limits in the first place. I’m nowhere near the centre, but at least I’m within its range, so I still get the ripple effects without having to be in the expensive postcodes.

And on that note, I’m off to see what’s on the 2 cinemas near me this weekend.

Peach and lube, people - peach and bloody lube.

Moved - again

As of 12th November 2018, I no longer live in the south of England.

I'm in Manchester!

At some point I will start adding stuff here about living in one of the Bright Centres of the Universe.

For now though, peach and lube everyone - peach and frelling lube.