Long Passage

9/30/2002

Sixty-two Not Out : "What would you want to do that for, at your age?"
"I've never done it before."
"It's harder than it sounds..."
"Yeah well, so am I."
"It's the gas that gets you. Burping is your friend."
"I love burping."

This was the kind of dialogue that preceeded an attempt at the Centurion. A simple task really. Just drink a shot glass full of beer. Every minute. For 100 minutes. I honestly didn't think it was going to be very difficult. On the way over to the venue, after being out for a warm-up pint, I was stuck on the tube for about 40 minutes. And then it struck me. You don't really have much time to do things like empty your bladder, go to the fridge or move too much.

Five of us got settled down to the task, bin-liners ready. We'd heard projectile vomitting was quite likely, so it seemed sensible. It was around this time that I realised that all of the calculations I'd made about volumes of beer were out by a factor of two. It would be about six pints in the first hour. And as usual, I hadn't done any kind of training. Conversation in the 58 seconds between each glass of beer was limited. Like being a goldfish, you get distracted every minute, and start a new conversation, more than likely on the same topic after each gulp.

After ten minutes, things didn't seem too taxing. After about thirty minutes, people started to draw close to their bin-liners. The pressure of having about three pints in you starts to become overbearing. You start to curse your bladder for not keeping up with your throat. Burping at this stage was a high-risk affair, but when achieved, yielded applause and supportive cheers from the other contestants. After fifty shots, the group decided that it was actually quite an unpleasant activity, and thought that this was a reasonable time to declare, and quit, with a celebratory photograph.

But heck, if you can do fifty, you can squeeze in one more wafer thin shot. And sixty is also a reasonable number to stop at - after an hour of relentless drinking. Sixty three would be a bit too much though, so that's when I stopped. I figure you could do the 100, as long as you could do that thing. You know people who open their throats to drink pints fast? Well if you could do the same with your bladder, and somehow staple it open, you'd be laughing.

One last thing. Er. Carol, if you ever see the pictures, thanks for lending us your flat while you were away in Amsterdam. Er. Possibly without knowing that you had...
posted by Garreth at 5:36 AM

Work for a life not for a living : The first three weeks back at work are the worst? My arse - this is day 15.5 (I had to have a half day after day 14), and it still feels dreadful.
posted by Garreth at 2:54 AM

Never confuse a memo with reality : That is the title of a book I once hoped to live my life by. The theme of the book is that you should learn from the experiences of a high flyer, bypassing the mistakes of the uncogniscenti. Each page holds a large-fonted explanation of something vital to your success in 'business' or just 'office life'. Examples include:

Know the seating plan and etiquette before boarding the company jet
You'll never regret spending too much time with your children
Never eat garlic at lunchtime
Act as if someone is paying for every hour you spend at work. They are.
An ink pen will always leak. Especially on a plane
Coffee and pastry can count as a meal

I took a look at the book about four years ago. I looked at the seemingly irrelevant advice advice about doing the things that I thought I wanted to do well, and interpreted it. (I still haven't been on a company jet). It was about the time that we started recruiting Australians at work. "Coffee and donuts is a meal" became "Beer and peanuts is a meal". And the wierd thing is, there always tended to be a kind of pub in which beer and peanuts would feature. The kind of pub you wouldn't intend to spend any time at all in. The kind of pub which relies on 'geographical trade'. "I need to get a train from this place. I have 15 minutes, perhaps I will have a quick pint with my Australian friends", always turned into, "Perhaps I should have some peanuts as the pub is still open." An open pub to an Australian is akin to a red flag to a bull, and at that point you would realise that peanuts and perhaps a late night kebab would form your sustenance until the morn.

I went to one of those 'station bars' today. A weird thing happened when I left the 'station pub'. For various reasons related to Midland Mainline, and late trains, I had to leave the pub twice. Both times, I left with the taste of Stella in my rushed-pint-the-train-is-leaving gullet. But also the taste of peanuts. Maybe they just put peanuts in the beer in station pubs, for this was the taste of peanuts I had not eaten. Figuring I might as well get hung for a sheep as lamb, I considered getting peanuts anyway. Maybe the 'station pub' was in it with the snack trolley on the train. The pub sells you the idea of peanuts, and the train's snack trolley closes the sale.

posted by Garreth at 2:35 AM

9/27/2002

Unite Against A Common Enemy : I lived and worked with a bunch of conservationists, marine conservationsists at that, for about three months this year. We lived in a large wooden long house on stilts on a sheltered bay of the tiny Malaysian island of Balak. During our project, we were trying to avoid the destruction of the local reef ecosystem, through measurement and monitoring of fish, algae, coral, invertebrate life around our island. Cynical punters think it was an excuse to live on a beach, on a tropical island, and be taught how to dive.

There were a host of animals on our island, some of them wild, some of them semi-domesticated. Our island was poorly provisioned for the protein loving carnivore, due to the lack of refridgeration facilities. This meant that meat came twice a week if we were lucky, and the rest of the time, we were taunted by succulent wild boar, who gorged themselves on our leftover vegetables in a biodegradation pit.

Why did the boar taunt and tease us? Because they were safe. Safe from the trip wires, snare wires, elaborate traps and sharpened stick devices that we, the carnivores, devised. Even though wild and unwise boar do not look for danger above them, and that a man hiding up a tree with a big sharpened log was sure to be able to get himself some pork for the barbecue, our porcine tormentors were safe. Why were they safe? Becauase one of the few rules on the island was that "Thou shalt not kill the animals unless in self defence. Not even if you're peckish."

A fair amount of time was devoted to trying to provoke the boar into launching a full scale attack on our chickens so that we could fall upon them with parangs and garrotting wire, purely in self-defence, like a bunch of famished whirling dervishes, but the boar were having none of it.

While we were diving, we were advised not to kill too much of the wildlife too, some sort of unwritten law of conservation. Standing on coral was frowned upon, talking about catching fish for supper wasn't really the done thing. The only person outside of the law was a local fisheries law enforcer who took time out from his normal job of tooling about in a boat, threatening to shoot the fishermen, so that he could learn to dive and appreciate the damage to the reef that the local fishermen were perpetrating with their destructive fishing techniques. Destructive not just in terms of killing the little baby fish before they've grown up and begat more fishes, but destructive as in - using dynamite to blow the living bejesus out of them.

For Jamal, the fisheries officer, the challenge was not just to learn how to dive and to protect the seas. His challenge was to leave the fisheries department and become a well paid dive instructor. Smart fellow. Jamal was the only person exempt from the unwritten rule of conservation. I think we used some kind of 'cultural differences' argument, which meant that we didn't have to tell him that he shouldn't really bring back rare shellfish from his dives and cook them. And we never really got it through to him that standing on fragile coral wasn't a great idea to save the effort of treading water.

There was only one other anomaly to the righteous conservation rule (unless you count trees, and then only some trees, which just look at you funny, and deserve to be chopped down and burnt). That was jellyfish. For the unlucky jellyfish, there was no Geneva convention in place. Death and torture by any means possible were positively encouraged. This was war. We were briefed on effective ways to kill them before we even reached the island. The little blobs staged a Pearl Harbour style attack on Joe before he'd even got off the mainland, necessitating a hospital visit and a fair few drugs and injections.

With grim resolve we made our way to the island, vowing that they would pay for this unprovoked injustice. And laughing at Joe. Day One on the island. The first swim - Mike and Joe find a sizeable box jellyfish, in the midst of a stealth approach to our house. The box jelly is kind of vicious - its long tentacles can easily wrap around your arms, face, or as Erika discovered, ankle, and make themselves impossible to remove without inflecting a vicious, incapacitating sting. The other trick they have is shedding their still active tentacles in the water when you launch a counter attack. The detached tentacles are hard to see, and leave the sea a dangerous place to be.

The first retaliation occured, and Mike and Joe dragged the advanced spotter jelly from the sea, foiling its reconnaisance mission. It fried on the beach in the tropical heat, a grisly death. We never figured out how to mount their heads on underwater sticks as a sign to other jellyfish. Now some people say that the jellyfish is just a victim of the tide, and gets swept into bays like ours by tides and the wind. That's what Jellyfish High Command wants you to think. Don't believe the propoganda. They knew where we were, and staged offensives. But they also had civilians, and we were capable of collateral damage...

Over the following weeks, we were harrassed by more lone strikers - the kamikaze box jellies that would swim from miles around to sting us. We were taking hits, getting disheartened. Being chased right back onto the land by the fear these attacks created. On the occasional dive, we would see huge mother jellyfish, several feet wide. The deathjelly, whose destructive sting power had never been measured. But we carried on our tactics, with a special force of seek-and-destroy jelly fryers.

Rich was the leader in these missions - "Trudi's been stung (again)", "Where?", "In front of the dive shack! About five metres out." "How many, how long ago?", "Solo jellyfish, six inches across, maybe three minutes." In he'd go, plucking the jellyfish out by its non-stinging head, and dragging it carefully to a parched, dehydrated death on the sand. Maybe close-by jellyfish could hear their comrades screams, we couldn't be sure.

Rich took to collecting jellyfish babies. Civilians in the war, in that they were too small to sting. He'd take them back into the lab and torture them. Electricity was one of his favourite persuaders. As far as I know, none of them ever talked though.

Other times, we'd find unarmed civilian 'moon' jellyfish with no stingers. An endearing memory is surfacing from the depths to see Mike and Joe wearing their masks, facing each other separated by about three metres. They had captured and 'innocent' jellyfish and were taking it in turns to throw it at the mask of the other as hard as they could. Quite what a flying jellyfish looks like as it impacts the faceplate of your snorkel mask is still a mystery to me, but they seemed to be enjoying it. Some jellyfish would disintegrate with this kind of punishment, but the good old moon jellyfish could be hoofed around for ages.

The jellyfish actually staged an invasion of our bay at one point, but their seige strategy was flawed. We had boats, with big food blenders at the back to reduce them to pulp.

So when someone said, there's a lake full of jellyfish in Indonesia, it made sense to take the war to them. For a variety of reasons, including being arrested and missing my chums, I ended up going to the Jellyfish lake at Kakaban, the spiritual home of jellyfish, alone. But they didn't stand a chance. The only reason that there are still jellyfish in the South China Sea, after I beat up on their breeding centre, is some trick of biology whereby you get twice as many live jellyfish if you cut one in half.

posted by Garreth at 4:36 AM

"Friday", Wrote Mr. Kipling : Has anyone ever noticed that lager doesn't actually taste very nice? I had a few pints of Stella, and it wasn't very nice. When people first try lager as a kid, they think, "Hmm, that's foul, but all the bigger boys drink it, so I must persevere." It's still rank, little boys. And Becks is even worse. I'm all for vodka soaked tampons myself...
posted by Garreth at 4:16 AM

9/25/2002

Food, glorious food : I worked with a bloke called Scott. He is very good at eating things. At lunchtimes, which were in a container handling port in Oakland, we would watch him eat enormous burritos from the greasy Mexican Roach coach outside (with fries of course). He was a monster. Turns out he writes about it too....
posted by Garreth at 6:45 AM

9/23/2002

Train Easy, Fight Hard : Did my training pay off for the Nike 'Fun' Run on Sunday? Well, a grand total of four practice runs amounting to about 18km in total was the preparation for the 10km jaunt. A juant with bitchin steep hills, and red-faced human litter spread over the track. Saturday saw two visits to the chip shop, and a fair few pints of strong continental lager, followed by a late night to prepare for an early Sunday morning start. Fine warm-up indeed.

Arriving at Richmond station an hour before kick off was a mistake. A nice man in a RunLondon tunic advised the torrent of arriving passengers that the queue for the free shuttle buses started just outside. The looks of confusion on the face of the newly arrived athletes soon turned to dismay when they had figured out that the end of the queue, which was hard to pinpoint initially, was quite close to them. The start of the queue was about a mile away. There were no buses in sight. Not to worry, the race start line was only 40 minutes walk away, so people set off at pace, not wanting to miss the race start.

The race started around an hour late. It seems Nike can't organise a fart in a cabbage factory, so I wouldn't be surprised if Nike sweatshops were actually being robbed blind by the child labour they reportedly don't employ. And Nike don't even know how to make running shirts, despite offering to do so for the 20,000 runners in the race, emblazening each yellow plastic t-shirt with a race number on a panel at the front. I hadn't figured this out at the start of the run though, so when I saw a sign that said "Wave If You Don't Support Child Labour," I waved and cheerfully exclaimed that at least the children made good t-shirts. It wasn't until the end of the slog, when people were dribbling over the finish line with blood spurting out of the holes where their nipples used to be, that I began to question the wisdom of putting square panels on the front of the t-shirts. The top corners of the thickened, hard panel were inconveniently placed at nipple height. Ouch.

In about an hour, I tried to charge across the line, with jelly-like legs and measle like nipples. Allegedly, I am in the "I did it because you did it" Nike poster, plastered in such fine places as the (Free) Metro newspaper, next to my good buddy Raz. He's to the right, above the last letter 'T'. Fame at last.

posted by Garreth at 5:07 AM

9/22/2002

Celebrity Lookalikes : The list goes on:

Paul Bearer father of Kane, from the WWF
Conan The Barbarian
Brian Ferry
One of those blokes out of Duran Duran who isn't Simon Le Bon
Most of the Human League
Oooh, Suits You Sir characters
Dennis Pennis

Keep your entries pouring in. No really.
posted by Garreth at 9:30 AM

9/18/2002

Howling mad Shaolins : The Shaolin Monk Wheel of Life is a fantastic piece of theatre in which bald nutters of all ages somersault from one side of the stage to the other while their friends poke swords and staffs at them. They tell a great historical tale, which fortuitously for the punters at the Peacock theatre, involves much fighting and flipping about, shows of strength, and the refusal to let the odd throat be pierced by pointy spears which are thrust at them. The lucky audience sees battle after battle, and judging by the sage commentary provided in the stairways during the interval, is mostly made up of martial arts nutters -"Having done Tai Kwan Do for several years, I would like to have seen more breaking stuff."

It wasn't the martial artists who were unimpressed though - it was the movie-going public. "It's not as good as the Matrix," quips one punter, while another complains that they weren't close enough to hitting each other, there was no blood, and no-one flew for an extended period of time. It would be easy to be impressed, you'd think, when a small boy does a series of tumbles, backflip after backflip after backflip. But without using his hands to land on, and launch himself into the next one. He actually landed on his head, and used that to flip himself over. There's just no impressing some people.
posted by Garreth at 12:49 PM

An ass like a ten-year old boy's : In the 80s and early 90s, as a boy, it was important to remember quotes from films. It started off with Arnie films, Aliens that kind of thing, but eventually it moved on to any film. There was some pride in being able to conjure up a relevant quote that a muscle bound 'actor' had once uttered, and inject it into pub time conversation. If possible, while drinking 5 pints in under twenty minutes without urinating and or vomiting, depending on the particular rules you believed in. Which is why I remember a certain quote "she had an ass like a ten-year old boys", and actually found myself thinking it, if not saying it, this morning.

But it was my ass that was like a ten-year old boys, and for all the wrong reasons. After trying to run again, with hamstrings which feel like someone has removed a section from them, and is holding the tattered threads together with a g-clamp, I am once more in agony. I used to be able to touch my toes with my legs straight, and not just in the showers of the YMCA. This morning I was lucky to be able to bend down so as to be able to touch my knees. Excrutiating pain was eminating from my butt when I reached any further. I at once attributed this to the mysterious hamstring clamper, who has obviously visited in the night.

Not content to cut sections from my hamstrings, this evil-doer has obviously gone one step further. This time, he's cut off all of the muscles that make up my glutimus maximus, and replaced them with a much smaller set from a ten-year old boy, making it impossible to bend or stretch my legs. I managed to limp about 3km today - a long way off the total 10km which is waiting for me in just over three days time. Bugger.
posted by Garreth at 12:36 PM

9/17/2002

It's Different Back at Work : Staying awake all day? Blimey, that's a challenge. I did so well last week - my first week at work for six months - that I had to fall asleep during Rachel's birthday party on Saturday. Half way through a walk around the Tate modern, with particular emphasis on nekked people and the upside-down piano, I suddenly decided I couldn't hack it any more. I managed to get a bit of kip on the lawn outside for a while, but it soon got too cold. But I couldn't quite manage to fall asleep when I went back inside the Tate Modern, and ousted a small child from the comfy seats on level three. It wasn't until many more bottles of red wine that I managed to get my second wind, and that only lasted until about 1am. I think I appreciate sleep more now. Maybe that's the secret to being relaxed - lots of sleep.

They say the first three weeks back are the worst...
posted by Garreth at 9:52 AM

Oooh Me Hammies : Foolishly, I agreed to do a 10k 'fun' run a few months ago, leaving three weeks between my return to the UK and the date of the race. I felt sure that this was what was needed to get back into shape after several months of absorbing food and booze, while essentially sitting on my arse doing nothing. "Just the kind of incentive I need," I thought. I noticed at the time that the training schedules suggested a six week plan, but thought nothing of trying to squeeze six weeks into four.
But it was only three days ago when I actually managed to start the training. I have four days until the race. It's not until I typed this that I realised that I had jumped into day one of week five's schedule. I just looked at the schedule again. If I skip out all the days that say "Rest" (Why would I want to rest, I thought this was all about getting fitter), and I skip the sessions that say "easy" or "walk" anywhere in the title, I should be on target to complete my training about three days after the race. Sorry 'Run'. You can't say 'Race', as it's all about doing it at your own pace.

As long as my legs get better. For some reason, I can no longer straighten either of my legs, and I have a throbbing pain in at least one of my hamstrings at any one time. So much so, that I couldn't do any running at all today. Maybe that's why they put "Rest" in the schedule, so that you can stay away from public places and scream in agony all day in the privacy of your own home. Ow.
posted by Garreth at 6:52 AM

9/16/2002

Baby Photos : Yes! I have approached the information age, and joined the buzz of the 90s. I have posted some photos on the internet - blimey.
posted by Garreth at 6:33 AM

Bar Staff : Yeesh. We had to teach a barman how to make a B52 on Saturday.
posted by Garreth at 4:36 AM

9/12/2002

Simple Differences Being Back : Top of mind simplistic differences that form part of reverse culture shock:

wearing underwear
wearing shoes with closed toes
having to pay much more for things than they're worth
not being targetted by salesmen because you're caucasian
insidious second hand car salesmen smarming at you
pints of strong continental lager
the weather being pants
talking about the weather being pants and complaining about everything in general
the food is different, but not all good, or cheap
worrying about not having been paid in six months
talking about the cost of everything to people who aren't remotely interested

posted by Garreth at 11:46 AM

It's Different Back at Work : The hardest questions I've been asked since I got back are things like: "Where's the money I leant you?", and "What was the highlight of your trip?". Sometimes the last question has just been shortened by some of my time strapped colleagues to, "Highlights?" It's hard to say really, not least because I don't consciously measure how much I was enjoying something relative to something else. But more than that, the whole point of going away on sabbatical was to do something quite different to what I was doing when I left. So one highlight might be the day I left work, and the feeling of joy, relief and release I experienced. Another highlight might be the fact that heaps of people from work came to buy me more drinks than I knew what to do with at the worst pub in Hammersmith when I left work.

But more than these things, the highlight was the whole trip. Sure, I did some things that were more fun than others, but they were all highlights, compared to what I do in an office from x to y every weekday, and some weekends. But people don't want to hear that, especially if they've been sitting in an office from x to y every weekday, and some weekends, while I've been mutilating forests and waking up next to piles of vomit and people on strange beaches.

What takes getting used to then, is that after seeing people you haven't seen for 6 months, and perhaps catching up, you just return to the desk, and sit working for hours. And everything seems strangely normal, and familiar. Not that much has changed in some ways, and the worst part is that you fear that you might not have changed either. All those different experiences might have been for nought. You find yourself having to make the same kinds of decisions that you used to, worrying about the same petty things you used to. It's a conscious, and challenging effort to try to think about what you're doing, and avoid falling into the same routines, and to put into practice some of the plans and ideas you had while away.

I'm not planning on going out tonight. Maybe I'll take the opportunity to learn a foreign language and bake some more bread.
posted by Garreth at 11:26 AM

I Don't Belieeeeve It : Apparently, some muppets are trying to get people to abandon the internet for a day next year. It's probably got as much chance of working as "National Chips Day" or "International No-Smoking Day". Some of the waffle on the promotional site really made me laugh:
"But it's so easy nowadays to get addicted to a half life in a virtual world, and to lose touch with your family, friends and neighbours."
Have you met my neighbours? Half of them sell crack to the youth of Shepherd's Bush, the others are running around outside trying to mug people to get more crack. Why don't we have a Legalise Crack Day? What about a Mugging-Free Day?

It goes on: "Yet we're creatures evolved from a tribal past". Eggsackerlee. Evolved. Except for those tree-huggers who play bongos feverishly in Golden Gate park, most of us have evolved. Except at full moon parties, I don't run around semi-naked covered in paint either, so why should I speak to my crack-dealing neighbours?
posted by Garreth at 11:03 AM

It's Different Back Home : The thing about getting lashed on your travels, is that the biggest challenge for the day after a big night out might be getting out of bed. Often it doesn't matter if you don't even manage that, but occasionally, you might have to get out of bed, of all the crazy ideas, by a certain time - perhaps to catch a plane / train / bus. Being a consultant in the UK is somewhat different.

Last night, for example, was an excellent opportunity to catch up with a few chums, and sample a few pints of Strong Continental. There were a few complications in the journey home, involving a bicycle that had difficulty with travelling in straight lines, and several large roads clogged with football supporters. After negotiating these moving, blurred obstacles, ironing had to take place. The results of the drunk bloke getting reacquainted with a shirt and an ironing board were mocked by casual onlookers, the man with the iron a source of derision.

Waking up early the today was little better, but the autopilot took over. Autopilot figured that turning up and catching a car at 8am travelling out to a client was enough. But then the reality of consulting took over, and people expected me to have sensible ideas and not be hungover, and look presentable. All things that aren't really weapons in the tourist armoury.

Sharpening up by around midday, something strange presented itself - there was a giant sundial by the cafe where we had our lunch. But the dial was an hour wrong. So the designers must have figured that it was best to keep it in track with GMT, not British Summer Time. Which means it'll show the right time in the winter when it's cloudy and impossible to read. Nice. Perhaps the sundial designer had just returned from their travels too.
posted by Garreth at 9:07 AM

9/11/2002

Sticks and Stones and the Singapore Haircut : Singapore saw a haircut transform me from Shaggy into ScrappyDoo.

In the last week, friends have been trying to settle on exactly who I look like these days. If you're going to play this guessing game, please make the effort to be original - these celebrities have all been suggested before:

Please be original...
posted by Garreth at 2:56 AM

Arggh : Terrorists have stolen the colour from yahoo.
posted by Garreth at 1:48 AM

Workin Nine to Five : It costs a few quid an hour to go to a naff internet cafe in a groovy town like Loughborough. Naff because they expect you to be able to predict how long you want to use the internet for ahead of time, and pay one and a half quid for every half hour you predict it wrongly. So in some ways, but really not all that many, you might be pleased to work at a company where you get a computer at your desk, connected to the internet all day, at no cost.

Personally, I was disappointed to get back to work, for a few reasons. Not least of all, I don't seem to be able to get time to use the internet or blog much. People keep asking me to do things, and ruin the otherwise harmonious combination of people to chat to, getting paid, and having a free computer. Arse.
posted by Garreth at 1:46 AM

9/09/2002

Back Home is Different : because you can't just sit in the back of taxis and yell instructions at the driver to 'rag it', and expect everyone else in the taxi not to look surprised. And if you think that your taxi is going to be late to miss the boat you're trying to catch, your speculations that there will be a flotilla of small boats driven by toothless old pirates willing to catch up your missed boat is likely to fall upon unreceptive ears.
posted by Garreth at 11:30 AM

Curry Worlds : London's Brick Lane saw an imaginatively titled festival yesterday - The Brick Lane Festival. The more unimaginative of you may have decided to kill two birds with one stone and taken in a few curried items in the curry cooking celebration, and then wandered on to the Body Worlds exhibition, also on Brick Lane. If you had tried to travel east on the tube, you may have been disappointed by crap delays on a crap system that is sticky, smelly, expensive, slow and generally unpleasant.

The unimaginative east end visitor would have been shocked to discover a queue for Body Worlds (where the queue is often zero minutes) was an afternoon wasting 1 hour 45 minutes, and that a bottle of vodka was the only way to pass the time and distance of the queue. The exhibition is of thinly sliced, or partially torn people, who have their juices replaced with plastic - all the better to be illuminated in displays for grossed-out people to gawk at. The audio guide inconspicuously changes from labelling the corpse something which once belonged to a 'body donor' to something which is now a 'specimen'. To be honest, you might find it hard to relate the perfect slices of constipated bowels and withered lung to anything vaguely human, to anything which was once alive. But it can be quite a giggle, and if you are at all curious about which parts of the body are located where, and what they look like if you are a 'consistent alcohol abuser', then this could be one of your finest days out.

I found out at Bosy Worlds that it isn't my liver which hurts every day I get up after a night of booze. I think it might be my appendix.
posted by Garreth at 11:25 AM

Schools In : When you return from a sabbatical to your job, think of a very long school holiday. Think of returning to school, but imagine that the school has no playtime, no breaktime, and they don't play sport for a few hours a week. Nor do you get to leave at 4pm. Returning to your office might be frighteningly the same - people you recognise working on projects you remember, people sitting in the same places, with the same posters on the wall. Be prepared for a shock, if you printed out lots of pictures and stuck them on the office walls eight months ago. They're probably still there.

The only other thing of note is that you start to feel tired at about 11am, and if you're not used to sitting in front of a computer and a phone for hours on end, staring out at the overcast grey sky of London might leave you wondering when you'll be back out with the sun and sea.
posted by Garreth at 11:09 AM

9/07/2002

Easy as ABC : The second helping of party fun was on a boat cruise along the Thames. In that very vessel, as I paraded about in a silk jacket, Martin Spellman informed me that I was got up like Martin Fry. He proceeded to explain that Martin Fry was the frontman from ABC, and though I'm partial to a spot of 80s music, I couldn't for the life of me remember what ABC had been up to 20 years ago. "You know, Look of Love!". "It's the look, it's the look, the look of love. Yeah, yeah, yeah". I could vaguely remember the chorus, and nodded enthusiastically.

It was a party, there was booze and dancing. And at one point as I was studiously avoiding having to dance by propping up the bar, something quite strange happened. I'm sure I'll have nightmares in years to come about being hemmed in by a circular fence of clapping people, looking at me expectantly. Spellman had thoughtfully asked the DJ to announce that I would be performing a virtuoso dance solo to ABC's 'The Look Of Love', a song to which I can vaguely remember the chorus on a good day. The dancefloor duly cleared, and I was dragged into the centre of the clapping masses to arhythmically twitch and prance for what seemed like ten minutes. Cheers Spellman.

It was ABC which led to my second injury that night, at the hands of Nurse Grady, more accurately her fingernails, which mysteriously gouged my eye during a section of high energy dancing during the next ABC 'hit'. I was just grateful that there were other people dancing too. Heck, I've got two eyes after all, and all my own teeth still.
posted by Garreth at 6:26 AM

Podium Finish : I infiltrated the netdecisions summer party in disguise. Well you'd think I did, given that people I've worked and played with for four years completely failed to recognise me when they were stood about ten feet away. They assumed that the grinning ginger guy with the silver medal round his neck was part of the crew for the afternoon's "It's A Knockout" competition. After a bit of gesticulation, they were forced to give me a second glance, and managed to penetrate my disguise. Apparently I look well, healthy, haired-up, relaxed. This implies that people who see me often at work must see me as miserable, ill and stressed.

The rota of questions that I would soon become very familiar with was unleashed. "When did you get back?", "Where did you go?", "Did you enjoy it?". When you're a live target on the entrepreneurial firing range in Thailand, where people try to flog you things you never knew you needed, you get used to answering the same questions over and over again - "Waa you flom?", "Har long you he-ah?", "Way-uh you staying?", "Wass your nem?". I was quite surprised not to find shops which print personalised messages on t-shirts you buy each day, so the fatigued tourist can just point at the required answers. Maybe in two or three languages. But it was kind of odd to experience the same thing in London.

The 2001 It's a Knockout Silver medal was introduced to the mighty team I joined. Jazz and the Five Dwarves was the team name, and our line up boasted a serious long-distance runner, Lucy, and Chris, an ex-rower who had twice competed in Goldie at the Oxford Cambridge boat race. With five teams, we felt confident that a podium finish was ours. The events were hilarious, with as much foam, water, and falling over as you'd expect. The last game was a riot - it involved negotiating an inflatable tunnel over a ten metre lubricated runway in a relay style. Scott perfected the nipple-perishing superman technique for launching yourself at full pace along the length of the wet tarpaulin, but I wasn't really up to it. I like my nipples too much.(well maybe not the left one). My first major injury of the day came with a failure to remember which way was 'right'. On exitting the inflatable tunnel, our team had agreed to pass each others' relentless headlong progress by veering to the right. Forgetting this as I hurtled headfirst off the runway resulted in a knee to my face that any Muay Thai exponent would be proud of.

But it's not the pain I remember, just the disappointment of yet another silver medal. Must train harder for next year.
posted by Garreth at 5:30 AM

9/06/2002

Reverse Culture Shock : Acording to this pamphlet about returning home after voluntary work, I may be about to experience 'reverse culture shock'. Sixty percent of returning volunteers feel disappointed, and fifty-eight percent had difficulty talking about their experiences on their return. When I talk to my family and friends, their expressions will glaze over, and they may ask apparently stupid questions and miss the point. Allegedly as they feel guilty about not volunteering themselves, or they can't relate to faraway experiences.

We'll see....
posted by Garreth at 5:12 AM

Singapore Barnet : I remember asking a colleague with an unusual hairstyle where he was butchered. "Singapore," he said, "they're all like that." So when I was in Singapore, the first thing I did, (apart from drinking tap water and watching wrestling) was to get a trim. This had to be an improvement on the horrific tangled mess that had been living on my head for 3 months in the sun and sea, on an island where I didn't have, or want, a mirror. The acid test was piloting the new hairstyle back to London, where the nicest adjective it has received so far is 'unusual'.
posted by Garreth at 4:51 AM

9/05/2002

What? Even More Juicy Posts? : Yes that's right folks. I love you all, and I know you love me. So I am committed to publishing even more great posts about Balak and about what a sabbatical does to your state of mindlessness. At no additional cost. Next week. Honest.

In next week's posts, expect even more information on how it feels to be back at work. How hard is it to integrate with strategy consultants? How is normal life after the initial rush of seeing all of your colleagues again? Will I be in the winning team of the netdecisions summer party ITs a Knock Out competition, after being cruelly cheated out of it in 2001? All this and more. And Nell McAndrew topless. Well maybe not, but I solemnly pledge not to talk about September 11th or Princess Diana.
posted by Garreth at 10:51 AM

I've got to ding a ling long my dang a long ling long : So here's the deal. I'm back in London. I've picked up my bicycle from the underground car park, where it had been sitting for the last 6 months. I felt a bit like Michael Caine, picking up my sports car from storage after getting out of jail. Except he didn't have flat tyres. Even worse than being back in Hammersmith, and sneaking into work unnoticed, is the fact that I am going back to work. I think I'll start back on Friday afternoon, as we're having our summer party. I'll be the one in the bad kung-fu movie costume.
posted by Garreth at 10:13 AM

9/04/2002

Sabatical Effects I : I've turned Radio 2. No-one is as surprised as I am. One afternoon, I took my car to the carwash. The next day I decided that I would actually wash and wax it myself as it gives a better shine. So I'm out on the drive, polishing my car. It would have been a Sunday afternoon, but now that I have been practising being retired for six months, every day is a Sunday. One long weekend in fact.

On top of car cleaning, I baked bread the other day. I'd used Delia's recipe for simple white bread, and made two loaf-shaped lumps which were vaguely edible. All of this was much to the amazement of my grandfather, who observed that two and a half grand spent on a marine conservation expedition had left me with some useful skills. While I was waiting for the bread to rise, I listened to a broadcast from the Royal British Radio Two. It talked about the cost of bread (some ten quid loaf they were talking about), the quality of flour, and the preparation time for a proper loaf. The fact that this was being broadcast while I was baking, left me thinking that life as a baking car washer was for me. I found the programme's message resonated with my life, and my approach to breadmaking. All hope is lost for me.
posted by Garreth at 3:42 AM

9/02/2002

Pavlov's Pork Pies : Eegads. There are adverts on the telly about secret pork pie eaters. It's not just me. They say your subconscious is very powerful, like a big ocean with tsunami sized waves crashing down onto your conscious mind. Maybe, maybe not. But I never thought I was a pork pie lover. But I'm going to visit my grandparents today, and I do have to drive past a Pork Farms factory / abatoir / pig processing plant. And I typically visit my grandparents for a meal, so I typically drive by the pig cemetery when I'm hungry.

Pork Farms aren't stupid, oh no. They don't want passers-by to notice the rancid stench of eviscerated hogs, and associate it with the eight foot high legend, 'Pork Farms'. So they vent the bakery section onto the A60, so you associate Pork Farms with fresh baking. According to Delia Smith, the smell of baking stuffs is enough to whisk you off to faraway lands, and sever your earthly links with your nasty bedsit in Archway. And this is the smell that I associate with Pork Farms Pork Pies. Which I scoff. That's my excuse.

posted by Garreth at 3:50 AM