Posted on 26/08/2007 by haonowshaokao

Prague isn’t next-door to Berlin, though it is a lot closer than Luxembourg. After a night in a fairly shitty hotel on an island in the Vltava I took another cheap bus the following afternoon and arrived just after sunset. I’d only been able to find one hostel with a bed free, and getting to it turned out to be more of a chore than I’d imagined. After two bus rides out of town, a brief search for the correct road and a five minute walk looking for number 56 I found that the last house was number 54 and the only thing past it this path (though at 11pm it was almost unlit and a lot less pleasant looking):

Another five minutes down the path in the dark and I found the hostel, got in contact with Amanda and Miriam, had a quick shower and headed out for the East. We met at a u-bahn station another couple of hours later. They were staying with some arty fashion people they’d found on craigslist. The one who came along with us was a 21-year-old french hairstylist. He looked a bit like a younger Timmy Mallett.

Actually he seemed pretty cool – he seems to be doing well for himself and works on the hair of a lot of cool Berlin types like Peaches. The night before Miriam had been hanging out with her. That night we walked to the front of a queue of at least 200 people and just strolled in. How it should be. The club was supposed to be mixed but turned out to be very gay indeed. Downstairs there was even a “dark room” which I didn’t really feel like checking out. Decent place though, and a good time had by all, etc. The two hours it took me to get back to the hostel were not particularly fun, though.
The next day we were all hungover. Most of the day I spent with Amanda, lounging around in cafes and then going on what turned out to be a futile mission to find Heidi, involving a tour of Berlin’s more well know train stations.

Eventually Heidi turned up at the flat, so we went there, took her to the cafe, and soon it was dark again. There was something else on and I could’ve gone out again that night but as I was leaving at 6.15 the next morning (and still not feeling great) I thought it better to give it up and try to get a little sleep – about three hours in the end.
Though I didn’t do a lot while I was there a trip to Berlin never seems like wasted time. Amanda and Miriam loved it so much that they are thinking seriously of moving there next year, and I can’t say I blame them. It just really does seem like the place to be – the clubs, the food, the people, the culture, the history, the prices; everything about it seems to be just ‘how things should be’. I’m sorry to say it, but Prague just looks a bit provincial and parochial in comparison.

Posted in diary | Tagged | Leave a comment

Be__lux

Posted on 25/08/2007 by haonowshaokao

On the Thursday I came within seconds of missing my bus to Belgium. There had been a delay on the tube and I’d lost track of time. Fortunately the bus driver wasn’t punctual either. The journey to Brussels was as dull as you would expect. I sat next to a Daily Mail reading woman and listened to the Blood Brothers.
Brussels seemed deserted when I arrived. Following the usual sketchy directions I eventually found the hostel, had a couple of cheap (and, naturally, amazing) Chimays and a half decent kip. Next morning it was drizzly and cold. After standard hostel-breakfast I had a look around the sights and found the place a great deal more seedy (and consequentially more interesting) than I’d expected.
After a kebab and a few bottles of fanta I caught an afternoon bus to Luxembourg, which meandered around the border for a few hours before dropping only me off. I’d come there to visit Jan, but after no e-mail replies and no number to call it looked as if I might have to give it up and stay in a hostel. After wandering around looking in vein for an internet cafe to check one more time I walked out of the pedestrianised centre towards the outskirts. Just when I’d decided to give up I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around to see Jan. He’d spotted me on his bus home from work, even more o a strange co-incidence considering I’d only been on a bus route for two minutes or so and that this was to be his last ever bus-ride home from work.
We spent the evening drinking high-quality Belgian beer with other Czechoslovaks, telling them our new anecdote. The following day Jan’s girlfriend Hanka showed me the few sights to be seen in the town before the rain forced us to hide in an English pub and drink a lot more Leffe, which made the trip to the supermarket much funnier.
On the Sunday Jan drove the three of us through southern Germany to Prague in his flashy new audi – a smooth, uneventful trip where all I did was snooze and eat half a kilo of grapes.

My street in Brussels

…and more photos under the cut…

Posted in diary | Tagged , | Leave a comment

England again

Posted on 09/08/2007 by haonowshaokao

In July I seemed to be on an adrenalin drip. If I wasn´t doing something constructive a feeling of itchy restlessness would seem to grasp me and so I got a lot done. As the month ended I promised to myself that I´d try to transfer this energy to my non work summer life, which had consisted mainly of lying down through June.
After the inevitable spirit sapping crash of my first day of freedom I sat down and wrote a list of everything I had left to do in September and it became clear that rest and recuperation was not going to be an option. The first priority was getting back to Prague, but before that I thought I should pay my dad a visit. I´ve figured a way of getting to his house in Herefordshire using four connecting buses or under ten pounds. itś a bit of a strain by normal standards, but after this last six months it feels like nothing.
The two days there were good, partially as they gave me the chance to wind down a little and catch up on some much needed sleep. The visit coincided with my stepmotherś birthday barbeque, which meant a fair amount of red meat and dad playing songs to an audience of village neigbours and work colleagues, followed by a day of watching DVDs on the sofa while my stepmother was sick with possible food poisoning.

Posted in diary | Tagged , | Leave a comment

July – the missing month.

Posted on 05/08/2007 by haonowshaokao

July was a bit hectic. If I’d had ten minutes to spare I would’ve written some description of what I was doing here, but ten minutes never came up. As it was I spent the entire month working for a summer school in Berkshire – teaching, supervising, running activities, making films, editing films, making the school website and the miriad other tasks that have left me, three days after the end of it all, still fairly shattered. Still, it was definitely the best teaching job I’ve ever had and I’m already planning to attempt a return next year, just before the olympics.
I did have two days off in the middle of all the organised chaos, but these were used up in the most efficient way possible – two train trips down to Brighton to go to Duncan & Amelia’s “Hag-do” and wedding. The first of these was very cool indeed, and went without major incident until I was shepherded onto the wrong train in Reading station and ended up somewhere near Salisbury, 2 hours late for work.
The wedding itself didn’t go so well from my end, co-inciding as it did with the fist monsoon I’ve seen in the UK. After a morning marching kids through sheets of driving rain I arrived at Reading station to find they’d had a power cut and nobody knew what few trains were coming in. The direct route being flooded and impassable I improvised instead a route through London, Clapham and Gatwick, which got me there, albeit 5 hours later than I would have liked. Fortunately Brighton’s micro-climate seemed to have protected it from the chaos that was gripping the country and I was in time for cake. D&A looked very cool indeed and I got to see about eight people I haven’t seen since I left Scumhampton in 2002. As the meal was ending we played TV themes on kazoos most of the way back to Charlie’s house, looked at photos of us all where we looked both very young and very thin, then went on to the party, which had a more people I hadn’t seen for a while and (best of all) a free bar. It was a good night.
Proper fun over I had another two weeks of work, though no complaints there really. Now I’m making a quick tour of the most essential relatives to say ‘hi’ and collect birthday presents, then off to Prague again.

Posted in diary | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Menu

Posted on 29/06/2007 by haonowshaokao

I’m in the uk right now, so this blog has been on hold for a while. Back in September. In the meantime here are some photos of a restaurant menu in Beijing. I don’t think any comments are really needed.

many more pages

Posted in food tube | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The NHS

Posted on 26/06/2007 by haonowshaokao

This morning I had to go without breakfast as I was having a blood test as part of the usual Doctors’ registration medical process. It’s a half hour walk there, but since the previous nurse told me to get more exercise I didn’t take the bus. The test was delayed by the losing and finding again of the paperwork they hadn’t actually told me to bring back. I’m not bothered about needles so long as I don’t have to see them puncturing my skin, so the three separate blood samples were taken without any problems as I looked the other way, then was told off for not pressing hard enough on the cotton wool. That done, I waited for half an our and then saw another nurse about immunisations for China. She was very friendly and turned out to have a son working over there too, so we chatted about life in the far east as she stuck yet more needles into my arms.
I walked back home for some serious lunch and was just sitting down to eat it when I was interrupted by a phonecall from the surgery. Apparently the nurse had informed the receptionist of how long I’d been out of the country and the fact that I was leaving again in a few months and the receptionist, in some remarkable fit of charity, had informed the “NHS Fraud Department” that I was a non-resident and not entitled to NHS care, and had de-registered me from the surgery with a recommendation that I be required to show evidence of having been living in the UK for six months before I can register again at any surgery in the UK. She had evidently taken great satisfaction in doing all this, and was keen to convey this information to me.
Apparently the fact that I am living here and working here counts for nothing, and neither do my years of brain-sapping work in the banking industry, in which I paid a great deal of taxes and went to the doctor about three times in total.
I’m pretty fucking pissed off. Pretty fucking pissed off. Fuck that receptionist, fuck the NHS and fuck the UK.

Posted in diary | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Brighton

Posted on 23/06/2007 by haonowshaokao

I spent last weekend down in Brighton. Much like everything else in the UK it’s been nearly two years since I was there. Getting down there was easy, but tiresome. The Megabus was as cheap and easy to book and use as always, but this time half-full of some kind of sports team who shouted like a stag party for all of the near two hours it took to get out of London and most of the forty minutes it took to get to Brighton. I tried to ignore them but wasn’t feeling great, so was just glad to be off the bus and in Brighton again.
Everything seemed much the same as ever, except for a couple of new buildings and the further descent into stick-town squalor of London Road. Not to say everything else wasn’t great, though – of all the places to visit in Britain it’s certainly the one with the most dense packing of things to do and buy. On a severe budget, I managed to limit myself to a haircut at Goose, a burger at Grubbs and a chocolate and orange Ben’s Cookie, all for (just) under a fiver. Then I did the half-hour walk down to Hove, where Duncan had organised one of his NFR Live nights at a literally underground bar called The Greenhouse Effect.

It was a cool night – caught up with Duncan, Amelia & Charlie and saw three decent bands. The last ones – My Device – played their entire new album, but the best were Catnap, who played some very decent free-jazz death-metal indeed.
Meanwhile I got everyone to look shocked for photos.

Here’s Charlie…

…Amelia…

…and Duncan.

The second day I went to see brokenjoystick at her new place in Hanover, supposedly the gayest part of Brighton. We had some food, talked about olden days, then we met up with Nick and Lottie and went down the Kemptown Carnival, which was more like a jumble sale with food stalls. It seemed to be winding down and starting to drizzle, so we went to Grubb’s again, then out for some beers with Charlie and Johnny.

Sunday meant a pub lunch with Charlie, then a dash to the bus station to find my Megabus was half an hour late, with the same sports team waiting to get aboard – though fortunately the prior warning meant I was able to avoid them by sitting at the front. While I was waiting Danny Madskilz called. I’d been trying to get in contact with him all weekend, but it turned out he’d slept through my whole visit.
So that was Brighton. Always fun to visit, though not the best place to work in. I’ll be down there again in less than a month for Duncan & Amelia’s wedding, which I’m already looking forward to, a lot.

Posted in diary | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Protected:

Posted on 23/06/2007 by haonowshaokao

This content is password-protected. To view it, please enter the password below.

Posted in diary | Tagged | Enter your password to view comments.

Bernard Manning

Posted on 19/06/2007 by haonowshaokao

Yesterday the old, racist British comedian Bernard Manning died, leaving a media unsure what to say about him. Though he’d been off TV for nearly thirty years he still made a fortune touring working men’s clubs where his behind-the-times humour was still appreciated. Many commentators seem to be saying that we’ve moved on a lot since the seventies, but I’m afraid I’d say that the problems we have with Manning are still with us today.
It seems to me that there are two kinds of jokes people find unacceptable. The first are the ones that Manning sometimes used to tell – jokes that promote prejudice. The second are ‘close to the bone’ jokes, which make light of a subject or situation that some people think is beyond the pale. The first, so far as I can see, is not ok – nobody’s saying they “should be banned” but all the same the hatred at their core should be exposed wherever posible. The second kind is not such a problem, but should of course be treated sensitively – you wouldn’t put rape jokes on kids’ TV, for example.
The problem is that instead of being against the hatred as a whole we’ve instead just banned categories of it – first racism, then sexism and homophobia. Any painfully unfunny trip to your local comedy club will reveal that this has just meant the same jokes are switched to other groups – chavs, gingers, Americans, short people, fat people… We’d never dream of complaining about any of these as our entire national character seems to be based on being able to “take a joke” – so the only option is to promote your “minority group” and try to “raise awareness” – exactly the kind of thing that starts people moaning about “political correctness”.
We English often have an unpleasant school-bully streak to our sense of humour. If people can start distinguishing between the two kinds of jokes above perhaps we can start to move away from that, though I don’t know how likely that is.

Posted in diary | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Posted on 18/06/2007 by haonowshaokao

I’ve been back in England a few weeks now, and the novelty of being here is already starting to fade into memory. I’d been away for 21 months, traveled to 21 countries via 16 buses, 31 trains, 7 boats and 6 planes, but this time there didn’t seem to be any culture shock waiting for me at the airport. The main thing that has surprised me on previous journeys “home” has been my sudden ability to listen to and understand the conversations of strangers. This time the only surprise was the drunken tramp on the flight. I didn’t know they traveled.

Here’s my first sight of England. Notice how the clouds cling to the coast of our island.

Home is now Harrow, since my mother moved here from Worcester last year. There’s a good chance I’ll never go to Worcester again – something I’ll shed no tears for. Harrow’s not bad. For starters it’s a lot closer to the centre of London than I thought, and the selection of food available nearby is fantastic.
My main occupation has been looking for summer jobs, but aside from that I’ve spent a week in Herefordshire visiting my dad, an afternoon at the Hay Festival, a couple of days in Cardiff visiting my old friend Gwen, a weekend in Liverpool with my Grandma, and an evening in Chester with my sister and her boyfriend. To be fair I should write something more about these, but I really can’t muster up the energy.

View from my window in Harrow.

Hay-On-Wye Literary Festival.

Herefordshire.

Gwen’s shop in Cardiff.

Posted in diary | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments