Days of Being LJ

All week I’ve been checking the weather reports, hoping, wishin’ short of prayin’ that it wouldn’t rain on Sunday morning, because Sunday mornings I have my tennis lesson and it’s my 90min of respite and physical joy for the week.

This was to be the first lesson of the term, last week in a rain delayed make up lesson something finally clicked in my groundstrokes and I was in deep anticipation to see if my form would replicate.

Eight minutes out of the house and six more till the courts, the ominous grey clouds started weeping. Although I cursed the weather gods, the weather report was right for once as the weeping turned for the worse into a generous sob.

By the time I got to the courts the generous sob decided to take a step back and let the showerheads have a go. The coach decided to call off the lesson, disappointed, a few of us had a short hit when the weather gods decided to take an ad break, but once the waterfall resumed the others had enough and decided to call it a day.

I decided since I was already slightly wet I might as well go all the way and let the clouds finish the job.

I took to the furthest court, it’s a court without the double alley and every time I look at it I feel like I’m playing some crazy indoor masters event from the 1980s with Ivan Lendl or Boris Becker. The only other people who felt the need to indulge in this bit of wet masochism were on the court on the other side of the grounds, so I was alone and undisturbed.

As I started to practice some serves, the rain started bucketing down again. Once I smacked all four balls to the other side of the court, I dragged my lazy arse across the net for some ball retrieval.

Just before the net I stopped and looked up to the sky, the water was still coming down, in harsh and incessantly heavy drops, lightly drenching everything from my cap, to my racquet and my shoes but suddenly I was struck my this eerie quiet, I couldn’t hear anything but the rain, the water hitting the nearby trees and my own solid breathing. I looked at the grounds and across the courts, the green synthetic grass glistening and almost smelling like the real thing instead of some cheap plastic imitation filled with sand which would stick like glue to your shoes and every pore of your body. A peek of light came through the clouds and accentuated the contrast created by the okra coloured borders of the courts.

I reached out my hands, like the adorning Christ the Redeemer. Feeling the individual warm massaging drops, and in that moment I felt bliss. I sensed beauty, epiphany and contemplation in the one hit. And funnily enough my first thought was SHIT!, I need to capture this moment on camera like if only I would click my fingers and Wong Kar Wai would turn up with Chris Doyle and canvas this moment in my life forever on celluloid.

I was soaked but I felt the most free I’ve ever felt, this freedom bore me this incredible sense of elation as if I was finally defying sensibility, playing in the rain like some naughty schoolkid unafraid of been admonished by her parents.

In those ten minutes of solace I was drunk with both happiness and disbelief.

But all such glorious moments must be eclipsed by interruptions and endings and as the rain came down heavier than ever with thunderous vigour, common sense and self-preservation kicked in; the slight possibility of pneumonia and the ruination of a great pair of tennis shoes. I ran for the club-house, rueful that such spiritual bliss couldn’t last just a little while longer…

*written 24th Oct 2009

LJK life emotion, epiphany, spirituality, tennis

I occasionally marathon entire series of TV shows but usually they’re the short shrift BBC seasons of 6-13 episodes at 2-3 seasons at most. It’s fine to sit down and work through 20 episodes of Life on Mars or 22 episodes of Rome. Shows like that are doable in a turnaround of maybe a week and leave one still with enough emotional energy left to dissect, analyse and discuss the series. Although one time I did do a 40 episode marathon of a Hongkie soapie starring Francis Ng called “Triumph in the Skies” in about 4 days, but that was done almost without any sleep, a fulltime job or uni subjects to study for.

In the interim period between Federer appearances on the ATP my life has been ruled by a gloriously perfect science fiction TV show. For a couple of years now I’ve wanted to start watching Battlestar Galactica but whether it was the horrid scheduling on channel 10, or the intervening writer’s strike which impacted on the production and consequential interrupted run of season 4, I never took the final leap of faith to get into the show. I saw the opening of the mini-series, watched minutes here and there between other shows but the combination of emotional maturity with what I was interested in at the time just didn’t seem to gel the idea of dark dystopic sci fi. Upon watching the premiere of Stargate Universe about 3 weeks back I thought I quite enjoyed the darkish human side of Stargate even though the palette and the camerawork took much of it’s inspiration from BSG. So I started to wonder how good BSG could really be…

I took on the challenge, a mammoth 75 episode one. Frankly I was highly deceived by the fact that season 1 was only 13 episodes, I thought, oh cool, 4 seasons of 13 eps, should be a relatively easy 2 week slog. Then I checked up and discovered that the rest of the seasons had 20 episodes. Now all the previous shows I followed which had 20+ episodes; X Files, Stargate, Grey’s Anatomy etc, I did so from inception so I can’t exactly imagine tackling the first 4 seasons of either TXF or SG1 in about 2 weeks, although it would be seemingly easier since both shows follow a VERY similar formula.

But BSG doesn’t really do this; it doesn’t have that Monster of the Week Episode which you can fast forward through or the clip-recap episode which you can skip entirely. In fact it tends to turn Sci Fi conventions a bit on its head. I guess you can almost call it sci fi soap in a way except with much better characterisation, writing and overall production values…oh yeah and also stuff HAPPENS, EVERY episode.

So 3 weeks after I took the leap of faith, I finished the 3 part finale (yes mofos, 3 PARTS) a few days ago. I’m still reeling from everything, the EPICNESS, my irrational attachment to the main characters and not to mention the ridiculously in depth (well for TV anyway) commentary on politics, religion and humanity itself. I have to confess that I rushed through most of Season 4 because I physically could not stand the tension. I felt jittery, like a kid on red cordial, I had to know what happened in the end as to guard myself emotionally if it turned out that everything was futile (thankfully it wasn’t as nihilistic as it could have been).

Although BSG doesn’t have the laugh out loud or cracktastic moments of a lot of cult sci fi (Torchwood and SG1, I’m looking at you) the laughter you get here happens in these uncomfortable tension breaking moments, enough to give you a breather and make you go “OMG, I can’t believe they made a joke at the expense of civilian lives and wellbeing” until the next nihilistic onslaught.

I can’t really say anything other than I think the show is just amazing. Most of what I like about cult sci fi doesn’t even exist in the world of BSG. Rather I’m just completely attached to the characters and to the moments. Even the so called “evil” characters I can connect and empathise with and that is just great story-telling. But the beauty of the BSG landscape is this deep rooted sense of reality. Jerky handheld camera aside, I don’t have to ask myself every episode why female military personnel have perfect makeup on when they’re at war in deep space (something that Stargate STILL doesn’t understand, and this is exactly why SGU will never work on the level of BSG). Sure some of the allegory can be heavy handed but at least it makes the audience ponder just exactly how frakked humanity is and can be. I’m not surprised people write their entire PhDs on the show. I’d probably do it too if I had the time and motivation.

I was watching some convention videos on youtube in the period of dramatic depression after marathoning a show, and there was a really interesting comment Edward James Olmos made in reply to being asked why he decided to join BSG. Actors with A-list capabilities and name recognition hardly ever get themselves involved in science fiction on TV, Patrick Stewart the obvious exception in this regard. However Olmos said once he was assured by Ron Moore (creator of the whole darstardly thing) that they were to explore the sci fi ground covered by Blade Runner, he was sold. Now unbeknownst to be moi until some more youtubing, Olmos actually played a crucial part in construction the “Street” language and other elements of the Blade Runner landscape so he was obviously invested in that film beyond the role of just the actor. Now BR probably needs it’s own dissertation so I won’t go into it much other than to say, by gods! how good would it be if someone re-imagined Blade Runner as a TV show? I’m just putting it out there and if someone does make it you know where to send your royalty cheques for ‘origins of show’ to.

This bunch of useless whiff whaff above is just evidence to why I can’t quantify my love for this show or how great it is in mere words (perhaps an interpretive dance is in order). Of course this is partly a result of a great emotional and passionate attachment to a narrative and characters in a very short space of time (oh man, where has that happened before? Methinks I need to also write a post detailing my tendencies to form deep emotional attachments to fictional material).

But I have always had one clear emotional reaction when I see or experience something as awesome as BSG and that is of the sudden urge to just go out and be creative, to write and create something extraordinary and leave my mark on the media landscape. Because I’ve seen how far these ridiculously talented people can push the bounderies of this medium and their stories and make humanity, feel, laugh and cry…feel frustration, anger and sadness….in the end I want to be alongside them doing the same.

LJK television battlestar galactica, emotion, humanity, science fiction, tv

Firstly I’d like to apologise to the one reader who still reads this blog for not writing any new posts the past couple of weeks. I just had nothing meaningful to say, and I’m usually a person who adheres to the rule that when you have nothing meaningful to say then you should keep your mouth shut or in my case, your keyboard quiet.

The past few weeks have been passing in a haze of inconsequential bored stupour and last night was to mark my exit from the haze and entrance into the next couple of months of festivals (Vivid Sydney, Sydney Film Festival, Sydney Winter Festival etc). Except my plans of checking out the light installations and maestro Brian Eno’s 77 Million Paintings tonight, ended in complete failure as the city was drenched in a downpour. I mean who puts on a festival featuring outdoor installations during the WETTEST month of the year? Who? Vivid Sydney that’s who, even the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday commented on the total lack of enthusiasm summoned for the festival. Methinks I’ll be disappointed by the actual offerings anyway.

Anyhoo, work…has been bitterly pleasurable as always. On the bus home I thought of the perfect metaphor to describe work. Work is like my 12km trek through the German countryside from Neuschweinstein to Schwangau to Fussen. I wanted to walk to Schwangau to check out the big ass lake and once I got there it was nothing but a huge gloried mud flat, lined with thick stringy trees. But once I got there it was too far to walk back to the bus stop, so I trekked back to my hostel in Fussen. During dinner that night with my newest hostel buddy I realised that even though the lake at Schwangau was a total dissappointment , the 12km trek was one of the greatest experiences of my life, it was something to boast about, and an interesting story to tell. I think work is akin to this, agony, frustration and disappointment during the journey but hopefully by the end I’ll have had a great experience, something to boast about and some great stories to tell.

Yesterday I experienced my first corporate restructure. As a background tidbit I’d like to add that one of the major things I learnt through my formative teen years after my parents delved into takeaway retail is employer/employee relations, albeit mostly from the perspective of the employer. Yet no doubt in such a small business any type of industrial relation is greatly magnified and so very soap operaish. I’m not unaware of restructures, and certainly in the last couple of months my mother has been harping on about how the recession is a great time to restructure any business.

However I didn’t expect to experience such a thing so early into my very new, and very first full time job. When entering fulltime employment you expect a reasonable period of total stability after your initial whirlwind induction into the next 40 years of your life servicing the economy. The restructure didn’t happen directly to me but I’m one of many who are directly impacted upon.

The first reaction is purely emotional. Sadness hits, then anger. “Well shit, this is a great way to end a Friday and start the weekend” you think. Then you feel heartache for the person involved. I had a good rapport with this person and obviously that creates an emotional attachment, but even more so because I’ve been in this position such a short time it’s hard to lose someone who you like and look up to so soon in the process because just as you thought you were settled in, that stake of stability dissappears.

It’s that emotional investment which impacts the hardest. You know this person, you like this person, you may be even quite fond of this person. Some people are clearly shocked, most are deadly quiet. Some take it on the chin in a “yup, okay” fashion just so they could get out of that awkward situation of disbelief as fast as possible. I had mixed emotions when I hurriedly put my head down and headed back to my desk. I wanted to comfort the person on the way yet I couldn’t, like if I did I’d break this unspoken code of “this is none of your business”. Sitting at my desk I definitely contemplated some alone time in the bathroom, just to collect my thoughts and process the numbness.

The emotional reaction than gives into the rationalisation:

Well I totally understand why it was done. Cutbacks need to be made, businesses need to move forward in this economic environment.

But how do you remove this human element? On a late friday afternoon, this is not the type of surprise you’d like to get. What shocked me was the abruptness. However perhaps I didn’t see it coming because I didn’t get the entire back story, but I couldn’t help but feel that I wasn’t the only person shocked by the ramifications.

I guess this is why it was done late on a friday, so all of us can come home and rue over it for the weekend and cool over any overly emotional reactions. Yet humans are social animals, and we hate losing a member of the pride, no matter how little time there was to bond there is still that residual loyalty, and this has certain emotional impact on the remaining team members

So what now, how do you go about things during the turnover period? The mantra is that it is just business as usual. But there is no doubt that the situation will effect team morale, even if it is in the short term. But how do you approach work? Do you act as if nothing happened and on the last day give them a hug and say, “It’s been nice knowing you, we’ll miss you and good luck for the future”? It just seems insincere in a way. Or do you look at them with mournful eyes the entire time, empathising with the unfairness of it all but rejoicing in the fact that at least it wasn’t you? Perhaps that’s an even more insincere act.

Things have a habit of working itself out through time, but this is definitely something I didn’t want or expect to experience 3 months in. Although I’ll get over it, does make me wary, even if it’s an irrational wariness. However I don’t think it’s exactly healthy functioning in an overly wary environments, but we’ll see how it goes in the next couple of months.

LJK job, life corporate restructure, emotion, recession, work

I’ve been harbouring all this residual rage and I don’t know why. I should be totally happy and content at this time. I have a job, a stable income and creative pathways to pursue…so why am I fucking angry all the time?

This anger and resentment came to a a head tonight, after a particularly frustrating basketball match, where I didn’t play particularly well, armed me with enough rage to turn me into a customer from hell (albeit with good reason).

I got to the parking lot after the game with teamates in tow, bitching about the game and what not, handed over my ticket and a dollar for the fee, thought nothing of it, saw my change and picked it up along with the ticket.

I get to the gate, shoved the ticket in the machine, it tells me with robotic precision:

“You owe $4.00″

AW HELL NO!!!

So parked my car, pressed the intercom and all I can hear is the attendant’s thoroughly uninteresting phone conversation in Shanghainese. There was no way to reach him, so I bolted up to the ticket office. Of course at this point I really should have reversed my car and let the others behind me go. However I thought it was going to be a relatively short ordeal, I go up, he let’s the gate up, everyone is happy. Obviously it was not so short an ordeal, otherwise I wouldn’t be blogging this.

Anyhoo, I apologise to all those cars waiting behind me (Vero & Seets in particular who watched the start of the proceedings with great amusement)

I get to the office, guy asks…where is your ticket? In the machine I reply, hurriedly also explaining how I paid etc.

“You haven’t paid.”

“Yes I HAVE, I was just here.”

So he hangs up the phone and agrees to come down and once he does, takes my ticket out of the machine and says again,

“You haven’t paid.”

“Yes I have, would you like to see the two 50c coins you gave me as change for my 2 dollars?”

No response….then finally:

“Okay I’ll go check”

So he motions me to reverse out of the way and takes my ticket back to his office. I bid farewell to all the cars behind me and I park my car and wait for him to come back.

What seems like an eternity passes…I’m still sitting in my car. Why is it taking so long?

I decide to trudge back to the ticket office. I walk in and find Mr Dumbfuck counting all his coins for the day. Any better and I’ll be having four and twenty blackbirds baked in my pie.

I was speechless, the scene incredulous. Was he counting all his coins to make sure that he had ONE dollar extra for the day? I inquired, still slightly dumbfounded.

He kept repeating for me to wait, that he has to check. Enraged I spouted a string of phrases trying to censor the obscenities rising to the top:

“What do you mean? I need to leave, I can’t wait for you to finish counting ALL your coins for the day (5c pieces too, mind you), just give me the ticket. Look I’ll give you the extra dollar and just validate the ticket.”

He keeps counting and still tells me to wait.

“No it could be my mistake so I need to check.”

“If it’s your mistake then it’s YOUR problem, fix it in your OWN time.”

“So you can’t wait?”

I look at him like he was the biggest dumbfuck in the entire world

“NO!!!!”

So finally after bouts of half yelling and pleading with exasperation, I get my ticket.

I get in my car absolutely pissed off at the guile of this person. And what is the lesson today? Don’t drive when you’re angry.

Whilst reversing I forget to check behind and I run into a concrete post. big dent on the left corner of the rear bumper, cracked plastic on the tail light.

I knew some sort of shit was going to go down today, I had a pretty shitty day at work too, it was bound to blow into something big and when I heard that BOOM from the bumper, that was it.

So from one Shanghainese to loathe to one to love, I came back home and consoled myself by watching Zhou Li Bo with my parents. A post on him shall follow later, but for now all you need to know is that he is a very good Shanghainese standup comic.

I guess I could have been calmer and more patient in dealing with this situation. But there’s only so much calm and patience one has and my reserves are drying out.

The entire time I just felt like ripping into him in Shanghainese (a brilliant language to rip into people with), but I didn’t cause that could be construed and being a cunt to your own race, and I don’t like doing that, but if I had, it would go like this:

eh, pang you, nong le gaou sa a? non le gei di fen bi? Jiauo ghoo deng le gei, deng nong di wei zen le? non na neng ga 13 di? doo ming zhz nong ce cu eh jiauo ghoo deng. zen jing ming, ba ghoo piao zhi.

mando translation:

哦，朋友，你在搞什么？你在点数硬币， 叫我在等待，等你点完了。你这么那么十三点？他妈的，是你出错还叫我等。神经病， 把票给我！

LJK life anger, basketball, conflict, dumbfuckery, emotion, life

Gah! I’ve been quietly seething with rage these couple of weeks and it’s really coming to a head these few days. I just snapped at my dad just then, not that I actually meant it or that he didn’t deserve it (as much as I love him, he’s really teetering on being a full blown obnoxious geriatric git these days).

Work has been frustrating me greatly. I’m not sure if it’s just my attitude or if the process would frustrate any normal person. Perhaps I just need to chill out more, but I’m wondering how chilled I can be before succumbing to a coma.

I’m having one of those moments when I want to scream into the infinite dark abyss like in Garden State and get it all out and over with.

I’m watching Long Way Round right now on SBS, and it seems at first cool and awesome to travel around the world on a motorbike, but shit the amount of brick walls you hit is amazing. My issues at work pale in comparison. Currently Ewan and Charlie are stuck in the wet mud of Mongolia, tears in their eyes, depression setting in and you can see that the one thing they want to do is go back home into the warmth of their beds.

But in a day, after spending hours and hours moving a couple of meters and then toppling over in mud, they make it over this hill. And on this hill is this brilliant dry grassy landscape, stretching towards the horizon. Was it worth it? totally, but Ewan looks at the camera and almost breaks down.

Is my quarter-life crisis coming back after a 4 month lull? Am I in my own little Mongolia at the moment? Perhaps…

Or perhaps it’s just the hormones and the oncoming monthly bout of PMS…

…but I still want to get over this hill and onto the grassy knoll…quickly…

LJK life emotion, life, tv, work