Days of Being LJ

A young Agassi found out that his father decided to name him after two of his co-workers from a Vegas casino. No reason was given, it just turned out that way, neither Andre nor Kirk were particularly close friends of Mike Agassi, but their first names were good enough to embroider the birth certificate of his youngest child.

Thus for his existence, Andre’s search for his answers in life, herein laid out in “Open” his autobiography, results in similar lack of reasons given. Sometimes life just is…it’s a journey which we find ourselves on but forget to find out why we started in the first place.

I was too young to really remember the petulant wild Agassi, and too disinterested to really take note of his late career resurgence but if it were a choice between Sampras and Agassi; I was more drawn to the big A.

After reading “Open” I now have a greater understanding of why.

Agassi is the classic anti-hero in the construct of the myth archetype. “Open” catalogues his odyssey. He cuts the figure of the dedicated child, misunderstood teen, wayward young man, tragic burnout and then the resurgent saviour and ultimately the hero, but always shunning his heroic gifts and in his case the ability to play tennis.

I’m attracted to anti-heroes, I love my protagonists flawed and conflicted but ultimately they need to be good and honest people. And as much as I know about Agassi himself, I get the vibe that in light of the mistakes he has made, he is ultimately an honest and good man.

“Open”, though littered with tennis, isn’t actually about tennis. It’s about humanity, love and compassion over a bed of explanation and analysis of the choices and relationships we make in late. Although there is probably enough of the analysis to fill most biographies it’s really the deep emotional resonance which makes the book interminably readable.

I finished the solid 400 pages in a day. I can’t remember the last time I managed to read a book in a day; I gather it was probably the first Harry Potter book when I was 15 or something.

Upon finishing the first chapter on the train heading to work on the morning I received the book, tears welling in my eyes, I knew for a book to elicit such an emotional response from me in the first 20 pages, it must be pretty damn special.

The book is very well ghost-written by J.R Moehringer (a Pulitzer prize winner no less) and I gather a good amount of the structure comes from his end but I wouldn’t discount some of the origins of the literary poetics from Agassi himself, together they form some rare quality for a sports (auto)biography.

I hold a great literary weakness for (auto)biographies, but usually they’re filled with latent facts for the casual reader with some revelationary stories for the hardcore fan but there is something about “Open” which makes it utterly engaging just on a humanistic level. Just look at the cover (above), it’s not pretty, some would say ugly even, but it’s raw and intriguingly human. Also the book, purely on a narrative level, is just a good yarn, a pure form of “Myth” storytelling.

I’m usually not one to re-read books but I can’t help but feel that I’d be thumbing through my paperback copy of “Open” constantly for years to come.

Even if you hate tennis (or any type of sport), or biographies, or Agassi for that matter, I’d still urge you to give “Open” a go, or at least read the couple of chapters telling of his courtship of Steffi Graf, I think even the most coldest and stoniest of hearts will fall fluttering and submit to the coy sweetness and endearment of that relationship.

LJK books andre agassi, book review, humanity, opinion, tennis, writing

“So you put a decade of blood sweat and tears, not to mention the countless lunch breaks you didn’t take, the pain and agony of building your businesses, contacts and networks.

You deliver budget time after time, over countless years adding to the coffers of those above…

…and then one day you’re given the envelope, a pat on the back….

“Well done old boy, you’ve poured your heart and soul into this place but the folks above don’t like you, so sorry but we have to let you go, nothing personal…”

It’s not that you were incompetent, they just didn’t like you…and there’s nothing you can do…absolutely nothing.”*

—

Treatise on Leadership

Are you going to be a pleb or a senator? A soldier or a general?

If you are the latter, are you going to be a tyrant or bring a sense of anarchic compassion?

If I were a leader and I got pushed off my dias, I’d want people to cry over me (unlike Eva Peron)…because at least it meant I touched them and instilled a sense of loyalty.”*

*written 29th Oct 09

LJK job corporate restructure, emotion, life, musings, work, writing

“All the little things we cry about. Silly little things, in hindsight, are so ridiculously inconsequential yet our initial reactions are to yell, scream and then cry.

Such is humanity that the minute we are pressured, when turmoil and conflict hit us, we immediately regress into babies.

But the minute the tears dry, there is still that lingering guilt and anger, why the fuck did I cry? And then further thoughts and contemplation leave us still with wet glistening corneas and we start this masochistic quest to quell the most fundamental of emotions.

What is it all for? Other than pure release crying does nothing else. We sit here day after day making so called meaningful lives for ourselves but in the end it’s just elements, senses, nerves, electrical impulses…”*

*written 28 Oct 09

—

I couldn’t stop crying, anything could set me off. For three days my usually cool calm exterior could crack (and did crack) at any moment, and any time and anywhere. Bus Stops, the office, at home. I joked to a friend that I didn’t have this many tears in the aftermath of my actual uncle’s passing early last year (of course the tears for that event were delayed for months, and boy was that a flood when they did come out)

Last night, after hours of which I consumed an entire six months of alcohol, I just started crying as I walked home. I don’t know why or what I was crying about, but it just continued and I decided to just let myself go. I thought perhaps this was the final release, 1am on a Saturday morning, beyond this cliff was the valley of acceptance. This was the release of more than 7 months of internal tension, turmoil, drama and something I needed to go through to attain catharsis.

Perhaps this morning a newer me stared back from the mirror.

LJK job corporate restructure, emotion, life, musings, work, writing

The email actually went out 6pm Tuesday but by that time I was already on my way to Leichardt to see Genova. I got in on Wednesday morning and heard from my colleague that Pompey had been dethroned, my first reaction is to let out an entire string of “fuck fuck fuckity fuck fucks” and then I fired up my computer to inspect the damage.

I read the email…blah blah, restructure, blah blah, thanks for their work and we wish them the best luck for the future…

Sucker punch to the gut, anger, denial…I can’t believe this is happening…

And then the tears…red hot, full of anger well up…and this is the one time I’m really thankful that I’m actually in an office rather than in the open plan. I wipe them away angrily and check the rest of my emails. Ten minutes later my boss boss comes down to explain the situation to me and I can’t hear anything, it’s like the scene in the film where the music drowns out the other person’s lines and your eyes glaze over, except you my case my eyes were dripping tears as I was both mortified and embarrassed at crying in front of my boss boss. And when he left I took a 30min time out in the bathrrom where I decided to re-enact some bad office movie were the protagonist goes and cries in the cubicle.

—

“A mini-empire came down today, torn apart by barbarians and the leader crucified as the plebs wept (well at least this pleb wept)

I never expected to experience this level of torment at the start of my career but I guess this is life right? Leaders fall and leaders rise and if you become a leader you reap the sugar and spice of the far reaches of your empire but also suffer the consequences of the ambition, greed and treachery of those around you.

The plebs continue to go about their daily lives, selling fish and whatnot. The plebs who harden the fuck up tend to survive the onslaught of the changes in leadership. Those who don’t, fall by the wayside and take their ticket out of the daily lottery.

But hey, power is just a business; it’s nothing personal we tell ourselves. It’s got nothing to do with emotions, feelings, you, me or the other person. But we also forget that unlike machines we can’t build a perfect impenetrable partition between emotions and cognitive thought processes, that’s what makes us bloody human.

The worst thing is, each sequential sacking of an empire makes us harder, more ambivalent and cuts ounces of humanity from our souls…little by little…

So all we are left with is this empty shell of what was, because nothing is personal anymore…everything is just business.”*

*written 28th Oct 09

LJK job corporate restructure, emotion, life, musings, work, writing

An event happened this week, something highly difficult to deal with and the resulting emotional responses and contemplations will stay with me for the rest of my life. I guess it’s one of those coming of age experiences, a colleague explained it best as suffering through your first break-up; the heart pangs and the uncontrollable tears. Except that I’ve never really been through a first break-up so I guess if this is how it feels, I really wouldn’t like to go through this again if I do end up having an actual first break up.

The following posts will be a series of random, thoughts, pieces of dialogue and analogies written in the past few days to make sense at least in my own mind of the event which conspired. Most are just simple emotional responses but which actually adhere quite well to the principles of the 7 stages of grief.

A little bit on the backstory

I’m going to keep this a quite vague since I’m going to be selfish and self-protecting on a professional level. I want to focus on my emotional reactions rather than the facts of the matter, and also because since this is the internet confidentiality will obviously be an issue.

I’ve been working for the past 7 months; it’s my first real full-time job, in an actual office. Corporate restructures are nothing new, and I’ve expounded on my first one previously, but this one was slightly different. I’ve known this manager (let’s call him Pompey) for over 7 months, worked as part of his team for 6 and grown to love everyone on the team almost like family, we bonded over some crazy experiences and lots of alchomohol but the personality mix in the team was one in a thousand, you were very unlikely to find or be apart of something as brilliantly visceral with such connections on a human level. The relationships on that team reminded me of how my own closest group of friends work, anything goes, you’re brutally honest both with compliments and insults and you’d help move dead bodies for each other. That’s how deep the loyalty goes.

So Pompey was like the crazy uncle I never had, who also took me in under his wing occasionally, literally and figuratively and pushed me into some industry events and training.  Pompey had been with this firm for a long time, had loads of experience and knew loads of people and was mostly well liked and respected by all. I’d say given perhaps maybe another 6 months or so, he could have become a solid mentor, the possibility was definitely there.

However Pompey had certain personality clashes with upper management and whilst the writing was on the wall for years as other rebel factions were slowly but systematically weeded out, when the time came for Pompey, it was still the greatest shock to all, and for his loyal Labradors, it was something unfathomable and impossible to accept and deal with.

LJK job corporate restructure, emotion, life, musings, work, writing

So it’s been over a month since I’ve last posted. I’ll try and keep this one short.

Reasons why I haven’t been blogging:

• Nothing that interesting has happened
• Work has taken over my life
• I can’t bitch about work because of confidentiality obviously and also the risk that people at work might read this
• because of the last point there really  isn’t anything to blog about now since for me for the past 5 years or so blogging = bitching about something

What will happen to this blog?

I’ve been wondering whether I should renew my hosting for the next year (I think my 1 year plan ends in November). Obviously I love to continue blogging but it’s turning to be more of a hassle less of an enjoyment more and more. I guess with so many years of reading other really well written blogs, more and more I’m drawn to the professional blogs which focus on one main area e.g. Tennis, Technology etc and if most people are like me, personal blogs just aren’t read anymore, unless you’re a friend who I like to keep in touch with but even then I’ve found that microblogging is more immediate and satisfying.

So in essence I’m bored about writing about my day to day life. I think when I named this blog I didn’t anticipate the sheer boredom of “Days of being” me.  Seriously I’m bored of living my own life, why the hell would anyone else want to read about it?

So my plan is from now until November (or beyond should I fancy) is to use this blog as a point of expression for being creative with language. I’m going to focus on longer essay type posts (about whatever piques my interest and allows me to keep up my academic writing skills), op-ed pieces, random poetry and other word burdened creative pursuits.

Life updates, what I find cool, short form fan wank and other updates of the personal nature will be kept on Facebook as of now.

In reality little will change since I’ve been focusing more on longer opinion pieces since this new blog started but now I’ll actually have a plan of attack and a focus.

Posts in the Works

• Beautiful People – Catching the Gen Y Nostalgia
• Torchwood, where compelling drama comes at the expense of character attachments
• Roger Federer, Goatmaster
• Love and loathing of Shanghainese part 2 (Stand Up Comedy Shang Style)
• The death of blogging

The above is a list of posts I’ve been thinking about developing longer opinion pieces on. If anyone is still reading this blog and has a preference for any of the above, let me know and I’ll bump up the priority but otherwise I’ll just work through these in the next few weeks between my new found obsession for Tennis (have I mentioned I finally started lessons?)

LJK blogging blogging, plans, work, writing

Last week on went on a glorious road trip with my favourite allies and I think I’m finally coming down with the physical results of drinking, talking, eating too much, and sleeping little.

It didn’t also help that this week has been fairly tough at work with a few deadlines, meetings and various issues. Yesterday I got up at the crack of dawn to attend the opening of a new concept store in Bondi Junction. It was fun but it didn’t do much for my plans of avoiding sickness these few weeks.

Every day my urge to travel and go frolicking in awesome places of the world continues. I hope to embark on a longer snow trip this year and work on my abysmal snowboarding skills but I can’t help but feel envious every time I’m bombarded with pictures of far off picturesque locations such as Chile on facebook.

Most depressing is the sudden realisation now that I will only have 4 weeks of travel time a year, 1 week in the snow and another planned for the Australian Open early next year may mean that I only have 2 weeks to frolic around overseas. That doesn’t do much for my plans of driving around Lake Garda ala James Bond, languishing amongst the olive groves of Sorrento and perhaps a side trip to Spain?

Yet I can’t help thinking all these wants and plans are just a method of compensating for my own loneliness. The more I see all my friends paired off and walking into the sunset the more I feel like the need to go out and collect new hobbies and experiences to fill that void in my own life. It’s sad but the brutal end will come as I pass out, face pressed to some cold pizza , vodka by my side and Alsatians nibbling at my toes.

Anyhoo for the positives in the future, the ABC will receive $167 million of extra funding over the next 3 years. A bulk of it will go to producing new local content (up from 20 hours to 70 hours) as well as content for its new Kid’s Channel in the pipeline. Methinks I should really start writing my opus, a dramedy based on my experiences at Uni. It’ll be totally compelling…to me and my friends that is.

But now is a good time to be creative, to start off that slam poetry, create that TV show and make money and fame off my perculiar blend of geeky ethnic youth intellectuality.

If none of that works…perhaps I’ll go become a roving travel guide.

LJK life conversation, creativity travel, drinking, friends, photography, plans, road trip, writing

Okay so the title of this post suggests that Shinjuku Incident (Jackie Chan’s latest Non-Kungfu offering) was a bad film. It’s not, it was actually quite enjoyable. A few unintentional laughs yes, (but when do people like Alan and I ever not laugh at unintentional moments?) but some good tension and action set pieces too.  Chan takes a few acting risks which is nice but overall he is slightly miscast as Steel Head. Derek Yee like most HK directors needs to restrain his actors badly, and what often starts as a nice scene descends into scenery chewing with bad moustaches.

Shinjuku Incident also embodies elements what has often become the scourge of HK cinema in the past 5 years or so:

1. Way too many actors from across the regions, HK actors, Mainland actors, Taiwanese actors and of course Japanese, cause the film is set in Japan.
2. Because of 1, you get HK actors trying to speak mandarin whilst lapsing into Cantonese or trying to sound Dong Bei but with an unconvincing Dong Bei mandarin accent, Taiwanese speaking hakka and mandarin, Japanese speaking Japanese AND Chinese and Mainlanders speaking standard mandarin (no that they’re actually capable of doing anything other). Like WTF people, have some consistency. The thing is that if it was a Hollywood film and Brad Pitt was meant to be a British character but instead spoke in an American accent they’d be uproar, but in Chinese films it happens all the fucking time. Like someone introduce the notion of a “Dialect Coach” into Chinese Cinema…PLEASE

• • But wait, you say…What about something like Hero or Lust Caution where you have HK actors speaking mandarin with an accent? That’s okay I say because those characters where never explicitly said to be from a certain place in China. For Ancient China we don’t even know what the accents were so it shouldn’t even be a problem to the viewer. In Lust Caution, Tony Leung’s Character was from the South, so he had a southern mandarin accent which worked. But in Shinjuku Incident, Jackie Chan and Daniel Wu were both meant to be from Dong Bei…but had southern mandarin accents.
  • But hey if you don’t even understand Chinese you wouldn’t care, so maybe I’m just being picky.

1. Total inconsistency with tone, Shinjuku Incident is part country bumpkin migrant rags to riches, part black society, part TV Soap, part weird surrealist punk rock anti-drug story.

Derek Yee is a director with some good solid and interesting films under his belt, but overall I can’t help but feel that The Shinjuku Incident was another failed attempt at pleasing the Pan-Asian market. Yet because of it’s subject matter, it didn’t get a release in the lucrative Mainland market and thus had to settle for whatever profits it can take from HK (It headlined the HKIFF) and peripheral markets like this weird deal made in Australia where it was exclusively shown at Hoyts cinemas.

What I think has been the fundamental downfall of the HK film industry is not only due to the rise of the Mainland China but more the lack of development of it’s own talent. In the golden age of HK Cinema the directors, actors and other crew came up through the studio system from the 1960s-70s with the likes of the Shaw Brothers Studio. They were essentially trained as collaborative filmmakers not as money men. Time and time again we see the same directors making the better films now, John Woo, Derek Yee etc.

Later on actors came though the TVB training system which has now become weaker and weaker because whilst previously young men and women who tried out for the TVB school did so not for the fame or money but because they didn’t have any other avenues (Chow Yun Fat, Andy Lau, Tony Leung etc etc). But now acting is seen as lucrative, HK people go into it for the wrong reasons and hence you keep getting more and more mediocre graduates.

So now you’ve got a lack of young developed talent both in front and behind the cameras in HK who have to compete with the greater numbers of more talented people over the border on the mainland. So we have actors and directors in their late 40s-50s who are still taking the top billing and getting the best projects…why? because no one younger can come close.

It’s a serious dilemma, and HK Cinema is not going to improve until it decides to start nurturing the younger talent like it did in the past. So in 10 years time I hope I’m still not stuck watching Jackie Chan, Tony Leung and Andy Lau in roles which should be played by guys in their 30s.

So has HK Cinema lost it’s mojo? Yes, and tt has since probably 2005 and probably even much earlier (although I think 2004-2005 was the last year for solid films like Breaking News, 2046, Jiang Hu, Love Battlefield etc) And it probably won’t regain its mojo in the near future. I’m thinking there’s at least another 10-15 year wait until there’s a possibility of a resurgence. It’s sad, but the damage has been done.

—

We have a similar issues in Australia with both Film and TV. I was looking at the BBC blogs over the past few days and stumbled over these:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/opportunity/college_of_comedy.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/opportunity/writers_academy1.shtml

The BBC has a Writer’s Academy and a College of Comedy…to do what? To nurture new talent. And this is why they’re able to continue to output new and interesting programs because they always have a fresh crop of youngsters waiting in the wings. But not only do these programs benefit BBC itself but it also benefits the entire UK TV and film industry.

*sigh*

LJK film accents, bbc, dialects, filmmaking, hong kong cinema, jackie chan, writing