Do Not Leave Your Emotional Baggage Unattended

Although Google are very late to the game with their latest attempt at social media (who else remembers their previous efforts? Google Wave™, Google Buzz™ and Google Apathy* beforehand?) their latest attempt at it – Google+ – seems somehow to be a moderate success.

This time round of course, Google went for the coquettish approach of only giving out logins to a select few. When I say “select few” what I mean is, “anyone who uses their Google login for anything other than just GMail”, or so it seems.

So I’ve spent some time, experimenting with it. Essentially, it’s “a bit like Facebook and a bit like Twitter”, but not.

As far as I can tell, the “putting people in circles” feature is mainly a metaphorical drag-n-drop thing to stop you from going insane at having yet another series of ways to categorise people you’re connected to.

In other words, because we’re all so used to having Facebook for people we actually know (unless you’re 15, where it’s likely you have 4,385,349 FB friends, all but 14 of whom you’ve never met), and Twitter for people we’d like to know (“I had that Stephen Fry in the back of my cab last week”), suddenly having a social media network like Google+ that blurs the two together is likely to make your brain explode, or at least liquefy and dribble out of your ears when you next tilt your head.

So Google came up with the idea of putting people in circles. I’m still experimenting with how I want to divide up the people I have on Google+. So far I’ve got the following circles defined, in increasing levels of scariness:

• Real-life Friends
• Acquaintances (ie. People I regularly interact with on Twitter but haven’t met yet)
• Media Whores (journalists, writers, stand-up comedians, media wannabes)
• Potential Restraining Order
• Daily Mail Readers
• Piers Morgan and Michael Winner**

The best analogy I’ve come up with so far is to compare Facebook and Google+ to airport departure lounges:

• Facebook is like the Economy class departure lounge. It’s mobbed with people, every fucker’s in there from seasoned travellers to people who’ve never flown before, the seats are cheap and uncomfortable and there’s no privacy.
• Google+ is like the Business class departure lounge: very slick-looking, special features the other one doesn’t have, no kids running around, very quiet, full of people who fly on social media every week, and not as interesting from a people-watching perspective as the Economy lounge.

This of course begs the question, where does Twitter fit in all this? Well, I fired up the Analogy-o-matic 3000, and it failed to fit Twitter in with the whole Airport metaphor. The best I could come up with was that Twitter is like the taxi rank outside the airport.  That’s to say, you can get going somewhere quicker with it, but they’ll only take you as far as 140 characters per journey, and there are some right fascists driving.

*I made this one up, as I couldn’t remember the third, runt-of-the-litter, attempt Google had at doing social media, prior to Google+

**I don’t actually follow these two dreadful people, but just in case they ever cross my path, I’ve got a special circle just for them. It’s surrounded by barbed wire and machine gun toting guards – facing inwards.

 

Movin’ On Up

It’s been a while since I last wrote, but frankly Mr Shankly, I have good reason not to have stopped long enough to write.

We’re trying to buy a house. We’re looking in Guildford. Why Guildford? Simply because the estimable MrsT managed to get a job in Brighton (lovely town but possibly one of the worst places to have to commute to daily, from anywhere but Hove), we need to move to somewhere halfway between there, and where I work.

We are not ready to move to a small village yet, if ever.  In any event, I’ve watched enough Midsomer Murders to know how lethally dangerous small villages are. No thanks.

The only real contender was Guildford. As luck would have it, it’s an interesting and lively university town, with a lively shopping, café, pub and restaurant selection.

MrsT made the initial appointments with estate agents. This proved to be ill-fated, as having grown up in China, always living in apartments, she had no points of reference for what to look for in a British house. The results would best be described as utilitarian.

So I took over arranging viewings, and soon we had our dream house. It was within budget, in a quiet road, plenty big enough, and needed no work doing to it at all. Our offer was accepted, our mortgage approved, and all was looking rosy.

After a few weeks, however, there was bad news. The vendors had spent a whole FIVE days looking at houses, found their dream home, put an offer in, had a survey done, found a problem with it, and had a little cry/tantrum. Apparently, if they couldn’t have THIS particular house, they weren’t going to move. They cancelled the sale. Fuckers.

After a day of moping, we metaphorically picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves down, and adjusting our hats* to a jaunty angle, saddled up and started all over again.

I then entered a mad cycle of work and house viewings – racing down to Guildford after work, to view houses. As Guildford is an hour from work and/or home, every time I tried to arrange several houses to view – tricky given the current stagnant housing market.

I have no idea how many houses we viewed. Somewhere between 30 and 40, with half a dozen on the town’s estate agents. After a while, one badly cleaned bathroom started to look pretty much like another.

The agents, true to their profession’s reputation, were variously lackadaisical, wide-boys, or corporately brainwashed automatons. You really had to push them to get anywhere.  This is not like when I bought houses in The States, where you get a realtor, and they have access to all the other realtors’ properties, splitting the fee between themselves and the vendor’s realtor.

So that’s where we’re at. There has been some progress, but I can’t tell you about it at this point. I’d particularly like to tell you about today’s comic house viewings, with my mother-in-law wandering into several gardens – none of which were anything to do with the houses we were viewing, and all of us sneaking into one house to avoid being seen by the owners of another.

I’m also just dying to do a humorous bit about the various agents I’ve had to deal with, but I’m saving that until we’re home safe, literally.

*I lied about the hats, and for that matter the jaunty angle and/or inference of being on horseback

‘Allo ‘Allo ‘Allo

Quite by chance last night, I stumbled across the French police drama series “Engrenages” (known as “Spiral” in English) on the BBC’s iPlayer.  The series (in it’s third season) is currently being shown on BBC4.

To be brutally honest, I generally don’t watch French films or TV shows – not because I’m averse to reading subtitles, nor because of any feelings towards or about the French (for the record, I like them) – but because by and large, I find a lot of their televisual output rather dull.

It is a testament to the writing, acting and directing of Spiral then, that I not only sat riveted to the episode being shown, but stayed to watch a second hour of it, that followed immediately afterwards. Bearing in mind that I was watching episodes seven and eight (of twelve), it goes to show just how engaging the programme is, that having missed the first half of the story, I still got sucked into it.

You can read more details about the plot via the Wiki link above. Suffice it to say that police dramas don’t get much more gritty than this. It made Prime Suspect look like an episode of Hart to Hart by comparison.

There was violence, both seen and implied, there was gore, and there was a lot of sex – and that was just the police in their off-duty hours. And duplicity? Dear God, if that ever becomes an Olympic sport, the French officials (both police and judiciary) will win gold.

It was the unending twists of double-crosses and corruption that add to both the tension and the attraction to what is already a superb storyline. Police sleeping with each other, telling tales and playing politics, judges being bribed, court officials being blackmailed, the list goes on – and this was just in the first 45 mins I’d seen!

All of which takes place whilst they’re trying to solve a murder and catch a possible serial killer, who in turn seems to be mixed up with eastern European people trafficking and prosititution. Oh, and then there’s the strange tramp bloke called Jesus who the killer brings in to cut up this victim. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that I check every jam jar very carefully when I visit peoples’ kitchens now.

People bang on endlessly about US television crime dramas such as the CSI franchises, but they pale into insignificance next to Spiral. Obviously an American show would never have the balls to show the amount of sex and gore that this show does, nor I suspect would they linger on the corruption of state officials as much but if American TV networks could learn anything from Spiral it would be to pick the pace up.

Much as I love America (for all its many faults) it’s crime drama and sci-fi shows are over-sanitised leaden snore-fests compared to British and French shows. Spiral is perfectly paced. The story moves quickly, but slows now and again in order to let the audience catch its breath.

All the main characters were well-played, and It’s hard to pick out anyone for special praise, but if I had to, it’d be Caroline Proust as Capt. Laure Berthaud, who manages to be a hard-nosed-but-deeply-flawed copper, but also quite sexy when she lets her guard down, and Thierry Godard as her Lieutenant “Gilou”. Superb chemistry between them that made me think they had been a couple in previous episodes, but reading up on the show, it seems not.

I’m no expert TV critic, as you can see by reading this, and I’m being brief in the hope that I’ll actually finish this and get it posted rather than leave it incomplete and unpublished.  The bottom line is, if you can handle subtitles, and you like your crime drama gritty and tension-packed, get yourself over to BBC4 on Saturday night (repeated Thursdays).

The Good Life

If you’re reading this, hoping for witty observations on Felicity Kendal and Richard Briers, striking out against modern society, and in particular, neighbour Margo, I’d hit the Back button now, otherwise you’re in for a disappointment.

I recently heard a comment regarding my public output as documenting a “happy middle-class life”. The commenter stopped just shy of branding me a “smug married”.

I’m glad they didn’t, because that would be inaccurate. Smug Marrieds spend their time preaching to single people about how good their lives are, and how incomplete the singleton’s life must be, being, well, single.

If my tweeting, blogging and/or Facebook-ing of the day-to-day good things about life is trying to say anything, it’s saying, “Finally, I feel like life is nearing the normality and stability that most people take for granted”. That’s not exactly the same sentiment as “Look how good my life is…why isn’t yours as good?”

Why do I do it? Why do I celebrate life finally approaching a comfortable existence? Simply put, because for the past decade it hasn’t.

The 10 years have seen me go from owning a house, down to renting a room in a flat, and very slowly back up again to (any day now) owning a house once more. They’ve seen me go from a well-paid, permanent, professional job, to long-term unemployment, voluntary work, badly paid but career-changing work, and back slowly, to a reasonably well-paid professional role. At the same time, I’ve gone from a long-term relationship, to singledom, several disastrous relationships, and the dating scene until finally, meeting my soulmate in the most unlikely of places.

The last three years of this decade of recovery have had me battling with immigration, wedding planning, more immigration, house hunting and mortgages – all the while keeping it together in a job that demands impossibly long hours.

So yes, I am a bit pleased that I have a beautiful and loving wife, who’s from a different and fascinating culture. Yes, I do love going to China, seeing the family, and exploring the Far East. It’s true I’m thrilled that I have faster broadband than most, and that our computers are all shiny new Macs. Of course, I’m excited at finally getting back onto the property ladder after so long away. I make no apology for any of this.

I’ve been away from this kind of domestic normality and sense of security for 10 years. Just like my 18 months being unemployed in the US made me glad to have a job every day since it ended, and my living in the States for nearly six years made me truly appreciate the positive things about living in the UK, so this past decade has made me utterly grateful for what I now have. Not just grateful, but full of joy, positivity, and let’s face it, relief, which I guess sometimes bubbles over into what I write.

If that annoys a few people, then I guess they’ve misunderstood.

Finding the Write Time

I have stuff I’m writing for DMfM, but realise that with the pace of life at the moment, it’s likely to be a while before I finish any of them.  That doesn’t really seem to be the point of blogging. Blogging is supposed to be (fairly) instantaneous and off-the-cuff, right?

As I’ve been hand re-posting some of the six years of DMfM posts, I see that the early stuff is very much like that – very of-the-moment – but sometimes as a result, very dull.

In later years, I strove to write more polished stuff, but that inevitably, lead to things taking ages and/or not getting finished. This was also hampered by the ‘inconvenience’ of having a job again (I’d started blogging when I was unemployed in the US).

Of course the appearance of Twitter in our lives (I’m @maxturner on there, if you care to follow) means that I – like many bloggers – now have a much more instantaneous way of communicating. We can get our feelings, humour, pathos and anger out into the cybersphere in an instant, with no need to craft a whole page, just 140 characters at a time. If you’re venting that way, it’s understandable, that the blog then becomes a more occasional thing – perhaps for when 140 characters just won’t do the job.

Maybe I should blog off-the-cuff, then go back and edit for quality? Shut up with your witty answers, that was a rhetorical question. Maybe I stick with Twitter for the everyday, and blog focused pieces that are carefully written?

Ironically, I’ve written this piece completely off-the-cuff, whilst listening to my wife chat on a video call to her dad in Shenzhen, China. We’re sitting side-by-side on our Macs like some multicultural advert for how Guardian readers should start their Saturday.

So anyway, bear with me. I started a piece called Moving Forward, which was originally about all the changes happening this coming year, but ended up going on about all the dramatic changes in my life in the past decade. In fairness, it has been an above-average decade of change (not all of it good). But if I’m honest, it ran the risk of being a bit self-indulgent, and so has stalled.

Looking to the future, it was going to mention that we are looking to buy a house, and get all settled – the most settled I’ll have felt in a decade. Maybe I’ll revisit the piece and rework the comedy angle, should there be one.

Talking of moving forward, I have to go now, as MrsT and I are off to view some houses. If nothing else, I’m sure a few hours in the company of an estate agent will give me inspiration for an amusing rant.

Now if only I had the time to write it down.

You Haven’t Been Watching

I had a dream. No, this isn’t a treatise about the great speeches of Dr Martin Luther King, I had the dream last night.

Like a lot of dreams we have towards the end of our sleep cycle, it was brief and bizarre, with just enough reality in it, to make you not realise you’re dreaming.

Here’s what happened.

Actress Caroline Quentin was gingerly stepping through some swamplands in dark 1920s clothing. Her dark burgundy dress was covered by a black, full-length overcoat, and her hair neatly tucked under a black, almost brimless hat. No, it was not a cloche before you try eagerly to prompt my lack of period tit-fer nomenclature.

As she approached, the head of a large serpent – about the size of a crocodile’s head, but attached to a much longer body – rose out of the murky waters and snapped at her ankle, just missing it.

Ms Quentin’s character then looks at the camera (for it is at this point we realise it’s being filmed) and says something indistinct in an over-exaggerated nervous voice, followed by the sound of (very obviously) canned laughter.

At this point, a voice-over kicks in, telling us that this new programme is coming to ITV this spring. It becomes apparent that her character – the lead protagonist – is a 1920s female version of Frank Spencer.

You remember Frank Spencer – that retarded Forrest Gump predecessor from the 1970s comedy “Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em”, a show written in the same School-Of-The-Bleedin’-Obvious-Comedy writing style that was to be used so many times over the coming two decades, and chuckled at by the same imbeciles that thought ‘Allo ‘Allo was ground-breaking comedy, or for that matter, funny.

Anyway, it was then that I woke up, shuddered at the thought of such a great comic actress being reduced to appearing in such banal shite, and for a nanosecond thought, “Yeah, she’d turn that gig down, and ITV wouldn’t bother making such wank anyway, would they?”, before I remembered her on-going role as M&S’s corporate TV shill, plus ITVs current output. Yikes.

Honestly, I struggle to see anything of any value on ITV these days. Of course you’ve got ITV3 for endless re-runs of shows made when ITV was still good (Sherlock Holmes, Poirot, Morse etc), but ITV1 seems to offer nothing, beyond shallow meaningless drivel to keep the chavvy ADD generation distracted for a few minutes.

Right now, their homepage is featuring three programmes. These, we must assume are its “flagship programmes”. They consist of:

• Take Me Out – a dating show that makes 90s “Blind Date” look like the interview panel for Mensa. A show that found the lowest common denominator then halved it.
• Primeval – a late-to-the-market fantasy show that was ITV’s response to the popularity of the newly revived Doctor Who, but from the episodes I’ve seen, despite some great CGI and top writers, has a basic premise more akin to Scooby Doo. More disturbing than the monsters in it, it has the bloke who looks like the result of Mick Hucknell shagging a pig. You know the one.
• Dancing On Ice – this is presumably ITV’s response to the popularity of the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing, wherein it has exactly the same format at Strictly, only it’s on ice. I wonder how long the brainstorming session at ITV headquarters took for that?

It’s at this point that some of you will be countering my slating of this once great network, with cries of, “Oh but look at the success of X Factor!”

But in doing so, you kind of prove my point. My point being, that ITV has become a network, almost entirely devoted to banal, shallow, low-rent, low-cost reality TV and game shows.

They’ve taken what used to be an annoying hour of early Saturday evening television, before the good stuff started, and expanded it to fill the whole weekend. Just how many hours does X Factor go on for each week? It seems like about 60.

They do this, this cutting production costs, playing to the lowest common denominator, and then they have the audacity to whine that the BBC has an unfair advantage.  This unfair advantage, seems to be, that the Beeb gets off it’s arse and actually makes new, challenging, thought-provoking drama.

They (ITV) whinge about how the Beeb has an advantage because they’re not reliant upon advertisers in an increasingly broad market. OK, so explain how Channel Four seems to manage then?  When was the last time that ITV produced something with the brilliance of Shameless?

Granted, last year they created Downtown Abbey, which was excellent, but that was a three-parter that came and went, drowned out by the mass baying of the Take Me Out audience, demanding stuff with shorter words, and staring ‘real’ people who end every sentence with the word(?) “innit”.

In Conclusion
I realise that television can’t be an endless stream of high-brow discussion, though-provoking documentaries and period drama, but it seems that ITV isn’t even trying any more.

Whilst I applaud ITV for Downtown Abbey, as I’ve said, that’s three episodes in a whole year.  It shows they can still do good drama.

You might argue that the majority of people want early evening banality on a Saturday, but perhaps that’s just becoming a self-fullfilling prophecy?

Take a chance ITV. Write something new. Write something deep… or funny… or both. Just don’t do it as a knee-jerk reaction to the BBC having some success, and don’t let Paddy McGuinness front it.

Merry Christmas

First off, I’d like to wish anyone reading this, a very merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah or “good luck spending time with those family members you left home not to have to be around for any prolonged period of time”. Whichever of these festivals you’re celebrating, have a good one, and try not to punch your younger brother.

Secondly, I’m fully aware that I never followed up the Hong Kong story, with tales of Shenzhen, Shanghai (which was essentially five solid days of drinking and being paraded in front of various groups of Mrs T’s friends), and Thailand. I will, I swear, and I’ll make it funny enough not to bore the arse off you.

The reason for so much radio silence has been work-related. Two days after getting back from our travels, I started project leading the biggest project I’ve been involved with so far. There then followed a month of insanely long work days, working through lunch, weekends in the office, all of it working at full-tilt. In the final week, I was a man down due to flu, and ended up doing a 62-hour week in the office, never mind time working from home. We got there, we launched, but anything other than work took a back seat. That finished just over a week ago, but then Christmas was upon us.

Christmas in our household was a first. It was the first time I’ve ever hosted my parents. It was the first time (I think) that I’ve ever cooked a Christmas dinner (although I’ve cooked turkey roasts a fair few times for Thanksgiving when living in the States). It was also the first time I’ve ever punched my 82 year-old stepmother so hard that she didn’t get up.

Before you start calling Social Services, The Police, or Help The Aged, I should explain that this took place within the virtual confines of a Wii Sports boxing match. Furthermore, it was her that wanted to box rather than play tennis or golf.

All-in-all, Christmas was fun, although true to cliché, I’m now left with more cold turkey than you’d see in the whole of the Betty Ford Clinic on any given day.

This year, more than last, I’ve followed other people’s Christmas celebrations via Twitter. It’s easy to get sucked into it, as you can read the tweet-stream whilst you’re watching TV, cooking the turkey, or waiting for your go on the Wii.

More than anything, Twitter has shown me that pretty much everyone in the UK, be they strangers, friends or celebrities, has (outside of religious aspects) almost the same Christmas experience. Pretty much everyone has the stress of travel, gift shopping, food shopping and spending a prolonged period with relatives. Pretty much everyone deals with this, via the miracle product that is alcohol.

I’m not sure if that should be heart-warming or worrying. I guess it means that deep down, as a nation, we’re not so different from each other (despite the Daily Mail’s constant shit-stirring about the destruction of the British way of life) – and still have a strong identity, and a shared experience of such milestones in our year.  Either that, or we’re a nation of alcoholics.

Hopefully, it’s the former. If so, this is a good thing.  Beating an elderly relative into unconsciousness, on the other hand, even virtually, is possibly not.

Have a merry one.

Hong Kong

After three weeks apart from MrsT, the longest we’d been apart since she moved to the UK, plus an 11-hour overnight plane ride,. I was very glad to reach Hong Kong, and be met there by Latisha.

During the plane ride, I’d been stuck in the Unaccompanied Minors section. I’m not sure if the airline were trying to tell me that I looked like I was good with kids (in a non-Gary Glitter way) or that I looked like I wasn’t safe to travel unsupervised.

MrsT was accompanied by some of the in-laws; father, brother and niece, who were all happy to see not only me, but Latisha and I reunited.

Even in late October, Hong Kong was hot and sunny. Oh, and humid. Boy is it a humid place – more so than any part of mainland China I’ve been to so far. Of course the in-laws are all bemused at just how bad this pale Englishman is at coping with the heat of the Far East. They’re sympathetic too, I might add, as I start to do my impression of an slice of watermelon – turning dark pink and exuding a ton of moisture.

Uncharacteristically for me, I’d made this trip sans-laptop. If you know me, my venturing out that far from my kennel, without a laptop, is a bit like a dog escaping from the house, and going all the way across town without its collar on – ie. Feeling slightly naked and ill at ease.

All was well, however, as after a brief respite to drop the luggage off, we went shopping.  First stop was an Apple Store.  In fact, they didn’t have what we wanted, so we ended up a few doors down, at a branch of a reputable electronics retailer, where they managed to find us a 17” MacBook Pro. I’ll spare you the gushing about how gorgeous, shiny and fast it is. I will mention, however, that compared to my old 15” one, it seems gargantuan – particularly the 1920×1200 screen. Never let it be said that my wife doesn’t know how to get me excited!

Our second stop was to get me a haircut. This went surprisingly well, considering I’d missed a night’s sleep, travelled 6,000 miles, and kept dozing off as they cut my hair. Luckily, I didn’t do the falling-asleep-head-jerk, and end up with a pair of hairdresser’s scissors embedded in the back of my head, but I did reassure the chap cutting it, that it wasn’t his conversation or work that was making me doze off.

We then went home to my sister-in-law’s, and had a lovely Cantonese hotpot, and several other dishes, with the whole family. It was a lovely evening, and great to be back with them all again.

When it was time for tea, the milk came from the Trappist Dairy. Presumably, they know the sound of one hand milking.

I know what you’re thinking but I was a good boy – didn’t even open the Mac’s box until everyone else had gone to bed!

The next morning Latisha and I went out for brunch and shopping, before packing our bags and heading to Fo Tan Station, to catch the train to mainland China, and specifically, Shenzhen.

 

China/Thailand Latest

Folks, the plan had been to rigorously report on our family visit in China/Honemoon in Thailand. So far, this hasn’t happened, due to a combination of time and technology limitations.

The main culprit has been time – we have a very packed schedule – seeing family in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, and all of MrsT’s friends from Shanghai.

So, whilst a fuller report will eventually come, for know here’s an executive summary (you can consider yourselves executives, for the purpose of this exercise):

I arrived in Hong Kong on 24th October, met with MrsT (who’d been over here for several weeks already) and the family, and spent a lovely day or two in Hong Kong. We then caught a train up to the border, and walked over to mainland China.

Two days in Shenzhen, involved seeing old family friends, for vast and delicious dinners, plus a spot of bargain shopping.

Wednesday 27th October, and we got up at stupid-o’clock to catch the first flight to Shanghai. We’re now in our (lovely) hotel room in Shanghai, and about to go to the World Expo. This is followed by dinner with some of MrsT’s old firends.

More details, and maybe pictures and video, when I have time.

Macon on your Mac, on

Last night I had one of those moments that, if it was in a movie, would have everything slowed down, and me shouting, “Noooooooooooooooo!”, as I lunge, too late, towards the disaster unfurling before my eyes.

It would then cut to a close up shot of my Mac laptop’s keyboard, whilst in slow-motion, an entire glass of red wine comes crashing down, spilling its contents into every gap, between every key.

I never did like long stemmed wine glasses.

I did what I could in terms of trying to drain the wine from the laptop, turning it upside down straight away, and getting through about half a kitchen roll of paper, mopping in vain at the keys.  All the while the laptop remained switched on, and more amazingly, acting as if nothing had happened.

It was over the next hour or so as the wine dried inside the keyboard that the full toll of the damage became apparent. About half the keys on the keyboard no longer work. The entire rest of the computer’s functionality is unaffected, even the trackpad remains fully operational.

Sadly, one of those non-functioning keys was needed as part of my password to unlock the screen, another one was the Delete key, and another was the Cmd key. All-in-all my options for working around the non-functioning keys were disappearing fast.

In the end, the only solution was to get an external keyboard. Even though I fully intend to get a replacement built in keyboard and fix it myself, my impending trip to China meant that I needed a fast solution to retrieving data from the laptop. So now, the trusty laptop has by necessity become a desktop machine.

Either that, or we have to do a balancing act of laptop and keyboard being carried around the house, and with the way luck/clumsiness has gone this week, it’d probably all end with me tripping over the additional cable, and going head first down the stairs. So let’s not, eh?