Un-named Haiku
This blog post is short.
It is for my friend Bridget.
The sentence count: three.
Getting to know me, or not.
Good morning, blog. Although, actually, it’s more like evening, seeing as how it’s 7pm and everything.
It’s probably morning somewhere in the world.
I have a friend on this ship who has a fetish for “Awkward moments”. I’m sure he wouldn’t like it to be called a fetish, but whatever, he really loves them. He savours them, as a connesour, specially saving them up and preparing them, finely planning moments of Awkwardness in the same way that a conductor of an orchestra prepares the finale of a grand opera.
He’ll often say stuff intentionally to make people uncomfortable.
So I asked about a week or two ago, why?
And his response was something like,
(a) it’s fun,
(b) I enjoy seeing how people really are.
And the second one is the bit that I took issue with.
He said watching how people react when they don’t know how to respond gives a great insight into them, and let’s you see them without the pretence and acting that accompanies so much of human interaction.
What’s there to take issue with?
Well, seeing people when they don’t know how to react, is that really how they “really are”?
It seems to me to smell slightly of the whole humans-are-nought-but-animals thing.
And also, the “You know the real person by seeing how they behave under pressure”. - Likewise, the same.
There is some truth to it, of course. It’s much easier to act nice and give a good image when you are relaxed and can concentrate on impressing others, or on behaving well, than when things are stressful and you’re under pressure and don’t have time to think about what to do next.
Others have also said that you know how someone is by what they do in their spare time, or when no one else is looking, and so on.
Some people seem to do well under pressure, and be able to think quickly and clearly. Others don’t. Some people find it easy to find jobs to do and to use their spare time productively and pro-actively.
So… it’s often very useful to know how someone behaves under pressure, but I don’t think it really shows who they “really” are.
This would have been all nice and theoretical, and all that, except for this week.
I got sick.
And, it turns out, I don’t act very nice when I’m sick.
Usually, when I’m healthy and fine and everything, I tend to use a lot of hyperbole, sarcasm, and irony in my general day to day language. It tends to be (I hope!) fairly good natured, and over-the-top enough that others realise it’s not intended seriously.
“Could you play this CD for me?”
“Nope. It’s completely impossible - the computer can only play CDs on Thursdays.”
and so on.
Well, the thing is, recently I’ve started to tend to mix double meanings and more biting sarcasm into what I say, and, usually, it doesn’t mean anything - to me.
Ie, “hey, the programme schedule says you’re doing a song later, but you haven’t put a form in saying you want any microphones or instruments or anything, so it’s just a Capella, right?”
Read more...From Carlisle...
Wind tore across the darkened misty moors of the Lake District, pounding along the side of the tent like a tidal wave breaking upon the highcliffed shoreline of a forgotten arctic land. Outside of the tent, tiny rabbits huddled together in their burrows shivering due to the icy drafts, while inside and close by rain-drenched men struggled through the mud to complete their epic task.
Less then 3 hours previously 6000 people had been standing while the melodious hymn of Amazing Grace washed around them, many, even 200 of them touched to the heart made their way forward to pray and be prayed for, to receive the greatest gift in the history of the world.
3 hours later, the knowledge of this gift was the warmth that glowed inside the men labouring to bring their flight cases, amplifiers and speakers into a truck and depart from the now empty canvas cathedral.
Finally the dismissal was given, and as the last few items were loaded in the the crew slowly dispersed. The 4 OMNIvision men removed their mud covered shoes, and climbed into their small car, and drove out through the dark unlit pathway to the main road, and off into the night.
Soaking wet, muddy and weary in mind and body, their spirits were none the less high as they left the town and none of them were expecting the sudden sliding skid towards the roundabout and the ominous crunch into the other car which told them the journey home would be longer than they had anticipated.
The driver – a Scot – immediately turned their car towards the side of the road and drove up onto the curve to inspect the damage. They climbed from the vehicle shocked but glad that none had been injured. The other car was significantly dented, but the driver was unhurt. After the routine exchange of sarcasm, licence and telephone numbers and insurance policy contact details, the other driver perked up and laughed. Quoth he “At least it wasn’t my car, it’s a company one, I’d have been really pissed off if it were mine!”, whereupon he grinned, hopped in to his, or rather his company’s car and drove away.
The four traveling companions were not so fortunate in their predicament. The bumper was only attached by one nut and dragging along the ground. Inside, the plastic wheel frame was twisted into the wheel, and the headlights were no longer attached and pointing in various directions. With still more than 100 miles of motorway to cover before reaching their destination, it was decided that to attempt to complete it in that mangled condition would be folly.
A phone call for help from the Automobile Association was made, and they settled back to wait for the assistance to arrive.
It was not long until it arrived, and their disfigured ride was lifted on to the tow. The driver, a friendly Newcastle man was quick and efficient, and as he climbed into the cab a few minutes later, he turned and said “No hado sinye fine sell bacun ahl droye temsix unwil mitwethe rileh tuhye hom. Shubetheh intwenni mints.”
Read more...At LAST...
OK. So, due to popular demand, this service will resume shortly.
It’s now then.
I’m back on Doulos, I took the train down to Manchester, from where I flew to Dubai, from Dubai to Bangkok, from Bangkok to Sydney, from Sydney to Auckland, and from Auckland to Wellington where I joined up with Doulos again.
That was an epic adventure, in itself. There was a bombthreat in Dubai, with some English nutcase got himself drunk, and just as we landed got into a fight with a steward, and declared he had a “device” that he would use to blow up the plane. Of course, the crew had to take it seriously, and so we were sitting out on the tarmac for about an hour or so surrounded by police and firetrucks and SWAT teams and so on, before they managed to sort him out and let us off the plane.
Oh well, another day in the life of the brummie-not-yet-at-sea. Well, the trouble then came when about half of us from that flight were now late for our connecting flights, and so had to stay 24 hours in Dubai airport for the next plane.
If you’re going to get stuck in an airport for 24 hours, it might as well be Dubai. I know it quite well, of course, and they did very nicely give me a hotel room overnight, and 3 meal vouchers. It was a bit complex trying to figure out sensible times to eat them, as I needed to leave the next morning at 6am, and was about to fly to Australia, so was trying to get my bodyclock as sorted as I could. So anyway, I slept the whole day, worked the night, and ate my mealtickets-worth at random times when I was awake.
So, right. I eventually got to Wellington, where some of my great friends were there with a ginormous paper origami crane bird thingy they’d made, attached onto a crown of old toilet-roll-cardboard, with dangly bits and all which I had to wear. It was so good to see them again. (In case you wondered). I’ll see if I can find a photo of the amazing crown. It wasn’t really my style, as such, but one does try to fit in, after all.
so. That was like a month ago now, and I’m settling in quite well. AV has been undergoing a few changes, some good, some… well, I have a differing opinion about them to the people who instigated them.
We’re now in Brisbane, Australia. It’s cool. I like it here. It’s good to be back on the ship again. Many people are about to leave, and there are 60 odd new people… But, new in that they joined 6 months ago, just as I left, so they’re already “old hands”, yet I don’t know them!
Anyway. It’s traditional for me to start new paragraphs with “Anyway” for no apparent reason. Here I am, I’ve started writing again, and so new posts will be forthcoming, fear not. I have a few more stories from Carlisle which I’ll be posting soon, but I figured it’s best to get the blog going again up to date, before launching into the past.
Read more...There and back again
Before I begin today’s tale, there are a few things I must first explain. The first is that the UK has these things called “Bank Holiday Mondays”, which basically means most people with office-type jobs don’t work on random mondays throughout the year. Nobody whom I’ve asked seems to know what these Bank Holiday Mondays are in aid of, nevertheless, they seem quite keen on them, generally as they happen to be some of the people who don’t work on these aforementioned Bank Holiday Mondays.
The second thing I’d like to mention is that I’m kind of used to the Doulos work week, which means that also, most people don’t work on Mondays, however, we do work every other day, including Saturday and Sunday.
So being here in Carlisle, where the team has 2 days off per week (Saturday and Sunday) is quite a rare and interesting experience. Then these Bank Holiday Mondays on top of that, wow! It’s surprising they get any work done at all! We had one of these Mondays about 2 weeks ago.
The third thing, is that you should now promptly remove all of the above from your current thoughts, but allow it to drift uninhibited and unwatched into the depths of your subconcious general knowledge. This will put you in a better frame of mind for listening to the rest of the tale, but also put you in roughly the same state as I was 4 days ago.
I got up as usual, showered, dressed, and made myself a rather tasty cappuccino with my breakfast. I headed early to the Shed to start getting some audio files ready for posting later on this week. So I got to the shed about 10 past 7, my housemate was still asleep when I left, and while I was walking to the Shed, I thought
“Once I’ve got these files going, I’ll try walking to the Office (which is on the opposite end of town) for 9am devotions” (that we have together with the Office staff 3 times a week).
So once my audio files were happily working, I set out from the Shed at about 8:15 and started walking at a reasonable pace towards the office. I kind of hoped to see the bus at the bus stop as I went past, and maybe see my housemate on it.
No sign of the bus.
“Hm,” I thought, checking my watch.
“8:23.. that bus must be a bit later than I thought.”
I picked up the pace a bit, thinking, “I wonder if I can get to the office before the bus and my housemate do!” and briskly hopped down the steps to the underpass, and headed through the park.
One cool thing about Carlisle is the rabbits. There are wild rabbits all over the place! I’m sure the local farmers hate them and so on, but I quite enjoy seeing them all over the place as I walk about early in the morning, and while along the footpath I saw a rabbit jumping out of my way.
Read more...Photo time
I’m feeling a little bit Italian, right now. Not much, but just a bit.
This morning I made myself and housemate espresso before getting the bus down to the Office, where we have devotions with the office people 3 times a week.
Then for lunch, I had a mozzarella and sun-dried tomato panini, from the local “Sandwhich club” which Euan and a bunch of others often get lunch from to bring back to the Shed.
Then for dinner, I made lasagne. Myself, I kind of like this whole cooking thing. Especially when I remember to not try and burn down the house (I’ll tell you about it later…), and don’t squish eggs in mid air all down the side of the cupboards and on the floor, and also when I don’t by accident tip the slice of cheese-on-toast over and dump hot cheese all over the base of the oven.
Yes, all of those have happened this week. I’ll explain later, but right now I want to talk about my lasagne, as it really was quite OK-ish, maybe. I’m always terrifed about making food for people. But it’s one of those “I’m scared because I’m scared” things, rather than “I’m scared for a good reason” things. And I’m trying to learn to (a) tell the difference, and (b), ignore the first kind of scaredness.
Well. I thought the Lasagne was alright.
Anyway. He did have seconds, so it can’t have been *that* bad.
And he did say he wasn’t hungry really, before eating.
Maybe that’s cos I’d said I’d never made lasagne before, and he’s seen all the other chaos of the kitchen I’ve had this week.
Anyway. So at the end of the lasagne, post washing up, what’s the first thought to my mind? Well, after the Espresso, Panini and Lasagne filled day, only one thing remains!
No, it’s not a good red wine. I wish we had some for dinner too, but we didn’t. It is, of course,
Gelato!
OK, so we don’t have any Italian icecream in the house, but we do have some old random English ice cream which past housemates have left.
And I have an espresso machine.
So, Hot frothy chocolate, and icecream! What a way to finish the day.
My otherwise quite unflappable very German
amused-in-a-quiet-way-at-Daniel’s-cullenary-insanity housemate is truly
shocked at the idea, and tells me I will explode one of these days.
All that sweet stuff right before bed.
Maybe he’s right.
Those Germans can be quite sensible, at times.
Nevertheless,
“Shiver me timbers!” I cry, and reach for the chocolate sauce!
It’s been a while since I posted any photos here, so here are a few choice pics for your enjoyment, and for the general visualness of this blog.
So, because of the whole coffee obsession thing that’s going on right now, here is the first ever coffee-type thing which I managed to get out of the machine:
Kind of bleh… Which is why I moderately proudly present:
Of Boys, Toys, JWs, Anoraks, and St. Augustine (or, The Coffee Maker, Part 2)
I always knew a few people who loved trains. I even knew one or two people who built model rail-ways at home, usually in some deserted far off loft or study.
I’ve suddenly discovered, much to my surprise, that this is not one or two isolated individuals, but in fact apparently a large percentage of the male population of this part of the UK.
I never expected to learn that.
They call themselves Anoraks, and about a third of the people I’m working with belong to this group.
OK, So trains can look quite cool, and I am working with the media and computers team of the company, so it’s no surprise, I suppose, that you find a higher pecentage of people here with high IQ / arcane / obscure hobbies…
But it’s not just little nerdy geeks with glasses wandering around with notebooks and flasks of tea getting all excited about 7.25" gauge K1 engines and 1937 liveries, it’s a lot of guys, of every background, upbringing, shape, size, character and personality.
We had finished setting up for one of those J.John conferences, and were hanging out round the back waiting for it to be time to start, when this anglican vicar looking bloke wandered up, and they all ended up chatting about trains.
And all the rest of the guys too: those few who don’t have a thing about machines that roll around the place on parallel tracks get excited by all kinds of other things.
There’s a bloke here who gets very excited about trucks, vans, busses, and other large automobiles.
When I say “excited”, I mean in the kind of “eyes light up, bounces up and down and starts talking animatedly and waving his arms around” kind of way.
And he’s not a tiny geek. He’s an (roughly) 8 foot tall construction yard manager from London.
I watched two guys across the room at a pizza evening last week. They were discussing the intricacies of the AT command set, and the fun to be had trying to fix router systems by logging in backwards through a modem to solve networking problems.
Let’s turnout to a diverging track for a few moments, and I’ll see if I can work us back to this rail at the next set of points.
I went out yesterday an bought a whole load of books at charity shops. I finally got a copy of St. Augustine’s confessions.
“Even now I cannot fully understand why the Greek language, which I learned as a child, was so distasteful to me… "
I found this sentence funny, in itself, but lets keep reading for a while, and a few pages later get to this:
“For I understood not a single word and I was constantly subjected to violent threats and cruel punishments to make me learn.
“As a baby, of course, I knew no Latin either, but I learned it without fear and fret, simply by keeping my ears open while my nurses fondled me and everyone laughed and played happily with me.
Read more...Work in Carlisle
OK, after that huge long ramble about my personal life, now a bit about work.
Written almost a week ago, which is a bit confusing for me reading it now, but the internet has been sketchy.
I’m quite busy. In a good way, I think. We’ve got these conferences of J.John, which are kind of messing up everyone’s schedule down in the shed. Basically it’s every Tuesday and Wednesday, in 2 different cities. So we send crew down Tuesday morning at 6am or so, rig all day, gig in the evening, pack down, finished by about 2am or so, then the same again the next morning, finishing everything and back to Carlisle at around 3amish.
This week was week 3, out of 10, and was my first time on crew. The team leaders here had figured out a complex scheme to try and reduce the load on the crew, by sending different shifts of people from Carlisle, so that no-one had the complete 2 days of 6-am to 3-am, which is kind of killer. Anyway, I was in the car that shuttled down at 6am on Wednesday, arrived about 10 past 8, rigged all day, did the conference/thing, de-rigged, and then came back. I got dropped off home at around 4am.
I was expecting to be doing graphics, mainly using a programme called songpro (evil programme. the latest incarnation which they have here is even more evil than the old version we have on the ship…) for displaying lyrics on the screens during the singy bit and also some titles and playing videos too. The guy who was supposed to be doing the graphics the first day, however, didn’t go back to Carlisle, but instead stayed on for the second day, and said it made no sense for him to no do graphics, since he knew how it would all work with the band and everything, and so could get it perfect.
Not everyone from the first day crew, however, came back the second day, so I ended up “shading”. I hadn’t been shown yet how that all worked, but had a basic idea. At the most basic level, shading is kind of just doing changing the Iris levels, gamma and blacks and colour correction live on the cameras, from the OB truck, during the whole show, so that cutting between shots it looks the same, and so that the image on screen looks good and is “Legal” TV levels all the time. So once we’d rigged, I spent as much time as possible playing with the controls, figuring it all out.
I also had a bit of time before the event to play with the Jib a bit. Now that’s fun. I thought the crane on the cranedeck was multi-tasking while swinging a big stick around. Well, the jib is even more complex, as not only do you have the big stick, but you have a *lot* of people sitting around underneath it, and have various screens and stuff to not bash into while swinging the big stick around, and also all the usual pan/tilt controls for the camera at the end of the big stick, and Zoom and Focus as well.
Read more...Of Coffee Makers and Consciences (part 1?)
One of the things I love about the “Peanuts” cartoons are the tiny little things that I love. If that makes sense. For instance, this one thing I love about the Peanuts cartoon, is Snoopy’s book that he writes occasionally “Has it ever occurred to you that you might be wrong?” as part of the whole debate thing with Lucy. I love those books.
Anyway.
Has it ever occurred to you that you might be mad?
It’s been of late the rather disagreeable experience of mine to have occurring to me with disturbingly increasing regularity the possibility that I myself might be in a somewhat insanitous state.
I challenge anyone to diagram that sentence, and send me the picture…
Insanitous sounds rather unhygienic, but it’s not. I just mean “mad”, in a slightly more complex way of speaking.
To take simpler mode of address, I’ll quote Freddie Mercury:
“It’s finally happened, I’m slightly mad.”
Anyway, the current evidence I have towards this conclusion is The Strange Affair Of The Coffee Maker In The Daytime.
I feel remarkably Adrian Plassish as I type this, in a “this is dead serious to me, but I get the feeling people will laugh at me about it, because it’s so stupid…” sort of way. Like his paper-clip story.
Settle back, gentle reader, and prepare thyself for an epic journey into the mind of one convinced that he is no longer all quite there.
It all began like this…
This house is great. I’m really enjoying living here. right now, I’m sprawled across one of the *three* sofas in the living room, with my laptop, and a pot of Earl Grey tea.
Seriously, how can life get more chilled out than this?
What could there possibly be to complain about?
Well, there’s no internet at home. Is this a bad thing? Well, kind of. But also, it does stop me spending inordinate amounts of time online, which I did over the whole furlough, to my shame. 3 months to rest and do anything, and most of the time I spent online. Silly. So, it’s probably a good thing that I’m not online here, and can just write emails that I need to write, and then send them from the Shed. And spend the rest of my time at home cooking, reading, playing clarinet, and exercising. Oh, and sleeping, of course.
Secondly. And far more seriously. There is no coffee maker here.
I say it again, for emphasis.
There. Is. NO. Coffee. Maker. Here!!!
Shocking! But true!
There is a kettle, and a teapot, and plenty of instant coffee, of the “Fair Trade” and the “Nescafe” varieties - both of which are vile - but a brewed mug of the real stuff? Not a chance.
So, how can I solve this crisis, I wondered, then had the brainwave: I can buy a coffee maker.
In the UK they have this really weird store called Argos, where everything is in this funny HUGE catalogue that you can get, and then you write down the item order numbers, or SKU or something, give it to the clerk, and it gets brought in to you via conveyor belt, or so. No browsing around the store, just the catalogue.
Read more...Almost a week in Carlisle...
What ho, blog. It’s me, the author of this blog, writing again. I do that, every so often, you know.
I’m sitting in my house feeling very domestic, and kinda lonely.
House did I say? Yes indeed. It’s a fair sized place, 3 bedrooms, dining room, kitchen, sitting room, bathroom, etc, etc. And only 2 of us living here at the mo. And my housemate is frequently gone, filming abroad or doing a bunch of conferences for “J John”. I’ll be helping with that from next week.
Anyway, I’m feeling very domestic as I just made meself a slightly over-large mexican meal, so feel kinda stuffed, and have done the washing up, and have a load of washing in the machine, making churney sorts of noises at me, as those machines have a want to do.
I’ve been here in Carlisle for about 6 days, and it’s been a very random week. I arrived Tuesday evening, and this dutch bloke, one of my new colleagues, gave me a quick tour of ’the shed’ where we work (an old bus hanger that they’ve taken over and have a bunch of OB-trucks (Outside Broadcast), busses, and so on and offices in.
My housemate, and most of the people who work in ’the shed’ were out doing the first of these conferences for J John, and so were not around. So I was wandering around this house, making myself at home, buying fruit and stuff, in someone elses house, whom I’d never met. Weird feeling, to be sure!
Wednesday and Thursday we had a set of “fund raising training” seminars we had to attend, with the whole staff of our company here in Carlisle (quite a lot, about 30 or so), and a few others from other groups about the place. So that was lots of sitting around and classroom stuff, basically.
The conference people had got back very early Thursday morning, and were asleep most of the day, but then we met up that evening, and basically most of the single guys who work at the shed came and invaded our house, we cooked some pizza, and watched a stupid rubbish movie.
(If anyone offers to watch “You, me, and Dupree”, don’t. It’s a waste of time, vulgar, and so totally down-the-line american comedy it’s just not funny. Virtually no american comedies are really funny, but this one is just resoundingly boring. About the *only* redeeming feature, and this doesn’t by any way redeem so far as to make it worth while, is that the young married couple don’t get a divorce, decide at the end to stick togeather, and that their guy friend doesn’t have sex with either of them. Bleh.)
Hey, the pizza was alright.
Friday was my first “real” work day, I got myself a tiny wee office, have a funky mac book pro to work on, with Final Cut Pro Studio on it, and was editing/top and tailing the footage from the J John conference, so we can make a DVD and sell this week’s talk at next week’s conference. This is apparently going to be one of my tasks while I’m here. Not too difficult, but took me waaaaay longer than it should have done. I guess I’m just out of practice, and trying to get my bearings in the office, and all. I’ll get the footage from this week on Thursday, so hopefully can get this one finished a lot faster.
Read more...