I'm 26 today - officially middle-aged.
Today is my birthday. Let joy be unconfined. There won't be a party. Too stressful. The trouble with birthday parties, in my experience, is that you tend to group different friends into different pockets - you have work friends, and college friends, and various groups of random friends you've picked up along the way ... and since they're all quite different, you behave differently with them. I might be a swearing lout with one friend and an urbane sophisticate with another. Mix them all together in the same room and it gives me an identity crisis: suddenly I don't know who I am any more, and I panic and smash chairs against the wall until everyone goes home.
So instead of holding a birthday party, I plan to mark the occasion by screaming and crying. That's what I was doing the day I was born, so it's fitting. And besides, I've got cause for tears: apparently, I'm middle-aged. I'd always assumed middle age began somewhere in your 40s - the Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "the period between youth and old age, about 45 to 60" - but today's ruthlessly youth-oriented Reich has shifted the entry point ever closer, while I've grown steadily older to meet it. As I turn 26, I have to accept that I'm yesterday's news.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
I’m all for giving up.
Barack Obama is on the cover of Time magazine. It declares him the winner and it looks as though he will indeed be the Democratic nominee. But Hillary is still campaigning 18 hours a day. People are wondering when she’s going to let go. Maybe she’s in denial. Some people believe she doesn’t know how to get out of the race. Now everyone is asking: does Hillary have an exit strategy?
Having an exit strategy is important. So is having a good sign off. Whenever I’m saying goodbye to someone I like to say, “See you soon.” I know it doesn’t imply a commitment but it feels like I have plans for the future and something to look forward to.
But saying “See you later” – that’s different. When someone says that I tend to ask: when? It creates anxiety. Usually they’ll be silent for a second and look taken aback. Then they’ll say they don’t know – soon.
Since I don’t go out very much it’s rare I have to devise an exit strategy. Also, people usually don’t mind when I leave.
When I do need to provide an excuse I rely on “I don’t feel well.”
As soon as you raise the possibility of illness, no one wants to be around you anyway. This makes the exit less conspicuous.
Another approach is to disappear. In relationships this seems to be the exit strategy my exes employ the most. Why? No talking.
No one wants to explain why they’re dropping out. It’s too messy.
It’s so much easier without explanations, discussions, and feelings.
Also vanishing doesn’t seem to require a great deal of time or effort. One day you just stop returning phone calls. When an e-mail or text arrives, you ignore it. If you don’t have a PA, you screen all calls to make sure you’re unavailable until eventually, the calls stop.
The opposite of this strategy is the way I tend to exit a relationship. The long slow goodbye. Dragging it out as long as possible. Endless dissecting of what went wrong. Who doesn’t love that?
However with Hillary, a big part of the problem is she won’t give up.
I’m all for giving up. It’s very underrated. We’re led to believe it’s a sign of weakness to give up but I don’t see why. I give up all the time. When something gets too hard, I quit. Why not. Giving up is so much more rewarding than winning.
Especially when it comes to sports. I’m not big on competition. If it looks like I’m going to lose, I stop. I’m not a Rugby player. What’s the worst that can happen?
The only time I seem to have any real tenacity about something is when it doesn’t matter. Arguments over current affairs, peace to the Middle East. There isn’t really a winner. But refusing to relinquish my opinions in a debate – those are the sorts of situations I won't concede.
In Hillary’s case, timing is everything. Her refusal to leave the race when she’s down in the polls makes her look like a fighter. Her refusal to leave the race when Obama is accepting the nomination? That doesn’t make her seem heroic. It makes her seem sad.
People say all the time if you don’t succeed – try, try again. But it would be so much more dignified if she said “I give up. See you later.”
Friday, April 04, 2008
Friday, February 29, 2008
Rantings...
What's the point? No really, what is it? Most mornings, I have to draw on hidden reserves of strength just to get out of the bed in the flat that I cannot afford, in the neighbourhood I don't even like because it is plagued by gun crime and knife crime and every other sort of crime.
And, as I sit on the bus because the CityRail isn't working, the traffic emitting the carbon dioxide that will one day return as a tsunami to wipe out the grandchildren I won't have because I am probably infertile, I think of the chavs and the hoodies having underage sex outside the window and also of the al-Qa'eda plot to finish me off and I think that, if it doesn't, I will probably just develop a lifestyle cancer and the health service will refuse to pay for the drugs to cure me of it.And a solitary tear falls from my eye.
And when I finally get to work - where I must toil for hours to pay for the benefit scroungers who are sitting on their obese bottoms watching The Oprah Winfrey Show - I open the newspaper and I discover that the country called Australia cannot even manage to binge-drink properly.
Well, that's it, I think. We're going to the dogs. We're over.
If you missed the story (and you may have done, because, for some strange reason, most newspapers decided to hide it on page 765), it is my sad duty to report that, according to this year's Economist Pocket World in Figures, we are not one of the world's biggest beer-drinking countries.
There is not even a derisory nod to us on its list. In terms of litres of lager per head, the Japanese drink more beer than us. Mexicans drink more beer than us. Vene-bloody-zuelans drink more beer than us.
This is absolutely shocking news. And it just gets worse: neither do we feature in the list of nationalities that smoke the most.
In Lebanon, they're puffing away. Seems that, in South Korea, they can't get enough of nicotine. But us? Pah! We don't even smoke enough fags to scrape into the top 22. It wasn't like this in my day.
This book - which makes for extremely uncomfortable reading - also says that the number of people getting divorced has fallen. Male suicide rates have gone down.
Not very many of us are being murdered. We have one of the highest life expectancies in the world.
More tourists want to come here than almost anywhere else in the world. What are they: insane?
What's the point? No really, what is it? Most mornings, I have to draw on hidden reserves of strength just to get out of the bed in the flat that I cannot afford, in the neighbourhood I don't even like because it is plagued by gun crime and knife crime and every other sort of crime.
And, as I sit on the bus because the CityRail isn't working, the traffic emitting the carbon dioxide that will one day return as a tsunami to wipe out the grandchildren I won't have because I am probably infertile, I think of the chavs and the hoodies having underage sex outside the window and also of the al-Qa'eda plot to finish me off and I think that, if it doesn't, I will probably just develop a lifestyle cancer and the health service will refuse to pay for the drugs to cure me of it.And a solitary tear falls from my eye.
And when I finally get to work - where I must toil for hours to pay for the benefit scroungers who are sitting on their obese bottoms watching The Oprah Winfrey Show - I open the newspaper and I discover that the country called Australia cannot even manage to binge-drink properly.
Well, that's it, I think. We're going to the dogs. We're over.
If you missed the story (and you may have done, because, for some strange reason, most newspapers decided to hide it on page 765), it is my sad duty to report that, according to this year's Economist Pocket World in Figures, we are not one of the world's biggest beer-drinking countries.
There is not even a derisory nod to us on its list. In terms of litres of lager per head, the Japanese drink more beer than us. Mexicans drink more beer than us. Vene-bloody-zuelans drink more beer than us.
This is absolutely shocking news. And it just gets worse: neither do we feature in the list of nationalities that smoke the most.
In Lebanon, they're puffing away. Seems that, in South Korea, they can't get enough of nicotine. But us? Pah! We don't even smoke enough fags to scrape into the top 22. It wasn't like this in my day.
This book - which makes for extremely uncomfortable reading - also says that the number of people getting divorced has fallen. Male suicide rates have gone down.
Not very many of us are being murdered. We have one of the highest life expectancies in the world.
More tourists want to come here than almost anywhere else in the world. What are they: insane?
Memory Loss
I used my pin all the time, but my brain suddenly deleted it. I'll probably forget how to chew food next. I was queuing for a ticket at Bondi Junction when it happened. The train was leaving any minute from a platform at the other end of the station, so I was tense. To add to my woes, the person in front of me using the machine was one of those professional ditherers the Sod's Law Corporation apparently employs to arrive in your life at the most infuriating moments.
As time drained away, he gawped at the screen like a medieval serf trying to comprehend helicopter controls, confounded by one simple question after another - questions such as where he was going, and how many of him there were. I ground my teeth to chalkdust as his hand hovered over the touch screen, afraid to choose, like a man deciding whether to stroke a sleeping wolf.
Finally the prick was done, and once I had waited for him to collect his tickets and his bloody receipt, it was my turn. Having no change, I opted to pay by card. But just as my hand moved toward the keypad to enter my pin, a voice in my head whispered: "You don't know what it is." And it was right. I didn't. I scanned my head, but nope: my pin had vanished. It had gone.I tried inputting something that seemed about right. "INCORRECT PIN," said the screen. I slowed my breathing to clear my head. Rested my hand on the keypad a second time. Tried to fall back on muscle memory. Performed a finger dance. "INCORRECT PIN."
I became aware of the snaking, sighing queue behind me. Now I was the ditherer. A third bum guess would swallow the card, so I snapped it back into my wallet, turned on my heel and walked off, past the eyes of the queue, trying vainly to look as though not buying a ticket had been my plan all along, and everything was going smoothly, thanks for asking. Annoyed, I went outside and hailed a taxi.
As I sat in the back, I examined the contents of my head. The number had to be in there somewhere. After all, I've only got one card. One pin to remember. And I use it all the time, every day; in supermarkets, cafes, ATM's, stations ... everywhere. I realised that I'd better remember it soon or I wouldn't be able to function in modern society. Yet the harder I thought, the more elusive the number became. The only thing I knew for certain was that it didn't have a letter J in it. And that wasn't much of a clue. My brain had deleted it for no reason whatsoever.
I asked friends for advice. One told me to close my eyes and visualise my fingers on the keypad. Trouble is, I'm so scared of thieves peeking over my shoulder, I've perfected the art of making my hand look like it's entering a different pin to the one it's actually entering. When I try to picture it in my mind's eye, I can't actually see what I'm doing. I've managed to fool myself within my own head.
Someone else told me the key was to stop worrying about it and go Zen. Next time you're passing a cashpoint, relax: it'll just come to you, they said. But I couldn't relax. If you forget your pin, you have two guesses at an ATM, and two guesses in a shop. A third incorrect guess incurs a block, and isn't worth risking. Fail on your first two tries and you have to wait till the following day, when your guess tally is reset. All of which makes each attempt pretty nerve-racking - like using an unforgiving and incredibly irritating pub trivia machine.
Over the past few days I've approached cashpoints with misplaced confidence, only to suffer last-minute performance anxiety. It's like trying to go at a crowded urinal, when you're wedged between two men with penises the size of curtain rods, pissing away like horses. Just as a shy bladder refuses to wee, my brain refuses to dislodge the number. It won't come out. Not a drop. I'm impotent.
This morning I gave in and called the bank, ashamed. Sensibly, they wouldn't read my pin out over the phone, but offered to post a reminder. But because they're a bank, and banks work to an infuriating Twilight Zone calendar in which any task that would normally take five minutes in our dimension suddenly takes five to 10 "working days", I'm currently operating in that unsettling limbo familiar to anyone who's lost a wallet; you become a social outcast, carrying ID into your home branch and begging for some old-fashioned banknotes to tide you over.
Inconvenience aside, what's creeped me out is the thudding blank hole in my head where the number used to live. It can't be possible to completely forget something so familiar. Perhaps it was stolen. Perhaps someone hacked into my mind while I was dreaming and sucked it away through a pipe. Or perhaps this is stage one of my inevitable descent into thrashing, bewildered madness. What am I going to forget next? How to chew food?
In the meantime, if anyone's got any hints on lost-memory retrieval, pass them on. I've tried everything from getting drunk to lucid dreaming, and the little bastard is still hiding in the bushes, looking on and laughing. I can sense it. But I can't see it.
I used my pin all the time, but my brain suddenly deleted it. I'll probably forget how to chew food next. I was queuing for a ticket at Bondi Junction when it happened. The train was leaving any minute from a platform at the other end of the station, so I was tense. To add to my woes, the person in front of me using the machine was one of those professional ditherers the Sod's Law Corporation apparently employs to arrive in your life at the most infuriating moments.
As time drained away, he gawped at the screen like a medieval serf trying to comprehend helicopter controls, confounded by one simple question after another - questions such as where he was going, and how many of him there were. I ground my teeth to chalkdust as his hand hovered over the touch screen, afraid to choose, like a man deciding whether to stroke a sleeping wolf.
Finally the prick was done, and once I had waited for him to collect his tickets and his bloody receipt, it was my turn. Having no change, I opted to pay by card. But just as my hand moved toward the keypad to enter my pin, a voice in my head whispered: "You don't know what it is." And it was right. I didn't. I scanned my head, but nope: my pin had vanished. It had gone.I tried inputting something that seemed about right. "INCORRECT PIN," said the screen. I slowed my breathing to clear my head. Rested my hand on the keypad a second time. Tried to fall back on muscle memory. Performed a finger dance. "INCORRECT PIN."
I became aware of the snaking, sighing queue behind me. Now I was the ditherer. A third bum guess would swallow the card, so I snapped it back into my wallet, turned on my heel and walked off, past the eyes of the queue, trying vainly to look as though not buying a ticket had been my plan all along, and everything was going smoothly, thanks for asking. Annoyed, I went outside and hailed a taxi.
As I sat in the back, I examined the contents of my head. The number had to be in there somewhere. After all, I've only got one card. One pin to remember. And I use it all the time, every day; in supermarkets, cafes, ATM's, stations ... everywhere. I realised that I'd better remember it soon or I wouldn't be able to function in modern society. Yet the harder I thought, the more elusive the number became. The only thing I knew for certain was that it didn't have a letter J in it. And that wasn't much of a clue. My brain had deleted it for no reason whatsoever.
I asked friends for advice. One told me to close my eyes and visualise my fingers on the keypad. Trouble is, I'm so scared of thieves peeking over my shoulder, I've perfected the art of making my hand look like it's entering a different pin to the one it's actually entering. When I try to picture it in my mind's eye, I can't actually see what I'm doing. I've managed to fool myself within my own head.
Someone else told me the key was to stop worrying about it and go Zen. Next time you're passing a cashpoint, relax: it'll just come to you, they said. But I couldn't relax. If you forget your pin, you have two guesses at an ATM, and two guesses in a shop. A third incorrect guess incurs a block, and isn't worth risking. Fail on your first two tries and you have to wait till the following day, when your guess tally is reset. All of which makes each attempt pretty nerve-racking - like using an unforgiving and incredibly irritating pub trivia machine.
Over the past few days I've approached cashpoints with misplaced confidence, only to suffer last-minute performance anxiety. It's like trying to go at a crowded urinal, when you're wedged between two men with penises the size of curtain rods, pissing away like horses. Just as a shy bladder refuses to wee, my brain refuses to dislodge the number. It won't come out. Not a drop. I'm impotent.
This morning I gave in and called the bank, ashamed. Sensibly, they wouldn't read my pin out over the phone, but offered to post a reminder. But because they're a bank, and banks work to an infuriating Twilight Zone calendar in which any task that would normally take five minutes in our dimension suddenly takes five to 10 "working days", I'm currently operating in that unsettling limbo familiar to anyone who's lost a wallet; you become a social outcast, carrying ID into your home branch and begging for some old-fashioned banknotes to tide you over.
Inconvenience aside, what's creeped me out is the thudding blank hole in my head where the number used to live. It can't be possible to completely forget something so familiar. Perhaps it was stolen. Perhaps someone hacked into my mind while I was dreaming and sucked it away through a pipe. Or perhaps this is stage one of my inevitable descent into thrashing, bewildered madness. What am I going to forget next? How to chew food?
In the meantime, if anyone's got any hints on lost-memory retrieval, pass them on. I've tried everything from getting drunk to lucid dreaming, and the little bastard is still hiding in the bushes, looking on and laughing. I can sense it. But I can't see it.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Sleep addiction!
Why would Amy Winehouse resist going to rehab? I wouldn't mind having a few weeks totally cut off from the world where no one could reach me and the sole objective was to talk about myself and my problems. Then get a pat on the back. What's not to like?
I tried to get into Promises, the exclusive treatment centre in Malibu, but they wouldn't have me. My addictions didn't qualify. "Do you have a drinking problem?" No. "Drugs?" No. "Sex addiction?" I wish. I told them I was addicted to suffering. But that was too vague.
Now all of a sudden, there's a new addiction. Nobody's sleeping. Heath Ledger wasn't sleeping. Britney Spears isn't sleeping. Justin Chambers from Gray's Anatomy just checked into rehab for not sleeping.
I have the opposite problem. I'm addicted to sleeping. From the moment I wake up all that I look forward to is going back to bed. The other night I was out to dinner with friends and as soon as the bill arrived I perked up. I knew it was only a matter of time before I could go home to bed. Then it hit me: I was more excited at the thought of going to sleep than I had been at any point during the dinner.
I'm stuck with an addiction that gets no sympathy. Everyone's concerned when someone is not sleeping but no one cares about those of us who oversleep. It's not an excuse for anything.
No one ever says, "Oh the poor thing – He's sleeping too much." Or, "He looks way too rested. No wonder he's not got no social life." I realise people mainly get addicted to things that are bad for them. And too much of anything isn't healthy. But how come you never hear of anyone addicted to apples? You never hear anyone say: her apple addiction is out of control.
The last time I went to the gym I had to drag myself from under the duvet to get there. On the treadmill, I know some people visualise climbing a mountain to spur themselves on – I visualised climbing back into bed. While I was there I overheard one woman tell her friend she was addicted to exercise. Why can't I have that? That sounds ideal. I would love to feel compelled to get in shape.
Not only am I addicted to something that's unsympathetic, but during the times when this addiction could be useful, it doesn't work. I can't sleep on planes.
Maybe it's genetic. I remember my mother sleeping frequently and waking at noon. My father was always a strong sleeper too. I'll just blame them. If only I were in rehab I'd be able to talk about it.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Why I love Christmas
My favourite time of year is the period between Christmas and New Year. It's like a week of Sundays. No one expects any work to get done, the streets are empty, the pressure is off. Just getting dressed feels like an accomplishment. Sometimes during this period I will agree to leave the house and meet up with a friend. But only if food is involved. If I'm going to interrupt doing nothing with taking a shower, there has to be an incentive. Conversation isn't enough. That's what the phone is for. It allows me to continue to engage with the outside world without ever having to look in a mirror.
But no matter how much I try to convince people I'm happy not going out, there will always be those who don't believe me. They can't fathom how being alone and staying in is preferable to being with strangers making small talk while at the same time wondering how I'll get home. And that's always the main concern. Getting around is such a deterrent. I would go out a lot more if everything took place in my building. The other day a friend invited me to a Christmas party and I decided to be honest. I told her I didn't want to face the hassle of traveling there and back. "But you travel all the time," she said.
Exactly. The last thing I want is to go outside my two-block radius if I don't have to. Nevertheless, a few nights ago I ventured out to the work party, which was at a venue that couldn't have been further away. Walking to the train, waiting for the tube, taking the tube, walking to the venue, getting lost, and stopping at a newsagent for directions; they could have had the party in Paris and I would have got there sooner. Within the first five minutes of arriving I was already putting into motion the exit plan. I arranged for a pick-up so I didn't have to worry. But then the whole time I was checking my watch to make sure I didn't miss the ride.
Anticipating wanting to leave early, I'd booked the lift too soon. For the first time in ages I'm actually at a party I would have liked to stay at but I can't. I have to leave because the mate's here. This is why I don't go out at the holidays. It's too stressful. On Christmas Day in Australia, there is no public transport. What could be better? Expectations are low. There is no obligation to go anywhere or do anything because there is no way to get around. If only it could be like this every day. No public transport limits the people you see to whoever lives in the neighbourhood. Recently I was on the phone to someone I work with when we discovered we live 15 minutes away from each other. She's around - I'm around - the obligation for coffee hung in the air. "We should meet up," I said. And then, to my delight, she replied: "Nothing personal, but no." She told me she'd rather be alone. Finally, I'd found the ideal friend to have in the neighborhood: someone I'll never see.
New Year's Eve is a whole other story. If you're over the age of 25, unless you're Kate Moss, no one will question your decision to stay home. But this year, I got the perfect invitation from my friend, Lee. The e-mail arrived with the subject heading: New Year Sadsters. "I hereby invite you discerning types to drop in at my under furnished flat on the 31st in the mid or late afternoon.I would arrange for there to be some food.and then you could go. Or stay as you wished." He then goes on to say he might change his mind about meeting at his flat but we could meet at a nearby pub or restaurant instead. And, we can let him know by the 29th. What I found so pleasing about the invitation was the ambivalence. It kind of sounded like he was hoping we'd decline. So with the pressure off, I accepted.
Of course now I'm worried he'll cancel.
My favourite time of year is the period between Christmas and New Year. It's like a week of Sundays. No one expects any work to get done, the streets are empty, the pressure is off. Just getting dressed feels like an accomplishment. Sometimes during this period I will agree to leave the house and meet up with a friend. But only if food is involved. If I'm going to interrupt doing nothing with taking a shower, there has to be an incentive. Conversation isn't enough. That's what the phone is for. It allows me to continue to engage with the outside world without ever having to look in a mirror.
But no matter how much I try to convince people I'm happy not going out, there will always be those who don't believe me. They can't fathom how being alone and staying in is preferable to being with strangers making small talk while at the same time wondering how I'll get home. And that's always the main concern. Getting around is such a deterrent. I would go out a lot more if everything took place in my building. The other day a friend invited me to a Christmas party and I decided to be honest. I told her I didn't want to face the hassle of traveling there and back. "But you travel all the time," she said.
Exactly. The last thing I want is to go outside my two-block radius if I don't have to. Nevertheless, a few nights ago I ventured out to the work party, which was at a venue that couldn't have been further away. Walking to the train, waiting for the tube, taking the tube, walking to the venue, getting lost, and stopping at a newsagent for directions; they could have had the party in Paris and I would have got there sooner. Within the first five minutes of arriving I was already putting into motion the exit plan. I arranged for a pick-up so I didn't have to worry. But then the whole time I was checking my watch to make sure I didn't miss the ride.
Anticipating wanting to leave early, I'd booked the lift too soon. For the first time in ages I'm actually at a party I would have liked to stay at but I can't. I have to leave because the mate's here. This is why I don't go out at the holidays. It's too stressful. On Christmas Day in Australia, there is no public transport. What could be better? Expectations are low. There is no obligation to go anywhere or do anything because there is no way to get around. If only it could be like this every day. No public transport limits the people you see to whoever lives in the neighbourhood. Recently I was on the phone to someone I work with when we discovered we live 15 minutes away from each other. She's around - I'm around - the obligation for coffee hung in the air. "We should meet up," I said. And then, to my delight, she replied: "Nothing personal, but no." She told me she'd rather be alone. Finally, I'd found the ideal friend to have in the neighborhood: someone I'll never see.
New Year's Eve is a whole other story. If you're over the age of 25, unless you're Kate Moss, no one will question your decision to stay home. But this year, I got the perfect invitation from my friend, Lee. The e-mail arrived with the subject heading: New Year Sadsters. "I hereby invite you discerning types to drop in at my under furnished flat on the 31st in the mid or late afternoon.I would arrange for there to be some food.and then you could go. Or stay as you wished." He then goes on to say he might change his mind about meeting at his flat but we could meet at a nearby pub or restaurant instead. And, we can let him know by the 29th. What I found so pleasing about the invitation was the ambivalence. It kind of sounded like he was hoping we'd decline. So with the pressure off, I accepted.
Of course now I'm worried he'll cancel.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
The rest of the year has arrived. It's called December
You got a seat on the bus on the way to work this morning: am I right? And there were no queues at the sandwich bar at lunch today. And last night you could get a seat for a movie without having booked two months in advance. Correct?
The explanation for all this is obvious. Everyone apart from you and me is on holiday. But here's the mystery. Even though everyone is on holiday, the cinema is still screening films. There are still people behind the counter in the sandwich bar to slap a slice of ham inside your lunchtime sandwiches and to charge you double by calling them " panini". (This practice is based on the hunch that the Aussie will pay more for things with an Italian name, like Prada, or focaccia, or Monica Bellucci. If the Democrats want us to pay more in taxes they should stop trying to persuade us of the social merits of siphoning more of our income into education and instead just use the Italian word for taxes: " tasse".)
And there are still people stacking the shelves and manning the checkouts in the supermarket. And the trains are still working – not at any respectable level, but no worse than it does at any other time of year, when the largest group of employees is the one hired to mint fresh excuses to explain the absence of any trains. (If you want to buy your child a cheap, noiseless present that's easy to take on holiday without swallowing your luggage allowance, buy him a City Rail train set. When he asks when the trains that you gave him will actually appear, just say they are indefinitely delayed because of signal failure, electricity supply problems, staff shortages and so on. As a present, it's both authentic and cost-efficient.) In short, the country seems to be running pretty much as it always does.
Now, an easy conclusion to draw from this evidence would be that if the country can run during December with, let's say, a quarter of the working population absent from their desks, factories, shops and garages, do we really need to employ quite so many people during the rest of the year? Isn't this – oh dear – a job-cutter's mandate? At first glance it looks like one: but hang on! If we sack a quarter of the workforce, there will be fewer people earning a salary; which means they'll have less money to spend on the goods produced by the company that sacked them. Far from prospering, these companies might find that they are worse off than when they were employing all these apparent wastrels. So, for their own financial self-interest and wellbeing, the companies then rehire them.
But how does any company (and all the employers in a country who, between them, make up the economy) know just how many of these apparent wastrels they need to pad out their payroll in order to achieve this delicate balance – without tipping over the edge and rehiring so many that the company's wage bill swells to the point where its products are no longer competitive? And how does the broader employment market strike the right balance? Luck? Asking an economist would be a quick way of establishing seven possible explanations, all of which might be as accurate as the suggestions in a "Guess Michael Moore's Weight in Cheeseburgers" competition.
This is because economists (economists are people who, when asked by their university careers officer, "Would you like a job where people pay you large sums of money, even when your forecasts turn out to be wildly wrong?" answered, "Yes") seem to mimic the working methods of utility companies. You know how gas and electricity suppliers send you an "estimated meter reading"?
Wait a second! Isn't this the same market that is currently yo-yoing like a drunk on absinthe; sending stock prices soaring one day because everything is going so swimmingly, and the next day sending them plummeting after suddenly deciding that, on second thoughts, things aren't so rosy after all?
So, has anybody got a clue how this curious employment alchemy works? Anyone out there understand what is actually going on? It's enough to make you feel a little anxious, isn't it? Well, you and me, at any rate. Because who else is around to worry?
You got a seat on the bus on the way to work this morning: am I right? And there were no queues at the sandwich bar at lunch today. And last night you could get a seat for a movie without having booked two months in advance. Correct?
The explanation for all this is obvious. Everyone apart from you and me is on holiday. But here's the mystery. Even though everyone is on holiday, the cinema is still screening films. There are still people behind the counter in the sandwich bar to slap a slice of ham inside your lunchtime sandwiches and to charge you double by calling them " panini". (This practice is based on the hunch that the Aussie will pay more for things with an Italian name, like Prada, or focaccia, or Monica Bellucci. If the Democrats want us to pay more in taxes they should stop trying to persuade us of the social merits of siphoning more of our income into education and instead just use the Italian word for taxes: " tasse".)
And there are still people stacking the shelves and manning the checkouts in the supermarket. And the trains are still working – not at any respectable level, but no worse than it does at any other time of year, when the largest group of employees is the one hired to mint fresh excuses to explain the absence of any trains. (If you want to buy your child a cheap, noiseless present that's easy to take on holiday without swallowing your luggage allowance, buy him a City Rail train set. When he asks when the trains that you gave him will actually appear, just say they are indefinitely delayed because of signal failure, electricity supply problems, staff shortages and so on. As a present, it's both authentic and cost-efficient.) In short, the country seems to be running pretty much as it always does.
Now, an easy conclusion to draw from this evidence would be that if the country can run during December with, let's say, a quarter of the working population absent from their desks, factories, shops and garages, do we really need to employ quite so many people during the rest of the year? Isn't this – oh dear – a job-cutter's mandate? At first glance it looks like one: but hang on! If we sack a quarter of the workforce, there will be fewer people earning a salary; which means they'll have less money to spend on the goods produced by the company that sacked them. Far from prospering, these companies might find that they are worse off than when they were employing all these apparent wastrels. So, for their own financial self-interest and wellbeing, the companies then rehire them.
But how does any company (and all the employers in a country who, between them, make up the economy) know just how many of these apparent wastrels they need to pad out their payroll in order to achieve this delicate balance – without tipping over the edge and rehiring so many that the company's wage bill swells to the point where its products are no longer competitive? And how does the broader employment market strike the right balance? Luck? Asking an economist would be a quick way of establishing seven possible explanations, all of which might be as accurate as the suggestions in a "Guess Michael Moore's Weight in Cheeseburgers" competition.
This is because economists (economists are people who, when asked by their university careers officer, "Would you like a job where people pay you large sums of money, even when your forecasts turn out to be wildly wrong?" answered, "Yes") seem to mimic the working methods of utility companies. You know how gas and electricity suppliers send you an "estimated meter reading"?
Wait a second! Isn't this the same market that is currently yo-yoing like a drunk on absinthe; sending stock prices soaring one day because everything is going so swimmingly, and the next day sending them plummeting after suddenly deciding that, on second thoughts, things aren't so rosy after all?
So, has anybody got a clue how this curious employment alchemy works? Anyone out there understand what is actually going on? It's enough to make you feel a little anxious, isn't it? Well, you and me, at any rate. Because who else is around to worry?
Thursday, August 16, 2007
India 60, turning 16.
India at menopause. Wow! By the time our Independence jubilee's back-slapping is over, 60 will be the new 40. Sixty will become Sexty thanks to all the media hype — and the media icons who happen to be midnight's children. They will gild, glorify and glamorise the personal Big Sixer, which they too have hit in continuing partnership with the country.
It's stupid but true. At every decadal milestone, women especially say 'OhmyGawd, I'm 30!' or 40, or 50, as if it were the end of the world, happiness or taut butt. Then as they settle into it, they discover that it's an even better life stage. In their 30s, women have shed their giddiness, and got into professional and personal stride. In their 40s, they are in their prime and in control. As they cross 50, they aren't looking at retirement, but only at retyre-ing their Alpha Romeo. And dangling him too.
When will it end? Never, I hope, since it's not over till it's over, as some coach oft-quotedly said. Since 1 2 3 is the flavour of the month, let me cite an American, Gail Sheehy, whose 'New Passages' (1995) was truly my 'Ah-ha!' moment. This cultural observer documented how, for contemporary women, the 40s and 50s were now a second coming of age. They were doing things in their private and career spaces that a previous generation would have considered undoable, unthinkable, and unseemly besides. Sheehy labelled what had traditionally been the dread decades as the 'Flourishing 40s' and the 'Flaming 50s'.
India's experience fits into these labels too. Economically, these have really been her 'Flourishing 40s' and 'Flaming 50s'. And, the next 10 years will be far from boringly 'Serene'. She is already the global IT Girl, and, as she enters her 60s, the world is finding everything sexier about her, from her markets to her merchandise, from her software to her soft power.
What about menopause then? Today's India can forget about it just as today's women have. It's not a time of depression, but of liberation. At this stage, the country no longer needs to worry about unwanted consequences. She can go ahead and just do it.
Even the anxious hot flashes of the early years of economic liberation are behind her, and any flagging of spirits or sagging of enthusiasm can be easily set right. We have the mood-lifting hormonal therapy of the exemplary achievements of our corporate go-getters, and even already have our silicon enhancements. India will find, as women have done, that this is not a period signalling the end of productivity. Like the old Coke ad, it's 'the pause that refreshes'.
India at menopause. Wow! By the time our Independence jubilee's back-slapping is over, 60 will be the new 40. Sixty will become Sexty thanks to all the media hype — and the media icons who happen to be midnight's children. They will gild, glorify and glamorise the personal Big Sixer, which they too have hit in continuing partnership with the country.
It's stupid but true. At every decadal milestone, women especially say 'OhmyGawd, I'm 30!' or 40, or 50, as if it were the end of the world, happiness or taut butt. Then as they settle into it, they discover that it's an even better life stage. In their 30s, women have shed their giddiness, and got into professional and personal stride. In their 40s, they are in their prime and in control. As they cross 50, they aren't looking at retirement, but only at retyre-ing their Alpha Romeo. And dangling him too.
When will it end? Never, I hope, since it's not over till it's over, as some coach oft-quotedly said. Since 1 2 3 is the flavour of the month, let me cite an American, Gail Sheehy, whose 'New Passages' (1995) was truly my 'Ah-ha!' moment. This cultural observer documented how, for contemporary women, the 40s and 50s were now a second coming of age. They were doing things in their private and career spaces that a previous generation would have considered undoable, unthinkable, and unseemly besides. Sheehy labelled what had traditionally been the dread decades as the 'Flourishing 40s' and the 'Flaming 50s'.
India's experience fits into these labels too. Economically, these have really been her 'Flourishing 40s' and 'Flaming 50s'. And, the next 10 years will be far from boringly 'Serene'. She is already the global IT Girl, and, as she enters her 60s, the world is finding everything sexier about her, from her markets to her merchandise, from her software to her soft power.
What about menopause then? Today's India can forget about it just as today's women have. It's not a time of depression, but of liberation. At this stage, the country no longer needs to worry about unwanted consequences. She can go ahead and just do it.
Even the anxious hot flashes of the early years of economic liberation are behind her, and any flagging of spirits or sagging of enthusiasm can be easily set right. We have the mood-lifting hormonal therapy of the exemplary achievements of our corporate go-getters, and even already have our silicon enhancements. India will find, as women have done, that this is not a period signalling the end of productivity. Like the old Coke ad, it's 'the pause that refreshes'.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Doc, I think I've got techno droop
It was seven o'clock on Thursday night when I walked past the Apple store in Sydney C.B.D, where details about Apple's new iPhone which had gone on sale three hours earlier – for the bargain price of $599 were being beamed on a flat screen. If you believed the news, Americans were queueing up across the country for this shiny black gizmo.
On eBay, one of the first iPhones had just been resold for $12,500. By the looks of things, however, the hysteria had yet to reach Sydney. Inside the store, I could see a sales assistant sitting alone. "Are you gonna get one, where is your dedication?" "Nah," I concluded, not yet at least.
Now, for as long as I can remember, I have been an "early adopter". I bought a laptop when they were still made out of wood and cost more than a space shuttle. I practically remortgaged my kidney for a high-definition DVD recorder, the model of which was discontinued a fortnight later and replaced by a generic model, which came free with satellite TV subscriptions.
So why not become one of the half a million or so people who became early iPhone adopters on its debut weekend? The problem, I think, is this: I have lost my technology libido. My interaction with the world's most beautiful gadgets has become chilly and dutiful. You could say that I've got an embarrassing case of iPhone dysfunction.
Personally, I blame it on environmentalists. If it wasn't for environmentalists, I wouldn't know that when you plug an iPhone into a power socket in Sydney, it charges up with electricity that has in all likelihood been made by burning coal. And coal, when it comes to gadgets, is the ultimate passion killer. When Apple's founder, Steve Jobs, unveiled the iPhone back in January, do you think he asked Bono to stand in silhouette against a white background, holding an iPhone in one hand and a lump of coal in the other? No, he did not.
And yet, with coal being the world's largest single source of fuel for electricity, the iPhone could barely exist without it. That cool widescreen that changes aspect when you move it from portrait to landscape? It runs on coal. The built-in iPod? Coal-powered. And what about that clever "visual voicemail" function? Made possible by setting fire to black lumps of half-a-billion-year-old plants, thus releasing planet-killing quantities of carbon dioxide and other nasty gases into the air.
Which is why, as we begin yet another cycle of droughts, storms, floods, hurricanes, twisters, heat deaths, famines, species extinctions and so on, there is a limit to my excitement at the prospect of owning a coal-powered device that can display a tiny YouTube video of a skateboarding bulldog. Nothing against Apple, of course. I wish Mr Jobs all the best. But if he needs another product to revolutionise – electricity might not be such a bad idea.
It was seven o'clock on Thursday night when I walked past the Apple store in Sydney C.B.D, where details about Apple's new iPhone which had gone on sale three hours earlier – for the bargain price of $599 were being beamed on a flat screen. If you believed the news, Americans were queueing up across the country for this shiny black gizmo.
On eBay, one of the first iPhones had just been resold for $12,500. By the looks of things, however, the hysteria had yet to reach Sydney. Inside the store, I could see a sales assistant sitting alone. "Are you gonna get one, where is your dedication?" "Nah," I concluded, not yet at least.
Now, for as long as I can remember, I have been an "early adopter". I bought a laptop when they were still made out of wood and cost more than a space shuttle. I practically remortgaged my kidney for a high-definition DVD recorder, the model of which was discontinued a fortnight later and replaced by a generic model, which came free with satellite TV subscriptions.
So why not become one of the half a million or so people who became early iPhone adopters on its debut weekend? The problem, I think, is this: I have lost my technology libido. My interaction with the world's most beautiful gadgets has become chilly and dutiful. You could say that I've got an embarrassing case of iPhone dysfunction.
Personally, I blame it on environmentalists. If it wasn't for environmentalists, I wouldn't know that when you plug an iPhone into a power socket in Sydney, it charges up with electricity that has in all likelihood been made by burning coal. And coal, when it comes to gadgets, is the ultimate passion killer. When Apple's founder, Steve Jobs, unveiled the iPhone back in January, do you think he asked Bono to stand in silhouette against a white background, holding an iPhone in one hand and a lump of coal in the other? No, he did not.
And yet, with coal being the world's largest single source of fuel for electricity, the iPhone could barely exist without it. That cool widescreen that changes aspect when you move it from portrait to landscape? It runs on coal. The built-in iPod? Coal-powered. And what about that clever "visual voicemail" function? Made possible by setting fire to black lumps of half-a-billion-year-old plants, thus releasing planet-killing quantities of carbon dioxide and other nasty gases into the air.
Which is why, as we begin yet another cycle of droughts, storms, floods, hurricanes, twisters, heat deaths, famines, species extinctions and so on, there is a limit to my excitement at the prospect of owning a coal-powered device that can display a tiny YouTube video of a skateboarding bulldog. Nothing against Apple, of course. I wish Mr Jobs all the best. But if he needs another product to revolutionise – electricity might not be such a bad idea.
Good TV is now obscured by all this trash
I don't watch much television, though this is not because I am too busy composing operas, or indulging in my passion for quantum physics, or taking part in bikram yoga, or teaching disadvantaged children how to do bikram yoga.
It is because I am always out, along with the 7,999,999 other problem drinkers in the country, and if I do happen to switch on the television, I rarely remember what was on it at the time. This means that the following day distressing images of high-octane people imploring me to phone in for big prize money come flashing into my mind, and I can't work out if I dreamt them, met them, have gone mad, or very possibly all three.
But I digress. Because circumstances - which I mentioned in my earlier blog - had forced me to stay at home quite a lot lately, and tiring of talking to my non-existent house plants, I have had to switch on the television. And if watching television for the past few weeks has taught me anything - and quite frankly, it hasn't taught me much at all - it's that Channel 9 has become even trashier and tackier than its neighbour 10.
Went overseas and watched loads of satellite television. Nothing positive to report over there either. Boring reality televisions shows and pathetic attempts at news broadcasting by Fox and Sky news. Others might suggest that TV died when some "celebrity" Big Brother contestants referred to an Indian woman as a "paki" - which is wrong on so many levels, not least factually - only for the channel to cover it up and deny that she was suffering racist abuse.
And some might argue that it was the night, when a channel aired pictures of a dying mother, despite her sons begging them not to. Diana - The Witnesses in the Tunnel, I haven't seen it. On principle, I won't see it. However, colleagues of mine who have watched previews tell me that it was actually a rare example of quality programming on the channel; what a shame, then, that good programming has been obscured by the station's ever-increasing desire to spark controversy.
Television has always been controversial. It was, after all, set up as an alternative, experimental channel. But now it seems to create controversy for the sake of controversy - of what interest are these pictures to any of us, other than to indulge in some rubber-necking? - and I am struggling to see anything in its schedules that is either alternative or experimental.
Big Brother - when this started eight years ago it was an interesting and innovative piece of television; now it's horribly contrived and full of grasping 18-year-old girls who think going on the show is perfectly normal; who have been taught by the programme - and therefore by Channel 10 - that there is nothing more honourable in life than arguing about hair straighteners on camera. It's enough to make you want to call for the return of public hanging; until, of course, you realise that Channel 10 would probably just try to televise that, too.
I don't watch much television, though this is not because I am too busy composing operas, or indulging in my passion for quantum physics, or taking part in bikram yoga, or teaching disadvantaged children how to do bikram yoga.
It is because I am always out, along with the 7,999,999 other problem drinkers in the country, and if I do happen to switch on the television, I rarely remember what was on it at the time. This means that the following day distressing images of high-octane people imploring me to phone in for big prize money come flashing into my mind, and I can't work out if I dreamt them, met them, have gone mad, or very possibly all three.
But I digress. Because circumstances - which I mentioned in my earlier blog - had forced me to stay at home quite a lot lately, and tiring of talking to my non-existent house plants, I have had to switch on the television. And if watching television for the past few weeks has taught me anything - and quite frankly, it hasn't taught me much at all - it's that Channel 9 has become even trashier and tackier than its neighbour 10.
Went overseas and watched loads of satellite television. Nothing positive to report over there either. Boring reality televisions shows and pathetic attempts at news broadcasting by Fox and Sky news. Others might suggest that TV died when some "celebrity" Big Brother contestants referred to an Indian woman as a "paki" - which is wrong on so many levels, not least factually - only for the channel to cover it up and deny that she was suffering racist abuse.
And some might argue that it was the night, when a channel aired pictures of a dying mother, despite her sons begging them not to. Diana - The Witnesses in the Tunnel, I haven't seen it. On principle, I won't see it. However, colleagues of mine who have watched previews tell me that it was actually a rare example of quality programming on the channel; what a shame, then, that good programming has been obscured by the station's ever-increasing desire to spark controversy.
Television has always been controversial. It was, after all, set up as an alternative, experimental channel. But now it seems to create controversy for the sake of controversy - of what interest are these pictures to any of us, other than to indulge in some rubber-necking? - and I am struggling to see anything in its schedules that is either alternative or experimental.
Big Brother - when this started eight years ago it was an interesting and innovative piece of television; now it's horribly contrived and full of grasping 18-year-old girls who think going on the show is perfectly normal; who have been taught by the programme - and therefore by Channel 10 - that there is nothing more honourable in life than arguing about hair straighteners on camera. It's enough to make you want to call for the return of public hanging; until, of course, you realise that Channel 10 would probably just try to televise that, too.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Psst! Wanna see my smash-up pictures?
Innocence, freedom, individualism, mobility - the belief that one can leave a constricting or violent history behind and remake yourself in a new form of your choosing - all part of the new economic migrant's dream. As a young boy who has ventured into the world believing that things are as they seem to be; that a person's story begin when they are born and their relations with other people when they meet them; that you can leave your home without fear of injury or loneliness because people everywhere are more or less alike.
How wrong, naive, churlish are these thoughts. There are times in life when good things happen unexpectedly. Recently I experienced one of those. In January, I got a call from an agent offering me a Technical Analyst position with Optus Communications. Aced the interview and got the position, I felt that a recovering carrier was absolutely essential to my recovering emotionally. And things had started to look up indeed. Apartment check, flatmate check, carrier check, health check - in short things were looking up. As Daniel Craig mentions in Layer Cake, "could taste it in my spit". Social life is despicable, but hey am learning golf.
Well, life has a manner in which it puts everything in perspective. Two weeks ago, I was mugged on my way home from work. Was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Amnesia - how very convenient. I was in ER, hospitalised, fractured, uncharted territory for the young lad. Then it hit me: it was so exciting, it was depressing. All the phone calls, cards, cookies and care. It could ruin my life, because I didn't want to be injured. And this one-off experience would make going back to normal life so much more difficult. Then again, it was a bittersweet experience I could live with.
Someone mentioned that I didn't complain throughout the ordeal. It got me thinking about how my life would be if I never complained. There are so many perks I'm missing out on. For instance, in a relationship. What's the reward for staying silent and being patient' Not breaking up.
Every time I meet the new boyfriend of ex-girlfriends, they are nothing like me. They don't seem difficult at all. I've always assumed it meant they weren't as interesting, but maybe they're interesting in a different way ' a less confrontational way.
The ex who I'm now friends with introduced me to her boyfriend last time i visited Bombay. As soon as I met him I could see why she's with him: he was exceptionally agreeable. Whenever she's spoken about why it works so well with him, it comes down to one thing: he doesn't ask questions.
No wonder I'll die alone. All I do is ask questions. And it's the root of all turmoil. Especially questions that provoke an internal search. 'What political party you belong with?' and 'What do you feel about the current Middle East situation?' Bad idea.
Especially after sex. Or when the TV is on. Or if the sun is out. Or if she's breathing oxygen. Questions that attempt to get information in general are never welcome. 'What are you thinking?' Doom. 'When is Howard going to resign?' Armageddon. The problem with these questions is, after time and perseverance, they invariably lead to an answer, which leads to a complaint.
And not answering is a mistake. It solves nothing. Or worse: an answer along the lines of 'You don't want to know.' Telling someone like me that I don't want to know is the verbal equivalent of sleeping with my sister.
A complaint is never in isolation. It's engulfed by wanting to know more and what can be done to fix it. And there lies the biggest question of all: would I be happier if I never complained? Probably not.
Innocence, freedom, individualism, mobility - the belief that one can leave a constricting or violent history behind and remake yourself in a new form of your choosing - all part of the new economic migrant's dream. As a young boy who has ventured into the world believing that things are as they seem to be; that a person's story begin when they are born and their relations with other people when they meet them; that you can leave your home without fear of injury or loneliness because people everywhere are more or less alike.
How wrong, naive, churlish are these thoughts. There are times in life when good things happen unexpectedly. Recently I experienced one of those. In January, I got a call from an agent offering me a Technical Analyst position with Optus Communications. Aced the interview and got the position, I felt that a recovering carrier was absolutely essential to my recovering emotionally. And things had started to look up indeed. Apartment check, flatmate check, carrier check, health check - in short things were looking up. As Daniel Craig mentions in Layer Cake, "could taste it in my spit". Social life is despicable, but hey am learning golf.
Well, life has a manner in which it puts everything in perspective. Two weeks ago, I was mugged on my way home from work. Was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Amnesia - how very convenient. I was in ER, hospitalised, fractured, uncharted territory for the young lad. Then it hit me: it was so exciting, it was depressing. All the phone calls, cards, cookies and care. It could ruin my life, because I didn't want to be injured. And this one-off experience would make going back to normal life so much more difficult. Then again, it was a bittersweet experience I could live with.
Someone mentioned that I didn't complain throughout the ordeal. It got me thinking about how my life would be if I never complained. There are so many perks I'm missing out on. For instance, in a relationship. What's the reward for staying silent and being patient' Not breaking up.
Every time I meet the new boyfriend of ex-girlfriends, they are nothing like me. They don't seem difficult at all. I've always assumed it meant they weren't as interesting, but maybe they're interesting in a different way ' a less confrontational way.
The ex who I'm now friends with introduced me to her boyfriend last time i visited Bombay. As soon as I met him I could see why she's with him: he was exceptionally agreeable. Whenever she's spoken about why it works so well with him, it comes down to one thing: he doesn't ask questions.
No wonder I'll die alone. All I do is ask questions. And it's the root of all turmoil. Especially questions that provoke an internal search. 'What political party you belong with?' and 'What do you feel about the current Middle East situation?' Bad idea.
Especially after sex. Or when the TV is on. Or if the sun is out. Or if she's breathing oxygen. Questions that attempt to get information in general are never welcome. 'What are you thinking?' Doom. 'When is Howard going to resign?' Armageddon. The problem with these questions is, after time and perseverance, they invariably lead to an answer, which leads to a complaint.
And not answering is a mistake. It solves nothing. Or worse: an answer along the lines of 'You don't want to know.' Telling someone like me that I don't want to know is the verbal equivalent of sleeping with my sister.
A complaint is never in isolation. It's engulfed by wanting to know more and what can be done to fix it. And there lies the biggest question of all: would I be happier if I never complained? Probably not.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Musings
As I close my eyes, the mind grazes high,
The memories of the journey flashes by
Wondering, I ask myself again and again
Why and what is it that I am heading to?
And what is it that I am leaving, too.
A few friends may be here and there,
A few faces that barely care,
A few places not far away from here,
A few fears that I surpassed with the flair,
And a few fears that still persist to scare.
A few sad tears of matters gone so bad,
A few happy tears of the joys I had,
Success and failures that drove me mad,
Long days of desperate wait and vacant stare
And a few sweet moments not long but rare.
As I scan these different scenes of my life
I relive those ups and downs without strife
These have made me wonder what is there in store,
And so I shall never fail to realize meanwhile
That these memoirs make the trip so worthwhile.
As I close my eyes, the mind grazes high,
The memories of the journey flashes by
Wondering, I ask myself again and again
Why and what is it that I am heading to?
And what is it that I am leaving, too.
A few friends may be here and there,
A few faces that barely care,
A few places not far away from here,
A few fears that I surpassed with the flair,
And a few fears that still persist to scare.
A few sad tears of matters gone so bad,
A few happy tears of the joys I had,
Success and failures that drove me mad,
Long days of desperate wait and vacant stare
And a few sweet moments not long but rare.
As I scan these different scenes of my life
I relive those ups and downs without strife
These have made me wonder what is there in store,
And so I shall never fail to realize meanwhile
That these memoirs make the trip so worthwhile.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Losing in Style, Arsenal: a nation mourns
How Arsenal discovered an ugly truth about the Beautiful Game! They lost the Carling Cup final, despite playing better than Chelsea. They were knocked out of the FA cup, despite playing better than Blackburn Rovers over two matches. They have lost all chances of winning the Barclays Premiership, despite playing better than Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool. They are in danger of failing to qualify for the Champions League next season, despite playing better than all the clubs below them. And now they are out of Europe's premier club competition this season, despite playing better than PSV Eindhoven over two legs and playing better than all eight clubs that remain in the competition.
It's not really fair, is it? But then Arsenal's football was not better in terms of goals and victories and all that; it was better morally. Arsenal play the right way. They play with style and brio, with beautiful passes, with intricate patterns, with wit and charm. They also play with youth, plucked from the ranks and taught to seek and find greatness.
This season Arsenal produced a team of pure and dizzy talent, the distilled essence of football. They embodied every kind of footballing virtue. Question: does defeat in four competitions destroy the moral argument? Does rightness depend on victory? Or is there really a right way and wrong way to play? Is it better to lose the right way than win the wrong way?
How Arsenal discovered an ugly truth about the Beautiful Game! They lost the Carling Cup final, despite playing better than Chelsea. They were knocked out of the FA cup, despite playing better than Blackburn Rovers over two matches. They have lost all chances of winning the Barclays Premiership, despite playing better than Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool. They are in danger of failing to qualify for the Champions League next season, despite playing better than all the clubs below them. And now they are out of Europe's premier club competition this season, despite playing better than PSV Eindhoven over two legs and playing better than all eight clubs that remain in the competition.
It's not really fair, is it? But then Arsenal's football was not better in terms of goals and victories and all that; it was better morally. Arsenal play the right way. They play with style and brio, with beautiful passes, with intricate patterns, with wit and charm. They also play with youth, plucked from the ranks and taught to seek and find greatness.
This season Arsenal produced a team of pure and dizzy talent, the distilled essence of football. They embodied every kind of footballing virtue. Question: does defeat in four competitions destroy the moral argument? Does rightness depend on victory? Or is there really a right way and wrong way to play? Is it better to lose the right way than win the wrong way?
After one season in which Arsenal had the upper hand over United, Sir Alex Ferguson, the United manager, said that his team may have lost, but they played the better — ie, the more attractive — football. The comment of Arsene Wenger, the Arsenal manager, has gone into legend: "Everyone thinks he has the prettiest wife at home."
But this season, Arsenal really are the prettiest. None but the most besotted and uxorious of one-eyed fans can deny this. They are better than everyone else, but not good enough to win anything. Where does that leave us?
Well then, what does being the best, the prettiest and most morally perfect football team entail? It is not a question of good behaviour, keeping to the rules, not diving, not kicking opponents. Arsenal have been guilty of all these things, but that does not contradict the belief that they play "the right way".
No, a team that play "good" football are one that please the senses of the observers. They are just nicer to watch. There is unquestionably an aesthetic dimension to football. The famous Danny Blanchflower dictum — that the game is not about winning but about glory and doing things in style — still has a deep resonance.
In 1988, when Liverpool played Wimbledon in the FA Cup Final, people wrote that Liverpool were "playing for the good name of English football". Liverpool were morally good because they played a game based on passing and cute triangles. Wimbledon were morally bad because they lumped the ball up the middle at a beastly centre forward. One team were moral, one team were immoral. The immoral team won 1-0, proving what?
In the early 1980s, football people were outraged by the theory of POMO: the Position Of Maximum Opportunity — ie, whack the ball into the penalty area as many times as possible and it will end up in the net by sheer statistical inevitability. This was rejected by many as heresy, not just because it is less effective than pretty football, but because it is morally wrong.
Cesc Fàbregas, the heart and soul of the young and lovely Arsenal team, rebuked Mark Hughes, the Blackburn manager and a former Barcelona player, because his team — successful against Arsenal in the FA Cup replay — did not play "Barcelona football". As if this failure was a moral outrage.
Blackburn played defensively, sought to stifle and intimidate, imposed themselves as far as the laws and the referee would allow them. Is that immoral? Would they have been more moral if they had, despite lacking the playing resources, attempted to play like Barcelona (or, for that matter, Arsenal) and lost 4-0? You tell me. We all know that football has no marks for artistic impression, but as a neutral I still wanted Arsenal to win. I can argue long and hard and probably correctly that Arsenal's moral stance is utterly bogus, but I am still a sucker for glory and doing things in style.
We all are, except when we have partisanship to deal with. In the rugby union World Cup of 2003, England were criticised for their lack of style. Is that all you've got? Look at the bloody scoreboard, we replied. Style is for wimps, we've got Jonny and Jonno.
Yet, when England choose to kick a penalty rather than run it at Twickenham, there are always boos. The crowd wants victory, but the right way, with lots of running and passing and rolling mauls and line-breaking forwards. A bit of glory. So why aren't the Barbarians everyone's favourite rugby team? They always go for glory. But it doesn't convince us because we know that there is nothing at stake. It's not real, it's just a bit of fun. We want glory in the context of the search for big prizes and persuade ourselves that there is a moral rightness in that course.
There is a tendency to see all those who play extravagantly as morally right because they entertain us. But do we really want every athlete to be like Henri Leconte, a tennis player who cared little whether he won or lost so long as he went the pretty way? Ilie Nastase was adored at Wimbledon for his style and swagger; he was twice a finalist but doomed to lose. Pete Sampras, one of the all-time greats in all sports, was disliked because he was "boring"; this was seen by some as a moral failing.
In the 1960s, cricket became so attritional, so totally based on defeat-avoidance, that they had to invent a new form of the game. One-day cricket came about because the traditional version of the game had turned its back on style and glory. The primacy of one-day cricket in the sub-continent can be traced to the hideous excesses of negativity in Test matches orchestrated by Sunil Gavaskar, the India captain from the late 1970s to the mid1980s.
Logically, we must always support every athlete's right to seek victory in whatever legal fashion he chooses. Logically, we must accept that sport is only incidentally entertaining; that the only duty of the athlete is to struggle for victory with perfect sincerity; that when an athlete seeks to be an entertainer, he loses the sport in himself.
But all the same . . . Sobers, Best, Campese, Warne, Pelé, Maradona, McEnroe, Jayasuriya . . . Pietersen, Muralitharan, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Robinson, Federer . . . yes, even Fàbregas, Henry, Denilson, at least to an extent. Style may not be a moral imperative in sport, but sport is more amusing for its presence. To say that style doesn't matter in sport does not mean that there is no style in sport. It only means that you lack this quality yourself.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
I hate money and I'm useless with it.
Only a few things separate us from the apes: 1) there's no direct ape equivalent of The Apprentice; 2) apes are hopeless at changing duvet covers (they pull them over their heads and panic because the sun's disappeared); and 3) apes don't use money. This third fact alone makes them vastly superior to humankind.
Money is the most terrible thing in the universe. It causes more stress, disputes and wars than religion, which ought to be impossible. Everything about it drives me up the pole, which is why I'm useless with it. I pay bills at the last minute, rarely check my bank balance, and get ripped off left, right and centre because I just can't bring myself to care about it. Friends gasp at my ineptitude. A few think me insane.
Immediate convenience. That's important. Not money. It's a wonder I bend down to pick up coins I've dropped. And it's nothing to do with how much money I have at any given moment. It's always been this way. In my early 20s, when I worked for peanuts in the university, I'd regularly take cabs to work because I'd overslept and couldn't wait for the bus. And at the end of the day, I'd often take another cab home because I was tired, thereby blowing my entire daily wage ferrying myself to and from a job I despised. This was, admittedly, astronomically stupid, but so what? I'm still alive, thanks to dumb luck.
As you might imagine, I'm incapable of haggling. I avoid it like beasts avoid fire, because any discussion about money depresses me into a coma. So my current situation is my worst nightmare - my day-to-day comfort is not under direct threat, and the only way out is to plunge headlong into a protracted financial negotiation. I live in a rented flat and the lease is about to run out in two months. The thought of moving genuinely makes me pray for death. Looking round flats, signing contracts, packing things up, lugging them around, sorting out the phones and the bills and the countless petty irritants - just crack me over the head with a paving stone and have done with it. Please. Anything but that.
Am earning some money and trying really hard to save. Folks want me to buy an apartment – quiet insistent on it too. Trouble is, I live in Sydney, where houses are a) satirically expensive and b) people crawl over themselves like rats, scraping each other's eyes out with their selfish, grasping claws at the sight of a halfway desirable property.
And as luck wouldn't have it, my place is slap bang in the middle of the catchment area for about 10,000 flouncey schools full of horrible, bawling little Hitlers called Josh and Jake and Jessica, every single one of whom will doubtless grow up to be as effortlessly brilliant with money as mummy and daddy, while I rot to mulch in the old folks' home equivalent of a pound shop, beaten and abused by underpaid care workers who will film my misery on their cameraphones and upload it to the internet for chuckles because I was too financially apathetic to sort out a pension.
Everyone has their success stories and secret formulas. Save here, invest there, do this, do that – I don’t want to do anything. When I see money in my account I panic – am I not being a good citizen by not spending this disposable income. Shouldn’t I be supporting the economy and making sure that the consumer confidence index is high by buying another pair of shoes.
... Dance the financial tango. Get your money's worth. Play the game.
But I hate the game. Hate it. It's a boring game, of interest only to the soulless. A fool and his money are soon parted. A bastard and his money are best friends. Financial negotiation is the opposite of music, of laughter, of sunshine, of ideas, of absolutely everything that makes life worth living. It's hell.
Do your worst, you awful, boring, terrible world of finance, you. Then leave me alone. For ever.
Only a few things separate us from the apes: 1) there's no direct ape equivalent of The Apprentice; 2) apes are hopeless at changing duvet covers (they pull them over their heads and panic because the sun's disappeared); and 3) apes don't use money. This third fact alone makes them vastly superior to humankind.
Money is the most terrible thing in the universe. It causes more stress, disputes and wars than religion, which ought to be impossible. Everything about it drives me up the pole, which is why I'm useless with it. I pay bills at the last minute, rarely check my bank balance, and get ripped off left, right and centre because I just can't bring myself to care about it. Friends gasp at my ineptitude. A few think me insane.
Immediate convenience. That's important. Not money. It's a wonder I bend down to pick up coins I've dropped. And it's nothing to do with how much money I have at any given moment. It's always been this way. In my early 20s, when I worked for peanuts in the university, I'd regularly take cabs to work because I'd overslept and couldn't wait for the bus. And at the end of the day, I'd often take another cab home because I was tired, thereby blowing my entire daily wage ferrying myself to and from a job I despised. This was, admittedly, astronomically stupid, but so what? I'm still alive, thanks to dumb luck.
As you might imagine, I'm incapable of haggling. I avoid it like beasts avoid fire, because any discussion about money depresses me into a coma. So my current situation is my worst nightmare - my day-to-day comfort is not under direct threat, and the only way out is to plunge headlong into a protracted financial negotiation. I live in a rented flat and the lease is about to run out in two months. The thought of moving genuinely makes me pray for death. Looking round flats, signing contracts, packing things up, lugging them around, sorting out the phones and the bills and the countless petty irritants - just crack me over the head with a paving stone and have done with it. Please. Anything but that.
Am earning some money and trying really hard to save. Folks want me to buy an apartment – quiet insistent on it too. Trouble is, I live in Sydney, where houses are a) satirically expensive and b) people crawl over themselves like rats, scraping each other's eyes out with their selfish, grasping claws at the sight of a halfway desirable property.
And as luck wouldn't have it, my place is slap bang in the middle of the catchment area for about 10,000 flouncey schools full of horrible, bawling little Hitlers called Josh and Jake and Jessica, every single one of whom will doubtless grow up to be as effortlessly brilliant with money as mummy and daddy, while I rot to mulch in the old folks' home equivalent of a pound shop, beaten and abused by underpaid care workers who will film my misery on their cameraphones and upload it to the internet for chuckles because I was too financially apathetic to sort out a pension.
Everyone has their success stories and secret formulas. Save here, invest there, do this, do that – I don’t want to do anything. When I see money in my account I panic – am I not being a good citizen by not spending this disposable income. Shouldn’t I be supporting the economy and making sure that the consumer confidence index is high by buying another pair of shoes.
... Dance the financial tango. Get your money's worth. Play the game.
But I hate the game. Hate it. It's a boring game, of interest only to the soulless. A fool and his money are soon parted. A bastard and his money are best friends. Financial negotiation is the opposite of music, of laughter, of sunshine, of ideas, of absolutely everything that makes life worth living. It's hell.
Do your worst, you awful, boring, terrible world of finance, you. Then leave me alone. For ever.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
How I hate Deepak Chopra
Different things spark off migraines in different people. An allergy to the smell of onions. A sharp strike to the temple with a refrigerated dessert-spoon. Kryptonite. That sort of thing.
For me, flickering vision and an abrupt and piercingly painful torsion of the optic nerve are the infallible signs of having received a press release announcing a new book by Mitch Albom, Paolo Coehlo or Deepak Chopra.
I have a conviction, perhaps irrational, but no less deeply felt than the Pope's belief in a benevolent and omnipotent God, that anyone who goes for this kind of tree-hugging hippie crap is a morally and intellectually defective human being.
The new one is from Chopra, the endocrinologist-turned-spiritual guru.
Mr Chopra, something of a jack of all trades, has written about the relationship between quantum physics and healing, has speculated freely about the origins of life on earth, and argued that a key move towards peace in the Middle East would be to open a branch of Disneyland. His ideas, we're told, are helping to change the way the entire world thinks about "emotional wellness". He is, in other words, a complete booby.
Now he seems to have decided that the Kama Sutra would benefit from being anointed by the Chopra brand. It's now Deepak Chopra's Kama Sutra. Sorry, ancient Sanskrit-writin' dudes!
Here's how the puff for the paperback edition puts it:
Deepak Chopra's Kama Sutra brings together India's greatest living writer and ambassador of culture, Deepak Chopra, and India's most cherished and well-known text, the Kama Sutra.
Acclaimed and international bestselling author Deepak Chopra explores the universal themes of spirituality and sexuality and their role in connecting lovers emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Deepak Chopra's loyalty to the original Kama Sutra and ability to find its sacredness makes this unique book a modern classic and a definitive version for generations to come.
The text also includes The Seven Spiritual Laws of Love, Deepak's intensive meditation and affirmation of simple, practical applications that partners can bring to their relationship to enhance and entice their intimacy.
Favourite phrases? "Acclaimed and international… ability to find its sacredness… unique book... enhance and entice…" Find that sacredness, and entice that ole intimacy: "he-e-e-e-re, intimacy, intimacy… that's a good little intimacy… just a bit closer… there's a good intimacy… ye-e-e-e-s."
Personally, I think Deepak does have something to contribute to our love lives. Make sex last longer by waiting until the crucial moment, and… thinking of Deepak Chopra! No good for me, of course. I have a headache
Different things spark off migraines in different people. An allergy to the smell of onions. A sharp strike to the temple with a refrigerated dessert-spoon. Kryptonite. That sort of thing.
For me, flickering vision and an abrupt and piercingly painful torsion of the optic nerve are the infallible signs of having received a press release announcing a new book by Mitch Albom, Paolo Coehlo or Deepak Chopra.
I have a conviction, perhaps irrational, but no less deeply felt than the Pope's belief in a benevolent and omnipotent God, that anyone who goes for this kind of tree-hugging hippie crap is a morally and intellectually defective human being.
The new one is from Chopra, the endocrinologist-turned-spiritual guru.
Mr Chopra, something of a jack of all trades, has written about the relationship between quantum physics and healing, has speculated freely about the origins of life on earth, and argued that a key move towards peace in the Middle East would be to open a branch of Disneyland. His ideas, we're told, are helping to change the way the entire world thinks about "emotional wellness". He is, in other words, a complete booby.
Now he seems to have decided that the Kama Sutra would benefit from being anointed by the Chopra brand. It's now Deepak Chopra's Kama Sutra. Sorry, ancient Sanskrit-writin' dudes!
Here's how the puff for the paperback edition puts it:
Deepak Chopra's Kama Sutra brings together India's greatest living writer and ambassador of culture, Deepak Chopra, and India's most cherished and well-known text, the Kama Sutra.
Acclaimed and international bestselling author Deepak Chopra explores the universal themes of spirituality and sexuality and their role in connecting lovers emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Deepak Chopra's loyalty to the original Kama Sutra and ability to find its sacredness makes this unique book a modern classic and a definitive version for generations to come.
The text also includes The Seven Spiritual Laws of Love, Deepak's intensive meditation and affirmation of simple, practical applications that partners can bring to their relationship to enhance and entice their intimacy.
Favourite phrases? "Acclaimed and international… ability to find its sacredness… unique book... enhance and entice…" Find that sacredness, and entice that ole intimacy: "he-e-e-e-re, intimacy, intimacy… that's a good little intimacy… just a bit closer… there's a good intimacy… ye-e-e-e-s."
Personally, I think Deepak does have something to contribute to our love lives. Make sex last longer by waiting until the crucial moment, and… thinking of Deepak Chopra! No good for me, of course. I have a headache
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Karuna
It's one of Buddha's words, Pali for compassion, for the immanence of all living things in each other, for the attraction of life for its likeness.
Teak is a relative of mint, tectona grandis, born of the same genus of flowering plant, but of a distaff branch presided over by that most soothing of herbs, verbena. It counts among its close kin many other fragrant and familiar herbs - sage, savour, thyme, lavender, rosemary and most remarkably holy basil, with its many descendants, green and purple, smooth - leaved and coarse, pungent and fragrant, bitter and sweet.
But nothing seems to have any shape for me. It's something you don't see until it's gone - the shapes that things have and the ways in which the people around you mould those shapes. I don't mean the big things - just the little ones. What you do when get up in the morning - the hundreds of thoughts that run through your head while you're brushing your teeth: "I have to tell you about the dream I had" - that sort of thing. Over the last few years I had someone to share these thoughts. Now, when I wake up in the morning those things still come back to me in just that way - I have to do this or that, for someone. Then I remember, No, I don't have to do any of those things; there's no reason to. And in an odd way, what you feel at those moments is not exactly sadness but a kind of disappointment. And that's awful too, for you say to yourself - is this the best I can do? No: this isn't good enough. I should cry - everyone says it's good to cry. But the feeling inside doesn't have an easy name: it's not exactly pain or sorrow - not right then. It feels more like the sensation you have when you sit down very heavily in a chair; the breath rushes out of your body and you find yourself gagging. It's hard to make sense of it - any of it. You want the pain to be simple, straightforward - you don't want it to ambush you in these roundabout ways, each morning, when you're getting up to do something else - brush your teeth or eat your breakfast...
I have known a lot of people in the short span of life. What comes back to haunt me, is the fact that someone told me that I will end up all alone, bitter and lonely. Am I on my way there...the march to existence with no purpose. The men or boys I have known as mates, colleagues, buddies, figure only as abstractions today. A faceless collectivity imprisoned in a permanent childhood - moody, unpredictable, fantastically brave, desperately loyal, prone to extraordinary excesses of emotion. Yet, I know it's all in the past. Watched a movie this afternoon which had a quote, "Salvation lies within." People of completely different background, existence, personality, come together - share experiences, create and destroy things and part ways. I suppose this is what life is supposed to be, a collection of an individuals experiences. Will I ever become a better person, or the dog is just waiting for its opportunity to strike. Shutting my eyes, am running hard and fast towards the unknown. Because, one thing which is known for a fact is that the one thing am not capable of is to return compassion. So many people in my life have been wonderfully kind to me, and in return I have been selfish, cruel, foolish and stupid. Teak - different yet useful, big yet protective, fruitless yet charitable.
I always wanted to be an elusive, unfathomable creature, a whipsmart Yale graduate and polymath who would speak fluent French and Japanese, would be conversant in politicial history and social anthropology, fly planes, direct charities, write music, play guitar and date power babes. Today, I present a defiantly reluctant front. I might be the essence of quiet civility, speaking in precisely meditated sentences about my craft with focused eyes and a furrowed brow. But what am I, and above all why am I? It's not about what who you are, but about what you can do or give to the society. Karuna is what I want to give...something I myself don't have.
It's one of Buddha's words, Pali for compassion, for the immanence of all living things in each other, for the attraction of life for its likeness.
Teak is a relative of mint, tectona grandis, born of the same genus of flowering plant, but of a distaff branch presided over by that most soothing of herbs, verbena. It counts among its close kin many other fragrant and familiar herbs - sage, savour, thyme, lavender, rosemary and most remarkably holy basil, with its many descendants, green and purple, smooth - leaved and coarse, pungent and fragrant, bitter and sweet.
But nothing seems to have any shape for me. It's something you don't see until it's gone - the shapes that things have and the ways in which the people around you mould those shapes. I don't mean the big things - just the little ones. What you do when get up in the morning - the hundreds of thoughts that run through your head while you're brushing your teeth: "I have to tell you about the dream I had" - that sort of thing. Over the last few years I had someone to share these thoughts. Now, when I wake up in the morning those things still come back to me in just that way - I have to do this or that, for someone. Then I remember, No, I don't have to do any of those things; there's no reason to. And in an odd way, what you feel at those moments is not exactly sadness but a kind of disappointment. And that's awful too, for you say to yourself - is this the best I can do? No: this isn't good enough. I should cry - everyone says it's good to cry. But the feeling inside doesn't have an easy name: it's not exactly pain or sorrow - not right then. It feels more like the sensation you have when you sit down very heavily in a chair; the breath rushes out of your body and you find yourself gagging. It's hard to make sense of it - any of it. You want the pain to be simple, straightforward - you don't want it to ambush you in these roundabout ways, each morning, when you're getting up to do something else - brush your teeth or eat your breakfast...
I have known a lot of people in the short span of life. What comes back to haunt me, is the fact that someone told me that I will end up all alone, bitter and lonely. Am I on my way there...the march to existence with no purpose. The men or boys I have known as mates, colleagues, buddies, figure only as abstractions today. A faceless collectivity imprisoned in a permanent childhood - moody, unpredictable, fantastically brave, desperately loyal, prone to extraordinary excesses of emotion. Yet, I know it's all in the past. Watched a movie this afternoon which had a quote, "Salvation lies within." People of completely different background, existence, personality, come together - share experiences, create and destroy things and part ways. I suppose this is what life is supposed to be, a collection of an individuals experiences. Will I ever become a better person, or the dog is just waiting for its opportunity to strike. Shutting my eyes, am running hard and fast towards the unknown. Because, one thing which is known for a fact is that the one thing am not capable of is to return compassion. So many people in my life have been wonderfully kind to me, and in return I have been selfish, cruel, foolish and stupid. Teak - different yet useful, big yet protective, fruitless yet charitable.
I always wanted to be an elusive, unfathomable creature, a whipsmart Yale graduate and polymath who would speak fluent French and Japanese, would be conversant in politicial history and social anthropology, fly planes, direct charities, write music, play guitar and date power babes. Today, I present a defiantly reluctant front. I might be the essence of quiet civility, speaking in precisely meditated sentences about my craft with focused eyes and a furrowed brow. But what am I, and above all why am I? It's not about what who you are, but about what you can do or give to the society. Karuna is what I want to give...something I myself don't have.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Are you a rigid PC or a flexible, creative Mac?
What this tendency of mine to segregate, classify and list also points to is another key division of our times - perhaps the most significant dichotomy in our society. In the great debate over whether or not you’re a PC or a Mac I know that I’m a Pentium-driven, neatly filed, inbox-cleared, spreadsheet-obsessive PC.
Over the past few weeks it has been impossible to escape an advertising campaign which features the comic partnership of Mitchell and Webb in which one (David Mitchell) plays the nerdy, pie-chart obsessed, virus-prone PC and the other (Robert Webb) represents the funkier, more freewheeling and flexible Mac.
Now I know that drawing inspiration from contemporary advertising campaigns marks, in many ways, a surrender to the soulless commercialisation of our times. But as a PC myself I’m not particularly averse to - indeed, I’m rather at home with - soulless commercialisation.
Which, sadly, puts me at odds with my flatmate. For while I am, in every respect, a PC - fussy, precise, never happier than when bringing administrative order to any aspect of our lives - he is a full-on Mac. He is creative, spontaneous, colourful, much better attuned to design concerns, easier to communicate with, much happier free-associating and having fun, than tied to the office, and overall much more human.
Now, happily, the divide between PCs and Macs is not as wide as it used to be. We can both use Microsoft Office and it’s possible to send e-mails between one and the other entirely freely. But while the formal process of communication couldn’t be easier, we’re still speaking slightly different languages and living out very different existences.
When I’m in meetings, as a PC, I take copious notes and then formulate a to-do list of desired outcomes at the end. When my flatmate is in meetings he treats the printed agenda much as a medieval monk would have treated a piece of vellum parchment - making an illuminated manuscript out of it with elegant floral doodles while simultaneously forming acute, novelistic impressions of the character of each of the participants.
He will bring to the meeting an artistic sensibility and come away from it with the raw material for further acts of creativity, as well as anecdotes to spice up a lunch-time gossip. I will leave the meeting with a tightly focused agenda, a reminder to self to now rejig appointments for the third weekend in September and mild acid reflux.
And talking of system malfunctions, one of the ways in which I am a pure PC and my flatmate is all Mac is the manner in which I am prone to all manner of viruses, like most hypochondriac males, while he enjoys the robust health of a more highly evolved creation.
The division between PC and Mac is not, however, simply a matter of gender. Hillary Clinton, for example, is a PC while both her husband Bill and her principal rival, Barack Obama, are Macs. She exudes the chilly efficiency of a machine politician while they communicate a creative spontaneity in which the division between work and play has been relaxed (indeed, in Bill’s case, the division between work and play became so relaxed that hearing that the President was on the job became no sort of reassurance at all for his wife).
And, talking of politicians, the PC/Mac divide easily transcends party and ideological divisions. If I am a PC, and I surely am, then I can recognise that Peter Costello is the pie-charting, spreadsheeting, organogram-designing, megabyte-memory PC of all PCs. Whereas both Tony Blair and Bob Hawke are Macs. Both of them, unlike Peter Costello, look as though they treat managing the work-life balance as a practical daily requirement rather than the title for a new pamphlet, and both of them, unlike Peter Costello, look as though they’re happier in conversation and out of a suit rather than on a podium and wearing a tie.
The PC/Mac dichotomy can, of course, be applied well beyond politics. Alex Ferguson is a PC, José Mourinho a Mac. Johnny Wilkinson is a PC, Kevin Pietersen a Mac. Kostya Tszyu is a PC, Anthony Mundine is a Mac. So far as I can see, there’s not a single person I know who can’t be slotted into one category or another. But then, of course, as a PC myself, I’m hard-wired to see it that way...
I’m a great believer in binary divides. Sheeps and goats. Left and right. White and Blue Collar. Punks and hippies. Dog-owners and cat-lovers. Almost everyone, with a little thought, can be classified as one or the other. Even those who have never strayed anywhere near a hunt, or who can’t afford any pet at all, are, spiritually, one or t’other. And I am only too happy to tell you who is which, using my patent process of analytical personality classification.
What this tendency of mine to segregate, classify and list also points to is another key division of our times - perhaps the most significant dichotomy in our society. In the great debate over whether or not you’re a PC or a Mac I know that I’m a Pentium-driven, neatly filed, inbox-cleared, spreadsheet-obsessive PC.
Over the past few weeks it has been impossible to escape an advertising campaign which features the comic partnership of Mitchell and Webb in which one (David Mitchell) plays the nerdy, pie-chart obsessed, virus-prone PC and the other (Robert Webb) represents the funkier, more freewheeling and flexible Mac.
Now I know that drawing inspiration from contemporary advertising campaigns marks, in many ways, a surrender to the soulless commercialisation of our times. But as a PC myself I’m not particularly averse to - indeed, I’m rather at home with - soulless commercialisation.
Which, sadly, puts me at odds with my flatmate. For while I am, in every respect, a PC - fussy, precise, never happier than when bringing administrative order to any aspect of our lives - he is a full-on Mac. He is creative, spontaneous, colourful, much better attuned to design concerns, easier to communicate with, much happier free-associating and having fun, than tied to the office, and overall much more human.
Now, happily, the divide between PCs and Macs is not as wide as it used to be. We can both use Microsoft Office and it’s possible to send e-mails between one and the other entirely freely. But while the formal process of communication couldn’t be easier, we’re still speaking slightly different languages and living out very different existences.
When I’m in meetings, as a PC, I take copious notes and then formulate a to-do list of desired outcomes at the end. When my flatmate is in meetings he treats the printed agenda much as a medieval monk would have treated a piece of vellum parchment - making an illuminated manuscript out of it with elegant floral doodles while simultaneously forming acute, novelistic impressions of the character of each of the participants.
He will bring to the meeting an artistic sensibility and come away from it with the raw material for further acts of creativity, as well as anecdotes to spice up a lunch-time gossip. I will leave the meeting with a tightly focused agenda, a reminder to self to now rejig appointments for the third weekend in September and mild acid reflux.
And talking of system malfunctions, one of the ways in which I am a pure PC and my flatmate is all Mac is the manner in which I am prone to all manner of viruses, like most hypochondriac males, while he enjoys the robust health of a more highly evolved creation.
The division between PC and Mac is not, however, simply a matter of gender. Hillary Clinton, for example, is a PC while both her husband Bill and her principal rival, Barack Obama, are Macs. She exudes the chilly efficiency of a machine politician while they communicate a creative spontaneity in which the division between work and play has been relaxed (indeed, in Bill’s case, the division between work and play became so relaxed that hearing that the President was on the job became no sort of reassurance at all for his wife).
And, talking of politicians, the PC/Mac divide easily transcends party and ideological divisions. If I am a PC, and I surely am, then I can recognise that Peter Costello is the pie-charting, spreadsheeting, organogram-designing, megabyte-memory PC of all PCs. Whereas both Tony Blair and Bob Hawke are Macs. Both of them, unlike Peter Costello, look as though they treat managing the work-life balance as a practical daily requirement rather than the title for a new pamphlet, and both of them, unlike Peter Costello, look as though they’re happier in conversation and out of a suit rather than on a podium and wearing a tie.
The PC/Mac dichotomy can, of course, be applied well beyond politics. Alex Ferguson is a PC, José Mourinho a Mac. Johnny Wilkinson is a PC, Kevin Pietersen a Mac. Kostya Tszyu is a PC, Anthony Mundine is a Mac. So far as I can see, there’s not a single person I know who can’t be slotted into one category or another. But then, of course, as a PC myself, I’m hard-wired to see it that way...
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
A non-shopping day: I would celebrate that
My cynicism about Valentine's Day is ancient and gnarled. It's not that I'm against celebratory days, not at all. We need more. It's just that this has become another in the endless series of cynical marketing fiestas that stud the year. It compares with Easter (festival of chocolate), Father's Day and Mother's Day (both devoted to the greeting card industry, with walk-on parts for golfing sweater manufacturers, gin distillers and market gardeners in the flower racket), Christmas (everything that can be bought and sold) and the new, wholly unabashed shopping festivals known as The Sales.
Oh yes, we do our duty, which is to trudge yet again to the shops, in this case for vile raspberry-coloured champagne, heart-shaped confectionary and so forth. But since shopping is what the country spends most of its time doing anyway, there is nothing special, or out of the ordinary, about it.
Wouldn't it be better to have new festivals that have nothing to do with buying things? There could be one day a year devoted to making up ancient quarrels - in person. That would be exciting. It would be full of high emotion, attempts at reconciliation going hopelessly wrong and confused debates about who was at fault, as if the country were suddenly dripping with real-life short stories.
Or, in this age of hyperactivity and stress, what about a day in which we all tried to stay in bed from dawn to dusk, doing absolutely nothing beyond a little gentle musing?
And I've always loved the idea of the Saturnalia, when roles were reversed. What about a topsy-turvy day, when city tycoons march out to man the Coles checkouts, parents are forced to obey their children, and the boy from Liverpool with the most Asbos becomes Home Secretary for 24 hours? There we go: Sorry Day, Snoozefest and Somersault Day.
My cynicism about Valentine's Day is ancient and gnarled. It's not that I'm against celebratory days, not at all. We need more. It's just that this has become another in the endless series of cynical marketing fiestas that stud the year. It compares with Easter (festival of chocolate), Father's Day and Mother's Day (both devoted to the greeting card industry, with walk-on parts for golfing sweater manufacturers, gin distillers and market gardeners in the flower racket), Christmas (everything that can be bought and sold) and the new, wholly unabashed shopping festivals known as The Sales.
Oh yes, we do our duty, which is to trudge yet again to the shops, in this case for vile raspberry-coloured champagne, heart-shaped confectionary and so forth. But since shopping is what the country spends most of its time doing anyway, there is nothing special, or out of the ordinary, about it.
Wouldn't it be better to have new festivals that have nothing to do with buying things? There could be one day a year devoted to making up ancient quarrels - in person. That would be exciting. It would be full of high emotion, attempts at reconciliation going hopelessly wrong and confused debates about who was at fault, as if the country were suddenly dripping with real-life short stories.
Or, in this age of hyperactivity and stress, what about a day in which we all tried to stay in bed from dawn to dusk, doing absolutely nothing beyond a little gentle musing?
And I've always loved the idea of the Saturnalia, when roles were reversed. What about a topsy-turvy day, when city tycoons march out to man the Coles checkouts, parents are forced to obey their children, and the boy from Liverpool with the most Asbos becomes Home Secretary for 24 hours? There we go: Sorry Day, Snoozefest and Somersault Day.
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