danieru in tokyo
Monday, February 28, 2005
Sunday
Once more, the weekend has been and gone. ergo, an entire week has now been graciously added to an abacus somewhere in St Peters reading room, making me Older. Not stronger, wiser, healthier, more fulfilled, less dependent on Prozac, or even understanding what is Port and Starboard and in my life. Just plain Older. And maybe a little hairier too, since it's been a few minutes since my last brush with Gillette.
I feel compelled to sumarize, and in some way educate and evolve from what has happened in the last 7 days. Truth be told, a reasonable amount of nothing.
- The top secret plan, which everyone knows about, has been brought to Simmer. Maps agreed upon, charities contacted. Brochure to write this week...
- Snow. Always cool, and I think I might have some photos, despite laziness and cold
- Made a couple of positive (as opposed to infirm) decisions. Well, three if you count "YES, i'll take the red, not the brown sauce. Please".
- Extra bullet point for the positive decision made above - there were two things, afterall.
- A great deal of overtime. Cher-ching.
- I spent a single day without alcohol. Meaning I don't have to Go Dry for a month. Bought some Laphroaig 15yrs. Tasty.
- Finally booked my flights to Praha.
- Lardy ass may still be present, but the running is coming back.
- Feeling somewhat more wholesome this Sunday evening, after pretending to peruse the above for typos, instead realising the Oxygen I consumed this Earth week wasn't a complete waste.
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Hamsters
3 minutes on the hamster wheel today in the gym, and the usual boredom set in. Marilyn Manson cranked up, emotion:anger spewing without flood gates, and then I remembered I left a tenner on the dashboard of the car outside. RUN RUN RUN to get it back before some piikee smashes the window for it. And then queue up again for a turn on the hamster wheel. Dammit. A newfound respect for those furry animals that dedicate so much of their life training with the aid of such a monotonous machine.
Got home to pressure - RV's friends were in, and I so had to cook for 4 girls. This was scary, because:
a. i could not make MAN food
b. i cooked 10 times as much, as girls don't really eat. Just sniff, twiddle, and ask "oh wow, so how did you make that?"
c. i cooked pig for a muslim
Part c. of course, was the pièce de résistance. A quick chick pea wotsit rendered food for all.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Airport Life
I have insulted the professional image that the workplace strives to attain in many ways, including wearing shorts, sandals, forgetting to wear a shirt, then giving up entirely on shirts, odd socks... the list goes on. Today, a new pinnacle was reached, as I computed that there would not be enough time to go home to shave, thus made use of the soap and a razor that I hastily purchased from the chemist. Bled for an hour. Sigh.
In the spirit of mindless collecting, the music collection has risen to 90Gb. Quantity has long usurped quality as the modus operandi, with Shakira entering the fold. Ick.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Street Kids
Just watched The Basketball Diaries.
Street kids: like i did, grew up with peers who are dysfunctional. but i had parents to rebel against. who did they rebel against? the police, the church, the dealer? all of these people are natural enemies. i thought that you needed an unnatural enemy, one who represents your possible future, whose performance in life you wish to outdo tenfold. the motivator.
yet, the survival instinct is keener in these seemingly rootless proteges of Howard Marks.
where does a street kid get their motivation from? if it is Howard, how can something so strong be derived solely from folklore?
Monday, February 21, 2005
Weekend
Sundays evenings, as anyone will testify, are crap. They serve only as a waiting room, as you tensely prepare for the un-anaesthetized surgery that is Monday morning.
Jimmy Chung got my 6 quid today, and in return my belly was filled with the remanants of farmyard species injected with the darkest of chemicals. Geiger counters click loud and rapid near my body. Buffets - I don't know why I ever suggested it.
This was after after a night with AF and AM, which ended early enough for me to get back to the flat, finish the Laphroaig and keenly attack the Oban whilst RV + GC + RH watched a DVD. I tried to be quiet, but I was drunk. Then I made them all drunk. The inevitable coeur au coeur took place. In summary:
- I am "Smart, But not". (with regard to understanding other people)
- RV loves me. (scared)
- RH believes true love is immortal. (i remained silent about my current book, which has a chapter hypothesising on the zoological rationale behind extra-marital affairs).
The most disturbing single fact from this week is that I haven't spend a single night sober. If next week remains as this week has, I will go dry for a month.
Sunday, February 20, 2005
Things i gotta remember
That you don't have to be nice to people if you're good looking - it's their job to be nice to you.
And more importantly, the time has come for my Evil Monkey Army to take over the world. Milking monkeys DOES produce banana milkshake. And the BBC reports that I can now make them super strong. All cadets will require a stringent fitness test, possibly run by retired Ghurkas. I will have to go for VC funding after a detailed POC has taken place.
Friday, February 18, 2005
Who is Souza?
RV asked me to ponder as I crouched, infused with Laphroaig, somewhere on the floor of a darkened bedroom at 1am.
People interpret how they wish - Bell has an amusing characteristic with regard to the pronunciation if his name. Worth misfiring just for the comedy, as it never fails. People have
(amongst other names) referred to me as Dan, Danny, Daniel and DannyBoy. Some ask "are you a Dan or a Daniel". "I don't mind" is never the answer they want to hear. Certainly, something of your character is defined in your name. Irrelevant of what is cast on the birth certificate, it is unlikely that a man who calls himself Toby will ever toast a drink to the man who calls himself Tobias.
In line with the array of self-deprecating narcissistic tendencies I display, I am more bothered about what other people want to call me, than mapping out a defined role for myself. Perception is all that matters.
Thus I do not care who I am, because there is no Daniel. The Holy Grail in Who I Am is the social chameleon - the one who is everything to everyone. The guy who you part company with, ostensibly convinced that a bonding of the souls like no other has transpired.
My insecurities asphyxiate striving for this precipice.
Summary: Souza is shallow. Like no other.
// I can say this now, for merely two days ago, I awoke elightened from the clouded mental turmoil ordinarily treated with Prozac. Blank staring overtaken by focussed glaring. I am here now.
Three sucesses tonight:
- Banana bread. Me baketh. Mmmmm.
- So far, no alcohol. But RH has just got home, and she's threatening to make G&Ts
- The Moon. I need more zoom - but it's getting there.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Theatre
There are events in life which charm for their scarcity alone. The theatre, I feel, is not one of those experiences. As rare as the occurences are, the theatre is enjoyable, because It Is.
Start with the Traverse Theatre Bar, historically proven to be a good place to start any drinking session, but instead detour downstairs for I'm a Fool To Want You. Four actors, only a few more characters, and some crazy dancing. Fantastic comical production, in which the life of an author, poet and musician are told with reference to his prized book. The protoganist croaks with a coronary upon viewing his masterpiece massacred in Kodachrome.
Then back home to freeze my &ss off whilst trying to take a photograph of the moon. And failing yet again. RAW setting invoked, F stop's and exposures varied through the range, a few different ISO's, and i'm still getting nothing. Ideas anyone?
And so many evenings
Are now spent with The Feast, The Wine, then trying to watch a film, yet consistently failing, as RH is incapable of silence for more than a few microseconds. And yesterday, she discovered my mp3 collection. Noise complaints from neighbours, deleted folders and "how do I do..." are at least 3 of the curses that will soon be plaguing my life.
And a thought which belongs nowhere:
Engage French accent: "Mais, vous êtes Anglais, you are Philistine, Oui?"
I bought a book from amazon the other day, from one of the zShops. Bloke said "as new" - I thought, wow, that's ½ the price. It'll do nicely. The book arrived today, posted from the US, with "PROPERTY OF DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY" stamped all over it. "as new" I thought.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
The Fyffes Criminal Mastermind
Fruit is free in the office. Gratis. Bowls piled full of the stuff lying about, waiting to be eaten. Replenished daily. This is good. However, I normally only feel like eating fruit when i'm downstairs in the canteen. This could be because
a. I'm hungry, or
b. the rest of the food sucks.
For the purposes of this story, it doesn't really matter. Lately it has come to my attention, that fruit in the canteen is actually chargeable. Hell yeah. Which means, for the past 3 months, I have been stealing bananas. Oops.
Monday, February 14, 2005
Sunday
And a couple of bullets from the weekend:
What follows is a story which will make me sound like a unmannerly troglodite. This is largely because I am. During a game of squash yesterday with JM, he scored the point (all surprises there) and I turned to walk to the back of the court. I decided that it was an appropriate moment to give my testicles a quick scratch, as I looked through the glass outside the court. Woman walking past, watching us play squash. We made eye contact, and it was not until she sharply yet coyly looked away, did I realise that I had my left hand generously massaging my crotch, while simultaneously staring in a fatigued moronic state out of the window, at her. Oops.
Ate dinner at Centraal today with KM, MC and AF. Just after we finished eating, RG wanders in With Woman. Probably not his woman, but maybe a sister. Blanks us all, and shuffles past with great haste. The boy can't mix social circles. Fabulous.
Saturday, February 12, 2005
Malarky
And The Man said: From hereon, with the cold strength of a mountain, I standfast before you and declare that Friday shall be a night inebriated debauchery.
The evening:
Bar Roma for dinner. Company (AM,JM,HP,DM,SK). After dinner DM runs home to play XBox, whilst the group depart for The Candy Bar. Meet JM's cousin + friend. OM appears. A little later the Three R's + 2 random friends of RV materialise. Big crowd. Split for Po Na Na. Group disintegrates, home.
The stories:
Being inspecific with regard to chronology.
- AM's involuntary altercation in Po Na Na with 6'2" woman - she jumped on him, snogged, jumped off, turned and ran. I told him it was a man, and he ran away to wash out his mouth.
- JM and OM becoming (what the industry would term) friendly
- HP and RV sharing stories about The Cat and me. Two truths, which had no place in the same space-time continuum
- KAA calling me at 1am to ask how to get a database live from a standby controlfile. I was drunk enough to comprehensively answer, rather than ignore stupid question
- SK was followed around in club by at least 2 men.
Family
It's got to the stage now where I am answering the flat landline saying "Pronto", pause patiently for the incoherent babbling to halt; then repeat the phrase "Non qui" gently iterating intonation until the caller either understands, or has lost interest.
Something else that has kept me entertained of late: running a series of undocumented scientific experiments involving Cat, high places, confined places and water.
From the midly amusing to the sublime elements that make Life Good, was dinner last night. RA and RH spent a solid 2 hours in the kitchen conjuring a 4 course feast, i get home in time to make the run to Scotmid to buy 2 bottles of wine, lights go down, food rolls out. Hmmm, tasty Bruschetta, and some kind of mustard chicken stuff that just worked. Eating out is overrated - money can't buy atmosphere.
Friday, February 11, 2005
My Big Fat Greek Birthday Party
Unfashionably late, and perhaps with distateful timing, 3 guys stroll into the restaurant and begin their quest to rapidly inebriate prior to catching the Last Train Home. This was achieved. The unforseen included:
- EY appearing at about 11pm, in time and out of step. Men shouldn't dance.
- Plates being smashed in traditional Greek style. Messy & violent. Yet in some way -and you are permitted to make sweeping judgements about my blood/alcohol ratios at this point - it did not feel like a much ridiculed mock cultural experience. Instead, people were just breaking stuff. Nice.
- Some flawlessly attractive woman falling in love with AM. He spoke, with distressingly nonchalant ease, knowing that a girl sitting 2 to the right was open jawed, aghast and at awe for his Glaswegian unshaven balding middleaged charm. Jealous? Moi?
Quote I like today:
"Age? That's just chronology" from random project manager
And I think I know what the next Big Aim is....Keeping it simple. With that in mind, I am now of to ponder something critical - Does banana milkshake come from monkeys?
Thursday, February 10, 2005
The Limbo Post
Aims. I've always had something specific in my life to work to, towant, and to get. But of late, i'm drifting.
School. Exams. There were GCSE's, then A-levels, and as disastrous as they were, they managed to get me to...
Uni: Exams, get degree, and as disastrous as it was, it managed to get me to...
Work: Mundane, but necessary. Nothing more needs to be said, other than the renumeration leading to...
Travel: which was excellent, but rapidly became tedious, without any specific drivers. It made me want to come back and earn money as a:
Contractor scumbag: where I am, and will probably be for the next few
years.
SO - what the hell next? I go out and get drunk every now and then, I try to read and draw as much as I can, watch movies and take photos, weekend breaks and all that other bourgeoisie crap - but still feel a vacuum.
I need to find the next target.
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Motivations
I fell out of bed today at 10minutes after I started work. Appalling. Pull into work 1 hour late, after tearing the rubber from the wheels of my Smart. Driving fast in a Smart is akin to being shot from a cannon. Pointless, utterly lacking safety, but you just gotsa try sometimes.
JS is getting married (same day as AL) - but in Praha. I choose Praha. "It's just down the road from Prague" he says. I should've known better. 6 hours from Prague, in some backwater village.... how the hell am i gonna gets me to the church on Saturday, on time? After having the obligatory Friday night in Prague? The only suitable train leaves at 04:30. Ouch. Computing options.....
John Wayne's original name was Marilyn. And he walked a bit strange too. Which bus was he on?
Whisky & Cigars
Last night: The tail end of a bottle of Christmas whisky, some Cuban cigars, and a Rodriguez film. And late to work again today.
RA enlightened me with a new trick. If you dip your cigar in whisky, you get to taste the whisky when smoking. Tasty.
Got a lift over to the main building today. Guy starts car, and CD player automatically kicks in. Classical music. He jumps straight for the radio dial, and with great haste slaps on some annoyingly tacky radio station instead. Did he do it because:
a. He figured I didn’t like whatever he was listening to.
b. He was fed up of the CD.
c. He was embarrassed to be listening to classical music.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Lefties Go Right
I saw an ad yesterday for "room required" in a café. It read something along the lines: "Basque girl seeks room in central location". Now, in a fully blown lefty world, why would people see it necessary to label themselves Basque - and alert other potential flatmates to this issue?
Possible reasons for her note:
The girl has a problem with non-Basque Spanish.
The girl anticipates a problem associating with non-Basques.
The girl has a preference of association with Basques.
All of the above are an abhorrent example of self imposed social segregation. Or maybe she just likes the sound of the word "Basque".
Anti genetic research propaganda is starting to get me irate. Science is, so far, the only deity that has not abandoned me.
Monday, February 07, 2005
Beauty
It’s always too easy to sacrifice form for function. Technically, Sennheiser make the best headphones. Period. The temptation was great, but I did not yield to the beauty of B&O, choosing a pair of PX200s over the weekend. Und jetzt, iPod sehr LOUD. Gut, ja?
But what made me feel really great was the haggling, in a high street shop. The guy limboed lower by 15% , and then I waved plastic. Sweet.
Sunday, February 06, 2005
That Frasier Feeling
An animal arrived on Friday. I don't like animals. They're like humans, only worse. And that's a low starting point. The cat appeared to know this, and now we have a mutual displeasure for each other. The juxtaposition involves me spraying the cat with aftershave, as a punishment for sleeping on my bed, and the cat using progressively more and more energy on to try to win my heart. It will live in hope, and die in despair for at my compassion decifit.
Saturday, February 05, 2005
Escapism
RM was back in town for the weekend, and discussions always seem to descend to one point: Escape from The Island Of Apes. So, today I questioned the question. Why is it so necessary to escape to Rio? Europe is a fine place, Edinburgh is a fantastic city, and apart from the cat in my flat, life is good. I've got what I want, but something is missing. Or is that just my greed for more?
The Chinese are basking in their glory. The world tells them that their economy will soon dwarf everybody else's, and they know.Gold Newspaper.
Friday, February 04, 2005
Bullet points from today
1. rv denies that she will want younger men when she is 30.
2. ra makes a space cake. I thoroughly expect a recurrence of The Terremoto Incident
3. rv steals the Stroh 80, and finds that pippetting a drop underneath tongue does the job. Fast.
Thursday, February 03, 2005
Coffee
Got an afterdinner coffee with AM today. How did you find this place? he asks. Well, I was kinda wandering around, and I stumbled across it, came in and read my book. This totally confused him. The idea that someone could just wander around town at night was simply out of the question. My response: You're a bit straight laced, conventional and conservative, aren't you? His acknowledgement: Well, I grew up in a small town, where life revolved around getting into fights with the boys from the other town.
No going to a coffee shop to read a book and hear some new music, then...
I attended an art class yesterday, which brought memories of school gushing back. But only toward the end, 5 minutes before the scheduled end of the class, I was already packing up and ready to run home. I meet people every day whose sense of humour appears to have been surgically removed from them as a child. The chasm that remains beyond the clinical procedure is visible, it appears, only to me, as they stare blankly - or sometimes with disbelief - back at my dry garrulous quips.
There is now an admittance within me to a void of patience. A similar procedure to the above, at birth, plausibly. The sale, of this entity within my soul, doubtlessly predated Ebay, but I pray that my mother managed a good price.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Callout
6am, and Bob from the datacentre decides to wake me up:
"Yadda yadda yadda. Hardware failure. Invoke contingent box".
In monotone thinking, I move over to the lounge, fire up laptop and wait. Get bored, go back to bed for a few minutes. Phone starts ringing again in lounge. Think: I better answer that quick, or it's going to wake everyone up. Dash towards phone. Trip over hoover, and send it flying towards the bookshelf. RV wakes up, holding her head.
"i'm sorry, i'm just so clumsy...."
"i know"
Energy
Energy healing on Sunday at the Forest Cafe. I used the free demo to discuss my favourite subject. Moi.
So there I am sitting on some wooden stool, right arm outstretched. Eyes peeled open and waiting for astrological comments on my life by the healer. Summary:
- I experience shoulder pain
- Something about Chakra. I dont really care about this one
- I have a dragon. A personal enemy that I am incessently at war with
Apparently, as a kid, someone shouted at me with such a devastatingly humbling duress that I still bear a grudge to this day. A grudge so cavernous it has resulted in me battling this dragon ever since.
GS has the unnerving ability to cut out my babble, and force me into admitting things I chose not to see about myself. Too many late night coffees and sofa confessions mean there is no point lying to her. What she got me to admit:
Perhaps my motivation - as sullen and vacuous as it is - does stem from the an intense desire to "prove those f*kers wrong"
Perhaps the dragon is really myself, thus implying that I am engaged in a downhill battle against myself. A fruitless excercise.
Or maybe IRECA is all rubbish, and I just wanted a coffee.
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