Weybiza

Two years; 50 or so return train journeys to the Jurassic Coast. Over 250 hours aboard Southwest trains travelling from one end of a train track to the other – the Prosecco Express or the Can of Tanglefoot Special depending on who I was (or wasn’t) travelling with. A fortnightly seaside adventure, all coming to an end.

I’ll miss Weymouth: for its half price drinks (compared with London), for its awkward evenings in bars with personal bands; for its cocktail bars that run out of vodka, for its cider beach parties and its cosy, ensuite-less B&Bs.

But what will I remember most about Weymouth is the sheer feeling of escapism instilled from the relative remoteness. On an earlier work trip I’d managed to visit three European countries within 24 hours, with the total time spent travelling collectively less than the nearly six hours it takes to get to Weymouth from Waterloo and back.

If you’re driving, it’s not actually that far from the M3/M27, but once you get beyond Poole and reach the Jurassic roundabout (yes genuinely) you’re in a place whose claim to fame isn’t something like the guitarist from Suede’s brother invented Pointless there, or that the Romans liked to bathe there; it’s that it once had dinosaurs trundling around, some 160 million years ago. That’s pretty impressive.

Back to escapism. It’s not so much that working in the office in Weymouth is more laid back than in London (of course it is). It’s not even about the space, although London feels like wooden seat economy compared with Weymouth’s first class experience. It’s the people. Local people, happy to work for an international retailer but always with a local perspective. Some born there or nearby, some quite happy to escape the stress of the city and move to the coastline, to live and to work. When you work alongside them, there’s an inevitable shift in outlook and attitude attributed to the escape from the bright lights, pollution and stress of London.

These days, of course, there are far more dinosaurs in London than in Weymouth.

There’s No Need To Top Up

In hindsight, agreeing to commute for a total of 4 hours every day wasn’t the best decision I’ve ever made. Not so much the journey itself – a drive, 3 trains and a 15 minute walk – more the resentment of losing sleep and losing most of my evenings for the past 8 months.

So I’ve done the sensible thing and found a new job 45 minutes closer to home. A commute that’ll still feature a drive and a 15 minute walk but just the one train. No more London Underground. No more DLR. No more being bowled over by umbrella wielding commuters intent on obeying a Pavlovian-type sprint response to the doors-closing beeping sound, despite the next train being (literally in peak times) a minute away. No more calculations to determine the most optimum route through the bowels of London (the Jubilee to Victoria Line interchange saves me about 30 seconds over the DLR to Northern Line one. What should I do with those 30 seconds?).

45 minutes doesn’t sound much. But it’s an hour and a half per day. Effectively I’ll get a full working day back by the end of the week.

As of this Monday morning, I have one week to go. The underground countdown starts today.

So if you’re thinking of taking on a 2-hour-each-way commute, don’t do it. Life’s far too short and you’ll just resort to writing endless nonsense in a blog that starts its life as a well-meaning, optimstic ode to the weird world of commuting but gradually becomes a dirge of drivel.

Mein Handy Stein

It’s one of those slow motion things – you pass your sparkly new(ish) phone to a friend to take a photo, and see it sneak between grasping fingers to plummet to the bottom of a stein full of German lager. A freshly poured stein, containing a litre of the stuff.

Given I’m typing this on the same phone that was bathed in beer, either HTC’s “Made from a single block of aluminium” is true, or Bavarian lager has magical electronic healing properties.

This happened after several hours of drinking at the beer festival, but I still remembered the right thing to do was to switch the phone off. 15 minutes later though, I had a “Why is my phone off?” moment and switched it back on again. HTC – your engineers are miracle workers.

And for anyone thinking of visiting Oktoberfest in Munich on the festival’s closing weekend during beautiful warm sunshine….  Don’t go on the Saturday unless you intend on arriving at around 8am, getting trapped inside a shuffling crowd of beer zombies and struggling to ever actually locate a beer. Instead, get there on the Friday around 11am, find a bench and stay there. All day (toilet breaks excepting). All manner of random people will temporarily join you, like a conveyor belt of increasingly drunk but friendly weirdos. 16 year old German blokes who’ll insist on teaching you German drinking songs. Three PHD student ladies who’ll share a single stein between them as they craftily realise a group of middle aged British blokes won’t notice any of theirs going missing every now and again. And maybe a cheese lady. She was a very friendly Bavarian who had cheese. And insisted on sharing it.

So amazingly, given all it’s been through this weekend, my phone still works. And as far as I know, so does my liver.

Random Train Thoughts

I’ve never kissed a girl as tall as me.

They should let men pee test toilets before they buy them, if the apparent difficulty one of our guests had is anything to go by.

Being tiny is a definite advantage on a busy tube train. But only in winter.

The people that bemoan the use of messaging on mobile phones have no idea what they’re missing out on. When the Wi-Fi signal appears at each tube stop, so do the random smiles when the messages arrive. It’s a cheery sight on an otherwise miserable journey.

Linked-In has turned everybody into a job tart. This is a good thing. Especially if you’re a job pimp.

Nearly 3 years after leaving China, I still can’t get the 11 note Family Mart tune out of my head.

If commuters did the conga rather than shuffling would that be more efficient?

The best taxi company in the world is definitely Pyjama Cabs.

Look, I’m tired and my brain is restless.

Music and Losing Control

On the train, nearly everybody has those little things in their ears (or those giant things on their heads), listening to all manner of auditory distractions. I find the needs of my own brain odd in that I could spend my commute listening to enlightened minds explaining the universe via any number of Podcasts or audio books and yet all I want (choose) to do is listen to music.

Does my mood dictate my music choice, or does the playlist change my mood?
I spend most of my commute either writing bollocks in this blog or talking bollocks to anyone that happens to be online (electronically). If I sound sanguine it’s probably because Richard Hawley has lulled me into his multi-layered, dream-like world. If my frustration over the world’s ills forms part of my ramblings, blame Nick Cave and his Murder Ballads rampage.

My music is usually on random (or “shuffle” if you like) causing me to leap between emotions at the behest of my innocuous looking but fully in-control phone: “Sorry Your Honour, but it was my HTC what did it. It threw up Fat White Family as a subliminal catalyst, suggesting I should forcibly hide the golf umbrella up its owner after getting fed up with it hitting me”.

The invention-in-waiting is for the ability to share whatever music you’re listening to with those in close proximity (and no, I don’t just mean via your device’s speakers). I’d like to shuffle all my fellow commuters for half an hour each day to see if I could judge the general mood of London on a daily basis.

I’d do an experiment over time to find all this stuff out, but Morrissey just won’t let me.

Stranger Conferences

When forced to immerse oneself into a room full of strangers – for example, at a multinational conference in Brussels – there are a number of things you can do to track down the few people in the 350 present that you’ll get on with.

My 7-part guide (couldn’t think of ten) to social etiquette when traveling alone at conferences:

1. When choosing your table to gatecrash with the introduction “Mind if I join you?”, read the body language. So if the two ladies you ask this of do not respond, and when you ask their names they simply point to their name badges, move on to another table. Do not stubbornly (and forlornly) assume you can get a conversation out of them. You can’t. And you’ll get indigestion from wolfing your buffet down.

2. Just because you’re told all the presentations will be in English, it would be a mistake to assume everybody can converse in English (or perhaps, is willing to). If your poor Spanish victims are struggling to chat, move on.

3. Russians are always your friends. If all else fails, track down a Russian.

4. Conformity is your enemy. An evening event’s attire suggestion of “Business Casual” is open to interpretation, and the three of you not wearing suits or cocktail dresses naturally have something in common. You’ll find each other. In your jeans. And bond over slagging off everyone else.

5. Use the person on your table who smokes as your excuse to escape for fresh air (ironically). Smokers are naturally sociable creatures. Temporarily join them, without the smoking bit.
But make sure the fire exit door you’ve both just gone through has a way to open from the outside. Or you’ll spend an uncomfortable few minutes praying for more smokers to join you.

6. Don’t reply in Chinese to the question of “Do you speak French”, even if you were genuinely trying to respond in French and cocked up your response. You’ll look like an arse. Laugh politely (say, in a French way) and move on..

7. Agree to meet up at the bar later. Those that do appear at the bar are either after your business (the commercial type!) or are similarly just after a conversation over a pint. Or whatever these foreigners drink*.

Seven rules to absolutely guarantee the success of evenings at conferences.

(*satire, xenophobes!)

Post-Holiday Blue Sky Thinking

Warning – non-cynical blog alert.

Two and a half weeks away in foreign places;  19 days of not thinking or worrying about work (or other matters of reality).  And so today, I rejoin the commute into London.

It’s tempting to fall into the trap of declaring the standard pseudo-depressive feeling associated with the return to work.  As if “post-holiday blues” is the only acceptable (cliched) sentiment to express to co-workers and fellow commuters on the first day back.

But the truth is I love being back at home.  Traveling allows me to catch up with friends in other countries I rarely get to see; it allows me to taste new food, to jam onstage with Vietnamese musicians and to wallow in a private swimming pool for a few days.  But it’s not home.

My long daily commute (which is only as monotonous as I allow it to be) brings me into London to earn a salary that will pay for future trips across the globe.  I’m damn lucky to have that as an option, and so I have no idea why I’m expected to be even the slightest bit sad about it.

So for those that are fully expecting me to be miserable today – I offer absolutely no apologies!

Not Suited

Wearing a suit doesn’t come naturally to me.  It’s the uniform of conformity for modern-day business, and whilst it may look smart on some, it can look abysmal on others.  Just like any type of clothing.

So I listened to more advice from a good friend and bought a couple of modern (I’m avoiding “trendy”) suits with the intent of remaining separated from the amorphous blob of grey-suited, hunched figures that trudges aboard the overground train each morning.  I suppose I could accessorise with a hipster beard, go unique with a bright red outfit or just accept it. I settle for my Flying Spaghetti Monster cufflinks.

There’s obviously a necessity to fight conformity buried deep somewhere, but I genuinely don’t understand why suits are considered so sacrosanct. They’re an unnecessary anachronism in the 21st century, acting as an impediment to disruptive thinking.

So for now, I wear my suits. I wear them knowing they’re fitted, not grey and not cheap. Many apologies if you have a grey suit by the way – I’m sure they’re fine.

That’s until Friday, when I willingly conform to dress-down day, and become instantly me again. No idea how I passed my interview wearing an old suit.