Berlin Berlin…

Well it’s slightly late in coming, but then I gave up any claim to frequent posting a loooong time ago…

Anyway, I had a birthday recently - my 26^th - and thought to myself that rather than do what I’ve usually done these past few years, namely go into a bit of a sulk and try to ignore it in the misguided belief that this will somehow lessen the misery of knowing that my years are ticking inexorably by, I ought to do something to mark the occasion. So when longstanding friend Pete mentioned a vague desire to visit one of Europe’s most historically troubled but now vibrant and cosmopolitan cities, I didn’t hesitate to jump in and suggest I go too in order to cheer myself up. Pete’s brother and acquaintance of mine for many years Luke also seemed up for the idea, and so it was that we found ourselves on a cheap yet very cheerful AirBerlin flight from Stanstead to Berlin Tegel near the end of last February.

After the usual delay in locating our hotel (somewhat far out of town near the snappily-titled Hochhuhn Schonhausen tram stop) we unpacked and promptly ventured into town, assuming we wouldn’t need to venture too far before finding the legendary Berlin nightlife and drinking dens of sleazy ill-repute that us simple-minded twenty-somethings had heard so much about.

Two and a bit hours of trudging around the general vicinity of Alexanderplatz later, the most we’d managed to find was an ex-pat-friendly Irish bar which was nice enough, but hardly the echt experience we were after. It did give us an opportunity to sample the well-known ‘beer’ going by the name of Berliner Weiser however, though alas besides its use as a colourful, exotic prop in a cheesy holiday photo there’s very little to recommend this bastard cross between Bavarian pilsner and Panda Pop soda – it comes in either red or green, looks like it’s meant for kids and tastes like fruit-flavoured soap.

The next three days largely consisted of the three of us spending a great of time shooting around town on and trams courtesy of the magnificent integrated public transport they have there, seeing the usual touristy sights such as the concrete syringe that dominates Berlin skyline known as the TV Tower (seen up there from below and from within looking down), the Brandenburg gate and drinking as many different varieties of beer that we possibly could. German purity laws a wonderful, wonderful thing…

The highlight of it all though was probably what we found ourselves doing on the final night we were there. The other two had expressed a general wish to see some genuine cabaret – with my German heritage I myself was keen to just what this equivalent (sort of) to Britain’s music hall and stand-up tradition was actually like. After some guide book perusal, we settled for the Kleine Nacht Revue, a small place located somewhere along Kufurtdamstraße.

Very small, as it turned out. We got there around half ten, were given a very warm welcome and ushered into a modestly sized room containing a bar, maybe a dozen or so tables, a sound booth and a small stage area. We ordered our overpriced (though not shockingly so) drinks settled in and thus the show began.

One of the gents who’d ushered us in (who looked remarkably similar to British actor David Warner) promptly took to the stage and proceeded to reel off a series of impenetrable monologues and songs, one of which I’m pretty sure concerned the sex life of a middle-aged woman from Baden-Baden, though I could be wrong.

Throughout this we’d been served our drinks by two rather attractive hostesses – when David Warner had finished his bawdy routines, one of them disappeared and then reappeared on stage naked from the waste down and performed what could conceivably be seen a piece of interpretive dance – in reality though, it was a striptease, albeit one done in the best possible taste.

Now, here’s the thing – I make no apologies about calling myself a feminist (honest guv), and I do have some genuine issues regarding the exploitative nature of so much pornography, not to mention the deplorable modern trend of treating women as little more than pneumatic sex objects for the gratification of baying bovine males (thank you FHM, Nuts, Zoo and all your detestable ilk – you mark my words, there’ll be one out soon titled Testicles: For Men with Balls).

That said, sex is nothing to be scared of and should of course be celebrated – just not used, debased, commercially tapped, sold off and used to beat people with in order to make them feel inadequate. And yes, all of this was running through my mind as I watched the first hostess and the second do their scantily clad, erotic ‘thang’. Over the next two hours the pattern basically went – naked or near naked dance bit with blonde hostess, David Warner’s stand up, naked dance bit with brunette hostess, back to Herr Warner, blonde hostess and so on with a 15 minute break between each one. The pacing was good, giving us a chance to have a few flustered and sardonic words between us and exchange pleasantries with some of the locals, though it was slightly disconcerting having our drinks orders enthusiastically taken by women who were flashing their bits at us only moments before.

Yep, all in all we were in smoky, Weimar-style ‘men looking at the women looking at the men with an occasionally bored, always detached look in their eyes territory’, at least until the blonde hostess got up to sing a number about her ‘disposable man’ or some such while wearing a wispy, wafer-thin barely-there dress and saw fit to drag yours truly up onstage for a ‘dance’ – with her leading and me mugging helplessly. I would have enjoyed it far more if I hadn’t been able to hear Luke and Pete’s cackling over the top of the pre-recorded music she was singing to. And frankly, I can’t help but suspect that some ‘hey, let’s make us a fool of ze Englander’-motivated mischief was involved, as there was no other audience participation at all in the whole two hours we were there.

So it’s highly recommended – and for all my guilty hand-wringing about enjoying it, I should mention that there were a fair few couples in their forties and fifties there (what the women would have got out of it, I’ve no idea – maybe they were really feeling David’s effortless bon mots) and even a family who’d seen fit to bring along their 12 year old son for some reason. As me and the other two remarked to each other, if he hadn’t hit puberty before that evening, he sure as hell would have done by the time he left.

Which brings me on to what I found really great about Berlin – ‘ver kids. Yes, when we in Britain score record lows in global UNICEF surveys of child welfare and development in ‘western’ society, second only to the good old US of A, something ain’t quite right. In Berlin, arguably, you can see how it should be. Our tram ride back to the hotel that night (at quarter to three in the morning – oh, to have had one of those going from Wakayama Shi to Ogura) was absolutely packed with ‘young people’ of a similar age to ourselves, many of them clutching oversized bottles of lager (as were we), with a small group of early 20-somethings sharing a quiet joint somewhere near the back, most people on board just shooting the breeze with their mates, nodding off, laughing, nearly all of them wearing proper coats and hats and things to keep them warm on the winter street – you know, acting like decent, civilised normal human beings.

None of these guys seemed to feel the need to bellow incoherently at each other, to intimidate us upon hearing our English, to start fights or indeed to act like wankers in any way shape or form, drunk and/or stoned though most of them undoubtedly were. So why is it then, whenever I’m walking back from my mate’s house on the other side of town on a Saturday night around 2 in the morning, I have to carefully navigate a route through the centre of Colchester that won’t lead past certain clubs or certain pubs, carefully sidestep past numerous abandoned kebabs and burgers and piles of vomit, the latter mostly likely from people who decided to chow down their post-pub treats instead of dropping them on the floor? Frankly I don’t care if I sound like Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells here, it seems like most of my generation in this town behave like fucking animals and something’s got to give. Now, I wonder what the English-teaching opportunities in Berlin are like…

Oh yeah, and it might be hyped to high heaven, but go out and get hold of Arcade Fire’s latest, Neon Bible, anyway because it’s really good. Those backing vocals on ‘Black Wave/Bad Vibrations’ is how I imagine the (fictitious) almighty kingdom of heaven to sound…

Time to Re-engage – Why a Media Studies Degree is the Academic Equivalent of Leprosy – The UK’s Take on Karaoke booths

A complete blog blackout that lasted for three+ months, then. Why? Well, a job that began as challenging before becoming difficult to bear and ultimately soul-destroying has something to do with it. Yes, the job outlined on the previous entry is the one I mean. This is not the place to go into specifics into why I found it as bad as I did – I could go on endlessly and have already done so to friends and family – suffice it to say that half a term there was more than enough for me, and I left shortly before Christmas.

This now of course leaves me, once again, without steady employment, living at home and drifting in an ever more erratic manner, career-wise. As a sign of how much I’ve regressed over these last few months, I’m going back to the same temp position I was in before I started at the school. Yes, the one I was somewhat uncharitable about, interviewing people over the phone because that’s apparently the only temp position anywhere in Colchester that pays more the £6.50 an hour. Marvellous.

Still, I can either sit here and moan about my circumstances, or do something in order to change them – to that end, I intend to embark on a hearty campaign of writing begging letters to any nearby publishers, radio stations and other local media organisations to see if any of them are willing to grant me an unpaid work experience position. See kids, I’ve one piece advice for anyone entertaining the idea of pursuing a media related A-level or university qualification – for the love of God, don’t. At least, don’t if you’re anywhere near as socially dysfunctional and bone-idle as I am.

The other great quest for me to achieve in the fullness of time is to learn how to drive. Yes, I am looking to part with between £500 and £600 in order to join the massed ranks of motorists, sat inside their air-polluting, society-fragmenting, death-dealing killing machines. Should anyone find this labelling somewhat harsh, I should add that I’ve spent the last two years as a frequent cyclist, and let me tell you, the rush of self-righteousness one experiences when perched atop two wheels as opposed to four is positively intoxicating.

All that’s set to change though, given enough time, patience and money on my part. It’s just the added convenience of being able to transport things like shopping, instruments, friends and loved ones around more easily that’s the main draw for me, hopeless altruist that I am. That and the thought of being able to one day own my own old-school (preferably mid-70’s model) VW Beetle. See, my helpless descent into auto-fetishism has begun already…

Aside from formulating future plans, however, these past two days saw me once again in the company of old uni chums Mark and Sophie, as I journeyed down to Brighton for an evening of bizarre cooking (quesedillas and okonomiyaki made by my own (due to the copious amounts of wine and, um, refreshment of another kind) somewhat shaky hand. Followed by several rounds of perhaps one of the most entertaining uses of a PlayStation 2 ever, gameshow-sim Buzz! The Music Edition. Comes highly recommended.

The real fun to be had was the Saturday night however, at Lucky Voice, one of the UK’s first Japanese-style karaoke booth establishments. You book your room beforehand (way beforehand, such is the popularity of the place, it would seem), turn up and settle yourself and half a dozen or so others into your own private boudoir, where you can make as much horrendous noise as you like without fear of upsetting any complete strangers with your atonal take on ‘singing’.

Mark and myself were old hands at this of course – in Japan you’re never more than 20 minutes drive from a karaoke booth parlour, and as such we’d both been to a fair few. Aside from the somewhat gloomy décor (underlit corridors of black illuminated by deep reds) and the very welcome addition of a bar area for smoking and mingling when required, the whole enterprise seemed to be a fair reproduction of what we were both already used to.

The only major departure however, had to be in terms of the price. Two hours for six people at one of these places will set you back upwards of 90 quid altogether. Once you start to factor in drinks, you’re easily looking at £150+. Nice though it was to be able to quaff Kirin Lager for the first time since summer last year, the thought that each bottle came with a £3.80 price tag was unfortunately somewhat sobering.

All in all, pleasant though the evening was, and helpful and friendly though the staff at the place were, I couldn’t help but think they’d missed the point of the experience in a couple of key ways. Firstly, karaoke booths in Japan are impulse activities – that is, you’ll be wandering (most likely drunk) through a busy city at night with friends and/or co workers – someone suggests karaoke, and in you pop. Of course, on the other hand Osaka’s probably got more than a hundred alone; the London one is probably overbooked as much as it is because there’s so little competition and they’re still so much of a novelty in the UK.

Secondly, most of the karaoke parlours in Japan are purely functional – strip-lit corridors, maybe some tacky UV light projection in the booth itself and a sparse reception are generally par for the course, in line with the idea that it’s a universal pastime which can be enjoyed by different kinds of people at different times of day – schoolchildren in the late afternoon, families in the early evening, and businessmen and hard-drinking good-for-nothing gaijin in the wee hours. All are welcome. Lucky Voice, on the other hand, is almost exclusively pitching itself to the urban, aspirant hipster type first and foremost – but then again, I suppose that’s only natural at this stage, when it’s still a new fangled thing.

It still brought to mind though, what I was discussing with fellow JET and current Japan resident Sarah on her recent visit to the UK, namely that Japan seems to be forever chasing western-style fashions, be it clothes, music and such like, while the west is perpetually falling over itself trying to appropriate the latest ker-azy cultural phenomenon coming from the Far East – yet somehow, the two always seem to miss each other. The universal, mass market, cheap and cheerful appeal of populist Japanese icons such as bento boxes, conveyor belt sushi restaurants and karaoke booths suddenly become gentrified, swollen in price, slick in delivery and designed to appeal to a very narrow, affluent audience.

Ooh, it has been a while...

Two and a bit months since the last update, has it been that long? I have my reasons, most of them inadequate. A default personality setting of 'incorrigible apathy' is probably the main contributing factor to my self-imposed blog silence. And with an opening paragraph as poorly-written, self-indulgent and stupid as this one, is it any wonder?

In short order then, the main things I did over the last two months were:

1. Went to the V(ery corporate) Festival in just up the road Chelmsford where I was lucky enough to witness a transcendent Go! Team and a particularly awkward Radiohead for whom the closing lines of the set's closing song 'Creep' ("I don't belong here") were poignantly apt.

2. Witnessed an old friend I'd known since the age of three get married, which was lovely to see.

3. Visited brother of aforementioned friend directly after wedding in Cardiff, and spent rather too much time gawking at places and sites I recognised from the revamped series of Doctor Who, hopeless geek that I am.

3. Spent the rest of August 'readjusting' to life in the UK. Lethargically.

4. Realised around the start of September that my meager savings from Japan were liable to take a fair old pounding if I didn't do anything about it sharpish. Subsequently spent the next six weeks or so temping as a telephone interviewer, carrying out interviews with people who'd applied for low level positions with a certain multinational banking corporation, whose name consists of a four letter acronym beginning with the letter 'H' and which enjoys a major presence on the UK high street. Knowing nothing whatsoever of banking, I found interviewing prospective cashiers and mortgage advisors initially somewhat daunting, but eventually found my feet and became remarkably more confident and proficient as the weeks wore on. Unfortunately this happened to coincide with a nasty bout of carpal tunnel syndrome due to the job’s heavy typing demands, another good reason as to why I haven’t done a great deal of tapping away at keyboards in my spare time of late. I was also required to sign a non-disclosure agreement as part of the placement, hence the fuzzy descriptions and the court summons that’s likely to arrive on my doormat within the next few days.

5. Found time to visit Brighton to meet up with old friends. Failed to find a suitable replacement for my battered, torn and generally knackered leather jacket from one of its many fine second-hand clothes emporiums. Also remembered how small the place was.

6. Got myself a new job. All I can say is that it’s in a school, that I’m not teaching, and that the most accurate description I can offer of what I do there is that it’s a combination of administration and student welfare. Knowing how frighteningly proficient Britain’s teenagers are at using the Internet to check up on things, places and people, I dare not right anything further. Those looking for more thorough updates on what I’ve experienced there thus far would do well to email me direct. At an address which is now never going to be posted here publicly.

7. Realising how many things in Japan are actually, well, better than they are in the UK. Recently I’ve found myself considering the words ‘greener’ and ‘grass’ with increasing frequency.

More soon…

Fleapit Fun and a Day In Lahndon Taaahn...

Well, it would appear that my starting a whole new blog has not banished my tendency to updated it infrequently and describe events some considerable time after they've actually happened. Still, I do have a life to lead as well as write about, you know...

Anyhoo, we begin with the performance I witnessed from longstanding pal Luke and his band The Lugers at Colchester's premier fleapit venue The Twist last Thursday. A place I once actually played in a previous life, it's almost gratifying to see how little it's changed in the four or so years since I was last there. It's still small, appallingly lit and the rather intense acoustics continue to make it impossible to communicate verbally with anyone standing more than six inches away from you. The latter of which was something of a shame, seeing as there were several people in attendance that I hadn't had the pleasure of seeing for quite some time, years in most cases. In any event, it was nice to briefly catch up again with various people, the band - Luke, Pete, Bub and Ewan – played well enough considering how easy they were taking this particular public engagement, and fellow Japan survivor Mark even managed to make it up to Colchester for that evening and the day after too, which was nice. Video footage used without band permission, as all the photos I took turned out to be rubbish.

The other notable event of the past week was the journey I undertook to London last Saturday, there to meet up with ex-colleague, erstwhile supervisor and all round legend Miyata Sensei (Aiko to her friends, though it didn't half feel weird addressing her as such) at the end of her two-week visit to Blighty. Following a lengthy amount of time hanging around Euston, she appeared courtesy of a Virgin train from Windemere, from whence we swung past her hotel to dump her baggage and hit the famously grimy underground of London's capital to get ourselves to St James' Park and Buckingham palace. After loitering outside the main gates with hundreds of other tourists, we considered lining up for tickets to see the interior, but getting past the horrifically long queue would have taken more time than either of us had.

Alas, this set something of a pattern for the rest of the day, at both the Houses of Parliament (Parliament itself of course being in recess) and Westminster Abbey (closed an hour before we got there). There was the London Eye, though, which was good. I'd never been on it before, and was strangely excited at the prospect of being able to make out the barren fields of Essex from the top, but clouds obscured the view, alas. Aside from the publicity, tickets and smug-sounding announcer misleadingly referring to the ride as a 'flight' however, the Eye is great, compelling anyone inside with even a passing acquaintance with London to go “Ooh, look, there's over there.” In traditional rollercoaster style, they even take a photo of you and your fellow passengers on your way back down, which Aiko was good enough to by two copies of for us. There it is, up there, complete with me sporting a shockingly ill-advised 'Man at C&A male model pose' and jiggering it up completely for those others inside who may have wanted one for themselves.

After dinner, we said our goodbyes, leaving things with one of those 'Maybe I'll see you again' kind of partings which I'd had so often in the last few weeks of Japan. It was great to her see on my home territory though, and was happy to hear that she got away all right the following day despite the security scares at Heathrow, her only compromises being a one hour delay and not being able to bring her glasses case aboard.

On the subject of which, I should mention that my dad made a very good point about the whole airport fiasco. Commenting on John 'Bruiser' Reid's typically stubborn reaction to journalists enquiring as to whether the Israel / Hisbullah hostilities and the larger mess in the Middle East generally could have any bearing on the extent of extremist Islamic terrorist activity over the past few years, he was recorded as saying that “Government policy will not be dictated by the actions of terrorists.” Odd then, that security policy in airports either side of the Atlantic very much has been, and I'd have to agree. Fine, so the plot to destroy nearly a dozen planes in mid air using liquid explosives and simple hand-held gadgetry as rudimentary detonators means that security staff are now thinking twice about letting bottled water and iPods into the aircraft cabin. But bags of any description containing paperbacks, newspapers and reading aids being outlawed? How much damage are they likely to do?

It's a small thing, yes, if being bored senseless on a short-haul flight is the price that has to be paid for dying a fiery death at 10,000 feet above the surface of the Earth (intercontinental passengers can always rely on in-flight entertainment to keep them occupied of course) but really, for the sake of a handful of intolerant, psychopathic fools, some of whom harbour a twisted death wish, air travel for millions is thrown into chaos, airport staff suffer all manner of stress and the nation at large is expected to cower in terror before a critical-level terror alert. And can we call “the terrorists” something else please, because the phrase has become so overused since September 2001 as to have lost virtually all meaning. Whoever the hell they are, the fire-and-brimstone idiots plotting these acts of destruction are winning at what they do, namely changing the way we live our lives. I suggest we start by robbing them of the “ooh, tremble everyone!” connotations that the 'T' word implies. I propose that from now on we call any two-bit moron with a shaky grasp of Qu'ran theology, some home-made explosives and one hell of a grudge a 'Petula', and change all references to 'Al Qaida' in the media to 'Crispy Ambulance'. That would be a start.

“Police in London today arrested 21 suspects allegedly involved in Petula-related activities.3 of the British-born suspects are thought to have attended Crispy Ambulance training camps somewhere on the Pakistani/Afghanistan border. In a press conference earlier this morning President George Bush said that the arrests marked a significant strategic victory in the ongoing war against Petula.”

Well now, after some considerable delay since it was first announced, I'm finally posting my first contribution to this, yet another no doubt deeply inconsequential and little-read blog, one maintained mainly for my entertainment and vanity.

Why Pickled Flex? Well, it's a combination of elements which make no sense whatsoever when placed beside each other and is ultimately meaningless - which is a lot like life. Besides that, it also sounds like the name of an internet startup created by some odious product of Britain's public school system going by the name of Tarquin, with only a media degree, a trust fund and a superiority complex to his name.

As should be clear by now, I could talk rubbish for England. You should probably also know that my life is not especially interesting, but it was not always thus. Alone In Ogura was a blog I kept until very recently which detailed the tremendously good times I had in Japan as a participant on the JET Programme, until I arrived back in England again last week at the end of my two year stint. I now find myself contemplating my career options, which I always find terribly depressing, and otherwise getting on with the comparatively far more enjoyable business of seeing family and friends again after a very long time indeed.

Of course, what one needs in order to to stay in touch with friends in this day and age is a mobile phone (or keitai as the vastly superior Japanese term would have it). Which is my way of awkwardly linking to what will no doubt be the first of many rants, namely, since when did mobile phone companies become so damn chummy? Have I just been out of the country for too long?

It's the enormous amount of literature you have to wade through before you can get the thing working that gets me, and as well as there being lots to read, it's all written in an unbearably patronising way. Examples escape me just at the moment, and laziness prevents me from fetching said articles to check, but anyone who's an O2 customer should know what I'm talking about. It's designed come across as though you're their new best mate that they've got to look out for, rather than the latest mug who's wandered in off the high street for them to fleece. Which only makes commercial sense I suppose.

Interestingly though, nowhere does it mention the potential hazards of owning such a small piece of electronic equipment. Honestly, my Sony Ericsson model is so small and light I'm actually slightly worried about the possibility of getting drunk one night and accidentally swallowing it. I'm starting to miss the nice, solid feel and chunky craftsmanship of my Docomo N900iS dearly, but then we all have to move on. And forming an emotional attachment to an electronic communications device is just plain wrong.

Stay tuned for further scintillating dispatches from the blasted commuter wastelands of Essex coming to you very soon...