Report from the land of saurkraut

I haven't yet had any saurkraut and if reports are to be believed it's a blöödy good thing too. Please excuse me if I bung in any spelling mistakes but such are the layouts of the german keyboard that the z and the y are backwardised and there are loads of fünny characters all over the place.

Frankly this latter statement is a fairly accurate summation of the trip, i am staying at a cousins house and there are certainly a stream of funny characters coming through. Further reports to follow but as yet I can report that I crossed the border to Strassbourg today and had a 4 course meal at 4 different restaurants with my cousin and his mates. I am surrounded by vietnamese people again, a la california, but this time the stark reality of my consistent slackassness has become lucidly evident.

For years I have neglected my eastern heritage, partly in an effort to keep up with the pasty white indigenous population, with their no-respect-for-their-ancestors. But obviously on the other hand I'm actually a fuckin lazy künst, generally quite assured in my abillity to "pick up the skillz later" a habit which has led to wholesale procrastination on the educational front.

One of the resultz of this habit is that I've let slip my own language and culture and haven't really bothered too much on the foreign language front. Like many English types I'm complacent in the learning of Modern Foreign Languages for the simple reason that modern foreign people know English. And Iäm too lazy to learn something that seems, while I'm on home soil, to be surplus to requirements.

As a result then, as I've been chilling with the super-intelligent tri-lingual crowd, I've realised how completely lacking in linguistical fluency I actually am. Itäs frightening to think that I'm actually capable of these things but have been too lazy to invest in the skillz. The skillz of my contemporaries and peers are a yardstick by which to measure my own achievements and as far as i have come on the academic and experiential ladder I realise that I am actuallly falling behind.

Although I can kick it with the physics and bust ass on the carnival front, it is an obligation of the global citizen, and especially the immigrant globall citizen to make an effort to successfully integrate with our neighbours. As a slackass I have little confidence to actually achieve this goal and feel that further effort is to be put in in this area.

Germany has been really relaxing and just what I need after the hell of last term. I really needed to disengage and perhaps to realign expectations for the next year and this has been therapy. Still working on rediscovering my sense of humour and if anyone sees it can you send it back as I'm kind of missing it.

Break from this insanity

I'm off to Germany for New Years Eve, so no time to ring the bloke about the nudey massage job. Remind me to ring him when I get back there really is no way I want to miss this one.

That's another year over then. Happy new year all.

Naturist Massage job

In possibly the years biggest shock so far, young Mischief has today applied for a job as a masseuse at naturist club in north london. The exact job description is as follows...

Masseuses Required for naturist club!

Additional masseuses required immediately for busy health club (sauna/steam/massage). Full training given if required. Must have a reasonable standard of English. It is essential that you are completely relaxed about working in a naturist (clothes-free) environment!

Apply Now!

Couldn't pass up an offer like that, so apply I did with little hope. How the hell was I gonna justify applying my physics degree and all that that entails about my personality to this application!?! Worth a try anyway I thought, throwing caution to the wind in the way that I am accustomed to doing anyway. Only a fool would pass up the opportunity to do naked massage and get paid for it.

...and within a couple of hours I had an email back from the manager asking me to call them up for an interview. I've just got to try and figure out exactly where I am going to fit being a swedish masseuse in with being a teacher and a policeman. Surely there is a conflict of interest here?

Hell, thinkin about it there's nothing I want more than to be a porno swedish naked masseuse so everything else can go to hell. Fuck it I'm going out to get some credit on my phone. I'm gonna be a naked masseuse!

Lamentable music scene

It's been a damn long time since I could say I was fairly on the ball with the music scene, this course having taken up all of my time, and having lived out in the sticks with JCA for a few months before getting here. Everyone knows that, despite the erosion of quality tunes coming out of the UK Garage scene I've stuck with it and championed the decent vocal tunes that have trickled out of the scene since it's official demise in the public favour a couple of years ago.

Artful Dodger has still been actively producing fantastic mixes and tunes like Midnight Lover (feat Sherman) and that brilliant mix of Rush Hour by fuck knows who, that only I seem to have heard. MJ Cole has recently released his next album, ruff and smooth in equal measure as to be expected. I was still believin that UK Garage had steam even with TJ Cases exiting the scene.

But I think I may have heard the death knell tonight on 1xtra. I tuned in to the top ten in the hope that I could brush up on the latest tunage to get up to speed but fuck me it was absolute shite. It was all the bumpy riddims, playstation shite, bedroom productions. I got bored pretty fast.

It's no secret that with carnival playing such a big part in my life, my taste has veered towards Soca and Dancehall over the last couple of years and I'm not one to stick to such vague concepts as musical genres. The whole essence of garage that hit in 1999 was that it was a dynamic experimental dance music, smooth productions with a phat bassline. But it's lost that dynamism and the DJs and producers in the garage scene have just stopped trying. Soca on the other hand is ripping up the country, with previously unknown Kevin Lyttle (I heard Turn Me On at Notting Hill 2001) and Wayne Wonder burning up the charts.

Dancehall is causing damage all over the place, which was inevitable following the demise of UKG and the popular revival of rap by Eminem, Dre and Snoop. It's been said every year in soca circles following monor chart success, but this year really is the year of Soca. The general public still has to discover real party music and frankly there is no party like a carnival masquerade! With Kevin Lyttle being vital playlist material on most DJ sets from dancehall to garage and Rnb nights as well as Soca nights it's only a matter of time before Rupee's "Tempted to Touch" becomes staple I reckon. Will probably take a couple of years though but I reckon that tune has the potential to put Rupee up there in the consciousness just the same as Lyttle. After that I think the stage will be set for Bunji Garlin, Machel Montano and Destra, Square One and Alison Hinds to smash the place up. They've got the tunes, and now that the public has been softened up by Kevin Lyttle and Wayne Wonder it's almost ready for some real party tunes.

Of course I probably wouldn't appreciate it in truth if everyone got into soca. It's a funny old world when you want people to hear your tunes, but you don't actually want to share. Everyone needs to hear Carl Jacobs and David Rudders "Trini 2 de Bone" but in truth how many people do I want to be singing it? It's all about the masquerade really.
Soca is a way of life, and the chart success of the likes of Kevin Lyttle show the world but a small part of the soca lifestyle. While people sing their lungs out to "Turn Me On" tunes like "No Letting Go" I like to think i feel the spirit of carnival when the beats pulse through me. All right in truth when I hear "No Letting Go" I just think it's crap, but when I remember dancing to "Turn Me On" 2 years ago it affirms my life. It's no throwaway tune that's for sure.

"Trini 2 de Bone" makes me feel alive, 3 Canal's "Enter the Dragon" is a chronicle of life, Bunji's "Snake Oil Gyal" and "Trinidad" are not really songs, they are hard drugs. Is it right to be distributing hard drugs to the masses?

Return to hell

I have been given a second chance and I took it. I'm going back in and repeating the block I have just done so if I do graduate from this it will be this time next year.

So I'm just about hanging in. Almost guaranteed to go insane this term, but Mr Hoang, Science Teacher is back and i'm not about to let some little bastard 12 year olds beat me this time. Fuckers.

It's all over

I've never dropped out of anything before. I was bloody close to dropping out of my physics degree at Warwick but there were reasons other than not being able to hack it. But actually dropping something has come as a massive shock and surprise.

I had it all for a while. I had a roof over my head in the nicest part of town, a beautiful girl for a best friend who I absolutely adore, a career for life. All I had to do was work out how to teach and I could have had it blissful for a year, but I fucked it up and I fucked it up bad. So I guess from one point of view I've lost it all now.

But let's be realistic about this. I'm out of a job that I feel that I am completely incompetent at that was making me physically sick.

Christina will always be around.

So really I've lost the roof over my head in the nice part of town and all student priveleges and the job for life that I feel I can't quite do. So it aint all bad.

As I pack my bags and head for the door it's important to try and keep this in perspective or I'll go fuckin mad. I've lost my girl, I've lost my job and I've lost my home and now I've got to fuckin pay council tax as well for the privelege. Ah shit. I've really fuckin fucked it this time haven't I...

What the hell do I do now?

I think I've probably officially fucked it now. I have requested to drop out of my course.

I'm just not nearly near mature enough to take this on. I am completely bloody disorientated whenever I walk into a school and the amount of work on this course and the amount of work a teacher has to take on is just staggering. I've been completely, comprehensively deconstructed.

There are too many reasons I've chosen this course of action but I think at the core of it I've been really disappointed by my performance this term. There are a numer of reasons for this. I am still essentially a child who wants to just guide his mates through the academic minefield. I duck in the corridors when I see the headmaster, cos I think I have to avoid trouble. I'm not a teacher yet, I'm still a damn student.

But what the hell do I do next? I am officially a dropout/loser now. Where the hell do I go from here?