yann is in spain at the moment and seems to have moved on from posting here to his bLog on his new site over at www.yannguyt.squarespace.com

bridge

in between.. I've said yes to a new place to live and am awaiting a reply for the how and when. Mostly when and where the paperwork needs to go and be signed. Looking for a room to rent has sent me across london. Dodging dirty kitchens, dodgy flatmates and all manner of scams. I'm hoping this one pulls through for who wouldn't want to give up the commute for a brisk half hour walk into work ?

Unfortunately, I've fallen into the trap of postponing everything. Whats the point of getting your hands dirty when you're about to move house? I'll have to pack everything anyway. All two suitcases and one bag full of earthly possessions. But I don't have a date, have yet to sign a contract. Still waiting for any word from my new new housemate, I don't get much done, mesmerised by what I'm hoping is the light at the end of the tunnel.

Sunset

I see him die every day yet he never grows old

amongst human settlements built only a generation ago

our city grows at a rate like a mould with fractal precision

he sees us come and go

without him we would not be so

we must provide him with glee

imagery

Wednesday 28th of october

Keeping up blogs and any online presence is not a chore. Real life can be however and keep you from creating fresh content. Today I got up early and after politely dodging a request to pick up a shift tonight (I already met my quota for doing favours at work) I got started on a new character for the player for my mac ninja game in Zbrush. Then I was distracted by a new twitter client for my desktop and followed links on how to make money online and.. you know they are kind of like buying lottery tickets: we know the odds are against it/us but we want to believe. Not that I need an extra job, my position at the Hard Rock has kept me pretty occupied. Its been so busy since I got back from Barcelona at the end of summer I've hardly had any time to do much on my mac but work on my videogame.. and this blog and other sites where I'd like to maintain a presence have fallen out of favour and lost in the battle for attention to Facebook.. I've always compared these social sites to emailing with pictures which I prefer because its prettier to look at.. but nowadays with questionnaires and casual games with leaderboards, iphone integration.. its almost like tv. There's nothing really on but something might pop up. Though, when something bad happens on facebook I still rely on actual newspapers to tell me... it is an online entertainment centre, streamlining the internet so it takes even less know-how than before (MySpace html coding anyone?). Only problem is its just not very creative. Like emailing before we still prefer to forward bad jokes and shock Youtube videos, superstitious chainmail letters that we got sent, over actually writing or making anything ourselves. Just want to be entertained and not be the entertainer and quite frankly I don't blame us, what's on telly anyway ? Its just that, when I have time, I do like to make stuff and write. So stay tuned and I'll forward you some home made links in the coming months.. and I'll try to stay away from internet marketing :P

creating a new 3D model for the player's character using zbrush | TweetPhoto

Mile End

Monday 17th 10:30 Mile End, London.

I don't think I've ever owned a suitcase where the wheels didn't come off. I moved one of my two suitcases yesterday from my old place in Oval to where I'm staying
with my polish flatmate from when I was living in Crouch End a few summers ago. The first tube I took I heard something snap and a lady was kind enough to pick up the debris and hand it to me. "Thanks..I hope that's not important." I said taking my suitcase rightwheel from her. It was quite a haul. Sunday afternoon, everyone and their family out for the day, trying to navigate the spiralling staircases when switching to the Central Line at Bank. I did buy the suitcases from that stall outside Warren station for 30 quid and they did last all of two journeys: made me wonder just how much better those really expensive samsonites are.
Ah well.. to the landfill with you. Now I need to find a home for the other one and get back into the grind which starts this eve: been at work the last week to chat with the managers and say hello to the many friends made over the years and introducing myself to some of the new faces while breezing through the hefty tome that is my new contract. Since I intended fully to emigrate to Spain I was no longer in the system. They gave me my new rota on thursday, tonight some bits and bobs of uniform and other standards and I'm back in business: N7 for those who know what that means.

Its tiring coming home from a journey and everyone wants a piece of you. I don't know how rockstars do it being the centre of attention. Where's my quiet cup of tea ? ha! The past few days have been a whirlwind of places and faces as I've met up with friends and colleagues for drinks and lunches and dinners, leaving do-s and home comings. I'm loving it, though its such a big break from the easy going lifestyle Andrea and I enjoyed in Barcelona, and I do miss my cafe con ponque listening to podcasts, this is like a shot in the arm. London has a rep for being hectic and its organised chaos within city-limits is a marvel to behold. Though most who come to dip their toes in this bigger pond do burn out within 5 years as much as I enjoy the country-side this is where I recharge my batteries.

Saterday august 8 2009.

I got burnt on your behalf. So many tweets and facebook updates bemoaning another superb summer in the English capital I figured I owed it to you to take advantage of the one thing this city does have going for me: sunshine. Today was another blistering hot day spent at the beach, broadening my mind with a wide range of podcasts while feasting the eyes upon the tapestry of bodies so haphazardly strewn about. The sheer variety bewildering I wondered how many worried before coming here if they measured up to whatever magazine cover they surely came across in the months between booking and taking this holiday. Hopefully my thin frame has put them at ease.. the men atleast. I've given up on womankind ever learning to be happy with the skin they're in. Ofcourse, if we put a stop to advertising or start rating it as we do anything violent these days. The Americans rate trailers after all why not advertising: "This advertisement is rated 15+ PEGI may contain nuts and erroneous assumptions about what makes one look attractive that have been proven detrimental to the emotional well-being of girls as young as 8 years old. As with this blog- Parental Discretion advised."

Once upon a time the father of a friend of mine told me he was as skinny as me when he was my age. I found that hard to believe as he appeared as Hardy as I did Laurel. 'Not to worry' he said. 'When I hit my thirties I piled it on.. just you wait and see.' Since I quit smoking a few months ago I certainly have but nature can be cruel sometimes and instead of padding me out in a more general fashion or atleast the bits where the bones are sticking out it, ofcourse, centers around the waist. Great. Sit-ups. My least favourite activity in the gymn besides the bicycle, tread-mill, rowing machine, swiss ball, and weights. Its not easy being a lightweight I tell you. You have to grow pretty tough skin. The heavy-weights among us however have it so much tougher. Whereas before you and I were only bullied in school now the government is out to get you as well. Much like the countless friendly advice given to me over the years its not that they care its just that they've come to the conclusion they could save so much more money by preventing us from having to take a trip to the hospital. As if the amount they've been saving over the past few years hasn't resulted in waiting lists that have been doing just that already. The next thing you know they are going to be touting hospitals' own conclusion that they had nothing to do with up to 70% of the patients' they discharge recovery: apparently its the placebo effect. They say we've so come to believe in the miracle works of medical science the men in white coats might just be the latest incarnation of the wise old woman of the village boiling arcane ingredients in her cauldron or the man with the long white beard and the skull necklace jumping about to the beat of a pigskin drum. They might just institute make-belief sessions for everyone every sunday or if you're really fanatic about hygiene 5 times a day. Unfortunately, that would release the father of the diabetic 11 year old girl that died recently from manslaughter. After the praying he did to God to make her better it would seem, in my hypotethical government policy of the very near sighted future, she simply didn't believe fervently enough it would work. She believed in docters and docters would've given her an insulin shot. The 30% they are sure about then. By the way, don't you just hate it when you go to the docter, and I've been in more than one country, and they pull the old "well.. its either a bacteriological or a viral infection.." I mean, that pretty much covers everything except cancer, doesn't it? I've always wanted to turn around with my blood shot eyes and runny nose and ask them how long they have to go to school these days to become one but then I'm affraid such thoughts will obstruct the magical thinking that will make their prescription of "Lots of rest and lots of tv -I mean tea-" work. Back in the day they would advise you to wash your hands too but nowadays docters themselves can't be bothered to do that at your local hospital. So they fire the minumum wage cleaner who escaped a civil war in an unnamed african country and has been eeking out a living, illegally residing in the country where one day she too will get to sign up to a pension fund only to learn through her church they invest her savings in the military industrial complex which has been lobbying the government to green light arms deals to resource rich regions of the world around the equator so we have something to look forward to in the next century when the experts say we will run out of everything except rubbish therefore she is better off clasping her hands together and looking up to the sky where our heavenly father resides though it has been proven not to be a crystal sphere but a continuation -however tenuous- of the air we breathe into the vacuum of space. Which, a) makes you wonder what they thought was up there before the invention of glass, b)'the vacuum of space'.. when the vacuum was first discovered and they showed it off by making mice die, something scientist of all ages still get a kick out of to this very day (and in doing so discovering there's this gas we breathe) and bells ring without sound (and in doing so discovering sound requires a medium) the religious authorites of the time went through quite a lot of trouble silencing those who showed off this discovery, for as they put it "Nature abhors a vacuum" 't is funny then how He who created Nature end up living in it with his Angelic choirs singing so.. silently. But the real joke ofcourse is on the cleaner who mopped the floors with chemicals that make your eyes burn in hospitals where people are dying of bacteria that have evolved to eat flesh and now chooses not to pay for a pension which would get her that kind of healthcare and out of a moral obligation to her own people and a faith which has no need for an all encompassing theory which perfectly explains how all things great and small are connected to and diversified from a single source. Simply because its much cheaper to replace her than it is docters who refuse to clean their hands. All I'm trying to say is if you want people to lose weight, because us skinny people are a lot cheaper to treat, maybe you should release MRSA into the general populace.

Monday musings

there was that time I came back from a holiday and found out I had been sued, then there was that time I came back from a road trip only to get a phone call from my landlord saying I hadn´t paid the rent for three months and he was going to evict me.
But this time..
This was not supposed to be a trip. When I moved to spain three months ago it was to start a new chapter in my life. A fresh start somewhere far away, where I don´t speak the language and the culture is further removed from my own than that of the island dwellers I've lived amongst these past six years. Yet those instances of failures past percolated from a subconscious treasure chest left slightly ajar early sunday morning, while listening to the screams of an eastern european mother as she marshaled her troops for an impending visit of the in-laws. Instead of a fresh start it quickly deteriorated into a scramble for papers proving I was legit. Legal enough to be here with sufficient experience in my chosen trade. Proof of good behaviour, see ? Innocent enough to get married. As the temperature climbed towards an average of 32 I exclaimed my plight day in day out handing out cv's, posting them online, emailing them to any site offering any jobs in sight.. and here I am nearly three and a half months later, giving my notice to my Valencian flatmate, ready to pack my things before I completely run out of savings. I gave up most of my possessions as I always have before embarking on a quest, now I'm left with only enough to fill a big carry-on bag. Unemployed, still waiting for the wedding to be announced, going back to the last place I called home and hoping it will be for the better.

Yet oddly I don´t feel like I'm taking two steps back. Though I'm not sure wether I will return here to live as I intended I've relearned a great deal. Sometimes what seems like losing everything is merely the peeling back of the wrapping around your honest desire. When the tasks you complete everyday turn to routines you've forgotten how to enjoy its hard to see why once you coveted them over any other. After all, the paths we choose in life are not a given and what point is there to worry about direction when you live on a globe ? Upon my return I'm willing to take any job for the enjoyment of being able to provide for myself and a loved one once more. To be part of a little tribe again instead of wandering under a blistering sun. Ofcourse, I will not forego the opportunity to return to my old stomping grounds. There's no better start than a home coming. Shame there's won't be the shock of surprise. That's all..