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About

Is it crazy and hypocritical to be throwing ourselves headlong into the Corporate dance-a-thon in another country, in our progression towards global do-goodery? Or crazy like a fox hitching a ride on the chicken truck? Do we have the pluck to finally chart our own destiny?

Sound whiney? Until we get what we want, yes.

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Pimps and cure-alls Saturday, November 04, 2006 |

Nazma had her first interview with an overseas firm the other day: a smallish concern from London. So while they seemed a bit reserved at first, the initial reports from the recruiter in the week since has been pretty favourable. He even suspects a forthcoming offer, but my experience with recruiters, corporate pimps and the like, demands a curb in enthusiasm. I've seen that carrot-on-a-stick before; until money's on the table, doesn't matter what they say. Anyhow, two more interviews in the coming weeks: things seem to be lining themselves up with little effort on our part and we're (generally) happy about that. Now there's just the part about making up our minds whether we even want to go or not...

Is London the panacean Land of Opportunity we're feebly hoping for, or does it just spell long walks home under dreary skies after frantic all-nighters in the City? Probably something in between and far more subtle, that I'm having trouble seeing from this distance: a steady diet of movies full of elevated characters in extraordinary circumstances breeds a mind that can only envision extreme situations.

Derailed by prodigious body hair Sunday, October 15, 2006 |

Second post and I'm already going off-topic. Last night we went to see an excellent outfit called Ladytron, who had all the shag-cut electroclash derelicts and gold-lederhosened tarty-tarts working the Commodore Ballroom floor-springs, while we rather self-consciously nodded our heads to the beat until Nazma slinked off because her feet were hurting. Don't let our physical passivity fool you: it really was a fantastic show. We were just feeling really old next to the bouncing cellphone-camera-snapping scenesters with their supertight jeans. What does this have to do with shining futures abroad? Not much, but I'll try to draw a connection.

Once in a while, a moment will just click, and all of a sudden you wake up and realise where you are. Sound stupid? We wade through the haze of the everyday wake-work-eat-sleep routine here on autopilot most of the time, so I mean: that sometimes, something happens and you snap out of it. It doesn't take much: something as mundane as everything else, just in a different cast than the rest of the monotone.

For me, the moment came when the big beer-sodden bastard beside us starting flailing his elbows at a particularly punchy song. As we tried to avoid broken noses, the strobes caught his arm hair like little black icicles against the brilliant backdrop of bass and bobbing heads and everything just froze. And ridiculous as it sounds, the sight of the thug's thorny simian arms haloed against the strobe, every one of them distinct and deadly, like those vaguely Celtic-looking pointy-knot designs on t-shirts from Surrey, shook me from wherever I'd been: a discontinuity, and my head was in a different place from before.

Now, "buddy's got a lot of body hair" isn't exactly the sort of epiphany that inspires people to great deeds, and it certainly didn't cause me to do anything more than shift over a foot to the right. But there's a strange clarity in that instant when your inner sight suddenly expands, and you see all the possibilities and the manifold effects and consequences. Like, for instance, pulling up stakes and leaving promising careers and an increasingly resigned but dangerously comfortable existence. Everywhere we wanted to head, what it all meant, and what it would irrevocably do to us, crystallised in that instant.

What did I learn? Not much: the synths crested and pulled me back to the music and the moment leapt on, like gold-leggings on a sprung dancefloor. But I'd begun recently to believe and fear that the quotidian haze had utterly eroded my ability to process with that kind of lucidity, and Arm-Hair, with his muttonchopped appendages, had given me a strobe-light shot of hope: that I haven't completely lost it.

Despite how ludicrous this post has turned out to be.

Gleam in my eye Saturday, October 07, 2006 |

In the same vein as cheesybeefpizza, I'm starting this new blog to catalogue our attempts at a second and more permanent escape from suburbian mundanity. While the sensations of SE Asia have quieted down to memories too easily drowned out by work-a-day worries, rush-hour-traffic anxieties, and general slothiness, the growing voice within Nazma and I to hit the road again can no longer be ignored.

Where to this time? Lebanon was a favourite hope until the wanton destruction of the past year. Iran, perhaps, before it meets a similar fate at the hands of the semi-retarded Leader of the Free World? Back to SE Asia, and a slow boat down the Mekong into Laos before the bandwagons rush the borders (hypocrite that I am)? And there's always visiting Nazma's parents in Uganda. We're open to suggestions...

Then, after this indeterminate period of long-distance coaches, ordering grisly offerings in distant eateries through sign-language, and general contentment, we'll be looking at slipping into a more established existence somewhere overseas. London seems to be the destination-of-the-moment for us, with the siren call of greater opportunities for more fulfilling careers than the ones we're currently plying, but having spent a winter there, it's not the most beautiful place one could live in. Lots to think about, and quickly, with the spectre of turning 30 and the twin threats of responsible adulthood and babies lurking at the edges of our rapidly fading youth.

Project : Eggplant

A blog tracking the whining, planning, eventual ass-moving and final eject from jobs and security for something shinier and more positive abroad. Seems like the only excitement we get these days is from leaving town, but what a kick!

btw, eventually you will be able to track our current whereabouts here.