Maslow

When I was eight years old, I got shipped off to boarding school, where I remained, with time off for good behaviour and holidays, until I was nearly 18.

One of the byproducts of this is that, when asked what material goods make me happy, I answer with the following.

A fridge full of food
Fluffy towels and clean bed linen
Being warm enough
Nice carpet on the floor (UK only, not for hot countries).

All of the above were conspicuous by their absence at my school. For instance we had a drying room, a room full of hot pipes going back and forth across the walls with slatted shelves. Its purpose, to dry things out. Usually it was full of unwashed and muddy rugby kit (smelly bag of washing only taken away once a week, don'tchaknow). The smell was appalling but we loved it in there as it was a break from the unrelenting cold.

When questioned about non-material things, I always come up with "absence of physical persecution". There is nothing like being woken from a deep sleep by being dragged out of your bed to make you yearn for a room you don't have to share with 10 other boys.

So, as we can see, we are beginning to lurch slowly up Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

There were, of course, many positives about my boarding schools. I gained a reasonable education, met some fine people (some of whom are still my friends), had access to some very interesting and educational magazines not available in shops in the UK (thanks to all the boys who took school holidays with their families in Germany) and had the use of excellent sports facilities.

Oh, and I also feel that people who have been to boarding school should hold up much better if, for whatever reason, they get sent to prison.

a friend's half life

There has been some discussion amongst my friends about friendship recently.
As we are all ex-pats, there has been further discussion about how you go somewhere, make a bunch of friends and then they all bugger off and live somewhere else (frequently Minnesota for some reason).

The question then becomes "how long will you stay friends with these friends-in-absentia"?

One of my theories is that many friendships are struck up over common interests and shared experience. If that is all there is too it, then the intensity of the friendship will decay over time, perhaps in a fashion similar to that of a radioactive isotope decaying. Empirically, the half life of such a friend seems to be about 5 years. Any sustained separation longer than that without any intervals of refreshment seem to lead to an inevitable estrangement.


However you sometimes make friends where there is a meeting of the souls, or the sharing of an experience so profound that they become your friend forever.
It hasn't happened very often to me and it's these friends that I truly treasure.

I have been away from my home country for more than 5 years. Many of the good friends I had there have now become acquaintances. There are only 3 people left that I would still consider to be my good friends out of all those I left behind.

Toast room

At school we had a little room sandwiched by the corridor to the side entrance and the downstairs toilets (very nice).
In the room was a counter, a sink, and, most importantly, an enormous bread bin and toaster.

Of a weekend, 50 adolescent boys with appetites the size of Texas would descend on this source of vital food. Vital as you couldn't be expected to last a whole weekend without several in-between meal snacks.

To be fair, the room was heavily patronised during the week also. However the key difference at weekends was that nobody cleaned the room from mid-Friday to Monday morning.

By the end of Sunday, all the available surfaces were a riot of breadcrumbs, spilt tea, blobs of condiment and, frequently, completely unidentifiable substances. The edges of the counters were of course the #1 convenient place to remove margarine, peanut butter and other leftovers from your knife.

Why not use the sink, I hear you ask? Because that was invariably filled with what can best be described as brown slurry. Also, I don't even want to start discussing the state of the dish towels.

There really is no point to this little story except to suggest that hygiene and a shared sense of responsibility for the state of the kitchen does not come naturally to males. This should come as no surprise to any woman who has had a male flatmate (husbands are different as they can be bullied into being a bit cleaner).

On a passing note, the fiance of my flatmate came to visit us once and commented that my bath towel did not appear to have been washed since her last visit a month previously. I posited my "towel theory" that, as I was clean when I used the towel, it would not become dirty and thus didn't need washing.

Logic is a wonderful thing

White collar full contact kick boxing

My colleague took part in "CEO challange" last night during which he fought a chef.

Very exciting, full contact. Our man won.

Big respect!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH-L2pB7Mvw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCm-dAW9iJc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQP7tqjgx5Y

Linden Lea

Friday was a significant day for 3 reasons.

1) It's been a year since I started learning to sing
2) It was the first time since 19(cough cough cough) that I have officially sung in public.
3) It is the firs time since I was in a band at Uni that I've played guitar in public.


2005 Hong Kong 7's. Friday night. Traveling from the stadium to Central. Walking down a long, echo-laden tunnel at a MTR station. My friend Rob and I "lost that lovin' feeling" (how very Top Gun) and, don't you know it, the rest of the people in the tunnel lost it too. I found it incredibly gratifying that I could get a whole tunnel full of people to start singing.

I mention this because that was a time this decade that I have sung in public. However it doesn't count cos I was drunk and it wasn't official. Karaoke doesn't count either. Even the time friend JB and I sang "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood and a bra landed on JB's head, thrown by an over-excited lady in the crowd (she asked for it back later).

Anyhow, here is the song

http://www.ianpartridge.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/linden.html

It went quite well. Guitar playing needs work though.

Spiderman

Work today ground to an absolute halt for the half an hour that it took Alain Robert (Spiderman) to climb up the outside of the Four Seasons Hotel.

Awesome to watch live

No soup for you!

This blog isn't actually about the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld. It is instead about the Yoga Nazi, that being me.

I was at Yoga yesterday, got there a bit early and was trying to get into the correct, peaceful frame of mind for the class. The only thing standing between me and this admirable goal was the blonde girl conversing merrily away with a chinese gentleman. They weren't whispering, they were chatting.

After a bit of sitting and huffing and thinking, I finally went over to them to suggest, very politely, that they go outside if they wanted to chat. Being quiet in the Yoga room is one of the rules of the Club, I may add.

Having told them, the girl then pointed out that another couple were also talking, rather more quietly, it must be said. So I had to go and ask them to be quiet. Then on the way back to my mat, another pair started up, so I had to ask them also.

By the time I got back to my mat I was fuming, felt like the form prefect, and far away from the state of transcendental magnificence I had hoped to achieve.

It turned out that most of the chatters hadn't been to Yoga very much at all.

I mention all this as my friend FMG, when presented with the same situation some weeks ago, elected to do nothing and sulk quietly. This didn't seem to do her peace of mind any good either.

So next time, I'm going to bring my iPod in there to block out the noise. I wonder if anyone will come over to talk about the tsh tsh tsh noise they can hear from my headphones.