I suspect it is the sheer horror of my current situation that has prevented me from writing recently.  Back at university and facing another year of working so much to pay the rent that university flashes by in an unremembered blurry struggle, I had the opportunity to take the other route into keeping the old head above water in London: endurance.  Endurance of terrible living conditions to limit outgoings.

You may well not remember the time back in China when I had a friend stay who I found so unbearable and unmanageable that I had to subtly kick her out.  Well, fate brought her to England, in as much as a sorry state as I am in, and we are in a role reversal situation in which I find myself the imposing guest.  Except this time we have a tiny room, not a huge apartment, and this time the lodger (i.e. me) is expected to contribute towards the rent  Frankly speaking, this is like a never ending sleepover from hell.  Sure, I could move out, but I'd have to double my work hours, so for now I'm just biting the bit and pulling my duvet over my head for most of the night as my insomniac friend taps away on the computer, before finally embarking on her 4 hours of sleep a night.  I'm sure there will be many gripes to come about my dear roommate, so at this point I will return to the rest of the flat.

Like my room mate, the 3 boys who we live with are also the fall-out of the single child policy.  Unlike my room mate they aren't really highly strung and fairly easy going, but on the negative side they have never looked after or cleaned up after themselves in their lives, and consequently find it impossible to maintain even the lowest standard of hygiene.  Dishes are never washed, the cat litter tray for their pet overflows behind the kitchen door and fills the room with the odour of cat poo.  The presumably once-white bathmat by the toilet make one wonder whether they even had assistance in peeing back home.

The darkest period of my few weeks here occured several weeks ago when the drainage pipe in the bath (over which the shower hangs) became blocked.  The calls and visits to the letting agent were to no avail, but what can you expect from an aggressive man who screams down the phone for overdue rent and takes only cash.  I never would have signed a lease with a agency like that, and one of the benefits of this unsettled life is that I don't have to enter any kind of contract or hand over any deposit to the almost invariably corrupt landlords who seem to control every flat that is let out to the anything-less-than-stinking rich of London.

When the blockage cause the pipe to leak and pour water into the flat below a plumber from the estate came to inform us that should we use the shower again before the matter is dealt with, we would be responsible for the repair fee, and sorry no he couldn't do anything to help as this flat is a private rental, not a council flat.

Two weeks passed.  I hummed.  I grabbed a weekly shower at a friends house, and felt barely human.  The turning point came when I woke one morning to find that my flat mates had decided to use the shower despite the fact that all the water now ran directly onto wooden floorboards, and that the kitchen had reached shocking levels of chaos.  At first I had indulged my young friends, as I was once a rather grubby BA student, and had cleaned the kitchen.  Sometimes that inspired/shamed them into picking up some of the rubbish that carpets every floor and surface.  But that day was enough.  I cast the dirty plates, pans, shrivelled vegetables and wrappers into the hallway and then cornered one of the trembling boys in his room and demanded that they either make the landlord fix it or I will help them find a plumber and they can pay for it.

You know, sometimes it feels really good to fly of the handle.

That evening I got back to find the flat unprecedentedly clean (which was still pretty grubby nonetheless) and a couple of days later a sheepish message was relayed via my room mate  that they wanted me to find a plumber.  That was another big PITA as I had to sort it all out by phone during intervals between work and classes one day as the plumber informed me that my flat mates couldn't speak English, and he didn't know whether he was supposed to do the job or just give a quote.  But all is well that ends well.  We can wash. 

 So that is just one of the 'highlights' of the flat.  We also have gas and electricity on a pre-paid meter, which means it constantly stops at undesirable moments.

But I may live in squalor, but I am no longer time-poor.  Indeed I have time to study, and have even taken an extra class for recreational purposes.  And I no longer have to ration out my vegetables to save money.  I am truly the queen of the bog of eternal stench. 

I thought I was being so clever, I thought I had the ultimate patronizing put down when a guy I met on a bus twice* in China and then exchanged the odd (completely platonic) email with out of the blue decided to profess his love for me (while seeming forgetting that he was supposed to have a fiancee). Didn't really know what to reply initially, but the messages first of reconfirmation and then apology started mounting up in the inbox, so I had the wonderful brainwave of saying to him that maybe I was mistaken what with the language barrier, but whatever point he was trying to make he should always remember that he is like my little overseas brother. Incidentally I couldn't use an exact translation, as 'little brother' is also a slang term for a certain part of the male anatomy.

Still, I quite liked the nice little condescending put down, drawing his attention to his tender years (about 23) yet in a friendly sounding package, and skillfully avoiding the whole declaration of love thing.

And now I get an email going on about how he's going to address me now I'm his big sister, and what this all means to him. That one rather backfired on me. Thank god continents divide us. He also added something about 'whatever I come across later when I'm back in China*, he'll always understand me'. Eh?

*It was very bizarrely coincidental that it happened twice like that, which is unfortunate as it means there is now 'yuanfen' (缘分, it's similar to fate) binding our paths together, like er, ape poo (猿粪 )

**presumptuousness on his part

There's something both incredibly wonderful and incredibly tragic about having nothing more to do with your day than read books, stare at walls and out of windows.  After spending an hour or so online reading about the Chinese mafia and daydreaming about the thrill and danger of infiltrating it with my pasty white charm and shaky Chinese I threw in the towel and returned to CSI.  To be honest though, I imagine the Chinese mafia wouldn't be terrifically cinematic, all bulging bellies and cigarette blackened teeth, but idle minds are inclined towards conjuring up a bit of glamour.

Well I suppose I should return to that small window of excitement that my trip to Paris opened on my life.  Oh but please note that I am by no means complaining about my current state of vegetation.  God no, after the year I've just had.  So what came next in Paris?  I could just summarise the bulk of the remaining part of my visit by saying we walked a lot.  Walking serves many functions- gets you places, saves money, provides interesting things to look at, gives you an opportunity to chat and fills time.  And there is the exercise thing of course.  The first of the epic trawls was from the south of Paris to the far north to see an old friend who, since our last meeting, had got hitched and spawned.  How do people manage these huge life changing feats while I have been aimlessly sketching about and implementing no markable changes on my life in the last 10 years?  But he hadn't changed that much really.

Getting there had taken at least a couple of hours, taking in some of the familiar and notable features of Paris, such as those island things in the middle of the river, Republique, and Jardin des Plantes to name a few that I can recall offhand.  Our next amble was in the early hours of the morning after we took leave of my friend and his new family.  This little stroll took me into uncharted territory.  Following my friend's wishes to cross into the next arrondissment to stay at her friends' squat, we embarked on what turned out to be a long trip along one of the ring roads that bound Paris.  Some arrondissments are bigger than others. I heard that these ring roads completely encircle the city, and should you have ever walked along one you'll be familiar with the strange feeling of being in some kind of retro-futuristic no-mans land in which cars roar angrily past, and the only signs of life being exhaust grey vegetation.  They make Paris into an island, what lies beyond I have no idea, but I like to imagine it is either a luxuriant paradise or an uninhabitable manga-style wasteland. 

The northern part of the ring-road is rather more monotonous yet less bleak than the southern stretch.  We had already been walking for long enough for my head to be cleared when we ended up having a seat with an old guy who seemed to hold some status among the assorted homeless and shuffling.  For his appearance, I wouldn't have even thought him homeless until he sent someone off with his trolley of possessions.  My friend shared a beer with him and we listened to his life story, with him at times courteously checking it was within my comprehension range.  Even the tramps are bilingual now.  A thoroughly trashed young lady who knew our companion plonked herself in our company for a while before staggering off, and then a young shuffler got an earful from our host for his 'bad manners' for asking for a bit of cigarette.  Presently, after taking his contact details, or providing him with some- it is all a bit surreal to remember clearly- we took our leave and continued our long trudge.  Not long after, a young man in a shiny 'runaround' type vehicle pulled over to, oddly enough, invite us to a party, even more strangely this party was alleged to be in quite a good area.  We refused, and then he tried to engage us for a different party in a week or so.  Now please bear in mind that we certainly did not look like girls wanting a party, in fact we were dressed more appropriately for a library visit.  My friend suggested a lift might be more appealing, to which he consented. 

"Stranger danger", I hear you children of the 80s cry, as did my internal neurotic, yet sizing up the little guy, it was clear to both me and my friend  that if push came to shove we could pummel him easily with our combined forces.  Our token of gratitude for the lift, which did save us a hell of as long trek, was that my friend accepted his number.  He had actually seemed rather slimey and not to be trusted with contact details.

And so we ended our evening in a rather palatial French residence, I again taking a grey coverless mattress, this time on a home constructed mezzanine bunk which afforded me good views of the moulded ceiling and blacked strands of spiderweb.  Two storeys and a basement, one bathroom, one toilet, a small garden, nice area, and neigbours who appreciate an occupied house rather than having to live next to a crack-head filled derelict, all for zero rent.  Not bad at all.  And all because an old guy died and his relatives don't want the debts that would come with the house.

And thus ended day 2 of my trip to Paris.  What with all this skulking around the fringes of Paris, oiling ourselves with cheap beer and 4 euro wine, you may be suprised where we actually ended up as the week progressed.  Never a dull moment in Paris.

Well, CSI New Your series 3 BIG CLIFFHANGER episode has ground to a halt so I thought I might as well write something.  Incidentally, I have seen the 1st episode of series 4 so I am able to keep a tally of which characters are definitely going to survive the threshold of the series, so no big shocks for me. 

 
So, anyway, Paris.  Well it all started on the bus.  Not the the Eurostar is beyond my means (at least not the discount tickets), but it's as if something forces me to surrender myself to the dirtbag way of travelling.  But perhaps with the Eurotunnel fire it can be put down to astute premonition rather than imbecilic public transport masochism.  What, a mere 2 hours from a station 10 minutes down the road, oh no.  Let me take the crawling slow bus that departs from a station many a tube station away.  Give me 7 to 9 hours of uncomfortable seating.

That said the journey wasn't so bad.  Got to go on the boat as well which was not so great at midnight as there was not much to see.  No one got pulled off the bus for having dodgy papers for a change so there were no impediments to the journey.  It was so smooth that we arrived at the bus station in Paris at 5.30 instead of the predicted 6.15 and had to wait for a bloke in a van to come and open the station.  Galliani station was not as bad as I remembered.  In fact only on the way back did I see a sole tramp sprawled and comatose in the entrance.  I then embarked on the journey to Chinatown, opting for the metro after the helpful information booth woman who initially ignored me told me there wasn't a direct bus to my destination.  And so I went, kicking myself along the way for failing to produce a sentence of French without unwittingly adding some element of Chinese.  C'est loin ma?  Twat.

So I got off at a once familiar intersection only to be confronted by a personage who, whilst begging, would not fit too comfortably into the common description of beggar.  Rape victim?  Who knows.  Confrontational and unnervingly bilingual as she was I made a sharp exit in the wrong direction.  But I got to my friends place eventually, a tiny room seemingly barely lived in for the few years she'd been there.  Visually, she was barely changed for the long years since our last meeting, apart from the startling cuts and bruises which covered her head to foot.  Ideologically she had made a U-turn.  While we sat, her on the bed and me entwined in a grey sleeping bag on a grubby mattress on the floor and caught up with the events of the last few years, and I heard the stories of how and why.  As for the bruises, it wasn't quite as bad as I had concluded at first sight, but after the events of the morning and the slight feeling of strangeness from our long period of estrangement I was gripped by the old Parisian feeling, the suffocating fear that I'm sliding towards something ominous.  It was partly that which spurred me to leave 5 years ago.

Sleep got me first, and a few hours later we got up and walked around Chinatown.  Paris Chinatown is really something else.  Back when I lived up in the 18th I visited the 13th and instantly was captivated.  It's exotic, it's Chinese, but certainly not China.  Like La Defence, it has the air of a 1970s vision of the future.  It's got looming tower blocks and Chinesy Vietnamesey Frenchy shops.  It's got an underground warren-like Asian shopping mall which emerges into the most surreal tableau in Paris, a cluster of low shops topped with thick concete pagoda style roofs, guarded by  a station of tower blocks, and as a final touch a retro brown tower block composed of 3 cubes stands in the middle distance.  Around the high streets the air at times is thick with the pungent smell of durian from the Chinese stores.  People speak Cantonese, or French and I can't quite get over seeing perfect French coming from Chinese lips, or strong espressos being consumed by the Chinese.  Over in China people boggled at my coffee habit, only attempting the stuff themselves if it was heavily diluted and laced with milk (powder) and sugar.

Presently we went and sat under the tower we used to stay in all those years ago, passing by the metal fence upon which I sat 5 years ago pondering the Chinese unknown into which I was soon to jet off into.  That was a warm summer night and the wind blew strongly.  I hardly followed the conversation.  The next time I was in the company of one of the conversation members was the following year, my first return from China, his funeral.  Cause of death- self induced, no accident.  But in China all of that felt so far away.

Returning to last week, after walking round Chinatown we headed to nearby Biblioteque, another example of Parisian stark weirdness, and, as I found out,  riddled with design faults.  My friend pointed to the extra metal in the floor to prevent people slipping on the wet floor in the rain, the rotatable wooden panels in the windows to stop the sun frying people in the four glazed corner turrets.  Then there are the wires holding up the trees in the sunken centre portion, without which the imported tropical fauna would topple.  Nonetheless it is a stunning place, just ripe for a sequal of La Jetee.

Later that evening we went to her friend's squat, which was an incredible example of exactly what one imagines a idealised squat to be like (except for the lack of a bathroom) when you dream of running off and living in one as an adolescent, before you got such in the 9-5 mentality and dreamed of nice Ikea furniture.  It had everything you could need, and totally DIY.  The sheets were somewhat grey though, a unifying theme in squats as I observed in my limited experience over there.The host did all the construction herself, and then topped it all off with a home made cheese and spinach tart, if I remember correctly.  But i might not, because I was on holiday after all...

Some others were there, allowing me to put a face and context to some of the earlier stories.  We didn't leave that late, we had an old friend to see the following day, and a lot more chat to catch up on.  It was the early hours before we went to sleep, and the afternoon before we awoke.  But we got a lot done that day.  Stay tuned for our next exciting installment, featuring epic trawls across Paris, and hanging out with tramps on ring roads.  Now perhaps I can return to CSI and see how those unconvincing Irish mafia types are doing.

The last unfinished piece I wrote was of gloom and misery and long wet walks in dismal fields and dripping forests with only the dog and my angst to comfort me, lamenting the creeping demise of a summer that never happened and that I can barely remember due to the repetitive early mornings and exhausted evenings that a 'proper' job entails. I would probably still be in the grips of the slow tide of deep depression had I not received the huge slap in the face that Paris never fails to deliver me. What a wake up call. I feel like my brain has woken for the first time in a year or more.

In China when I was called on to deliver talks on 'how to adapt to life in China' to the confused, misguided and culture shocked new arrivals, one of my main points was that you had to let go of your principles. Don't fight back when you get pushed into the monkey routine to get some school a bit of publicity, don't scream about your rights to freedom when your school asks to be informed when you leave the city. Just do it, don't complain, enjoy it, use it for your own ends, find a way to weasel your own way. Surely you don't really feel good sitting alone in your apartment having won the battle of principles at the price of alienating the hand that feeds you? But take me back to the motherland and I don't realise I have turned into such a 'good', 'socially responsible', wide-eyed and obliging little poster child that I end up having completely sacrificed myself on the alter of my own principles. Get a job pay your taxes, be polite, smile and attend interviews, love your NHS and it's superbugs and complete absence of dentists and the wonderful welfare state that allows you to go and kiss the arses of some bored and over inflated little hitlers who assume that everyone who needs a little unemployment benefit, oh sorry, job seekers allowance, is a workshy good for nothing and a punch bag for their delusions of power. But a good citizen must just grit his or her wonky little English teeth and take it, because it's jolly better that we have these little wankers, isn't it? Maybe I would have felt a little better if I'd just called them all a bunch a fascist c***s. But maybe they would have just called the police, as I observed they enjoyed doing at the merest provocation.

England can be so depressing. Perhaps living in the disappointing reality of a free and democratic capitalist utopian delusion is just intrinsically depressing. When I had that job in summer, which was really a good job, in a nice place where employees and employers had a mutual respect for each other, i.e. the best thing someone who is condemned to be a teacher can get, just the plain fact of having to go there 5 days a week was enough to feel that I had no control over my own life. And is it all worth it? Pensions and mortgages, the promise of security?

A week ago when I came to London on the bus, a young woman sitting behind me started a loud phone conversation with a friend which quickly went into great depth about her recurrent cervical cancer, and the prospective removal of 'what's left of her cervix'. As if that was not bad enough, she went on to inform her friend and the passengers seated in the front half of the bus that she at least has learned not to have unprotected one night stands anymore, though we can be reassured that she hasn't had one since the first occurance of her cancer. Talk about airing your dirty linen in public. She went on to assure us that she is 'very positive' about everything, and went on to detail a job she is applying for, it's terms and conditions and salary, before going on to go on about reflooring a kitchen, holidays and so on, until the bus mercifully pulled in to Victoria coach station. I had stopped trying to force myself to feel sympathy for her and understanding for her rather bizarre public broadcast about half an hour earlier, instead concentrating on repressing the urge to scream. Didn't want to do anything antisocial and offend anyone, did I? Sharing my sentiment, a man across the aisle hissed 'thank god' loudly as she hung up, causing a middle aged man a couple of rows in front to collapse into snickers. That girl is the epitome of the English delusion. So liberal, so bold to speak out about her promiscuity, and her adventures in gynecology, so positive, and what a work ethic, eh? I don't want that to be me. If I get (would say 'got' but it's not that impossible) cancer, especially of the female specific varieties, I would not want to be happy happy cheery cheery positive and dress up for job interviews. The last thing I'd want to do is spend my 9-5s in some bloody primary school being patient with potentailly knife wielding small brats.

But before going to Paris, I just tried to ignore the screaming nihilism that has been encroaching and consuming my psyche since I have been back on this dreary isle, being so admired for my ability to work ever so hard in underpaid jobs to support myself while I better myself through my overpriced masters degree, and still happily pay 25% of my 120 or so quid a week into the purse of this great nation.

After arriving in Paris, I still argued my ever so reasonable and responsible points and principles to a friend who has metamorphosed into a hard line anarchist since we last met several years ago. And as ever no one's viewpoints were changed by mere debate. But over a few days my perspective changed slightly. I doubt I'd ever be an anarchist, but thinking back to when I was broke, had a shamelessly shit job and no place of my own back in Paris' China town all those years ago, I was better off than I have been in London, and I'm not talking about financially. I'd put that short year's experience as being on par in terms of enjoyment and enrichment as living in the rural countryside of China, except perhaps it was less warm and fuzzily rewarding yet less stressful than China. And arguably less healthy.

And thus this is the fruit of the huge existential crisis I had yesterday after a sleepless night on my beloved Eurolines coach, a crisis that crystalized the thoughts that had been churning around my head in those few tiring, intense and intoxicating days spent over the channel, and it's all presented to you in one of those boring bog-standard angsty blog entries that are the staple of the so-called blogsphere. What you really want to know is what the hell did I get up to in Paris, non? All* may well be revealed, if I feel motivated, interspersed with more shit amateur philosophy over the next few days when I don't have to steal moments on the computers of others.

*with of course the obligatory self censorship. I may change my principles but I'll always be spinelessly conservative, at least in print.

It may surprise you to discover that it wasn't me who said the above words, rather it was a colleague in the English school who has been forced to return to the UK for good for some undisclosed reasons.  Three of us were having a discussion about how crap it is to return to the old motherland after living abroad, with them noting that each time you return it is less enjoyable (so I had a good solution in China, just not returning for years on end, so then you get some novelty when you do go back).  anyhow, teacher B asks teacher A whether she is getting used to being back, now she knows it's indefinite, and she said very bluntly, "well, no.  It just gets worse actually".

It's worth noting.  Sometimes you start getting into a routine and thinking everything is ok here, start thinking about one day getting a mortgage, having a place for all your stuff and so on, but now and then you really have these moments when you think, well, hangabout a sec, this is all crap?  What kind of life is this compared to the one I had before?  I find living in England comparable to being in a relationship with some sappy loser, it's when you get out that you''re shocked to realise you were merely in a poor delusion of contentment.  Right now I'm lucidly delusional.

NB that's on the life in England front.  Boyfriend front is non-delusionally peachy.  Surprisingly.

It's not impossible I'm still miffed about my current situation.  While work is no longer making me totally knackered, I have virtually surrendered my life to it.  Even when I'm not marking or preparing stuff, it still looms on the horizon and lurks in my mind.  I still can't get over the fact that in this modern world of ours in which we are always looking for technology to improve our lives and labour-save, we are entirely missing the point.  We don't need stuff to make everything in life quicker and more convenient- we need more time to do it in.  Two day weekends, indeed.  What a concept.

Pardon me, I'm just bitter due to the stark realisation that my lifelong ambition to have a job I enjoy will probably never come to fruition.  Might be due to the fact that you can't get a job reading books, watching CSI and studying Chinese.  Humbug.

Pardon me for not writing for a while, I'm in hell.  Over year ago I deliberated over whether I should return to England and decided that at the very least it would end the deliberation and show me if things really are better abroad.  I was feeling the gnaw of the English work ethic telling me that if my work wasn't making me suffer, I wasn't really achieving anything.  Well, I've found that you can suffer AND not achieve anything, unless deepening wrinkles can count as an achievement.  Worse still, when you are in England with nowt to your name, your lack of achievement of anything in significant life is really highlighted by the high fliers that surround you.

Recent news.  I got out of London.  It's the summer, I'm half way through my MA and I got a comparatively good job.  What makes it only comparatively good is that it is still ESL teaching.  Is this my karma for giving my teachers a hard time at school?  I was always a firm believer in the the old adage 'those who can, do.  Those who can't, teach'.  Serves me right, eh?  But putting aside my disrespect for my own 'profession', I'm at a good school, with real teachers, not just scruffy backpacker types.  Salary is much more favourable than the London jobs, and the commute is negligible. However the responsibilities are tenfold and I have spent about four extra-curricular hours today on marking and preparing.  After all these years of avoiding a serious teaching position (especially of low level learners) I find myself still on the lower ranks of the learning curve.

Being back in the quite westcountry is alright though.  It's nice to see some birds that aren't pigeons and to completely avoid public transport.  Note that that doesn't mean I can drive or anything- oh no, I haven't even got a license to my name-, I just walk to avoid it.  One unexpected disadvantage though is that instead of getting waited on hand and foot at home, I find the tables turned. After dragging myself back home yesterday, feeling ready for a kip, I was instead greeted with a request to cook dinner.  for six.  And I mean people, not o'clock.

Anyway, it's six minutes until my self-imposed bedtime.  I'll try and do something interesting to write about in the near future, but don't hold your breath.