South East Asiafied...

There has been zero blogging from me for the last 6 months from my new home Jakarta. reasons...

1. Getting used to living in Indonesia was a total mind fuck and didn’t leave any room for wit or motivation.

2. All my cute little Indonesian students have added me on facebook. I wasn’t going to accept any at all. No exceptions. But then some girl I thought was really cool would add me and I’d want to say yes and then I’d feel like a dick not accepting their friends etc.. Until I found myself getting tagged in pictures of kittens and lolly pop s by people I seriously DON’T EVEN KNOW. So now 60 plus Hello Kitty loving, cupcake eating, pink mini skirt wearing, Justin Beiber loving, pig tail twiddling Indonesian twenteens are monitoring my every move, status update and photo tag. Needless to say there’s some stuff on this blog that would probably make them think a little differently about their favourite teacher (i.e. what a filthy, scumbag sinner bitch) so it’s for the best that I am no longer plugging the blog FB style.

3. Lastly, thinking about the general ethos of this blog, I tend to be mainly about slating everyone and thing that crosses my path, and how about this for a mood killer... I think Indonesia has actually made me a more tolerant and respectful person. The people here, although at times unbearably annoying, frustrating and gut wrenchingly shallow, are some of the nicest I’ve ever met in my life. They have a genuinely optimistic and sunny disposition (at least on the surface) which can be a whole sackfull of sugar down the throat sickening but is also pretty fucking impressive. They really do seem happier than people from London, and it’s rubbed off. It I might even say I’ve become a bit sweet sometimes – which I’m sure doesn’t make for good blogging. Now turn up Taylor Swift and pass me a fucking cupcake bitch!

Anyway I was just doing a bit of FB cruising and I came across the blog of a guy I know here who teaches also so I had a good backlog read about his Jakarta experiences and got inspired. So here I am, back on the blogging scene. It was funny reading Omar’s blog because he was talking a lot about some stuff that I’ve also noticed here; the gender divide, the bizarre money: looks ratio which seems to render girls here completely blind to anything apart from cash and the way women like to represent themselves in a manner which most men I have come across in the West would find pretty repulsive (i.e. acting like they are little girls in come kind of cutesy bubblegum world of pink puppies and BB messaging). But If I started talking about that I’d be here all day and I want to ease back into my blogging mojo so I won’t. But one of the things that has most surprised me about being here is how much of a WORLDY WOMAN I feel like, even talking to people twice my age. I swear sometimes I am in a room of 30 adults and am the only one who knows what a vibrator is. That’s a scary room to be in!

Anyway, South East Asia is mental. It’s changing me daily and although I love my job and have met some really amazing people, I’m looking forward to getting back to the West in 6 months. I don’t think my personality can take much more of this candy pink hue that seems to be imposing itself on me, I need to spend some time around AIDs jokes and vodka asap before I really go beyond the point of no return and start pretending I don’t poo and buying handbags in the shape of cartoon characters. Prey for me, but not to any particular God because that would fuck over my atheism, which I am hanging onto by a thread after months of incredulous interrogation from people who BARELY KNOW ME. It seems no topic is off limits here. ‘Why don’t you believe in god?’ ‘Where do you live?’ ‘Why aren’t you married?’ And most amusingly / massively depressingly ‘If you aren’t pregnant why is your body like that?’(Whilst madly gesticulating at my boobs and belly!) I have given up on personal space. I must admit, although Jakarta is proving to be an amazing experience I am certainly looking forward to getting back to London and being surrounded by people who are completely disinterested in my religious beliefs, my address, my marital status and my bra size. Well... maybe the last one is a bit ambitious…

On the plus side though, cigerettes are really fucking cheap here and I got a fake Hermes handbag for about £15. Score!

Half way house...

Since Christmas I've been living back in the motherland and the novelty of being unemployed and living with my mum has most definitely worn the fuck off now. I think the worst thing about being skint to the point of being housebound is a toss up between wearing a pink furry dressing gown day in, day out until you pick it up to put it on and wince at the smell and actually starting to give a shit about Coronation Street. And fuuuuccck have I drunk?! Poor mother has started buying bottles of whiskey just to keep my mood on the right side of bearable.

This time next week I will be spending my first night in Jakarta - capital of Indonesia, where I am beginning a teaching job. What on earth possessed me to leave all my family, friends and boyfriend to go to the other side of the world to do a job which I could have quite easily done here is beyond me. I honestly don’t have a clue why I made the decision to apply for the job, I must have been having a Destiny's Child 'girl I didn’t know you could get down like that' female empowerment moment. Or been really pissed off with someone. Or that kind of drunk where you don’t think you're drunk but then you wake up and you remember that you promised your boyfriend you'd wake him up with a blow job so you must have been drunk.

I thought I should blog at this pivotal stage in my life but I'm struggling to muster up anything interesting to say after a month and a half of absolutely fuck all happening to me with the exception of Christmas Dinner and loosing a hell of a lot of games of cards to my mother.

In conclusion, I'm feeling a confusing mixture of extreme boredom, scared shitless and added to that I have the prospect of year of celibacy stretching ahead of me. It's not a cocktail of emotion that I'd particularly recommend but hey, it's got to be better than another month of smoking my cigerettes in halves to save money, falling to sleep with a glass of whiskey in my hand and Dancing on Ice.

Money doesn't talk, it swears

I really need some extra cash. Christmas is coming and I have pretty close to zero pence in my account, no job and an upcoming phonebill, which judging by my last bill will be double the amount I signed up to pay with no explanation or apology apart from some bullshit about three picture messages I sent months ago. Thankfully I have paid my last installment of rent before I flee oversees but no matter how many times I add things up on my phone's calculator (maybe they're charging me extra for that?!) I still don’t have enough.

I googled 'ways to make money fast in London' and was disappointed with what I found.

1. Sell your hair. Jesus! I'm a bit skint not a Romanian peasant with the village pimp on her back trying to buy her youngest daughter. No hair will be sold, if I do decide to have a Posh Spice circa '99 cut then it has zero to do with the money and everything to do with my love for the era.

2. Pose as a life model for an art class. I really thought about this one and was pretty keen until I read this bit...

'You must also be prepared not only to be visually scrutinised by a class full of students, but verbally by the tutor pointing out your very personal idiosyncrasies.'

I don't know about you but £10 an hour doesn’t seem enough to be naked, cold and hunched (or worse, splayed) in whichever position a total stranger decides on while a group of pervy OAPs and foreign students gawp at your fanny and some arty prick walks around you with a long stick pointing out every flabby roll and patch of scar tissue on your goosepimpled body, eventually leaving you cold and still for the duration of the class with only the prospect of seeing a roomful of paintings of the very faults you’ve been crying inside over for the last two hours. Oh yeah and £20. No thanks, not for me.

3. Flog your designer clothes. Who the fuck wrote this list, Tara Palmer Tomkinson on a downer? Don’t have any, all my clothes are from Peacocks. Next.

4. Pawn your jewels. Fuck offfff.

5. Advertise in Private Eye's 'Eye Need' page. Hmmmm this is more like it! Apparently you can place an advert in the back pages of Private Eye (the thinking man's Heat) begging for cash!

'In the back of Private Eye magazine there is a column called ‘Eye Need’ where readers can publish a very short description of why they need money, together with their sort code and account details. Rich readers (the Eye has many) can and do put money into their bank accounts.'

Like a kind of hobo lonely hearts. Defiantly worth a shot I'd say.

'Girl too shy to strip, long brown hair (wants to keep it that way) and green eyes (sore from crying) in desperate need of cash this Christmas. No designer gear or jewels to flog and sacked from job for shagging. Please give generously.'

I'll update on my progress.

Alternatively I could try babysitting, that’s if anyone is prepared to leave me alone with their children for any length of time after getting to know me even slightly. I'll try and pick up some tips just in case...

The best thing about today was that I managed to steal an extra box of Canesten Duo thrush treatment from Greenwich Pharmacy.

I think I must have been the first person to ever suggest paying by Visa for something as it took the woman who served me a good ten to twelve seconds to process what I was proposing when I took out my card. Once she had asked if I could pay cash (no - I'll pay whichever way is most fucking convenient to me, this is 2010, I have thrush and it's your job to be nice to me you retarded old bat), she took my Visa card from me (reluctantly) into the back room only to appear a minute later claiming that 'we're sending a fax through on the card machine so you'll need to wait ten minutes'.

I'm a reasonable person and I don't claim to know for definite that you can’t send a fax through a chip and pin card reader, but REALLY??? ARE YOU REALLY SENDING A FAX THROUGH THAT THING? OR ARE YOU JUST TRYING TO GET ME TO PAY CASH BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT SURE WHICH BUTTONS TO PRESS TO MAKE THE MAGIC PLASTIC MONEY FLY INTO YOUR TILL?

It took her a further 15 minutes to complete my card transaction, all done in the back room apart from when she hurried back to get me to 'press my numbers'. So I didn't feel even a tiny bit guilty convincing her that she hadn't already given me my box of itching relief cream and oral capsule and so walked away with a double portion of magic minge medicine. HAVE THAT GREENWICH PHARMACY! AND LEARN TO USE A FUCKING CHIP AND PIN OR I'LL DO IT AGAIN NEXT TIME I HAVE A YEAST INBALANCE IN MY VAGINA!

YEAH!

p.s. thrush isn't dirty my mum told me only clean people get it.

Getting Sacked and Kidbrooke.

As the title of this blog entry suggests, I got sacked from my job. Gross Misconduct was the official line, unoffically it was more about me being caught on CCTV shagging my new boyfriend in the relaxation room. It wouldnt have been too bad had I not that day intended to move out of my cosy safe flat filled with friends and comfort into the freezing cold solitary square metre of bedroom in Perivale which I had selected soley on the basis of it being walking distance from my work building, a building which, post sacking, I was understandably reluctant to even walk past let alone enter. After I had been escorted off the premises and was waiting for my partner in crime to be sacked as well I realised that I needed a plan, I needed a solution.. so me and James did the only sensible thing - bought a bottle of vodka, found the nearest park, got pissed and tried to have sex in the bushes.

I never did move into Perivale so lost out on my fifty quid holding deposit and even more crushingly the chance to watch TV through a plasic bag in the garden with a group of Iranian men. That could have been such a good blog entry. But for every shit area you dont move to theres a shit area you do - enter Kidbrooke.

Over to Wikipedia...

'Kidbrooke is a district of south London, England, located in the London Borough of Greenwich.
The district takes its name from the Kyd Brook, a watercourse which runs from Orpington to Lewisham, by which point it is part of the River Quaggy. It is a tributary to the River Ravensbourne.'

So far sounds quite nice, like a cross between Sherwood Forest and Watership Down... but the rent is so cheap here surely there must be a catch..?

'Kidbrooke is also home to the Ferrier Estate, one of the largest and most deprived council housing developments in London.'

Oh. I think that might be the catch.

'Famous residents have included comedian Jim Davidson, who grew up in Holburne Road; interior designer Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen, who lived in a bungalow on Kidbrooke Park Road until 2004; and singer Sandie Shaw. English West Ham United player Junior Stanislas.'

Wow. Just wow. Never in a million years did I think i'd be treading the same cobbles as a young Jim Davidson. And Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen lived JUST DOWN THE ROAD FROM ME 6 YEARS AGO!!!??? This is better than I could ever imagined! That little celebrity relalation almost makes up for the complete lack of anything to fucking do at all. Almost. But not really at all actually because I cant even get poxy phone signal in my bedroom (from my BUNK BED), theres no internet and to make sure no one escapes or has any evening jollies there's no night busses.

Kidbrooke = shit place to live, no wonder Llewelyn Bowen fucked off he's far too jazzy for a place like this. Jim Davisdon though I can still see fitting in quite well.

Good News comes in Twos

I have two pieces of moderately good news.

Firstly I finally got round to phoning the university to find out whether I had managed to get anything out of years 2005 - 2009 apart from crippling debt and a few dickhead mates. Astoundingly I actually managed to speak to someone who actually seemed coherent enough to understand what I was saying and reply in a manner which hinted at some knowledge of the university system. This is a definite first for my dealings with the London Metropolitan University admin department, usually they deal with my queries with the efficiency and enthusiasm of a depressed paraplegic on valium. But I shouldn't really grumble because the nice lady told me I had achieved a 2:2 with honours which was pretty special news for a goon like me. Of course I phoned my mother straight away and she sounded genuinely happy, I got a funny warm feeling inside which I think might have been pride but could also have been indigestion as I'd just had a cheese and ham panini.

Next piece of news... I have found somewhere to live for the next 4 months of saving. It's a house share in Perivale which is a desolate no mans land between what looks like gypsy farmland and the Hanger Lane Gyratory. It's idyllic of course. My room is about the size of a bus shelter with a mattress on the floor and some hooks on the wall to hang up clothes. Some positives though, they have a cleaning rota and the telly lives in the garden - my new Iranian landlord explained the process of covering it up with a plastic bag when it rains. I think I might just read more.

Dating in the Dark

Tonight I watched Dating in the Dark on Living with my friends. Its a programme where three men (one minging one fit one edgy / fucking weird) and three women (one minging one fit one fat) date each other in a blacked out room so they cant see what one another other look like and then have to pick one to see in the light by personality and touch to potentially date. Then to make it even more amazing they have to decide whether the one they picked to see is worth not completely screwing over and shaming on telly by saying they want to go on a proper date with them. In the light. Where they can see each others actual faces.

Absolutely amazing television! My friend Boo said that if she went on Dating in the Dark she'd bandage down her boobs and pretend to be a prepubescent child to freak them out. We could make a whole new concept out of it use it as a peado trap. The ones that are into it get taken away and the ones who aren't into it go free. It's just a shame it wasn't around a few years ago, we could have caught Gary Glitter out on the celebrity special.