24.12.2006 - Lazy Sunday

Another Sunday morning spent sitting on my sofa watching TV and not doing work it seems. Sunday definitely has a different atmosphere to the rest of the week; time stands still especially if you shut yourself off from the outside world. I always debate whether a venture outside to window shop would be a good idea but I guess the sensible thing to do would be clean up. I’ve been putting allot of thought into how to manage the MMI enterprise of late. Do I continue to blog as I am now, do I go forward with making videos or pod casts and how would this content be delivered in a way more unified than now? I certainly would welcome the opportunity to make use of my new camera as I have fallen in love with it.

So by now you are all probably very excited about the prospect of Christmas. I’m sure the fight for the Nintendo Wii is an amusing sight this year. Christmas day for me will be spent at work trying to do as little as possible and stay cheerful. There are many things I would like to buy if money weren't so tight at the moment. I have my eye on Metal Gear Portable Ops for the PSP. But alas, such things will need to wait for a while now as I rely solely on the appeal of the internet for entertainment. I’ve been watching the second season of Jonathan Ross's Japanorama from BBC3 via you tube along with a bunch of awful movies.

I feel it’s more relaxing to watch movies with absolutely no value or substance to facilitate the brain shutdown process which is required to fill my free time. It’s been a while since I sat down and took a film seriously and it seems like I haven’t exercised any intelligence or individual thought for a good long while. On the upside I have reached a sustainable level of mundanity which feels a little like routine, something which puts me incredibly at ease in my environment. I really feel like nothing is new or different about my surroundings and I am finding my Chinese is getting good enough that I can get by. Someone asked me a question in a restaurant the other day and without thinking I answered them, thinking to myself, "When did I pick up Chinese?".

The answer to that question is gradually and without realizing it. Its still necessary to hide the fact that understand what most people say to me time to time because of the benefits ignorance allows in this place i.e. People will not tell you to stop doing something if they don’t know how to tell you. This has helped me to avoid the restrictions on drinking and taking photographs in shops on many an occasion. And on the off chance someone tries to impart such restrictions by means of eye contact, arm waving or frowning, it pays to simply smile back, wave and continue to go about your business.

But anyway, despite majority of the excitement based on my location having faded away, I am still very happy to be here. I live in a great city with tons of stuff to do and places to go and people to hang out with. Life is still very special, but when you are broke this month and you sit in front of a computer screen for eight hours a day, its hard to remember the difference between south east Asia and south east Staffordshire. Someone told me the other day that they are constantly having "moments" in Asia that wakes them up to where they actually are. I said that I stopped having those a while ago, but then again, maybe I should take responsibility for that. Moments don’t occur when you are sitting on your sofa drinking tea and watching family guy, they occur when you are out there in the neon lit streets, buying capsule toys and drinking green tea. I used to remember that but somewhere along the way I just forgot. I guess now that I have my new camera I can take on the mission of finding images which epitomize the uniqueness of my situation. Well at least that would be something worth posting up right?

Till next time,
This has been MMI
Merry Christmas Everyone!