Comin' to you Real as Pentientiary Steel...

So yeah, as usual of late lots has happened since my last post. First of all I finally quit my internship, the less said about that the better. I'm now looking for a job, again. I realise that most of my life seems to have been spent in pursuit of some apparently illusory job. The proble is that every job I do seems to be marred in some respect and I end up hating it. If I could just get something that I was enthusiastic about, I think things would be different. I wonder my life would be like now if I had gotten a job I really and truly enjoyed that paid well as soon as I first tried when I arrived in Hong Kong, all those months ago.
{Blur to Imaginary Fantasty)
I am lying in a massive bed, surrounded by silk pillows, hypoallergenic sheet, piles of money and many beautiful lady servants.
Servant 1: Good Morning Master, did you sleep well?
Me: Of Course my dear, I always sleep well, It's impossible not to sleep well when you're ridiculously rich and you made it doing something you love, but it's especially easy in my brand new tricked out 4.1 Litre Golden Mercedes Four Poster Bed, complete with Virtual Reality Plasma Screen, Multicolored Underlighting and GPS.
Servant 2: Don't forget the Interdementional Silk Sheets and Automatic Catheter.
Me: Ah yes, the Automatic Catheter, you know I can't even remember what it was like before when I had to actually leave my bed to go to the bathroom.
Servant 3: Yes sir, I think we can all agree that things are much better now that you're indescribably rich.
Me: Yes, and I suppose I can put it all down to finally getting a job that I enjoyed. That and my brilliance of course.
Servant 4: Oh yes, your brilliance is mighty!
Me: Well thank you for saying so, so how's my day looking?
Servant 5: Well Master, first you Breakfast with your lovely girlfriend Emma who you respect and adore above all else and to whom you continually prove your love by refraining from having sex with any and all of the beautiful ladies who adore you and wih whom you could indulge your many and varied sexual fantasties at your smallest and most meagre whim.
Me: Ah, good.
Servant 6: Then it's on to your heliport, to travel across to your Space Yacht, Robert De Niro has requested an audience, apparently he wishes to make a movie of your life and star as you.
Me: That talentless hack? Never! I shall star in it myself.
Servant 7: Of course that would be much better, De Niro's really gone downhill since Taxi Driver.
Servant 8: Actually, I quite liked Meet the Parents.
Servant 7: [Bitchily] You're just saying that because you know the Master likes that movie.
Servant 8: [Enraged] You Whore!! How dare you embarrass me in front of him!!
Servant 8 smacks Servant 7 in her lovely face and they proceed to fight. I look on with interest.
Me: I wager 2000 Quatloos on the newcomer.
Servant 9: It shall be done Sir.

Anyway, I could go on with this, I really could. There is no limit to how long I could indulge myself in this particular little post, but I've got to go get a job, which is shit. Because I like not working. It's great!
No it's not. I need a job.

Blood, Greg and Pink Champagne.

So yeah, how much better is my life than yours? Much.
It’s much better.
It’s much, much better.
Than yours.
Which is not as good.
As mine.
Not at all.
In preparation for the visit of my good friend Gregory Morrissey esq. who is of late of Japanese extraction, I went through a surfeit of effort the likes of which has never been seen in human history.
The Pyramids? Pah! Mere child’s play in comparison with my labours!
Magellan’s Voyage of Discovery? He had a boat! I didn’t even have that!!
World War II? Why would you try to compare it to my recent hard work? It’s plainly not even in the same league in terms of human sacrifice!
The Holocaust?………………………..I would like to state for the record that I have now and always had nothing but solemn respect for the Jewish nation and the suffering and death they underwent and how dare you insinuate otherwise! Do you think I have such bad taste as to insinuate that spending fifteen minutes on the phone organizing two spectacularly good evenings out in any way compares to the deaths of millions of innocent people? Do you?
That’s right, hang your head in shame!…IN SHAME!!!!!
So, I guess the only way to proceed is to pretend that you never brought that up, but just so it’s been said I think your trivialization of my moral fiber is despicable and reflects more upon you and the calibre of your upbringing than any conceivable action in the entirety of your life, but lets say no more about it.
Anyway, Greg arrived at around half sixish –an hour after he had said he would the fucker- and we went for a wee drink in Lang Kwai Fong, which is sort of the Hong Kong Island version of Temple Bar. Incidentally did you know that the Temple Bar was originally named for a political movement by Catholic shop-owners in the 1800’s barring Jewish people from entering anywhere in the area except the synagogue that was situated there? So it was a “Temple Bar”? Isn’t learning fun? But racism isn’t, but we’ve already talked about that, so lets move on.
After the drink we went up the Flat where Greg dropped off his stuff –Sandy and Christopher very kindly said he could stay there cause they’re the nicest people ever- and we got ready to go out. We were attending the launch of a new line of lingerie from Agent Provocateur. I have to say, contrary to what you might think, it was fan-fucking-tastic, although we foolishly turned up in suits when suits are for old people. The whole thing was a decidedly classy affair, full of what are loosely termed “the beautiful people” and by that we really mean good-looking cocaine prostitutes who are so world-weary and ironic only because they’re always demeaning themselves by hanging around ugly men hoping for a line and think their pleasant visage will earn it for them. But other than that as soon as you entered the room, it was amazing. The whole place was done up like a burlesque house, pink and blood red fabric adorning everything, hot models in minuscule lingerie mingling with sleek and young whilst also energetically handsome and talented go-getters like myself and Greg, it was a great laugh. Then, once we’d met up with the socially omnipresent Lauren, [who hooks me up big style with the conexxxions] we found a nook and drank some free pink champagne. It was very pleasant, good choons, chats with Greg, very pleasant. But even the best formal party gets a bit samey after a while, that’s when a good party-planner brings in strippers. So then the physically unlikely figure of Dita Von Teese, Marilyn Mansons’ present fiancé and international burlesque star came out to the pounding beats of the Peter Gunn theme and stripped around a huge glass of pink champagne, which was nice. Once I was about six glasses of pink champagne to the bad, there was a fashion show where a lot of women wore very little, and then took it off, which was also nice. I can safely say that everyone was riveted.
At this point I’d like to state for the record that I spent the entire thing thinking of how much I love and admire my girlfriend Emma whom I also love and admire in as much as a man can. Of course I covered my eyes when things got too risqué, but sadly others were not quite so retiring, I think one middle aged man threw his underwear at Dita, he was probably a multi-billionaire, they’re everywhere here and they’re always making fools of themselves. Damn Billionaires.
Afterwards we went out to a place called Dragon-Eye where the after party was. I must say, I have never had a doorperson look at me with such comprehensive scrutiny. I realize now how hard it must be to decide if someone is well dressed these days if you work in a fashionable bar, especially because today messy is stylish, so doorpersons have to become effective fashion consultants, it’s not enough to just say that you’re stopping people with white socks in HK, it’s a little bit more involved than that. It depends on whether or not they’re wearing cheap white socks.
Anyway, after an evening spent dancing around like chic-muppets and Greg spectacularly failing to score a girl we later found had a boyfriend, we went home and went to sleep, as we mere-mortals have want to do from time to time.
The next day I had gotten the day orf work, so we went for a wee explore. I had a meeting with a guy from this thing called the Brunswick Group for a possible internship. It didn’t pan out but I had a great chat with the guy, a really nice guy he was. He made some interesting points about my CV, my aims and about what I should be expecting to achieve in Hong Kong as well as how I should go about achieving it. Afterwards, we walked about a bit, I showed Greg some of Hong Kong’s touristic delights such as the Escalator and the Wall-Tree and then we returned home again to ready ourselves for another hard night spent getting on the wrong side of right.
That evening we were attending a high-class launch for a global concierge service called “Quintessentially”. We made an executive decision to not look like executives like we had the evening before so I wore my now legendary misplet “Nietsche is dead” t-shirt and Greg wore a similarly informal affair, understated in the way he overstates himself.
Upon arriving at the mall that was housing the party around 7ish, we found that we couldn’t find it and Lauren wasn’t picking up the phone. You know the really annoying thing about HK is? According to the all the American movies that I know and love, Chinese people speak English when there are no foreigners around!! They just have a heavy Chines accent, biut it’s English!! So every one of those people I asked about the party was pretending!! After wandering the mall for about twenty minutes and cursing the name of the Chinese while also looking fantastic the whole time, I finally got through to an acquaintance of mine who was also going called Maddie Thompson and we went upstairs to meet her. She’s a card. At least I think she is, I’m not exactly sure what a card is when it refers to people, but instinctively I think that Maddie is one. So we accompanied her and her gaggle of beautiful model friends downstairs, she showed us the way and we finally found the party. Without any help from the bloody secretly English-speaking Chinese.
1] The party was amazing, full of the usual mix of beautiful young people, rich old people and free drink.
2] Said people all wearing formal dress, Greg and I only ones wearing t-shirts.
3] Got away with it because people just assumed we were too cool to care, which we
plainly were.
So we sat through the launch, sipping drinks and making pertinent conversation. Apparently Quintessentially are hardcore large, being spread across the fashionable capitals of the world. Top level membership costs about $30,000 a year. It entitles you to have no hassle about anything, ever again. And you have to be invited to get it. If you want to go skiing in the alps with a Chalet and a helicopter, they’ll sort it out for you but if you want said Chalet to be painted bright pink and smell like Mutant Space Walnuts they’ll sort it out for you. Reputedly Phil Collins had a bet with a friend who said that he couldn’t ring them up and get them to deliver a bongo drum to the boat they were on in the middle of the Mediterranean within an hour, they got it on and Phil played the night away. On his $30,000 bongo drum. Pontificating fucker has the tenacity to tell me to think twice about homeless people and he spends $30,000 a year getting bongo drums delivered to his Mediterranean yacht.
Anyway, we went to that, had a laugh, met some good people, some not so good people and drank a lot of free champagne and then left. It was an interesting foray into Yuppieville, hilarious in one respect, deeply disturbing in another. Afterwards we went out to a bar, got drunk and then ended up at this bar that I continually seem to go to called Yumla, I like to think of it as one of the techno holes from the Blade movies where all the vampires drink. We were drinking cheap beer out front that we bought in a 7-11 and chatting with the peeps.We drank and we drank and we drank. We certainly surfed the Light Fantastic that evening, I can tell you!
Actually……. I can’t really,…..cause I was drunk. Really really drunk. For all I know I spent the evening vomiting blood into an icecube tray that Yumla then put in their Bloody Mary’s for the consumption of their secret elite techno-loving vampire clientele, I can’t really comment either way because I don’t remember, cause I was really, really……really, really drunk. It’s possible of course that we did some Light Fantastic surfing, but I can’t be sure…..cause I was too drunk. I guess that’s pretty much the only thing I can say about that evening, that I was really, really drunk. And I didn’t die. Or if I did, I somehow managed to come back to life and have no recollection of it. Or maybe I’m now some kind of reverse vampire? I woke up the next day and now that I think about it I seem to remember some kind of ritualistic feeding, a newfound craving for blood, a desire to sleep by night, haunt the world by day? Wait a minute…..
DAMN YOU REVERSE VAMPIRES!!!!DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!!!!! I HAD A LIFE!!!!! A LIIIIIIIFFFFEEE!!!!!!
So anyway, the next day, which was apparently my first as a newly born reverse vampire, we both woke up with hangovers and with much trepidation at the prospect of a day of required activity due to the fact that it was Greg’s last day in town.
I took him down to Wanchai where we met my highly blood-filled friend Tom, a hilarious young-un who I like to think of as the Hong Kong equivalent of the Artful Dodger, and by that I don’t mean the shitty DJ who released the questionable “Moving Too Fast” some years back, no, I mean the cheeky chappy young street urchin from Oliver Twist, and by that I don’t mean the crappy cooking show with that South London twat who can’t pronounce his r’s, no, I mean the movie of the great Charles Dicken’s novel, and by that I don’t mean Charlie Dickens of West Lafayette in sunny Algeria who was born in 1983, no I mean the Victorian author who revolutionised the world of populist media with his serialised novels that examined the themes of the industrial revolution in a method that was immediately comprehensible to the newly literary society, and by that I don’t mean me, because I’m a reverse vampire and they don’t write novels because they don’t want the world to know of their existence. Instead we write Blogs, they’re much cooler than crappy old books and when you can play techno music while you write in them.
So anyway, we all went over to Kowloon side. I wanted to go and find a coffin but they wanted to go to the crappy Science museum. I demurred, knowing that Ic ould use my vampiric powers of mind control any time I wanted, but in the end it turned out that we were unsuccessful because we couldn’t be bothered walking. Instead we took a taxi [There was this scary cross hanging from the rear-vie mirro, I had to shield myself by going to sleep] to the Temple St. Market so that Greg could buy some shitty tack for the folks back in Japland. Once there, we saw they absolute miasma of stalls, shops and people that is a Hong Kong market. I had to control my new-found cravings for blood, but I was able to sate myself on a small pig I bought from a fleshy-looking man in a backstreet stall when Greg and Tom were busy looking at porn. It wasn’t very nice and I thought he overcharged me so I ate the man too. Sadly he was no tastier than the pig.
Meanwhile Greg was busy getting some hilarious stuff, and I bought some classic VCD’s Godzilla vs MechaGodzilla!!, McBain!! Cyborg Cop!! They all cost about 1 euro each so I was quite happy with this. Quite happy indeed. So I didn’t kill and eat the owner as I had originally planned.
Greg got some hilarious stuff, I want to re-iterate this. I’m not going to tell you what it was. This is an editorial decision, I have a responsibility to my investors, but needless to say it was hilarious so you’re just going to have to imagine something hilarious that you could buy in a Chinese market, like an exploding cow or a porcelain piece of crap. Or something.
Anyway, afterwards we were wrecked from walking around in the heat, so, hungover and despondent and tired from all the laughing at Greg’s hilarious purchases [They really were hilarious!! HAHAHA!!] we headed home on the Star Ferry. We didn’t get home however because we went for drinks with some of the other Interns again.I didn’t kill anyone and they got drunk, it was funny, then we left and went to a couple of bars in Soho. We ended up back at Yumla because I had to commune with my fellow vampires and scope out potential “Chow” [That’s not a racist slur on the Chinese by the way, it’s what we reverse vampires call people, duh.]. We drank a little, but the fight wasn’t really in us so we went home relatively early. Greg had to leave at 5:30AM to get his train to the airport so we watched the movie Seabiscuit [Which is probably Jamie Oliver’s favourite movie as it is shit, like he is.] until he had to go. We bid each other a fond farewell and he left for parts unknown with a tear in his eye, a bounce in his step and minus several pints of blood. I went back upstairs and went to my bed/crypt to ready myself for a new day of hardcore reverse vampirism.

Mia muchas Infantigo con el Interim Grande!

RSCN0558
Originally uploaded by ruadhraigh.

Before I go any further I'd first like to apologise to all those people who are plainly hooked on my random twitterings and are lamenting my recent lack of updates. I'm sorry but after an entire day of sitting around doing nothing but writing witty repartee, the last thing I feel like doing is sitting down and giving a run-down of what I typed about earlier on. But of course I have to keep on going! For the Fans! Such an outporing of raw human emotion I've never seen! "We love you Rudhraigh!! Why don't you post hilarious things in your hilarious Blog the way you used to? We miss your hilarious adventures and awkward moments of social infantigo!"
Well you know what? I don't think "infantigo" is even a word. I think you're just making up complicated sounding words in order to try and impress me as I am very intelligent and regularily use long and complicated words such as "Reson Detre" and "Periphary". Normally any attempt on your, or anyone's part to subtley test me on whether I will prefer to risk being thought of as stupid to point out someone else's mistake or if I'll wimp out and let any stupid shit fly will result in your glee if you're an asshole or your dissapointment if you're intelligent. As such your use of "infantigo" could be a blind, maybe there is no such word? Maybe you're just making shit up to see which way I'll jump? I could check on the interweb, but I won't, I will not make this blog into a house of lies, or a house of effort. So your test may have worked again. I will say nothing about infantigo and we'll continue like I didn't just point all this out...... or make it up myself. So anyway yes as I was saying, of late my social infantigo has been massive!! Much infantigo for Rory!! I have had another week of various activities, I've been keeping up with the mental metaphor of work as Summer Sports camp and it seems to be working quite well, although I think the people at the office are getting a bit weirded out when at 12:30 every day I do a lap around the room and then sit down with a plate of orange halves.
I'm not sure how much longer I'll stick with BC, it's been great but I kinda need to start making money. For my own dignity if not for the actual process of money-making, which I've heard is pretty good in and of itself. The last couple of days have been interesting, there are two new interns, a guy and a girl. When the girl turned up, she was acoompanied by a fifteen year old school kid, I assimed the kid was a new intern and my self respect went down a few hundred notches as I don't think either of my leaving certificates, my four years of university, my hours of study and reading, my thesis or my numerous essays could have really felt like they were being utlised to the full extent of their ability if they were put on the same qualifiactions level with a fifteen year old girl who thinks "Britney is the Coolest!!!" Now admittedly Philosophy isn't much of a degree, but it has to be worth mroe than that? Luckily I was to be proved right when it turned out that the kiddie winkle was actually doing her work experience for school for a single day, so my self-dignity went rocketing back up the scale, back to it's normal habitation alfway between "self-loathing" and "self-hating" I had to take her over to Kowloon Side to a restaurant I was reviewing to giv her the skinny on the true meaning of journalism: Free stuff. Over my fourth helping of sushi and ramen, I explained in my typically imperious manner why she should do Philosophy in Dublin in college. I tell this to all the smart kids that I meet so that I remove them from competition for my jobs. No-one wants to employ a philosophy graduate.
Anyway, the other two inters are great, it's a measure of the atmosphere of general communication in our office that by the second day I didnt actually realise that Patrick, the other intern, knew them both and they were all like best friends. It's great to see that, people being friends, its refreshing from all the networking freakos I've met so far that qualify friends as people who have given them their business cards more than twice. The two newbies are called Ryan and Danielle, they're going out and their constant canoodling makes me miss Emma with a fierce and amazingly omnipresent tenacity that I cannot describe in this format, it would require something altogether more complicated.
Otherwise, non-business as usual. Going to parties [I secretly went to a kickass one in Shanghai Tang, full of models and the beautiful people and didn't tell anyone in the office because I didn't want them to know I was hungover the next day, except that they're probably reading this right now so I guess the jig is up on that one] Tomorrow, my friend Greg Morrissey arrives from Tokyo, I have a full calender of events planned. Tomorrow night Agent Provocateur, the sexy lingerie people, are putting on a massive party that I have arranged for us to attend. Beautiful people in various states of undress, models slinking around in lingerie, free drink all night and half the interesting people of Hong Kong, not a bad thing to do first thing off the plane. Otherwise, it's just going to be regular Hong Kong stuff, I got the days off work so we're going to have an absolute blast.
In other news, Stiff with internships has happened but I'm reticent to say "I might" this or "There's a possibility" that, because every time so far that I've said something like "I met this guy last night who's the President of the Universe and he says that God is looking for Interns and he can hook me up" I've ended up an looking like an idiot because plainly the universe isn't a republic, it's more of a socialist oligarchy with inherently self-perpetuating physical norms. But anyway, I'll give it a go: I might be doing an internship in the Financial Times here. It's truly impossible to put that in context if you don't understand how important the FT is, and how important Hong Kong is to the FT. So if I become an IT in the HK branch of the FT, it'll be pretty fucking GT. I'll know more about that soon hopefully although I've stopped holding my breath for these things, I keep passing out in public and making much social infantigo for myself.
I've also been made a contributer to www.pixelsurgeon.com. It's a designy linkpage with reviews and hilariousness. At first this was admittedly just a roundabout way of pissing Dave Wall off by casually putting myself a notch higher than him on the imaginary "cool" ladder that he tries to scale daily, but I have to say I really enjoy writing for it. I can just think "Hey, I'll review this" and then it turns up online looking all cool and designy, I like that a lot. Also it'll let me claim to be a journalist even after I sell my shiny soul to the corporate magpies who keep flying around my house/body. So I've spent rather a lot of time taking photos of myself for my bio for the page and this is the one I chose in the end. I have others, including many taken of me in a pith helmet that I brought home with me after a particularily good night out. Anyway, I'm going to sleep now. You demanding assholes have kept me up to 2:00, again!! Ah well, I guess you're worth it.