Post 40 - The Ultimate douche-bag.

Who remembers this fucking idiot?

Chances are if you're male and between the ages of 25-30, he'll need no introduction, but for those of you who are uninitiated into the world of American professional wrestling, that 'roided up, multicoloured mullet on legs is none other than Jim Hellwig, aka "The Ultimate Warrior". The Warrior was, during the late 80s and early 90s, one of the most popular pro-wrestlers in the world, simply because he was at the top of the game in about 1989 when WWF Wrestling becamse a massive overnight success and took the world by storm. The kids who were watching (including a 10 year old me) instantly went crazy for his high octane matches, colourful ring attire and tendency to steam-roller anyone who got in his path (though at the time, I didn't realise that merely punching and clotheslining someone for 30 seconds then pinning them wasn't actually good wrestling). The Warrior, after winning the World Championship, then let his ego skyrocket and began making outlandish demands to the owner of WWF, Vince McMahon. On the day of the biggest match of the year at the Summer Slam PPV in 1991, The Warrior told Vince he was refusing to wrestle unless he was paid a large sum of money. Vince was sort of backed into a corner since he'd sold about 50,000 tickets for the show, and many more Pay-Per-Views around the world on the promise of an Ultimate Warrior main event, so he paid him the money. As soon as the show was over, Vince called The Warrior into his office and promptly fired him. After a few months on the sidelines he was re-hired by WWF, where a recent investigation had caused them to ban steroid use in all forms. When he returned, The Warrior was noticeably much thinner, and had taken to wearing a flesh coloured jumpsuit with muscles painted on it to try and disguise this. During this second stint, he again tried making wild demands of his employers, and was quietly released again the same year after, surprise surprise, failing a drugs test. After flitting in and out of various wrestling companies and being repeatedly fired for thinking he was the biggest star in the history of the world and making ridiculous demands, Jim Hellwig retired from wrestling in 1999.

And so to nowadays. The Ultimate Warrior is a cunt. After retiring, Jim Hellwig decided to get involved in politics, aligning himself on the far right wing. He also started a career as an after dinner speaker, occasions which he deemed a suitable platform to air his far right views. After being invited to be the after-dinner speaker for an American University graduation ball last year, where no doubt the graduates decided it would be a bit of nostalgic fun to have one of their childhood hereos as a guest, Hellwig told the room full of university graduates, to "Remember, queering don't make the world work". Among the other colourful quotes attributed to old Jim are a few of these beauties:

"Look, the facts are that AIDS is mostly spread, and held, by people that are promiscuous, and in Africa, where there's incest and all that other stuff."

"We live in a society where the bum is as legitimate as the business man, where homosexuals are the same as good straight people, where Kwanzaa is the same as Christmas."

In addition, Hellwig is currently writing a book about the core values of conservatism, which he will be releasing under the title “America: Get It, Or Get Out!”.

In a final act of petulance against Vince McMahon and the WWF, Jim Hellwig recently legally changed his name to Mr Ultimate Warrior, knowing that if that was his actual name it would stop McMahon from producing merchandise with the Ultimate Warrior name on it, or using his image in any way. He also changed his children’s last name to Warrior.

And to top it off, when asked to appear on a WWF program recently to be interviewed by the hosts Todd Grisham and Darren Drozdov (a former pro wrestler who was injured in the ring and left paralysed from the neck down), Warrior refused, releasing a very controversial page long statement in which he refused to have anything to do with “the cripple and the queer”.

It pisses me off. It pisses me off that people that ignorant exist in the world, it pisses me off that people that ignorant have the opportunity to become role-models to impressionable children around the world, and it pisses me off that one of my childhood heroes has lowered to becoming such a turd. With that in mind, I decided to send Warrior an email telling him my thoughts on his right wing views, how it bothered me that he felt it was OK to preach those beliefs to people, and that I felt it was wrong of him to judge and discriminate people in such blatant fashion. However as I sat down and started typing, something went wrong between what I had written in my head and what ended up in the email. In the end, I fired this off to the Warrior’s inbox:

From: Dissolvo Ray (dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk)
To: ‘mrwarrior@earthlink.net’
Sent: 21st March 2007 21:14
Subject: Queering don't make the world work.

Dear Mr Warrior.

I would just like to express to you that you are a disgusting, xenophobic, homophobic sack of crap and I would like to wish you nothing but misery and bad karma for the rest of your lonely life. What's more, you are one of the worst wrestlers in recent history. It's not often I agree with Vince McMahon, but firing your lame ass was the smartest move he ever made.

Regards,

Ray *******


I do hope he responds.

Song currently stuck in my head – “Janie’s Got A Dissolvo Ray” by Zombina & The Skeletones.
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk

Post 39 - Stuck In The 'Dam.

After the first three weeks in Geneva, I was granted a weekend at home this weekend. After spending the day having my balls bored off in a sales meeting at work on Friday, I left at 3pm and jumped on a flight home to Aberdeen. I was met by my beautiful girlfriend who I hadn’t seen in 3 weeks and spent a wonderful weekend with her, my family and her family. As well as splashing out on a spanking new all-singing all-dancing laptop so I can finally get the fucking internet in Geneva and stop bothering Kai to upload all my blogs, I also spunked away a fair wedge on a new Sony 10mega pixel digital camera so I can document my time abroad, I also got a few new books, and borrowed a stack of DVDs off Lucius Shitface to stave off the boredom of life in my Swiss flat. The weekend sadly had to end though and this afternoon I reported to Aberdeen airport to return to Switzerland. Of course plans went a little tits up, and my flight from Aberdeen to Amsterdam was delayed by almost 2 hours. By the time we landed in Amsterdam the last flight to Geneva had already left, leaving us pretty much stranded in Holland. Well, there are worse places to be stranded I suppose. After visiting various KLM service windows in Schipol airport, and a few cries of “where the hell are we supposed to stay now?”, KLM agreed to put us on an early morning flight and spring for a hotel for us in Amsterdam, a free bus, as well as a bag of overnight essentials, since to rub salt into the wound, they couldn’t find my luggage (though I’m assured it will be waiting for me in Geneva tomorrow morning). And so we travelled on to the Ibis hotel in Amsterdam from where I currently write. My room consists of a single bed, a TV (which is showing the Chelsea Spurs match, so not all bad), a shower, and a radiator which is stuck at the highest temperature. Our free dinner which we were promised was a choice of weird chewy meat in a grey sauce with tinned potatoes and bread roll, or nothing. I took the chewy meat and a pint of cool refreshing Heineken. My free goody bag of overnight essentials contains: One XXL shapeless plain white t-shirt; a hairbrush; shaving cream and a disposable razor; some deodorant; toothpaste and a toothbrush; a huge pair of itchy navy blue socks; some make-up remover; some laundry detergent (?); and some moisturiser. All in all a decent little package, though missing a few Amsterdam overnight essentials, such as condoms and a joint. Oh, and some shampoo would have come in handy. Also, the underwear I am in was going to have to last me all night tonight and all day tomorrow since I am going to have to go straight from the planr to work, so I made a little trip to the hotel’s gift shop to see if they could solve my pants problem. Being that it was full of absolute tat, I didn’t hold out much hope, but they surprised me: they did in fact stock boxers, albeit only two types: XL knee length boxer shorts covered in hash leaves, or XL knee length boxers covered in windmills. I chose the windmills. I didn’t have any Euros since I wasn’t expecting to be staying in Amsterdam, and the woman behind the counter wouldn’t accept Visa transactions under 20 Euros, so I had to fill my arms with loads of other crap to take the price up, and then asked for a packet of smokes as well. All very well, except the woman behind the counter told me it was illegal to pay for cigarettes in Amsterdam with a credit card. No amount of arguing that that was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard would change her mind, so I told her to hold onto it while I queued at reception for 15 minutes to exchange some sterling into Euros. Oh well, at least I didn’t have to buy the sunglasses and other crap I didn’t want to make it up to 20 Euros. Except that when I went back in, she had already rung it all through and I couldn’t be bothered arguing any more, so I walked out with my XL windmill pants, a pair of gigantic sunglasses, a few other pieces of tat, and thankfully a pack of Marlboro light. This takes the time to 23.30 and my bus to the airport is at 05.00 so I’m thinking it’s time to turn in. I realise this blog has consisted of one incredibly long winded and incredibly boring paragraph, but well, it’s my weblog and that’s how I do things.

Song currently stuck in my head – “I Feel For You” by Chaka Khan.
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk

Post 38 – Women Drivers

Today I went to the 27th Annual Geneva Motor Show – the biggest car exhibition in the world. At only £5 for a ticket and £1.20 for the 20 minute bus ride to get there, it seemed a fun and cost effective way to spend the day. 3 hours I spent in the Palexpro – Geneva’s answer to the AECC. Though if you take the AECC, make it about 8 times bigger, and fill it with cars, you get an idea of what the Geneva Motor Show is like. An enormous, sprawling building that seems to go on forever. All day my senses were attacked with beautiful, shiny Jaguars, BMWs, Ferraris, Porchses, Maserratis, Chryslers, Corvettes, Mazdas, Dodges, Chevrolets, Cadillacs and much, much more (including Ladas, oddly). Each company’s stand was more eye-catching than the next, with gadgets, flashy lights, free goody bags, big TV screens and the likes designed to drag you in to look at their latest cars, and each car was accompanied by a stunning girl, elegantly dressed in evening wear or something elegant, smiling and greeting everyone who came near their car, though I would wager not a lot of them knew a hell of a lot about cars. Highlight for me included seeing Michael Schumacher’s 2006 Ferrari F1 and Jenson Button’s 2007 Honda, and the spectacular Fiat stall with it’s weird and wonderful design, oddities and curiosities inside, and the array of beautiful girls all dressed identically head to toe in white – a spectacle it may have been, but it didn’t change the fact that the cars were still Fiats.

As the day drew to a close, I hopped on the number 5 bus back to the main city hospital, which is just a ten minute walk to my flat, and it was while on that ten minute walk that mayday took a turn for the bizarre. I was rounding the corner and about to head up a steep hill, when a large, fat, black woman in a head scarf approached me.

“Excusez-moi monsieur!” she exclaimed, quite agitated. “Aidez-moi! Aidez moi”
(Excuse me sir, help me, help me, for those who didn’t manage to pick that out)
“OK, what’s wrong?” I ask in English.
“Blah blah blah blah mon voiture!” is all I hear next.
(Blah blah blah blah my car!)
“Oh you want the car park? It’s over there I think” I say, pointing at what may or may not be the car park.
“blah blah blah blah some French stuff blah blah blah blah”
“I’m sorry, I don’t speak French. Je parle Anglais.” I say.
She then starts waving her arms at me. “Ici! Ici!”
(Come here! Come here!)
I follow her up the hill to where it becomes obvious why she is having a problem with her car. In front of me, parked at the side of the road and pointing up the hill is a spanking new Renault Megane Scenic. Embedded about a foot into the front of the Renault is a beat up old Toyota Corolla with more dings and dimples than a golf ball, the rear end of which is still halfway out into the middle of the road. The Toyota’s driver door is open and a similarly dressed black woman is standing next to it, looking like she’s about to cry. About 6 inches behind the Toyota is a brand spanking new Chrysler Voyager. It takes me about a second to work out what has happened. The two women were driving down the hill looking for a parking space. Probably due to someone being behind her and the extreme impatience of the drivers in Switzerland, she has swung into a space far too quickly, realised too late that there isn’t enough room to fit a Toyota Corolla into it, and belted it, at speed, into the front of the Renault. Realising then that she is almost wedged in, and it’s going to be quite a tricky manoeuvre to get it out again without taking the front off the Chrylser as well, she has decided then to grab the first passing man and get him to fix it instead. I step up.

“You! Fixy! Sorty! Sorty!” she says.
“You want me to help push it out?” I ask, wondering if my puny frame can push a Toyota Corolla backwards up a hill.
“No” she says, “you drive.”

I don’t particularly want to get behind the wheel of the Toyota for a few reasons, such as
A) the wheel, handbrake, mirrors, gearstick et all are on the wrong side and I’ve never driven a left hand drive before.
B) I have no insurance.
C) It seems inevitable that the owner of the Renault is going to come out and see me driving a car which is buried into the front of his car, then start yelling at me in French.
D) I’m not sure if, even with my 10 years behind the wheel without an accident, I can get it out of there without pranging the Chrysler as well. She has done a great job of wedging it in.
E) It’s a saloon and I drive a hatchback, which is miles easier to judge when reversing.

However being a sucker for a damsel in distress, I suck it up, take the keys and get behind the wheel. It’s going to take some delicate clutch action to get it out without hitting the Chrysler, and there are still cars careering down the hill behind me at speed. Everything is the wrong way round, which throws me to begin with. I wind down the window and wave all the cars approaching past me until the road is clear. Then I start the engine, put it in reverse, raise the clutch till it bites, accelerate like hell to make sure I can get up the hill backwards, drop the handbrake and start to pull backwards. The sound of crunching plastic and twisting metal overpower the sound of my revving, and keeping an eye on my mirrors I manage to manoeuvre out into the street, missing the Chrysler by about 3 inches. Triumphantly, I smile and turn off the engine.

“Now in here!” the woman says, pointing at the spot she has so spectacularly managed to fuck up parking in.
“There’s not enough room” I tell her. “Too small. Tres petit”. But this doesn’t put her off, she is determined I am going to park her car for her. In truth, I can’t park for hit and may do an even worse job of it than her. But, staring at the mangled front of the Megane, I slowly try to park the Toyota, but the space is simply too small, and the ass end is still in the street. Not wanting to be outdone, I go forward and start to reverse into the tiny space, when the woman has a change of heart and tells me to stop. So, half parked, I get out, and her and her friend, after briefly thanking me for my endeavours, climb into the Toyota (which barely has a scratch on it, well, not a fresh one anyway) and get the hell out of Dodge post-haste, leaving me standing alone in front of a quite obviously newly bashed up Renault Megane. I wonder for a second if perhaps I am on some Swiss hidden camera show, then after looking around to see if anyone has witnessed this, I follow suit and continue my trek home. Is leaving the scene of an accident without reporting it illegal even if you weren’t directly involved in the accident? Up until now I haven’t gotten a knock on my door from the Megane driver, the police, or the Swiss equivalent of Jeremy Beadle, so I figure I’m in the clear.

Song currently stuck in my head – “Rock n Roll High School” by The Ramones.
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk

Post 37 – Swiss Cuisine

They eat sone fucked up stuff in Switzerland. Thursday’s lunch menu at work had the option of grilled kangaroo or stewed rabbit. I had the kangaroo. It was delicious, but quite chewy. And who can forget the shark soup and pig brains from last week?

Last night, we went out for dinner, and after doing a runner from what promised to be a Mexican restaurant while waiting for a table (it had Mexican menus in the window, but when we went in there were no menus, only a buffet full of sushi and vegetables, and people were actually cooking their own food at their tables. It seemed to confusing so we legged it), we ended up at a nice looking and very upmarket Swiss/French restaurant in Quartier de Champel (the suburb where I live). The menus were all in French, but all extremely pretentious French so it was virtually impossible to pick any words out, and despite the best efforts of our extremely pleasant and professional waitress, we were just too ignorant. For the starter I managed to pick out the word “canard” which I recognised as duck, so I ordered that. My mate had spotted “thon” which he recognised as tuna, so he ordered that. For my main course I had ordered shoulder of lamb, and when I asked the waitress for a bottle of white wine to go along with it, she looked as though I had just asked to shit in her mouth. Still, she managed to say “good choice sir” through gritted teeth. Well fuck it, I don’t like red wine.

When our starter came, I began to wish I had stayed in the weird Mexican / cook your own sushi place. What I got was a plate of thinly sliced raw duck, with a bunch of rocket on top. And I don’t mean very rare duck, I mean raw. My mate gloated for a minute until his arrived, and he had a mush of diced raw tuna steak mixed with red peppers, drizzled with orange sauce, and brilliantly, with a dollop of ice-cream and a wafer on top. I almost pissed myself. My raw duck was pretty grim, and though I grimaced with the first few mouthfuls, I soon discovered that if I drowned it with balsamic vinegar and ate it with plenty of rocket, you couldn’t really taste the raw duck. Somehow I managed to finish it all. My mate had less luck with his weird raw fish and ice-cream combo, instead choosing to flatten it all and hid it under the rocket, so as “not to appear rude”. I didn’t really get that either. When the waitress returned and asked if there was something wrong with it, he informed her he didn’t eat it because he doesn’t like red peppers. I don’t know how he kept a straight face. The main courses made up for it, but the weird starters were still a hot topic of conversation the next day when we went into the city centre to get some lunch. In the centre of Geneva you expect to pay about 3 times more than you would in the suburbs for food, but we had expenses left to use, so we went to the restaurant attached to the Four Seasons hotel. After having our jackets taken and being seated we began to browse the menu, then wished we still had our jackets so we could do a runner again. There was a choice of 7 things on the menu, and they were quite ridiculously expensive. I opted for a club sandwich, which was the cheapest thing on the menu at £18, thinking I would get loads of other stuff on the side, along with a cup of coffee. My mate ordered veal at around £30, expecting some big veal steaks or chops, and had a couple of bottles of Swiss-German beer. When the food came, my club sandwich turned out to be simply a standard club sandwich, served with a few little bits of lettuce which I later discovered were covered in salt crystals and ended up being spat back into my napkin (it tasted like licking the sea). The £30 veal arrived for my ravenous mate, and ended up being………… thinly sliced raw veal served with rocket. Laugh? I nearly shat. After he picked away at a few forkfuls of veal, and I ate my sandwich and spat the salty salad into my napkin we called for our bill, and found that the Swiss-German beer that slimy head waiter had so kindly recommended to us cost £6 a bottle. And so, £60 lighter and still hungry, we left and vowed never to return. On the way home I stopped at the supermarket, bought a packet of frozen quarter pounders and some buns, got home and fried the fuckers good and proper, served with cheese slices and dripping with ketchup and oil. Pretentious French food can be interesting once in a while, but you can’t beat some good unhealthy British style cookery.

Song currently stuck in my head – “Untutored Youth” by The Hives.
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk

Post 36 – Communication Breakdown

Two weeks down in Geneva, and I’m now fluent in what I like to call “Franglais”. What that means basically is that when talking with a Swiss person, I say the words I know in French, and the rest in English, which is usually enough for me to get my point across.

For example today I went to a dry cleaners where the elderly Swiss gentleman didn’t understand any English, yet somehow we still managed a transaction.
“Bonjour monsieur. J’ai mon clochettes pour…. dry cleaning”
“Oui”
“OK, j’ai seis chemises”
“Oui”
“Et deux pantalon”
“Oui”
“Et un… suit.”
“Un complet”
“OK, a complet. Aussi, mon jeans”
“Pantalon.”
“Oh jeans are pantaloon too? Well that makes it nice and easy”

119 francs later, and my clothes will be back on Wednesday. And so across to the chemist where I want something for heartburn I’ve been suffering since I had grilled kangaroo for lunch yesterday (true). A girl of about nineteen is manning the counter.
“Bonjour monsieur.”
“Bonjour madam. J’ai bruleé d’estomac. Vous avez… something… for bruleé d’estomac?”
She looks confused. “Brulere d’estomac?”
“Oui”, I say, aware suddenly that bruleé is a dessert. She reaches to a shelf behind the counter and picks up a huge box with “GEL” written on the side of it, and goes to ring it through the till.
“Wait a minute, what the fuck is that?” I ask. She stops, but has no idea what I said. “Not gel” I say. “What am I going to do with gel, fix my hair?”
She looks blank.
“I want tablets” I say. “You know, tablets? Les tablets?” With a last throw of the dice I try “Gaviscon? Rennie?”
“Ah, Rennie!” she says, and hands me a box of peppermint Rennie. Yet another problem overcome using Franglais. To the untrained eye, I’m almost a native.

Song currently stuck in my head – “Holes” by Mercury Rev.
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk

Post 35 – Damn The Man! Save The Empire!

Jokes have been rife this week about the uselessness of the Swiss army. On the way to my work I pass some kind of army training centre, and regardless of what time of the day or night I pass, there are about 40 soldiers just standing outside on the pavement nonchalantly kicking their heels and smoking. I figure it can’t take too much training to learn how to open a bottle with one of those little red knives, or how to make sure you put the tweezers and the toothpick back in the right place, so they probably have plenty time to spare. It’s like looking at waxwork dummies sometimes, there’s so little life to them. Perhaps that’s why Switzerland prefers to stay neutral – because their army is totally shit. Generally, whenever I walk past I comment on how they’re just standing around doing fuck all and occasionally profess that I’m going to go up and headbutt one of them to see I can coax some kind of movement out of the others. Today though as I walked past they were all standing around smoking as usual, however they were each holding a semi-automatic assault rifle in their spare hand, with a holstered pistol on their hip. Oddly enough I kept my head down and kept quiet.

Last night I refamiliarised myself with one of my all time favourite movies, Empire Records. When I was a teenager I loved that movie and I can still probably quote most of the film to this day. It was even the inspiration behind me taking a job in Virgin in the Bon Accord centre, hoping that it might turn out to be just like the movie – dancing, singing, forging lifelong friendships with colleagues, a caring boss, and dealing with complex teenage issues. It didn’t turn out that way however – the boss was a cunt, they forced us to listen to shit music, and the most complex teenage issues that arose was selling Westlife CDs to fat ugly 14 year old girls. The day that I was listening to Dark Side Of The Moon on the store CD player and the boss changed it to the best of the Lighthouse Family, that was the day I quit.

Anway, I digress. Empire Records, for those of you who haven’t seen it, is basically summed up as follows: upon finding out the cool indie record store that he works in is about to be sold to a chain, one of the employees, Lucas, takes the weekends takings to Atlantic City to gamble it and make enough money to save the day. Of course, that doesn’t work and he loses it, and has only a day to make $9000, gaining a lot of wisdom along the way. AJ, the handsome cool art student with the floppy hair, is in love with Corey (a pre-fame Liv Tyler), who has brains and beauty and is going to Harvard after the summer. Corey however, is in love with Rex Manning, a washed up musician and TV star, desperately clinging onto the last crumb of fame, and disgusted that he is lowered to spending a day signing records at Empire. Her best friend is Gina, (a pre-fame Renee Zelweger) a white trash slut who can’t bear to end up like her trailer-trash mother, but is heading that way. Debs is the other half of Berko, the lead singer in a punk band, and arrives for work that day with bandages on her wrist from a failed suicide attempt. Marc is the resident stoner with ambitions to start a band but with no idea how to go about it. Eddie looks after the vinyl department and delivers pizza on the side. Joe is the manager of this motley crew, and loves the store, and was hoping to put in an offer to buy it before it is sold to the chain, but has to use his money to replace the takings Lucas lost. Warren is a bolshy arrogant teenage brat who is caught shoplifting, but becomes quite endearing in an unquantifiable sort of way. During the course of the day, as well as doing a lot of dancing, they each face their own personal problems and help each other through them, becoming better people and better friends by the end, with lots of added cheese. (Except Rex, he gets punched, though in the deleted scenes he becomes a good guy too).

Anyway, I bought the special Fan Edition DVD last year, with 20 minutes of lost footage put back in, plus extra deleted scenes and a host of music videos. Whenever I put it on I drift away for a couple of hours into the wonderful world of the Empire Records store, with my best friends, AJ, Corey, Gina, Joe, Debs, Berko, Eddie, Warren, and of course, Rexy. Last night however, when the end credits rolled, I came back to earth with a bang. It hit me – there’s no more Empire Records. I’ve seen all the lost footage, deleted scenes, extras, got the extended special edition soundtrack, and there isn’t anything else. I have seen everything that’s ever been made about Empire Records, and that’s the end. Upon realising this I immediately attempted suicide with a pink Lady Bic with flowers on the handle and a moisturising strip, but it took me forever just to break the skin so I gave up. Besides just watching the DVD another hundred times, I don’t know what I’m going to do now. Would a sequel be too much to ask?

Incidentally I was nosing through the IMDB entry for Empire Records today, and I was highly amused by the ‘plot tags’ they have set up for people who are searching for movies by content. I really don’t think they give a fair representation of my favourite movie:

“Drug Addict / Head Shaving / Obscene Finger Gesture / Suicide / Virgin”

Why would anyone be searching for a movie about “obscene finger gesture”? And why would Empire be included in the results, when it is completely sans-finger gesture? It’s all too much for me. I need to go and do what everybody does in times of stress – put on AC/DC and play along on that drumkit that’s just lying about in my office.

By the way, if you haven’t seen Empire Records, go do it! Go!

Song currently stuck in my head – “Til I Hear It From You (Theme from Empire Records) by The Gin Blossoms.
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk

Post 34 – Lazy Swiss Bastards

The laid back Swiss lifestyle that I openly gush about to anyone who’ll listen, can, at times, be a pain in the ass. Last Friday I took some clothes to the dry cleaners at the end of my road – nothing extravagant, just 5 shirts and 2 pairs of trousers. After I had paid her my 52 francs, she explained to me that they have a half day on Saturdays and are closed on Sundays so my clothes would be ready on Monday (or at least I think that’s what she said, I still haven’t really grasped French). OK I thought. Generally my dry cleaning back home takes 24 hours but I can wait a little longer. So on Monday I dutifully trooped back there after work to pick up my laundry. However, it wasn’t ready. “Mardi! Mardi!” exclaimed the woman, which I later discovered means Tuesday and it’s not some Swiss festival. So on Tuesday, back I went. She handed me my shirts, then pointed at my penis and shouted “Mercredi! Mercredi!”. I deciphered that Mercredi means Wednesday, and she wasn’t talking about a German car. After a bit more penis pointing and gesticulating, I realised she meant my trousers would be ready on Wednesday. So I trooped back on Wednesday, and the fucking place was closed for a half day. Motherfucker! By this point, I had been wearing the same pair of trousers for three days, and I’m pretty sure they weren’t clean when I put them on initially. Finally today I went in and got my trousers back – 6 days after putting them in. How these lazy Swiss bastards ever get anything done is beyond me, with their half days and their two hour lunch breaks. Plus, they must all be wearing dirty trousers. Well, at least I’m fitting in.

Song currently stuck in my head – “White America” by Eminem.
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk

Post 33 – Expenses

Do you know how fucking hard it is to eat £35 worth of food every day? I receive £245 every week for ‘reasonable living costs’, ie the company I work for will pay for food, soft drinks, bus and taxi fares (though most of Geneva, at least all the places I want to visit are within easy walking distance of my flat) and anything else that leaves me out of pocket because I am living in Switzerland and not in Scotland. Tonight for example, I went to a steak house and had a starter, a 6oz T-Bone steak, 3 beers, and a big fancy ice cream, chocolate and pear dessert, and it came to less that £25. Geneva is a weird place of contrasts – the centre of town is one of the most expensive places to eat and drink in Europe – the suburbs just a few blocks away must be one of the cheapest. In general I spend about £5 on a 3 course lunch and about £15 on a 3 course dinner. That leaves £15 a day unaccounted for, which if I don’t use, gets deducted from my next wage. That comes out at about £105 a week I have to pay back. My company charges the company I am contracted to £245 a week to pay my expenses, and what I don’t use they take back from me – but they don’t return it to the company I am contracted to, the fuckers just keep it. I’m not having those fucks making more money out of me than they already do, so I’m trying like fuck to spend all the cash, even if I’m just wasting it. Thing is, I’m struggling to break my old habits from back home – when I shop in supermarkets in Aberdeen I’m so used to buying the cheapest bread, the cheapest juice, the cheapest meat, that I can’t stop doing it here, and even though it leaves me with spare cash to use, I still come back with supermarket brand products. I guess I’m just not used to having cash to throw around. To remedy this, I’m playing a fun little game of trying to see how much weird stuff I can get signed off as ‘reasonable living costs’. Last week for example, I succeeded in having a £20 toaster signed of as a ‘reasonable living cost’. This week I’ve bought some socks, some mugs, an ashtray and a party pack of balloons. The expenses go in on Monday. If they refuse to pay off these little extravagances this week, then for the duration of my trip, come Sunday nights I am going to go to the supermarket and spend my remaining weekly allowance on loaves of bread. If I have £40, I’ll buy 40 loaves. Food, they said, is an expense they will sign off without dispute, be it sirloin steak, lobster thermador or imported monkfish. If anyone queries my receipt for 105 loaves, I’ll simply reply “I was hungry”.

In saying that though I am enjoying having the cash to be able to pay other people to do the stuff I can’t be arsed doing. Like for example, spending £50 a week having the dry cleaners on the corner do all my laundry, despite having a washing machine, a drier and an iron in my flat. And getting a taxi half a mile home because I’ve eaten three courses in the steak house and I’m too full to walk. All of which gets signed of as expenses. If this is how the other half live, I’m quite prepared to try it on for size for a few months.

Song currently stuck in my head – “Take On Me” by A-Ha.
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk

Post 32 – Stuff That’s Weird About Living In Switzerland

All the sandwich ham in the supermarkets is asparagus flavoured. Why why why?

The milk all tastes like cheese.

Barmen give out free beer,

The toilet roll provided at work is soft and comfortable.

Your cleaner promises she’s been round to clean your flat but it looks exactly the same when you come home as it did when you left.

Zebra crossings appear to sometimes give right of way to the pedestrian and sometimes to the car, with no indication of which is which, hence why I cross with extreme caution these days.

The buses are electric, and run on overhead electrical cables like dodgem cars. So what happens if someone double parks and the bus has to swerve around them, that’s what I want to know.

The Chinese sells fucking pig-brain.

When you order a steak, it comes with a side serving of Greek yoghurt. Eh?

If you go to the crapper in a pub or restaurant, you get disinfectant wipes to clean the seat with before you use it. Which is nice actually. They should do that in Britain.

There are entire aisles in supermarkets dedicated to ice-tea. You can even get Volvic and Evian ice tea,

They’re polite, patient and helpful toward foreigners who are struggling with the language. Think that would happen in your local supermarket?

Virtually every menu in every restaurant is built around meat. Not a place for vegetarians. In fact I’ve yet to even see a vegetarian option on a menu.

The first night I got to Geneva, the first bar we went to was the tiny little hotel bar with the football and free beer, and literally the first person I saw when I walked through the door was a guy I used to work with in Aberdeen.

The black bin bags are the same size as carrier bags.

There are fucking pharmacies on every single street corner. And a few in between the corners as well. There are pharmacies across the road from other pharmacies. There are pharmacies next door to other pharmacies. The Swiss must be either the sickest, or the healthies race on the planet. I can’t decide which.

I haven’t done a single smelly fart since I got here. Perhaps the clean mountain air overpowers it, compared to the smog of Aberdeen.

Song currently stuck in my head – “No Cigar” by Millencollin.
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk

Post 31 – Liquid Lunch

We’ve got a sweet little number going on in Switzerland. There’s this little hotel bar round the corner from our flats that is always empty. I mean literally empty. This place has Italian Sky, which shows all of Serie A, all the Sky Sports live Premiership matches, all the Prem Plus matches, the live SPL matches, all the La Liga matches, most of the Bundislega and most of the French First Division, plus all the Champions League and the UEFA Cup. Basically if there’s a live match on anywhere in the world it’s on Italian Sky. If there’s not a live match on, all 30 of their sports channels are showing re-runs of matches from the weekend. As soon as we walk in, the barman who we have befriended pours us two pints, fills a dish with peanuts and hands us the Sky remotes. When our glasses are empty he brings us fresh pints to our table. We get drunk. When we leave and go to pay out bill (you generally work on tabs in Switzerland), he charges us for 50% of the beer we drank (the other day we had 7 pints and got charged for 3), then he prints us a receipt for food or dry cleaning so we can claim it back on expenses. And what does he ask in return? Well so far, nothing. We throw him a few tips and offer him a couple of pints but he always refuses. This kind of flagrant fiddling of expenses can, and probably eventually will, lead to me being fired, but fuck it, you don’t turn down a free lunch. Or 20 free pints of Swiss beer in our case.

Somehow in spite of this arrangement we’ve managed to avoid going in to work in a state like we did on our first day. The extreme displeasure that came our way that day was enough to put me off drinking on a school night for the rest of time. It seems that in Swiss culture it is not acceptable to turn up for your first day of work reeking of beer, unable to keep your eyes open and disappearing for a half hour to have a snooze in the shitter with your head resting on the toilet roll, every part of your wretched body sweating alcohol, your stomach churning with knots which almost cause you to double over in pain. It’s taken a lot of hard work to win back some of the brownie points we lost that day, and I doubt we ever will fully gain the respect of our colleagues and superiors after that ill-fated day. One thing is for sure, there will certainly be no repeat performance. Or at least until next week when we go down to our new local to watch the Champion’s League.

Song currently stuck in my head – “Nineteen” by Paul Hardcastle.
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk

Post 30 - Lost In Translation

Today I’ve been mostly pointing at things in menus. This afternoon we went to an Italian restaurant for lunch, where the menu was in Italian with a French translation underneath, neither of which I speak. After picking out a few words I recognised I was still really none the wiser, so I just pointed at the most expensive thing on the menu, read it out in a bad French accent as though I actually knew what I was saying, and added “avec frites”. As it turned out my £19 brought a large veal steak in breadcrumbs with fried courgette on the side. Nice. This evening didn’t bring so much luck – we went to a Chinese restaurant which had a menu in Chinese with English descriptions, though the daily specials were exclusively in French. I started with the rather odd sounding Shark Fin and Crab soup, which was weird fishy meat served in a soup that tasted like curried parsnip. For my main meal I thought it would be funny to order something that would be a total surprise, so I plumped for “Tete a lion” – what that translates as I have no idea, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be lion. When it came the waiter brought it over in a serving dish with a lid, sat it on my table, et voila! He pulled the lid off to reveal what appeared to be a big mound of dumpling not dissimilar to sticky toffee pudding, covered in a stinky brown sauce. “Tete a lion?” I query. “Oui” was the response, so I tentatively spooned a mouthful off the side of the dumpling. To say the taste was odd would be an understatement. The dumpling had the texture and flavour of supermarket own-brand meatballs, kind of like meatloaf, and the stinky brown sauce tasted like chocolate syrup mixed with gravy. The first few forkfuls were a struggle and I visibly grimaced every time I swallowed. I wondered aloud what type of meat it was. “Pedigree Chum” my mate offered.
When the Chinese/Swiss waiter came over to clear our plates away I asked him politely what I had just eaten. “Pork” he said.
“Pork? What do you put in it to give it that interesting dumpling shape?”
“Um…” he thought for a minute. “Pork.”

I’m told that “tete” means head. I think it was pig brain. Maybe it’s time to learn some French. Or perhaps Chinese.

Song currently stuck in my head – “Hands Down” by Dashboard Confessional.
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk

Post 29 - First Impressions

Today did NOT go well. My first day at the new job, a chance to impress some very important people and pave my way for either a permanent job offer, or a glowing reference to my current employers back home, ensuring me pay-rises and more projects abroad when I return to Aberdeen.

At 8.30 I was due to start work. I stumbled in at 9.15, a shambling, hungover mess. Instead of getting a good night’s sleep after the 2 hours I got the night before, I decided to go out for dinner and a few drinks, and ended up sitting in a bar till 3am throwing back glasses of the delicious local beer, Cardinal, which it turns out is quite heady. I woke at 8.37 this morning, by a phone call from my equally hungover colleague, also on his first day, asking where the fuck I was. I jumped out of bed, threw on some crumpled clothes, wrapped a tie round my neck negating to actually tie it, slapped some gel on my hair negating to actually style it, and headed for work, which I couldn’t find and got lost. When I finally got there my irate new boss was sitting on my desk ready to read the riot act. I was just a mess. I am reliably informed that I absolutely reeked of booze, and for the first two hours I literally could not keep my eyes open, While my boss was talking to me I would feel my eyes rolling back in my head and my eyelids begin to close, and although a voice in my head was yelling “What the fuck are you doing?!” I just couldn’t fight it. I made an excuse and went to the bathroom, sat down on one of the crappers, rested my head on the toilet roll and fell asleep for 30 minutes. I really was just absolutely entirely wrecked. If first impressions are really as important as they say, I can name two Aberdonians who have properly fucked up big-time.

Shopping in Swiss supermarkets is a bewildering experience. The supermarket next to my flat, Migros, sells only Swiss and French products, and although I am not of the breed that go abroad and search everywhere for Jaffa Cakes, Tetley tea, and British theme bars, I would have liked to at least been able to understand what the labels said (I probably should have learned some French before I got here). After quite a lot of head scratching at the various packets and products on the shelves, I instead decided to plump for the products with the most amusing names. Which is how among other things I ended up with Duo Keks biscuits (delicious!), Nobless coffee, (well actually Noblesse but what’s an E amongst friends?) Douche Fit Man! shower gel, Sanissa butter (I thought it sounded like a feminine hygiene product), Erdissbutter peanut butter (I thought it sounded like anal lubricant), and Belherbal shampoo, which doesn’t sound that funny, but when you take into account that it has pictures of peanuts all over the bottle you see why I had to buy it. The milk I bought tastes like cheese, the cheese I bought tastes like Satan’s bell-end, and the Nobless coffee, as well as smelling exactly like gravy granules, is quite possibly the single worst thing I have ever tasted in my entire life – and I’ve eaten bubble bath.

The food in the restaurants though is sublime. In the last two days I’ve had some of the best food I’ve ever had. Swiss chefs seem to have 3 simple rules: make it taste strong, make it taste rich, and make the servings fucking huge. And although the prices of virtually everything in Geneva is enough to make Bill Gates dread picking up the bill in a restaurant, the quality of the food and the service make it not seem painful to hand over £30 for a one course meal and a bottle of Diet Coke. Though the fact that my company are paying all my expenses makes it that little bit easier to order a 12oz sirloin and leave a £10 tip.

Song currently stuck in my head – “Lilac Wine” by Jeff Buckley.
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk

Pos2 28 - Bonjour De Geneva!

Contrary to what I said in my previous post, hell is not George Michael records. Hell is being in a hotel room with 40 channels of Swiss TV.

As you can probably guess, I have finally made it to Geneva. It’s been a long, long, day, beginning at 3.30 this morning, when I got up to go to Aberdeen Airport, a full two hours after I went to bed. I hate flying at the best of times: at that time in the morning I hate it just that little bit more. My first flight this morning was the 6.15 Aberdeen to Amsterdam. Take off is the bit I hate most. As soon as I feel the plane leave the ground I always feel compelled to cross myself – however since I’m not Catholic I think there’s more chance of god smiting me down if I do, so I usually resist. 20 minutes into the flight comes my first calamity of the day, as I spill a cup of boiling hot coffee on my groin. Painful, and uncomfortable. On my second flight of the day, 10.55 Amsterdam to Geneva I spill a carton of fresh orange juice on my shirt, and then dribble water all over myself. Something makes me retarded on planes. Upon reaching Geneva we went straight to work, luggage and all, and so I reported for duty in my orange juice splattered shirt and my coffee-soaked trousers, utterly exhausted from lack of sleep and from travelling. Thankfully my employers recognise that in my current state I’m not much good to anyone, and after a few hours induction, allow me to clock out at 3pm and go to my accommodation for some much needed rest.

I find to my surprise that they have cancelled my hotel reservation and instead have put me in a fully furnished flat in a leafy and beautiful area of Geneva (though to be honest, there aren’t many parts of Geneva that could be described as anything except beautiful), Even the most crooked of estate agents would struggle to describe my apartment as luxurious, but it’s certainly a lot better than the flea-pit I was expecting. I have a large lounge/bedroom with huge windows which let in the sun, a double bed, a glass coffee table and chairs, wooden floors and all tastefully decorated in cream and deep red. My lounge boasts a TV, DVD player and stereo, a built in wardrobe, and enough space to play 5 a side football. My kitchen is tiny but well equipped, including a dinner set, a kettle, a hob, a microwave and a fridge freezer. The bathroom contains everything you’d expect from a bathroom – toilet, sink, bath, shower – all in all, a lot better than spending 2 months in a pokey hotel room,

Since leaving work I’ve hooked up my laptop, Playstation, iPod and speaker dock and unpacked while listening to The Fratellis album at full volume (definitely going to be the soundtrack to my trip). It feels homely already. The only thing missing from this scene is my significant other, whom I’m going to miss terribly, but the black and white photo of her next to my bed will be there to greet me when I wake up in the morning – not quite a substitute for the real thing, but it’s all I have.

All in all, the signs point to this being a great 2 months. Now if only I could do something about the fucking weather…

Song currently stuck in my head – “Vince The Lovable Stoner” by The Fratellis.
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk

Post 27 - Lake Of Fire.

I have a little notepad feature in my phone which I use to scribble down things such as records I plan to buy, things I mean to do, and occasionally, topics for blogs which come to me during the day. Sometimes after a night on the sauce that little folder becomes filled up with the most miraculous nonsense, which is promptly deleted the next day, though this week after a particularly heavy night out, I looked in my little blog topic folder to find 5 simple words, all in block capital: "HELL IS GEORGE MICHAEL RECORDS". I don't know what Mr Michael had done to upset me during the course of the evening, but it seems I wasn't in the mood to listen to "Fast Love" that night. While it might be a little dramatic, I don't think it is really tha far off the button - OK so George Michael records may not actualy be hell, but I'm sure they play an integral part in eternal damnation. I think my own personal hell would be to be bent over a couch and dry-bummed by all the members of Westlife while "Careless Whisper" plays loudly on a eternal loop in the background, and I have my eyes held open a lá A Clockwork Orange and I'm forced to watch a video entitled Glasgow Rangers Greatest Ever Victories. (They do say one man's meat is another man's poison. - that would probably be heaven for Alex Dick). Imagine having to do that for a million years. It's enough to make me start saying my prayers and pop down to the Church of Scotland this Sunday to pray for my soul.

After the fun, fun escapades of the filthy guest house last week, and the Bates Motel the week before, this week I was faced with the prospect of, for the third week running, having to stump up £160 from my own pocket to live in cold, shit accomodation so I could get to work. I decided against taking this path, and instead took a week's holiday from work and, tail between my legs, at the age of 27 came back to live at my parents house in Fraserburgh (though only for a week). It's oddly reminiscent of when I used to come home as a 19 year old student, the only difference being that before I would take home a big bag of laundry for my mum to do, these days I take it back and do it myself. Geneva is all systems go for this coming Monday, so barring some major catastrophe, or more likely me sleeping in and missing my 5am check in, by this time next week I should be in my office in Switzerland surrounded by a bunch of people chatting away in a language I don't speak. 2 months away from my girlfriend, my mates, my family, the Dons, and perhaps the most painful thing, most of my clothes. How will I cope? Find out next week when The Great Swiss Adventure begins...

Song currently stuck in my head - "Say It Right" by Nelly Furtado.
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk

Post 26 – A Life of Grime.

Last week I was staying in a Guest House, which was, I discovered, just a fancy name for a Bed & Breakfast – this week I am staying in a Private Hotel, which I have discovered is just an even fancier name for a Bed & Breakfast. The guest house I stayed in last week was pokey and I hardly had enough height to stand up in my room, I had to get fully dressed and go down 2 sets of stairs just to take a piss and the noise of the hailstones on the roof of my attic room woke me every night, but at least the bed was comfortable, the room was warm, and it was meticulously clean, I had hot water in my room, a big TV with Freeview, and a fridge to keep milk and juice. The smell of Chinese food cooking would creep up the stairs every evening and find it’s way to my hungry nostrils while I was having my dinner of custard creams and Pringles in my room. Compare that to the more expensive, pretentious-sounding ‘private hotel’ which I am staying in this week.

What a shit-hole.

On first glance it seemed OK – the room is huge, and has a little shower room and toilet built into the corner. But after spending a night there, it’s shortfalls have become more apparent than Paul O’Grady’s sexual persuasion. The sheets and covers on my bed look abut 20 years old; there are stains all over the armchair which make me not want to sit on it, ever; the bathroom is filthy, every corner of every wall and roof is covered in black mould, and every surface covered in unspeakable dirt; the shower head is broken so the water dribbles out of it pathetically like a garden tap; the shower only has two temperatures – freezing or scalding; the taps in the bathroom don’t have hot water (shaving with cold water – painful); the ‘clean’ towels supplied smell like cheese; the room is like a fucking ice-box because the heater doesn’t work; I don’t have a fridge for fresh milk; I don’t get breakfast (so it’s not so much a bed and breakfast as just a bed); the TV is a tiny portable affair with only 4 channels, all obviously being fed off one aerial and the signal split to every room, as the picture is so fuzzy it’s unwatchable; my room is right next to the front door so I hear the door slamming as people come and go all night; and brilliantly, the loud extractor fan in the bathroom, which stays on for 20 annoying minutes after you switch the light off, doesn’t even have a pipe on the back to guide the smell outside – it’s on the roof of the shower room, and after clambering on a dresser to see what was on top of the roof, I found that I could look down the back of the fan into the bathroom – it simply extracts out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, so that instead of your bathroom smelling of shit, your whole room does. To call this place a crap-hole would be an insult to the good name of crap-holes. It should be condemned. In fact it should be demolished. As I lie, shivering between my threadbare sheets, watching my fuzzy TV and inhaling the fumes of my own turds, how I long for a return to my tiny attic room with the scary taped up doors and the serial killer Chinese woman. Better to die quickly at the hands of a machete-wielding Oriental psychopath than slowly from the combination of germs and cold in this ball-sack of a hotel.

Song currently stuck in my head – “The Pieces Don’t Fit Anymore” by James Morrison.
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk

Post 25 – Things I’ve Learned This Weekend

Lipton Peach flavoured Ice Tea – Nasty (though you can probably guess that from the name)

Rage Against The Machine’s first album – still sounds good, and even though I haven’t listened to it in about 10 years I still know most of the words.

Nintendo Wii – fun, but dangerous after a few drinks

All the girls on nights out in Fraserburgh dress like sluts.

Scotch eggs rule!

The fucking Ford Ranger advert on Northsound 1 (“He says – I hear”) is the most annoying fucking advert ever.

Alan Curbishley – Possibly even more shit than Alan Pardew.

Dancing On Ice – Simply awful TV. There’s never been a more fitting use for the term “chewing gum for the eyes”.

Song currently stuck in my head – “Grace Kelly” by Mika (is that song ever off the fucking radio?)
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk

Post 24 – Chinese Whispers

Tonight is my last night in the guest house. As homes from home go, this one isn’t that bad. Despite being locked away in a corner of the attic like a dirty family secret, and evidence of murder most horrid, I’m actually growing quite attached to it. My only major grumble with the place is that I have to share a toilet. Not because I’m too much of a snob to inhale the scent of other people’s bodily functions, or that I have to queue for the shower – but simply because if I need a piss during the night, I have to get out of bed, get fully dressed and walk down two flights of stairs, since walking around the public areas naked or even half naked is pretty much frowned upon. Every time I need a piss during the evening the sink in my room looks more appealing – if it wasn’t for the fact that I also use that sink to wash, shave and brush my teeth I would definitely be peeing down the plughole.

I’ve came to a new conclusion about the grizzly murders that I suspect have been carried out around me while I’ve been asleep – the bloodstain in the bathroom definitely points to some heinous crimes being committed by the clearly deranged owner of the guest house, and the little doors in the attic which have been heavily taped shut and furniture pushed up against them is hugely suspicious. Plus she has a little room in the downstairs of the house with a lock and a “Private – Keep Out!” sign on the door. I’ve been curious to find out what’s in there, so I’ve knocked on the door a few times to ask some stupid question I already know the answer to just to get a peep at what’s in there– each time she’s opened the door just a crack and just stuck her head out, and I can see that’s she’s wearing an apron and rubber gloves – standard clothing for disembowelling – and she always seems really anxious to get rid of me, to the point of almost closing the door in my face, which makes me wonder what she’s getting up to behind that big heavy door.

After having eaten at the nearby Chinese take-away, I can safely say that the meat in my chow-mein DEFINITELY wasn’t chicken. I’m sure that I chowed down on a hot, spicy portion of guest-house dweller. There’s no way she can be making enough money to survive on the low prices she charges for her rooms – she’s got to subsidise her income somehow – by slicing and dicing her paying customers, selling the meat to the Chinese take-away, and hiding the skin, bones and their personal possessions behind the little doors in my bedroom.

And I deduced all of this from just one bloodstain. I should be a detective.

Song currently stuck in my head – “Be My Baby” by Vanessa Paradis.
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk

Post 23 – Shalabridees

Day 3 in the attic room in the guesthouse. I have discovered more evidence that something sinister is afoot at the innocent looking bed & breakfast I am currently lodging in. While taking a piss yesterday in one of the two communal bedrooms, I noticed a big streak, about 2 inches long by 1 inch wide, of what can only be blood splattered down the side of one of the panels. It is pretty well hidden from the casual glance, and would have been quite easy to miss if someone was be cleaning a murder scene in a hurry. It isn't beyond the realms of feasibility that my mild-mannered landlady, in between burning toast and cleaning rooms, could be hacking up patrons of the guest house and stuffing the body parts into the loft via the weird taped up doors in my room. Tonight the remote control for my tv disappeared for 20 minutes, and then reappeared in a place I had already checked twice, and halfway through Match of the Day on BBC 1 the TV turned itself on to BBC3 without warning - both classic signs of a haunting where someone may have died an unnatural death. Or maybe the boredom associated with spending 16 hours a day alone in a single room has allowed my imagination to over-compensate.

I got to thinking today about celebrities. It was mainly due to an observation today that for the first time since January 2nd, the Daily Star had something on it's front cover that wasn't Big Brother related (though there was a smaller story about Big Brother on there as well). It prompted a discussion at work about celebrities, which ones we hate, which ones we like, which ones we'd like to meet, and which ones we have met. I've met a few celebrities who are firmly planted on the C-list with little chance of their stock ever rising, and while I've yet to meet a Tom Cruise, Bono or David Beckham, I'm still pretty happy with my list. The following people are lucky enough to have met Dissolvo Ray – I just love doing my bit to make people happy:

Rich Hall (Comedian, Otis Lee Crenshaw)
Bill Bailey (Comedian, Never Mind The Buzzcocks)
Katie Melua (singer)
Steve Davis (snooker player)
Terrorvision (rock band)
Joe Mangel off of Neighbours (I'll tell more of that story another day)
Paul McClain off of Neighbours
The entire cast of Balamory (weird Scottish kids TV show)
Alex Salmond (MSP and First Minister wannabe)
Tommy Sheridan (MSP)
The bassist from Status Quo
Phil 'the Power' Taylor (darts player)
Raymond Von Barneveld (darts player)
Skin and Cass from Skunk Anansie (rock band)
Geoff Capes (former World's Strongest Man)
Jocky Wilson - (Former darts player)
Less Than Jake (punk ska band)
Mercury Rev (weird band I didn't even recognise)
Zander Diamond (Don's giraffe-like centre half)

And I've walked past but not spoken to:
Marilyn Manson
Dita Von Teese
Cane and Marlon off of Emmerdale
Darren Fletcher (Man Utd and Scotland player)

Rubbing shoulders with stars - that's the Dissolvo way.

Song currently stuck in my head - "Ooh La" by The Kooks
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk

Post 22 - Best Laid Plans...

It wasn't supposed to happen this way. Today, 5th February 2007 is a date that has been circled on my calendar for 2 months. It was the date that I was supposed to fly out to Geneva. Not only that, but it is also my travel companion's birthday. We had the day planned to a T. Finish work at 5, out for dinner (we had even picked the restaurant), then out to sample some of Geneva's nightspots, before retiring back to our executive apartments to sleep off the effects of our first night in Switzerland. Sadly things haven't gone quite to plan, and currently at 10pm, instead of being full of fine food and wine, I find myself shivering in a pokey, draughty, attic bedroom in a guest house in Aberdeen's Great Western Road, which I will be calling home for the next three weeks. My evening meal tonight consisted of a prawn salad from Asda which I ate from the packet with a plastic fork, some salt & vinegar Pringles and a bottle of Diet Coke. For entertainment I played Football Manager and watched Ghostbusters.

My hostess is an elderly Chinese lady who asks questions in broken English, clearly doesn't understand your reply, then carries on the conversation using what she just thought you might say as your reply. Like tonight, she asked me If I had stayed here before. I replied that I hadn't and she, a little too quickly, exclaimed, good! You'll know where everything is then! A similar situation occured when we talked about what I do for a living, which he had already mind her mind up was the oil industry, and despite me telling her otherwise, she still thinks that.

My surroundings, by all accounts, are similar to Kai's in Craiginches. Upon opening my door there is a single bed pushed up against the wall which takes up most of the room, a little worktop with a chair and a TV on it which takes up the rest of the room, and a washbasin in the corner with a toothbrush holder. At 5'8" there is just room for me to stand up without bashing my head on the sloped walls. There is one skylight which is open just a crack, and despite my best endevaours, refuses to close or open any further, stoically remaining steadfast, and open just enough to let all the heat out and all the noise in. The walls have no less than three different patterns of wallpaper. And perhaps most worringly there are two cupboard doors built into the walls which are crudely sealed shut with masking tape. My supicious mind cannot help but wonder if that is to keep people from getting in to the loft, or from getting out...

Executive apartment this ain't, but with my Playstation set up, the sink full of stubble and shaving foam, and my dirty discarded clothes strewn across the floor, this is starting to feel like home already. All I need now is a drunken flatmate to stumble in drunk, piss all over the floor and call me a cocknose and it'll be like I never moved out.

Song currently stuck in my head - "My girl want's to party all the time, party all the time, party all the time...."
dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk

Post 21 - Homeless.

Annoyingly, the Great Swiss Adventure, which was scheduled to begin on the 15th January, then delayed to 5th February, then delayed until 12th February, has now been delayed again until the 26th February. Due to the inability of the guy who looks after the contracts and gets paid £40k a year for his trouble to look at the contract, point his big yellow crayon at the bit that says "Signature" and scrawl a crude 'X', we're now running 6 weeks behind on the job - which normally wouldn't bother me, I'll still be there for 2 months, just starting later and leaving later. Unfortunately as I was promised I was flying out on the 5th I arranged to move out of my flat this weekend - I've moved all my stuff out and all that remains is for me to return my keys. Only after all that did my work decide to inform me that someone has fucked up and I'm not going yet. So as of Saturday I don't have anywhere to live. If you see me on Union Street over the next few weeks, under a rug with a begging bowl, chuck me a couple of quid will you?

I do apologise for my lack of updates of late, I've been busy with the work, the moving and the preparing for Switzerland. Plus, as per my last post I share an office with my boss now so she can see everything I'm doing. Unfortunately this doesn't look like changing anytime soon. If I ever get to fucking Switzerland I'll post every day, I promise... I'm bursting with ideas. I just don't have a chance to get them down on paper before I forget them.

Song currently stuck in my head - "Grace Kelly" by Mika.

dissolvoray@hotmail.co.uk