My gosh, I hate this awful country...

Today a bank machine robbed me of 250$. I cannot afford to lose this much money. I've been trying to call the bank who robbed me all day but I can't get through. I really, really hate this country. Seriously.

Hell in a handbasket: Pt. 17

Well, a fairly uneventful but still enjoyable weekend. Dinner party with all my buddies on Friday, and work on Saturday; complete with apres work pints at the Wrens Inn across the street.

Anyhoo, in my effort to recount at least 10% of all the crime I experience in this country, I can relate the following two (three?) incidents from the weekend. 1) Although I wasn't there, on Friday night some people came into our cafe and tried to sneak out with an old lady's purse. My boss, an assertive (but lovely) Indian lady, smelled something fishy when the thieving couple tried to leave without buying anything and demanded to search their bags. Cowardly as most of the English thieving class of scumbags are, they relented and gave back the handbag - saying they 'accidentally' stole it. 2) Saturday morning while I was walking to work, I stopped to watch a busker playing the sax, while I was watching, a little kid (read: street urchin) came buy and stole some of his money out of his tin. The saxaphone player shouted for someone to help him and catch the kid, but this being England, nobody gave a crap, even though there were thousands of people and at least a score probably saw the kid steal the money. Myself being not-English, I followed the kid and when I caught up with him I grabbed him by the neck of his coat and made him give back the money (although he said it was only 50 pence and I had no way of proving otherwise). 3) On the way home from town today somebody threw or slung something at the window of our bus and smashed it, scaring the crap out of everyone and giving the poor old lady sitting by the window a near heart-attack.

This raises my point about England, the so-called 'land of hope and glory'. By and large, it's really crap. The problem is the people. They can't be bothered to do anything, ever. Over the two years I worked at the call-centre, I became very well acquainted with the English national motto: "I can't be arsed". It's what English people say whenever you ask them to do something that might benefit someone other than themselves. Whenever I got a call from one of our customers whom we had screwed over through some error on our part (a common occurrence) my managers could never be "arsed" to right the situation. Bus drivers often "can't be arsed" to stop and let you on the bus (last week I saw a bus-driver close a door in the face of a paraplegic rather than get off his fat 'arse' and put down the ramp. Many people in my neighbourhood can't be "arsed" to raise their kids properly, or go to work, or pick up their dog crap (or even go for a walk with the dog: English dogs, usually some type of pitbull or Rottweiller, walk themselves - makes for a really safe neighbourhood for kids and small women).

Anyways, I'm thinking of designing an alternative flag to the St. George's cross. Instead, it will have a hand giving the two-fingers (England's equivalent of the middle-finger), and underneath it will say "I can't be arsed".

There, just had to vent some spleen. Thanks for reading.

Happy (?)

Hello friends. Have been feeling 'good' today for the first time in a couple months. Having gradually tapered off my anti-depressants until I was completely off by December, by mid January I felt like absolute crap. I've said it before and I'll say it again, there is just no way to describe a massive depressive episode, it defies human language. It is a constant gnawing. You stop sleeping, you don't enjoy anything, and in fact nice things almost make you feel worse because the fact that you get no joy from them highlights how awful you feel. I don't know what causes depression, but there is absolutely no way to reason yourself out of it by rational thought, you feel absolutely insane and reel around through your life in a feeling of unreality which is also quite creepy. The most accurate way to describe it (at least in my experience) is like living in a nightmare, it's the same feeling. One thing that has truly amazed me is the mind's capacity for pain. A major depressive episode feels much worse than dying, in fact dying would be a positive relief, I pity the non-believer who finds himself in such a place.

Anyways, thank God for SSRIs. They cost only £3 a month from the NHS (UK social healthcare) and although they seem to take at least a month to start working, when they finally kick in it is magic. Anyways, I wasn't going to write about this because in a way it seems like vulgar self-indulgence and narcissism. But I decided to write about it because maybe one day it will help someone else who is feeling mental. I was struck out of nowhere by a serious panic disorder mixed with major depression when I was 18 and I thought that was it for me. I thought I'd spend the rest of my days in a straight-jacket looking out a window from a rocking chair in a psych ward. Anyways, to my great surprise life has gotten much better, and God has blessed me. I've basically come to accept the fact that I might well be on pills the rest of my life, oh well, if that's the worst thing that happens to me I will consider myself lucky.

There, that's my take on mental illness. It's the crappiest thing I can imagine, but being a Christian helps, and so do meds. Also, it may have been triggered by smoking pot and excessive drinking, which I don't recommend to anyone.

On a much brighter note, I got my last semesters marks and they were all firsts, which really lifted my spirits. Beth did very well on hers too, thank God. I also really enjoyed church on Sunday. I have a truly special group of Christian friends here, I need to post some pictures of them. Now that I have a nifty camera in my phone I will make sure to take more pics. Speaking of which, here are some more pictures I took of Leeds today. Leeds is somewhat interesting for its role as a major centre of industry in the Victorian period. It has many old and beautiful (if perhaps a tad ostentatious) buildings, here's a few of them I snapped today:


Leeds town hall is so massive you can't get it all in one shot, even from across the street. The clock tower on it dominates the city's skyline.





Double decker buses are fun, especially when they whack tree branches overhanging the road and scare the crap out of everyone upstairs.


Leeds city library is also a really nice building with a huge chessboard in front with big chess pieces. I should get Beth to hustle people there and bring us a bit of income. Last year she beat the president of the Leeds University chess club. I've only seen her lose once, to me, and the incident has never been repeated.


The court building in millennium square. They often have concerts and stuff in millennium square, and there's a massive tv screen that's always playing BBC news.

Photo Journal

Well, I decided to take some photos on my way to work today. Partly because I was early, partly because I thought some people might find pictures of Leeds interesting, and mostly because I wanted an opportunity to use my new camera. Actually, it's just a Nokia phone that has a camera on the back, but dang, it's a pretty good camera for a phone. It even has a Carl Zeiss lens. Anyhoo, you can be the judge of whether or not it is an acceptable camera, for my part, it's the only camera I have/can afford because it was a free phone upgrade from my mobile carrier.

Anyways, here's the photos. Enjoy!




Here's the entrance onto the high street shops. In England, the 'high street' basically means a down-town shopping area where cars aren't allowed. It actually consists of quite a few streets. It's where you do your shopping (except maybe for groceries, which are down the road).



This is the Grand Opera House in Leeds, next door to my work. We cater to the Opera patrons, who always fill our restaurant before a show. Last week Prince Edward was at the Opera so there were cops hanging around. I didn't see any royalty though, not that I would know if I did.
Here's the Grand arcade. I work inside.

Inside. If you can see the little chairs half way down, that's the outside of my restaurant: "Roots and Fruits". It used to be a gay vegetarian restaurant.



Some churchy place across from my work where junkies and drunkards sometimes like to relax/whack up.

Hmmmm...

So Beth has been bedridden the last few days with an awful flu. Yesterday I was at work and I get a call from a very, very upset and scared wife who tells me that she has just encountered someone who broke into the flat through the window.

She was in bed sick and heard something in the living room. She went in to see and found somebody bending over our television. She started screaming (she said it wasn't even in any particular language), and ran into the bedroom with the phone and started trying to push the bed against the door. Realizing the phone had come out of the wall (which was outside the bedroom), she ran out again into the office and called the cops, then me. I ran through town to catch a cab and when I got home I found her talking to a cop who had arrived. Beth still had our big carving knife beside her which she had grabbed, while she waited for the cops to get here. In England when you lock your door from the outside, it means you need a key to open it from the inside too if you want to get out. So when the cops got here that had to search the apartment to make sure the guy wasn't still in here, but he must have left through the window again. They're coming to check for fingerprints and stuff today.

Anyways, sometimes England seems like a totally rubbish country, where people break into your flat while you are at home, in broad daylight. It's a country full of drunks, smackheads, and racists. Beth's fine though, thank God - now she just has her awful flu to deal with. And she scared the guy so bad that he left without stealing anything.

Seriously though, it's getting so bad that we can't even open our windows in the middle of the day when we're sitting in the same room. I mean, sheesh, this is the second time in a month!