It's a kick-ass business school. Can I become a kick-ass student?

First things first. How did I get onto the course? Actually, just how did I get onto the grounds?

Henley is in the World top ten of business schools. The ranking breakdown is even more impressive. However, I would urge anyone interested in reading, to carefully study the methodology used.

WW #10. That's great. But I still have to work hard and not compromise my on-the-job performance. I am reminding myself that it's a marathon and not a sprint (i'm dropping use of rude analogies for now).

But...the course team is formidable (Dalton, Cullen, Ordish, Smith & Osborn Jones, etc), and the workshop I have just returned from zeroed-in on the foundations - personal development & learning skills. I have a lot to reflect on, following my Belbin test results and discovery of my learning style.

I also need to sleep.

I'm also proud to be in my study team - 'The Watford Gap 8' - they're a great bunch.

Note: I did propose other names for the team, such as 'The Hairy Kojaks', 'The Sub-Primes', etc, etc. My team sensibly ignored me.

'Banana'

Another one (this time with meaningless title) that waits on Da Bomb...


Speed is of the essence as you hurry me aboard your express train to destination wedlock.

You always want to dive into the deep blue sheets with me; your constant enthusiasm raises a cloud of doubt above my head. Your high-speed rumba, I at first attributed to youthful inexperience, only now realising that you want to get it over with before we get it on.

The routine you see as security - eat, fuck, cum, sleep - to me spells control and monotony. Our trifling disputes addressed by your rants and witholding of 'pleasure', while I counter by calling your bluff, sleeping the sleep of an all-night sigh of relief. All the while you're terrified that once I succeed in engaging you in a long discussion, I will surmise that nobody's there; only a shell, floundering in that vacant space I never fence off.

You remonstrate with me, telling me that you want to marry a man and have children. No mention of personalities or qualities - just anxieties, as you long for an end to your perpetual fears and uncertainties. I am inclined to believe that daughters take after their mothers when I remember that your mother only married your father out of self-interest, not love.

I finally come to understand that you would be satisfied marrying any moron. I feel that it shouldn't be this one.


1st September 2007, Somewhere Else

'Of People and Parasites'

There we were, promenading along The Bund.
And there he was alongside me, crouching, hopping,
squirting white sticky stuff over my boots,
attempting a wipe-steady action
while my heels accelerated.
Chuckling, I fled the scene by taxi,
comforting my distressed leather with a Kleenex.

But -
any vestigial humour was outgunned by a bare-knuckle economic imperative.
Here was no entrepreneur, farmer, builder or teacher;
but his needs were no less vital in that vacuum of outgoing -
rent, healthcare, education and nourishment.
His dreams of a better future encapsulated
within a solitary tube of liquid shoe polish,

clinging to me, my revenue potential, to hope itself,
the last rung on the ladder before falling into -
well, what is lower than this?

But lower than a cockroach,
as only the self-satisfied and self-obsessed are,
I shrugged him off like a fly.


Wondering why, The Bund, Shanghai, January 2007

Giftwrap

It's gayness one degree removed. Dissatisfied with the accoutrements of man love - flabby udders, salt n pepper stubble and irredeemably bad wind - we substitute foreplay with the act of giving eachother gifts; Barbara Streisand, Ethel Merman and Judy Garland.

The key requirement is for each artist to be portrayed in a less than flattering light - Babs simultaneously destroying World music and the notion of the concept album. Mumblin' Ethel Merman decapitating disco like a testosterone-stoned Liberace. Judy being goofy with a half-pint Mickey Rooney.

We finish, by exchanging the act of being taken up the rear, for listening to them. To a music lover, it is much the same thing.

11th September 2007, on the floor

Errrr

A shout out to my cousin Kam - remember to check out the Jurassic Cliffs in Dorset if you can't be bothered to venture to Eggerton Hill.

The Terracotta Warriors at the British Museum are fabulous - I can't wait to get a day off and fly to Xi'an next time I am in Beijing.

Missed: the great Joe Zawinul, who played with Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis and co-founded Weather Report, passed away this week on the 11th of September.

Revenge is a dish best served with ear plugs...

I finally got my revenge on the iPOD Perv this morning. I gave him the latest Go Team! CD, along with a four CD box set of Judy Garland with Mickey Rooney - yep, camp musical fodder from the 1940s. It was awful. Trouble is, he played it in the car on the way to Islington, so I did suffer somewhat. But at least it paid him back for some of the following musical crimes he has committed against me over the years, including:

• 'Barbara Streisand & Other Musical Instruments' (foul, foul, foul - her and all 150 instruments)
• 'Trad Mad' (box set of trad jazz - not even the good stuff like Scott Joplin ragtime)
• 'The Ethel Merman Disco Album' (this can suck the sweat off a dead man's balls)
• 'Deep Throat - Original Soundtrack' (yes, the awful soundtrack to the seminal porn film)

A welcome return to an old haunt: the Marquess Tavern, Islington

Adieu, Horatio

The NJK's (Nick and Nicky - no, i'm not kidding), have left the room. All the best for Bulgaria and hopefully see you next year. It was a pleasure working and sharing an office with you, and conducting various classified experiments upon you.

Doris won't stop crying, and the donkey has changed his name to spare his reputation any further slurs.

Thoughts on Tarquin's leaving thang on Thursday:

• The Harp was excellent
• The Mongolian Barbecue was as expected
• Lowlander was closed
• Can't remember the other places

My apologies to 'Holster Girl' for repeated infractions and profound thanks to KebabMan™, the urban superhero who visited me at 3.30am and deposited an AlmostLikeItsFresh™ kebab in my hands. I can still taste it.

What are you reading Wozzy?

I have just finished 'China Road' by Rob Gifford. Like 'River Town' by Peter Hessler, the book is written from the point of view of someone who has lived and worked in China, providing an awful lot of insight into the lot of the Chinese everyman ('Old Hundred Names'), that is not provided by the scare-mongering, black and white texts spewed out by left and right-wing fuckwits - or by the literati, glitterati and chatterati of China's newly emergent middle class.

There are about 150M people in China who earn a decent whack, and they're located in the Eastern areas of the Bohai Rim, Yangtze River Delta & Pearl River Delta. The other 1.2 billion are not doing so great - 750M of them are still regarded as peasant farmers. The Communist Revolution of 1949 was for them, but they have benefitted the least, and this is the fault line in China's prospects for future growth and stability.

My next book in the 'China list' is Susan Shirk's 'China: Fragile Superpower'. She has over 30 years of dealing with China and spent some time as a diplomat. After that (time willing) will be Peter Hessler's 'Oracle Bones' then Will Hutton's 'The Writing on the Wall'. Then in Feb '08, Penguin's 'History of China' should be released.

That, the job, the poetry/prose and the MBA should keep me busy.

Dali & Film at Tate Modern

It was fab. There is one week left and if you want to catch one event in London this week, it's got to be this. The iPOD Perv and I can also recommend Tas Pide on New Globe Walk for decent, reasonably-priced Anatolian cuisine near the gallery.

At this time of year, the iPOD Perv and I exchange birthday gifts. Two CDs; one good, the other bad. He got me 'The Best of Blue Mink' (good CD) and 'The Ethel Merman Disco Album' (take a guess, sharp-ass - she sounds like a drunken drag artist on a bad acid trip).

I'm getting him the latest 'Go Team!' album (good CD) and have an ace up my sleeve for the extra-shitty disc - but I won't reveal it yet.