Another Note to You, Dear Reader.

Hello, and thanks for checking into this travel blog bog thingy just now.

For anyone who doesn't know me. Even for those who do. I have a few 'warnings' and, 'excuses' if you like, about the rough 'n' readiness of this blog.

1. Typos galore.
2. Very messy syntax sometimes - you may have noticed. Though some words like 'west' which you may think should be capitalised with a "W" are NOT a mistake. I capitalise things pedantically, as it is a reflection of my mood - at any given moment.*
3. Profanities. Lots of 'em. And expletives. The whole works.**
4. And some of the earlier stuff in India, and even at home in the UK - I just didn't have the bandwidth and/or energy to fill in the missing sentences. So the writing actually 'drops out' mid-sentence, or maybe mid-word. I'm not sure which. Can't remember that far back. Plus, there are some infuriating glitches with the interface of this iPad and Google blogspot that I can't seem to fathom (excuses excuses).
5. If you feel like it, I suggest you go back and read one of the earlier posts which I think explains, in a gentler way than here, how I sometimes use the English language.

That's life, eh? Imperfect.

Lemme tell you. This is a massive turnaround for me. I have suffered from perfectionism all my life - and great secrecy, come to think of it, in terms of the excellent qualities, skills, gifts and talents of my past lives. So, this is partly an exercise in practising new habits, and letting go of some of the bad habits of old ... like presenting myself in a negative light, to tell stories that veer towards the Dark Side. Even in jest, I'm sure that at times I come over as a right old 'Dim-Sumitis' ***. Cute, but miserable little dumpling. Please, if anyone disagrees, put me out of my misery. It's difficult to have a subjective view of oneself, I find.

I hope at the very least I make you laugh, fart, go "Grrrrrrr", smile, roll your eyes in despair - actually, Anything, Any reaction will do. As long as there is a reaction, I feel - it's a good sign that one is not half-dead - don't you think? And that my writing is not a complete and utter crashing bore to read. That is one of my worst fears. To be boring. ****

Also, if you'd like to complain, comment, send me a kiss, or start a debate - please do so in the comment box. And I'll get back to you one way or another. That is, I'll either publish it. Or if you're a complete numpty - you'll get ignored. Autonomous? Ha, yes, call me a mini-dictator, if you like. I was born under a fascist dictatorship, 1961, Taiwan, The Republic of China and proud of it - so what the hell?  Native traditions and 'fascist-signs' run deep. Just like horoscope signs can. If that's your belief system, you're welcome to it. [You know I'm joking about the 'fascist' bit, right? I meant I'm proud to have been born in Taiwan. Made in Taiwan. Only the Best. And proud to be English too.

I'm still trying to find out what my belief systems are. As I have a terrible habit of being fickle, of changing my mind, of sitting on the fence, and generally taking ages to do some of The most important things in life ...

Anyway, whatever you might think of me after all this verbiage - it is clearly none of my business, as I have no control over what others might think.

I am me. And there's fuck all I can do about it.

Once again, thanks for popping in.

Seriously, I mean it.

Enjoy.

Love

Miss Mo xxx

Currently residing in Jin Shan Nan Lu, Section 2, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C., Earth [ooh, that was so tempting to type R.O.C.K. Earth, 'cos we are a rock, pebble, piece of gravel, dust particle, ash ... compared with the rest of the Universe, maaaan.]


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* Besides, I was introduced to syntax quite late in life (mid-'30s) by my former personal tutor, composer, and the then Dr Rhian Samuel (now retired Prof), City University.

Before that, schoolteachers did their best (ish) at the time, but left great gaping holes in my understanding of grammar and syntax. Come to think of it, our Basic Grammar teacher, Mr Rose, was such a bad teacher, I can't remember learning a thing. He had this seriously bad catarrh problem, and had to hawk off-puttingly into a handkerchief every 5 minutes or so. He spoke with a slight speech impediment, and spat regularly on my poor classmates who sat at the front of class. The only thing I took from the torturous two years of Basic Grammar was Christine G. bringing in her brolly to class on a hot summer's day - during the last week of the academic year. The moment Mr Rose opened his mouth, Christine made a fabulous show of opening up her girlie umbrella, right under his nose. And too right! After all the saliva he'd showered on her all those years - it wasn't a moment too soon. I so wanted to applaud her. I'm sure some of us burst out laughing, then were immediately scared by the large, bulging eyes, and hooked-nosed of Mr Mucous Mouth - hushed into a red-faced imploding silence. Christine G - what a legend! As a 13 year old, you gave me one of the best memories of Walpole Grammar.

Let me tell you as a former teacher of UK secondary schools. I was personally abused on a daily basis. Ha, I was even called a 'chink' in a very good state school in Streatham, and a lousy school in Brighton. In fact, the latter has been ranked as one of the worst schools in the UK. I do pick 'em, eh? It was like the clocks had been put on fast-rewind to 40 odd years back. I was attacked physically, and had the classroom piano set on fire. Normal fare for teachers, really, in crappy rundown Music departments. Music departments don't figure in school league tables, so schools simply can't prioritise them in terms of budget and resources. And I was 'unlucky' I guess in terms of the schools I ended up working in. Weak Heads, or meglomaniac ones. Plus, I'm not cut out for full-on state school teaching - not in the UK system, that. Ach. Maybe more on that later, if I can be bothered ... There are plenty of teachers from my cohort at the Institute of Education who are doing brilliantly - notably Tessa A - but I bet the majority have dropped out along the wayside of mainstream teaching ... a well-known fact of life.

Suffice to say, my school days of the late '60s to late '70s were a stark contrast. OK, we were naughty. But respect and good manners towards teachers were still a prerequisite for us schoolkids then. If a teacher was rubbish - and there were plenty of them in those pre-regulation days - then they deserved the hell they got from us, as far as I'm concerned.

Ah, sorry. The memory rewind button went a bit too far there ... Back to City University now and the new arrival of Dr Samuel, formerly of Reading 'Stuffy' University, 1994. I'm referring to their music department at the time. It was very old skool compared with City University.

It was only in my second year (repeated second year) that I discovered I didn't even know some of the basics about syntax until Rhian doggedly picked me up on every single punctuation mark that was out of place. I will be eternally grateful for that. She even took issue with me starting off a sentence once with "Not only". I asked her why there was a red line through this, and how it was grammatically wrong. She had the honesty to simply say: I don't LIKE it. I may've crumpled inside momentarily, because she was a hard task-master. But she was good. Real good.

She showed me great kindness and compassion, and introduced me to Gender Studies in Musicology and made me aware how male hegemony had affected the suppression of Women in Music over the centuries. (She had co-edited the Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, after all). And this eventually led me to gain a place at Oxford to read Gender Studies under the tutelage of the musicologist Roger Parker. However, after one meeting with the tutor - I immediately sensed in his flamboyant demeanor, that there might be trouble ahead. I had met and worked for plenty camp, emotionally bitter and twisted types in BBC Television. I didn't want to put myself through that in an academic context too. I could see a devilish, maverick twinkle in his eyes - which I didn't quite trust.

After that meeting with the then Dr Parker, and the one introductory 'lecture' in the post-graduate music department - I found myself getting into my battered old Astra Estate and driving, eastwards on the M40. Foot almost flat on the floor and wringing an impressive 115 mph out of a 15 year old Vauxhall engine, when traffic conditions allowed, towards the safety and sanity of my own den in The Borough, SE1, central London. Fuck that for laugh, I thought. Oxford University, the genuinely lovely, friendly Yah-kids and buxom English Roses in the Post-Grad Common Room, Worcester College -  coupled with the fustiness of the oak-panelled meeting room which the music department had hired that day; the tweed jackets with elbow patches - worn un-ironically; the young, yet musty and out-dated European-privileged were not for me. It was like walking into a staid and washed-out anaemic version of 'The Love Story' that had been in suspended animation for about 30 odd years. I was even looking for cobwebs on the people around me, and in the corners of the room. I am not exaggerating. Any Walpole Grammar/Elthorne High contemporary of mine would've felt equally ill at ease, I'm sure.

I'd already forked out about GBP 60 - a not insubstantial sum back in 1997 - just to hire a flippin' gown, mortarboard, thin back ribbon - just so I could shake hands with the gigantically mumsy Dean of Worcester College. For the bought honour to sign my name in the College register. For said Larson Lady to shake my sweaty palm, and present me with a 3-inch thick College rule book that I could've done some serious weight-training with. One quick scan of it under the "Essential things to do to get your Masters" chapter: Attend 4 compulsory dinners in the Banquet Hall and pay GBP 25 for the privilege of getting some dreadful food. Never mind if you complete all your papers, sit all your exams, AND get a First for them all. No, you don't get your Masters unless you pay the college, what for me was, a huge sum of money. [What a feckin' liberty!!] Money money money makes the collegiate system go round. Me, naive? Course I was. I am still very naive about some of the most glaringly-obvious things in life ... strange that, huh?

To a Comprehensive-educated, first-generation immigrant the whole shebang felt wrong - very wrong. I felt out of place and choked in the hallowed medieval confines of some moth-balled cloister of smelly Oxford University. More importantly, I couldn't bear or justify adding at least a further £15,000 of debt - I'm talking 1997 money) to my already scary student loan. And what was I to do after a Masters anyway? Have a full-on academic wank? Leave it out. I needed to do something to pay the bills, and pay off the first student debt. Bye bye Oxford.


**One old classmate of mine has described the content as "scatological". Here's a non-ironic, and heartfelt 'Thanks' for that, because I'd forgotten about that word. However, the pedant in me feels compelled to point out that in the context in which you used it, i.e. in the C-word post, is incorrect.  That fine word you used relates to excrement, and/or an obsession with it. I can be that if you wish. Strangely enough, I have been wondering whether to go that far in this blog bog thingy, or not, as it happens. So maybe you have given me the final push (pardon the pun) to quite literally, have a literary dump. By Jove, JK, what a brilliant inspiration you have been to me. I mean it. You have been only the Third Man (and person) to have bothered leaving me a comment in this whole time. And that means a lot to me, Comrade.

*** The former BBC TV Drama Series & Serials producer, Caroline Oulton, used to call me Dim Sum-itis, when I had the fucking dire experience of working there in 1987-89. 

Colin Rogers - what a closet-gay numpty! Oh, and that Jonathan Powell who humiliated me during my work performance review - after all the slaving I did for your bum chums George Gallaccio & Rogers. You were all having a right old momentary titter at my expense, weren't ya? Thanks for that. I hope it made you feel even more powerful than you already were. Did you enjoy that, Powell? I hope you and your broadcast meedjah dick-waggling ways as the Thin Controller of BBC1 afterwards made you more of a steamin', chuggin' plonker than you were as the Almighty Head of BBC Television Series & Serials. So good luck to you. If that was your thang. Fair play to you all. To me, it was just tellyvidge. Such a low form of 'art'. One that I couldn't get that excited about. Plus, I didn't know the right people, or go to the right University. [Christ, I hope that after exorcising all these ancient memories for the first time, I'll be able to Om-out and breathe renewal into my system ...].And thinking back, I reckon that my 'buried' disdain for the industry probably had a funny way of showing, through the chinks of my little Dimsumitis skin.

Err, sorry. Back to the lovely Caroline Oulton.

Whenever she greeted me with this name, I never used to bat an eyelid. I thought it was a term of endearment! Little did I realise that she was being a cheeky little so-and-so. She was nice. I mean it. English, gentlewoman, seriously gifted and talented, slightly eccentric in that whiz-kiddie kind of way, and very quick-witted. She was a real wunderkind back in those days. A great Cambridge degree, one of Alan Yentob's protegees at the time -  along with my soon-to-be boss, Michael Jackson. I believe - though this is from unresearched (ok, I just made up that word) memory - so don't quote me just yet, they were among two of the Bright Young BBC Things that Yentob felt could freshen up the BBC. Bring some new, young blood into an artery-hardened clunky old beast. While Caroline Oulton championed new scripts by women, directed by women - Michael Jackson pioneered a Brave New World of live daily TV arts programming - The Late Show. These young kids were promoted quickly into positions of enormous cathode-ray power, back in the day. Incidentally, I was headhunted to work for Michael Jackson. No disrespect, Michael, but you were a bit of a social freak at the time, no? You were very tightly-wound, and I did pamper your every whim. I just yes sir'ed and no sir'ed all the way through my dreadful BBC TV career. Just like the obeisant Chinese female I felt I ought to be ... Still, I can now acknowledge that I was actually sought out to work for you because no other Production PA had lasted more than a week, you were that difficult. So I can now breathe on my fingernails, and polish them on my tee-shirt with pride. I wonder where you are now? Heard that after being the Chief Exec of Channel Four, you buzzed off to LA donkey's years ago ...?

**** On reflection, maybe 'boring' is exactly what the doctor might order. Like, maybe accepting that I'm no spring chicken any more, and that it might be a good idea to stop running around like a headless one? Like, less risk-taking when it comes to intake of drugs. Less bamboo-caning it on chemicals - both pharmaceutical and illicit - and booze, and ciggies and, and, and ... Goddam, that sounds sooooo boring already. Zzzzzzz.

***** Funny how a brand name has entered the English language as an actual verb. Pretty annoying and impressive in equal measures, if you ask me. Though it's quite old hat now. The transitive verb, to google, according to Wiki, entered the OED on June 15, 2006. It's a bit like how we might say in England: 'Oh, jolly dee. It gives one such joy and happiness to hoover every morning ...'.