As The Fontanians launch date draws nearer I can’t help but intertwine the impending success or failure of the site with the success or failure of myself as a human being. Which is wrong, I know. But knowing something cerebrally and believing it in the core of your being are two such very different things. And only the latter really matters.

I feel invisible sometimes. Like I need to roar to be seen. Like I need to strip to be heard. Like someone scraped away every layer of my power and left me raw and impotent. Like people feel they have to sympathize with me when I tell them where I’m from. Like it’s not enough to just say “I’m Zimbabwean” anymore. You have to say “I’m Zimbabwean but…”. Without that disclaimer, they’ll see you as either a pauper or plunderer. A rapist or a victim. Black or white. No more shades of grey.

But I’m Zimbabwean, and I am grey.

So, somehow, I have to focus on the power that I have – writing – and I have to leverage it the best way I know how – online – and I have to shout and scream and beat my chest as loud and long and hard as I can. Until they see me.

I am Zimbabwean and I am grey. And I am more powerful than you give me credit for, World.

Unless it all goes horribly wrong. In which case this could be a little bit catastrophic.

But, no pressure. Me and my big mouth.

Good luck, Me.

From time to time, me and my friend J wonder out loud to each other why we are not rich.  We are smart, single, hard working and ambitious.  So it’s a bit of a conundrum.  I should be able to swim in a ten-foot deep pool of the cash gleaned from my blood, sweat and tears over the last year alone.  Yet, in reality, financial freedom, in the truest sense of the term, is as far away now as it has ever been.

We’ve figured out why J isn’t loaded.  And I don’t guess she’ll thank me for blurting it out here, so…

Me? I’m apparently too much “creativity” – not enough “business”. Which I guess is kind of true.  I’m not enough of a hardass when it comes to chasing down forfeited payments.  Though, that has only happened to me once – one jerk – based in country X – for whom I wrote copious amounts of copy, which he then proceeded to pervert with his special brand of idiot-speak so that I had to rewrite it all over again.  And then, after I had done that, he extended the scope of the project by about 50% and I, stupidly, didn’t ask for more money up front.    In the end, he didn’t even refuse to pay, he just said “I’m really busy right now” to the two follow-up emails I sent and ignored my phone call when I rang.  I decided that I wasn’t that hard up for the outstanding x quid, so I let it go.  Wanker.  Luckily, I am not a girl who holds a grudge.

It always seems so rude to ask for x% up front, doesn’t it?  Don’t get me wrong, I do it, but I feel like I’m saying: “Good luck trying to screw me over, Buddy.  I’ve got your number.”

So this month, I have had another epiphany for the rest of my life.  One that means I will not see another weekend until Christmas.  One which means that every day between now and December 25 has already been accounted for and I am going to have to spend my “free time” hunkered down writing “letters of motivation” and résumés and “personal statements” and scouring the globe for people who will put me through school without me having to pledge my firstborn child to them.

Since the universe has failed to deliver my iPhone, I have decided on a combination of fervent prayer, finger-crossing, interminably long sleepless nights and caffeine.  That sounds like a cocktail for success, if ever there was one.

So I had a bit of a setback on the weekend.  I’m not sure I really want to elaborate on that because once I did elaborate on a blog – stupidly – and it totally came back to bite me in the rear.  Which was pretty unfun.  This was a while ago.  Back in my 20s.  Which I am now referring to as “The Lost Years”.  So let’s just call it Setback X.  “Setback” because that’s what it was.  And “X” because it’s a mystery.  Yeah.

And it made me think about patterns we repeat.  I am such a pattern repeater.  If there is a sure thing in Irisjumbania, that tiny island in the sea of shared experiences, it’s that if it is bad for me, I want it.   That’s pretty much a given.

So I was thinking about breaking patterns and doing something different and doing something that actually matters and making a difference to someone else’s existence other than my own and trying to be a big picture thinker rather than an insular navel gazer.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while.  A couple of months ago, I came up with a plan.  A good plan which involved me and Persons A, B and C.

But here’s the thing about plans: when it comes to actually getting stuff done: it is hard.  No-one tells you that when you are at the conceptualizing stage.  Concept: fun.  Implementation: draaaaag.

When the idea was in its very embryonic stages, I spent days and days writing proposals and contacting people, and coding everything into pretty, multi-colored html and getting the key players on board. And then when it came time to put it into play, to roll up sleeves and get on with it, if felt like there was suddenly this massively impenetrable wall in front of me.  Like in Langston Hughes’ As I Grew Older:

And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky–
The wall

The wall really threw me.  I didn’t see it coming and I wasn’t really in a climbing frame of mind.

So now I’m left with two choices – jack it in so that 10 years from now I can wistfully muse: Whatever happened to that good idea I once had?  Whatever happened to that thing-doer I always wanted to become?

Or … get on with it and find a way to climb or dismantle or circumvent the wall.  Because there has to be one, right?  I like to think there is.   I just have to figure it out.  Let’s go, Brain.

“Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.”

Remorse, regret.  To err, to do nothing.  Potayto, potahto.  I agree with you, Mr. Rochester.

Dear World

So this is where we are right now:

In the red corner: Kanye West interrupts the insipid acceptance speech of some spotty-faced teenager accepting an award for a video she neither conceptualized nor directed nor produced.  Taylor Swift.  As in an adjective randomly tacked on to the end of a surname? Like “Barnes Hungry” or “Davies Oblique”? Ok.

In the blue corner is a 12-year old girl – some dirty old molester’s “bride” – who died during excruciating childbirth after 36 hours of labor. This CNN article says she “struggled for three days in labor, before dying of severe bleeding…”. At 12.

• One of these stories should make us want to writhe and rail against a reality that is completely unacceptable.
• One of these stories should make us want to claw our way to the nearest mountain top, or at the very least, leap up onto our Twitter high horses, to scream our outraged revulsion.
• One of these stories should make us want to accuse and point angry fingers and wish this irreversible injustice into non-existence so that a young girl could get another chance.

And, according to my newsfeed, one of these stories did.

Not that outrage or wishing or mountain-top screaming ever made the blindest bit of difference to anyone.  In the end, it’s all just impotent noise, I know.

But still, a little bit of posturing and a couple of vacant platitudes would be so comforting right now.  If only to confirm that there hasn’t been a total disconnect.   I mean, what on earth is going on when everyone from Barack Obama to…whoever is on the opposite end of the “magnitude spectrum” will weigh in on this Kanye/Swift drivel but kids are being raped and their little bodies are buckling under the strain of a burden they should never have to bear yet no-one’s got anything to say about that?

Nothing like waking up to bit of oblivious narcissism in the morning.  I need a new newsfeed.  

Love

Angry Girl (Glad she’s got a blog because she’ll never be able to afford therapy)

Ok, here is where I am right now.  I have an idea.  I think it’s spectacular.  But I’m also worried it might really not be.  Because if it was truly extraordinary, why wouldn’t anyone else have though of it?  But I do.   Think it’s spectacular.  Good job, brain!  I’ve looked around and it doesn’t seem like something that anyone else is doing.  Which is mad.  But, just so that I don’t oversell it, it’s not like I’ve just reinvented Velcro.  Velcro…that was brilliant.  My idea may not quite be of those proportions but it’s still something I’m pretty jazzed about.

It’s really hard to sleep in this weather.  All this waking up drenched in frustration and this sticky wet heat.  But since my big epiphany – about four nights ago – I’m up at about three each morning jotting away all the tiny little cogs that will make this big wheel roll.   Many, many cogs.

I am so fracking excited!

It’s a little bit ridiculous.  I wonder if somewhere in a parallel universe – or perhaps even in this one – someone else has had the same idea and they are about to beat me to the punch.

That would be…disappointing.

But, good to know the old creative juices – they are a-flowing.  It’s not going to make me rich.  In fact, it’ll cost me money at the outset.  But, I get to do it with  people I love and trust.  And we get to actually make a difference.  Rather than just talk about making a difference.

I’m tired of talking about making a difference.

Here’s what I would like.  For those expats who send out endless tweets about how they are singlehandedly bridging the gap between China and the West to get over themselves.  Right.  Over.  Their.  Deluded.  Selves.

I don’t think your swilling cocktails for 100RMB a pop at Pretentious Bar X is doing anything to bridge the intercultural divide and the fact that you’ve managed to convince yourself that it does, explains a lot about how people get sucked into joining cults and  jumping off buildings in the belief that the Great Grand Wizard will grow them a pair of wings before they land.

Last week, I thought about joining a volunteer organization. Truth be told, volunteering is not something that comes naturally to me.  Usually, I kinda have to know you before I am inclined to help you.

But I need to store up some major credit with God right now.  I need him to do me a huuuuuge solid and I figure that if I start volunteering, and giving back a little bit, he’ll be more predisposed to helping me out.  Yes, of course that’s how it works.

The logistics are still a nightmare and it may or may not be something I end up doing – we’ll have to see.  But it did make me think.

In the very unlikely event that I am ever asked to write a book on how to bridge the  Sino-Western Gap, you can expect just two, pithy chapters.

Step 1.    Stop fricking talking about it all the time.  It is tedious.

Step 2.    It’s not “helping” if you’re the only one who’s benefiting

On that note, here are some organizations in this smoggy, we’ll-catch-up-with-the-West-in-no-time-even-if-it-kills-you-us city that could probably do with a little help:

• BEAN Shanghai
• Project Hope
• Shanghai Red Cross
• Hands on Shanghai
• Shanghai Disabled People’s Federation
• Lifeline Shanghai

“A **** company in **** district of ****, is looking for native English copywrites to write copy for *****”

That sounds so like me!

“…The candidate should come from England, the USA, New Zealand, Canada, or Australia.”

Ah, not so much, then. It’s the last sentence that really makes my heart sing. Because they’re saying No darkies, basically. Which is fine by me, China. Honestly. Despite the fact that I am blogging about it. Doesn’t mean that I have a problem with your blatant discrimination or the fact that you assume someone with a light skin or a certain color passport is automatically more competent or superior. I mean, have you seen my people on the dance floor? Or do you just watch us swim?

I wonder what’d happen if only a bunch a bunch of Maoris, Aborigines, Native Americans, Black Brits and Black Americans applied. But China, join us in the 21st century some time. The water’s mighty fine. Wait, what century is this? It is the 21st one, right? Or is it the 22nd? Certainly not still the 20th – feels like that one’s been going on forever!

Ties in nicely with what my sister was saying about education in the West. I remember learning how to give speeches, spell words like rhododendron, miscellany and diarrhoea as well as how and when to use a semi-colon*** by the time I was 11 years old. And that was considered normal in deep dark Africa where dangly-breasted women shun bras and apparently eat their own children.

Now you see kids (and grown ups) in certain countries using words like “carn’t” and “lyk” without even a smidgen of irony. But these are the people that make the “Preferential Candidate” list because their passports are pretty.

Though, to be fair: my passport is pretty minging. Bottle green, Zimbabwe. What were you thinking?

***The best way to use a semicolon is…sparingly.

I’m brushing up on my very ropey audio editing skills (and video eventually) for some projects I have coming up. So a couple of audio blogs this week. The sound quality is not perfect. That’s partly down to the workman. Partly down to his tools.

I’m the workman in this scenario. In case that wasn’t clear.

• Chef Peter Bacon cleared of raping solicitor so drunk she could not remember sex.
• Efforts fail to improve rape conviction rates

Not really sure what the big fuss is about swine flu. Heard someone say today: The world is due a pandemic. Hm, there’s that term again: “The world”. What they really mean is America/Europe. More people die of malaria in Africa than of any other disease. Aids. The Ebola virus. Dengue fever. These are diseases that have killed hundreds of thousands people in dozens of poverty-stricken nations, sometimes even whole continents, for decades. There are people who watch their kids and parents and friends and relatives die pretty much every day. They die slowly. Emaciated and debilitated and shorn of all dignity. And yet some guy in America catches a cold and it’s a global pandemic. Alert “the world”.

This kind of reporting reminds me of when 911 happened and it was supposedly the day “the world” changed. Ask this prisoner in Zimbabwe how freaked out he was by 911 Ask these little girls in India how much the falling of the Twin Towers rocked them to the core. They probably weren’t even born yet but that’s not the point.

I could link all day to images and stories of people who don’t seem to factor into the media’s reckoning of “the world” whenever sensationalism and crisis do their chicken and egg routine. It’s like we live on the same Earth but the experiential divide is so cavernous, so wide and yawning and boundless that it’s not really the same planet at all. There are some people who live underground. Out of sight. And out of mind. Until George Clooney pastes his Colgate smile all over a cause. Or Angelina decides to buy a baby from there. Or Bono decides to go a little “church”, coz you know us Afro types like that, and pretend to give a damn.

My take on swine flu is this: stop freaking out and wash your hands a lot. Oh, and when it’s your turn to go, it’s your turn to go. Embrace that.

If you had to make a list. A list of people you were better than, who would be on it?

Would it be the names of individual people? The names of certain races? Genders? Religious, or anti-religion groups? People of a certain sexual orientation?

Or would you something like: I don’t think I’m better than anyone. We’re all equal. I honestly believe that.

Liar.

I saw this pic in the Telegraph yesterday and it made me wonder a little bit.

It’s not the six-storey house or that someone is getting £100million (eek!) for selling it. The thing that struck me was the policeman standing outside. Does this house, its proprietor, the people in this area, do they have personal, round-the-clock dibs on the police? Do they have 24hr Bobbies at their beck and call to keep the undesirables away. Do they have a special claim to a warm sense of security and a good night’s sleep?

When I lived in London, I never managed to get a policeman stand outside my door. And my area was here the miscreants and ne’er-do-wells thronged. I know people who have called 999 for genuine emergencies and been told that there was no one available to help them. I’ve read articles about citizens who have had to make arrests themselves and detain criminals, sometimes for hours, until official help came. These people didn’t, alas, live in £100 million luxury terraced houses in Belgrave Square.

I wonder about the guy whose house this. I wonder about his lit of people he’s better than. I bet it’s pretty long. I bet pretty much everyone’s name is on it. And can you really blame him, if he gets to buy his own police to babysit his property?