Chapter 139

I woke up at 6 on the dot and put some classical music on. Mahler I think, I usually just open a huge folder I downloaded and choose a compositer at random. I started my day slowly, made some tea, did a quick 15-minute yoga session and went to work.

I don’t remember doing anything. The students were gone to an exam so I sat in the office and listened to some good ol’ death metal. Connaisseurs of the genre (no, I’m not going to fucken spell it connoisseur, I’m not retorded) know about the signature sounds from the early 90s, back when regional bands influenced one another much more than nowadays and there was much slower spreading of ideas: the Stockholm sound, the Long Island sound, the Florida sound, to name the most important and influential. But there was also a Finnish scene, with a very distinctive vibe and aesthetics, including a lot of doom elements into their molasses-heavy death metal, and for some reason these great bands made a much smaller splash and are underappreciated nowadays. A friend posted a link to one album from that era, World Without God by Convulse, and it was superb. I then blind-clicked on an album by Purtenance, who also turned out to be a Finnish band from the 90s, and it was a much more chaotic and lofi affair but very enjoyable, it’s DEATH metal we’re talking about here. I rounded up a great session of dissonant aggressive music with an EP and a LP by Cruciamentum, British band that plays some old-school shit despite being formed in 2007.

I had a 40-minute invigilation shift, in the middle of a two-hour math exam. I walked around, peeking at the problems the students were working on. It might as well have been ancient Armenian. I did all that shit 15 or 20 years ago, trigonometry, calculus, statistics, and managed decently enough, now the only math I can do is simple algebra.

I got home, reheated some R n’ S, topped it with two fried eggs, and ate while watching the second part of the documentary about Mike Perry, the rather unstable UFC fighter. As a fan of combat sports, you have to contend with the ethical dilemma of admiring athletes who can be deep down violent thugs and not very good people, and also, while the disciplined and brutally humbling nature of the sport can be a great way for them to release their violent impulses in a productive (or at least, not destructive) way, there’s also the not-yet-fully-understood issue of brain damage and how it can make it worst. At times it feels it’s not a question of if, but when, a Chris Benoit incident would plunge the UFC into a PR nightmare.

I hadn’t taken the dog out in the morning, so I took him for a stroll before going back to work. Again, I sat around reading and writing and listening to music, there were two new black metal releases by Wormlight and Seth that were OK but nothing terribly memorable. I read the 90s underground magazine Answer Me!, there were interviews with people from all over the spectrum of the seedy underbelly of society and culture: a KKK member turned politician (the name, David Duke, vaguely rang a bell, I looked him up, he’s still active today), a porn magazine editorialist, the Geto Boys, a completely off-the-rails metal musician named El Duce, frontman of The Mentors. I looked up their music, it got a cult status apparently but I’d never heard of them. I found it to be OK, some sleazy 80s rock with lyrics that must have been shocking then but I heard way worse since.

I was so bored I looked desperately for ways to busy myself, and ended up cleaning my USB key and the folders on my hard drive where I keep my teaching materials. Once in a while it’s a good idea to do this, and to make back-ups.

I got home, took a quick nap and went to practice BJJ. I’m about evenly matched with the British white belt, or at least once in a while I manage to capitalize on one of his mistakes. In a weird spazzy clumsy white belt scramble, I sank a d’arce choke, not sure if it was technically sound but it did the trick and he tapped. Between two 5-minute rounds, one of the kickboxing coaches summoned me to the boss’s office, it felt ominous, like being called to see the principal as a school kid. He invited me to sit across from his beautifully carved tea table, offered me a cigarette, and asked if I have time in the evenings to teach English to his friend’s child. A pretty common thing to be asked as a resident laowai, plenty have little side hustles like that and it can get pretty lucrative, but I’m not that interested, money is plentiful these days and I like my free time. Plus, it’s illegal, which is the reason I gave him for politely declining. In the past it felt like it was way more of a “don’t ask don’t tell” situation, but recently there has been crackdowns on out-of-contract employment and I know more than a few guys who spent a few days in jail as a result.

When I went back on the mat, the guys (and girls) were done, sitting around eating pineapple and honeydew melon slices. I had one or two more rounds left in me but that’s fine, it was a good session.

I rode home in shitty heavy rain, thankfully it was only a 10-minute ride. I cracked open a beer, showered, threw my rags in the laundry and ate a big dinner while watching a documentary on the 30 Years War, that was a particularly brutal one and I’m still slowly wrapping my mind around that complicated conflict.