National pride and other such malarkey

The six nations rugby has started again in earnest, and with that came a horrendous shift in the kitchen. Being a bar monkey, usually that means dealing with pissed up men from various parts of the world shouting at the top of their lungs about how much better their team is, but this shift was different. Instead of the black shirt and black jeans I donned chef whites and sweated my bollocks off with the the boys from upstairs making a hundred plus (it's a smallish place, believe me, that's good, and there are only four people cooking) meals and side dishes. This has resulted in me having more sympathy with the kitchen staff; the bar staff tend to ignore them a lot and thus mistakes happen and food stays in the lift longer than it should, and we get more impatient with them than we should, because now I know precisely how long each meal takes to make or prepare.

This gave me enough time to think about the important things in life, such as the issue of national pride. Where does it come from? Why is it such a huge deal to people? I have found that having been in both Wales and the US that these two peoples, despite being such huge polar opposites do share one common trait: They are insanely proud of where they come from.

Now don't get me wrong, I do suffer from the national pride disease myself. When I was in Vegas, I loved people telling me that they loved my British accent, and that I was so polite and well spoken. I'd ham it up a bit, obviously; "Well, it's just the way they bring us up; Stiff upper lip, tea in the afternoon and old fashioned chivalry!" and after I was done, some people thought I rode a horse on sumptuous grounds killing time until I had tea with the Queen again. But I don't get mortally offended if someone mistakes me as Welsh (and the Welsh will hamstring you if you ever accidentally call them English), and though it amuses me, being mistaken for Scottish or Irish doesn't make me mad. They're all in the same area, largely speak the same language and have their own histories and cultural diversity. But the Welsh, especially the Welsh have a huge chip on their shoulder regarding the English. This bad blood is a few hundred years old now, and the Welsh are not alone in their ancestral dislike; The Scottish and the Irish have their own reasons for hating the English. Take it for granted when I say it would require more space and time to explain it than I have here.

Now, even if I think it's pointless, I accept and understand why our three brothers in the British Isles don't like the English; We have a bit of a bad history. But that isn't who we are now. The most you could accuse us of nowadays is arrogance and a low level xenophobia, which is a trait all four nations of the British Isles share. It's a little like hating Germany for World War II. It was over sixty years ago, and a lot of the people who fought or were responsible for it are dead now. What's the point? No, if you're going to hate anyone, hate the current crop of Neo Nazi's springing up all over Europe, or hate the French because of their unshakeable superiority complex and very well hidden racism. Don't hate the English because we were bad a few hundred years ago and think we're snooty.

I know that those comments in Wales would certainly get me beaten up, but I'm not bothered. I'm half English, and Half Filipino. That actually entitles me to hate the whole world, because there are only twelve nations on Earth that haven't occupied the Philippines at some point. Even the Welsh aren't innocent of it. They had a colony on Luzon that kept local SLAVES. It doesn't get mentioned in Welsh, English or International History books or History articles because the Philippines isn't important enough, and the Welsh are strangely silent on that period of their history. Pot, kettle, black?

And, if you're going to talk about the question of national pride, leave the politics at the door of the stadium, Millennium or otherwise; Rugby's only a game. Just over twenty people get onto a pitch and chase a bag of air for eighty minutes and thump each other about. No one dies, no new laws get passed and apart from ground on the pitch, there is no territorial ambition. CHILL THE FUCK OUT! "That's for the last hundred years you English pricks!" Shall I call your Filipino slave boy to mop your brow for you Rhodri? No? Then sit down and enjoy the game. This is where getting a bit too het up about where you crawled out of your mother gets you:

http://www.bnp.org.uk/

Don't stay there too long. Your brain will rot.

The idiocy of customers

Not such a happy post today... or I suppose technically it is now tomorrow... I have extremely odd hours because of my job (I work in one of the latest opening bars in Cardiff, and it's extremely popular. In fact, it's far too popular for its own good), and as such, I have adopted the philosophy that it doesn't officially count as night time until you go to sleep. Even if it's daylight outside.

The pic? The reason that Beavis and Butthead are opening up our visual delights is because I've been reminded several times today that people in general when they are going about their daily routine are idiots; Selfish, thoughtless, rude and totally unwilling to engage their brain for just one second. Those of us in the service industry know exactly what I'm talking about, and the problem is especially worse in bars or restaurants; Here's a little sample of the breathtaking levels of customers not always being right, and in some instances, just being plain weird. I've bee a big fan of waiterrant for quite some time now, because it's a well written and entertaining blog, and quite literally, you could not make up some of the stuff I've read on there...

http://waiterrant.net/?p=353

Today I've had to deal with phone calls from people with the most horrendously stupid questions; I've had to deal with a woman telling me that I really shouldn't be working in a bar, because "...not everyone is ok with a bartender who is so obviously an ethnic minority,"; I've had delivery men whose grasp of how invoices work is much less that basic, but most of all, I've had rudeness. And lots of it.

"Two vodka and cokes, yeah? Sort it now, mate."

"What the FUCK? What THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN THERE'S NO STELLA?"

"I'm not paying it. I don't care how old the brandy is, I'm not paying £3.50 for a fucking brandy and coke." (after pointing out that said drink would be taken away from him if he did not in fact pay, I was threatened with LEGAL ACTION. Over a fucking drink).

"What's all this 'sir' business? Are you taking the piss?" (This one I really don't get. So many people seem to really lose their rags with me when I'm being ultra polite, and respectful. I work in the sort of place where saying 'sir' is necessary. The last time I called someone 'mate,' the customer complained and I got my arse dragged to the office for a stern warning that these are not our mates, but our "guests and customers." We're supposed to be serving them, not being friendly or familiar."

Go figure.

In a way, customer service is a lot like babysitting; You are paid to look after a bunch of people and keep them happy and largely out of harms way (or at least a pub with less smooth edges). The only difference is that you do this in bars with intoxicants, and they pay you directly for your services, rather than their parents.

Despite desperately needing a drink after today, i decided that the best thing for me to do would be to head straight home and let my brain turn to mush; I successfully managed this with a combination of web comics like Questionable Content ( http://questionablecontent.net/... and the more astute of you will have noticed that my avatar is that of Marten Reed... who is something of a personal hero of mine despite being a fictional character) and Stumble Upon for mains, and for dessert I rounded it off with some Wii related frustration on Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and Super Mario Galaxy.

Customers suck. They really do. And they suck worse because all of them are smart enough to know that without them, no one gets paid.

If you need any more proof of that, then here's one more place to check

http://notalwaysright.com/

And the ball begins to roll!!

Hello all, and welcome to the official blog of the band Kalmar. It took me long enough to set everything up, and after a few hours of tearing my hair out and cursing the general refusal of machines to do their masters bidding, I finally got this up and running with everything verified. So now that my blood pressure is drastically falling, I thought I'd introduce myself, and ourselves (the band that is...)

Jools: Yeah, that'd be me. I'm the guitarist and main vocalist for Kalmar. I play an Ibanez s370 and use a Marshall 100watt DFX amp. It's a little on the small side but seems to do the job. Guitar wise, I'm mostly metal influenced (though probably not technically as good as a metal guitarist per se), and favourite bands with regards to inspiration writing wise are people like Jesper Stromblad from In Flames for sheer technical ability, and Paul Townsend formerly of Hundred Reasons because of the cavernous sounds he manages to achieve.

Recently, I've been experimenting with the idea of metal that sounds Happy... that is, still maintains the power and aggression of heavy metal along with the technical proficiency, but ending mostly in major chord structures (the happy sounds) and lyrically dealing with happier themes, such as defiance, and being satisfied with the person you are despite others telling you you shouldn't be.

Mike: Looking nice and festive is our bassist Mike. A veteran of the Cardiff music scene, Mike has been there, done that, gotten the T-shirt. What he doesn't know about being a musician in a band is probably not worth knowing. He has more of a classical understanding of songwriting and has an uncanny ability to herd in all of the wild ideas we have into something approaching credible pieces of music.
He plays a Stagg 5 string, and uses a Behringer 450watt bass head/cab combo.
He's also one of the two musicians in the band that own a car. Which of course makes him invaluable.

Coren: Because our drummer is a pain in the arse and does not like having his photo taken, we used the worst picture we could find of him. And this is it.
His drumming style shows heavy influences of Incubus and Finch, so he's very well rounded for playing harder rock stylings, but his high hat work is extremely crisp which is something that can be missing from a lot of rock and metal drummers.
He plays a Pearl Export custom kit with Zildjian Z series cymbals. It's a basic setup, but extremely effective.

When it comes to actually playing music, it's a very weird mixture of attacking something brand new and retreading old ground. We were all in a band together before Kalmar called Girl13, and we did achieve a modest amount of notoriety, but because of a few periods of upheaval and an almost revolving door lineup, we never seemed quite able to break through the glass ceiling and transform ourselves into a famous band with a record deal rather than local band that nearly did it. It's safe to say that all of us are a bit tired of the same old routine, so we're going to be actively striving for ways to get to that next step rather than hoping that something will magically fall into our laps.

We are Kalmar. And we're pleased to meet you.