Tag: hangover

Dare To Dream Naysayer

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Here is something to amuse you on this cold November morning while you suffer from your Full Moon Halloween induced hangover. It turns out there is such a thing as linesman watch. That probably makes no sense to you, and for those who don’t know, a linesman is the person who runs along the touchline in either football, rugby or such thing and indicates whether the ball is out. Bizarrely it turns out one has become a celebrity for all the right reason recently, or at least the amusing reasons. Scottish football team Inverness Caledonian Thistle decided to replace human operated cameras with AI ones but it backfired when the AI system mistook the linesman’s bald head for the football. Only in Scotland.

While AI may stoke the fear of Terminator in you we discover the more amusing realities of a technology evidently still in it’s infancy. It is clear though how much technology is going to affect the way we work and the jobs we have. I’m no luddite, although I am cautious, but I do believe technology has the potential to set us free. It’s not work that’ll do this, it’s quite the opposite. Mass employment is not the answer but neither is capitalism’s quest for infinite profit. It offers up the possibility that we will likely in the next ten years either have to create an entire new sector of work, likely more than one, or find a way to allow people to work less and yet keep this standard of living.

It’s not impossible for people for work four or five hours a day, sharing what jobs remain. It would mean the entire redrawing of society as it would be impossible for people to continue to hoard the wealth. It would likely mean the unthinkable that things would need to be shared at little, less profits would have to be made. Maybe the concept of a profit driven society would be replaced with a people centre one. Perhaps I’m some kind of utopian idealist dreamer but we need dreams to make anything previously thought impossible possible. Throughout history the previously impossible has been made possible. Humans have proved in the past they are capable of compassion, they don’t only want to screw each over. No extreme one way or another is either desirable or realistic but perhaps a redrawing of the balance is about due. We are very capable. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise, it’s likely not in their benefit or they simply have no imagination. Let’s start imagining.

The Yin Yang Brewery

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The beer didn’t brew properly. It is unclear at which point it went wrong but certainly it didn’t carbonate although I doubt that was all. In two bottles I used honey instead of the sugar they provided and they nearly exploded when I opened them, although they still tasted like shit. It is possible that the beer wasn’t kept warm enough, the instructions that came with it suggested keeping it at 18-20 degrees but I found things online suggesting 20-22 degrees so that may have been an issue. I also didn’t properly use the little oxygen / carbon dioxide thing, which has a proper name that I can’t remember, but which you put in the little hole at the top of the fermenting barrel. There were no instructions on it with the brewing kit as a whole so I just put it in place but discovered halfway through the brewing process that it was supposed to have either distilled water or some spirit to help filter the air going in and out. I put whisky in it but it may have been too late. I did notice on about day two that something had happened with the fermentation process and it seemed like it had risen pretty high so maybe that thing without liquid was an issue. Saying that it did ferment I think because the barrel was full of yeasty dough like gunk at the bottom so something happened.

Clearly then it could have been many things but what I am left with now is this sickly liquid, not thick like syrup but it seems as if it would like to become so. The two bottles which I used honey as the sugar are now gone, one partly over the wall, sink and table top as I opened it and the rest in my belly. There was one bottle which seemed to carbonate slightly using the sugar they gave, that is also now drunk as is one of the sickly sugary bottles that didn’t work. I suspect then that the rest will be going straight down the drain which is a terrible shame but the inevitable conclusion to a failed attempt.

Is this the end of my beer making career, most likely not but that will probably be down to whether I view it as an obstacle in the road or an experience to learn more, which would ultimately make it a success. That then would be the lesson we could learn from every situation that doesn’t work out as we had initially thought and hoped it would. These moments are not failures, but opportunities, now you know more about what you are trying to achieve and yourself in the the process. What a wonderful opportunity failure is, why do we not see it for the balancing yin and yang that it is and as some bad negative thing. It will only ever be how we view it and that is the one thing we at least have control over.

A

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A funny thing Football is. There’s a part of me that views it as my dirty little secret when I’m trying to pretend I’m some kind of intellectual cultured traveller. This is less of a thing these days but undeniably I barely talked football when I ran around as a little hippy activist back in the day. Seemingly the worlds we move in through life change, or a better word may be evolve, and if we’re making the effort to live life not necessarily to the full, but realistically at atleast seventy to eighty percent then it’s not unreasonable to imagine we move throughout a few worlds within our lifetimes.

I wonder if it’s even possible to fully know the world you’re currently inhabiting. Maybe that’s also a ridiculous statement as its probably quite obvious sometimes, but more that if you’re experiencing life in a way in which you’re not thinking too much about who you are or your image within such a world then there’s a chance you just exist. It could be a case of embracing and being true to the moment or some such thing.

I just re-read that last paragraph and now might be a good time to mention I’m struggling with an horrendous hangover, rambling mindlessly without any kind of point in sight. In regards to my ability to write with a stinker of a hangover though I think I have improved from my last effort about a month ago when it took me about three days to write anything coherent again and even then coherent may be a little generous. That’s one of the things this blog is though, some self indulgent observations of course, but for a large chunk it was and still is about the experiment of writing for a year everyday and what that means in various real situations. This hangover while driving back to Scotland is very much then another real situation in which I attempt to write something you may actually want to read. Saying all that, it’s probably not the most interesting thing I’ll ever write.

I’m on the boat across the Irish Sea at the moment, just watched some film about bird watchers. It was alright but I can see why I’ve never heard of it before. The point being though that they found themselves in Alaska at one point and I remembered how much I want to sail around some crazy remote northern or southern areas. I nearly went on a trip last year to Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America with this crazy eighty old Alaskan. In the end I dropped out because his engine looked a long way from ever working and he talked too much. Antarctica, Alaska, the Arctic…all the best places seem to begin with an A

Dublin

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

You’ll never believe it but I’ve got a hangover. Drank a few too many Guinness and red wines. The Guinness in this country really is smooth it’s undeniable and despite the hangover I’m actually looking forward to some more. I went with a couple of my cousins on a little racing bike around Dublin today which probably helped me sweat out some of the alcohol. Dublin is not necessarily bike friendly but it’s not too difficult and dangerous to get around in the centre of town. I know how useless I am on racing bikes, especially in crocs which don’t fit well into those little peddle holder things but I survived. Also spent most of the time thinking it was a one gear bike, which is wasn’t, but meant I got a real workout on the cobbled streets. It is a beautiful city though, some lovely old building and a hell of a lot of interesting looking pubs.

There is probably a little too much of a worring trend in what some call progress as they build flats everywhere though. It’s strange how people who run the city seem to think the place needs an infinite amount of hotels and flats, and that they can repossess these old buildings with history and character, and not lose the very character that makes the place desirable in the first place. We passed an old market which is the most beautiful building and which is now going to be turned into some commercial shopping centre. Or the oldest horse market in Ireland, which I remember going to as a child, being closed down because the owners of all the big hotels and office buildings recently built around it started putting in complaints. How will these things benefit the city, it’s people and those who want to visit interesting culturally renowned places. We know who it benefits and it’s depressing. People consciously make decisions which will be to the detriment of their hometowns just to line their own pockets. I guess it comes down to priorities and perspectives, I know mine.

With that in mind I’m going to do what people do best on Christmas Eve, when they’re not happy with something but not going to do anything about it. I’m going to have a drink, chill out and get on with the daily grind of a life full of everything.