Head in the clouds

Atlantic clouds, kindly lent to me by Martin Brummell

Walking on the tarmac towards the plane, I inhaled deeply.

Do islands exude pheromones, I wondered. The island's runway is right by the ocean, so hello and goodbye are always a heady combination of marine notes with sub-tropical flowery, sweet, woody undertones. It is the smell I always longed for when I was away, a comforting smell, and until yesterday, the smell of home.

No tears, no farewells. Instead, yesterday was dedicated to sporadic airborne napping, mind-twisting reading and industrial consumption of overpriced bottled water.

The first flight was curiously oinky. The lady next to me made porcine sounds at very regular intervals throughout the journey, the kind of which I had only associated with Islandish men before. It was a sinus-clearing-minus-tissue kind of sound, followed by a mucus-swallowing gulp. Rooomph-oink, rooomph-oink, gulp, and so on. Meanwhile, and only a few rows behind us, a small identity-challenged child thought it was a piglet and squealed randomly.

The second flight involved sitting a tightly packed filthy microwave with wings. Purple splodges all around – and on – the window next to me indicated that I was sitting where a blueberry yoghurt-based life form had exploded before. Plus it was so hot in the cabin that almost everyone on the flight fell asleep a few minutes after take-off, under the spell of an air con nozzle that was as effective as a hairdryer on full power.

As I exited the aircraft, I came across a uniformed lady with an anxious frown welcoming everyone with an unusual greeting. "Supersize Island?", she kept asking as people walked right past her without a second glance. When I smiled and said yes, she beamed with relief at having located the one passenger with a connecting flight. Because I had a long-ish layover, it turned out she had been sent to tell me I had the option of going out, breathing actual air and going though customs again.

She made my day, as did sitting in the cool, crisp and foggy air for half an hour, jumbo cup of decaf in hand.

The third flight was a first row seat to a stunning sunset followed by a great big hug from my favorite person, a short ride to the seaside, a cute dollhouse flat with rooftop and sea views plus a good night's sleep in a bed no body part stuck out of, untroubled by rogue mattress springs or vivid dreams for the first time in a very, very, very long time.

Today feels like the first page of a new blank notebook. 

Outer brain experience

I target human heads, via TTBM

Airport, flight, airport, flight, airport, flight, Supersize Island, seaside, seagulls...

That's Tuesday – all of it – taken care of.

In ground news, I found a job ad that read like something I might have written. So I did a wee happy dance and set out to apply right away, i.e. in the middle of the night so I wouldn't miss the deadline when I am up in the sky counting clouds.

It's by the seaside, too.

Which means I would need to get back into the habit of putting a pack of baby wipes into my messenger bag – Supersize Island gulls have notoriously loose bowels.

And because there's always a tourist or two to feed them human food, when it rains, it pours.

Bad karma job advert

Levitation, by Ashley Campbell

A Supersize Island industry beacon is shining a little dimmer for me tonight after publishing a job advert that is the equivalent of a vigorous slap in the face.

At first glance, the position appealed to me a lot as it combined being immersed in words with ensuring fellow bathers were not peeing in the alphabet soup. As a little bonus, it even involved irregular hours, which I enjoy.

But it also made a very ugly statement that made me cringe with disgust.

This, the advert read, "is a non-union contract".

This, I thought, is also a profession where workers are often put upon, exploited and shown little respect by those who employ them.

For an industry mogul to act so pettily is hugely disappointing – not only does this approach immediately belittle any potential employee, but it also transmit the kind of haughtiness I find insufferable.

The days of slavery are over – without mutual respect from the start, I don't see how a balanced working relationship – or indeed any kind of human relationship - can ever develop.

If the industry mogul's goal was to inspire candidates to showcase their best, the ad was a fail.

If it was just to get any cheap, starry-eyed non-entity who values working for a big name more than they value themselves and their skills, it's a hit.

But I only foresee a future working relationship marred by mediocrity.

I didn't apply.

A mirage in the nick of time #2

In this case, #5 & #6. via Benedict Froggatt

This is a down-at-heel island but there is always a budget for certain things, a category said maybe-job most probably falls under. The problem is other, and as worrying as it is unethical...

The person who contacted me with this maybe-job-pseudo-offer is someone with whom I have an excellent working relationship based on mutual respect, common goals and bloody hard work but who is under the influence of an individual who didn't take kindly to my asking questions and uncovering some very inconvenient truths a few months ago.

During the last decade, he has wormed his way into Islandish politics as well as community politics abroad and has been striving to garner as much power, influence and financial advantages under questionable pretenses  such as faux philanthropy. When my enquiring mind became an embarrassment to him, he severed all ties with me but still keeps an eyeball up my backside indirectly, and not in a particularly clever or discreet way either.

One mention of my name and he could convince the powers-that-be not to hire me unless the whole maybe-job-pseudo-offer is a roundabout way to keep me quiet. The latter disturbs me more than the former, because I loathe the thought of my potential employer – an honorable, genuinely kind and highly competent man – being so completely at the mercy of a manipulator.

There is only one thing I can do, and that is to try and expose wrongdoing, one way or another. Should the maybe-job-pseudo-offer materialize, it probably would be easier – and quicker – to help straighten things out by enforcing transparency. If not, it's just a matter of letting a few facts loose, eventually.

An indispensable work tool, a finely tuned bullshit radar can also weigh heavily on a tormented professional conscience: nothing rattles me more than well-meaning people being taken advantage of.

So I tell myself to let go of any residual attachment to the island, and subsequently find myself in complete agreement with Doris Day.

Professional plenitude is possible

I'm the stray one, via Martha Stewart.com

'Hannah 2.0' is go! 

And I have a corporate crush.

By Friday lunchtime, I was beaming happy wordy vibes in the general direction of the lower top half of Supersize Island. Half an hour later, I was also radiating joyful text appeal towards Supersize Island's Smoke-o-polis.

One position even involves tongues! Ooh. Mouthfuls of foreign, that I can do.

I am also trawling job adverts, some of which have baffled me into near speechlessness:

1 - spelling mistakes and poor grammar make me question the credibility of the recruitment agency, and by association of the employer who entrusted them with a brief. Also, aiming to keep your client's identity confidential by lifting a chunk of copy off their website because you couldn't be bothered to write it yourself is a fail of epic proportions in my book. As a side note, the booby prize goes to whoever published an ad for a teacher of Franch... 

2 - some employers ask for free pitches as part of the application process, and this suggests to me a certain amount of spite towards the candidate's good will and – at least, have the courtesy to invite me for interview BEFORE you rape my brain. This always makes me wonder whether the position advertised is used as bait to get free ideas...

3 - any advert that makes me screw my little elastic face into a bemused frown is probably not conducive to the state of permanent professional bliss I aim to achieve.

On the whole, there is a whiff of 'candidate factory' about most recruitment agencies that makes me feel very uncomfortable – I much prefer to connect with a potential employer without being repackaged by a middle man first.

It's that deep-seated dislike of boxes and labels all over again, because I have led a somewhat unusual life so far, matched by unconventional professional choices.

And I am comfortable with that.

Gloriously – and unapologetically – unboxable.

Selling myself again

Past professional metaphor, via The High Definite

Having always argued until I was blue in the face that the medium should never get confused with the message, today sees the start of my own personal branding and marketing campaign.

As I type this in the sticky Islandish night - an old pair of cans filling my head with sounds of The National – I am proudly blinking back disbelief. Not only have I suddenly become a product, but I have finally applied my skills to me, cramming them into a CV and a power covering letter that are 100% authentic Hannah, straight up. No stilted sentences, no jargon and definitely no sugar coat.

'Hannah 2.0' is a simple marketing package designed to appeal to people in companies that do passionate, innovative and creative work, places where I can blend my existing skills, acquire new ones and stretch my imagination a little further every day.

Because when you are blessed with a vocation that makes your heart sing, work is not a job.

Instead, work is your daily serving of passion with a Cheshire cat grin on top.

Probably for the first time in my life, this package is a clear statement of who I am, where I have come from and what my values are.

I reasoned that if boring, conventional CVs beget boring, conventional jobs, then the opposite applies.

And because trying to sell abstract stuff is a waste of everyone's time, I used 'Hannah 2.0' to showcase some of my skills and included others in HTML links whenever possible.

In a few hours, I will send my first marketing package to a terrific Supersize Island company I discovered via some random act of t'internet magic involving Twitter and blog hopping.

More than a state of mind, curiosity is a good shepherd.  

A mirage in the nick of time #1

My Islandish life? by Armin Blasbichler

As I was dozing off to mellifluous insults delivered by an archived and badly subtitled Gordon Ramsay, an electronic burp came from my pocket and made me sit up. 

Having deliberately embraced the unsociable life in order to regain a semblance of sanity in a place that – by now – has driven me to distraction, I wondered who could be seeking my attention on a Friday night, a time slot not traditionally used by my cell phone network for SMS-based advertising.

Had I not been sitting down, I probably would have felt compelled to do so when I saw who the message came from. And when I read it. Once, twice, three times and again, until I made sure it was not a joke.

And just like that, a potentially-attractive-maybe-job-pseudo-offer glared back at me from the tiny screen of my ageing brick cellular device. I poked and prodded the tasty textual bait then keyed in a thank you as well as a few questions related to the maybe-job-pseudo-offer, making no mention of my impending departure, which at this stage bears neither a temporary nor a permanent label.

A little SMS conversation ensued, whereby I learnt that actual job would depend on the outcome of a meeting the message sender was to have with the government, turning last Friday night into my very own Groundhog Day.

For starters – my interlocutor said – it would probably be part-time and, despite my inquiries, he would not clarify the legal status of said maybe-job. To me, this smells just like another freelance gig on the never-never, a carbon-copy of the situation that killed my project and left me without the means to live. Or indeed leave.

Neither of us signed off and I decided to sleep on it, then spent an agonizing Saturday morning trying to tone down a strong-worded message. By that time, the draft of a strategy to carry out the tasks said job entails was already in my head, too, only I felt it would be unwise to share it. Instead, I sent a message saying that as long as the job was interesting (a euphemism for serious, the use of which would have definitely offended in this context) and worth my while, I'd be happy to do it, but highlighted that there was no way I would accept to work under the same terms and conditions (or absence thereof) as before.

Polite but brutally honest, which is a far cry from the way things are traditionally expressed here. To me, integrity is part and parcel of professionalism, full stop. And being able to state that my skills come at a price counts as progress for me. Since I have started working on the island, I have successfully advocated on behalf of anyone but myself it seems.

Unhealthy. This must change.

Since then, not a peep. On the one hand, silence is the hallmark of an atypical Islander who only communicates when he has something to say, and on the other, I have a strong hunch this may fall through, but not necessarily because of the government...

Wings!

Leaving the island on an early morning flight, 2008

I have been gifted a pair of wings with which to escape from this tiny floating rock of doom at the end of the month. 

In a place only accessible by air, still closed to low costs and therefore boasting some of the most expensive routes around, said wings amount to an average Islandish monthly salary at the moment. The price of an outsider's freedom.

Those are one-way wings for now, for cost reasons and also because it is not clear to me whether I will return or not. Being mostly unburdened by material trappings (excluding books, which are slowly finding new eager readers), home will once again be where the suitcase is - at least for the foreseeable future.

It has taken me weeks to accept the need to go away, and then the wings. As I seat in the relative air-conditioned comfort of the airline's booking agency, I blink back tears and swallow hard and heavy golf balls of sadness for about an hour while absent-mindedly chewing on my left hand.

At the same time, an increasingly annoyed clerk keeps punching dates and route combinations into a computer which refuses to believe that a foreigner could be so destitute as to have such elastic travel dates. Clichés die hard here, and if you're exotic-looking (read oddly inconspicuous in most of the Western world) and speak accented Islandish, you're minted, regardless of the fact that your messenger bag might be strategically positioned to hide a big - unmendable - hole in your T-shirt.

The booking agency is a mirage of posh modernism in a cement oasis of ugly: a big open plan office with photographs of smiling passengers in front of stunning landscapes, glossy magazines and identikit doll-like employees whose personality has been groomed and made up within an inch of comedic ludicrousness. The trowel-applied blue eyeshadow and fluorescent plastic nails bestow an air of redolent smut upon the whole scene. And then I notice a huge crack in the wall staring back at me. Because there is simply no getting away from shoddy workmanship – or gaudiness – anywhere on this island, no matter how hard you try.

As the uniformed airline employee wages battle against her wheezing Dell and tries not get an epic talon stuck in the keyboard, I seat back in my plastic chair and remember how – before I moved here – the airline blanket I always packed used to make me feel home wherever I was. The island and I, we had a long courtship marked by many flights to and fro, back in the days when I had disposable income. And a job I loathed, living a meaningless side life of intermittent luxury, airports, hotels and restaurants among whingeing – often unpleasant to the point of being unabashedly rude – people who doormatted my natural good cheer out of existence with their existential issues and general cuntitude.

Finally, the cheapest travel date is found, involving three different flights and an 11-hour journey. Which is fine by me, as it means air-conditioned oblivion for an entire day, mammoth readathon, clean bathrooms, coftea on tap and quite possibly the prospect of meaningful conversations with strangers.

And at the end of it all, my best friend, a big hug, seaside and seagulls for a few days: the sketching of a fresh start, wherever that might be.

What are you looking at?

Not quite the snapper I met...

Odd is part and parcel of island life, so much so that airport authorities should erect an advisory billboard urging all outsiders to suspend their disbelief as soon as they land.

Of the many quirks and horrors that have befallen me since arriving here, having my picture taken when I was coming out of the house garbage in hand definitely ranks as one of the most unsettling experiences. It wasn't until I lifted the lid of the trash can that I sensed I was being watched. Why anyone would want a snap of me disposing of household refuse is as questionable as it is strange, even when allowing for kinkiness and fetishes.

Apart from being deathly pale, long-haired in a 'Highland cow meets Dougal' kind of way and taller than the average Islander by a handful of inches (I am only a modest 5'7'' barefoot), I'm inconspicuous in most places. In fact, a former colleague once commented – in a doubt-laden voice –that I might actually look nice if I dressed like a woman rather than some teenager with a fondness for Birkenstock sandals and huge messenger bags. And yet, the lens was on me, leech-like, sucking away at whatever last shreds of inner zen I had managed to preserve until then.

In what I hoped was a graceful slow motion moment when my luscious mane swished as I elegantly turned around and smiled coyly – rather than froze in surprise all furrowed brow, wrinkly forehead and Wilma Flintstone hairdo – I spotted the lens sitting across the road outside a café.

It took me a while to see that it was coiffed by the trademark mop of unruly grey hair belonging to an acquaintance best described as the Islandish version of an aging trustafarian 'artiste'. Pre-snap, I'd probably have referred to him as a friend. Post-snap, not so much, despite the nerve-soothing cup of coffee he insisted on buying me.

Initially, I laughed out loud when I identified him. I went over to say hello, delighted by yet another impromptu manifestation of island zaniness and a much-needed opportunity to flex my zygomatic muscles. He had been sitting there all afternoon snapping away at oblivious people for some art project of his, apparently. We chatted for a while and he expressed surprise at not having seen me around. He thought I had already left the island.

That's when my sense of humour folded under me and made way for a disturbingly unpleasant memory.

"If you take part in that amateur dramatics workshop, I'll send someone to take pictures. I want to know who you're with and make sure that you are not behaving inappropriately, socializing with men. I'll know what you are doing", I was told last winter by someone who – at the time – purported to be my 'boyfriend' even though his interest in me never stretched beyond 'trophy sex', which is Islandish shorthand for having a relationship with a foreigner, and what credibility my presence in his life might lend him.

Said 'ex-boyfriend' – who emigrated to the First World decades ago but maintains close ties with the island – was as controlling, sociopathic and manipulative as the above threat suggests. Plagued by a lifelong obsession with power, publicity and recognition, his preferred method of interaction with people was a mix of grandiloquence and rudeness, which he indiscriminately dispensed to everyone, from his mother and assorted relatives to terrified employees, via waiters and taxi drivers.

Of my work, he said – with a self-satisfied smirk and gleaming eyes – that some of it would probably get me mobbed in a dark alley one day. Having been on the receiving end of death threats once many years ago – and growled at, stalked and even ran after since I moved to the island – I shrugged, safe in the knowledge that if anyone messes with me, I just have to lob my enormous messenger bag in their face and leg it swiftly, courtesy of my unwomanly footwear.

And yet, even seemingly innocent arty pranks now have the power to make me break out in a rash and scratch for days on end until my skin is raw.

But, more than likely, the itch is only proportional to the attention I give it.