Why does everything have to be such a freaking struggle?

I am back from Germany at last and I was so incredibly sick when I was in Germany. It's not just the legendary Man-Flu, oh no, this is German Man-Flu (Deutschmanngrippe). It all started the night before I flew there - I had an early flight from London Heathrow, so I knew I had an alarm set to get me out of bed at stupid o'clock. And typically, because I was nervous and excited, I couldn't sleep. I think I knocked off at about 3 or 4 in the morning but it didn't feel like very long at all when I had to crawl out of bed I was like a zombie. That was when it all started going downhill - the mad rush to the airport (yes I left my flat 20 minutes later than planned), my bad but I still made my flight.

Then the moment I arrived at Köln Bonn Airport, the production manager from Action Concept picked me up and I supposed adrenaline did kick in. I was determined to speak to her mostly in German and not English and I was so focused on understanding her German that I forgot just how sick I was feeling. I had a sore throat, I had a headache and I was slowly developing a fever: yeah, classic flu symptoms. I at least had the presence of mind to pop some paracetamol to keep the fever at bay and deal with the pains (do always travel with your favourite painkillers).

Oh yes, I have arrived in Alarm City in Hürth

We drove directly from the airport to the small town of Hürth, which is incidentally the hometown of German racing legend Michael Schumacher. In this small town was the production base for Alarm für Cobra 11. I was offered coffee and fruit when I arrived and was rushed through to a costume fitting. By then adrenaline had well and truly kicked in - here I was, in the production office of one of Germany's biggest and longest running action TV series and there was my photo on the wall, as a character in episode 288 along with some of the biggest names in German TV. The costume manager preferred to speak German with me and I was like, okay, let's try but I may end up speaking in a mix of English and German (which I inevitably did, given the gaps in my German vocabulary). They call it "Denglisch" (Detusch + Englisch = Denglisch) - but I thought that speaking in Denglisch was at least better than speaking in English. I wanted to try as far as I could to speak in German or at least Denglisch.

Then it was to the production office where there was a lot more paperwork to go through and thankfully, I had been in an German speaking work environment earlier this year in Hamburg, so at least being in a German meeting didn't faze me even if I didn't understand every word. At the meeting, they proposed the possibility of my character being English-speaking rather than German-speaking and they wanted to know if I would rather do it in English? I got  upset at that suggestion and insisted that I would rather do it in German as I had worked really hard at my German; granted I was not fluent in German, I had already memorized my script and had no problems delivering it convincingly. They replied, "you will meet the director and he will decide if your German is good enough, if not then you will do this in English."

I know many people in my shoes would have grabbed at the opportunity to do it in English - there was no extra money to deliver the lines in German, the contract was exactly the same and it would have been undoubtedly easier to do it in English of course. But for me, I knew that if I wanted further work in Germany, then I simply had to do it in German (and in impeccable German as well). But it wasn't my decision, it was the director's. When I left the meeting, I was then driven into downtown Köln, to Ebertplatz to meet the casting director who gave me the part - I wanted to thank him for giving me this chance, to get my foot in the German market. Now that's a journey of roughly 10 km or so, but good grief, we hit heavy traffic and I started getting car sick. But once again, I was so focused on trying to speak German that I ignored how sick I felt as the paracetamol, acidic fruit and coffee in my stomach churned. When I got to Ebertplatz, I waited till my driver had pulled out of the carpark before I threw up violently on a patch of grass. Oh my stomach hurt so bad, I could barely stand up. Somehow, I staggered up to the casting director's office and when he offered me more coffee, I declined and had water instead. The excitement of meeting the casting director made me forget how badly my stomach hurt, but I did throw up again in his toilet before leaving his office. Yikes. Anyway, after that meeting, somehow, I managed to make my way back to my hotel and I actually took some videos of the pretty Christmas markets along the way (and you can see them in my Köln vlog).

Thankfully, I really liked my hotel (it was pretty darn nice hotel - not a bad place for a sick man). Mind you, there were often reporters and teenagers camped outside the main entrance of the hotel and if you were being picked up or dropped off in an official looking car, they would just take your picture first and then find out who you are later. If only I wasn't so sick, I would have enjoyed all this attention and pose for the pictures! When I got to my room, I basically collapsed into bed and thought, aaargh I am so sick I am gonna die, this can't be happening and this is just day one?  From then on, I fell into what I call my 4-hour paracetamol cycle. Say I take my first paracetamol dose at 12 noon.

On the wall at the production office: playing the part of Jim Pao.

12:00    I feel sick, so I take my paracetamol medicine.
12:30    The medicine kicks in and I feel fine. I can walk around, I can work, I can function.
15:30    The paracetamol starts to wear off and I start feeling sick again.
16:00    I take my next dose of paracetamol.
16:30   The next dose kicks in and I feel normal again.

So as you can see, there is this nasty one hour window of hell as the last dose wears off and the next dose has yet to kick in - that is when I feel decidedly sick. And it's not like a flick of a switch like clockwork, sometimes, that period is shorter on good days, sometimes longer on bad days. But such is the nature of paracetamol,. aspirin, ibuprofen and other associated drugs for relieving fever - you cannot exceed the daily recommended dosage, even if the last dose has worn off, you have to wait the minimum four hours before taking more of it. So that meant that when I was in Germany, for every three good hours, I had one hour of hell. But when you are working, you can't exactly time that one hour of hell because you're on someone else's schedule. Oh and this totally f*cks up my sleep at night, as I would often awake either shivering from fever or sweating profusely as the fever breaks - either way, I kept waking up.

On set with the famous clapper board!

As for the shoot, oh it was a schedule of night shoots - that meant starting at 6:30 pm and ending at 4 or 5 am in the morning. It was pretty nasty because your body clock is completely screwed up - when you are so sick, all you can to do is curl up in bed and go to sleep at midnight, not film a scene in a freezing cold building in a suburb of south Köln! You see there is a huge office block that used to belong to the German Radio station Deutsche Welle - but since they have stopped using that building, it has been used primarily as a film set. That means that as a building that is not maintained, there is no heating, no lights and some of the toilets had no water. That meant that the building was like an ice block - it was so cold, buildings like that not only trap the cold but somehow the dampness as well (as we were in the basement). So let me put this to you:

1. I was under pressure to perform perfectly in German, a language I have not studied formally but was completely self-taught. 
2. I was extremely sick, relying entirely on paracetamol to help me work. 
3. The set itself (in the Deutsche Welle building) was crazy cold (even if the unit base was very cozy). 
4. I struggle to speak German confidently at 2 pm, never mind at 2 am when I am so very sick and tired. 

Waiting to get my make up done at the unit base camp

Oh yeah, it is never easy with Limpeh. Es ist nimmer einfach mit mir. As if I thought this challenge wasn't going to be hard enough when I left London, it had become so much harder by the time I got on set in Köln. But let me jump to the punchline: when I met the director and did a line run with him, he said, "Kein problem," after hearing just two lines as he was immediately convinced about the quality of my German. I had indeed turned up very well prepared. I forgot how sick and cold I was when my adrenaline kicked in and simply delivered my lines flawlessly in German. 

One of the younger actors playing a supporting role (who spoke English flawlessly) asked me, "Your German sounds pretty confident but when we try to chat, you speak Denglisch? " So I explained, my German is mostly self-taught over the last 17 years or so. I have never ever studied it in school, I have never had a single lesson in German, I have never had a German teacher. So whilst I have only a basic grasp of German from the time I have spent in Austria, Switzerland and Germany, it is all self-taught. Whilst I don't pretend to speak German fluently, I did however, make sure I memorized all my lines perfectly with the help of a native speaker of German - that's why I am able to deliver those lines very confidently but we're speaking in Denglisch. Anyway, the bottom line is, despite all the challenges, I delivered under pressure and the director was very happy - we did it entirely in German and didn't even talk about doing it in English. I was brilliant - not just my German, but all the stunt and action sequences were well executed too! 

With my call sheet in my trailer

So I did manage to go out and see a bit of Köln - the weather wasn't great (wind and rain) but at least I had enough free time for me to walk around and visit the main sites. I did get caught out on the last day when I remember shivering like crazy as I approached Köln harbour - I knew I was entering the phrase where I was just waiting for the next dose of paracetamol to kick in and I would be fine in 15 minuets or so. So I just ignored the discomfort and pushed on. When I got back to the hotel, I went down to the sauna and sat in the steam room until I broke the fever. Probably somewhat unorthodox and probably not recommended, but damn when you are shivering with a fever, a sauna feels so incredibly good. I'm not normally a sauna-kinda guy, but I totally loved it this time. 

I shall leave you with one thought - whilst I was at Köln habour, there was a Christmas market (oh yes Germany's famous Christmas markets) and I saw a young child about 7 or 8 year old, riding a Carousel (Merry-Go-Round) and he kept waving to his parents and grandparents, who were either taking photos or videos of him. I was thinking, huh? I don't get it. I suppose even if I do become totally fluent in every single European language (and I am already fluent in many of them) there is just something about my Singaporean upbringing that would always shape my perception of things like that. Why were his parents and grandparents doing that? Something was very lost in translation there.

There were Christmas markets all over Köln.

When I was a child, my parents considered such fairground rides as a waste of money and probably 'too dangerous'. They also didn't like taking photos of us - they were of the generation where a camera was a very expensive possession, so it was only to be taken out during special occasions like graduations, weddings and foreign holidays and when you posed for a photograph, you had to look solemn and serious. Smiling had to be subtle, with no teeth to be shown. I remember once my mother pulled my ear for smiling for a photo and she said, "don't act cute lah." Oh if only my mother has seen half the photos I have uploaded onto Facebook, she would have a heart attack at how vain I am - you see, actually buying a camera and film for your camera cost a lot of money back in those days, getting the photographs developed took more time and money and when you got your photos, you put them in the photo album. Then on special occasions, you would take the photo albums from the shelf to indulge in a moment of nostalgia. Overindulgence in photography was seen as a sign of vanity, which meant that you were a vain, shallow and conceited person who didn't have the right priorities in life. 

So perhaps to witness a German family in 2014 indulging in their child like that, for what? Riding a wooden horse on a carousel? Perhaps it is me being utterly ridiculous to judge them by 1983 Singaporean standards, but my first reaction was, "well my parents would have never ever taken a photo of me like that, I would not even get to ride the merry-go-round in the first place." I can pull off the near-impossible against the odds in Köln with my German TV debut, yet there is still a part of me that worries that my parents will never ever appreciate what I have achieved. I then got jealous -  that German kid has it so easy, his parents are happy to take him to a Christmas market, pay for him to have a good time on the fairground rides and make him feel special, by taking photos and videos of him the same way the paparazzi had taken photos of me coming out of my hotel. And all he had to do was get on that wooden horse? 

The avant-garde buildings in the Köln harbour area.

Perhaps I could say it's not fair, but if I hadn't been denied approval all of my life from my parents, would I have been as driven to succeed even as the odds were stacked against me? And as for the German kid of the wooden horse, would he be as driven to succeed if everything is simply handed to him on a silver platter, if approval is given for the most basic things like being himself - a carefree child riding a playground ride at a German Christmas market? I don't know. His experience is certainly going to be different from mine, but I hope it will be a happy one for that kid.  Maybe it's the fever talking now. Time for more paracetamol methinks. Many thanks for reading, Vielen Danke fürs Lesen.

PS. Achtung bitte! Check out my latest vlog where I show you the delights of Koln: please click here, danke!

Köln is anglicized as Cologne.