How NOT to apply a stencil...

My girlfriend sent me a wee quote shortly after:

"There is hope in honest error.
None in the icy perfection of the mere stylist."
- Rennie Mackintosh -

She's an optimist if ever I've seen one. Wonder if she'd let me stencil her walls??

The Sunday Struggle #10

I've been doing some decorative planning for my flat this weekend, mostly designing stencils and cutting them out. Stanley knives are a real bitch to handle, I have to say. I'm going to trial-run one of them tonight, paint them on my wall to see how it takes. Will put a pic of it up on my blog shortly after. While I'll be spending the rest of my Sunday on translation work and some catching up for my Proper Job, I've found a few Sunday distractions for this week's Sunday Struggle:

1. I think it's important to uphold the whole Sunday tea & cake tradition, and in my mind, there's currently only one place to be for cakes: Tarte Françoise.

Jo'll kill me for writing this on a public forum, but then again, this is a public forum with a highly visible comment section and she's got a "Right of Response" *wink*... Jo managed to eat a WHOLE cake by herself in multiple sittings throughout one weekend. THAT's how fab they are. (Allright, I had a wee sliver too (but twere only wee) and it should be stated that Jo actually clocked up 100k on her bike that visit, so she could defo use the calories).

2. I've blogged about this once before, but I hunted down the site again recently because I simply love the artwork so much. You can now see the entire collection here.

3. I am always looking for alternative ways to represent data. While some forms are more useable than others, this recent find is definitely clever: it uses the color-proportionality on the flags of countries to represent the data. Striking.

4. I'm not about to jump on the CO2 bandwagon, but it's always a clever move to:
(1) save money by keeping your electricity costs low
(2) keep your offices cooler by ensuring all's switched off at night.

This handy power strip was designed to scan your pc's energy usage and knows when to automatically shut off other devices that do not require to stay on, such as printer, scanner, speakers, etc. There are outlet spaces for devices that need to remain on all the time as well. Brilliant.

5. I'm a bit of an instant gratificationist, so I like it when design motivates me to just hold off a wee bit: Superbitus is a one-piece, bomb-shaped ceramic money box. It's supplied with a white marker to write the purpose of the savings on it, like "new bike" or "weekendtrip". To top it all off, you can drop the bomb so it shatters when you've reached your goal, and collect yer money from amidst the shards.

6. And finally, some fun playing around with visual perception: Julian Beever's 3-D street drawings.

Love Thru the Wire

"Given the large number of people that live within easy travelling distance of each other, it ought to be theoretically possible for everyone (except Australian outback farmers, polar research scientists, explorers, and religious hermits) to find someone geographically compatible; however, this is manifestly not the case. There are a number of theories about this, but perhaps it is nature's way of ensuring variety in the gene pool. Or perhaps it's a case of nature having a good laugh at the expense of a small number of unfortunate humans."

This is the opening statement of a link my girlfriend sent me yesterday. It is a BBC web-entry on "Long-distance Romantic Relationships - A Survival Guide". It made me giggle. The site is written in a style reminiscent of the late Douglas Adams and if you take a closer look at the actual link, you will undoubtedly spot the reference to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Jo and I are certainly no exception on the Long Distance Relationship (LDR) front. At lot of my friends in Academia are forced to keep up LDRs, because the likelihood of both finding a post-doc or lectureship in the same city, is small. Also, the more people travel, the more likely they are to start up long-distance things. I currently have 4 close friends, 2 cousins and a myriad of acquaintances that are in long-term LDRs.

Jo also directed me to The Center for the Study of Long Distance Relationships where we found a few entertaining statistics on the "average long distance couple":

How far apart do they live?
Average: 125 miles
95% range: 30 miles to 950 miles

How often do they visit one another?
Average: 1.5 times a month
95% range: once a week to once every four months

How often do they call one another?
Average: once every 2.7 days
95% range: at least once a day to once a month

How long are their telephone calls typically?
Average: 30 minutes
95% range: 2 minutes to 1 hour 20 minutes

How long do they expect to be separated before they can move closer?
Average: 14 months
95% Range: one month to four years

Our personal statistics are not too dissimilar: We live 285 miles apart in birdsflight, we aim to see each other once every 2 to 3 weeks, we call daily with an average skype-time of around 3 to 4 hours, and in terms of how long we expect to be seperated from each other before we can move closer, well... we've got a rough idea in mind and will see how things evolve.

The website also offers a 6-step guideline (based on extensive research) to surviving a long distance relationship:

1. Stay Optimistic

2. Re-learn how to be Intimate:

- share in little day-to-day events

- use technology

- send snail mail letters/cards

- understand the pitfalls of phone conversations

- use little reminders of your partner frequently

3. Some Things Must be Said

4. Don't Isolate Yourself

5. Expect Disappointment

6. Learn the Art of Long Distance Sex

The upside for all of us long-distancers is that technology has evolved a great deal. It's easy to take camera-phone snapshots of things in your daily life and send them to your partner so they can be part of it. Phone calls are free if you use skype and if you combine them with wireless headsets, you can actually use skype as a sort of long-distance baby-phone. Jo and I sometimes leave the skype connection open, while we go about our daily business. I can faff around the room, doing whatever I need to do and still talk to Jo. Or Jo can be sat on the sofa reading her newspaper while I work, and we'd exchange little comments as if I was in the room right next to her.

Yesterday, we had a particularly long talk-session, trying to establish where we both stood in terms of the long-distance and each other. It eventually transgressed into conversation that went on into the wee hours of the morning, and we both fell asleep with the connection still open. When I woke up this morning, I noticed my laptop was still next to my bed and we were still connected with skype, so I ventured a tentative: "goodmorning gorgeous". A stiffled stretchy yawn and the sound of a kiss came right back at me through the wireless from across the North Sea. While this may a bit too much of a good thing for some people, I firmly believe that everyone should take their own relationship as they feel is right. And for us, it seems, we both have the urge to talk, to be in touch, explore each other's minds and to simply connect. So in that respect, current technology truly is bliss.

For more resources: Click Here, Here or Here

The Sunday Struggle #9

Right then, today's Sunday Struggle is bound to have a minimal target audience, what with the lovely weather out, but here it goes nonetheless. I've amassed the following links/gimmicks/curiosities for you for today:

1. Design your own tie: Girl-ties are all the rage again, and I quite fancy some for the dressed-up days at work. Unfortunately, the only website that seems to sell ties specifically designed for women is a rather crap one. So until someone can point me in the right direction, maybe designing my own tie might be the best alternative.

2. Floor & Wall-stickers: I spotted these and thought they were a good idea in terms of decorating, if you don't fancy going for the regular wall and floor arrangements. Tango-steps explained on your floor or a cheeky plug-socket. They come in at around 50 euros each and I think that's a tad overpriced for something you could quite easily do yourself in the space of a few lost hours on an overcast Sunday...

3. Publish Yourself: (Thx to Ine for pointing this one out). It's one of the several "print yourself" sites out there, but it gives itself a bit of a leading edge by providing an easy downloadable tool with lots of templates that guides you through the process of publishing your poems, your photos, or even your entire blog... in a neatly bound book that would fit well on your lounge-table. I am currently publishing Ubiquitous 2005, Ubiquitous 2006 and a photo-album of my round-the-world trip.

4. Livingstones Lounge: I won't have enough space in my new flat, but if I had, I would most definitely splash out on creating a wee corner like this. It looks fab for kids, or for a lazy comfi Sunday-afternoons, leisurely splashed out across some pebles with yer book or sunday paper.

5. And for the most random inventions of the week: The Jonny Glow Toilet Locator and the Hamster Shredder . Designed to help men aim for the toiletbowl in the dark (a problem I am unlikely to encounter in my house-hold what with the absence of men, but I can imagine this would be problematic for some other family arrangements), and an ecological way to shred your paper. I am actually all up for that Hamster thing, and may even suggest it to my boss at our next meeting. Every office needs a mascote. It might as well do something useful too.

6. Photography: Kelli Connell: Look closely at the pictures and you will notice that both people in the image are actually one and the same person. On Connell's website she explains:

"This work represents an autobiographical questioning of sexuality and gender roles that shape the identity of the self in intimate relationships. Polarities of identity such as the masculine and feminine psyche, the irrational and rational self, the exterior and interior self, the motivated and resigned self are portrayed. By combining multiple photographic negatives of the same model in each image, the dualities of the self are defined by body language and clothing worn."

This play with the duality of identity, and sometimes the seemingly contradictory co-existence of both aspects, is very close to my heart. Fits in perfectly with my own Queer identity and daily introspective moments.

7. Organic Fizz: Delish British goodness. With this warm weather, I find it hard to stay away from the Diet Coke. But in terms of rehydration, these fizzy drinks are by far the better choice. May have to import those when I go out to York in a fortnight.

8. Word of the Day: My girlfriend has a thing for words. She knows a plethora of them and they get me hooked on her story-telling. She's introduced me to Dictionary.com, a site that sends you a new word of the day every morning. Today's word was rather appropriate, so I decided to include the link ;-)

prolix
\pro-LIKS; PRO-liks\,
adjective:
1. Extending to a great length; unnecessarily long; wordy.
2. Tending to speak or write at excessive length.

Trials & Tribulations outside the Time Warp

I'm moderately relieved that the week is almost over. It's been a bit of an odd one.

After having had Jo over for a nine-day visit (total indulgence) around Easter, it was time to see her off again last Monday. While Eindhoven Airport is only a half-an-hour away from my work, we decided to set off plenty early, to allow us some extra time for breakfast at the airport. A wee stolen moment to say goodbye without having to rush.

Unfortunately, it seemed like the world had collectively decided to return to work at 6am that particularly Monday, and traffic was tantalisingly slow. I was starting to get a wee bit frustrated at seeing my extra time with Jo being eaten away at by something as trivial as a traffic jam, when a police car overtook me. I made the rookie mistake of engaging eye contact with the police officer in the passenger seat, because, sure enough, he started signalling for me to pull over.

Despite a squeaky-clear conscience, I suddenly felt incredibly nervous. I have an incorrigible urge to mess with people in uniform and while I know I shouldn't, I never quite trust myself not to. It's like fear of heights. Popular belief claims "fear-of-height" is when you actually feel an urge to jump off and have trouble trusting yourself not to do so. I think my fear-of-uniforms is somewhat similar. I don't trust myself not to land me into trouble by sheer cheek.

As it turned out, they'd merely pulled me over because of a failing back light. I promised I'd get it fixed in due course, but he insisted on checking my board documents and then kindly informed me that my MOT (Dutch: keuringsbewijs), had expired over 14 months ago and that legally, I was now no longer allowed to drive my car.

*Sod's Law*

Thankfully though, the testosterone variety of uniform can generally be swayed by a sweet oestrogenous smile, and he said he'd give me a caution but would turn a blind-eye while I dropped Jo off at the airport. So off we popped.

While Eindhoven airport had been carefully chosen for it's low-budget services, Jo ended up paying some ridiculous surcharge for extra luggage, thus rendering the whole low-budget strategy rather pointless. The queues at the check-in were so monstrous, we had to skip a proper breakfast and spent our last half-hour together standing in a queue.

I had serious lovesick pangs in my tum when I saw her off, but I have to admit my body felt slightly relieved at the wee break it was getting. Jo's visit had been one of sheer indulgence, verging on the debaucherous. Now, Jo's a bit of a choc-o-holic, and we both love food, so Easter was probably not the most wisely chosen time for visits. There's something delightful about the initial loved-up flutterstage of a relationship. You seem to forget just about anything but the object of your affection, and life enwraps you into some special warped time-frame in which the outside world, the standard rules of physics and the restraints you normally place upon yourself, no longer matter. You float instead of walking, savour life instead of consuming it.

The only object in the universe, however, that forever seems to live by the normal rules of physics, is the bathroom-scales. And the vicious thing informed me I'd gained 2.5 kilos over 9 days. So, on Thursday, I hauled ass to the gym. Due to the RTW trip, being ill and having a new job, I'd not actually set foot in a gym since about July. And I think the gym came back at me with a vengeance, because when I tried to skip the cool-down period after my run, all buttons on the machine stopped working. The "EMERGENCY STOP" button was flashing away at me trying to tempt me to push it, but I never quite trust emergency buttons NOT to set off some ridiculously loud alarm, and the last thing I needed was to lose face in front of fellow sporters on my first day back. So... diddums here decides to try and jump off it, misses by about an inch and catches the treadmill's speeding conveyor belt with the tip of her right foot, which launches me into a full-on-flat-on-yer-face type fall. I guess I should come away with this with the notion that gyms are vindictive lovers when neglected for too long.

To top it all off, the cockrel I mentioned earlier seems to have taken permanent residence in our very own backyard and now appears to have lost ALL sense of time, as it's started crowing at 2 a.m.

Oh, and did I mention I got attacked by two pigeons on the way to my car on Friday?!? Still think I'm paranoid?!?

Search Hits

I'm not too sure how I feel about people find their way onto my blog by entering keywords such as this into Google:

While "annoying belgians" might not be a hit to be too proud of, I had two hits just last week from people googling for "wringing pigeon's neck"...

I think the world is finally catching onto the pigeon conspiracy! Thank sod for that.

GM Cockrel

Could someone maybe please take some time out to genetically engineer a cockrell with a snooze-time that surpasses the 30-second mark?? Because seriously... while I'm all in favor of the return to the countryside, I would be tremendously grateful NOT to be roused by a "COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!!!!" every other half-a-minute at 5 a.m.

I'm sure there's a market for expended-snoozetime-cockrells... Get in!!

In Image

Beyond Enthusiastic

When my girlfriend warned me that she could talk for Britain, I brushed off the comment with a very smitten reply along the lines of "But babe, I could listen to you ramble for hours". What I didn't know then, is that the talking doesn't generally stop when she goes to sleep. This for two very different reasons: Jo is a notorious sleep-talker (whole dreamt-up phone conversations and the lot) and well, Jo's also got a tendency to become very excited about cute little things.

Just a few nights ago, I got prodded in the arm at about 4.30 a.m. It was with some reluctance that I surfaced from the dream I was having, but when I opened my eyes, I found two very awake, sparkly shiners staring back at me.

"Do you know," she said excitedly, "that there's a place in Edinburgh called Saxe Coburgh?!?!"

A little confused about why exactly this bit of information had warranted a prod so early in the morning, I replied: "Erm... what?"

"Well, isn't your royal family called Saxe-Coburgh?!?" *excited Jo-wiggle*

Now, it has to be said. If anyone else were to attempt interrupting my sleep for such a random bit of information, they'd probably get a good thumping or a dangerous little growl, but right then, all I could see, was a big happy grin on the pretty face of that excitedly wiggly girlfriend of mine, and I couldn't help but burst out in a wee giggle.

Now, I think the REAL test of our relationship will come if she'd ever insist on talking me through the life-cycle of the single-celled amoeba in the middle of my sleeping pattern, but until then, I can't wait to find out the other random bits of info that excite this girl so much ;-)

Introducing...

The frequency and content of my blogging seem to have become increasingly scattered of late. While that is partly due to the fact that I have jumped headlong into my new job and am still very much trying to re-organise my private life around this new situation, that is not the whole story...

These last two months have heralded the arrival of a different level of distraction entirely. It presented itself in a highly compact, dangerously spiky and tremendously vibrant packaging. And I've taken the last two months to slowly unwrap it and figure out what place to give it in my life.

Frequent visitors to this blog undoubtedly know that I have been single for pretty much 19 months now. About a year and a half ago, I made the conscious decision to take some proper solo time for a change. It was time well spent on thesis-writing, travelling, re-establishing old connections, making new ones, physical and emotional recovery, finding a job and buying a flat. It seems odd, if not a little indulgent then, that one would find oneself at a point in life where things seem to fall perfectly into place, and to feel utterly contented with what one has and where one is in life... only to be presented with some unexpected icing on the proverbial cake.

I've taken some time to let things sink in and have refrained (as much as I could without exploding of eagerness to shout it over the rooftops) from recounting the events leading up to this point. But it seems fairly obvious to me now that this is the right time to introduce "the icing", as she'll undoubtedly feature in more than one of my future blogposts, if I continue the level of personal-account blogging I've accustomed these last two years. I don't feel very comfortable holding stuff back, and I'm sure you've all picked up on the fact that my posts have been less coherent as well as more impersonal, and I've just about stretched the limits of self-containment anyway...

So, ladies and gentlereaders, voila ma petite-amie: Jo.

Ye can't really tell from her picture (what with her being uncharacteristically pretty for a Scot *ONLY JOKING*... *not*), but she is in fact Scottish. Sexy accent included. And yes, yes, I KNOW I have just bought a flat and landed myself a fantastic job here in Belgium, but then I like the road less travelled. More than that... the combination of those various elements in my life seems to make perfect sense just now.

I could quite easily list a thousand things about her that make me go all mushy, but then I would like to keep my readership and it would seriously interfere with the high standard of blogging you're all accustomed to *cough*

Actually, sod that. She's fab. She's got bump 'n grind dancemoves that make MC Hammer look like a wallflower in comparison, her funky hair would turn even the most well-endowed hedgehog envious and when she smiles, it totally tugs at my heartstrings. She's in my system and it feels like that's exactly where she was meant to be. So yes, Jo's likely to feature on this blog in future. By association.

And now that I've managed to get this all out on "paper", I've cleared the path for my blogging to regain its natural flow...

The Sunday Struggle #8

My Sunday's not been much of a struggle this weekend so I figured it best to simply keep it to a Sunday Stencil and Sunday Quote...

- Mankind's Evolution -

Found this stencil while off out on Saturday night. I absolutely love this one. It's such a simple visual representation of mankind's evolution into a military power that has turned on itself. Very powerful visual in my opinion.


"Happiness?

A good wine, a good meal and a good woman.
Or a bad woman.
It depends on how much happiness you can handle."

- George Burns (Via Jo) -

Women's Warped Sense of Time?

What does a lesbian bring on her second date?

A moving van.

This joke is funny simply because it's so painfully accurate. It's the stereotypical lesbian image: Girl and Girl meet, fall in love, start wearing each other's clothes, move in, adopt cats. All in the space of 6 months. But stereotypes are generally rooted in reality, and this one no less so. Based on personal experiences and observing some of my gay female friends, I would have to conclude that the stereotype is not too far off the mark. As a group, we have a tendency to move fast.

During a recent phone conversation about this topic with Jo (yes, the hot girl I mentioned a few posts ago), we both acknowledged that the two weeks that had passed since her visit, did appear so much longer than just two weeks. And it made me wonder whether maybe women simply have a different and unrealistic perception of time. If women perceive time differently than men do, then the time-perception of a lesbian couple is bound to be skewed. Perhaps men and women in heterosexual relationships balance each other out in this aspect, allowing them to move according to a more accurate timescale of relationship-events. While the warped-perception-of-time of two women in a gay relationship would merely aggravate the situation and therefore enhance the speed at which things move forward within the relationship.

So, I decided to browse Science Direct for a while to try and hunt down a few publications on gender differences in time perception. I found lots of publications that seem to confirm that women indeed tend to OVER-estimate duration of time, while men generally have an accurate sense of the time passed.

In light of this, it's probably no coincidence that the words "Bed" and "Death" are consistently preceded by the word "Lesbian". Lesbian Bed Death is a term used to describe the phenomenon of declining sexual activity about a year into a lesbian relationship. It's a bit of a scare-mongering term in the lesbian community and whether this concept is purely mythological or not, it is still highly debated both socially and academically. I personally think the whole phenomenon is largely exaggerated. The concept of the declining sex life is as much a straight as a gay issue in long-term relationships and depends highly on the individual couple. But I suppose that the warped sense of time could account for some instances of Lesbian Bed Death. If women systematically over-estimate the duration of time passed, then a year might indeed feel like a lot longer and I would guess that the emotional timeline would therefore reach the general long-term slump a tad sooner too.

Whatever the case, gay women seem to have developed a good sense of humor about this little "quirk" of ours to "move fast", as it's become a bit of a standing joke within the community. I'd say humor is always the first step towards awareness. Whether or not the awareness will be able to restrain us from renting out the U-Haul on a second date, is another matter entirely ;-)


References:

- Wittmann M et al. 2003, "Sex differences in perception of temporal order", Percept Mot Skills 96(1):105-12
- Krishnan L et al. 1984, "Perceived time: its relationship with locus of control, filled versus unfilled time intervals, and perceiver's sex", J Gen Psychol 110:275-81.
-Dolu N et al. 2004, "Sex-related differences in time estimation and the role of expectancy", Int J Neurosci 114(7):805-15
-Eisler AD et al. 1994, "Subjective time scaling: influence of age, gender, and Type A and Type B behavior", Chronobiologia 21(3-4):185-200
-Espinosa-Fernandez L et al. 2003, "Age-related changes and gender differences in time estimation", Acta Psychol (Amst) 112(3):221-32