When technology gets cheeky...

Had trouble getting myself out of bed this morning, so I hit the snooze button a few times. Until that is, my mobile phone decided that I'd had enough. When I tried to reset for more snoozing, it beeped at me angrily and flashed a message "no further actions possible" at me. The cheek.

*growl*

So I got up.

Oot 'n Aboot

Jo hadn’t been home since Christmas and the last time I was in Scotland was just under a year ago, so it seemed like a perfect little outing for our latest three-weekly “conjugal visit” ;-)

For the first time since the start of our relationship, we were on turf that was familiar to the both of us, and as soon as I got into Jo’s car at Newcastle airport, I had the strange sensation of coming home. I could drive the road up to Cumbernauld with my eyes closed. Even when I was living in that neck of the woods, driving past the Lake District and the hills that parallel Hadrian’s Wall, always felt like being handed a tub of vapour-rub. As if you can finally breathe freely again. We stopped for some fish ‘n chips in Gretna Green (no we did not get married... yet) and got ridiculously excited at the idea of being back in the country of neds, fried mars bars and gingers. Jo was beaming with excitement when the first tones of Scottish hit her ears.

We stayed over at Jo’s dad’s on the Friday night. I don’t think I’ve ever been this nervous about meeting a parental (I really wanted to make a good impression), but I was greeted with a very wide, very cheeky grin and a proper weegie “ye allrite hen?”. The resemblance with Jo was hard to miss and I instantly felt very welcome.

I slept close to nothing that first night and not for the reasons you might expect. Jo’d forgotten to bring up the inflatable double bed, so we ended up sharing Jo’s old one-person stead. Admittedly, Jo’s only wee. But when you take into account that fabulous hair of hers, she does succeed at taking up half the space, so I woke up repeatedly during the night trying to resuscitate one limb or the other, as it’d gone dead under the cramped position we were in.

When we headed into Glasgow for breakfast the next morning, I was in dire need of a strong cup of coffee. And spaghetti, apparently, because I ended up choosing a royal serving of pasta for breakfast. I try not to question the cravings I get on weekends of indulgence ;-)

We’d planned to do loads of shopping, but instead, we just hung around enjoying each other’s company. I had to constantly remind Jo that I had in fact lived in Scotland, and that yes, I did know that Cult was just around the corner and that I had ventured into Borders once or twice before. It was fab. We keep discovering more and more common ground between us, as well as fantastic distinct little quirky differences and I have to admit that this is why I love the flutterstage so much. It’s like charting the proverbial undiscovered country. And as Eddie Izzard would be inclined to say, I feel utterly smug at having planted my flag in this one ;-)

Despite the lack of sleep the night before and a tiring day out in Glasgow, we decided to go for a wee jolly at the Polo Lounge that night. It’d been a while since I last set foot in a proper gay club and it was hugely entertaining doing a round of “spot-the-stereotype”. I got accosted by a rather drunken lad at the bar when ordering drinks, who seem to feel it necessary to stress that he was in fact straight, not gay, that he had wandered into the club by accident and that he was surprised to see that we were all nice people. I replied that I knew some nice straight people too and that I occasionally accidentally find myself stranded in a straight club, but that I too get over the embarrassment then and just try to have a good time.

I think he was too drunk to note the hint of sarcasm.

We spent the remainder of the weekend in Edinburgh, where we’d booked ourselves a room in a hotel just off the Royal Mile. Excellent staggering distance from the pubs ‘n clubs and easy access to a decent fry-up for the morning after. I’d asked Jo to show me “her” Edinburgh, so she’d compiled a wee list of places for us to go to. I would recommend any tourist take the Jo-tour, because not only did we get to have lunch at Elephant House (where J.K.Rowling wrote the first Harry potter), we also saw an excellent exhibition on Pixar animation, the ancient cemetery AND we had the most royal serving of nachos possible.

Because the Monday was a bank holiday, we decided to do something characteristically lesbian: we both rang our ex-es, their respective current girlfriends and a few other friends (Richard!!) to meet up for a night out on the Sunday. Ok, so I exaggerate *grin* There were only two ex-es really ;-)

Most of us were moderately inebriated by the time we fetched a cab to Studio 24 (27? 53? Sod knows what number it was, I did just say I was inebriated) and when the cab driver failed to respond to our enquiries but kept driving in what appeared to be the wrong direction, I had a very scary vision of the lot of us stranded in a ditch just outside the Scottish border. But the bloke clearly DID know the venue, because a few minutes later, he pulled up next to a very butch female bouncer, who welcomed us into a noisy wee club.

I will refrain from commenting on the burlesque show that was put on between DJ sets, as I got called a body fascist by both my girlfriend and my friends following my comments on the night itself, but can I just say that THONGS are wrong on SO many levels *shudders*.

Dammit, my train’s pulling into the station. I will have to love you and leave you. Might finish off this post later… or I could simply take this opportunity to spare you further ranting ;-)

Sheer Stupidity

Can someone explain this to me please? Found this on the shoebox that came with Jo's new shoes...




Average content: 2 ??

Seriously.

Crisis

Postman Pat is on strike. At least he seems to be in Ghent. I've not received any mail for a week now, which is highly annoying.

While I'm normally quite partial to a bit of socialist/communist rallying, right now, all I can think of is that huge order I've put in for spray-paints, stanley knives and canvasses from Schleiper. They're not likely to arrive any time soon now, what with the humongous backlog at the postal distribution center.

My workhours overlap with the store's opening hours, so there's no other option for me but to order them online and await their arrival patiently. But it's a bit of a dud having 10 stencils cut out and ready to go, when you've run out of spray-paint and canvasses. I desperately need white-spray paint to finish off some of the multi-coloured stencils I've started, and it pains me to see them unfinished. It's like an itch you can't scratch.

The real bitch of it is that while the government can't seem to be arsed to mediate in the postal crisis, it still managed to get its own electoral cards delivered to our mailboxes exactly as planned, because I received mine today.

It would be marginally less annoying if I had a clue who to vote for this time around. I assumed my ideals hadn't changed all that much since the last elections, but when I took the online survey it told me: "your answers most closely match the political pamphlet of the christian democrats (read: conservatives)". I almost cried. Either I have gotten really old, in which case I'm going to have to go back into therapy, OR, the whole political arena suddenly made a staggering shift towards libertarianism, in which case I'd say we're just about done saving the world.

To check whether my ideals had indeed changed significantly, I decided to re-take the political compass questionnaire. It appears I have changed very little since I took it two years ago:

The hilarious thing is that this result points me to be ever so slightly more leftist and libertarian than the Dalai Lama appears to be. In my opinion, the Lama is a right authoritarion rightwing b@*%@rd ;-)

To be honest, I think the questionnaire is ever so slightly contrived. It may be my autistic inclinations but when someone asks me to rate the statement:

"A significant advantage of a one-party state is that it avoids all the arguments that delay progress in a democratic political system."

I feel slightly ill at ease with the phrasing. Am I to judge this statement on pure logic? Because if that's the case, then of course this is a significant advantage in favor of a one-party state. But if I am to interpret this question to mean: "Is this advantage enough to warrant a one-party state", then my answer is of course completely different.

Another example:

"Mothers may have careers, but their first duty is to be homemakers."

Now this is a tricky one. If this statement had said: "Women" instead of "Mothers" then I would have instantly replied "Strongly disagree". But here it says "Mothers". I very strongly believe that if a woman decides to pop out a few childeren, then it is her first duty to provide a "home" for them in every meaning of the word. But this statement is highly likely meant to be probative of underlying sexist ideals, and as such, my answer will be entirely misinterpreted.

This last statement, however, had me tangled up the longest:

"Military action that defies international law is sometimes justified."

First of all, I feel that laws should continuously be challenged and re-appraised. If a law fails to hit the mark or is inadequate in one way or other, then it needs to either be revised or ignored. There's nothing more stupid than blind faith in or docile obedience to set laws. But... and this is a big "but"... if the sentence is meant to mean the current international law on military intervention, and surreptitiously hints at US infringement of international law by invading Iraq, then my answer is "strongly disagree". Because this political compass was designed in 2001, it's highly likely that this question was set up with Iraq in mind and that its answers are judged in this light.

Anyway, I'm rambling, and I've forgotten what my point was. At any rate, I won't be voting Christian Democrat. I'm a libertarian lesbian scientist for chrissakes... who in their right mind.... ?!?!

The Sunday Struggle #11

Are you stuck in your carsey today, with nishta to fake but to fiddle your luppers? Need some bona jogger, or a few hints at web-charper worthy subjects? Grab yourself a pogy bevvy and just varda below. I've screeved pogy tips:

1. Learn Polari, the forgotten Gay language.
Polari was developed in Britain in the 1950s as a secret code to communicate. Homosexuality was very much illegal still and it was a means to escape detection by police.

2. Compile a ransom note with the help of the Visual Dictionary

It's a collection of images of words, found in our urban environment. (Thnx Lynne for this excellent find!)

3. Watch a movie/sit-com without paying or stealing at TV Link
A huge selection of high quality films and series you can watch online for free without the need to download them to your laptop illegaly first. (Thnx Matt & Val for this tip)

4. Take time out to think about what you're thinking: The Thought Project
Photographer Simon Hoegsberg took three months to stop strangers in the street, asked them what they had been thinking about the exact moment he stopped them. He recorded their answers on a dictaphone and then took their picture. His website is a very interesting collection of their random thoughts. (Via Ine)

5. Sound familiar? The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon:
Baader-Meinhof is the phenomenon where one happens upon some obscure piece of information– often an unfamiliar word or name– and soon afterwards encounters the same subject again, often repeatedly. The reason for this is our brains' prejudice towards patterns. Our brains are fantastic pattern recognition engines, a characteristic which is highly useful for learning, but it does cause the brain to lend excessive importance to unremarkable events.
(Thnx Disco, u know I love patterns and emergence ;-)

6. Get stuck in the fallacy of logic, the wonder of incentives and some sound economic-cultural thinking at Freakonomics.

7. Break out of the box by separating your circle of concern & circle of influence:In Excellent and in hindsight obvious little strategy on where to focus your energy (Thnx Jo)

"looking at ways to influence and change our surroundings it is helpful to notice where we focus our time and energy. We each have a wide range of concerns--our health, our family, problems at work, the national debt, etc., and it is these things in our lives that make up our Circle of Concern. As we look at those things within our Circle of Concern, it becomes apparent that there are some things over which we have no real control and others that we can do something about. We could identify those concerns in the latter group by circumscribing them in a smaller Circle of Influence."

8. Those of u expecting a new offspring any time soon, would do well to read this article first before choosing a name ;-)

PS: Since I've started the Sunday Struggle, I've received some excellent tips from many of you, so please do keep them coming! ;-)

Grotesque Science

Call me conservative, but I find this article highly disturbing:

Baby Formula that Fights Fat

"Infant formula and other baby foods that provide permanent protection from obesity and diabetes into adulthood could be on shop shelves soon, reports Lisa Melton in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. The foods will be supplemented with leptin, the hunger hormone. Those who take the foods early in life should remain permanently slim."

In plain language, the science behind this article boils down to this:

Through time, humans have evolved to get the maximum amount of energy out of a minimal amount of food. From an evolutionary viewpoint, this makes perfect sense: your chances of survival go up. Energy expenditure is a very strong drive in animal life and evolution. A cheetah needs to be successful at his kills, because he loses a lot of energy on the chase of prey. The energy lost at acquiring prey must be far less than the energy gained by eating the prey, otherwise there is no point chasing. Likewise, your survival chances increase if you become more efficient at getting energy out of the food you managed to catch.


These days, we no longer have to struggle to find food. In the Western World, food is no longer scarce and processed foods are far richer in energy (fat, sugar) than most other natural sources of food. So, because we are so efficient in terms of energy acquirement, we get fat. That is to say, those making no effort at a balanced diet and exercise regime, get fat.

Instead of working on incentives to drive people to think more consciously about their diets, scientist have decided to take a short-cut:

Leptin is a hormone that regulates energy metabolism. By giving leptin to babies, you re-train their bodies to become LESS efficient at getting energy out of food. So their body, on all accounts, becomes inefficient at dealing with food. They can eat lots, but their body will only absorb small amounts of energy, and will therefore be unlikely to become fat.

I am all for investigative research, if it aims at explaining how our bodies work. But when that knowledge is used to undo years of evolutionary fine-tuning, I start to feel slight shivers down my spine. The product is expected to be on the shelves in a year's time. I wonder how many people will choose to feed it to their new-borns. I fear there will be rather a lot. Ignorance rarely is bliss.

Observing The Habitat

What do you pack on your first visit to the girlfriend's natural habitat? I had a chocolate cake and ample supply of Belgian cookies, but surely I was supposed to bring some other stuff too? Clothes yes. But which ones? Packing makes me feel uncharacteristically girlie. And there's no point bringing your entire wardrobe, cuz that'll just make you look like a right tit. Plus, Jo's chivalrous and only wee, so it's not fair bringing a bag twice her size. She'll only insist on carrying it to the car for me anyway.

After a lot of faffing, I settled on a weekend-sized duffel-bag full of freshly laundered clothing, the basic toiletries, a notebook to jot down my observations and a good book in case Jo would tire of my rambling at any point over the weekend. I turned up at the airport way before schedule, and lost about 5 years of my life when this cheery announcement sent me off in a wee panic:

- Leeds Bradford: Cancelled -

As it turns out, only 14 people had signed on for the flight to Leeds Bradford, and despite the 300 euro airfare per person, BMI simply couldn't be arsed chartering a separate plane for such a small group. So instead, they transferred us all over onto the semi-full East Midlands flight, told us we were lucky to still get a flight out and dropped us of at Leeds Bradford via detour, a whole 2 hours later than expected. If I hadn't been so relieved that it wasn't a proper cancellation, I would have kicked up a real fuss.

But then, my mind was on my final destination, for just this once. My mind slid out of focus, however, when I had to make my way through customs. As I dropped my bag onto the X-ray belt and placed the chocolate cake on a separate tray, a very scary thought crossed my mind: What if... what IF, the bakery accidentally left a knife in the chocolate cake while making it? I mean, it happens. Not often. But it happens. And it would be just my luck that the knife would accidentally be forgotten inside the ONE cake to be scanned at a high-security airport that day now wouldn't it? I was in half a mind to just bin the cake entirely, but then decided that my neurosis was simply in overdrive, and stepped through security with my fingers crossed.

Just as my cake was passing through the X-ray, the lady in charge called her two superiors and stopped the conveyor belt. They eyed me up suspiciously for a few minutes whilst talking amongst themselves and finally turned to me with the words: "Is it a good cake?"

It took me a moment to gather my wits and I eventually replied: "Well Sir, that depends on why you want to know?" To which he said: "We were just thinking of keeping it." "Oh well then, it's a bad one," I replied. Which made him grin as he handed the cake back over to me.

Looks like I wasn't about to be arrested for suspicious knife-smuggling after all.

- Angel of the North in Brussels??-

I took a big risk flying without my lucky travel-sock, but I figured I'd just about all the luck I needed, waiting for me at the other end of the channel ;-)

There's something peculiar about long-distance relationships. No matter how close you've become, no matter how long you've known each other for, there's always a refreshed amount of flutters, nerves and shyness each time you meet up again. It generally takes an hour to settle back into where you last left off, but the fantastic aspect of it is, that you switch into an accelerated gear after that. You have both made a conscious effort to make time for each other for those few days, and you can well and truly focus on each other and on what it is you both want to do. It's remarkably fluid and intense.

While it was my first visit to Jo's habitat, it felt very much like coming home. I did warn her that I wasn't quite sure whom I'd kiss first: Her or the British Soil. I'd not been back to the UK since I left for New Zealand last August, so I'd more than missed Britain. But when I walked through the gate and saw her pretty smile flash back at me, I couldn't resist kissing her first ;-)

She offered to carry my bag for me and I was relieved I'd stuck to a weekend-sized bag.

The drive to her house was a quiet one. We squeezed each other's hands a fair few times, but we were both settling into that strange mixture of re-acquaintance and excitement, and it felt nice to just sit there, among all the tension and unspoken thoughts, with her next to me.

Walking through her front door was like finally finding another difficult piece of the puzzle I was trying to solve. When you meet someone long-distance, it takes a while longer before you get to see the clear picture of each other. You fall in love gradually. Bits of the puzzle are revealed to you only slowly through texts, e-mails, phone conversations and the stolen moments spent together. But a person's home, where they keep their memories, where the rooms are drenched in their daily routines, can reveal substantially more to you than any conversation can. And as such, every new encounter is like falling for someone all over again, only deeper.

It's been a while since I've had such an indulgent, relaxing weekend. We went wherever the flow took us. Much to our surprise, we actually successfully made it out of the house a few times. Strolled the lovely historic streets of the town, hunted down some poached eggs for breakfast, indulged in a traditional Sunday Roast down a local pub, spent a night on the town with some friends, whiled away some time over coffee at Borders while perusing (and buying) books. All incredibly relaxing.

I have a major thing with books. When I was little, my mum arranged it so that I could have three library cards instead of just the one, enabling me to take out 15 books a week. And when I'd made my way through most of what the local library had on offer, my dad started taking me to FNAC once a month, where I would be allowed to buy as many books as I wanted, provided they were of a certain level (was never allowed to buy "the baby-sitter's club" ;-)) And I think to me, those visit to the library and bookstore were like the proverbial visits to the candy shop.

So I love bookshops. And thankfully, it's a passion shared by Jo. I love strolling through them for hours, sitting on the floor in front of a section that tickles my interest, just perusing the books on offer. I genuinely feel that Belgium still lacks on bookshop-culture. Most good bookstores in Britain have coffee shops incorporated in them, and there's sofas strewn throughout the entire shop where you can cosy up for a wee read. There's few things more invigorating than having all that information and story-telling at your fingertips, while being given the time to browse them at leisure.

The nice thing about relationships then, is that you get given a second set of eyes. And because Jo loves books as much as I do, we were feeding off each other in the bookstore. She'd spot things I had missed and vice versa, and while our topics of interest don't necessarily always overlap, our interest in each other enriches the perusing experience. After much oooh-ing and aaaah-ing, I walked out with a book on Banksy's artwork, a photography book on emerging patterns and "Freakonomics", a book I would very much recommend to anyone with an interest in incentives, logical fallacies and economics.

Now, this going to sound a little sad. But do any of you have deeply hidden fantasies about "the love of your life", like say, a knight in shining armour coming to your rescue, or a bad boy/girl on a motorcycle driving you off into the horizon? Vivid dreams about the day Richard Gere walks into the factory in officer's outfit to lift you into his arms and carry you out? Or of Fred Astair tap-dancing his way over to you to seduce you with his singing? No? Right, well don't judge me on this then, but I've always had a massive thing with Dirty Dancing and Grease. And while I fancied "Frances" and "Sandy" instead of Patrick Swayze or John Travolta, the romantic view of love instilled in my head is very much to do with dancing and music.

I don't have "a type" as such, but a nice smile, sparkly eyes and some killer dance-moves never fail to seduce me. And I didn't quite realise how deeply rooted this romantic "Dirty Dancing"-fantasy of mine was until I went out clubbing in York. Jo slipped down in the booth next to me while we were waiting for our drinks, and I could tell she was itching to have a wee boogie. Five minutes later, she was up on the dancefloor strutting her stuff and my jaw just dropped. Now that girl can dance. Not only that, she can dance WITH me. None of that Tango-style classical malarky, no... just freestyle contemporary fun. Feeding off each other's energy, a rhythm that was very much in sync.


Maybe, just maybe, scents and pheromones aren't the only factors of seduction at play in human relationships. I suspect rhythm and pacing very much are too.

- A slightly inebriated, sultry Jo on
our way home from the club-

Get in!

Oooooh I could crush a grape, I'm that excited!!!


I'm flying out to the UK for a wee visit this weekend. It'll be the first time I'll get to see the phenomenon that is Jo, in her natural habitat. Got my binoculars and notepad at the ready, and some chocolate to tempt it to come closer.

Get in!!!