Football Afternoon

This day has been marked in my calendar for a while. The Anna Ross Breast Cancer Awareness run was scheduled for today, but then also the #NLFtour with the twitter kids. Then there was our usual yoga class, which entailed meeting with my friend Lau, the earlier Skyping with my boyfriend and then hairwashing and laundry. Lots of stuff? Yes, plenty.

I woke up early because we received the threat that there won't be any water from 7 am to 5 pm due to... well, the Major should know why. As result, I woke up ON SUNDAY at 6 am to wash my hair and get my laundry done. Guess what? The water went nowhere. It lost pressure, but we had plenty of water. Then again other people in other parts of the city did suffer the lack of water. Last year I went to the Anna Ross run, and I loved it, but I remembered the nightmare it was to try and get to San José, and so since I was going to watch the Denver Broncos vs New England Patriots, and getting to the sports bar by car, I decided to skip the run this year and rather go to yoga. Uhum, by the way, I'm seriously out of shape, and it shows. Gara do something about it.

After yoga - where I did particularly bad, so I MIGHT practice some asanas at home in this week to come - I "changed" (I pulled a dressy top and wore my charcoal-grey stripped string pants, which I used for yoga), fixed up myself a little bit, and then dropped my friend at her place, going then to San Pedro, to the Chichi's sport bar, where we had decided to go and watch the match.

When I've got there - over two hours before the begining of the match - the place was packed to capacity. Tables were bunched up and set for parties, who were there to enjoy the Barcelona-Real Madrid match. Yes, this is a country where the only valid type of sport worth following and cheering for is football soccer. Just like basically in most of the rest of the world. We were crammed in a small table, where we watched the soccer match and ordered a thing or two for snaking and drinking. The conversation was profusely peppered with tweeting, facebook checking and chart consulting which sided up nicely with social conversation of a type that hardly comes up in any other group of half- strangers.

We laughed lots, joked a lot, shared comments and tweets and generally spent a wonderful time in ways that are unconventional by traditional means. Or may that only be my perception?

Social media does speed up the ice breaking, but maybe it sheds off many nice elements of expectation and patient maturing that the old ways of making friends have.

Lightning Shaked Saturday

From sunny to clouded and lightning linen, today looks a lot like a day with bipolar issues. And dear Hyne, what the hell happened to my weekend?? I remember still being in Hungary and spending quiet little weekends - maybe even wishing for weekdays so I could see my beloved Korean series - but now! Now I spend weekdays hoping for weekends - just like any regular, normal, decent and self-respecting employee does - and when the weekend comes I have a week's worth of plans and programs and no idea how to have them all done! Yes, planning, planning, all can be solved with proper planning and organizing, but sometimes an Ubiquity Pill would help a lot. At days like this I wish I were already retired.

Today's plans included going to the seamtress to get three pairs of slacks fixed, because somehow I have lost... well, if not weight, I sure have slid off my frame a couple of sizes. One of the slacks I took for fixing had already been fixed, which made the woman widen her eyes in amazement. I just smiled, but when I saw how much had to be taken off the slack to fit me I couldn't believe it. It's at least two inches from the waist!

Then I also checked a local bead store to get some supplies for my next project, and once again realized that they sell garbage. I needed some hooks, but the hooks they sold were so badly planned that they don't open. Don't get me wrong, they do move, only both parts of the hook never slide far enough to fit anything between them. From there I roamed here and there, went to the Post Office, then visited my DVD rental -where there was nothing, as usual - and then home, just in time to avoid the 2 minute pouring, which was preceded by lightnings like you have never seen before. It was like energy trees planted on the sky were shooting their powerful white roots from above into the Earth. It was scary.

Further plans include meeting with my fellow Heredian Tweeters at 15h for a coffee, sharing news and tweeting live, under the #tuiterosheredianos hashtag, and then meet with Carrie and Kate at 17h. Hopefully I can get them to meet at a different location since I need to fix a couple of things for next Thursday, when my friend Alix will be celebrating her birthday, for which I'd like to get her an appointment for a mini spa treatment. If I can't get Carrie and Kate to meet me at the new place I'll have to arrive at our meeting later, but in any case I need to meet them! Not only because I already miss them, but because Carrie has White Collar Eps for me, and I really, really need those!

Still have lots of things to fix and arrange, but I'll manage the rest of the load later, for now, I'll see how can I handle these.

Blessed weekend for all!

Another Hectic Sunday

Something must be definitively out of order whrn you wake up on a Sunday at 6:45 am all by yourself. No alarm, no plans, no trip to the beach only a disjunctive: join my usual yoga class at 10:30 am or join my friends for breakfast at this awesome location some miles away driving, with the opportunity to meet new people, update on information and plunge into the most recent topics of conversation hot on the cyberuniverse - which I may or may not know of. This was a Twitter Breakfast, a uniquete kind of meeting where you can synch with the rest of the community, or at least be updated on the latest trends without having to sacrifice your own usual search. (For instance, I'm quite disconnected of the local gossip and national actuality, as I'm more stuck in telecommunications, Amazon.com, books and American Politics.)

As I was starting my Sunday as any other Sunday, I realized that I still had to wash Sookie. But not only that. Kari and I had decided to take my older nephew for shopping to get him scubba diving equipment (he's birthday is close and his aunt - me - thinks that a T-shirt and a Chinese Chess game ins't nearly enough). Then I realized that I had to get going with Lau's scrapbook project, so either I worked on it now or I would never be ready. As result Sookie got washed and waxed, but neither the yoga class not the Twitter Breakfast were doable under my current situation.

It's kinda sad that two things that are important to me, that could be among the last one I can attend in my life, are moved for something one could say I can do any other time. Well, no. Yes, say, but I had to cancel on both for the reason that though I could do scrapbooking any other time  - pictures are not going anywere - scrapbooking is a very time consuming thing and either you get doing it on schedule, or you end up with no margins of time left, holding into any available, free minute to work on them.

It reminded me of studying and even working. Sure, you can think you can study any time, you can work anytime, but exactly that sort of thinking is what pushes you later to be unable to do it anytime, because either you do it now or you'll never get done with it, and you'll fail or lose what you where aiming for with the project. I didn't plan my time well with this project and I ended up running out of time, and as result now I have to give up things I would love to do, in order to catch up on the project and get it by the last available time possible for me.

From this I leave you a question: Are you looking forward for Hectic Sundays? Is your schedule really as flexible as you pretend it is, or are you working yourself a whole lot of rushing and trouble? Pressure isn't fun and it can end up being really expensive.

Organize your time well. Plan your activities.

Indifference: In Reply to a Post

As many other times, for many of us, Twitter has been today the way for a guy known as @H3dicho, or carepicha (swearing expression in Spanish) to promote people to read his latest post. Inspite of his colourful handle, this kid writes really well, spinning his words quite properly, with gusto around the topic he develops. Truth to be told, I don't follow his blog, therefore I couldn't tell you what's the normal trend of his blog, though I have read a few of his entries, most of them about daily philosophy, pointing the finger at different cases, all of them very well sustained, and so on. This time he wrote about one topic that seems to occupy the mind of men more often than not, and it has nothing to do with any sort of sport you can follow on ESPN: women.

I saw that, eye rolling. But before the ladies fall into the usual when-will-men-think-of-anything-else-other-than-how-complicated-we-are, let's give him a chance, let's talk about it, shall we?

There's a general misbelieve that women are complicated and nobody can understand them, except other women, and also that men are complicated (or generally stupid, with a mental development of a 5 year-old and an emotional level of a 3 year old) and nobody can get them except other men. That's not true. Neither women are complicated nor men are stupid. Truth is that socially we are conditioned to be attracted to each other, but not to work on the same wavelenght when it comes to relationships, or more personal, intimate matters. Societies such as Latin American ones, and others where the cultural difference between the genders is even more marked, this gap is wider. It's not only about giving dolls to girls on Christmas, and cars to boys, but also the things we daily receive from everywhere. Girls are expected to take interest in fashion, and wishing to get married, have a family and cook and clean for them. Boys are told to be interested in sports and mechanics, seduce as many women as he can and always have a sort of pure angel, a virgin at his side who will faithfully serve him, give him children and sleep only with him. Demurely.

The view society sells about a woman is a young person with big boobs, small waist, long legs, big ass, long hair, skimpy clothes, who was born only for sex and servitude. She must love shoes and dress sexily to attract men, whom she dates looking always for her Prince Charming. She changes her mind constantly and never says what's really in her mind, but speaks so much she drives everybody into boredom.

In most societies men still resent it if his wife or girlfriend makes more money than them, and also resent women who act like them. Women tend to look down on men who make less money than them and dislike men who act like them. It's a good sign, that these are less and less seen in the younger generations, but the seeds of difference are still present.

Generally, also, society tends to infuse in us bits to deconstruct weaken our self esteem and self confidence. For one side, the virtue of being humble is promoted everywhere, and often in a way that suggests you must hide your other virtues and systematically debase yourself, undervalue, underestimate yourself, otherwise you'll be guilty of being too self involved. For instance, you are not allowed socially to say you are beautiful, or smart. You can't reassure yourself of these. The social way for you to reassure yourself of being beautiful or smart is by being considered so by others. In other words, your opinion of yourself has no social value, only the opinion of others, and the only value acceptable is the social one. A person isn't successful if their environment doesn't consider them so.

Also there's another social conditioning regarding relationships of the romantic type: people who say "yes" right away are either desperate or whores. Playing "hard to get" is socially expected. A woman who yields at one to the request of a man loses his respect. Women, naturally, are not allowed socially to make requests at men, but a man who replies at once to her subtle advances is considered a loser who would wag his tail at anything giving him the slightest morsel of attention. Thus everybody's life is made more miserable thanks to expectations. The downfall here is that you are put on a guessing game, trying to find out whether you will actually get to your goal or not, which isn't all that much fun. Also, when you are not interested, how are you supposed to fend off the unrequested attention?

However, yes, socially the pretended party is expected to show indifference to arouse the attention of the pretender. In this game often two types of pretender come to game: the broken, one who can't stand indifference, thus must convert it into attention; and the hunter. In either case - sadly - the pretended using the indifference card, loses their humanity: they are no longer a person with whom the pretender would like to build a healthy, happy relationship, but a challenge, a goal, an object. It's quite interesting how lots of people are actually hoping to become objects, shed their humanity to be a thing.

The broken is often a person seemed as well adapted, normal, and much a product of their society. This kind of pretender often comes up like someone who moves well in society and their behavior is in everyway as expected. In other cases, as the need for acceptance increases, the broken can also come up as a dependant, needy person. This character often seeks specifically people who are not interested in them to seduce them. Those around them who like them are less interesting, less important, as their input of appreciation has already been gotten. Interestingly, in their mind, as they find someone not charmed by them - or a negative input about themselves - the value of those liking them decreases. After all, being the value of the person determinated by others, if one person don't show appreciation is because there's something wrong with them, and all those liking them are mistaken because they can't see that flaw that takes aways someone else's aproval. Thus seducing this person, making this person like them is the only way they can restablish their own worth.

Not getting their approval equals to failure, a rupture on their self image.

For this kind of pretender, getting the liking of this person isn't the end of the story, for they will keep seeking for other people to "convert". If the broken finds another person to seduce and seduces it successfully, their self image remains unharmed. The aproval of the left one leaves no mark, as any disapproval will be written off as dispair due to the break up. However if the pretender is the one leaving them, the broken's self image suffers greatly. Approval was temporal and they have failed to keep it up. The sense of failure in them will be great and they'll probably feel worthless, as if source of their worth is only a mirage. Comfort people like this is a really hard task.

The hunter, on the other hand, is interested only on the game, on the getting the prize and then hunt down the next one. Easy preys are not fun, which is why they only go for those hard to get, or those who have a particular feature that makes them socially valuable. Some hunt for the youngest, the foreigner, the pretiest, the wealthiest, the strongest, the most wanted, the most famous. It's never about the person, or about getting to know the given person, or even get their approval. The game is only about getting it, the whole point is to be able to say "I had X". Another notch on the bedpost, another entry in the black book.

Yes, certainly you can attract some pretenders by playing hard to get, but think about the kind of people such a move will put in your life. People who expect you to play, to pretend, to be something you are not, to conceal yourself, leave honesty outside of the relationship because you can't actually express what you want. If, on the other hand you pretend a person who plays this card, what kind of person will you get? Yes, the woman who played hard to get will be complicated, because she learned the only way she can keep your interest is by making things difficult for you. Yes, the man who played hard to get will be a motherfucker who treats you like shit because he learned you like to suffer and be subject to an emotional swing: beating&chocolates. But what can you do? Keep dreaming about the perfect person who will happen into your life like a dream and make everything perfect?

Men dreaming about women who are beautiful, don't want them for their money, love football, aren't jealous, love them to madness and love to have sex all the time. Women dreaming about kind, gentle men who help them, don't complain about the number of shoes stashed in their closets or the time it takes them to get ready.

Keep dreaming.

Have anyone noticed we are taught to dream about something other than a person? Have anyone noticed that our best relationships are those with our friends because they are loose and free of expectations? You friend people, humans, regardless of their gender, money or looks, and you love them for long, long time. Why can't we look at our romantic relationships the same way? See the person before the social pose, the looks, the money, the shoes, the title, the fashion?

My kind is easier. Simpler I wouldn't say because no person is simple and no person is as uncomplicated as they believe themselves to be. But we talk. If you approach us and we like you, we will smile back, kiss you on the cheek, talk, seek to know you better and then decide. We don't play hard to get. If you arouse us we might even kiss you before even saying hello. We don't need your approval, we don't depend on that, we only want your honest wish to share soemthing with us: time, smile, a trip, a friendship, thoughts, a good talk, sex.

We don't hide our thoughts, and we would like you to do the same, but we don't expect. You give what you want to give, what you feel like giving, and we will take that, nothing more and decide if that's enough for us. A break up can make us sad, because we might lose someone we've got to love deeply, but we will recover, smile and remember the good and greet you gladly if we see you again sometime.

You don't touch our self esteem or our self confidence, or our image: you touch our lives and we will cherish you always. Society doesn't really roll with us. We are accepted, as we have grown many in number, but we are not a "normal" component of societies. We are "variety", "different", "freethinkers", "weirdos", "hippies", "potheads", "treehuggers". Society continues looking at us as exceptions, though we are starting to hardly be so.

Yes, there's people out there who is honest and can't give a flying jump about what society thinks it's proper or not, so it's up to you: continue in the game, strategize to get a prize, play your cards to be the Game of the Year, of let yourself meet people and find those who will say yes at once and concentrate not in the seducing game, but in the building of a happy, uncomplicated relationship. Your choice.

Social Networks

Things such as the social networks, in whatever form, shape, name, exercise an impact over the life of people, the way they see life, the way they meet other and the way their interact. The norms for meeting others, the particulars that make two individuals qualify as "friends" - or whatever name they are given in the different circles - morph within the boundaries and rules proper of each of these cyber human-interconnections.

The social networks I'm part of at this moment are basically iwiw (the Hungarian profile social network. Invite only), Facebook, Interpals (a network to make friends for correspondence, or penpalling), and naturally, Twitter. Of all these Twitter has to itself a distinctive feature that haven't been able to find in any other: the actual chance for people to meet. A space created for "mini-blogging", though I keep seeing it like more of a "messageboard"-meets-"fortune cookie"- meets-"yes-it-could-be-mini-blogging", it proves to have the muscle to bring people to meet, sit down on a group date - no romance involved - to provide for the lack of proper photo albums and costly apps that aim for your data while throwing in exchange some time consuming game or a quizz designed to make you believe you could actually be Hitler, a vampire or Wilson from House MD.

Through breakfasts - or more like brunchs - and sushi or pizza dates, a group of people armed with internet-abled phones or handsets of any other sort, sit together and break the bread, exchanging their usernames, engross their follow and follower lists, making their timelines speed up faster, unroll at a higher speed with more and more tweets from more and more people. I'm getting more and more used to the interaction among them, unlike in the begining, where my old school head couldn't wrap around the concept of having a table of 20 people, with all of them talking through their phones, tweeting instead of talking.

The communications flows, truth to be told, both recorded in the cyberspace, 140 characters at the time, but also life, in the flesh, where the smile, the tone of voice, the eye contact gives meat to the follow. Meetings like these uncover for the cybernaut the person behind the picture, the human behind the characters, the mind behind the message. Here I must stop for a moment and pay my respects for my friend - in here now and shortly referred to by his user, @dankenzon - who was the one to pull me into this social network, and then further introduce me to the rewarding life of #breakfasttouring.

Today's rendez-vous brought together over 28 twitters, gathered around a long table - well, more like 4 or 6 of them pushed together - sharing the moment and the nourishment like a big family. Several local celebrities sat with us, not in the least pushing themselves over the others, claiming their cyber-status to extend also to their real life presence. Known bloggers, who's opinion has been widely shared, sat and commented with those of us less published - if not down right silent about our writing. 

Two of the many topics mentioned caught my attention, bringing me to write this post: The influence of Twitter over expression skills, and infidelity over twitter.

In the first topic, it was mentioned how Twitter pushed people into developping certain skills, such as creativity due to the need to express oneself in 140 characters - thus being able to better phrase one's thoughts, but also the capability of being more tolerant, since the level of peer-pressure on this medium is much higher than in any other network of social sphere. Though these reasonings were quite eloquently exposed, I found myself wondering about them, finding it was not my case, nor I saw it that way. As a longtime journal-writer, and penpaller neither blogging nor tweeting has further developped my expression-skills. If anything, I've found my skills diminished, when compared with those I used to have when more deeply involved in the former practices. There is a certain self-censuring going on in the cyberspace, that does not appear in the intimate paper plane. In here you can write all you want, say all you want, but you never say really all that's in your head. The instant quality of words typed into the big cyberness, does rob them time and again of their better considered, matured condition.

Type and publish. It is out there to be read in the moment you finish typing it, and though you can save it in your draft box for a while, mull over it, how often do you do so? It's different with a date counter to tell you how long has it passed since you last wrote, in a medium so expedit, so instant that up-to-date-ness is expected, in contrast with the paper way, where the past is the seal, the mark, the brand, and the eternity of the things written, scratched, carved upon paper is the expectation.

So, does it improve? Is tweeting better? Does twitter hones expression skills? That's not an affirmation I'm willing to make. It changes the mind, the expressing structures, and it imprints the current trend: fast, concrete, social-centered, and up-to-date. Is this good? It depends on what are you aiming for. In my book the paused, eternal thinking, the one that searched still at the roots, that dwells in the past and goes back to the classics is still the best way to go. Not that I would oppose younger styles and forms, but I do weep for the lost of the paused, dedicated wording that set the written style appart, with verb forms and tenses only used for the written language, the descriptive, rounding palates that could not be freely, spontaneously spoken, but that flows from the pensive soul that has munched on the tip of the pen for long moments before.

Perhaps today's social networks, in the wake of a style that does not make distinction between the spoken and the written language, that makes no distinction between opinion and philosophy, and prefers openly the latest trend instead of the abstract, timeless, rhetoric flow, pulls new speakers, new voices and new forefronts of thought. An era of speech is solidifying around us, that make writers such as Sartre, Nin, Lorca curious memories from a past close in time, distant in concept where the weaving of terms rounded in an diseconomy of words and characters a concept of beauty that fades in the eyes of those easily bored if not excited constantly.

This new expression trend would be like fast and furious fucking, while the former style might have danced and skirted sex, prizing the flirting, the long courting of the message, climaxing, satisfied with the touch of the ungloved hand.

From here I flow to the second topic, that lack of skirting and flirting, it has come to my attention how it happens that people act rather unashamed on the social networks, typing down messages that should be meant for one person, to be read by many. As if in absolute disregard of the 500+ people in whose timeline or wall their words will pop up, pleads and jokes are exchanged in a way that makes it blatant who is talking to whom. Two friends share their private jokes on the net, pretending to be alone - yet not using more private means to communicate - rubbing their intimacy on other people's face, pushing impressions - wrong or not -  and then expecting others not to meddle in their business.

Open channels are exactly that: open channels, and there the conversation of two becomes the headlines of hundreds.

It is already shamefull to witness people going intimate, personal before others, but then, when it happens with people otherwise engaged in a romantic relationship with someone else, it's scandalous.

I have knowledge of a particular case, where someone, having a relationship with someone else, mistreats the official partner and openly favours an alleged friend, with whom trades messages in the open channel, that go way beyond decency. Ads playing with the concept - telecommunication operators pushing the danger of being discovered while away from the computer and not being able to control the damage - do not go as far as these cases do. The case I was witnessing seemed to me abhorrent and beyond any paramether of decency I could come up with. The Ms, was not as much courted by a Mr that couldn't come close in class or education to her significant other, but she in a true Messalina fashion, threw herself to the Mr in question, shamelessly whoring herself out, pleading publicly for his attention, declaring her affection both freely as well as upon the call of the Mr.

At one point things had gone as far as to arise the public cry and rejection over their low, dirty behavior, to which it was the Ms who dared to reply wishing third parties out of their business, while the shady, sleezy Mr obscured his presence by retiring into mere observation. Such disgraceful scenes are never to be seen - not often anyways - outside the social circuits created by the cyber space, where the narrowness of the screen deludes the mind from the wideness of this kbps impulsed universe.

The unabashed Ms and her coward player, continued their games after less than 12 hours of resented silence towards the open channel, soon falling into much shameless messages, earning this time the unspoken, yet blatant scorn of their peers.

It happens, as I found out today, that their case isn't the only one recorded in hundreds of timelines and walls and updates. Infidelity, cheating is even more shameless now, happening often before the very eyes of the offended partner, who witnesses astonished how the person that has promised to share love and life turns to someone else, with the same promises. Whore and solicitors pululate, rubbing their dirty business in the noses of everyone unlucky enough to happen there and watch. Is it our business? Well, it is my screen, my timeline, therefore my right to react, but - here curling back to the topic of expression skills and perfected tolerance - where's the extent of our alotted expression?

In the light of these happenings, the trend of today's expression becomes a little bit more outlined. You can say anything you want, but you are expected to self-censor when others do not, otherwise mayhem falls upon you. The careless, shameless cheaters and flirters polute your updates with their unrequested, offending messages, opening their intimacies in the same way cheap whore spread their fuckholes at any passerby at the streets, and those of us who are slapped with the unrequested, unwanted goods, shall look away, mask out gaging reflexed, and mutter under our breaths "how disgusting". We, declining, uninterested patrons, shall choose silence and self-restrain.

Tolerance of the prostituting of expression, where the whore can rule the demure? Yes, public scorn rises, the user will soon find it's account cut from others fed up with their unclean display, their disrespectful ways, but the offended shall choose the self-restrain, wrap in the mask of tolerance when there is no tolerance for silently, in very private notes and thoughts the message is bold, loud and clear: "I'm disgusted by the whore".

One Good Book

I started following - via Blogger, though I follow via Twitter too - Changeling, a Twitter and Blogger with a well-laced sarcastic style, that swings with cadence between insulting you and other in your face and dipping the tip of the [insert whatever you are thinking] in a swirl of whipped throughts of the heaviest nature. A delight to read, I must say. I found this delightful cyber phenomenon through yet another witty, fun twitter. Social networks, I tell you. Sometimes it like swinging Tarzan-style from one contact to the next.

Last week, I finished reading Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller, and I must say, it was one of those books that leave you in a daze. Certainly a book hard to describe, as I have said so time and again while I read it, and often almost engaged in a long courting of the pages, worshiping from far, reducing our encounters to hushed minutes in a secluded waiting area. Russian romanticism applied to a jaded, brute, seedy bum. However everything tied up amazingly. After the long courtship, I've realize that also a quick fuck is needed. Take the book, escape to some place where the two of you can be alone and deep into it, spread it like Miller had said to spread his whores, and slam head first between the many lips of the paper cunt. The impressions such should leave must be amazing.

There's no outspoken romanticism in the book, book which in itself has managed to steer away from telling a story without either falling into a philosophical essay. Fiction and reality fuse in this non-story bowl, where all shreds of romantic tones are bashed, smeared thick with shit and dirt. Unpleasant details plague the pages often as ice over a frozen river, where maybe a faint rushing can still be heard, maybe it isn't ice all the way to the riverbed, or maybe it is.

Food, sex, food, shelter. Hatred, self-hatred, envy translated into more hatred, into the need to despise, the need to destroy. Unability to decide what he really wants, unability to be happy with anything in the present, but constantly remembering how good it was back then, when this and that. The title eventually makes sense in so many levels, the sheer genius of it smack you dumb. It's the body, the heat, the sex, nakedness, focus on the lower levels, on the stench that sticks to your hair, the sweat that smears on your skin. The poverty, the turmoil.

It reveals much of the writer, the confusion about whe his wife is, Tania or Mona, not as if he wouldn't know, but knowing but mixing them up. Who he felt as his wife? Anaïs or June? It's not an editing mistake, it's his mind, a mind that fused them both into the one wife he needs. A woman less needy, less demanding, less complicated, stronger, more of a whore, less of a bitch.

June's disappointment is evident as well. She wanted to be an uplifted heroine, a beauty, Sarah Bernhardt, but all she was in the book was the cheating-cheated wife on and off his life, far less interesting than any of the whores that so thickly peppered the pages. A character that goes from longed person to a secondary thought, material enough for a brief wondering. It's not an ode to her, but an anthem to him and the life she hates but can't really escape herself.

A book that goes nowhere, a rat in a stinky trap to which it returns whenever he gets the chance to step just a little out of it. Hate it but can't live it. And even as hope shines, feeble like a candle in the storm, and he shelters it, helps it, makes it grow, strenghten, he lets it escape his hands. Twisted, sick, breaking down and pushing away the cure.

The settling at the end of the book rounds it up into a more novelistic type of story, where threads become more evident, and there's a stream that takes you from A to B, which you don't see in the rest of the book. It gives you a strange feeling, almost as if you were coming out of a thick, dark fog into a clearing. It then opens up, it's left half done and untied, in tone with the rest of the book, where it wouldn't mean the end of a story, because it flows constantly and splashes into something else, a few thoughts on the matter, a new quest for food and shelter and money to spend on toothless whores and all types of dirty, clap ridden women, who pretend to be high mantenance ladies while they spread for anyone with enough francs in the pocket to buy them a dinner.

So, now off the heat, bewildered by it still, I chose to soothe my mind with a double attack: The Brothers Bishop and Moll Flanders. New books are on the rack.

Green, Green, Green

After Hyne knows how much time, yesterday Shimmy Gin and I finally met. In contrast with his bipolar girlfriend, though we kept postponing our meeting, not even once we questioned the fact that we would meet. And we did. Shimmy was a bit late, as usual, since the traffic at Escazú is completely impredictable, even to Paul The Polip, and me... well, I was kinda late too - not all that much, but late still - for kinda the same reason: the traffic at Sabana is the most perfect random system ever concocted between men, nature and asphalt.

To my doom-delight, after not going to "home" for Hyne knows how long, I was subreptitiously ambushed by no other than my beloved Benetton store. I guess I keep falling and falling for it. It is simply inevitable. The Sun rises at East, sets at West and I will always be seduced by Benetton. Some things are simply the way they are. It was the haphazardly breath of the new collection setting in, still awkwardly pushing out the past one, with racks of green skattered, sensual, suggestive with soft cotton spilling in messed up piles, shades hanging here and there more in a hectic mix of textures, than a progressive order of any sort. It wasn't a store, it was a closet. The sweater you took off yesterday in a hamper of tops and blouses you didn't care folding, just fisted into the shelve, pushed it deep and hoped it won't fall on your head when you open the closet door again.

I was late, as I said earlier, and I still wanted to check Argento, as I am looking for a new silver ring to take the place of my Nibelung ring, and I really had to hurry, but hey, if Shimmy where there he would give me a call, right? Besides, I wasn't going to buy anything. I was just... going to check out the merchandise. That's quick and there's nothing wrong with it. And these are the lies us addicts tell to ourselves. I gave myself rules: I would only check out the green stuff. Just the green. Oh, I kept that one. I thought of the office, and so discarded a lot of informal, thin, tiny tops and skirts that wouldn't make the cut in a serious environment. Some made me laugh, truth to be told, and sneering I noticed the Sisley label on it. And some people consider Sisley the "elegant brand". Suuuuure. Collection after collection, Sisley constantly strikes me as the "dumby, trashy little sister of Benetton". Uneven hems, large, sparkly prints, lots of beads and rhinestone and such. Not me for sure. I was reaching the end of the rack and I was delighted: there was not a single piece for me in the rack, so I could turn around, walk out and keep the virtue of my card.

You never underestimate the power of the Store.

At the very end there was this awesome wool dress, knee long, perfect cut and amazing as a top layer over pants, worn as a sweater. And it was on a mindblowing discount. Okay, I would try it on, and perhaps, perhaps it wouldn't fit. Yes, only that by the dressers there was this oncoming, new collection green dress that was just too perfect to leave. No price on it, so it could be a very, very unpleasant surprise. I had to try it on. Why do I do that? It's Benetton! Of course it's gonna look awesome! You never, never try on a Benetton piece if you are trying to quit. Everytime it's gonna look like a banking bailout on you: so good it's immoral and should be ilegal as well. Trying it on IS buying it. And the worse thing? I actually stayed within my rules: only green. So I set another rule for myself: IF the dress goes over $120, I won't buy it. Mentally I tried to push up the limit up to $200 - $250. The pro argument convincingly said that the card was squicky clean, and the amount could easily be covered with the next paycheck, but still, I nailed my resolution to $120. It was far less. Tricked again.

So I did the old move and slid the gold, and walked out with a bagful of luscious, fresh green.

Thanks Hyne there wasn't a single decent ring at Argento.

Shimmy and I met at our favorite crèpe place, and chatted away. Got updated on gossip both on old acquintances as well as the Twitter entourage and latest activities and followed twitters. We dissected people and personalities, found an application to the deductions I've pulled from my musings on Nin and again made an effort to understand the collective and individual mind of the surroundings in which we have been plunged. Some book flirting then next door, coyly looking at covers and spines, letting ourselves be seduced by backcover words, let the flirt unroll and then hold or decline. We submitted to the clutching dependance of the printed word and grabbed our poison from the shelves. My new additions includes a novel by Elizabeth Kostova, author of "The Historian", and an "Ars Magica" of sorts that caught my attention. Books on witches always get to me. Oh goodie, even more books to carry over seas.

This time around, Shimmy was quite disperse, intensely enthralled by the potential #twittertour developing under our feet, at the lower level in Hooligans, were he identified at least three twitters he admires. His rushing, his running, my waiting. But I had my Benetton and a new book to read.

Thin Shimmy is still as engaging as Thick Shimmy, but he is far less focused.

Oh well, until next time.

Arguments and Counter Arguments

Yes, me again, but don't get any ideas! It just that it's not so fair to post in Spanish when the 86% of my readers... well, I believe they don't read in Spanish.Well, not like I'm actually sure who reads me out there, and not like I would really want to know. You, anonymous mass of occult readers stay in your anonymacy! (I think people actually scare me... but that's just a theory sprung out of the moment.)

A fact that can't be denied, though, is that I've been positing a hell lot about my job - well, this crappy new Smart Building we were relocated to - to the point where I'm wondering if I'm turning this blog into a branch of "OfficeSucks", which, yeah, does seems like. Hn, there's this community in the LiveJournal called "coworkerssucks" which I LOVED, as in LOOOOOOVED, since it had the most amazing stories about crappy bosses and abhorrent coworkers you could ever imagine. Great place to go feel good - either by realizing others have worse problems than yours or because you can top them all and post an even more bizarre story. (Tried to locate the site to link you all up, but it's missing. You can still find quite fun blogs of people bitching about their jobs and everything that comes with it.)

Anyway, point this that this blog is about... well... hmmm... So, it doesn't really matter, but the point is that it is not, nor I want to make it a "Bitch About Them" type... though I do that more often than not.

It's like the other day, when I was thinking about my Twitter account and how I would like to make it mean something, only to realize that there's no way I can do that, since no worthy thought can be expressed in 140 characters. No worthy Western thought, that's it, since we don't think (or at least I don't) in riddles and "fit for fortune cookie" sentences. (I kinda forgot where I was supposed to go to with this... Damned Dr. Pepper! His delicious taste distracted me.) So, Twitter remains for me this "comment on the world" thing, where nothing actually "juicy" goes. I've noticed (and therefore unfollowed) some people who use their Twitters to post fortune cookie sentences, or slip little bits of whatever Discovery Channel program they are watching. A question arises in me: "Shall the Twitter be rather original and post stupid stuff like 'I'm having fish for lunch' or shall it be 'smart' and copy great sentences from anyone else?" I love originality, but everybody can do as they want, really, then you reserve for yourself the right to unfollow anyone annoying or stupid enough to stay under the "worthy" cut. I know I do.

Thing is that people tend to be the same way about their blogs, have you noticed that?

So, I was thinking about posting about something else, anything else - since this isn't a fix topic blog -  and though when away from the computer a lot of really good ideas come to my mind, once I'm here I can't think about a single good idea. Do you have the same problem? I certainly don't wish to "impart wisdom" today, I had enough suggesting my coworkers to wreck havoc at the parking lot, and telling them a few sociopath-worthy techniques to do so (yeah, the post in Spanish you may not be able to read... Well, you can always learn Spanish ^_^). I don't feel like going for memories, nor to tell you what I had for breakfast... and soon I should be going to have lunch, if I want to get there before the lines for the microwave start.

Today I thought I would give you a chunk of what I think about random things.

The one random thing I can think of right now is a comment I received yesterday after tweeting a youtube vid of R. Pattinson "smooching" and actor whose name I can't recall right now (nor I'll Google it for your benefit), in amovie called "Little Ashes". I remember I watched the movie because I was thinking that due to its caliber Mr. Pattinson could reivindicate his name in my eyes (the Twilight saga was a major fall from grace in my eyes, and I really-really liked him in Harry Potter), but it didn't work. Dear Chuck, that boy is the most stiff, spastic actor I have ever seen! Makes you think, from the poor way in which he performed his part (I know he was playing Dalí, but he was awkward, visibly uncomfortable and far more unnatural than any part would demand), that he does get his roles solely on his good looks. So, the opportunity to lift his name sunk like the Titanic. Disappointed, I bitched to Carrie, with whom we decided that the only good thing was that this at least trampled things for Twilight fans, with vampie-boy switching sides and cheating on whiney-bitch.

After tweeting the vid, a comment came dismissing it, because "today's teens are 250% sexually open". O...kay? Does this means that... hmmm. No, I don't get it. I guess the idea is that all teens, all of them, no exception, and then some more are... bisexual? Or perhaps that all of them accept gay people? That would be awesome because that would mean that there's no more gay bashing! Oh goodie! (I guess they only bash EMOs now, and that takes a lot of effort.)

So aside from the fact that the point was utterly missed (Dude it was about breaking the love-lock you and your lot has placed on the pairing!), not to mention the blatant overlooking of the guy's acting "skills", it was quite interesting the comment in itself. Interesting since we all know it's not true. Gay kids are still being picked on at school, gay people is still being bashed and trampled, their rights denied. On the other side, and that's also part of the "sexually open views", straight people is still being cast aside, mistreated by their gay piers. Yes, sorry, but I myself have been subjected to reverse discrimination, based on the fact that I happen to be straight.

Thing is that there's still discrimination and where there's discrimination there's also reversed discrimination, and then, when it comes to teens, who are still  people in formation, how much of their points of view are really valid to assert or support a thesis? If their personalities is still in formation, if they don't know who they are, if they are in the age of experimentation, how can their "openness" and their "view" on a topic be asserted as a valid counterargument? Hell, my generation was open to "Satanic religion" back then, does that made those views firm?

When arguing, people should watch carefully the weapons they pick and the duress of them. Dude, that was lame.

#FollowFriday

If you are a Twitter, a good, decent, recurrent one, you know what's a hashtag (or shall I say #hashtag?), but if you are a damned tweet-junky, a tweetmaniac, a Twitter by your own right, hashtags are something slightly different: they are a tool of expression. If I had Twitter at the office, I would be one of those. Hell, I need my mobile internet!

Hashtags are often used within our 140 characters-right, mostly a way to invite others into participating of different conversations, also to help us group up a given topic, and then, some of them, become a Trend. Trends appear on the right side of your screen, showing the most popular hashtags and topics right then at the Twitter. I often find some quite annoying or boring trends, such as.... #RealHousewives (yeah, like those rich, kept women are actually real-real housewives, like they know what a middle class or a poor housewife goes through), or #Twilight and stuff like that. Ewwww... Some are political or news related, such as #Iran, #Haiti, #Iceland #Reykjavik, #AF440, #Neda and such. Some are for fun like #ilikedtwitterwhen and then yesterday, for the first time in my life, I saw #supernatural as a trend. Awesome!!

A popular trend is #followfriday, which usually appears on Friday, as you can expect it, and it is awesome! Some people like @felipezarate often offers, from his followed friends a selection of people he considers interesting to follow. Other people take the chance to propose some going out, recommend a place, talk about a movie, share some sort of message or thought and so on. In general #followfriday is a party-hashtag, ritualistic almost, as a cyber ceremony to officially receive the Blessed Weekend, where usually work rests and the relaxing and partying unleashes like there's no tomorrow. I mean, just imagine it: kick the high heels off, strip off all your clothes, slip into some comfty trainers, or your cotton, baggy pyjamas, pull on a soft t-shirt, wash of your make up, let you skin breathe, grab a beer or a Smirnoff Ice, or whatever rocks your boat, fall into the bed and watch your favorite Friday series. But that's homy ol' me. Picture waiting for the end of the work day, all giddy and excited, with a lunch that tastes better, agreeing with your coworkers where to go, unless you have your fix place, or getting threaded into the waves of calls and SMS from your friends nailing down the details of where will you meet, where will you go and so on. The one workday when you can go out and don't care about how long will you be out, how much you drink, because the next day you don't have to go nowhere!

Beer even seems to taste different on Fridays, have you notice that? It taste like fresh and more bubbly, and there's some strange kind of excitement floating in the air as you look around the room and see a lot of peole in suits, men pulling their ties loose, women stripping of their costume blazers, undoing their tight and perfect buns to let go their hair fall in slwoly relaxing locks around their face, maybe then held together with a simple hairband or a hair clip.

I #followfriday, do you?

My Third #pintotour

Today was one of those few Sundays when I wake up early. It wasn't because I had insomnia, but because I had plans: I had an appointment with other Twitters from Costa Rica. As in the other Twitter appointments I've attended, this was a traditional breakfast, marked with the hashtag #pintotour. For anyone who has gone to one, this symbol and nine letters mean an appointment to make friends and spend a great time always at a great location.

Today's location was a restaurant called Chubascos at Fraijanes. This is located in the province of Alajuela, close to the Poás vulcan. I had no idea how to get there, and so I arranged with my best friend Mario to meet in Alajuela at 8 am to grab the bus to Fraijanes. Now, in order to get to Alajuela at 8 am I had to wake up at 6:30, which I did, get showered, dressed and up to go. It was one of those few days where I actually woke up on time, and got out of the bed right away. Could just hope it was the same for work ~ However, as it happens often for me, I forgot that on the weekends, particularly on Sundays, buses tend to hold to a much more "lax" schedule, so the freaking bus wasn't showing up in the Heredia-Alajuela direction even though two had gone in the opposite direction.

The day, however, started sweet, calm and smiling, like any day that promises to be simply great.

Bar La Palma, on my way to the bus to Alajuela 

A bus stop on my wa to Alajuela

...and this is Alajuela

...and this is the bus stop... half of it.

Like some sort of goofy tourist, I went on taking pictures of just about anything in the attempt to catch the feeling of the day at the other end of my objective. The daily landscapes and motives flashed beautiful before my eyes as I happily rode to my appointment with my 140-character friends. I was a bit sad because @sancarlena77 wasn't going to be there, and hoped to meet @Amaretto, who at the end never showed up. :-( However I was happy because I was going to see Mario again, who was supposed to bring me the information from the Tecnológico de Monterrey about the Economics Postgrad Programm. - Mario forgot it, so we'll have to meet again this next week. -

We've got to the bus stop of Fraijanes Lake, before which a line of local tourists in flat shoes, jeans, shorts and cotton clothes waited with their backpacks filled with hard boiled eggs, sandwiches wrapped in paper napkins and stashed in ziploc bags, bottles of beverages and maybe here and there a homemade beverage poured in a reused bottle of soda. In Costa Rican tradition these low budget local tourist are known as "comehuevos" or "egg-eaters" due to the fact that back in the day when there weren't so many choices of carrying food without it getting spoiled, many of them brought loads of hard boiled eggs for lunch. The bus left the station on time, but kept loading more and more people on the way, and all of them packed up with the distinctive egg-eater clothing and backpack.

 On the way

23 Km to Poás Vulcan

...and still on the way... 

the trip alone proves to be so amazing!

in moments like this you say: Costa Rica Rocks!!

Mario and I talked on the way about a hundred and one things from politics to what's great in Korea and so. We pushed our cameras out in the window and took more pictures of just about everything out there. It basically didn't matter where we pointed at, everything was an amazing objective and HAD to be captured. I asked him over and over, taking the chance presented by the #pintotour and the picture taking, to revive his blog, Dankenzon for All, which I really love, and I'm not just saying that. In my heart a little candle of hope lit up, as he might, perhaps, write again there and I'd be reading him again.

Finally, with a 15 minute tardiness, we arrived to Chubascos, where only the Sosa Siblings were sitting at a tiny table. The whole entourage was beyond magical. Tall trees and fresh mountain air, with a small, gentle meadow stretching for the view. The ragged, spotty shadow the branches and leaves made gave such a delicious sunny-fresh feeling to everything, it was like wrapping yourself in sun scented clean blankets. The Sosa siblings sat at the terrace twitting their fingers away, silent and acompanied by two white mugs of black coffee - no sugar. Francisco's smile picked up the race with the sky, so bright and shiny and delightful it was, and Evelyn, well, Evelyn was plain beautiful, gracing the place like a delicate princess with her sweet face, beautiful hands and graceful gestures. The waitress approached us (at our bidding, I shall add) and asked us how many people would be coming, to decide how many tables to put together. I found it a bit rude that she said it would be senseless to put together four tables just for four people. The words had barely left her lips when twitters started pouring in. They came in couples and trios as they met in the entrace, some taking a moment to take a few pictures for the Twitpic, or their own blogs and sites. There was @AceCostaRica and his calm, nice manner, and his wife, whose youthful charm always hit the note of every gathering.

Felipe was also there, phone-camera in hand taking all the official pictures of the breakfast. Julian came with his wife, and set the stronger note of the gathering, with pointier remarks and faces to match them. He's amazingly expressive.

 

The table is set!

 

And set both sides!

Four tables soon proved to be little and we squeazed closer together. Three menues for thirteen people were hardly enough, so many took pictures of it and consulted it from their iPhones. As I looked around the table, and so many iPhones were flashing in the hands of the twitters, it made me think about the company I work for and their position about this handheld. A matter of decitions made up there can't really dictate what happens on the daily life. It made me also wonder about the rest of the Public Sector and how far from reality our Government falls. 

This is the kitchen, or part of it

Laughter came along the menu as Mario did the honors of reading it for the benefit of all. Most of the presents ordered "pinto", while I, true to my custom, ordered a HUGE tortilla, fried eggs, sour cream and a coke - no ice. I sipped my black coffee happily while the Sosa siblings picked on me asking me how come I come to a #pintotour and have no pinto. The coke raised a few eyebrows again, but I hope it will stop being strange after a few more #pintotours, which I hope to share with them in the future.

HUGE Tortilla (handmade) and platanos 

Yay! Food! Delicious, yummy food!

The food was to-die-for, even though we had to wait for it until we were famished, starved and ready to dive head first and wolf up the whole thing. It was somewhat unpleasant to have to wait so much for the food, but then it proved to be so much it kind of made sense that they sarved us before hand. It was just DELICIOUS!!

The waiting and the eating was peppered up all over with talk, comments and an enriching exchanges of opinion. Mario shared his theory about why the Middle East was so important to some, tying it to the Summerians and lore on allien intelligence manipulating mankind. It did raise a few eyebrows, others joked around, - me among them sorry to say, but I'm not much of an OVNI fan - and others simply cheered when Mario's food finally arrived. It was actually the only meal received with a round of applause. Pictures were made as we had fun, and we all just felt awesome.

The crowd grew close, homely and those of us who didn't knew each other before were soon following and sharing like life long friends. Each of these meetings offer always such a nice, friendly, civilized environment, open and polite and always leaves you with the distinctive desire of sharing more. This was not the exception, and how would it be, when you meet so many nice people!

My Geek Pillow

Today, finally, I've got MyGeekPillow, and I must say, that I love it! Well, them. I've got two! Just in time, as the adorable micro-enterpreneur promised, and I must say, they worth every penny! Can't hardly wait for Kari to pick his geeky logo and have his pillows made just like mine! ^_^ Now, no, I'm not being cheap, but I'm keeping my pillows in their plastic bags because I don't want then to get all dirty before I take them home. Yep, they are going abroad and will live in Budapest with Kari and me.

They are made out of non-stretching cotton fabric (for the body of the pillow) and felt (for the design) and they are sooooo soft and so perfect and sooooo niiiiiiiice!!! I forget to ask whether they are washable, but I believe they are not really that washable due to the felt. Felt deforms easily.

I'm a total sucker for pillows, and I mean pillows of all kind. I even have three just for sleeping, and I pile up throw pillows everywhere. Office, bed, floow you name it!

When thinking about our home, I was always clear about throw pillows on the bed and in the living room, probably even at the bench on the hall... anywhere I can put a throw pillow I will. However up to MyGeekPillow I thought my pillows would be solid, serious pillows peppered up here and there with Pucca and Hoops&Yoyo, which I've got for my birthday a year or so ago from two different friends (who know about my not-so-secret liking). Perhaps I would score a few more before I'd move home or something. However, when I've got to know about these pillows through Twitter, the light was made: I wanted at least one of these cyber-era marks in my home.

Kari isn't much into the Internet, but I can think of a few programs that mean to us, that perhaps he would like to see lined up in our couch. This is our life, this is our world, and I want to bring all that together, have it represented in Our Home.