Tag Archives: Internet

The Internet is full of liars and charlatans – just like real life.

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I’m not entirely sure why people are either surprised or, even, angry.

It’s the thing about the Internet. It’s impossible to say if it’s real or not. And so, the Syrian lesbian blogger who turned out to be some American guy living in Scotland and the lesbian blogger who also turned out to be a man are being hounded and made a lot of people angry. But why?

Karl, posing as (or should that be ‘was posing as’?) a very ugly man wrote a blog for 2 years before finally revealing he was, in fact, nothing of the sort. People got angry. People get angry, I think, because they feel they’ve been duped. But they only have themselves to blame. With the ‘Syrian’ blogger, there’s even a woman (in Canada, I think), who thought she was having a relationship with him/her, even if they’d never actually spoken (obviously)!

In a way, I have to admire these people. To create (and, in some cases, go to great lengths to give credibility to) a persona that’s not only not you, but isn’t even your sex and doesn’t have your sexual orientation takes some skill and creativity. They need to be good writers, one would think. But is it any different than, say. JK Rowling creating a whole host of characters for her Harry Potter series?

One could argue, of course, that JK Rowling doesn’t pretend that the characters are real. And yet, in her head, at least whilst she’s writing them, they do have a sort of reality. When they become films, they take on a more substantial reality. OK, so pretending you’re someone in the real world and carrying it on is different – but only slightly. You didn’t have to believe it. In fact, why should you believe anything you read on the Internet?

There are some people who read my blog who I know and have met. Lola, for example, Pietro, a colleague, Karl, the once ugly man or Stef, a good mate are people who know I am a real person. Stef and Pietro knew me ‘before the blog’, Lola and Karl, afterwards. Then there are those (Gail, The Store Manager, Man of Roma and Ruth, the friend of a friend) who don’t actually know me at all. Well, Ruth knows I’m real, I guess. Yet, I have a friendship with these people. I don’t actually know them either. Does that invalidate the friendship? Not really. If, for example, MoR turned out to be a woman living in the USA, would that make our discussions irrelevant? No, not at all. And I trust that these people, when they blog, are telling me the truth. Would it matter if they weren’t? Again, no not really.

There is a woman with whom I am a ‘friend’ on Facebook. Solely for a game that I used to play. She has all sorts of ‘problems’ but I don’t know that it’s all real. Perhaps she is just making it up? She certainly craves attention both in the game and on Facebook. I don’t know if it’s all real or whether it’s just being said for the attention. And I don’t really mind either way.  I take the Internet for what it is.  I believe the people that I read about but I’m not really emotionally involved, I suppose.  How can I be?  I don’t know them.  I can read about things that they do, empathise with them over problems that they may have but deeper than that it’s impossible for me to go.

And, anyway, it’s not like real life didn’t throw up the odd con-man (or woman) or two?  The Internet just makes it easier and, certainly, makes changing sex very easy too (not that that hasn’t been done in real life).

So, whereas I’m not especially impressed by what the two guys have done I’m not really shocked and I’m not outraged.  It’s what you should expect unless you have proof otherwise.

Grumpy old sod?

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I suppose I should mention it. After all, tomorrow is a special day.

Oh, yes, and some posh bloke is marrying some ordinary woman and they’re making a rather big deal about it although the Guardian is being funnier about it all whilst the Daily (Hate) Mail is getting it’s knickers in a twist one minute and all overly-excited, the next.

I will be at lunch whilst it’s all happening. At a vegetarian restaurant, of all places!

But, still, I have this annoying thing in my brain that will mean I shall probably try and find some coverage on the Internet when I get home. It annoys me because I shouldn’t (and don’t, really) care – but I am intrigued. And, I too, want to see ‘the dress’, even if it will be, after all, just another dress.

It makes me feel stupid. I am just thankful that I am not in the UK. I guess I would have stopped watching the news a few weeks ago.

Or am I just a grumpy old sod?

The Last Supper (the real one this time)

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Italy!

Sometimes, to be perfectly honest, it can be a real pain in the neck.

I was only chatting with R, last night, how, although everyone in Italy had mobile telephones the moment they were first introduced and a minimum of two when Britons were still umming and ahing about having their first, when it comes to the internet, they are a tad slow. So, whereas Facebook was a big hit in Britain, say, five years ago, it only really got a toe-hold in Italy in the last couple of years.

And web development is, to be frank, fairly crap here. It is almost as if they don’t really get the power of it. My colleague, S, for example, doesn’t like to book anything or buy anything over the net. So, using websites in Italy is quite hit and miss.

I needed to book tickets to see The Last Supper. If you haven’t been in the last 10 years or so, you really, really MUST. They have cleaned it up and it is, quite honestly, breathtaking. Any pictures you see of it really don’t do it justice.

But you should try to get tickets before you come. These days the viewing is strictly controlled. The number of people allowed in at one time is limited to about 20. You are only supposed to be in there for about 15 minutes.

It used to be quite difficult to get tickets anyway but now, with all the restrictions, it is definitely harder. You can book about 2/3 months in advance only. Even so, tickets are not that easy to get, especially if you are restricted to certain days.

So today, the tickets for July and August came on sale. And I learnt some interesting things that, should you be wishing to book, might help:

1. Getting through on the phone is almost impossible.
2. The website which shows available days, is updated ……… A LOT (so refresh the page as often as you can).
3. Pre-register with the booking site as, during the time you are trying to register, the tickets you thought were available will have been sold.
4. Do try the call centre again if you can’t find what you want on the site.

I had rung last month. The kind lady (there is an English section) told me that I couldn’t book for July, yet. Also, she told me not to worry as they always have tickets available in the call centre that are not shown on the site. I don’t rest easy with that sort of information. When people say ‘don’t worry’ in Italy, it’s usually the time to worry.

Anyway, this morning was the ‘time’ to get July tickets. I need them because D&S are coming over for their first anniversary. So it’s important that I get some for them. I suggested to F that, perhaps, I should also purchase a guided tour. He said, ‘No, I’ll do it’. ‘Really?’, I queried. But, apparently, yes. Well I guess he might know something about it since he did Art and stuff at college.

I got on the site. Until about 8.45 a.m. July and August were not even available as months to look at. Then July was there – but no days were available. Grrrr.

I try phoning the call centre. The line is engaged. I try again. The line is engaged. And again. Engaged. Engaged. Engaged. Engaged.

I get through. I press ‘2’ for English. They tell me, in Italian, that I have to be put through to an operator. I wait. They play a message apologising for the delay. I wait. They play another message apologising for the delay. I wait some more. They play a message that apologises for the delay but adds that the operators are all busy and so it is taking too long to wait. They cut me off.

THE BASTARDS! Having already spent money on the call, I want to wait more. Instead, I must phone again. The line is engaged. I try again. The line is engaged. Engaged, engaged, fucking ENGAGED! Bastards, bastards, BASTARDS!

I am now repeating the calls on both my mobile and landline. I get through! Hurrah!

The message about waiting for an operator comes on. I wait. I hear the ‘sorry for the delay’ message. I wait. I hear the same message again. I wait. I hear the same message plus the bit about ‘we’ve decided that rather than permit you to hold the line, we shall cut you off with no thought for you whatsoever and make you redial 6 million times until we get you get through to here, giving you false and unreasonable hope that you will actually get to speak to someone – but, at least, then, someone else can get through and they can have the false hope that they will get through. Anyway, it’s our joke because although this is called a ‘call centre’, in fact it is only one person sitting by a telephone’.

Bastards.

I go back to the website. I refresh. Well, you never know?

I didn’t know. This time, every day is available until the 13th July! WTF?

Ah, yes, of course, someone is just entering them by hand, right now! They are entering the available dates by hand because, well, this is Italy, and the thought of setting it up in a file beforehand so that the flick of a program makes them all appear at once is JUST NOT POSSIBLE!

Useless BASTARDS!

However, on a brighter note, it means that, if these dates have suddenly appeared, more dates will too. I hope. I sincerely hope.

I am now dialing the useless number that is always engaged and simultaneously, refreshing the page on the site.

The day I want comes up as available. Hurrah!

I select the date. Some times come up. I select a time. To continue I must register or sign on. Damn! I have signed up with this company before. I bought ballet tickets for V at La Scala. I can’t remember my username or password. Damn, damn! I try to register. I cannot. My email address is already taken.

I click on the forgotten login button. I will get an email. An email arrives. It has the username but the password is not there for security reasons. This is quite stupid. I wait for a moment for another email with the password. It’s not coming. I go back to the site. I go back a few pages – except I can’t. I am, in my head, screaming at ‘them’. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.

This seems to have little effect. I go back to the original page. OK there’s even more dates available now. I click on the same date and the same time. Of the 7 tickets available, there is now only 1. BARSTEWARDS!

I try a different time. I try to log on with my username and say I have forgotten my password. I go back to the tab with the email and click on the inbox to refresh it, every few milliseconds. I fail to notice that the email has arrived and so click once again on inbox. This only slows everything down.

You might guess by now that I am a tad frustrated.

I copy the password and paste it in.

There is a message in Italian. I do not read it. I have no time for this. It is not letting me go any further. I try a different tab. The same thing happens. I go back to the first tab and try again. I reload the page from the beginning and try it all again. No dice still.

I read the message in Italian.

I am already logged on somewhere else and so must close the tabs and start again.

I close all tabs. I open a new tab. I start again.

The date and the time I want is still OK. They have seven tickets, still. I want four. I sign in again. They do not have all the details they would like. Anyway, the address is wrong. It’s the one that I used to have in the UK. I change it. I have to look up my codice fiscale on my phone. I ensure I have entered all the required fields. I tick the box to say I have read the Terms and Conditions. As with most people, I haven’t, of course.

I am not allowed to go further.

You utter, utter, fucking bastards!

There is a field they insist must be filled even if it is not marked as required. They do not need this information. It is not essential to this transaction. Am I a man or a woman? Why must you know this to allow me to purchase tickets from you (which, incidentally, are going to cost me an extra €1.50 EACH!!!! because I am booking in advance)?

I am tempted to say I am a woman.

I don’t.

I continue.

It lets me pay. But now there is this new thing with the credit card. I must enter my password. The one assigned to the card.

The last time, even if I know I entered the correct password, it didn’t work and I had loads of shit trying to get a new one, eventually having to phone a premium line from my mobile to get it working.

I enter the password, making sure it is 100% correct.

It starts processing. It is taking a long time. I am not hopeful. Eventually, a message appears. The transaction has not processed. For fuck’s sake! I re-read the message. The password is correct, the transaction is being processed now.

Oh!

I get the confirmation that I have four tickets. I print it, not really believing that after more than an hour of phone calls and messing about on the internet, I have actually got them.

F sends me an email with the picture of a dog, a picture of a shower-head, the date of Friday the 22nd and a picture of a clock at about 10 o’clock.

I reply with a picture of tickets, of the Last Supper, a poster with the date that I have booked the tickets and a clock with 1:15 on it.

Underneath I put a picture of a finger pointing out of the screen (you) and a picture of a tour guide with a flag.

We are done.

So, in case you wish to book to see the Last Supper, you can (maybe) book through this site. In fact, if you check right now, there are even a few dates that have become available in April, May and June that, previously, were all fully booked.

Failing that, you can try the telephone number on that site. But only phone on a day that is not the first day of sales. They say ‘Not to Worry’. Of course, I have lived here long enough to know you should. Still, it is worth a try, isn’t it?

Anyway, this was only my experience. I’m sure yours will be better ………….

Blog Life

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Thursday, April 22nd, 2010.

Not a particularly odd day and yet the last day. Well, the last day for a post. And, so, a particularly odd day.

I haven’t been back for ages. You see she was inextricably linked to another woman who caused me some grief. In fact the woman who caused the birth of this place for my blog. And so I couldn’t link to her.

Oh, she replied after that. As late as June, I think. But then nothing. So April wasn’t exactly the ‘last day’ but rather the ‘last day of posting’.

But, it makes you think or, rather, it makes me think.

This is not intended to be morbid at all. But I am curious. Supposing I were to have an accident, tonight, on my way home. I wouldn’t have another post. There wouldn’t be another post. And yet, for some time, the blog would be ‘live’ and people would find it. But there would be no further correspondence and no comments posted it would just halt, as if frozen, as if that were the last day.

And people would come, from time to time and, maybe, wonder why I had suddenly stopped.

Just like me with that other blog. The one that I kept in my links but kept private and not on display.

She wasn’t young – but not so old either. Trying to organise flights off her island. Well, not her island but the island where she lives (or lived). For both her and various members of family who had come to stay but now want to go home but cannot because of a volcano and it’s ash (is it REALLY less than a year ago?).

And she says she is busy but, you know, not a single post in a year? Did she get to the UK? Did she get back?

It makes me wonder. Now, as she is a once-famous author, I googled her name. there is nothing to say she is no longer with us. So one wonders why.

And it struck me that I will, probably, never know. Not that I knew her in real life but, you know ……..?

And so it is true of my blog too since the only person that could really write something else cannot. Not only is he not English (and so it would be difficult but not impossible) but he doesn’t have the password or know his way around.

And there is no one else.

Not one.

And so it would just stop. And I’m not sure if, in my mind that isn’t more horrific than what would have physically happened to me to make it stop.

I mean to say, you couldn’t even ‘talk’ about it as the comments are moderated. At least, not here. So, you would have to wonder in silence. Like I am doing with her. Except I’m writing this. But this has no connection to her or her blog and so it is a vacuum.

And I guess I was in the ‘mood’ for this because I read about this – which may or may not be true but, probably, no one will ever know.

I think it’s the ‘not knowing’ that is worst.

But every blog has it’s ‘life’, after which, for various reasons, it must depart or be killed off or just be left hanging (although, some people have killed off more of their blogs than others – mentioning no names ;-) ).

Still, it is a sadness I feel.

Just an old woman who is dying

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I don’t really know why I did it.

I suppose it was mild curiosity as to where she was now.  I mean to say, she must have moved on.  It started when I ‘liked’ or commented on her friend’s, H, status or something. It made me think about her and where she might be. And, so I looked.

Her ‘wall’ gave regular updates. We are in so-and-so. We are sailing to so-and-so. I didn’t recognise the names anyway. Is she still in Australia? There was a mention of Fiji (is that near Australia?). I can’t look these things up. Too much like stalking. To weird.

There’s a ‘conversation’ between her and her niece. Is she (the niece) looking forward to going to stay with her nan, to look after her?

Of course, I have to find out which nan. I have to know what had happened. If she’s the one I suspect, she’ll be about 74 now, I guess, if my memory serves correctly.

I find out. There’s another conversation with other people. There’s been a fall. Something to do with an operation, a hip, a replacement, perhaps? So it IS her. The niece has to look after her for a while after she comes out of hospital. For sure, it means her husband is already dead. I was right. That doesn’t make me happy but, then, it doesn’t make me unhappy either. It just IS.

In doing all this, reading all this, I feel a sort of thrill. I can’t explain it. I don’t feel any real emotion but it’s like I’m spying and so I get this kind of thrill.

It crosses my mind that she might do the same thing. Through her friend (as otherwise nothing shows up – not that I put that much on there anyway – a few photos but nothing of any real interest – my security settings are tight and limit most people as to what they can see – except friends, of course). But her friend could see some things, I suppose. The photos, if nothing else. It gives an indication, I suppose.

I wonder how she is – after the fall and the operation and the new hip – but not in a connected way. It’s all detached. It’s like a reality show. A reality show in slow motion. No television, no pictures, just a few words from time to time.

Of course, it got me to thinking. What happens when she’s close to death? Maybe she already is? Will she ask her daughter to find me? Not if what her husband once said was true. She didn’t want to know ….. apparently. But, if she dies, will her daughter try to contact me anyway? Or is that door now closed. Will I feature in the will? I doubt it and, anyway, if I did, it wouldn’t be so much. I’m not that important – not after all this time.

I go through the steps that will happen. Her daughter makes a friend request. Or her friend, H, contacts me.

Do I accept? Well, why not?

Then, when we are ‘friends’ she send me a message: Mum wants to see you. I reply: Why? or Why now?

It goes blurred at that point. Do I go or do I stay? I want to be nasty but, also, in my head, I should be nice. After all, she’s nearly gone. She’s already nearly gone in my head whether this be true in ‘real life’ or not.

The meeting, should there be one, is not clear. Only one line from me.

“But, you’re just an old woman – an old woman that I don’t know who is dying”.

But since all of this is in my head none of this will happen. Anyway, she might live like the Queen Mother did – for years yet. But the fact that, probably, no certainly, none of this will happen is a relief, to be honest.

After all, this is just some old woman that I don’t know who is dying.

I am alive!

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“Do you like it?”, he asked.

“It’s OK. It enables me to stay here”, I replied.

Thinking about it, it’s not really OK at all. But what can I do? He is determined ‘to be a writer’. But I remember, vaguely, some quote from an actor or writer that said, more or less, that they kept on saying that one day they would be a writer or actor until the time came to renew a passport and, since they didn’t have a ‘real’ job, they had to put writer or actor and then realised that there was no ‘big moment’ where they moved from being an aspiring whatever to the real thing.

So, he is, in fact, a writer. A writer of books. Well, one book with another, he hopes, soon. I hope so. I wish it could be the same for me but I am not that skilled in writing that I could ever be a real writer. I’m just a blogger which is not the same thing at all. Anyway, I couldn’t do what he has done/does and my goal is not that defined. I have no goal. ‘Just living’ is the goal. Oh, yes, and eating and drinking and spending time with friends and the dogs and stuff.

Hardly the stuff of dreams.

___________________________________________________________

F is funny. When he meets any one of my friends (or, even in this case, someone I really don’t know), he talks. It’s like he can’t have a silence.

Of course, once he had found something to talk about, he didn’t stop. In this case, once Karl (this is NOT anything to do with the ‘Karl spark’ – it’s his real name and I’ll link to his blogs in due course – since the ‘Karl’ in the ‘Karl spark was, in fact, a guy with a real name beginning with J) had explained his ‘great plan’ (which is not a great plan as such – just an idea that will change as the year progresses), which is to visit as many festivals as possible over the world, F started to come up with all the festivals that Karl absolutely MUST go to. They were all music festivals and included, of course, San Remo.

I’m not actually sure that, even if Karl intends to go to San Remo, it will be quite the same as the festival experience he’s looking for. After all, it’s a little commercial now. I recall the Upton Jazz Festival. The first year that it was staged, the jazz bands played in the many pub gardens that are a feature of Upton upon Severn. Everything was free. The feeling that one got was fantastic, wandering from pub to pub, having a beer, listening to some live band – really ‘chilled out’. The next year, the bands were behind screens and you had to pay and, immediately, it moved from being ‘a night out with friends (even if you didn’t know the people nor the musicians) to being a commercial event. Not the same at all. A little like the Hay Festival or (I imagine) the Edinburgh Festival. Far removed from the original thing.

I think San Remo would be more like going to a book festival. Of course, to F, it is a wonderful thing. We shall watch it again, certainly.

Still, Karl took notes, which was kind of him even if some of them were almost certainly going to be dropped from the list even as he wrote them down.

As I predicted, F didn’t come and stay with me. He is quite strange sometimes.

This morning, I got up just after the alarm. The sambuca, the night before, didn’t seem to have the usual effect, which was good. The lack of enough sleep makes me tired – but it’s not really different from normal.

He said he slept well. I forgot to ask if he had managed to connect to the internet OK after I went to bed. I forgot to tell him to take tram 23 to the middle of town. Mornings are not really my best time.

But, in case you were worried, I am, in fact, alive.

So he wasn’t a crazed axe murderer after all. Nice guy doing this round the world thing. I couldn’t do it – I like my comforts too much, I guess. Still it was interesting and I wished him good luck with it all.

Next up ………. Dino sets up his own blog!

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Of course, I know that Dino howls when he hears an ambulance. I don’t need to be told that by the neighbours (even if I have been – it wasn’t a complaint so much as a comment that it’s the only way they knew the dogs were there, which is a nice kind of backhanded compliment).

Originally, not long after I got Dino, we did have complaints (in the old flat) that the dogs were barking. This was a surprise as my dogs, generally, do not bark. Eventually, we found out it was Rufus. He would do this when Dino had a toy or something and he wanted it. If Dino wanted it from Rufus he would just go and get it, Rufus growling and complaining but, in the end, letting him have it. Rufus, however, wouldn’t do that but, instead, would stand there and bark at Dino. So, I had to separate them. Now it’s not necessary with Rufus being so old and blind and deaf.

But I would like to know what they get up to when I’m not there. Do they play? Do they stay together? Do they just sleep most of the time?

There is an application on Facebook called Dogbook. I added them to this a few weeks ago. They have their own profile page and their ‘own friends’. I have also added F as ‘family’ (after checking with him, of course). They also have a ‘status’, just like normal Facebook. For Rufus it is ‘is sleeping’ and for Dino, ‘What can I lick next?’.

But, wouldn’t it be ‘fun’ if they could enter their own status? Rufus could go from ‘is sleeping’ to ‘is eating’ or ‘is sitting staring blankly at the walls’ (which is what he does, sometimes, now). Dino could be ‘walking around’ or ‘licking Rufus’ eyes’ or ‘playing with a toy’ or, even ‘howling at the ambulance’.

Well, it seems, they are almost there with the technology. I have found Puppy Tweet. Tweeting, of course, is publishing a small ‘story’ on Twitter. This would be the equivalent of the status on Facebook/Dogbook. Having seen the blurb somewhere I had to go see it for myself.

You can use your own Twitter account or a special one just for your dog. You can, within reason, set up how many tweets you get in a day. It says it monitors your pet by motion and then tweets a humourous tweet to the account via your computer.

I just love the idea. So funny. If any of you get one, you just have to let us know how it goes …….. please?

Update, May, 2015 I’ve just read the reviews on Amazon and, unfortunately, they’re NOT good. Would have been a great present.

Stop looking for your soulmate

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For those of you who have been reading this blog over the last 2 years or so, you will know that, having thought I had found my soulmate, I found that I hadn’t, apparently. At the end of it I thought that, given my age and, having already done it all twice before, I wouldn’t even be able to find someone else to live with but then I changed my mind. I decided that I DID need to be with someone and that there had to be someone out there, somewhere, who was looking for me. I did the internet dating thing to save myself having to go to bars and clubs, seeing it, as I do, as an alternative to those social places.

I was determined. I don’t know that I ever thought I would find my soulmate or, even, if that was important. What was important was to find the ‘person for me’. I had some preconceived ideas about who that would be. The criteria narrowed after a short while. They couldn’t be too young nor too old. In the end I found someone and, to be honest, that someone was a surprise and (partially) unexpected. But I remain intrigued about how people find their soulmates and, even, if that really exists or if it is your soulmate but only for a period of time (that period being undetermined and indeterminable).

I remember my sister. She, as I told her more than once, always tried too hard. Her criteria, it seemed, was always non-existent. If they moved and were male it was enough. Now I look back on that as probably her trying to hard to be straight and conform, since she has a girlfriend now.

I was at a friend’s house on Sunday. She is setting up this internet dating lark. She is very clear. She doesn’t expect to find the perfect man on the internet – only to determine exactly what she DOES want. To be able to refine her criteria. But, I wonder, is she just saying that?

Anyway, I was interested to read this:

Relationship gurus expend enormous amounts of energy debating whether “opposites attract” or, conversely, whether “birds of a feather flock together” – largely, it seems, without stopping to reflect on whether relying on cheesy proverbs might be, more generally, a bad way to think about the complexities of human attraction. Should you look for a partner whose characteristics match yours, or complement yours? The conclusion of the Pair Project, a long-term study of married couples by the University of Texas, is, well, neither, really. “Compatibility”, whether you think of it as similarity or complementarity, just doesn’t seem to have much to do with a relationship’s failure or success, according to the project’s founder, Ted Huston: the happiness of a marriage just isn’t much correlated with how many likes, dislikes or related characteristics a couple does or doesn’t share. Compatibility does play one specific role in love, he argues: when couples start worrying about whether they’re compatible, it’s often the sign of a relationship in trouble. “We’re just not compatible” really means, “We’re not getting along.” “Compatibility” just means things are working out. It simply renames the mystery of love, rather than explaining it.

According to the US psychologist Robert Epstein, that’s because a successful relationship is almost entirely built from within. (He cites evidence from freely entered arranged marriages, arguing that they work out more frequently than the unarranged kind.) All that’s really required is two people committed to giving things a shot. Spending years looking for someone with compatible qualities may be – to evoke another cheesy proverb – a classic case of putting the cart before the horse.

For F, of course, his most ‘successful’ previous relationship was with a blue-eyed, English, Taurean. He cites this often as if to explain why he is with me. He is saying that it is ‘inevitable’ that we would be together. Conversely, of course, it could also be inevitable that we will split up!

I look for things that we like ‘together’ and find few. I worry that we don’t have enough in common, the most obvious being my love of all food whereas he is so picky. As I said to my friend (mentioned above), if F and I had met in some bar or club, I’m not sure that either of us would have given the other a second look. We met only because we had chatted for some time first.

Yes, the pictures I saw of him – he was sexy. But, mainly, he was funny – he had the ability to make me laugh and feel better. He still does and may it long continue.

As his friend R said, he was ‘ready’ when we met. So was I. We both wanted the same thing and so, together, we can get the same thing from each other.

And, I suppose, that’s why V and I split up. We no longer wanted the same things. F is not V in any way. V wasn’t M in any way. F and M are not similar either. Being compatible or not seems, as it says, to be unimportant as to whether it works or not. You (both) just have to WANT it more than anything and be prepared to step off the deep end and see how it goes.

And that, together with making those small sacrifices to make your partner happy seem to be the only requisites to have a happy and loving relationship – for however long that lasts.

For the above ‘piece of advice’ plus other tips (that can replace your New Year’s resolutions) go here and enjoy :-)

Are the USA having a laugh?

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This is quite unbelievable:

5.30pm: With perfect timing an email arrives from Philip Crowley at the state department:

The United States is pleased to announce that it will host Unesco’s World Press Freedom Day event in 2011, from 1-3 May in Washington, DC.

Ironic? Read the next paragraph from the press release:

The theme for next year’s commemoration will be 21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers. The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts. New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals’ right to freedom of expression. At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information. We mark events such as World Press Freedom Day in the context of our enduring commitment to support and expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age.

I have no words that adequately express how I feel about such a thing.  From the Guardian