"... neither reveals nor conceals"

Moved!

2006-02-28T17:33:00.000+02:00

For reasons that have to do mainly with appearance and ease of use, I have decided to move this blog to Wordpress.

Although this site will not be deleted, it is now closed.

Please update all your links to the new home.

In longhand, the new address is

http://loxias.wordpress.com

So, see you there.

Details

2006-02-23T08:27:00.000+02:00

Restrain:
First thing yesterday morning, NL greeted me at work like this: "I never knew you had so much patience!". Later, a couple of people told me what a good listener I am. Then a different colleague, hearing me on the phone to a human lizard, exclaimed 'Ooh, how tactful you are'.

Is that me? Are you folks sure?

Concern:
Fear overcame me yesterday morning when Jod told me a friend confessed to her that there is nothing more to sustain her in life but antidepressants and us. Relying on antidepressants is already bad enough, but relying on us... ?

Anger:
In the evening I went to a beautiful talk (trying to expand my horizons here). That stupid git of a (probably) student saw fit to make three people stand up passing through on her way out during the question session, in her high heels negotiating the floor tiles. Four fucking minutes before the talk finished. I so much wanted to stick out my leg and make her trip, landing on her face of a blasé imbecile. Still angry.

Exasperation:
Traffic jam. A woman jumps the queue and sneakily tries to wedge in front of me, but ends up to my left. I decide to give her neither the finger (Jod's road rage trademark), nor the Compatrido gesture (mine). I just stare at her in reprimand mouthing 'where do you think you are going?' to her.

No expression change, not a single muscle twitching. No expression, either. The queue moves about 20 cm forward. She tries again to wedge between mine and the car in front. I would not let her. I turn to her again and once more mouth: 'where do you think you are going?' The same death mask of a non-expression. I have seen that on Outposter drivers doing something antisocial too many times. Non-confrontation, passive aggression, levantine cunning.

The hopeless cow was still trying to join the queue when I last saw her in my rear view mirror.

Joy:
I managed to find E Reader on the phone yesterday. She almost shouted in joy when she heard me. Ok, she is giving birth today (will they really go for 'Victor'? I still prefer 'Stephan') but that was not it. It was that moments before my phonecall W Boson was told he had got the job, the real one. "Friends who really love you just sense these things!" she exclaimed to W Boson, who was standing next to her. I was truly moved: that was a lot on her behalf in exchange for nothing.

Happiness:
The baloons are still lightly tapping against the ceiling, bonbon-coloured jellyfish floating inside the room, their swaying strings always tantalising Gizmo who is bent on chewing them to extinction.

All along the city walls

2006-02-20T15:51:00.000+02:00

I went for my usual Sunday coffee and newspaper with pH. I had the camera with me, just in case I saw anything shootworthy. Walking towards the city walls, so that I take a shortcut to the café, from a distance I saw an Asian woman in second-hand jeans sort of just standing there. A passing car honked momentarily, she faced it. I thought she was waiting for a friend with a ride to pick her up, as she looked like a Philippina on her way to a Sunday prayer meeting, a party, or both. The car drove on, a fat elderly guy on the wheel.

The penny finally dropped. Yes, these women sauntering along part of the city walls on Sundays are indeed trotteuses. In broad daylight. In the crumbling heart of the city. A bit like in old Paris, although they are (too) modestly dressed here. While walking towards her I looked at the drivers checking her out. They were all elderly, none of them looking particularly (East) Asian. I was right. As I was a pedestrian, she didn't even look at me -- maybe I don't look like a punter, either. Just when I was passing by her, I caught her rehearsing the following line in English under her breath:

"It is forty pounds."

Are we all Danish?

2006-02-15T12:55:00.000+02:00

No, especially if you ask the Danes themselves.

I like the Danish, especially their sometimes (very) warped sense of humour. Still, it is quite telling that both my good Danish friends are expats: one, the Hyporborean Hunter, has fled the country for the vast frozen expanses of (dependent) Greenland; the other is Henry's Stepmum, permanently living in England. They had both told me a lot about the Danish brand of xenophobia. Actually, Hyporborean Hunter, when I was after a job in Aarhus, warned: "Never attempt to speak Danish; they will appreciate more a foreigner speaking better English than them than one speaking non-fluent Danish."

Mexico City

2006-02-14T07:57:00.000+02:00

Aerial photos of Mexico City, including some architectural and city planning oddities as well as extreme contrasts between opulence and desolation, via Attu's blog. I suggest you go straight to the slideshow.

On insult

2006-02-13T08:36:00.000+02:00

I don't really like fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims. I feel that the(ir) One God should smite them by throwing them, even temporarily, to the Hell they have prepared here on Earth for women, children, sexually active people of all orientations -- and many others. Still, I am in full understanding both of the right of free speech and of respect for others, their views and sensitivities (including theirs).

As I am not competent to comment on the recent events regarding the above tension between free speech and respect for others, I will quote Paul Postal, a very influential theoretical linguist. In a recent book of his, of a technical nature, he nevertheless dedicates the last chapter to discuss some guidelines by the Linguistic Society of America about avoiding sexist usage in Linguistics examples. I am not in position to comment on this topic, either, but I noticed a very interesting excerpt therein

Let me expand on the second point first. The guideline only addresses sexist usage. But it can hardly be doubted that many people are offended by some or all of the following:

(3)
a. obscenities
b. demeaning of certain racial, ethnic/religious/social/age, etc., groups or figures
c. criticisms of certain political/entertainment/sports figures
d. characterizations of people, real or not, in drastically unkind ways
e. demeaning of physical characteristics
f. articulation of certain political/social/moral views
g. denials of deity status to various claimed deities
h. denials of greatness in various endeavors
i. assertions/denials of quality of various products
j. assertions/denials of the sacredness of various texts
k. invocation of various national, ethnic, etc., stereotypes
l. calls for violence
m. linguistic depictions of sexual activity
n. calls for increased consumption of tobacco, cocaine, heroin, or high-cholesterol snacks
o. laws and proposals seeking to limit the rights of Americans with respect to firearms

There are countries where engaging in some of these activities not only pretty widely offends, it can get one killed. The list could be expanded essentially without limit. And that is the problem. If linguistic organizations and powers are to police examples so as to effectively reduce the possibility of offense, the scope of the necessary guidelines will be enormous. In fact, it could well prove impossible. The result of banning every sort of statement which could offend someone or even ‘many’ people would necessarily yield at best examples of enormous banality. What then if some people are offended by banal examples? More seriously, is the fact that no doubt many people are offended by obscenities to lead to a situation where it becomes impossible to publish linguistic studies of such forms?

What to do? [...]

That is the question.

Hobson's choice

2006-02-12T23:13:00.000+02:00

In small places all over the world, when a new bar or club opens, everybody praises it and then they all proceed to go crowd it. For weeks people had been telling me to try the new Scarabbeo bar and the local listings magazine agreed. After theatre (Mc Donagh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore, which was ok) and dinner at a newly-opened American diner (very good burgers but a tiny menu and, eventually, more of a glorified overpriced fast food place than a diner) we eventually headed straight there last Saturday.

The place had a veneer of swankiness and taste. The music was unnecessarily noisy from a jumbled up playlist, whereas the place was irrationally organised, with overcrowed rooms next to empty unfurnished ones (no, the latter are not dancefloors). pH and me went to the bar. I asked for an "extra dry martini" (verbatim). "You'll regret it", said pH. I should have heeded his wise words. The bartender indeed asked me: "Ice?". Perplexed, I answered "er, no". I should have known right at that point, but then I looked up and at the other end of the bar was someone I know waving at me with her boyfriend. I waved back. Looking down at the bar I found my drink in a whisky glass and full of ice. I should have known right at that point. pH was in the process of paying, so I told the bartender she got it wrong. She gave me a 'be damned, you creep' look, shouted that she had never heard my answer, proceeded to take a new whisky glass and pour from a bottle of Martini Bianco, you know, the vermouth, passed it to me and sneeringly informed me it was on the house. I stood there agape, dumbstruck. Not wanting to make a fuss, I decided to once more bear it with a smile, grabbed the glassful of ice and Martini Bianco, leaving the complimentary one at the bar with the rude bartender, and joined the others at out prized table.

The poor thing did not know what a martini is. Sure, where I come from bartenders sometimes do not know (exactly) how to mix a drink, either because you are a weird customer or because they just don't. So, they ask you. Not here. I sat down. I took a sip of the aperitif, for the first time in 15 years. I recalled immediately, in this cliched by now Proustian fashion, how vile Martini Bianco tastes straight. Only then did I erupt in fury. I severely and patronisingly scolded the hapless waiter who came over to furnish us with carrots and nuts and crisps and asked him to tell the bartender to come over to our table so that she can be told how to make an extra dry martini -- I was out of control. Of course nobody ever came over, so I spent the next half hour sulking and in furious silence. Then Jod got angry at my behaviour and we had one of our quiet rows which involves exchanging stares and making carefully nasty comments to others in a contrived mock-carefree way.

Why does a drink matter that much? I am not an alcohol connoisseur, I am not bar savvy. I had no business ruining the good time of others and making a working person's life hard (I mean the waiter). But I am so tired of having to choose among, say, the same six bars to have a drink in and two clubs to go dance to -- none of which I would really hang out in, if I had a real choice. Especially given that we spend most of our weekend time working at home, so going out is precious. Especially given that it's all a bloody lottery: if you are lucky, it might just happen the right crowd gathers in one of the few places you have a limited choice among -- and you are there, too. So, given we already have to settle for less, rudely being given the wrong drink can make me feel really miserable and retrospectively angry. (Plato's Bar in the Old City make very good martinis, exactly as ordered. I may give Scarabbeo a second chance but next time I will order a Carlsberg. Bottled.)

Today it was Jod's turn. We were driven to the mountains through a downpour by NewYorker (she is one of our three Outposter friends) to this "wonderful rustic taverna". Now, this is a national sport here: going to fairly inaccessible places to eat on Sunday lunchtime. The food was mediocre (well, worse than that, by Outpost standards) and there was no real service: people would just go to the kitchen and pick up what they were tired of waiting to get at their table. A woman going in and out of the kitchen carrying dishes all the time told us she did not work there. A large group next to us cleared their own table, as they made the mistake of asking for doggy bags. This is not some kind of 'special' traditional self-service place or an arcane local practice: it was just untypical and very very frustrating, not to mention that the prices were like those you get in restaurants in the Capital. This, in combination with the place being overcrowded and packed with screaming kids nudging us all while passing through... well.

In Black and White (?)

2006-02-07T14:56:00.000+02:00

Israel is a soft target: not only because of the obvious reasons but also, resentfully, because many of its critics are in fact denigrating it as a way to express their own antisemitic feelings. In this light, I think the following report on the relations between South Africa and Israel in the 70s and 80s is both informative and thought-provoking as well as balanced.

Coming home

2006-02-07T09:15:00.000+02:00

I had been warned beforehand that Jod would be taking a nap, five hours of sleep only go that far. I quietly turned the key, at 6:30 pm the living room was dark although the curtains were still open. My eyes got used to the darkness; actually it was not complete as streetlights and neighbours' lights glowed through the window. A very urban kind of diffused glow, assuring. The room was warm and peaceful, the meagre lighting making it feel like a comfortable and safe place out of a dream. I stood there briefly; before moving, Gizmo made a brief comment alerting me of his sprawling presence on the rug: he seems to have figured out that our eyesight is not as good as his, having been stepped on in the dark so many times. Then Jod's mobile on the sofa lit up, considerably illuminating the room and vibrated vigorously. I encased it between my palms, waiting for the persistent unknown caller to give up. It stopped, the flat became quiet and almost dark again, although populated. I cannot say I did not feel happy right there and then.

I went to the bedroom and found an inlet on the duvet shaped by the body beneath it and lay there, in the manner of the cat. After a while I whispered:

"Do you want to wake up?"
"Yes."

Dedication

2006-02-02T19:26:00.000+02:00

This goes out to Viennese Rhino & Harvard Nun, lately of Providence, Rhode Island, true friends, with love.

We'll be back, or you will. Or we'll meet halfway. Whichever. To be sure, let's fix an appointment here,

or even here.

Infidels! I will turn you all into beasts of burden!

2006-01-30T19:22:00.000+02:00

Here is Damien, from my favourite South Park episode ever.

[Insert timely quotation here]

2006-01-29T20:20:00.000+02:00

Internal life on a crisp sunny Sunday: random thoughts and sayings.

"... others which have no hope"

"Am I not an insecure person? Do I look like I'm feeling insecure right now? There must be a reason."

(happiness)

"there is such a thing as a correct mistake"

For the first time in years, I am optimistic.

Stasis

2006-01-26T08:45:00.000+02:00

Loxias is sad this morning. He is sitting in his office staring out of the window at a place he has struggled to put up with, and failed. He is wearing a suit, ready for a press conference, he looks at his To Do list, he thinks in dread of a long dry stifling summer ahead.

Loxias is fearful about the future, about the strength of tensile materials -- like humans are. Loxias was sobbing yesterday, after a sweet and soothing conversation even, while dark was falling in the room, he even screamed, like a child who had just lost a parent. "We have achieved nothing here, except getting this stupid cat" -- who was poignantly asleep at the time. "Enough with conclusions, what are we going to do?", a call for action, what Hamlet is struggling to avoid.

Loxias is trapped in the future. Loxias is tired of persevering and rationalising and bearing it with a smile. Loxias feels alone and fearful of the future this morning, the part of the future that matters most. He is already tired of the past, of advice, of patience.

This is not an anniversary post, as you might think it would be: I only realised while writing this that it's four years today in this miserable exile that has corroded us inside. I wrote this as an exercise in self-pity and as yet another gimmick to muster strength.

Yea!

2006-01-24T16:25:00.000+02:00

Yes, yes!

Thanks to theGoose!

Ignorant (et ignorabunt)

2006-01-24T14:19:00.000+02:00

One striking fact about the majority (maybe) of Outposters is their blinding ignorance on matters of what we usually call general knowledge coupled with a sense of their country being the undisputed centre of the world (whereas everybody else knows it is Ojai, California). I have said bits and pieces on the matter before, but it is a topic that inevitably keeps resurfacing.

There is a wealth of anecdotes on the matter, most of which come from perplexed and bewildered Outposters themselves (e.g. "the idiot thought the Principality has a Prime Minister, she's lived here all her life, for *^#%*$#@$ sake!"). Recent examples include yet another student (I mean, they are supposed to read books, right?) who asked her teacher of Spanish what part of Spain Latin America is in and a candidate in a competition for a Propaganda Ministry job consistently translating the term for United Nations into English as 'United States'.

I don't want to dwell on more of the colourful examples; their plentiful abundance making itself manifest every now and then has lost all novelty by now: I have been here for four years (sigh). I am only interested in why there is so much ignorance. I think I can identify two reasons:

a. Outposters do not seem to be interested in whatever takes place beyond the horizon of their everyday experience. Recall that, for most of them, 'kids, houses, food, chauvinism' is all that matters. In this respect they are not really exceptional or even different from, well, quite a lot of human beings. However,

b. Outposters are raised in a society where criticism is actively discouraged in education, society, politics and relationships and this culture of anti-criticism is quite pervasive and, at the end of the day, oppressively inculcated. Naturally, there are discernible reasons for that: a recent colonial obscurantist past superimposed on a sturdy quasi-feudal socio-economic organisation (with the Church as a major player) would make any criticism very unwelcome anywhere. Moreover, this being a small, family-oriented, social-network powered place with a violent recent past of abject poverty for most, criticism would be corrosive of highly prized power relations and social dynamics: your butt of jokes is someone's relative, and you somehow rely on this person, your one-night stand is someone's daughter / sister (male perspective assumed throughout, of course), and so on.

Introvercy and a culture of anti-criticism hardly encourage anything but reproducing the ideology, especially in a rote fashion. In our case (and others), we are dealing with an ideology featuring a formulaic and distorted interpretation of the world in black-and-white, a sentimentalist iconography and irrational foundations, as well as disdain for excessive 'detail' and 'useless 'information.

Other people's crimes are heinous

2006-01-19T09:04:00.000+02:00

Dedicated to devious diva and her (online) struggles.

I have finally found time to locate the link to an extremely important article on Orhan Pamuk, Turkish crimes and the British way of doing genocide (and then going on to hush about it).

American Memory V

2006-01-18T20:18:00.000+02:00

I marvelled at many things but I only learned one: that Europe is miserable in at least one thing, namely the morosity, Angst and bile of its intelligent and cultured people (or, really, every European, bar the Portuguese). Plainly put, if you are intelligent and / or cultured in Europe, you cannot be happy, you cannot be fun, it is inconceivable that you may smile or be pleasant. You must be possessed by the sullen spirit of Schopenhauer, you must look at the world throught the eyes of Raskolnikov, you must despise the world more intensely than that poor fictional New Yorker, Holden Caulfield, you must despise it at least as much as Nietzsche.

America taught me (Boston first and New York definitely) that you can be of a happy and kind disposition even if you are intelligent and cultured. Also, sullenness and grumpiness or pose, rudeness and obfuscation can hardly conceal emptiness and stupidity. In America. In Europe they are sufficient hallmarks of a true intellectual.

American Memory IV

2006-01-18T20:17:00.000+02:00

American Memory III

2006-01-18T20:11:00.000+02:00

The Garage jazz bar: cool place, relaxed crowd, great martinis, delectable jazz. A trio: a black guy (bass), a white guy (piano), an asian guy (drums). A singer: looking like Morrissey in 15-20 years. On Seventh Avenue at (roughly) 12th St.

--

Update on 31.I.2006: actually it is at Grove St., very close to Bleecker St. Hyperlink added, too: even memories can use a hyperlink.

American Memory II

2006-01-18T20:05:00.000+02:00

Walking in the street and understanding, for the first time, why The Battle Hymn of the Republic is maybe as important -- and as (excessively) iconic -- as L' Internationale. Among other things, it is a candid and clear voice from a time when American Protestants were all for Civil Rights.

American Memory I

2006-01-17T20:23:00.000+02:00

Waking up to rush to a bagel breakfast, turning on the TV, we saw this.

It's a small world, after all

2006-01-15T01:31:00.000+02:00

On Friday, Zapata, St and One of the Seven agreed to join us to listen and dance to Winding Corridors, a live band playing anything from '80s and '90s music to disco and heavy metal. Jod and me first went to the theatre, then to a Mexican restaurant. By the time we were ready for some dancing, Zapata had fallen asleep at his home, after having watched Sin City on DVD and St had relapsed into her Yuletide tonsilitis complete with a fever. She also stayed home. One of the Seven made it with two female friends and a male one named after the natural border between Greece and Turkey (imagine: "My name is Bond, Pyrenees Bond" -- something like that).

A lot of dancing ensued. In fact, at a given moment I found myself dancing next to a political party leader (right-wing fearmonger, if you ask me) and his scantily clad party youth overlords. Then we spotted Jod's German classmate from her Spanish lessons, who said she had had enough of the Outpost and was so bloody out of here. During "Play that funky music, white boy", someone I came very close to having fired just before Xmas (I have no executive powers to sack anyone), came to the floor and said hi to me, too. Last but not least, one of the band's two singers is a newscaster by day, presenting the Principality TV's English-language news.

Ha, beat THAT, New York. Eat the Outpost's dust (it's got plenty of the stuff, too).

More New York photos

2006-01-12T22:22:00.000+02:00

I am posting some more photos from the recent New York trip, this time of a more personal character.

First of all, some exhibits from the Met.

The following is a classical Greek head, which I found curiously dramatic and with a very modern feel, the face half-covered with a veil seemingly blown by the wind.

Two of my favourite paintings by Courbet.

Closely observed Pollock.

A stained glass window from Prague, from the time it was the imperial capital (of the Holy Roman Empire).

A miserable looking flag of the Vatican, soaked in the rain.

Looking out from the Skylight diner.

Two shots from Central Park.

More truths about sex, life and the like from a bookshop shelf (click to enlarge):

From the International Center of Photography shop.

Skating in Bryant Park.

Red carpet in Bloomingdale's.

The following three are exhibits from the MoMA exhibition on safety in design and design for safety, "Safe: Design takes on risk". The first is a set of stickers to protect us from overexposure to TVs and PCs.

The second is quite touching, a low elevated pedestal emitting heat and light for street-walking sex workers to stand and rest on, providing comfort and a sort of 'safe space' for them. I found this a very touching piece of design because it bears witness to (unfortunately limited in our societies) sensitivities for the weak. The symbolic and, maybe, also practical significance of a space like this becomes even more relevant in a world swept by trafficking and sex trade (perhaps slavery for our times).

What the following is is evident and, at first blush, very funny. My mirth was curbed when I learnt that it can be a life-saving device for populations, especially African women, unfamiliar with the subtleties of latex rolling on impatient members. In other words, the thingy below can contribute to the correct putting on of a condom, 'correct' here entailing the difference between life and AIDS. Intriguingly sobering.

Finally, nostalgically and with love, the reading room of the New York Public Library.

I will have to tell you about New Yorkers some other time, I now have work to do (yes, at home).

Just old books

2006-01-12T11:08:00.000+02:00

From the British Library.

Leaving Manhattan

2006-01-08T02:15:00.000+02:00

I was planning a series of posts when I was there. One for each day. They would be numbered and be named something boisterous, like New York Chronicles, or so. Still, a few hours ago I told Jorge:
"I do not know what to write about the trip. Or the city."
"Don't worry, it will all ooze out in time."
"But I do want to post something on New York now!"
"Well, just post some pictures."

Same old kind of advice. But I followed it. So, here.

First, the obligatory shot of Times Square.

Tango behind a shop window, advertising some show.

Looking up from Bryant Park.

A virtual convergence (?), from the Lower East Side.

However, some Americans seem to have got it right (from the Coliseum bookshop).

Our favourite New York landmark.

More of the 'alzarsi perpendicolarmente' business here.

A view from Brooklyn Bridge,

and another one.

An urban landscape from within MoMA,

and from Central Park.

Pure Upper West Side.

The Angel of Bethesda (also known as 'I, I, I...')

Ascending Guggenheim crowds:

Views from the Empire State Building.

Looking Northwest, to Times Square.

Looking Northeast, to the Chrysler Building and Queens.

Looking Southwest, towards Chelsea.

Looking down.

Finally, I think the quote of this trip is by Jod, while waiting for the subway and as a response to a Chinese fiddle playing in the station:

"This music makes me wanna pee."

Manhattan mornings

2005-12-30T03:37:00.000+02:00

New York. What can I say about it that has not been said before, that you don't already know, that hasn't come up in at least half a dozen of films, books, stories?

Like Prague, knowing about it is so different from getting to know it. I like New Yorkers, too, even more than Bostonians.

Street performers

2005-12-24T15:46:00.000+02:00

Here's a new one: street performers (touring Europe on bikes) reached the Capital's central square and performed there: a medley of pantomime, clown acts, juggling, song and dance. Here is a bad photo (shot with my mobile):

Merry Christmas.

Educational mini sculptures for your home

2005-12-24T15:34:00.000+02:00

The first item illustrates a comfortable breast-groping position. In shiny porcelain, to emulate that unique baby-oil effect.

The second item, in solid metal, has a fourfold use. First and foremost, a lethal weapon to deter any prospective intruder foolish enough to attempt your home (given your particular taste, too); second, a table light -- although not obviously so; third, an object of decorative and esthetic value, tying in nicely with previously advertised items; fourth, an educational illustration of the perils of attempting cunnilingus while standing, especially in the hampering presence of a giant light-emitting lotus-shaped object between the aspirant performer and the sweet target of performance.

Xmas gonads?

2005-12-24T15:25:00.000+02:00

Mini ones, too?

No, no: just mini donuts

Just a feel of the place

2005-12-19T15:10:00.000+02:00

The weather has been vacillating between autumn and spring lately: chilly in the evenings, warm, almost hot, during the day. Outside my window I could see the familiar grey patch of winter against the sky moments ago, the kind of grey you get when you mix too many watercolour tones together. Now, the brightest blue of Northerners' Spanish fantasies as a backdrop to the cypresses.

This place has always felt secretly broken to me, of a quality that makes it feel unwound, ruptured, punctured, razed and, ultimately, unfixable. This is both true of the 'deserty' countryside, now all green and pleasant due to some rainfall recently, and of the incoherent urban developments that both spread out in the emptiness and encroach on older, humbler settlements with narrow streets and curiously eclectic houses and churches. This is sometimes true of some people, too, quietly despairing on the lap of luxury, momentarily glimpsing at the great void ahead of each one of us' line of gaze.

When I think of the Outpost I think of scorching heat and the precious consolation of its short winters, of so many ruins and wildflowers, of old clots of blood on dry soil and the devastating ugliness of unimaginative concrete prisms, of unmarked graves and discarded condom boxes, of roadkills and the shame of erstwhile poverty; I think of the locals' desire to tile every patio and housing-develop every hill, especially if overlooking the sea; I think of the thin forests on the mountains that cannot usually hide sweeping vistas of barren rock and dust just behind them, in the near distance. I somehow always think of kind Outposters, always of kind people, never of unkind ones. I can even name them. I feel the loneliness of a tired couple who only have each other. I feel them embracing inside a room as if to keep each other from the cold, where there is actually none; I feel their inability to be happy in this ugly town, feeling as they do like trees sometimes, uprooted from and thirsty for the wide open world.

Pinter

2005-12-10T19:41:00.000+02:00

I can't help feeling that, for a brief moment in time -- say, the instant occupied by a blink in the indifferent flow of history, Harold Pinter restored our sense of dignity as humans, exactly as intended. By standing up for truth.

Xmas solutions

2005-12-10T17:05:00.000+02:00

Bored of this Xmas tree thing? Why not hang it from the ceiling, then.

Wolf's Medea

2005-12-08T08:15:00.000+02:00

Last night we went to the theatre, to a world class adaptation of Christa Wolf's Medea as a dramatic monologue, at the Principality Theatrical Organisation's small "experimental" stage. It was one of the most intelligent, profound, powerful and harrowing pieces of theatre Jod has ever seen (she knows so much more on the topic than I do, but I wholly agree). The play was minimally but solidly directed and acted, foregrounding the many themes subtly enfolded within Wolf's majestic but intimate text: if it had opened in English in London or New York, the world would have been raving the following day. Congratulations to the Principality Theatrical Organisation, they've done it once more and we are planning to go back to watch it again. Pure delight on a Wednesday evening, rare and precious.

Then we went for sushi. Yum. Great tuna sashimi.

Once more

2005-12-04T21:36:00.000+02:00

The week passed relatively quickly. My internal life restricted itself mainly to the development of a number of themes: how to deal with idiocy in dignity; Yu's sorrows; my personal shortcomings and a blunder; planned trips.

Among other things, from the motley fare we deal with over a week's time: after many years I remembered Karakter, that wonderful Dutch film, and its unique atmosphere and, ehm, characters. I saw the number 626 on a number plate and had Requiem's Introitus humming in my head for the first time in years. I stared dumbstruck at the sight of four copies of Tender is the Night with the front cover torn off. I sensed the spirit of Rosa Parks hovering around a TV station, which suddenly decided to host two interesting and revealing shows on civil rights and on immigration, the second one featuring a brave woman police officer set against a patronising immigration officer. I stood in awe in front of a 14-year old's talent, as materialised in her portfolio: she'll be a great comic artist one day, I hope. I had my own Ulysses day yesterday.

Yu found a great place. But the landlord would not have her sign the contract, unless a guarantor would sign it, too, in the presence of two witnesses. Without entering into debates about generalisations, sweeping or not, this is not standard in the Outpost. I would be the guarantor. I made sure I would intimidate the landlord before signing the contract, especially after his wife, Yu and Jod (one of the witnesses) entered the lift and he turned to me and, smiling, said "women are dumb" for no apparent reason. Hence, I scrutinised the contract. I remained unsmiling and stern. I asked him why a guarantor was needed if Yu was paying a deposit (she was). "Because she is a foreigner". "I am a foreigner, too". He was embarrassed, but got the message, so I morphed back into a more pleasant me. He turned out to actually be a polite, considerate and discrete person. He was just as scared of foreigners (especially 'Russians') as anybody else. Great is the power of prejudice although, thankfully, not absolute.

My Ulysses day started with me waking up at 8:45 and deciding to go back to sleep for a little while, beneath blankets and duvets and in the sweet fragrance of a sleep-in. It continued with me going to work (yes, on a Saturday) to attend a professional training seminar NewYorker was running, where I saw a fellow administrator I had a disagreement with -- but no more hard feelings here. A miserable buffet lunch after the seminar. Then to the supermarket, for cat sand and leeks and chevre. Then home for coffee with a hard-working Jod on a break (ah, teachers! what a life!). Then to an Irish pub where Great Westphalian and his wife were watching the Liverpool vs. Wigan game, to talk business and down a pint of Caffreys (after years of not having done so). Then for coffee with NewYorker, true confessions and trip planning, her friend joining us later, a businessman who's served in the US Army. Then accidentally meeting Maria and the Guitarist on my way home. A shower and driving Jod to a parent-teacher reception thing, myself joining One of the Seven to an experimental theatre thing (which was not really good). Then drinks with One of the Seven and Emiliano Zapata. Fog has covered everything as Zapata and me drive to opposite directions after midnight. Pamuk's Snow and sleep.

World AIDS day

2005-12-01T08:05:00.000+02:00

UNAIDS and some more material here. Also, how to do AIDS research at home.

Useful (?) tips to exasperated readers

2005-11-29T08:34:00.000+02:00

I thought of upgrading a possible comment of mine to the previous post, as I think I would have a couple of points of a more general interest to make.

1.
Having read the post, St suggested we read Foucault; he offers a number of valuable insights on matters of the politics of the body.

2.
One could also visit the local Institute of Gender Studies (website). They have recently released a media and gender handbook, which contains even more case studies (serious ones, too), some of which quite revealing.

3.
I feel that some readers should (res)train themselves to only attack opinions and ideas instead of people, especially using expletives. I mean, "fucking"? tsk, tsk, tsk; "hellhole"? shocking: even I would not say this, and I live here. A propos, look at this quote, again from the comments:

No loxias I'm sorry.You ARE wrong.You came here a few years ago and for some reason you think that you know the place and it's people better than people who lived there all their lives.

A rather predictable invocation to 'authority', isn't it?

4.
Still, despite all the openness and camaraderie (I still hope) of the blog medium, I am not obliged to tolerate people claiming I tell "outright lies" or branding me deluded and insane. Without an apology, no more comments will be welcome by such people. I'm sorry, it is a matter of dignity.

Angels of Heaven II

2005-11-26T16:46:00.000+02:00

The following stories are not about sex and sexual frustration. They are about the politics of repression. They are about the generic becoming specific -- and personal. So, be warned. They start nasty and end disturbing.

(Listening to Preisner's bombastic but beautifully visionary Song for the Unification of Europe.)

'Russian' (woman) in the Outpost (and elsewhere) is the synonym of whore, either by profession or by disposition (as they used to distinguish in the phallocratic Compatrido Republic when it was still the Kingdom of Compatridia). A 'Russian' can of course come from as far south as Moldova, or even Bulgaria.

eleS is a 'real' Russian. I will quickly tell you her story first: she is a student in the Outpost. She used to have a local boyfriend her age, 25 or so. She moved in with him, in his parents' home, obviously. He was complaining she was not arousing enough, going around in the house in those boring pyjamas instead of some sexy underwear. eleS pointed out the sexy underwear option was pretty unfeasible with his parents under the same roof. He would also complain of, and look like he was suffering from, that particular kind of tedium. A propos, she found his massive cache of porn, but said nothing. He eventually broke up with her.

So far, nothing remarkable (remember we live in our little sexist world, not some Ursula LeGuin utopia). Enter Yu now.

Yu is Russian, born and raised in Belarus, the last dictatorship of Europe (of Beautician and the Beast qualities). Four years ago, she was a tour guide in Minsk, making something like $400 a month (which is great if your monthly expenses are around $300, like in her case). Enter Yu's husband, an Outposter on a cabaret-cum-strip-joint tour of Minsk for a buddy's sake (he told me), hotfoot from the US, where he had spent 7 years of his life. On a break from the lap(s) of luxury, he goes on a tour of Minsk. Love at first sight, marriage.

Yu comes to the Outpost. By virtue of her degrees and the five languages she speaks, she gets a high-flying $3000 a month job (which is great if your monthly expenses are around $1600, like in her case), of which her husband appears slightly jealous. She forks out a lump sum towards the deposit and contributes in the payments for the house (every couple in the Outpost must build / own a house, unless paupers, Jod and me are creepy freaks). The husband is unhappy and has to speak very badly to her. Moreover, the quality of her housework is not up to his mum's standards. She also argues with him (not really). She wants children.

This children thing was the last drop. Children? After four years of marriage? For this reason, last June, Yu's husband actually expelled her from his house. She knows practically nobody here, so she came to our place for refuge. She stayed here for a week. Our landlady was concerned: "where does she really work?" "she will not bring any, hm, men here, will she?" Yu's husband's pals convinced him he was too rough on her. She got reinstated.

Three weeks ago, Yu asked Jod to recommend a sex therapist to her but Jod did not know of any. Days later we find out why: Yu's husband had been complaining that he can get no satisfaction. You imagine my coarse first reaction to such a statement. Yu's sex-making was apparently boring and unimaginative (guys, you get the message, don't you? it is as crass as 'alternative points of entry'). Still, he would not tell Yu what he wanted, so he gave her some addresses on the Internet to check out for herself. She did not particularly enjoy the porn she found there, so she thought there was something wrong with her and she had to seek expert advise. The therapist told her to look after herself and her own needs. Yu's husband becomes enraged. Yu is expelled again.

Jod is helping her to find a flat, talking to landlords, as nobody would rent to a 'Russian'. They are decent people.

Now, I hope you realise what underlies the two stories. (Not just Outpost) Men fantasise about Russian women being white fragrant über-whores, Angels of Heaven that will eagerly lick you up and joyfully go down on you, offering up their fabulous gymnast's flexibility which somehow combines with adequately stimulating curvature packaged accordingly. They expect them to be all these and they energetically attempt to impose this stereotype on them. They cannot be timid, or anything like this. They are 'Russians'. The difference in the Outpost is that here these repressive stereotypes can be successfully and painlessly (well, unless you are the woman) imposed with few eyelids batting.

I never knew politics can be so perniciously relevant within private lives before I came here.

(parenthesis:

2005-11-23T13:25:00.000+02:00

Minutes before leaving work, I found these blogs: beast and Somewhere near the river. My stomach constricted at the realisation that lyricism, that peculiar kind of lyricism I found once more in places like the above, has almost been lost from my life in this little desolate place I have found myself in. Otherwise, I am grateful for the -- at last! -- cold air invigorating me.)

The truth about Bouvet Island

2005-11-21T23:05:00.000+02:00

There has been some bewilderment on where I am. I am obviously in the Outpost. But, understandably, this is not enough for some readers, so they look the blog up in a directory. They come up with Bouvet Island, because this is how I have it listed. I was recently asked where Bouvet Island is.

Bouvet Island is antarctically cold, miserable and uninhabited, one of the most isolated places in the world. More isolated than Pitcairn (a very lonely place) or even Tristan da Cunha, of Wings of Desire fame. So, 'Bouvet Island' is just another trick of mine, as it is a place very different from here. However, the Outpost does feel like a lonely place, sometimes. Not last weekend, though, when Jorge and boyfriend visited and we threw a massive brunch on Sunday. I'll be eating brunch leftovers for the rest of the week (too fatty for Jod's tastes).

I will tell you about Yu's terrible woes some other time. In the meantime, for those of you who liked the pictures, you know there are more, here for instance.

Linguistics

2005-11-18T08:13:00.000+02:00

"esho-nessemasta!", said the secretary to me minutes ago.

I thought she was speaking Japanese (say the thing out loud, stressing the vowels in boldface; see?). I dumbly asked 'who?' She burst out laughing. She is an Outposter, so she couldn't be speaking Japanese to me, anyway.

One grand weekend

2005-11-14T22:11:00.000+02:00

On Friday we were bored and tired again. There was no question of watching yet another DVD: we have seen so many films lately, it is becoming a joke we are not getting paid to. So, we went to the bar we used to hang out in. The stakes were low and we secretly knew we would quickly get bored. So, on our way there around midnight, we browsed shop windows.

We opened the door and I said to myself "So here is where everyone is!", i.e. the wonderful section of Outpost youth as well as loads of foreign people like us, including some really good-looking women (Outpost ladies, dressing down can occasionally do miracles!) and that amazing black guy with the white hat (I want a hat too, now). The atmosphere was phenomenal, the music superb -- we were having fun by just standing there, looking at people, drinking stout. In the meantime, we were texting friends to join us, none did.

Then friends arrived, untexted for: Maria and the Guitarist. And we had immense fun. What else to say.

The following day NewYorker took us for a ride to the other side. The weather was good. We left the Capital.

An hour later, we stopped at a cute beach, blue, green and sunny.

Then we moved towards the end of Europe, a peninsula like a foreign appendage sticking out of the body of the Outpost. So different from the (rest of the) Outpost, too. On our way there, villages would get poorer and poorer, roads progressively degrading. We stopped again, this time at a seaside chapel carved inside the rock, more of a ruin.

Yet another poor village and then, suddenly, a different place: full of maquis vegetation and trees, too; grass on the ground; a gentle landscape. Roads getting ever worse, blocked by sheep, people ever more oblivious to the existence of the (rest of the) Outpost and cars. Then, another village, the last settlement, formerly beautiful, now in abject misery, only nominally part of our great European Union, a bit like les banlieues. After that, mainly nature, truly the end of Europe, the Outpost's outpost. Twenty kilometres through mainly unspoiled beautiful countryside, reminiscent of Provence and Crete and Dalmatia, to arrive at the Beach: by far the most amazing beach in the Outpost:

Like with Prague, pictures are understating. You cannot imagine what the place looks and feels like. People used to tell me and I wouldn't believe them. Now I am converted.

We continued to the end of the road from there, where a crumbling monastery is, linked to Scotland by an Apostle whose relics had the peculiar habit of travelling a long way, navigating the high seas.

Another beach lay nearby, complete with Scandinavian-looking cabins

and a former watchtower of the Evil Empire, now humbly serving as a bungalow

Then we turned back. And that was just on Saturday.

On Sunday the weather was good again. We hooked up with One of the Seven and drove to Aerosol. An odd city, after all, in that it is not entirely uncharming, combining a business centre with a beach.

They have recently completed a 17 km-long footpath and cycle path across the waterfront; the Sunday being sunny, the seaside was full of people ("foreigners mainly", commented One of the Seven). We found an immigrant street market and we shopped for clothes

Chat, fun, lunch, coffee -- then merrily back home.

Listening to the White Album, which I bought today after 20 years of waiting, I am bidding you Good Night.

Indoors

2005-11-07T14:55:00.000+02:00

Another weekend like those we have been lately getting a lot of: nothing to do, nobody to see (and Jod having work to do at home). The highlights included cooking Thai red curry and watching DVDs: the Best of Road Runner (not Blade Runner), National Treasure, La Mala Educación, 9 Songs.

La Mala Educación I did not really want to watch. This is because I do not like Almodóvar, although some of his films I have found watchable. Guess what, La Mala Educación turned out to be a great film, subtle, superbly paced, playful (there are three main narrative levels embedded within each other), intriguing and tragic (Almodóvar can usually go only as far as melodrama, so...).

Then we saw 9 Songs last night. I had been meaning to see this film for some time because I was intrigued by its allegedly combining sex and rock gigs (there is actually a third element besides these two: Antarctica). I also liked Winterbottom's Wonderland, so I was definitely curious.

The film is a gem: simple and subtle, achingly atmospheric (it sent me into yet another spin of nostalgia for our lost English life), building characters not through dialogue, but through their having sex. Minimalism seems to be the guiding principle, but in a lyrical, personal and intimate way, without detachment or voyeurism. Although the story is narrated from the guy's point of view, the film's editing, choice of angles, lighting, even the actors cast in it (see picture above) make it a very unlike piece of pornography. 9 Songs belongs to a sparsely populated subgenre of films about relationships that use sex in a frank but essential way -- not as a distraction, a filler or a means to just titillate -- in the good company of the raw Baise-moi and the superb Intimacy, and unlike bathetic stuff like Romance, which is really born-again French porn (you know, porn with loads of spoken treatises on the duality / duplicity of love and the meaning of life and men being from Mars, blah blah...).

Of course, this is my point of view. Jod found 9 Songs -- well, here is the dialogue:

Lox: What did you think of it?
Jod: Porn. The live songs are good, though.
Lox.: Porn??? How can you say that? The actors are, like, human. You can identify with them. Nothing like the inhuman circus freaks of porn.
Jod: Antarctica was cool. I'll get the soundtrack.
Lox.: What about the plot? The [see my arguments above]
Jod: Well, it is not mainstream porn. It is a British take on French porn: profound porn. Winterbottom knows how to use sex. He's done it before. He just overdid what he knows best.
Lox: Well, I for myself like the idea of using the bare essentials to describe a relationship; sex is the bare essential.
Jod: Sure, but why did we have to see a close of her dilated labia [she thankfully expressed herself in an academic way -- Blogger censors are on patrol] or his belly soaked with cum? [uhm]
Lox.: Well, come on, these are elements of sex.
Jod: And why do we have to be shown them?
Lox.: Oh, it's not like Winterbottom wants to turn you on!
Jod: Well, I was turned on. Weren't you?
Lox: Yes.

Everyday life

2005-11-07T09:48:00.000+02:00

Two pictures of browsing pictures in an open-air exhibition in the Capital.

People at a cafe:

Two shots from the local film club:

Breakfast options:

Before sleep:

Almost there:

Annuit coeptis

2005-11-05T12:13:00.000+02:00

Last week I had a meeting with the American Embassy's Public Affairs officer, as member of a committee representing my employer. The Embassy want us to organise public events using for free their speakers, either resident in the Outpost or invited for that purpose. Among the many suggestions they put forward (some of them actually very interesting, we are seriously considering to take up their offer on these), they included us hosting public lectures with themes such as 'EU-US trade relations' and 'American foreign policy'. NL, also in the committee, asked whether these two would be of a historic perspective (subtle NL!) and, more specifically, whether the speaker would discuss Cold War era American foreign policy. "Oh no, we are talking today's foreign policy", replied the Embassy officer. "Aha", I thought.

The officer himself was naturally forthcoming and smooth-talking (Lord, diplomats are always somehow scary in their own elusive manner, and I have met so many of them here in the Outpost). I politely and civilly attacked the Embassy for suggesting us to act as a vehicle of their government's propaganda and went on to request from them to bring us an expert speaker on racism, who we would gladly host as here in the Outpost "we can certainly use the valuable US experience on the matter". He (diplomatically) enthusiastically exclaimed that this was a wonderful idea, and that this is why such meetings are great.

The guy has an @state.gov email address; his bodyguard, looking like an Iraqi insurgent, was waiting outside the board room throughout the meeting standing, hands crossed in front of his genitalia, like a footballer waiting for a free kick.

[...]

2005-11-01T08:32:00.000+02:00

Jod brought me Morrissey's latest album on her way back from a wedding in the Home City. While listening to 'First of the gang to die' yesterday, I thought of the Hyperborean Hunter, rapidly plunging into winter's long uninterrupted darkness descending on the great expanses of whiteness he roams -- as he is unreasonably fanatic about Morrissey. I also remembered getting drunk merry with Theta the Cuttlefish last September in York to this song, just before I was revealed as a brit-pop kid. I felt happy and high for the first time (excluding sex, of course) since August.

While the song was playing, Gizmo was frantically miaowing in tune (???), pausing only to vigorously and purposefully scratch his head.

Rigid fingers

2005-10-31T09:29:00.000+02:00

Here is a portrait of me as a Lego, courtesy of here, via mor.

Thank you, William Randolph Hearst

2005-10-27T11:00:00.000+03:00

Look at this, via 42. Some of them are actually good.

Succulent mega-tart

2005-10-25T19:26:00.000+03:00

This is what Tot brought us for dessert on Sunday. The mound seen consists entirely of cream and strawberry pieces. The spoon was placed to indicate scale. The confectionary concoction seems to have been devised in the Outpost, and also comes in an even larger size (the particular one is meant to be shared by five).

Front view:

Rear View:

The time of reckoning

2005-10-24T11:35:00.000+03:00

This post is like those crappy sitcom 'specials', which are actually reruns with just an added twist at the end. As the drums sound in the distance once more, I am sitting in my office, unable to concentrate on work, calmly thinking about what we have learned during the past three months:

I never liked the weather here. The lack of somewhere to walk in(to) has really intensified our general sense of entrapment. Ignorance (especially among those who should afford none), can be hilarious, irritating or disheartening, depending on the circumstances, but usually not lethal. Hypocrisy and the local form of doublespeak, likewise. Maybe the quasi-fascist mores of part of the society are more perilous, but there are those who are alert. The fierceness of the people I was lucky enough not to experience directly, after all I came here 50 years late for the times when people would kill their neighbours with stones and sticks. Then, there is the coarseness and peculiar conversation strategies, which we have managed to partly negotiate.

Still, it has been much harder to cope with the ugliness of the landscape and some instances of rampant parochialism. Of course, these and much more can often be overcome with a little help from sound social life. However, you also know about the social tedium and the general feeling of loneliness we are going through here, too.

So, it became almost official last weekend: we are languishing here and we need out soon. Although I am no longer as cautious when it comes to the 'where to' question, we still have nowhere to go.

Pictures

2005-10-22T16:07:00.000+03:00

Just two pictures.

Still...

2005-10-20T12:15:00.000+03:00

... the single most beautiful and uplifting thing in the Capital throughout those long (almost) four years has been this:

Hundreds of birds (what birds are they?) gathering daily inside the ficus benjamina trees lining some streets of the Capital at sundown and deafeningly cheeringly chirping to each other, masking the noise.

Youth

2005-10-20T11:37:00.000+03:00

I have faith in the Outpost youth. They grow up in a materialist but fanaticised, parochial and entrenched society, with little stimulus and with little of note to do (except perhaps some sport), a society that only recently has begun opening up to the possibility of there existing an outside world of any true importance. Still, an impressively large proportion of them escape early marriage, early employment, early procreation and the ensuing sweet lull of building a family home, of buying an unrealistically expensive car and of living life like strangers with a spouse they used to know well, in jobs found for them by the family. Large sections of the Outpost youth has an almost indomitable desire to learn, to create, to contribute -- some young individuals are among the most brave, spirited, open-minded and open-hearted people I have known.

They are everywhere: journalists who want to do graduate studies so that they "do not bluff their way through writing, without a solid theoretical foundation", hard-working students, amateur actors, ingenious and patient diplomats with principles (wow), rocking schoolkids, political activists, playful artists and grave artists -- all making a difference.

Most of them have studied abroad or intend to. They leave the Outpost ignorant, fearful of familylessness and of the wide open world, the males subdued by the 26-month-long daily pointlessness of military service, the females on the brink of mental castration. They come back, well, enlightened.

On a less than cheery note, compare this with most Compatrido youths studying abroad: they leave Compatridia omniscient, fearful of the wide open world and oh so ready to rock. They go on to spend their studies (?) lamenting the lack of everything they prize: cheap cigarettes, mum's cooking, easy ways to cheat, cheap booze all night long, toleration of plagiarism, TV shows and everyone considering them nothing short of brilliant. No need to debate the state they come back in.

Theatre

2005-10-20T11:14:00.000+03:00

Theatre in the Outpost is exceptional. There are many and very good stages, starting with the brilliant Principality Theatrical Organisation, and not all of them are in the Capital. The actors tend to be at least decent (and sometimes really good), and even when they are not talented, they are usually diligent and meticulous. The repertory is varied and the venues quite numerous (and usually packed), considering. There are also visiting theatre groups aplenty, usually of high standing. All that in a tiny place, from limited resources (bar the lavishly funded Principality Theatrical Organisation) and for a small population.

We're off to a production of Mamet's Oleanna in the weekend; I'm very excited, actually.

Power

2005-10-19T10:41:00.000+03:00

A thought on power, also useful should we seriously consider mixing God with politics.

Another birthday

2005-10-17T08:15:00.000+03:00

or The Sorrows of Young Werther

I don't want to write this post. In fact I have work to do and if I were to post something, I would rather tell you about Outpost theatre, which is so very good. I don't want to write the post I am actually writing, mainly because of the on- and off-line brouhaha it might cause. But I have to.

My birthday was to be celebrated on the same day as Great Westphalian's housewarming party. Great Westphalian asked us to drop by later, and I vaguely said I would. The day passed at work and then quietly and sweetly, courtesy of Jod (and her presents). In the evening, the members of the bubble, friends and some house guests would all go to a live music restaurant to celebrate.

It turned out that very few people remembered me for the occasion, especially compared to last year (when I was away in England). With few exceptions, like Jorge (may God make him serene, rich and job-happy -- as everything else, he has) and people like, say, my parents and the like.

We went to the restaurant. The food was very good, the music quite good, the wine list crap (they had no Outpost beer, either). But what really bewildered, enraged and depressed me was my dinner guests' behaviour. With very few bright exceptions, they chatted the night away among them, paying very little attention to the person whose birthday they were supposedly celebrating. I'll keep it short here, just mentioning that no fun whatsoever was had, at least on my behalf.

We went home not particularly early, some time after 1:30 am. It turned out that Great Westphalian was expecting me after that in his housewarming party, as he had a little birthday surprise for me (complete with cake and presents). He was not very happy afterwards, and how can I blame him?

The following days have been very difficult for both me and Jod. I could cast a malediction (ineffective), or blame the Outpost for the lot (totally unfair). All I can really do is bark my frustration away in this so very public stage of my internal life.

Eating out

2005-10-12T12:23:00.000+03:00

Leaving tourist traps aside, although they are numerous, as they are just that, i.e. tourist traps, eating out in the Outpost is not just one of the few forms of entertainment, but also a remarkable experience. Now, the worst case scenario in eating out in the rest of the world entails one of the following:

a) awful food
b) exorbitant prices
c) service from hell
d) miniscule portions
e) a choice of the above

So many options -- none of them easy to be found here. In the Outpost, the worst case scenario in eating out means maybe not great value or maybe not the most exquisite food or maybe a tad on the expensive side. Usually, food is good, reasonably priced, politely served and in huge quantities.

As for choice: first of all, you have the local cuisine, which is delicious -- although limited in scope and overrated, moreover I am still suffering from withdrawal symptoms. Second, there is the number, variety and quality of international restaurants: Chinese, Japanese, South African, Syrian, Lebanese, Curry places, Italian, French, US-style diner, Greek, Spanish, Mexican etc. Third, junk food is so mediocre, you usually want to go out and eat something really good...

Expats in the Outpost quickly and visibly gain weight shortly after arrival. No wonder.

Birthday

2005-10-11T15:30:00.000+03:00

Celebrating (almost) one year of this blog (attention: self-referentiality alert!), I will be writing about great things in the Outpost. You know, the kind of things I will be missing n years from now, when I will have finally escaped from here, bitter and grey... ;-)

This is the (non-final) list, to be expanded in the following days / weeks / months:

Eating Out
Theatre
(Some) young people

As for more talk of books and angels of heaven, promised last August, ah, sorry, I can't bother: boring.

An isolated incident

2005-10-10T13:45:00.000+03:00

In case you are among those who leer at the 'Chinese miracle', who think that Tibet is the one human rights issue over there and who firmly believe that capitalism entails freedom and equal rights, try this.

Three themes

2005-10-04T08:57:00.000+03:00

In case you thought all is well in the Outpost because I keep silent about it, well, it is on a personal level. But look at these themes, too:

One of the Seven told us on Sunday that she closed the account with the Principality's Housing Finance Corporation she's had since she was a teenager. Naturally, the purpose of having an account with them is in order to secure (better terms for) a mortgage from them. Only that the Corporation will only sell mortgages to married couples. "Hang on, maybe they give priority to married couples", said Jod, holding fast on her cappuccino. "No, they used to sell mortgages to everyone eligible, but now they officially only lend to married couples." It's really hard for me to believe this, but if it is true...

BBC recently 'quoted anonymous local commentators suggesting' (= "pointed out") that local politicians need to come to grips with the Principality no longer being a superpower (it used to be during the Bronze Age, well, mutatis mutandis, and then those blasted Phoenicians took over world trade -- and do not get us started on the Egyptians) and with the world having other business to attend to besides the problems of a tiny place with a population less than one million. This is an appalling point of view. It's called realism.

The sinister Nomenclature that be are trying not to promote someone I know and who is worthy of promotion (the ad hoc committee freely and unreservedly suggested so). See, she is a

a. foreign
b. unmarried
c. woman.

Hence, she is without patrons. She is too intelligent. She does not pay lip service to any of the three (four?) factions in the department she works in. Hence, she has gained no patrons. She was given outside responsibilities and serious duties too quickly, due to merit. She is hard-working. Hence, she is coveted and feared. The Nomenclature people told her that much; they (or anyone else here) are not very subtle.

Diminishing nostalgia

2005-10-03T08:41:00.000+03:00

For years the urban theme inside my head whenever walking in London was the Box by Orbital.

Here is an urban picture:

Three years ago, cappuccino in a legendary cafe in the Home City for the first (and maybe the last) time, watching the downpour. Autumn becomes cities.

Nevertheless

2005-09-26T01:00:00.000+03:00

"Look at the ugliness around you!" said pH, like W Boson some time ago, giving me a lift on Saturday.
"I have chosen not to pay attention to it anymore. We eat, we sleep, we work, we read, we get together and we go out. We are avoided by locals, we can even avoid noticing the place." I replied.

I have been thinking about this exchange throughout the weekend. No, this is not the final word on the matter. "Ninety-five percent of everything is crap, after all", as Sensei once said. Let me then, once more, concentrate on the, say, 5% that matters here: intriguing, charming and sometimes beautiful images, most of them from the part of the Capital that "looks like a foreign country", as a silly silly young Outposter I have worked with once said.

Thus, here is my brief, unenthusiastic but affectionate photo song for the Outpost Capital.

Equinox

2005-09-22T21:53:00.000+03:00

For some days now, a fluorescent green praying mantis has been loitering on the shared patio in front of the house. A welcome presence, quiet and standing still, it looks like a piece of quirky design, maybe Spanish or something dreamt up by Tatlin. I closed the door behind me absent-minded on my way to the gym, expecting yet another balmy evening. But not. There was an almost cool, autumnal breeze instead, perhaps heralding the changing of seasons appropriately. The neighbourhood was calm and homely, through an open french window I peeked at a woman in her nightgown folding clothes into a drawer inside a Hammershøi-lit ugly bare bedroom. I arrived at the gym to find it eerily empty.

"Where's everyone?" I asked G52
"No idea. Maybe the changing weather", she said.

Killing time

2005-09-20T17:30:00.000+03:00

For some time, I have been meaning to write about time. That we are all trapped inside time. That no look-ahead is afforded to us, even for five seconds. That we have to patiently go with the flow of time, while that inner voice inside us (is it inside our head? sometimes I locate it in my chest, I used to feel it originating from within my jaw when I was a kid) goes on screaming: what next? what's going to happen? yes or no?

I had too many opportunities to ponder on the matter last summer. A broken promise to send a text message (the sender having fallen asleep) resulting in three hours of sleeplessness that night. Being feverish and getting into a cab to catch a night flight back to the Outpost, only to realise 10 minutes later that the briefcase (containing passport, air tickets, memory stick, money, documents) that should be sitting on the lap had been left on the pavement where the cab was caught: endless long moments until safe retrieval. And so on, and so forth.

So, when Francis hails the in-between, he probably has only quiet and serene gaps in mind. Not waiting for operation outcomes, not spending days waiting for life-changing decisions on behalf of others, not fearing the worst during ungodly hours, not spending months in penury and joblessness, not waiting inside delayed aircraft to reach the beloved one, not spending years waiting for love. Judging from his examples (a pause between parts of the Gloria of Bach's Mass in B minor, a train trip), I believe this is the case.

The gaps between things can be indeed "life's most unappreciated pleasures". Or they can be tortuous ordeals.

As for the recently announced Die Ruinen von Athen II, who wants to read stuff like more tales of Athenian rudeness and calloussness? Or Outpost private-scratching? Or English penny-pinching? Sod that.

@@

2005-09-15T08:22:00.000+03:00

eleS was complaining a few days ago that having sat for, say, three hours, through a discussion among Outpost men, you would be left with absolutely no idea of what they had been talking about. It is true: discussions among them are primarily repeated reciprocations of teasing, commentary on text messages exchanged in real time and, maybe, minimal grunting remarks on football, cars, immigrants, women. Crucially, they make longish pauses to vigorously scratch their genitals in public. Actually, they systematically and openly do that, whether sitting down or walking from / to their car (they do not otherwise walk); eleS burst out laughing at a demonstration I gave her.

At this point I could tell you about the relentless, pompous and loud-mouthed know-all rant that a conversation among Compatrido men consists of, but that would be too boring. No conversation skills here, either.

Pictures from England

2005-09-14T11:43:00.000+03:00

And now for something different.

The Grey Monument in Newcastle, dusk:

A notice in a cafe:

York Minster and York:

York delights: strawberry tart with creme patisserie. The strawberries were heartbreakingly delicious.

Democracy and tanned buttocks

2005-09-13T23:28:00.000+03:00

When I was younger, I was an optimist. I both thought and felt that the world would be gradually becoming, you know, a better place. I was an ecstatic spectator of the original Live Aid, after school. During the Velvet Revolution I was inebriated with joy: toppling tyranny non-violently was a real and valid option. The night Pink Floyd gave their Berlin Wall gig, I stayed up until late to witness the moment; I saw Rabbin and Arafat shake hands; the first time I saw a letter from South Africa with Mandela as its president on its stamp I fought hard to suppress tears. This seemingly unstoppable path to freedom, peace and justice was coupled in my mind with the, I then thought, irrepressible drive for tolerance and equal rights, for the final prevailing of healthy attitudes towards sex and relationships, for the defeat of prudism, abstentionism and sexual repression.

I was so completely out of synch with the rest of the world, it turns out.

While on holiday, in late August, I had a brief glimpse of such a utopia of tolerance in a tiny Greek island, which will remain unnamed. On its four beaches -- remember, the place was tiny -- I could see people in varying stages of nudity: swimming gear, partial swimming gear, no gear. Was this mingling disturbing? No. Did anyone seem to bother? No? Should anyone bother? Definitely not. Instead of the everywhere else customary segregation according to where you fasten your lycra and how much of it, we were all a motley bunch, mainly suntanned, as nobody went for the Victorian neck to toe sort of swim suit.

Before you pester me with questions about where this island is, a tip and a warning: if you are looking for tiny barren paradises of the Med, follow select Italians: usually they are the ones to discover them first. Then the locals arrive and make an utter guck of the place, sometimes followed by Attila the Hun (sorry, Cordia): Brits. Which brings me to the warning: one of the islanders told me that the aforementioned increasingly popular paradisical enclave of tolerance will feature deckchairs and umbrellas on its beaches come next year's season. So, decency and segregation (nudists will be alloted a place, surely) will once more defeat tolerance.

Before closing, in case you think I am exhibitionistic or biased: I rarely take anything but my top off in public.

Parentheses

2005-09-12T07:49:00.000+03:00

I am back. I left behind British TV (maybe the best in the world, especially compared to local, American and other options), fried food, Kenco instant (non-)coffee, chicken with a mushroom soup sauce (if you don't know what this is, don't rush to find out), the bleakness and grandeur that Newcastle is, the 'severely depressed Prague' that York is (said Jod after examining the photos from there) and loads of work, only to get back to more work. In the meantime I went to the great pubs of York (there was this particularly good one, I can't remember the name), ate at more than decent curry places, got revealed as a 'brit-pop kid' by a younger colleague, finished Q (more on that when we talk books) and started The Poisonwood Bible (after Sensei's suggestion), I briefly walked in London (love for a place, like love for someone, has no logic), reaccustomed myself to the sight of the ever scantily clad Saturday night girls (some of them not unbefittingly so).

The highlight: I saw Theta the Cuttlefish, who once more proved to be a friend. What else is needed?

Old York

2005-09-09T14:36:00.000+03:00

York is so unlike Newcastle: more orderly, cleaner, on a smaller scale, more boring: I am too young for the quaint cuteness it exudes. Give me some buzz, plase. Betty's tea rooms and cakes were exquisite, though.

A specialist (I don't know what you call the scientists studying floods, coasts, rivers and the like) told us that York is the UK's New Orleans waiting to happen: too much flooding too frequently. Which reminds me: where is the uprising, the rebellion, the insurrection? Hasn't the federal government of the United States criminally betrayed the people of Louisiana before and after the disaster? Ah, just the poor. Ok, then.

Back to York, I walked up the spiral of the 270-something narrow high stone steps to the top of the York Minster tower. I had to stop to catch my breath, it was also that it made me claustrophobic. The view from above was good. Pictures coming soon.

What else? Ah, yes. The room in my Bed-and-Breakfast is clean, cosy and comfortable. The staff are polite and smiling and not co-extensive to the family owning it. Wow. But, no shower gear in my room. So, I am taking baths. That's generally ok (after six years here, one gets used to the idea, if not the practice itself), but the prospect of washing my hair in there strikes me as, at least, unsavoury.

North Country boy

2005-09-06T16:37:00.000+03:00

I am in Newcastle where, implausibly, the sun has been shining for three days straight.

A woman with bruises all over her face was walking next to me for something like sixty seconds last night. Very difficult minute. Very hard life. And the Christian churches continue to locate personal sin within the domain of consenting sex.

I had forgotten this country's dismal food, its vile coffee, the old smell of damp semi-cleanliness in its rented rooms. I had also forgotten how much I sometimes love this country.

Hiatus filled

2005-08-30T18:58:00.000+03:00

(or shamelessly marketing a neglected blog)

I have an eventful summer behind me to write about, but no time for it. I promise to make up for that with exercises in graphomania later. Possible topics:

The books that kept me company in July and August
Nudism, freedom and tolerance
Die Ruinen von Athen II
Angels of Heaven II

I'm off to Britain for a business trip, I promise to post pictures. In the meantime, check this out.

ring out the bells again

2005-08-13T16:38:00.000+03:00

In the afternoon's blinding light I am almost overcome with melancholy and regret, surrounded by people I honestly and urgently feel the need to reach out to, but, somehow missing chance after chance to, I end up inert, appearing aloof and distant to them.

Green Day's "Wake me up when September ends" is buzzing inside my head.

Spot on...

2005-08-11T21:46:00.000+03:00

...once more.

How can people so different, so far away and on so diverging life paths experience feelings so germane? Feelings are supposed to be very private affairs, after all.

Human nature, perhaps.

Ne mutlu Türküm diyene

2005-08-09T12:46:00.000+03:00

(or The Baklava Post)

During my Athens sojourn I witnessed a profound change which can be summarised as follows: these days are the best time to be a Turk in Athens since, let's say, 1820, when the then village and today's metropolis was in Ottoman territory. Come to think about it, even in 1820, Athens would be a good place to be a Turk in only if you were some sort of rich land-owning aga. Anyway.

This is so because Grecoturkish (or Turkogreek) rapport, detente and entente seem to be at last flourishing. Obviously, there are solid (?) political reasons for this, but for everyday folk this new era is heralded by a number of highly successful TV series and films about Greeks falling in love with Turks (and vice versa), about the politics of love and about the consequent over-reacting. There is of course (at least) one more thing: food.

Like most Mediterranean peoples, Greeks and Turks share an insane love of food. So, when a branch of the famous Istanbul-based Güllüoğlu pastry shop opened in Athens, everybody knew that this would only bring the two peoples closer.

While in Athens I only managed to go there twice and practically tried everything on offer. I also bought a sample of their diverse types of baklavas for my parents (well, whatever remained intact after a long and tortuous shipment in an unsecured cardboard box across hundreds and hundreds of meters between Athens Güllüoğlu and, well, them).

Now I know it is true that there is no baklava like Turkish baklava. Although I have tried the Greek, Lebanese and Syrian versions, although Michael Manske (to whom I want to extend all my good wishes and sympathy right now) once extolled the Bosnian version, they all seem to pale in comparison to the unrealistically balanced tastes, the gossamer thin fyllo and the superb baking of Güllüoğlu baklava. If I am to get fat, I would like to get fat on this.

So, "Long Live the Friendship of Peoples" (as the old Soviet motto used to go), a feeling approximated in tone (although not in content) by this post's title: "how happy to be called a Turk". Even in Athens, that is.

Slow progress

2005-08-08T18:09:00.000+03:00

A mere eight years after Dolan suggested so, I decided to buy a cheap small tripod for my camera. I tested it and, indeed, the results are remarkable; hence you'll be seeing more (and clear) night pictures in this blog in the near future (starting, say, in, what, seven years' time - hehehe).

Die Ruinen von Athen

2005-08-04T17:13:00.000+03:00

I have been meaning to write about good things in the Outpost. In the meantime I have spent some days in Athens (Greece, of course, not Georgia) where three things struck me:

The powerful rudeness of the people. I have been to Paris many times and I have lived in London; I know that people in big cities tend to be 'unforthcoming' (as my Sensei used to put it), but Athenians can be horrifically rude, callous and arrogant at the same time. Maybe they exhausted all their politeness and respect potential during the magnificent Olympic year 2004 and now they just cannot muster together any shreds of civil behaviour whatsoever. Examples ("always give examples", Sensei used to say) abound, but are all too context-dependent to cite: Athenians are malicious, but (relatively) subtle.

Yes, they are rude: bus passengers, shop assistants, cops, drivers (sweet lord! I must never again complain about Outpost drivers and driving!), (some) waiters, bus drivers -- and so on. Polite individuals in Athens truly stand out as beacons of enlightment and compassion. In this respect, I prefer the passive-aggressive (should I say 'peasant'?) non-confrontational ways of Outposters. At the end of the day, passive aggression (is this the term?) can be effective only if you actually pay some attention to the person exercising it. Whereas straight aggression is all-pervasive and in-your-face...

A second thing, the moaning about heat. Like Romans (reciting the 'fa caldo' mantra on any given occasion during the summer months), Athenians fear only one thing weatherwise, the legendary, but rare, heatwave ('kausonas'); they fear it irrationally intensely and more than god-fearing Americans fear men with beards, white powder in envelopes and teenage sex with gay abortionists. It is irritating. They don't know what heat is. In the summertime they get high temperatures but low humidity and breezes. They don't know what prompt suffocation due to crazy humidity feels like (one of the bad bad things about Boston, quite common in the Outpost, too). Throughout August, there is even a seasonal mistral-like wind blowing, dissipating humidity and clearing the atmosphere from dust -- we should be so lucky in the Outpost. Still, they just whine, whine, whine about the heat, heat, heat.

The third thing: the rudeness of the people... oops.

Hell must be a comfortably spacious place

2005-07-29T21:26:00.000+03:00

Here is another photo from my recent stay in Cambridge, Mass., which I cordially dedicate to moira, with a wink.

Also, notice the child at the right edge of the picture.

Boston pictures

2005-07-27T14:05:00.000+03:00

... with minimal commentary.

First, the obligatory shot of downtown Boston

and some more of the downtown.

Then, the charming neighbourhood of Beacon Hill.

A curious case of segregation from the Harvard Bookstore.

A glimpse of the catholic tackiness, er, heritage, from North Cambridge...

... and of urban life, waiting for Hamlet, in the Boston Common.

Finally, an idea for a T-shirt logo, straight from the city's Museum of Fine Arts:

The glorious bubble

2005-07-26T18:01:00.000+03:00

I briefly glimpsed 'real' America when walking the wrong way across Massachusetts Avenue, away from Boston instead of towards it, on the television and in the Logan Airport bookshop (I never knew so much rubbish was published under the 'popular science' tag). Otherwise, I spent happy days in awe.

Boston is beautiful. Sitting last Saturday on the Boston Common and watching the crowds in deckchairs and on blankets watching the free production of Hamlet while munching on bread and cheese and hotdogs and sipping on white wine, I knew Boston was a city I would love to live in. Only in Prague have I seen so many, so good and so cheap books in sale. Books everywhere, I spent $450 on them and I was modest modest modest. Far from being 'snotty' and 'highbrowed' (as Californians and Southerners hold), Bostonians are relaxed, friendly and courteous, free from what characterises all Europeans, from the Urals to Galway and from Nordkap to Gavdos: reserve and bile. Civic pride was aplenty, and for good reasons too: a beautiful city, but not a 'model' one (there is the blasted expressway running through it, after all), colourful, liveable, diverse. The Museum of Fine Arts is wonderful, too, albeit understated.

It was Cambridge that stole my heart away. It takes feeling only slightly "intellectual" to be forever charmed by a place where an amazing mix of people goes about holding and using musical instruments, books, notebooks, laptops, where bookshops offer you the equivalent of the stendhalian experience of a cheese shop in France. I was lucky to have my own Beatrice there to guide me around, my good friend St, recently arrived from the Outpost as well, and point out the various types: the Harvard mother, the gay activist, the faculty secretary, the preacher, the genious, the reggae kids, the nerd, the failed Alanis, the Haitian cabbie, the sex goddess, the Greek diner owner, the writer, the ZZ Top-styled linguist, a future president of the United States. Unlike Cambridge, England, where 'intellectualism' is framed in alcohol, musty shabbiness and reclusiveness, Cambridge, Massachusetts puts on display a fascinating alternative: Peet's coffee, hard-working casualness and bohemianism (although more than just these).

St said Boston is a bubble. It must be. But a fair sized (like everything American) bubble, and so full of wonders. Besides, as I told her, in the Outpost we also live in a bubble, of five: herself, myself, Jod, A+ and pH. How could one of millions be bad?

At the end of the day, Boston and Cambridge made me a happier person.

Waiting for questions and comments this time, I am sure I left a lot out. Pictures coming up later.

617 - First impressions

2005-07-21T03:07:00.000+03:00

Boston is like someone, quite unexpectedly, took London and, as if by urban magic, transfigured it into a beautiful city.

To the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

2005-07-18T13:46:00.000+03:00

So many people (the Viennese Rhino and sissoula among them) are very curious about what I will think of Boston and my first time in America, although, well, Boston is not your typical America: not even three-legged aliens can survive it.

We'll find out soon.

Survival of the fittest

2005-07-16T13:05:00.000+03:00

I had the misfortune of spending two hours of my life last night watching the miserable piece of cack called, you know (I am not even naming it). Before I attack it, a disclaimer:

I am not squeamish but I strongly resent the depiction of brutal death in a film to create an effect. This is the reason I will never see the Titanic, a melodrama capitalising on scenes of people drowning like rats, or most splatter films. Of course, it is not slaughter or burning or disembowelling or shooting as such I have problems with, it is the way they are shown and their narrative and cinematic purposes (so, no problem with David Lynch or Tarantino whatsoever). In fact I am perplexed and annoyed by the fact that the public are so intolerant towards the depiction of "gratuitous sex" (what does 'gratuitous' mean in the context of sex? I mean, non-reproductive sex is 'gratuitous', right? Haha) and, at the same time, so ok with films where people are freeze-drowned screaming helplessly, or are zapped into cinders in the foreground, or have steel blades disrupt their respiratory system a tergo for being stupid teenagers, or are slowly devoured alive. This was one of the reasons I hated the new Spielberg piece of [place own term here], a miserable return to what the industry thinks he does best, after the brilliant Minority Report.

Then comes the rest of the reasons: that maximally annoying girl screaming relentlessly, the bathetic ending ('bathos' is not potent or pompous enough to describe it), the obscurantist politics underlying the narrative, the pukifying 'family' subplot, Tom Cruise planting grenades into a harvesting machine's tight anus (I wish it looked half as good as it sounds), the lamentable music score. Above all, the film is an assault on the audience, a shameless sensory and ideological overkill: panic, disgust, misery, horror, helplessness, gore, paranoia and fear, fear, fear. All in dizzingly high doses. The film acts as a sort of a cinematic Inquisition, ensuring the message inculcated will not be lost on anyone: we are helpless, we are vulnerable, we are fertiliser; although there are no more nukes to wipe us out, humanoid slimy-looking Arabs (sorry, aliens) will either burn us up leaving only our clothes hovering in mid-air or will suck our blood dry. A tequila sunrise and some night driving afterwards only partially alleviated the effect of this overdose.

(Ok, my favourite scene: all-American denizens killing each other for an SUV. Hohoho.)

Incidentally, if you want a subtle, really chilling and genuinely terrifying take on the topic, go see 28 Days Later.

Your London days are over

2005-07-16T11:46:00.000+03:00

For the last two weeks, whenever I go to the gym, I hear a song playing. I don't know what it's called and I don't want to learn (otherwise, Google is only a click away). Its chorus goes like 'I could never be a woman', which is peculiar, considering it is sung by a presumed man. This is some coincidence, as this song was quite a hit back during my London days. I would actually hear it playing every time I would shop in Harts the Grocer (which became yet another Tesco Metro long time ago), opposite the Russell Square station exit.

If I were superstitious, I would consider this is due to some cosmic get-together concerned with awakening this memory into me, in the aftermath of the bombings (a teaching assistant? what the fuck, world?). But I know that, in reality, it is just that the gym has only a finite number of CDs to play.

Naive questions

2005-07-11T21:35:00.000+03:00

Seeing injured Londoners against the backdrop of my former home, off Russell Square, realising one of the trains exploded below the Marchmont Street - Judd Street area, where Hyporborean Hunter and me would buy Chinese takeaway and sandwiches, browse books and tacky postcards and get haircuts and kebaps, I wondered: why are these people to blame for the UK government's crimes?

Then I wondered, why were the non-combattant secular Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica to blame for anything? Or Israeli commuters? Or the good people of Baghdad since 1991? Or janitors and cleaners in the Twin Towers? Or Madrilenos? Or Palestinian children? Are we supposed to all rise up in rebellion against Islamic / Baathist / Imperialist / Zionist / no-matter-what terrorism and crimes? Yes -- but with the alternative being death while shopping or commuting?

...praeter necessitatem

2005-07-11T21:25:00.000+03:00

Strange people, Outposters. First you claim they "lack in clever wit or warmth of emotion". Then you complain about pretty much everything, in effect calling them hypocrites passim. Not an eyelid bats. Recently you actually curse them, for %^@$#@*'s sake, and they applaud. You do the above in all honesty and seriousness, too.

Still, if you engage into some fancy role-playing, pretending you are some sort of social scientist dissecting their 'realities', and call them 'peasants', trouble ensues.

Entia non sunt multiplicanda...

2005-07-07T00:07:00.000+03:00

I have been meaning to write about shutters lately, or, rather, the scarcity thereof in the Outpost. Now that it has become really hot, I have started noticing that most newly built homes (i.e., say, 60% of all homes), houses and flats alike, completely lack shutters of any description. This means that the heat cannot be prevented from reaching through the glass panes and getting trapped indoors. Instead of shutters, you have curtains or the cursed Venetian blinds (a cat's plaything and not even sexy anymore). Why would people not install shutters in a land drenched in sunlight? Why do they want the heat to be trapped inside their homes, between glass and curtain? Do they like it? Not really, that's why they set their air conditioners at 18 degrees, with fans at full speed.

I have been trying to both seek an explanation and reconstruct the just-so story locals would have about this. Then, suddenly, inspiration in TGI Friday's: a general theory that captures all sorts of Outpost behaviour, sure with the details still left to be worked out, but a good, simple theory in any case; it can be reduced to a single proposition:

Outposters are peasants.

'Peasants' should be read descriptively: neither as pejorative nor as a label glorifying rustic purity. Once this is understood, you can go back and read every single post of this blog under the light of the proposition above and it will all fall into place now. As a bonus, the above captures intriguing similarities between 'Outpost realities' and those in other places and times. Actually, in hindsight I wonder why it has taken me so long.

While you are occupying yourselves with this, I can take a short break (maybe), dedicating myself to internal life.

Do something.

2005-07-02T18:02:00.000+03:00

7:45 am

2005-06-28T08:24:00.000+03:00

Driving to work, the morning radio show is on. This one is hosted by a married Compatrido couple: the drag in their speech (unlike the Outposters' vocal hopscotch when they speak Compatridese) and the smartarse sense of humour would give them away, anyway.

At 7:45 they comment on gay rights in the context of dark (butt)holes, stereotypically hystrionic queerboys (they actually used the word), dressing in drag (in tights, more specifically) and kids without a mum (hypothetically adopted by two gay men, that is).

Think about it: a foreign couple with a radio show on a major radio station (Energy) abusing gay people at 7:45 am.
"Beat that!", said Jod.

At 8:10, when I was parking, they were still on air. You should have figured that out. I did not ring the station to protest: they would reply that I take good natured humour too seriously, or (worse! god forbid!) that I am gay.

Three easy pieces

2005-06-27T01:55:00.000+03:00

The great passions of this small land: kids, houses, food, chauvinism. Houses: Last Saturday, Yu's husband told us apologisingly four times how small their new house is (it is not), after having given us a tour of it.

Elective affinities: Last Friday, at a live music scene, where PhiPhil (in his mid twenties), who both pH and myself have worked with in the past, plays electric guitar. The following day, in a garden party, a bunch of 50-somethings, succoured by some 30-somethings, grab an acoustic guitar and start strumming and singing. The same morose, sometimes even morbid, Compatrido ballads and slow dance pieces in both cases. In all cases, maybe the appeal of almost grandiose lyrics and certainly the overflow of pathos and feeling.

The art of divination? During daytime, it is hot outside. There are many tell-tale signs, one of them is the kitchen cupboard crammed with the mugs stored in it. Usually the mug space in the cupboard is more comfortable, as at least two of them would be drying on the dish rack at any given time. But it's been a long time since we've had a hot drink.

At night, a welcome breeze, coming god knows from where.

Rules of disengagement

2005-06-21T17:24:00.000+03:00

I've just had a meeting with eleS, who is unfortunate enough to be a Russian woman in the Outpost. In the morning, someone got her on the phone, wrong number. Alas, enticed by a young, female, Slavic voice at the other end of the line, the anonymous caller went on to text and ring her continually (thrice while she was in my office), asking her to meet him on a blind date, although she would repeatedly text him to leave her alone.

Exasperated, the wooer texted her:

OK sOrry fOr the disterb bye bye sweet hard

Imprecation

2005-06-18T20:25:00.000+03:00

Just came back from a trip to Big Resort, where we were invited to join some colleagues of Jod's to a fish restaurant. Because we woke up at noon (see below why), we rang them to say we would only make it for coffee. "That's all right, fine, cool, see you." On our way there, they texted us to find them at the fish restaurant, so we thought they would be waiting for us to move on to a cafe.

Once we arrived there, a series of facts (or 'realities', as they like to call them here) became evident: First of all, many more people than just the colleagues had just had lunch, coffee and dessert. We sat at the table but we were not introduced to anyone, this is common here: people do not introduce if it involves even the slightest bother -- everybody who is anybody is somebody's cousin, after all. Then, nobody addressed us, not even Jod's colleagues (with whom we had gone out before) and everyone continued doing what they were up to: texting, playing games on their mobile, ordering more water, coffee and ice cream, staring at the infinity through the glaringly bright balmy atmosphere. All this, against the relentless drone of a fat guy (who turned out to be the owner of the fish restaurant) going on for the total of 90 minutes we spent there, talking utter and complete rubbish to the half of the table that he found worth addressing. Actually, it was Antonia, a 4 year old, who asked Jod to go have a look at the pelicans with her (there were two pet pelicans next door). Then Antonia asked me to go see the pelicans with her, as well. Then I spent an hour or so staring blankly, waiting for someone of those who had invited us to talk to me or Jod (so that I can join into the discussion). No luck. For the first time in many years, I got so angry and frustrated in a social gathering, I was ready to cry in public. Why the hell did they invite us there anyway? Antonia saved me again, by summoning me to visit the pelicans for a second time. Eventually the fat guy finished talking on the minutiae of restaurant book-keeping, on how to keep frying oil going for a week, on the deplorable restaurant habits of Outposters and even more trite stuff, so we all left.

At the end of the ninety minute ordeal of silence, we had got addressed only by Antonia and one of Jod's colleagues wondering whether we wanted coffee or watermelon.

So, to all you Outposters who, in these three years, have invited us only to immediately forget about us:

Curse you, curse you antisocial and complex-ridden gits.
Curse you for not knowing how to treat a guest, for not caring how to make someone feel comfortable and welcome.
Curse you for making Asperger's patients feel warm, engaging and sociable in comparison.
Curse you for profusely advertising the warmth and hospitality of your people, inept sociopaths interested only in your own folks.
Curse you for inviting us all the way to Big Resort, to a bar, to your place for dinner only to abandon us in the midst of food, drinks or even leftovers, making us feel redundant and miserable. It was not the first and it was not the last time you do this to us and others, so curse you.

Funny that all this followed A+'s party last night, a grand and wonderful success, as A+'s parties always are.

Simple pleasures

2005-06-16T22:15:00.000+03:00

Succesfully furnishing everyday life can be very difficult. One of the ways to do this is to seek the company of others, especially interesting others. Last night we went to the Climber and the Designer's place. The Climber is a mountain climber (Himalayas and all) and a gym owner and an insurance agent. The Designer designs jewellery and works in a bank, which is what cool people seem to do here.

They were very relaxed, in a relaxed home where their kids -- one of them a teenager, a friend they are putting up, his kid, the Nepalese domestic helper and a number of funny-looking shy cats all floated around in grace and harmony. The friend, Co. Meath, is the fabled Irishman who opened the first real café in the Outpost in the distant past, as early as 1999. Before that, and him, there were only touristy cafes here, also serving full English breakfasts and pasta (you can have a glimpse at a sample here), but no tiramisu, (good) espresso or brownies... His café is still among the best in the Capital, although overpopular with local characters of the more colourful sort (car keys on the table, designer sunglasses, excess of makeup, latest mobile on the table, ugly looks expensively pampered, no conversation, forced coolness, dodgy fashion choices), thus avoided. Co. Meath now runs a Knightsbridge café, so not bad at all.

Takeaway, a football match, chatting, jewellery samples, mosquito stories from New Zealand (they are very aggressive there) and here (they are not so aggressive here), Co. Meath remembering the celebrities who have patronised his Knightsbridge place (he once taught Bon Jovi a lesson in punctuality and served three cappuccinos to Michael Caine, Roger Moore and Sean Connery, who were having a break together): the evening passed quickly and pleasantly.

Foreign food

2005-06-13T23:02:00.000+03:00

When I was a child, my family would spend some time at my maternal grandparents' place every summer and during Easter holidays. We would often be joined by uncles, aunts and cousins. One of the highlights of these visits was my grandmother's cooking: fried eggs tasting implausibly delicious, fresh baked bread, tomato spaghetti, slow-cooked roast chicken dishes, pies... and the blasted mantı, of which I couldn't even pronounce the name, due to its foreign and seemingly indeterminate-sounding final vowel, which would come out as either 'manti' or 'mantu'.

To my child's eyes and taste buds, mantı, fervently adored by everyone else in the family, looked and tasted like a really good idea gone to waste: First came the oven baked thick fyllo pastry dumplings filled with a mix of meat and other stuff. So far so good. Then, alas, came the sauce made of yoghurt, water and mashed garlic. The mere sight of it I found repulsive, as for the taste, unbearable to even think of: the sourness of yoghurt entwined with the burn of garlic. Even worse, every plate filled with the poor soggy dumplings swimming soup-like in this yoghurt concoction was topped with a mix of butter and red pepper. Mantı cooking days were days of mourning for me and I would eat the dumplings straight, set aside especially for me, with a fork, looking away from the others' plates and the ceremonious choreography of their spoons stained with yoghurt going up and down.

I have just finished eating two bowls of the thing, which I cooked earlier tonight. With Russian frozen pelmenyi dumplings, unfortunately. Granma having been dead for 22 years now, this is as good as it gets. But, once more, I tonight felt that some chances should be grabbed while there is time.

The need for beauty

2005-06-10T19:25:00.000+03:00

I have been wanting to post images of beauty here for some time, for the benefit of us all. As I am not really a nature lover, I belong to those who feel beauty is primarily that of the human body. Nevertheless, I would not really post pictures of nudes, given that most of them are copyrighted (to others, obviously). Not to mention that a blog featuring nudes on top of fictionally named real places and people, funerals, lazy film reviews, anecdotes, rant, casual observations, online tests, music suggestions, daily musings and whatever else there is to be found in here, would only make this place even weirder. Can I afford this? Not really, after Big T (hello uncle!) called this blog "eccentric".

The above need to post images of beauty this evening found a confluence with a trickling sense of guilt for always portraying the Outpost as a grotesque, ugly and nasty place. I felt I had to partly make up for this. So, I turned back to landscapes, Outpost landscapes, to present you the following pictures.

Norway II

2005-06-09T08:30:00.000+03:00

A newly found online friend insisted to know more about Norway and whether it met my 'high expectations'. I am not sure I had any expectations really. But let me see.

Norway seems like my kind of country: forested and cool; but then, maybe too cool, viz. unseasonally cold. I am not talking about the people, though: Norwegians were smiling and laid back; they look like they know how to have fun and show it. Throwing in an example for the sake of comparison, consider the Danish (hello Hyperborean Hunter! hello Ritta!): are they having fun? are they bored? do they look nonchalant to save face? are they mortally insulted? impossible to tell in the first 30 minutes (or more), just by reading their ironic-expectant facial expressions. Norwegians are not like this.

In a way, Norway made me both nostalgic of the British buzz (can be too subdued) and made me pity the British mess (things work, quite nicely too).

I am not sure I have more details to give. During most of the trip I was preoccupied with other matters and in Trondheim I mainly watched TV in my hotel room, trying to make sense of people talking on Swedish, Danish and Norwegian programmes (I still prefer the Danish intonation -- Swedes thought I was nuts, Norwegians were plainly enraged).

I guess the experience was also spoiled because I flew there and back via Amsterdam, where I had long layovers. I found Amsterdam even more rundown and even more pitifully in the hands of crappy tourists: mainly American kids after lotsa weed, you know, to get high, and Mediterranean kids after some sex, you know, for a change. Still, I once more realised I adore this country (well, the Randstad) and will continue to, the way it goes.

(Quote of the day: “But isn’t it offensive to call them Turks?”)

(Placename of the month: Hell, Norway and the nearby Helltunnel.)

The 51st (?) State

2005-06-07T18:15:00.000+03:00

Flying back to the Outpost the other day, I remembered a discussion between two flight attendants on a Flying Sheep Airways (the Principality's national carrier) plane, just before the take off of my first flight out of here, years ago. We were slightly delayed, so the young flight attendant says to an older senior one, who was standing beside me:

"The delay is due to a complication with a passenger holding a Puerto Rican passport: the authorities were not sure whether they should let him board the plane."
"I see."
"But, isn't Puerto Rico part of the US? What is the problem?"
"Oh no, Puerto Rico isn't an American state, that's why they have separate passports..."
"Aha..."
"... Venezuela, on the other hand, is an American state, but they do not count it because it is on the other side of the Gulf of Mexico", clarified the senior flight attendant.

Norway

2005-06-06T19:47:00.000+03:00

The dark green land, due to the extensive and dense forests punctuated by snow, especially when viewed from an approaching plane, is Norway. The trip there was, again, on business; to Trondheim. I have some pictures for you, with brief commentary.

The main landmark of the beautiful city is its Cathedral, where St. Olaf (the patron saint of the country) is buried.

The rest of the city centre looks like this:

and this:

It is as beautiful as it looks, although all the nastiness (malls, industrial estates etc.) is actually tucked away behind the forested hills...

The view from my hotel room, at midnight was the one below. Don't be fooled by the workings of digital photography; the light was enough to read a newspaper.

The city sky is full of seagulls; sadly, one of them did not make it:

Bicycles were everywhere, as well, on the pavements mostly. One bike shop sported this nazi-looking brand sign, of an, apparently Danish, bike company:

The city gallery, from a slightly 'Hammershøi' point of view:

The days I spent there were graduation days, for both schoolkids,

and students.

[...]

2005-06-02T14:12:00.000+03:00

Currently in a dark green land.

Watch this space.

Farvel.

Thirty francs

2005-05-28T21:16:00.000+03:00

Darkness was falling outside and inside the flat while we were watching Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran but neither of us bothered turning on a light until after the film finished.

Cher ami E., I hereby retract my generic condamnation of French cinema: Florian was right on the matter, as expected. (Tout va bien au Canada, j' espère.)

Sex 0-1 Death

2005-05-25T11:26:00.000+03:00

or The Death in the Family Post

Back in 199... I was a graduate student just months into a programme in the University situated in the miserable market town I have told you about before. I was doing little studying and was basically spending huge amounts on overseas phonecalls, to Jod. So, I decided to put my (little grant) money to better use and I booked a ticket to Compatridia for a long weekend: the amount for a return air ticket was what I would spend in a single month of phonecalls on the cheap plan, anyway.

So, I got on the plane, one of those flights that arrive in ungodly hours (the other option was a flight leaving in ungodly hours). During the flight I suddenly thought of my grandfather, for no apparent reason. Otherwise, my thoughts were dominated by the prospect of sex. That was the reason I was going to Compatridia incognito.

Arriving at the airport I immediately realised there was something seriously wrong. Jod announced to me that my grandfather had died hours ago and that my parents were looking for me. I cursed obscenely and violently along the lines of "there goes the incognito long weekend". Jod got angry, assuming that I was just playing macho, masking my grief behind expletives. Honestly, at that moment, my only grief was for a wasted time of sweet loving, and so on... So, we went to a hotel (under no circumstances would I go to my parents' home), we slept, I got up in the morning.

I left the suitcase with Jod and put on my clothes from the previous night. I caught the train to the city centre, on the way to the cemetery, skipping my parents' (and, definitely, my grandparents') home, but I decided to ring them. A good idea, but a bit late. My mother was in a shock, she had actually feared I had somehow perished along with my late namesake, in a cruel twist of fate. When I made it clear to her that I had not, we fixed an appointment in the cemetery.

I arrive there by bus, unshaven, in abused jeans and the miserable blue sweater I yearned to get off me as soon as possible. Most of the clan was there, my father's family, the proud and obstinate bunch, the fallen bourgeois nostalgic of the Imperial Capital, the family in which you were either in charge, or sweet or an intellectual. My grandfather was the second of four siblings, all named to mark historic events of their birthyear: 1908, 1910, 1913, 1918, by the same weird godfather. Granpa would joke he was lucky not to be named 'Comet' or 'Halley'. Before I enter the room where they keep the dead before the service -- whatever this place is called -- my mother's brother stops me.

"Welcome back. You will see your granpa dead."
"Yes, I know."
"Have you seen a dead person before?"
"Yes."
"Can you handle it?"
"I can."

Except for the natural sorrow, I had no problem with that. Around the casket were seated granpa's relatives. As I had never in my life seen 1908, I approached a woman looking like her -- although she was in an extremely youthful shape for someone around her 80s.

"Hello, aunt 1908."
"Hello dear. I am her daughter, Jucunda."

Jucunda being back then in her 50s, it must have been the least flattering thing she had heard in her life. I felt an utter idiot. Exactly then 1908 came back from the loo...

Immediately people noticed me. They stopped paying attention to the person the funeral was organised for and made a series of assumptions:

His grandson is here. So, he flew in on a very short notice (1910 was not really ill or anything). He looks like crap. So, he dropped everything to be here, for the funeral. Ain't that sweet?

So, everybody gathered around that sweet poor soul, so attached to his grandfather -- which I was known to be. Nobody knew what it was that had really brought me there, besides coincidence.

Idle thoughts of a driver on an excursion

2005-05-23T00:18:00.000+03:00

The temperature reached 37 degrees last Friday, then it dropped to a more comfortable level. Thankfully, even at its highest, the heat is currently tempered by a slight but continuous breeze and cool nights. Sunday morning was bright and warm, so we set off for the beach. We drove through the dry and barren land to 'our' beach, which was truly ours this time (completely deserted, save for a string of four canoes, and their canoeists). The water was a harmonious and, almost Adriatic, translucent blue. Cold, too, so we spent little time in it. Then paper reading on the pebbles and in the sun (my nose tip, unscreened by suntan cream was done au point).

On our way back, through the empty fields and by the salt lakes (more like real salt pans, by now), a host of swallows in front of us made a number of quick low circles and then dispersed in mighty grace and speed. I immediately thought of the fiery, ever-focused, many-eyed seraphim, surrounding the throne of Mercy and singing their minimalist anthem to the One who sits on the throne. Then I realised that the image these swallows really had evoked in me was not that of a beatific vision and the transcendental seraphim: my cultural baggage is that of a child of the '80s, after all. No, the swallows were to me just an earthlier, homelier, kindlier squadron of cherubim, like those ethereally blue ones guarding the Ark of the Covenant by encircling it. In the Bible? No, in that Indiana Jones film I liked so much when I first saw it in an open-air cinema, in nineteen-eighty-whenever. Not to mention that even my seraphim are derived from Bach's Mass in B Minor and Mozart's Requiem and, primarily, Nick Cave's Mercy Seat.

Have a great week.