Martin
For anyone who's wondering, I've been in touch with Martin, our gracious host, and he is okay. He says his blog will be back up, eventually.
(Thanks to Phil for pushing me to contact him.)

The Metal Monkey
It's been a good few days. Partly because there's not a single thread of traffic congestion in sight, partly due to the hilarious on the street interview Jajamitabha coaxed me into doing for the Dapat Auto series on TV3 and partly contributed by the idea of being away from FB for quite awhile*.

(Sing to Queen, "God knows, God knows I want to break freeeeee.......").

My jobhate grows. Especially when things haven't been so rosy with the project next door where FB is easily pointing her short little midget fingers at me whenever there were queries. If doing something you wouldn't have done in a million years but you had no choice and survived with what was given to you was unnerving, being at the mercy of unstable female emotions puts you in a very awkward mode.

Awkward is now upgraded to fear and demoralization.

After celebrating my one-year employment anniversary at the GLC last month, the reality of having a 43-year old spinster for a superior finally sunk in. Oh, the pinball hormones. Oh, the dark cloud of her menopause that hangs above my head.

She is just too into her Glasgow research-degree work to mind her career anymore. Or mine.

" You do what you want Foxy, I don't care anymore. I don't want to baby sit you any longer."

Old cranky woman, you might just get what you bargained for.

Apart from all the other resumes of hopeful friends I'm handing over to HR for the application to other available vacancies at the GLC, I've also submitted my own.

Bated breath.

The Awal Muharram gave me kinda revived my faltering confidence and guts. My mom, being herself, wrote me some surah and other petuas to read in conjunction of the new Islamic year. Among the perkara-perkara sunat to do, was keep some money away with niat for `berkat rezeki yang mencurah sepanjang tahun', Insya-Allah.

As for our Chinese friends who are celebrating Chinese New Year of the Rooster,their predictions for little Monkeys like me this year:

The Monkey always considers life to be a comedy rather than a tragedy, and this saves them from pessimism and discouragement. They will therefore enjoy themselves this year, and do many frivolous things, but will always keep a certain sense of balance. Moreover, they will study philosophers, particularly those who know how to make fun of philosophy, such as Montaigne and Pascal. If they continue on this path, they will have many chances to spend the year profitably. Beware, however! They should not continue to believe that all people are foolish except for themselves: 'It's great folly to want to be wise all alone,' as La Rochefoucauld said!

Metal Monkey:
Your temperament as a winner will express itself with all its force. And woe betide those who'll try to resist you! In your work, this sharpened competitive mind will cause you to achieve fine successes. In love, don't overdo things and don't try at all costs to impose your will on your mate.

Those of you born under the influence of the Chinese Astrology element of Metal are determined, self-reliant and forceful. You enjoy the good life and all it has to offer -- luxury, comfort and freedom, especially. You're like a reclusive film star: You want the acclaim, but you also want to be left alone. You create your own success, building your desired destiny with single-minded focus. Others look up to you in awe of your commanding, confident presence. While you Metal individuals are strong and virtuous, you can be a bit set in your ways. No arm-wrestling with the metallic ones, either; they might break that appendage in two! You can be a stern taskmasters as well, demanding the most from yourself and those you love.

Cleartype
This time, is a small software that I propose to you to have patience : Cleartype.

That does not function with Windows XP and the flat-faced screens, and that was conceived to increase the legibility of the characters on your computer. You do not need any ? Try to see the difference ! is especially when one is accustomed there and one does not have any more that is the catastrophe !

You thus download the software here, while clicking on " download ", in red.

You install, " ok ", " next ", " next ", etc like D’practice. Not the sorrow to include/understand English.

At one moment, that proposes six texts to you. Click on that which seems to you clearest, easiest to read. And here, still small " a next " or " finish ", and is ready !

You will say news of them !

Put Zen in your life of couple
In a perfect world, it would simply be enough to like to taste durably with the delights of the life with two. The conflicts would be solved harmoniously and " routine " would be an unknown word.

Unfortunately, a world as this one does not exist, and each one among us knows very well. However, and they are not least our paradoxes, not only us did not make the mourning of this perfection, but let us cultivate we it a such secret garden. We await the love in our lives as the children await their gifts under the fir tree. There is no question neither of being disappointed nor frustrated, all that we ask it is : duration and the innovation, tenderness and the pepper, resemblance and the difference. With the passing of years, the level of our requirement increased, so much so that to the first storms in the relation in love the great fears and the great doubts emerge. And so precisely our waitings, in other words the idea that we are done of an ideal relation, were the principal obstacles with an opening out life with two ? We collapse under the councils and the opinions of experts : to overcome the crises, to start again the desires, retisser bonds of the intimacy. But when one looks at there more closely, it could be that we become exhausted to run after an ideal who does not cease moving away, quite simply because we forgot that the true road on which we advance is that of reality. To bring a key of Zen in its couple does not mean another thing to only make as well as possible with what is, rather than to put all its energy to be reached what " would be ". " To make with " is not an invitation with resignation, but quite to the contrary, an invitation with the creativity, which is precisely the thing which seems to miss with so many couples in the dead end.

To make as well as possible with which us sums could summarize the philosophy of the couple Zen. Thus instead of running after an inaccessible ideal of life, 3 objectives to reach here in order to find or find the way towards your balance :

- the rejection of the certainty : How much among us have a preconceived idea of the relation before even engaging ? How much have the certainty to know their partner by heart ? How many of the women want man with big cocks? These certainty are reassuring, they grow with the wire of time and each one becomes the belief of the other then, worked by its waitings. Until the day when lassitude makes steal the bars of the cage or which one of the two partners appears under one day unknown. We should not thus hang to us to a belief. Only the experiment causes knowledge, and not the idea, even brilliant, that we are done of a person. Its waitings thus should be demolished, but also of its beliefs and its prejudices, which is most difficult to achieve in the love life.

- To cross the conflicts : the reasons for conflict in a couple do not miss. The divergences are transformed into charges and criticisms in indictments. Anger scrambles the spirits and prevents any constructive confrontation. It explodes more easily in the intimacy than it freed from all the parapets which usually contains it in our social life. It is nourished by the resentment or what the other touches in us the vulnerable one. To choke to adopt a impassibility of surface is neither good for either nor for the other. To use to take the top carries out to a dead end. It is thus necessary to be useful of this energy to advance to two in a constructive way.

- To put an end to the routine : with all the occupations which rythment our everyday life, we have only very little time for us. And couples it in all that ? The pleasure of being together is transformed gradually into a sometimes heavy routine and the practices end up being right of the love. Réenchanter is thus needed the daily newspaper. A relation can be the mixture of 6 savours (land-mark, acid, soft, pricking, salted, insipid) and of 3 virtues. Dimensioned savour, which is that which misses with your relation ? Which do you use without moderation ? Which do you fear to use ? Which savour rejects you and why ? All these savours must cohabit in harmony, a pinch of each one supports a rich and creative relation. With regard to the virtues, we have : the flexibility-lightness which refers to the adaptability and the capacity of dédramatiser a situation ; the clearness-freshness which evokes the integrity, the absence of prejudices, the transparency, the spirit of beginner ; and the care-precision which returns to vigilance, the constancy and the taste of making well.

I do not say to bring a magic receipt here to live happy in his couple, I say only that small nothing, that one does not suspect inevitably can bring a note of imagination and give again a small blow of whip to a relation which would tend to stagnate a little bit. Then my last council : to roll up your handles !

No one really is a virgin. Life fucks us all.
Well...I told another soul about the fact I am no longer a virgin. The unlucky person...my own sweet Jason. I really love him, and I'm sad he couldn't get it together enough to be with me, but such is life. I'm with David now, which makes me happy in it's self.

I told Jason last Saturday when he was suppose to be at the band competition. I suppose I was trying to help him not feel so shitty by having him come with us to the pig roast we were going to that day. I don't get to see him at all anymore, so it was a treat for me. We of course started talking about stuff related to sex, and then he asked me what my dirty secrets were. I tried to get off the subject which intriguide him more, and after a while of "tell me" "I don't want to"I blurted it out. His reaction was not what I wanted it to be to say the least. It was Jason shock. It was Jason dissaproval. It was Jason dissapointment, and strangest of all...it was Jason jealousy? Yes, he admitted to all those things. I asked him if he thought lower of me, and he said after a tense pause "a little...yes." At least he was honest.


Every once in a while during the evening he would make rather cruel jokes about it, but I understood what he was going through so I let them go. He is one of the greatest people I know, and I feel like I failed him. I didn't feel any regret about the entire thing, untill I told Jason. I hope Grace never finds out, because that situation could easily be as horrible as Jason. I don't really feel regret, I just feel bad sometimes. Jason started telling me stories of when David would come over to his house and look at porn, and made comments of how David's head was in his pants. Then he tried to cover up his motives by saying "But David is a good guy. He wouldn't take advantage of you like that." Yeah..that wasn't exactly convincing. I don't doubt David at all, I just question why Jason was saying all those things. I pursonally think he was subconciously trying to start something between me and David, because...well...he did say he was jealous. Maybe I'm flattering myself too much.

I just feel a little bad because of all that. I'm sure things will be alright, but it was so sudden. It was just out of no where. I would think he would understand, but his reaction proved differently. I guess I shock alot of people sometimes...

My golf coach is a damn genius
Yesterday marked the 6th and final session with the golf pro at my course. It may have been the most important to date as we covered the short game. It's going to take time for everything I learned to become second nature/automatic on the course which of course means I will need to practice, alot. That is to say, anyone wanting to get in a round or go to the range, I'm in, just call.

I'm in the first group for the club championship this weekend. Evidently my play this season was enough to put me at the big kids table. Hopefully some of what I've learned from the pro will give me an edge in the tournament. If not, I'm bringing cigars and planning on at least enjoying the walk. If only the course wasn't in a dry county. DAMN!