Reluctant Nomad

All is well with me

2007-05-29T15:00:00.000+01:00

I am around, I am fine and there isn’t anything preventing me from blogging apart from lack of interest.

Nothing dramatic has happened in the past few weeks (although Queen’s Day celebrations were a real eye-opener!) but there has been more than enough material to blog enough had I had the urge. While I’m not obliged to blog, it really has been very remiss of me to completely ignore the comments on my blog and several emails that have expressed concern about my ‘disappearance’. Blame it on lethargy, bad manners or something completely different. But, whatever the reason, it’s no excuse for completely disappearing and not reassuring worried readers that all is well with me. For that I do need to apologise.

Sorry!

I owe two people (Terri and Angel) my responses to being tagged by them so when I do get to blogging again, my responses will be given top priority. Until then, I’ll probably be rather quiet.

Kryptonite really exists!

2007-04-24T07:16:00.000+01:00

Not that I need to tell you this, but, according to Wikipedia, kryptonite is a fictional element from the Superman comic book series. The element, usually shown as having been created from the remains of Superman's native planet of Krypton, generally has detrimental effects on Superman. The name "kryptonite" covers a variety of forms of the element, but usually refers to the most common "green" form.

Researchers of the Rio Tinto mining group have found that the mineral actually exists!

After its discovery, the researchers enlisted the help of Dr Chris Stanley, a mineralogist at London's Natural History Museum:

'Towards the end of my research,' says Dr Stanley, 'I searched the web using the mineral's chemical formula, sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide , and was amazed to discover that same scientific name written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luther from a museum in the film Superman Returns'.

'The new mineral does not contain fluorine and is white rather than green, but in all other respects the chemistry matches that for the rock containing kryptonite. We will have to be careful with it - we wouldn't want to deprive Earth of its most famous superhero!'

Read reports here and here. Although kryptonite's discovery has only just been reported, I was impressed to see that Wikipedia had already been updated with the information:

In April of 2007, scientists found traces of a mineral matching the chemical composition of kryptonite, in a mine in Serbia. The mineral found does not contain fluorine and does not emit a green colour, instead it is white and emits a pinkish glow when exposed to ultraviolet rays. Nevertheless, the mineral is essentially kryptonite. It will formally have the name of Jadarite, named after the Serbian town where the mine is located. Most importantly, the mineral is harmless and has no known dangerous or toxic properties.

Now that kryptonite is no longer fictional, will I get to find my Superman?

Today is Four-twenty

2007-04-20T17:17:00.000+01:00

Not heard of the term before? Nor had I until today. My son told me about it - he heard about it for the first time yesterday.

From Wikipedia: 4:20 or 4/20 (pronounced four-twenty) is a term used in North America as a discreet way to refer to cannabis and, by extension, a way to identify oneself with cannabis culture. Phrases such as "420 friendly" sometimes appear in roommate advertisements, indicating that the current occupants are tolerant of cannabis users.

And this site tells me that Hitler was born on this day in 1889.

Father and son stuff – teach him properly

2007-04-19T13:02:00.000+01:00

Read part 1 here.

A couple of hours after he arrived here, I took my son for his first stroll around Amsterdam. He was overwhelmed. A rush of new sights and sounds engulfed him. The sensory overload was obvious - his eyes shone like those of a kid in the proverbial candy store It’s not his first trip overseas but it is the first time he’s had an adult’s freedom in a European city. Not just any European city, either. This was Amsterdam! He’d seen several coffee shops when we’d taken the tram to my flat from Central Station but we didn’t see one for at least 5 minutes once we started our stroll.

‘Where’re the coffee shops?’ he asked.

I pointed out the first one we passed. ‘Let’s go in,’ he said.

‘No, not yet, there’re lots of them around. Later.’

At that stage, I was still pondering the quandary of whether having a joint with him was cool or not. He was definitely going to have one at some stage, probably sooner rather than later. Perhaps I’d go in with him and have a drink while he had his first legal puff? Or we’d just go in, have a look then walk out again?

As we got closer and closer to Walletjes (the red light district), we saw more and more of them. If anything, delaying the moment when we finally entered one, was definitely uncool. I saw one that also served alcohol. In we went.
Read more..

Father and son stuff - cool or uncool?

2007-04-18T09:09:00.000+01:00

Having not been around my son for most of the past 5 years, I’ve missed out on most of his ‘coming of age’ events. You know, important things like when he first got pissed. I don’t know when that happened. Probably several years before the time when he and his friends redecorated the kitchen, sitting room and front lawn with pools of their vomit. I may not have been there but I heard all the gory details. Has he lost his virginity? I’ve no idea. But he’s the sort of kid who’d let his parents know. Perhaps not actually volunteer the information but he’d readily discuss it if asked. I do, however, know his tastes in music (evolving) and clothes (unchanged) of the past few years.

So, two years ago, being told that he’d been called a ‘wigger’ by a group of Bishops boys when seen at Cavendish Mall with the friends he usually hangs out with didn’t surprise me at all. Style is symbolic of identity. That’s not an absolute truism but, as generalisations go, it’s a good one. Rap and hip-hop are often associated with drug culture. Nowadays, they’re also associated with misogyny and homophobia, things I know he’s not guilty of. Recently, his tastes have veered towards dance music. To some, ecstasy may be a bit passé but, not so many years ago, it was synonymous with dance music. So, do his music tastes say anything about his attitude towards drugs? It’s so easy to generalise and get things horribly wrong.
Read more..

Read part 2 here.

Today's UK Investment Tip

2007-04-16T16:26:00.000+01:00

In the UK, an increase in the cost of postage gets advertised several weeks/months in advance of the price change. First and second class stamps are designated as such, ie the monetary cost is not printed on the stamp. Next time a price change is advertised, buy stamps in bulk before the price change and save handsomely.

The recent increase in first class postage was 2p per stamp. A 1000 pound purchase of stamps would give you a healthy 20 pound return on your investment. Keep them beyond the next increase and the return will be even higher.

Clever, huh?

Now I wonder how long it would take for you to use/sell a 1000 pounds worth of stamps? Mmm... quite a while, I should think. Let me check with my colleague who told me about this scheme, having recently done it himself.

Pin-ta-nel

2007-04-16T12:32:00.000+01:00

Dutch television really isn’t the best. Yes, I know that Endemol (inventors of Big Brother) is Dutch but doesn’t that say it all?

Pin-ta-nel (*).

It’s all panel discussions, game shows, dire pop music (you really have to see and hear it to believe it!) and ads.

Pin-ta-nel.

Not only do the ads go on and on and on, but many of them are way too long. Some of the funny ads are no longer funny by the time they end several long minutes later.

Pin-ta-nel.

British 'yoof' television is bad enough with its weird camera angles and 'yoof' slang – watch Channel 4 over the weekend and the British version of MTV and you’ll know what I mean. The Dutch variety is worse. Pin-ta-nel. It follows a similar format but seems more dependent on overly enthusiastic voices and sentences ending with forced shouts. Pin-ta-nel. You should see the ringtone ads. Pin-ta-nel. Awful. Fucking awful, I tell you! Pin-ta-nel. Pin-ta-nel. Late at night, it’s all bare boobs and pouts luring you to ring premium rate numbers and visit sex sites. Surely no one falls for that stuff?

Pin-ta-nel, pin-ta-nel, pin-ta-nel!! It’s driving me mad!

(*) Dutch web domain (.nl) as said in Dutch: punt (fullstop) en el. Talking of web domains, why is it they some countries don’t have the ‘co’ in their web domains? Instead of dot-co-en-el, here it's dot-en-el. Not that the constant repetition of punt-co-en-el would sound any better, mind you.

I’m surrounded by them!

2007-04-11T16:05:00.000+01:00

The big boss is one, the head of technical writing services is another, as are most of her team. I’m talking about sexual deviants. You know, poofs and dykes.

Although I already have my own personal faghag in the office, no one else 'knew' about me in the office until Sunday when I bumped into the big boss at the Amstel Tavern. He didn’t seem surprised to see me there but if he did wonder if I was a fellow deviant on my entering the place, I’m sure it didn’t take him long to be sure of my credentials as a card-carrying poof. It was one of those nights where the last few hours of it no longer exist. I even lost an item of clothing, my coat, à la 'my favourite jumper'.

I saw him today. He approached me with a huge grin on his face. My grin was probably of the sheepish variety. Apparently, I didn’t do anything too embarrassing although I was seen gyrating oddly. Standing up and on the dance floor, I hasten to add.

Unlike my jumper, my coat hadn’t been kidnapped by an undesirable. I retrieved it last night after my Dutch class.

I’ll probably discover a whole lot more of the fraternity when I attend the monthly GALA get-together at Café Rouge tomorrow evening. My faghag discovered its existence today and emailed me about it. Now I'm their newest member.

For an organisation that tries to be 'inclusive', even allowing hetties to become members, it doesn’t have such an inclusive name. Obviously, GLBTA doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as GALA does, but what about all the B’s and T’s in the organisation?

"Check this out. Amazing!"

2007-04-10T08:20:00.000+01:00

The first entry on Scripting News effectively ushered in the first blog 10 years ago. In the intervening years, these online diaries have been touted as the future of media, labelled "pathetic drivel", and caused court cases, prison sentences and international incidents. But love them or loathe them, bloggers around the world have ensured incredible growth for the medium.(full article here)

Ten years ago, I'd just finished my MBA and was already a very seasoned user of the web. Blogging didn't enter my radar until some three years later when I read an article about blogger.com. I liked the idea, printed the article and put it in my file of 'interesting things', planning to return to it some day. The file gathers dust on top of the bookshelves in Cape Town.

Fast forward another four years and I was introduced to my first blog by Mike. After a brief stint of 'guest-blogging' on his blog, I set up this blog with its first entry entitled 'Test'. And that was that for almost a year when I began blogging in earnest. Sadly, that memorable first entry disappeared into file thirteen.

Eighteen months later, I'm still here, wittering on about nothing despite often wondering why I do it.

Procrastinating by posting

2007-04-05T10:11:00.000+01:00

I’ve got a major deadline to meet today and I just don’t feel like doing the work right now. It’s all about averages (rolling and otherwise) and excesses to do with facility limits and outstandings for related borrowers and outstanding groups. You wouldn’t feel like doing it either, right?

So, being true to my character, I’m procrastinating.

After visiting most of my usual websites, I had a look at my blog stats to see where my visitors have been coming from. Seeing what gets people here via search engines can sometimes be quite amusing. Ages ago, procrastination and boredom even led me to post the results of my analysis of how search engines were reaching me.

Today, I’m going to do the same:

best carrot cake: The best carrot cake recipe in the world
Cheek fucking: The fucking cheek of it!
Little mouse with clogs on: The fucking cheek of it!
How to make your own fleshlight: Build your own fleshlight
List of the best insults: Insults - they just don't make them as they used to
Shaving your balls: Do you shave your balls?
How to shave your balls: Do you shave your balls?
though I don't agree with what a man says, I will defend to the death his right to say it: Will I defend to the death your right to say it?
ts elliot on henry james quote no idea can penetrate it: More classic insults - Artists and writers being bitchy to each other
fleshlight attachments: Build your own fleshlight
Mozambique's flag meaning: Shooting down the flag
"virginia woolf on james joyce": More classic insults - Artists and writers being bitchy to each other
make your own fleshlight: Build your own fleshlight
bitchy insults: More classic insults - Artists and writers being bitchy to each other
jou ma se poes: Jou ma se poes
don't leave the one you love for the one like, quotes: Insults - they just don't make them as they used to
crazy afrikaans insults: Insults - they just don't make them as they used to
The Office TV series Pam big tits: I'm in the closet....
Nottingham Football Hooligans: I fucked a football hooligan
hundert-funf-und-siebziger in-between: I didn't realise I had so many names!
literary insults: More classic insults - Artists and writers being bitchy to each other
interview questions for gay people: Interview questions for Gay Banker
scarface part 2: Scarface - Part 2
Roy Blount Jr Quotes – list: Insults - they just don't make them as they used to
fucking in bed: The fucking cheek of it!
one liner classic insult: Insults - they just don't make them as they used to

Terri recently presented me with a Thinking Blogger award (I have yet to make my presentations). By ‘thinking’, I think she may have meant ‘thinking in the gutter’.

The shattering of a myth

2007-04-05T07:22:00.000+01:00

Over the years, urban legends have circulated about the hotel. It is said that fleeing Portuguese settlers poured liquid cement into the plumbing system, or down the lift shafts.

"Savana"'s investigations, however, show that this is just a colourful myth. (full article here)

I was living in Maputo when that hotel was built. My school wasn't that far away from it and we used to pass it on our way to the Costa do Sol. All the adults I knew loathed the way it dominated the skyline in an area devoid of buildings. All the kids I knew were excited by it - tall buildings were cool!

My family stayed on after the Portuguese fled the country in 1974. I was living in Maxixe by then but often saw the building when in Maputo. And I 'knew' that the building had been sabotaged by the embittered fleeing Portuguese. I last saw it in 1996 when I visited Maputo for the first time in 19 years with my wife.

I told her the story about the cement in the lift shafts.

Now it's gone and with its demise I've learnt that something I believed for so long was completely untrue.

The BBC has a good series of pics showing its last moments or you can see a lot more pics on a blog wholly devoted to its demise.

UPDATE: This story corroborates the truth of the so-called urban myth. What is the real story, I wonder?

My own special SoulCollage

2007-04-04T19:30:00.000+01:00

The lovely, talented Caroline has made me my own special SoulCollage. She's not sure what it means but was thinking about my nomadic state when she made it. I don't know what it means either but my immediate interpretation hinged (unintentional!!) around the half-open door.

It's not fully open as my wanderings are not always enthusiastically embraced, reluctant if you will. You could also say that the jetfighter in South African colours says much the same as it is flying past the mountains instead of towards them. The panels in the closed door are windows to places that differ from the one that the other door opens to. The seascape is one I know. The northern mountainous region is one I don't. Not yet, that is.

Attributions for the photos Caroline remixed:

patina by Kalense Kid
floating colours and a boat by k-girl
Lake Moraine Banff by ahisgett
wilderness by jaysk
双子の狐 silent observers by uBookworm
Enter by ljpixie75
Flying The Flag by Steve Crane

Thanks, Caroline.

Fretting about my fiets

2007-04-02T21:32:00.000+01:00

What do I usually do on a Saturday night? Get pissed and get laid, right?

No, not last Saturday. Instead, I spent a lot of time looking out of my window. There’s a lot to see out there, not just on a Saturday night. But it’s not something I usually do (read the above implication) unless it’s to see if the ‘Big Banana Shop’ (a rather dodgy name for a perfectly normal delicatessen that sells nothing more unusual than hash lollies) is still open.

I was checking to see if my bike was still where I’d left it.

After cycling home that afternoon, I’d parked it outside my front door, locked its wheel lock and gone upstairs. Perched on its bikestand thingy, out there in the busy street, it looked very vulnerable. Tethering it to something would have made it look far more secure. ‘I really should have bought a chain lock for it,’ said the voice in my head. I’d bought one for my son’s bike, but not one for mine.

As the evening wore on, the number of bikes parked around it dwindled until it stood on its own. Could it look more vulnerable? Yes, it could! I began checking on it every twenty minutes or so. Each time I looked, it was still there. My constant checking made me feel a bit foolish. And then, just after ten, it wasn’t there! My heart filled with panic. ‘I knew it! I knew it!’ shouted the voices in my head. My brain flooded with recriminations, all of them directed at me.

It’s estimated that there are 600 000 bikes in this city of 750 000 people. That’s a fuck of a lot of bikes! Yet still they get stolen. Which explains why you can buy a bike that retails for €150 on street corners for €30. A very tempting discount, I’d say. ‘Don’t do it,’ says every Amsterdammer. ‘It’s bad karma’.

Buying a stolen bike is bad karma? Does anyone actually believe that? Does anyone actually believe in karma, bad or good? Not I, Mister Super Rational Me. No, as tempting as it may have been, I didn’t buy a stolen one. Buying one from a bike shop seemed to be the easiest option. And being easy, that suited me just fine even if it meant paying much more for it. So much for counting my cents and the euros looking after themselves. This time next year, I'll be a millionaire? I don't think so!

Anyway, I rushed downstairs to see. See what, I’m not sure. The thief nonchalantly puffing on a fag as he prepared to mount? Fingerprints left on my door as he supported himself while perpetuating the evil deed? Other incriminating evidence that would lead to his apprehension and the swift return of my bike? I looked towards the canal. Nothing - no sign of it. I looked in the opposite direction. A bike, an omafiets like mine, was parked about five metres from my front door. It was mine! Why the fuck would someone want to move my bike? I moved it back to its previous position and went upstairs again.

My vigil began again.

In between looking out the window every twenty minutes, my ears did their best to pick out bicycle-stealing sounds from the noise of the revellers outside. Roman Polanski’s ‘The Pianist’ was in the DVD player; not the most light-hearted film I’ve seen for a while. I don’t mean any disrespect and I would never presume to suggest that my concern for my bike even remotely approximated the fear of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, but, well, you know...

That after-supper joint had been rather strong.

The more the film engrossed me, the less vigilant I became. By the time it had finished, I’d probably not looked out of the window for over an hour. It wasn’t there again! Fuck, fuck, fuck! The panic returned; a short-lived panic this time. Someone had moved it again. Could someone be trying to scare me deliberately?

Calm down, Alan, it’s just a bike.

My son’s bike was in the hallway so it didn’t need to be chained to anything - I took his chain and chained mine to the railings on the canal. Why hadn’t I done that right from the beginning?

Nominated for two, won one

2007-04-02T15:12:00.000+01:00

Yes, I won an award in this year’s South African Blog Awards! A new category, nogal (*). I’m the first winner of the GLBT category, one of three new categories introduced in this year’s awards.

It feels good to be a winner but it would have felt better had I done better in ‘Best Overseas South African Blog’, a category I won last year. Oh well, win some, lose some.

Congratulations to all the other winners.

(*) An Afrikaans word used in South African English slang as an exclamation - even!

I finally did it!

2007-03-31T18:49:00.000+01:00

No, not THAT. That still has to happen.

So what did I finally do? I went out and bought myself a bike. In fact, I bought two, one for me and one for my son. His has a few gears, not that he needs them on this flat terrain, so it's not a traditional Dutch 'omafiets'.

Mine, however, is.

It's not quite as mouth-watering as the mountain bike I had in Cape Town but it feels right having an 'omafiets' here in Amsterdam even if not having brakes on the handlebars feels very weird.

The weather promises to be very good tomorrow so we'll probably go for this ride.

Here she is, parked outside my front door. Such serenity, don't you think?

Page 158

2007-03-28T20:32:00.000+01:00

My copies of 'Shaggy Blog Stories' arrived today!

Actually, they arrived yesterday but the package was too large to fit through the door so they had to be picked up from the post office today. My son picked them up for me while I was at work today.

Opening the parcel was such fun! Paging through the book was even more fun. Finding my own contribution was like finding a favourite jumper that had got lost at the back of the cupboard. I immediately looked for the 'truly awful howler' of a typo that Mike mentioned as having crept into my entry:

Where the text says "Three hundred and (*)", you need to add an R, thusly:

"Three hundred Rand (*)"

That was our one truly awful howler. The rest, I can live with.

It wasn't there! Nor were any of the other typos Mike and others picked up. Seems like I don't have a rare first edition with its valuable typos.

As of yesterday at 17:30, 430 copies of 'Shaggy Blog Stories' had been sold, making a £1910.06 contribution to Comic Relief. That's a great contribution but an amount of £2000 would look so much better.

GO BUY A COPY!!

Tailored for expats

2007-03-23T00:11:00.000+00:00

Being tagged can either be tedious or great fun. But, either way, tags can be quite illuminating. I've been tagged by chocolate girl, an expat in Germany. It's a great tag and one that most expats should enjoy being tagged with. And since it's one I think expats should enjoy, I'll actually being tagging someone with it. You'll only find out who the unfortunate soul is after reading my answers.

Name 5 things you love in your new country:

The ‘different-ness’ of the place that gives me a constant feeling of being on holiday
The continuity between a long, glorious history and a very modern present
Quirky, interesting shops dotted all over the city
Fresh produce markets
Great public transport and bicyles

Name 4 things that you miss from your native country:

Blue skies and warm weather
Feeling completely at home
My children
The feeling of being in Africa

Name 3 things that annoy you a bit (or much) in your new country:

The way the Dutch pour beer
Strange electrical connections and not enough of them (maybe that’s just my flat)
Over-crowdedness , both with locals and tourists

Name 2 things that surprise you (or surprised you in the beginning) in your new country:

How tall so many people are
How wet and windy it is

Name 1 thing that you would miss terribly in your new country, if you had to leave it:

How cosmopolitan it is

The unfortunate soul? Well, there are six of them:

My son arrives in about 10 hour's time. I feel like the proverbial kid in a candy store!

My son

2007-03-21T21:36:00.000+00:00

My son finished school last year and is taking a gap year before going to UCT next year.

He arrives on Friday to spend some time with me in Amsterdam. With a bit of effort on his part (he's never had to earn a cent of his own), he'll be finding part-time work here to fund his travels elsewhere. His first port of call will be here.

COMING OUT TO CHILDREN: GUIDELINES FOR FATHERS

Come to terms with your own gayness before disclosing to children. This is crucial. The father who feels negatively about his homosexuality or is ashamed of it is much more likely to have children who also react negatively. The father must create a setting of acceptance by first accepting himself. If he tells his children when he is ready and comfortable, it is likely to be a positive experience for everyone.
Children are never too young to be told. They will absorb only as much as they are capable of understanding. Use words appropriate to the age of the child. Details may be added as they grow older.
Discuss it with children before they know or suspect. When children discover their father's sexual orientation from someone other than the father, they often are upset that their father did not trust them sufficiently to share the information with them. It is exceedingly difficult for children to initiate the subject, and they will not bring it up even though they want to.
Disclosure should be planned. Children should not find out about their father's homosexuality by default or discover it accidentally or during an argument between their parents.
Disclose in a quiet setting where interruptions are unlikely to occur.
Inform, don't confess. The disclosure should not be heavy or maudlin but positive and sincere. Informing in a simple, natural, or matter-of-fact manner when the father is ready is more likely to foster acceptance by the child. If possible, discuss or rehearse what will be said to children with someone who has already experienced a similar disclosure.
Inform the children that relationships with them will not change as a result of disclosure. Disclosure will, however, allow the father to be more honest. Children may need reassurance that the father is the same person he was before. Younger children may need reassurance that the father will still be their father.
Be prepared for questions: Some questions and possible answers are:

Why are you telling me this? Because my personal life is important and I want to share it with you. I am not ashamed of being homosexual, and you shouldn't be ashamed of me either.
What does being gay mean? It means being attracted to other men so that you might fall in love with a man and express your love physically and sexually.
What makes a person gay? No one knows, although there are a lot of theories. (This question may be a childs a way of asking if he she will also be gay.)
Will I be gay, too? You wont be gay just because Im gay. Its not contagious, and it doesn't appear to be hereditary. you will be whatever you are going to be.
Don't you like women? (The child might be asking, "Don't you like Mom?" or "Do you hate Mom?" If this question is asked by a daughter it may also mean, "Don't you like me?" or "Do you hate me?") I do like women but I'm not physically (or sexually) and romantically attracted to them as I am to men.
What should I tell my friends about it? A lot of people just don't understand so it might be best to keep it in the family. You can discuss it with me any time you want. If you want to tell a close friend, go ahead and try it out. But the friend might not be accepting, and she or he might tell others. You should be prepared for those possibilities. If you do tell somebody, let me know how it turns out.

WISH ME LUCK!!

I came, I drank, I went.

2007-03-17T14:29:00.000+00:00

I came:
I almost didn’t - I very nearly wasn’t allowed to board the Nottingham flight at Schipol. Blame that on me leaving the flat late, the tram breaking down, and a delayed train. It’s really not that pleasant plonking yourself down next to a fellow passenger, huffing and puffing, dripping sweat everywhere. Less pleasant for the fellow passenger, of course. Mike put me up even though he was already tripping on ‘Shaggy Blog Stories’ adrenaline. Thanks, Mike. Despite the adrenaline, he looked just as he did when I saw him in Amsterdam a few weeks ago.

I drank:
We met up with several friends at the Lord Roberts. It wasn’t a particularly late night but both of us felt the effects of beer on us in the morning. A few hours later, after several cups of tea and a slice of toast, we were in the café at the Broadway Cinema, the venue of Nottingham’s first blogmeet. Thanks for organising it, Mike and Lisa. A very successful event, in my opinion.

I wasn’t the only international guest as Rob had travelled all the way from north of the border. Besides Siobhan, everyone else was local: Lisa, Mike, James, Michelle, Neil, David, Sarah, Lord Bargain and Alex. Most of us had not met before but we got on surprisingly well. The topics of conversation ranged from gap years to local politics to oiled Nubians. More beer was consumed. No food was eaten. Well, not by me even though the place serves food that is more than acceptable.

The pink contingent (a disproportionately large one) accompanied by our favourite honorary pink lady, Michelle, decamped to the Lord Roberts. Lots more beer. Still no food. Apparently, I got rather drunk even though I succeeded in not embarrassing myself. Had I not been taken home by D, a man known to be quite a dab hand with a hammer, I’d probably have done a good job of embarrassing myself later on that night.

I returned to Mike’s to get changed and pick up my stuff before we went to Michelle’s for brunch. Ah, at long last, food!! Food, glorious food! Thanks, Michelle. No beer but lots of Bloody Marys and Bucks Fizz. Red wine too! Thanks again, Michelle.

Back to the Lord Roberts for a last pint with Alan. Make that two pints. Oh, and another half, please.

I went:
I almost didn’t - I missed the last bus to the airport. That bloody bus driver wouldn’t wait even though I was only a minute late. He drove past with a dismissive wave of his hand. Bastard!

Thank god for taxis! Mike, James, et al probably thought the same as I’d have been spending the night with one of them had it not been for the taxi.

2007-03-16T08:05:00.000+00:00

After a marathon effort, Mike (and several very hard-working people who assisted him), got the book out in time for today, this year's Red Nose day. Read about it here but, more importantly, go order it here.

Go on now, you know you want a copy.

My head hurts, does yours?

2007-03-15T11:37:00.000+00:00

My daily metro journeys are simple affairs. I read if I have a seat; I stand and switch off if I don’t. Yesterday evening was different. I was standing but not switched off. I was thinking so hard that my head hurt.

I stood there wondering if my fellow-passengers had been created by me. I wondered if the friends that I’d seen in Nottingham this past weekend no longer existed now that I wasn’t actually seeing them. My son is arriving on Friday next week to spend part of his gap year with me. He’s in Cape Town at the moment, out of my sight. Does he exist?

I’d been reading this article (by Robert Lanza) in the office just before leaving for home. You need to read it to get a clear understanding of its implications but I’ve summarized it for you. I used to read a lot about this kind of stuff but, in recent years, my mind has got lazy, happy to read nothing more complicated than the Sunday papers. I think Lanza’s article manages to get a bunch of concepts across in 7500 words whereas it takes many other writers a book to get across.

Be prepared for a long, roller-coaster journey from ancient Greek philosophy to modern-day scientific reality. A scientific reality that, despite the theories of quantum mechanics, largely fails to recognize those special properties of life that make it fundamental to material reality. To recognise how the subjective experience relates to a physical process you need to take a biocentric world view.

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Our sense of the forward motion of time is really the result of an infinite number of decisions that only seem to be a smooth continuous path. At each moment we are at the edge of a paradox known as The Arrow, first described 2,500 years ago by the philosopher Zeno of Elea. Starting logically with the premise that nothing can be in two places at once, he reasoned that an arrow is only in one place during any given instance of its flight. But if it is in only one place, it must be at rest. The arrow must then be at rest at every moment of its flight. Logically, motion is impossible. But is motion impossible? Or rather, is this analogy proof that the forward motion of time is not a feature of the external world but a projection of something within us? Time is not an absolute reality but an aspect of our consciousness.

In 1927, Werner Heisenberg discovered the Uncertainty Principle, a cornerstone of quantum mechanics. You can know either the velocity of a particle or its location but not both. If you know one, you cannot know the other. As an analogy, think of a film which is made up of many individual frames. To see the film, you need to see the frames in motion but once they’re in motion, you’re unable to see each individual frame. From a biocentric perspective, this makes sense: time is the inner form of animal sense that animates events—the still frames—of the spatial world.

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle has its root here: position (location in space) belongs to the outer world, and momentum (which involves the temporal) belongs to the inner world. Time is not a feature of the external spatial world. In Heisenberg’s words: “A path comes into existence only when you observe it.” There is neither time nor motion without life. Reality is not “there” with definite properties waiting to be discovered but actually comes into being depending upon the actions of the observer.

Twenty-five hundred years later, the Zeno arrow paradox finally makes sense.

Before Heisenberg shook up the world of physics with the Uncertainty Principle, Einstein had already shaken I up with his theories on relativity. His theories rely on a core concept of discrete entities and spacetime. He held that the speed of light is constant and that events in one place cannot influence events in another place simultaneously. In the relativity theory, the speed of light has to be taken into account for information to travel from one particle to another. However, experiment after experiment has shown that this is not the case. In 1965, Irish physicist John Bell created an experiment that showed that separate particles can influence each other instantaneously over great distances. The experiment has been performed numerous times and confirms that the properties of polarized light are correlated, or linked, no matter how far apart the particles are. There is some kind of instantaneous—faster than light—communication between them. All of this implies that Einstein’s concept of spacetime, neatly divided into separate regions by light velocity, is untenable. Instead, the entities we observe are floating in a field of mind that is not limited by an external spacetime.

The experiments of Heisenberg and Bell call us back to experience itself, the immediacy of the infinite here and now, and shake our unexamined trust in objective reality. But another support for biocentrism is the famous two hole experiment, which demands that we go one step further: Zeno’s arrow doesn’t exist, much less fly, without an observer. The two-hole experiment goes straight to the core of quantum physics. Scientists have discovered that if they “watch” a subatomic particle pass through holes on a barrier, it behaves like a particle: like a tiny bullet, it passes through one or the other holes. But if the scientists do not observe the particle, then it exhibits the behavior of a wave. In short: If observed, particles behave like objects; if unobserved, they behave like waves and can go through more than one hole at the same time.

Dubbed quantum weirdness, this wave-particle duality has lead science to concede that quantum physics is incomprehensible outside of complex mathematics. How can quantum physics be so impervious to metaphor, visualization, and language?

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However, if we accept a life-created reality at face value, it becomes simple to understand. The key question is waves of what? Back in 1926, the Nobel laureate physicist Max Born demonstrated that quantum waves are waves of probability, not waves of material as the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger had theorized. They are statistical predictions. Thus a wave of probability is nothing but a likely outcome. In fact, outside of that idea, the wave is not there. It’s nothing. As John Wheeler, the eminent theoretical physicist, once said, "No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon."

A particle cannot be thought of as having any definite existence—either duration or a position in space—until we observe it. Until the mind sets the scaffolding of an object in place, an object cannot be thought of as being either here or there. Thus, quantum waves merely define the potential location a particle can occupy. A wave of probability isn’t an event or a phenomenon, it is a description of the likelihood of an event or phenomenon occurring. Nothing happens until the event is actually observed. If you watch it go through the barrier, then the wave function collapses and the particle goes through one hole or the other. If you don’t watch it, then the particle detectors will show that it can go through more than one hole at the same time.

Science has been grappling with the implications of the wave-particle duality ever since its discovery in the first half of the 20th century. But few people accept this principle at face value. The Copenhagen interpretation, put in place by Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, and Born in the 1920s, set out to do just that. But it was too unsettling a shift in worldview to accept in full. At present, the implications of these experiments are conveniently ignored by limiting the notion of quantum behaviour to the microscopic world. But doing this has no basis in reason, and it is being challenged in laboratories around the world. New experiments carried out with huge molecules called buckyballs show that quantum reality extends into the macroscopic world as well. Experiments make it clear that another weird quantum phenomenon known as entanglement, which is usually associated with the micro world, is also relevant on macro scales. An exciting experiment, recently proposed (so-called scaled-up superposition), would furnish the most powerful evidence to date that the biocentric view of the world is correct at the level of living organisms.

One of the main reasons most people reject the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory is that it leads to the dreaded doctrine of solipsism. The late Heinz Pagels once commented: "If you deny the objectivity of the world unless you observe it and are conscious of it, then you end up with solipsism—the belief that your consciousness is the only one."

Physical reality begins and ends with the animal observer. All other times and places, all other objects and events are products of the imagination, and serve only to unite knowledge into a logical whole. We are pleased with such books as Newton’s Principia, or Darwin’s Origin of Species. But they instill a complacency in the reader. Darwin spoke of the possibility that life emerged from inorganic matter in some “warm little pond.” Trying to trace life down through simpler stages is one thing, but assuming it arose spontaneously from nonliving matter wants for the rigour and attention of the quantum theorist.

Physicists believe that the theory of everything is hovering right around the corner, and yet consciousness is still largely a mystery, and physicists have no idea how to explain its existence from physical laws. The questions physicists long to ask about nature are bound up with the problem of consciousness. Physics can furnish no answers for them.

Space and time, not proteins and neurons, hold the answer to the problem of consciousness. Our thoughts have an order, not of themselves, but because the mind generates the spatio-temporal relationships involved in every experience.

We can never have any experience that does not conform to these relationships, for they are the modes of animal logic that mold sensations into objects. It would be erroneous, therefore, to conceive of the mind as existing in space and time before this process, as existing in the circuitry of the brain before the understanding posits in it a spatio-temporal order.

We are living through a profound shift in worldview, from the belief that time and space are entities in the universe to one in which time and space belong to the living. Think of all the recent book titles—The End of Science, The End of History, The End of Eternity, The End of Certainty, The End of Nature, and The End of Time. Only for a moment, while we sort out the reality that time and space do not exist, will it feel like madness.

Do you see what I mean about a sore head? Are you wondering if I actually exist? I’ve never seen most of the people who read this blog so I really can’t be sure if any of you exist. In fact, I can’t be sure that those I’ve actually met actually exist. Although I saw Mike last weekend and I’m sure that his collaborative book for Comic Relief, ‘Shaggy Blog Stories’, will be available to buy from tomorrow (BUY IT!!), I’m not sure if he exists right now.

This kind of sore head feels so different to the one I had on Sunday morning after a night out in Nottingham.

Shaggy Blog Stories: a collaborative blog-stunt for Comic Relief

2007-03-09T11:40:00.000+00:00

Mike over at Troubled Diva has come up with a great idea for Comic Relief's Red Nose Day. He's proposing to assemble and publish – in the space of just seven days - a paperback anthology of blog writing, that can be sold to raise funds for the charity.

The book will be called 'Shaggy Blog Stories: a collection of amusing tales from the UK blogosphere'.

Go here for further details.

My favourite jumper

2007-03-07T22:49:00.000+00:00

As soon as I woke up, I knew that the previous night had been overly indulgent, even by my standards. My throat was so dry that I couldn’t swallow without grating off bits of it; my eyes rejected the aggressive daylight streaming through the skylight with such a vengeance that you’d have thought a transplant had gone wrong; the thud in my head was like that of an onboard motor.

Thankfully, I was alone in my bed.
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SA Blog Awards 2007

2007-03-06T18:34:00.000+00:00

Although I've been aware that nominations were taking place, unlike last year when still very much a blogger newbie, I've not paid much attention to this year's South African Blog Awards. That was until today when I noticed that my reader stats were swelling with hits from this year's awards site. To my surprise (and delight), I've been nominated in two categories, 'Best overseas South African blog', a category I won last year, and a new one, 'Best GLBT blog'.

I confess to not having nominated anyone (not even myself) so it's with cap in hand that I thank all of you who nominated me. Thanks, I really appreciate it!

Now that I'm in the running for two awards, I urge all of you who nominated me and the rest of you to vote for me. And, of course, vote for the others who are nominated in other categories.

To vote, click on the logo or go here.

Several of my favourite blogs have also been been nominated so I'll not only be voting for myself.

Three Things

2007-03-04T23:40:00.000+00:00

I've been tagged by the mad, wonderful Babs to reveal three things about me in a variety of categories. So, here you have them:

3 Things That Scare Me:
My habit for living in the present (and in the past) but never looking to the future
The taxman
Disappointing my children

3 People Who Make Me Laugh:
My kids (I don’t mean to copy Babs, it’s true)
Myself ( in a kinda pitying way)
Victoria Wood

3 Things I Love:
The smell of the sea and the smell after it has rained after a really hot day
Buying people presents
Sex (sorry to be predictable)

3 Things I Hate:
Having to work for a living
Bigotry and intolerance
Doing things I don’t like to do

3 Things I Don't Understand:
Violence
Fanaticism
Fetishes

3 Things On My Desk:
Red wine
Cigarettes
Headache pills

3 Things I'm Doing Right Now:
Making green masala paste
Listening to music
Drinking red wine

3 Things I Want To Do Before I Die:
Write a novel
Meet my half-sister (my father allegedly had an illegitimate child before meeting my mother)
Be at peace with myself

3 Things I Can Do:
Put my legs around my neck
Put my head in the sand (figuratively)
Lie convincingly

3 Things I Can't Do:
Spend time in the company of bigots
Network (horrid buzzword, but you know what I mean)
Be responsible about things financial

3 Things I Think You Should Listen To:
Adagio for strings in G Minor by Albinoni
All along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan's song) by Jimi Hendrix
The things said about you by those closest to you

3 Things You Should Never Listen To:
The things said about you by those closest to you
Politicians who profess to speak for the ‘man in the street’
Religious fanatics

3 Things I'd Like To Learn:
To speak Xhosa
How to laugh
How to worry about the future

3 Favorite Foods:
Piri piri chicken
Roast lamb (all sorts of ways, but especially the way the Greeks do it)
Braai-ed (barbequed) yellowtail

3 Beverages I Drink Regularly:
Coffee (especially cappuccino and espress)
Red wine (is it a beverage?)
Beer (is it a beverage?)

3 Shows I Watched As A Kid:
I was 17 before I watched TV (no, I’m not THAT old!), but here are some shows I’d like to have seen:
Courage the Cowardly Dog (didn’t exist when I was a child)
The Addams Family
The Avengers

3 Bloggers I've Tagged:
Minge
Anjou
To The Bowlines