When to shut up

My exam is on Wednesday morning. I know I should be studying but I just can't do it. The reality is there are a few things I can memorise but the exam is so context heavy that until I see the materials on offer I won't know what I'm dealing with and what is going to be useful. I have done some study already and will do more over the next couple of days. Right now it's stormy and I feel bloggy.

Had drinks on Friday night with a couple of colleagues. This was nice as neither of them are regular social whores (yes, I've been described this way in the past - sometimes even without the first adjective). It was very good to talk to them, but I'm sure I was a little too honest. In one case I was asked for my honest opinion and was so outraged I would have given it even if I hadn't been asked. In the other... well... maybe I was being, dare I say it, *nasty*.

The first case involved Mr Reliable. Mr Reliable is fairly new to my workplace, around 6 months, but is a top guy, immediately liked by everyone and headhunted very quickly by management. Oh yes, and he's a geek so he very quickly got my vote. He confessed to having been forwarded an email from his girlfriend that was never supposed to reach him.
Does that even happen anymore? People surely aren't so dumb!!
In it she basically said how she's not that into Mr Reliable. For very very superficial, selfish reasons. No, she did not have the decency to actually discuss these issues with Mr Reliable. Instead choosing to tell her friend. Fair play, but not when you accidentally forward it to the person you are discussing (dumbass). He asked me what I would do so naturally I told him I would take the high ground, break it off quietly and quickly (while getting in a passive aggressive dig about how I knew why she didn't really want me) and then have as little to do with her as possible. I think I used the words "fucking outrageous" a couple of times.

Then there is He-Man. I call him He-Man because he goes to the gym 6-7 times a week and is obsessed with his body (the buffness of which doesn't reflect the hours he puts in). As we talked about women in general and his total superficiality was put on brazen display I couldn't help but get angry. It eventually came to the kind of body he expects a woman to have. "I just can't respect a woman who lets herself go".



As I tacitly suggested that no woman is going to look like the above once she hits her 40's (or very few anyhow) I was rebuked because age, gravity and reality apparently have no basis in a discussion of the kind of girl you would like to date. At this point, the blatant objectification became too much and I couldn't help but ask him. "He-Man, you're never ever going to be happy with a woman? That's ok with you?" Of course he answered yes. I should at least give him credit for knowing he's a superficial Slagathor.

Oh yes, it's not like He-Man is the greatest catch in the world. He's gym-toned (I guess), loud-mouthed, money-obsessed, superficial and balding. Take a guess which country he's from.

I'm an unabashed PostSecret lover. I recently ran a short PostSecret myself with some adults. I was shocked by what came back to me. I never expected the participants who had never heard of this to come back with secrets that really encapsulate the heart of the project. I asked them if I was able to share some of the secrets so here are a couple of my favourites :

"Sometimes I talks to my toys"

"I don't like to run"

"I didn't dare to look around my bedroom before asleep everynight because scare to saw something I shouldn't saw"

"I and my colleague have smoke and dance in the toilet during work time"

"I know I'm playing with fire, at least in my job. Unfortunately my mind is not allowing me to bend before them... sorry I'm so stupid"

Thanks Frank, the world is an amazing and beautiful and heart-breaking place.

11 days to go

For the first time in eleven years I find myself in exam mode. Sure, since then I've crammed for things. Interviews, observations and the like. But this is the first actual exam. I'm quite pleased with the work I did today and feel so 2008 for deciding to record all my exam notes onto MP3 and play them on my way to and from work each day. God, I AM a nerd.

So, in the spirit of nerdiness I find myself having a Saturday evening in and online. Can't believe I took those for granted for such a long time. Weird though it may sound, I used to have a very active and encompassing digital life. This was all loooooooooong before social networking sites were trendy and years before Facebook became what it is. I have to say I kind of miss it. Perhaps it accounts for so many of my failed relationships. Let's just put it this way, my last girlfriend suggested that she felt we were closer and "saw" more of each other when we were in a long-distance Net-based relationship. What are you going to do?

Anyway... the point of all this is that I read about a new Google option which allows you to bump up or delete search results. Of course I went straight to Google and tried. Didn't work. I'm guessing you need to be signed in to make use of it. This then led to that guilty pleasure, that masturbation-level sin, the funnest of fun : googling one's self. I haven't done this in well over a year. There are now 277 results for my name. It wasn't al that long ago that results for my name were well under 50.

So who does Google tell me I am? I'm dead many times over. I'm a long sought after brother. I'm a contributor to BBC News forums. A trustee and chairperson of a cemetery. A company director. And the El Presidente of a community college gay-straight alliance. Phew... it's amazing I have any time at all!

Will be giving serious consideration over the Christmas period as to whether I will stay with my current employers, stay in Singapore or move to a different country. While all these thoughts flit about my head at the moment I dare not dwell too long as there're just too many other things to focus on. Oh well, only 11 more days...