Gay-dar

I fear that there’s something wrong with my gaydar. It’s not working properly, especially with younger people and / or metrosexuals. Maybe the times have changed and the youngsters behave differently nowadays. I’ve even more confused with certain cultures like the Italians, Spanish, or even the Greeks, after living in the UK for the last years. There are lots of straight Greek guys out there that look gay to me.

I was watching the other day, a very silly TV program called ‘Playing it Straight’. The show’s very similar to the ‘Bachelorette’ but with a twist. There’s a girl and around 10 boys. Boys try to win the girl’s heart. However not all of them are telling the truth. Some of them are gay. At the end if the girl picks the straight boy, they both get £25k. If the girl picks the gay boy, he gets £50k on his own. The quality of the show is very low to say the least. The boys need to prove their manhood (in comparison to their gayness) by wining challenges. Some of the challenges are ridiculous like working on a fish boat cleaning fresh fish or knowing how to use a compass and a map. The stereotypes used could be plain insulting but the show wasn’t taking itself too seriously and the narration done by the very camp comedian Alan Carr gave it a funny twist at times.

At the end the girl chose a straight guy (or that is what he said) and it ended happily ever after. However, the whole process made me think. Firstly, there was a set of twin boys in the show. It proved at the end that they were both gay. That is the second occurrence I know where twins share the same sexual orientation. The other is from two sisters I know in Greece. I was wondering, is that common? When one of the twin’s gay, is the other one as well?

Secondly, the guy who won didn’t really look straight. He was as camp as a Christmas Tree at times and I’ve always put him in gay group. He also had a tribal tattoo on his lower back that I think is more easily fashioned by gay guys. OK, I know that someone’s campness is not always an indicator, but… I also have to admit that being gay, makes me find more gay traits in people. Maybe it’s wishful thinking

PS. I love the date today! Happy leap year to everybody!

Q2 - February 2012

Welcome to 'The Question'. That's Stephen's from 'The State of the Nation UK' new project where he poses a question to all bloggers each month. The second question is:


What is the best piece of advice you have ever been given? 

Unfortunately I have the memory of a goldfish and I do forget (quite a lot). Sometimes you need to repeat certain things many times to me before they actually sink in. There are however some things in life that stayed. For example I do remember what my father told me I should do regarding my career, what a friend of mine mentioned when I was a teenager on how to be a good sex partner and what my first grade teacher often commented so many years ago.


From these pieces of advice I'll share with you the one that my first grade teacher shared to us. She told us always to aim higher than the mark in everything we do in life. It's normal that some times you can't accomplish what you aimed for but at least that way the minimum mark is reached.


This is a very simple advice but I believe very good. I've used it throughout my academic progress and now at work. Even in my personal life when I set targets in my path, I always try to reach higher than what's minimum expected or needed... 

Dating a porn star

The fact that George Michael is actually dating a porn star didn’t come as a shock to me, but I have to admit that I was surprised. I have no experience in the matter at all, but it made me think. Would I be OK dating a porn star or an escort for that matter? To be perfectly honest I’m not that sure about it. I don’t think that it’s a matter of morals. I do believe however that I’d have a problem with my boyfriend having ‘intimate’ moments with other people. I don’t know exactly how to explain but I would like to know that I share something special with my partner that no other people knew or watched.

Being paid for sex is considered a profession like all the rest, right? It is different being ‘easy’ (aka a slut) and sleep with lots of people not really having any standards and sleep with people in front or behind cameras to get the money you need to pay rent. As an argument I’ve heard from someone that everybody everywhere, in a sense, is using their sex or love partners. From helping to fight loneliness or fill a gap in someone’s life to sleeping with your boss to get a promotion, don’t you use the person next to you? My personal answer would be negative. Personal financial gain is different to psychological gain from both parts in a relationship where each member gives and receives more or less equally.

Also, I fear that in most cases, being paid as a sex object leaves or shows psychological scars. I have two very real examples to show you. I have a friend of mine that dated in the past both a porn actor and an escort. Both guys were of course fine. I spent some time with them in various outings and we had fun. However, both of them had issues when it came to relationships. One of them was extremely possessive and jealous! I couldn’t even grasp that a guy doing porn movies on the weekends could act like that. The second was sentimentally unattainable. I don’t know if that’s expected of an escort. I assume that in order to survive in their profession, they need to create mental walls to protect themselves that it’s not easy to take down, even if they wanted to. Sure the money's good and the looks matter but the price is too high.

These of course are speculations. Not everybody is the same and I can’t generalise. There are all kinds of people in all professions and definitely there is no such thing as being normal.

TGIF

I’m so happy its Friday today. I had a difficult week but I’m happy it’s over. I mentioned in the past about me being dragged into an intercompany dispute about which technology is better, in terms of outcome and cost, to use in a project. After the third or fourth meeting the high managers decided in our favour! Yay! Congratulations to us. We won! However, that meant that I had to be part of the rival team to show them how to do things our way. Well, they weren’t that happy having me, the enemy, over, taking control of things. So, during the whole week I was based in our other building, in the City area, trying to do my job ignoring the grunts, complaints etc of my ‘lovely’ colleagues. The first couple of days were bad but to be honest the situation improved over time. Now, we are almost done and everybody’s happy. Hopefully next mid-week, I’ll be back to my normal position, in my normal desk.

On the other hand, changing offices wasn’t that bad, but rather enjoyable. I’ve realised that I’m generally adaptable. That’s probably something good I picked up during my army year. I don’t mind getting a new working place. It doesn’t take me long to familiarise myself to the new environment, the new people or surrounding areas of the building to get lunch. I even like the change of scenery once in a while. Getting to the area in the morning rush has been more difficult, but it was fine.

Changing the subject, I’d like to say that I’m beginning to feel we’re very unlucky when it comes to picking concerts we want to go to. First strike was George Michael. We had ordered tickets online for his concert with the London Symphony Orchestra (I think) in Earl’s Court that was supposed to take place in December. Then he went and got pneumonia and the concert got postponed. OK, I have to admit that during his first appearance after the cancelation he did look very sickly and underweight. We had bought tickets online though that were supposed to be delivered two weeks before the concert. The cancelation though was announced before that, so the tickets were never delivered. Hopefully, when the new dates for his concerts will be announced we will get the tickets and everything will be fine. Unfortunately we are a bit worried about this. The website where we bought the tickets hasn’t been too helpful providing information. They barely speak English. We do have confirmation emails. There is also a big ‘if’ though, if we will be able to make the new dates. George posted a couple of very cute pictures by the sea enjoying himself with his boyfriend somewhere in the South Hemisphere recently, so he is recovering quite nicely.

George with the porn star Isaac Mazar on holidays

Second strike was Madonna. Last week, Friday, we bought some not so very cheap tickets to see her live this summer in Hyde Park. I’ve seen her live before and it was always a very nice experience. She puts on quite a good show. From the distance of the stage, the veins in her hands are not visible. She doesn’t look that scary. JJ hasn’t seen her live and he’s quite excited about it. However, not even a week passed and there are articles on the papers on how big concerts in Hyde Park are too noisy for the people living close by. They’d like to cancel all big events taking place there! Hopefully if something like that happens, it will be in force from next year, or Madonna, being the control professional freak she is, will find another big venue to organise her concert. We’ll see.

UK Hate Crime Legislation

I’m not that great when it comes to understanding law. However I was reading about a recent case in the UK that included the distribution of gay hate leaflets and I wanted to share it with you.

Ihjaz Ali, 42, Kabir Ahmed, 28 and Razwan Javed, 28, were distributing gay hate leaflets outside a mosque and posting them through letterboxes in the Normanton area of Derby. The leaflet had the title of ‘Turn or Burn’ or Gay - an acronym for ‘God Abhors You’ and pictured a burning man in a lake of fire.

Gay people who received the leaflets were horrified. One man, who didn't want to be named, told Sky News: "They incite violence and I would even say it's incitement to murder. It lists various methods of executing homosexuals from burning alive, stoning, hanging or being thrown from a tall buidling and I felt that was directed at me. My initial thoughts were that I was actually being targeted by an individual, it really was quite frightening, it's a very very scary image, especially when you realise what the message is," he said.

Of course the leaflets created quite a stir in the local community and thankfully the responsible people were arrested and trialled. Ali was sentenced to two years in prison at Derby Crown Court, while Ahmed and Javed were jailed for 15 months.

In that landmark case last month, the trio was the first people to be convicted of inciting hatred on the grounds of sexuality since new legislation came into force in 2010. According to that, hate crime legislation is extended to cover "hatred against a group of persons defined by reference to sexual orientation (whether towards persons of the same sex, the opposite sex or both)."

However, to prevent the Act being used to inhibit freedom of speech on the subject of homosexuality there is a new section entitled "Protection of freedom of expression (sexual orientation)". I’m not going to go too much into detail about it.

The way it was explained to me, a third person can now act and denounce doings that he or she believes are acts of hatred towards people with different sexual orientation. I think that up till now, it was only the person targeted that was able to go to police and press charges. This ‘hole’ in the previous legislation was of course exploited by various people. Hopefully this case will act as a basis for better justice to be enforced.

VD

 It sounds a bit like a STD, doesn’t it? I’ve never been a great fan of this day. Although it is nice to express one’s feelings towards another, pink is not my personal favourite colour and I’m not into heart shaped objects or teddy bears. I like ‘bears’. But the only thing fitting into the ‘teddy bear’ category that I’ve personally bought, was a small vocal ‘Stanley’ with various catch phrases like: ‘Oh, my God! They killed Kenny!’

I fear that sounds like I’m being very a negative person! I’m not! I just don’t want to go into a gift shop and follow the trend to buy something. I don’t think that I need to prove my love to JJ that way. So, I followed a tradition I started last year and baked him something. I found Pascale Lorraine’s amazing recipe which you can find here and this is the result:

We’ve been having slices of that cake every day since Sunday. Not because I made it myself, but I really liked it. JJ agrees. He’s been very sweet today too. He got some small chocolates with sweet messages and he’s hidden them in the house. So, this morning when I was getting ready for work, I was running across them. For example I found one in my towel, next to my hair gel, in my trousers, next to my Kindle, in my gloves etc. I’ve been munching chocolates all day today.

Anyway, I hope you have a nice Valentine’s Day whether you are in a relationship or not.

 

Learn and grow

January had been a frantic month work wise. We had to close the previous year, setup the new year and create a couple new applications for our teams in the meantime. It’s already almost mid-February and I haven’t been able to catch my breath. Almost all my week days have been filled with some stress and lots of things to do.

In a weird, sadistic way I’m enjoying this. Each day flies by quickly, I’m managing to stabilise my position and make myself known to people higher in the company’s hierarchy. I’m even caught in an intercompany dispute. It’s my team versus another on which technology is better/cheaper etc to use. We’re both working on delivering a similar product that will be offered to a client. The race is not particularly fair against us and there are lots of politics involved but for me it’s a huge learning curve. Never before had I been in a similar situation. My previous company was so small these things would never happen.

Now I can see teams fighting other teams over budgets, betrayals and gossips going around. It’s a bit scary but interesting at the same time. I just hope I grow a thicker skin and don’t lose my integrity. I’m still in a junior position to be of threat to anyone so for the time being I’m not worried about being backstabbed. On a documentary I was watching the other day, a member of staff from the ‘London Underground’ was saying that the most difficult, rude and demanding clients are white, in mid-thirties, wearing an expensive suit.

On a different note, the situation in Greece is getting worse. There are new austerity measures that diminish salaries, minimize pensions and cut budgets for things like the health care and social benefits. There are horror stories on the news of parents abandoning their children at schools because they can’t afford to raise them anymore. There’s a massive wave of neo-homeless people with no substance abuse or psychological problems and well-educated that became homeless only due to financial reasons. Overall the number of homeless people in the country was increased by 25% the last two years. I personally know so many people whose salaries were diminished by 40 – 60% when utility bills, petrol, taxes and transport fairs are higher. I hope for the best, although I can’t be too optimistic.


Have a nice Hump day. The weekend is not too far away. Sorry for the sad news

Picture Fail

I was reading the news the other night and this made me laugh...

There's a local respectable magazine called 'Radio Times'. It's owned by BBC and published since 1923 with radio and TV programme listings and other articles. There was a minor error on the February's issue though! A MAJOR fail with a picture!

In February there will be a TV programme for the Royal Marines in Afghanistan. With the listing, a picture of the Marines was published! In that picture though, one of the marines was going commando! Without anyone noticing the picture was published! Of course an apology was issued by the editor and probably someone got fired.

However, the whole incident was hilarious. I give you the published picture. Check the guy around the middle in the green / gray shorts! I think you can enlarge the picture by clicking on it.

PS. Thank you for voting to my poll about the new template. It is much appreciated.

My day in pictures

This is my day in pictures! It was really nice and I wanted to share it with you. 

On the way to the tube station this afternoon. It's pretty cold and that's JJ with his very cute hood.

We went to see the exhibition of David Hockney in Royal Academy of Arts. I have to admit that I didn't know much about him before today. Going to the exhibition was JJ's idea. I really liked Hockney's work though. He paints landscapes during different times of the year, demonstrating mostly the changes of nature's colours.

A visit to Wagamama for lunch. That's me looking really happy in front of a plate of duck gyoza and another one of ebi gyoza.

Then we went for a coffee in Soho,

where we had amazing deserts. That's oreo key lime pie. Yes, it was as amazing as it looks!!!

Next stop was a 'National Geographic' store with some friends for a second coffee. I went for a really nice Earl Grey though.

The time was getting a bit late and it started snowing!

The snowfall became a bit heavier! That's yours truly in the back garden!

That's Mojito in the front garden! It's so nice being indoors, warm and watching the snow flakes outside.