These tricks are going to change your life… not a lot

Happy New Year!!!

It is customary to say "Happy New Year" to everyone on 1st January, so now it's done (it was quick!), I can go on with my usual silly things I found.

Let's have a look at what will happen this year:

2008 is a leap year. It basically means that it has an extra day, namely on 29 February (on a Friday this time).

More interestingly, 2008 is the International Year of the Potato. That's good news for me, since I love eating them, especially as chips and crisps. (Yes, I'm a perfectly healthy person, though!) But while reading the relevant Wikipedia entry, I discovered that the UN goal was:

affirming the need to focus world attention on the role that the potato can play in providing food security and eradicating poverty.^[1]

All right, then. No International Year of the Belgian Chip.

There will be many interesting events during this year. Here are the ones I wanted to highlight:

• 14 February: "Bunker Philo" (I'll be there!), but also Saint Valentine's Day! I've gotta think about it… My first Valentine's Day. What a kerfuffle! But don't worry, I already have an idea for a present. But shhhhhh!
  
• 24 February: the 80th Academy Awards Ceremony: it's a shame they don't broadcast it anymore on BeTV, for I had been watching it between 3 and 6 am for many years…
• 2 March: Russian presidential elections. I can already assert that Dmitri Medvedev will win, because Vladimir "Combover" Putin endorsed him as his candidate to the function.
• 7 June to 29 June: the Euro 2008 championship tournament in Switzerland and Austria. Fortunately, the Belgian Red Devils didn't manage to be qualified, so that we won't be distracted by their matches during the exam period.
• 8 August to 24 August: the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. As we get less medals each time, perhaps we'll get only one this year (probably Justine Henin).
• 4 November: US presidential election. By the end of the year, G.W. Bush will eventually be gone! (Or kind of.) Perhaps the Americans will have a women as head of state?

Furthermore, the Iraq war will continue, as well as the War in Afghanistan, the Conflict in Darfur, and also the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

And there's already a page for the deaths in 2008, with a large number of curious but interesting links…

We'll see in one year's time how the World has changed! Let's hope that all of us will still be there! (We never know…)

But still, have fun and enjoy 2008 !!!

Big Mistake

Today, I came back to my digs in Namur in order to bring last year's course notes and syllabi, but also clothes and food. Staple elements.

At 11 am, I went to the city hall in order to hear the mayor's speech on the occasion of the Fêtes de Wallonie in Namur. The matter is this speech only started at 11.40. If there is any non-Walloon who reads this, I have to say there is an urban legend that says that Namur is a slower city, where people talk slower and… think slower. Even technology works slower. It appears to be true on some occasions.

Anyway, after the speech, we were offered a drink (beer or orange juice). I walked back to my digs. With no internet connexion, I was unable to do anything useful (and I'm not talking about writing posts on this blog), then I decided to go… walking, once again. I knew there would be another official speech to be given by Rudy Demotte, our Ministre-président.

I climbed at the top of the Citadel, and so did official vehicules transporting ambassadors, members of parliaments and ministers. But I realized I wouldn't be allowed to listen to the speech, for it was to be done in a giant tent that you could enter only if you were a VIP. On the opposite side of the road, roughly 50 people beloging to the RWF (Rassemblement Wallonie France, "struggling" for Wallonia — how dumb can be!) were demonstrating. Rather silently, I must say.

Later, I went walking in the city, where groups were singing and people drinking. The streets were slightly being filled with waste. I walked and I nearly bumped into Alexander, that old friend of mine. I was glad I met him, because I hadn't seen anyone else I knew. We both went eating crisps (delicious food, believe me), then we made our way into the overcrowded streets of Namur. At 10, there was a fireworks show to be seen. It lasted 30 minutes — definitely the longest in my entire life.

Then I met another friend of mine, a girl that was living in a digs in the same building as me and with whom I've always got on very well. I spend the following three hours with her and two friends of hers, we were all drinking tiny glasses of pékèt (the local Walloon drink). Round 1 am, just before my friend left us to go back to her flat, I was foolish enough to dare asking her "the" question (basically if she wanted to go out with me), because after all I was a little tipsy, otherwise I'd be too shy.

To make short, let's say that she turned on my invitation by saying that she wasn't interested in me and that I was the exact opposite of what she was looking for.

The last time I got rejected was 14 months ago, and the reason was that the girl I asked out had just been asked out ten minutes earlier!!! You can imagine how I was: destroyed, shattered, annihilated, obliterated. Something like this in my mind:


(Illustration for Magic card "Obliterate", by Kev Walker.)

And I looked like this:

(Illustration of Magic card "Assassinate", by Kev Walker.)

Or that:
(Illustration for Magic card "Incinerate", by Zoltan Boros.)

Basically the "Wrath of God" effect:
(Illustration for Magic card "Wrath of God", by Kev Walker. Man, that guy's great at drawing destruction and pain! By the way, this is my favourite piece of Magic artwork.)

So, I was devastated back in that time. And I had to deal with it alone, because it happened just before the summer holiday. I had hardly anything to do to busy myself with. I don't like losing social contact. That's why I'm so happy to go back to university — even if I know I'll regret these words very soon…

Back in June 2006, I got rejected because of a question asked too late, or else she'd accepted.

Since then, I never practised courtship with a girl. Maybe because I feared I'd need a great deal of time to go out with a girl, but also because I'm hopeless at asking girls out.

I went surfing Wikipedia to look how to translate "se prendre un râteau" and I found a link to another article about love-shyness. Here are some interesting bits:

Love shyness is a phrase created by psychologist Brian G. Gilmartin to describe a specific type of severe chronic shyness. According to his definition, published in Shyness & Love: Causes, Consequences, and Treatments (1987), love-shy people find it difficult to be assertive in informal situations involving potential romantic or sexual partners. For example, a heterosexual love-shy male will have trouble initiating conversations with women because of strong feelings of anxiety.

Dr. Gilmartin researched this phenomenon exclusively in heterosexual men, concluding that (1987, p.1) love-shyness "afflicts approximately 1.5 percent of all American males...[and] will effectively prevent about 1.7 million [U.S.] males...from ever marrying and from ever experiencing any form of intimate sexual contact with women."

There's also a list of criteria, enlightened by reseach on a large number of heterosexual men. I don't correspond to most criteria, but this one struck my mind:

(…) he is a male who desperately wishes to have a relationship with a woman, but does not have one because of his shyness. In other words, he is not a man who consciously chooses not to have romantic or intimate relationships; rather, he wants such relationships but cannot establish them.

That's my problem, I admit it, and I'm dealing with it. The proof is that I actually dared ask someone out. Real love-shy people could not. And most criteria don't apply to me, for instance because I do have many social contacts (I mean at university), including with girls. Apart from that, I also discovered I'm afflicted with involuntary celibacy:

Involuntary celibacy is the state of a person who has not established an intimate relationship or engaged in sexual intercourse for reasons other than voluntary celibacy or sexual abstinence. The term is used especially for adults who, despite general expectations, have had little to no sexual or romantic experience.

Definition

An involuntarily celibate person is someone who fails to initiate or sustain a sexual or romantic relationship, despite his/her desire to experience such a relationship. Afflicted people may suffer from loneliness, frustration, (…).

They also say there are criteria, but just a couple apply to me. My case isn't hopeless, after all. I really want to have a girlfriend. I'll turn 20 in five months' time and that's one of my goals up to then (apart from passing for all my exams). Wish me luck!