Le mirabolanti avventure di Barbara Jacob

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Former freelance web developer Barbara Jacob was on the verge of breakdown because of appalling customers behavior and the huge mortgage she had to repay for all her foreseeable life. So one day she escaped to London, where she isn't happier but at least she can keep the wolf from the door. Well, and now that we are here, what we will do with our life?

November 2008
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Archives for: November 2008

Apart from some menial, practical worries, and the nagging dilemma between going at a curry dinner or at a pub crawl on next Tuesday, absolutely nothing is going on.

I do think, indeed, as I've been spending the whole day horizontal on the bed, without even bothering to clean the flat - spare for one hour spent lunching at a local kebab house.

I think mostly about relationships, about my inability and unwillingness, as an adult, to commit in whatever way. I remember how I felt relieved, when I went together with Lord Greensleeves, to be finally in a love affair that didn't put any pressure to me, where I wasn't the baddie of the situation because of my deeply ingrained committmentphobia. I wonder why my healthiest relationships were the easiest to close and to get over them. I wonder why my "friendship" with Roy went pear-shaped and died in a matter of minutes.

But I'm not worried or concerned. All that is seen through a gaze of olympic indifference, between short spells of perusing books about economics and browsing internet sites about psychology. I feel good, I feel plain lazy. Nothing seems worthy to get too excited about.

Yawn. Whatever.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 30/11/08 at 11:04:24 pm | randomly put in the category Me | | Leave a comment

Yesterday night I went to the presentation of a new exciting Microsoft product, so exciting that I can't remember the name ("biz"? "spark"? something like that).

Having missed the Microsoft-sponsored happy hour distribution of free beer, and being so underwhelmed by this new software that promises to create viable mashups in 7 minutes, I spended the evening hanging out with the owner of a recruitement startup, who thought I was Finnish ("in any case, all the people in London come from either Italy or Finland"), a Malaysian PR that couldn't stop talking and a Bulgarian programmer who has built a product intended to compete with myspace and Facebook.

- And so what do you do for a living?
- I'm a front-end programmer in aziendastrafica inc.
- Ok. Cool.

My job isn't really much of a talking point for parties. Did I feel uneasy because I had no exciting plans to take over the internet world?
Not really - actually I couldn't stop thinking of Nathan Barley.
Which was a quite smug attitude, for sure .

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 29/11/08 at 07:40:13 pm | randomly put in the category Me | | Leave a comment

- So you're in love - I half ask half affirm.
- I've just seen her once! - answers Andy - Unlike you, I don't poke my fingers into things, me.

He's right - alas poor me, I know I do that.

It's just that I can't resist poking my fingers into things, drunk or sober, all the time.

Marmite

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 25/11/08 at 08:14:21 pm | randomly put in the category There's someone in my head but it's not me, Me | | 8 comments

This morning I was sitting next to a Met policeman who was taking notes on a big printout of telephone logs. The bunch of A3 sheets was covered in post-it and comments: "the two of them met", "back to Bedford" and the last sheet has a huge mark in red around five or six records: "ROBBERY".

I was pretending to read a copy of Metro but I was just falling short of holding it top down as much as I was hypnotized by his work, sucked in by a dark fascination - I couldn't take my eyes off his spreadsheets. Reconstructing a dramatic occurrence that is now completely in the past, through such casual trails, a bunch of apparently meaningless data, as if the truth of something that is not anymore visible could be inferred by a minimal, sterilized, abstract relic - that must be really exciting, I thought.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 25/11/08 at 12:52:39 am | randomly put in the category Me | | Leave a comment

In these days I've found myself a couple of times involved in discussions about Gordon Ramsay, whose TV antics I find rather entertaining - but I still don't get how he could have become such a superstar. And quite frankly, I find a lot more interesting the original baddie of English stoves stardom, Marco Pierre White. In this picture, he looks like some gangsta from a Sixties French movie.

Marco Pierre White

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 23/11/08 at 02:31:32 am | randomly put in the category Life on Mars, Images | | Leave a comment

- I know... but you're different, you see... you're from Mars.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 21/11/08 at 07:46:53 am | randomly put in the category Citazioni, Me | | 2 comments

It must be difficult to always like the sources of our frustration and to be drawn to them.

It is a narcissistic thing, this - a punishment meted out by an already gone or absent parent.

We are drawn to our reflections ("he is so much like me!") and, being narcissists, we fall in love with ourselves through their agency and mediation, vicariously, by proxy, as it were.

These doppelganger, these alter Egos, these suddenly significant others with whom we experience such resonance, such depths of empathy - legitimize our need to engage in the most distilled form of incest - infatuation with our selves. By "loving" or "being attracted" to THEM - we actually fall in love and have (emotional and often physical) intercourse with ourselves.

This is never sustainable because, deep inside, we harbour a burning hatred, resentment, and sadistic urges directed exactly at our very selves - the selves that we so crave, that we are so enamoured of.

Thus, loving our reflections terrifies us. It leads us closer to the sources of our emotional (and sometimes imminent physical) demise. By loving OURSELVES through THEM - we provoke our idealized, sadistic parents, buried deep inside our psyches - to attack us relentlessly, ferociously, mercilessly.

Of course, we blame our significant others.

Who dares stare the abyss in the eye? It might stare back at us.

So, we attack and we withdraw and we avoid and we blame and we apportion guilt and we suffer and we torment and are tormented and then we divorce ourselves, assisted by our False Self.

We call all this - "relationships".

(Sam Vaknin)

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 18/11/08 at 04:14:35 pm | randomly put in the category Citazioni | | 1 comment

Bland TV actually does exist: it's BBC2 during the afternoon.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 18/11/08 at 02:28:20 pm | randomly put in the category Me, Life on Mars | | Leave a comment

- I've got a cold and I'm in bed, ranting and moaning 'coz I get bored and think about things that should be better left alone, and possibly I will have to skip tonight's dinner

- No Jubilee line from Christmas Eve to the 28th December. This means that I will be going to work by train via Farrington - that means a whopping 1h '30 of commuting. XxX$£%@°$$!!!!!!!

- Yesterday, queueing in Brent council. At the end, the receptionist made me skip a part of the queue because I was the only one there that wanted to pay something instead of claiming benefits. That caused a tiny riot but eventually I was out of there with my council tax sorted out, in "only" a couple of hours.

- No personal news whatsoever. I am in a sort of adrenaline withdrawal syndrome.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 18/11/08 at 11:35:42 am | randomly put in the category Me | | Leave a comment

On Friday morning. I had just taken off my shoes and was ready to drink my coffee and prepare my demo which was due for noon. The fire alarm rang. Damn.
The only difference with our last exercitation was that people was suddenly walking for the exit a bit quicker. My Portuguese colleague in particular was really swift. I stay behind to lace my shoes, vaguely thinking that maybe the building was going to explode and I was going to die because I didn't want to go outside barefoot. I felt very marginally relieved when I arrived in the garden. The whole thing nevertheless went in a very orderly and civilised fashion.

Another difference was that Roy wasn't there and I felt an huge pang of nostalgia while I was waiting in the church garden, talking shoes with Rebecca and Alixe. He had asked me to tip him off "next time" - I was right in suspecting that there would never be another time, not with him present at least.

I kept my nostalgia for myself. Some freaker had set alight a bunch of cables on the sixth floor and by caution all the building had been evacuated. Less than one hour after we were back at our places, but I had lost a very precious and needed hour to prepare my demo and rushed through the task, continuing knitting it, doing and undoing things until five to noon.

So went my first real life experience of a fire alarm in London.
Milder than expected, and kind of melancholic.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 16/11/08 at 11:13:22 pm | randomly put in the category There's someone in my head but it's not me, Me | | 3 comments

[....]
E' così strano che abbia bisogno di te
Tanto lontano, tu così diverso da me.
[....]

(L. Dalla)

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 16/11/08 at 09:35:35 pm | randomly put in the category Songs, Citazioni, There's someone in my head but it's not me, Me | | Leave a comment

Dammit.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 16/11/08 at 10:43:32 am | randomly put in the category Me | | Leave a comment

http://samvak.tripod.com/faq74.html

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 15/11/08 at 01:02:10 pm | randomly put in the category Citazioni, There's someone in my head but it's not me, Me | | Leave a comment

Not bad.
It feels good.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 13/11/08 at 10:55:22 pm | randomly put in the category Me | | Leave a comment

Home again, late and tired, I offered drinks, I was offered, I've swapped phone numbers, email addresses. I'm pleased - it was another nice night. I feel likeable and liked, I lose myself in the bubbling present of the big city, I feel light and empty.

But late at night, each night when I am back home and discover distractly how many phone calls I've missed and how many email I've received, I am still vaguely sad, because in the crowd of names I see on the screens, yours is never there, and neither in the many faces I remember to have seen each night - your eyes are never there.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 13/11/08 at 09:29:28 pm | randomly put in the category There's someone in my head but it's not me, Me | | 2 comments

My leg doesn't hurt anymore, but it's so very black, from knee to ankle.
I've bought a new pair of platforms that promise to not let me [crashing] down.

The leg will revert to white in due time. It amazes me to think that all the recent intense, exciting and gruelling experiences will fade away and disappear very soon, like these black blood stains.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 12/11/08 at 11:36:09 pm | randomly put in the category Me | | 1 comment

Went with Matthew and Rebecca, met nice and interesting guys. It has been fun and relaxing, it felt so all right, so I'm already subscribed to all the future events.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 12/11/08 at 11:16:16 pm | randomly put in the category Me | | Leave a comment

It has been such an intense day, and tomorrow will be worse
I'm not even hungry, I just want a shower and sleep - possibly ages.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 11/11/08 at 08:02:42 pm | randomly put in the category Me | | 1 comment

It rains (in that split second, you would correct me by saying it's raining, if you were there).

Good memories, bad memories? Who cares. I don't feel a thing in the world, apart from the pain in my leg - not much, a bit of hunger, mild excitation as I'm going to have such a busy week.

And, ah, I've got to go to downstairs to buy the cigarettes I forgot.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 10/11/08 at 08:43:30 pm | randomly put in the category Me | | Leave a comment

My left leg hurts because of a little platforms accident.
So today I took off the knee-high boots, and spent the day in the office with my socks only - like many others programmers, by the way.
Try it! It feels good and you feel a lot less tired at the end of the day. I've decided to adopt this strategy in a permanent way; the only drawback is that now I have to take care and pair the socks

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 10/11/08 at 08:38:09 pm | randomly put in the category Me | | 10 comments

... it has been a week of unrelenting misery.
But I will survive. I'm a tough cookie, me!

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 09/11/08 at 01:04:38 pm | randomly put in the category Me | | 4 comments

It ended badly, but it wasn't a bad trip at all.
You made me so heady, and I do not why, but definitely you deepened my perception. I'm not being romantic now, it's just that sometimes, some rare and precious times, someone is actually able to reach us. And I don't care to know - I always knew that - that it was all a stupid mindgame; I'm happy it happened. A pity that it was so short.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 08/11/08 at 05:55:49 pm | randomly put in the category Me | | Leave a comment

Oggi sono un po' triste :'(
Solo un po', ma un po' sì.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 04/11/08 at 09:03:58 pm | randomly put in the category Citazioni, Me | | 7 comments

I know that I will never see R. again.

You see, the only people that are actually able to reach for me, are at least as bonkers as I am.
But unfortunately, often more.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 03/11/08 at 10:16:33 pm | randomly put in the category Me | | 4 comments

The hangover is pretty much gone and I'm organising the weekend, or what remains of it, and realising what happened exactly yesterday night and what I did.

Well, apart from disgracing myself, doing a lot of very stupid things and getting to know truths that I knew already but I kind of blocked off my mind... not much.

What to say - that's your average night at the pub in London

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 01/11/08 at 02:27:22 pm | randomly put in the category Me | | Leave a comment

And I have a bad hangover, without the perk of not remembering what happened.

I reckon I should either drink less, or drink more.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 01/11/08 at 09:33:40 am | randomly put in the category Me | | Leave a comment