For a little bit of inspiration..

As you know, I am an ex-pat. As such I generally don't catch on to all that much of what goes on back on the island.

I was watching a film on TV this evening (sooo traditional I know) and in the ad break, T-Mobile are running an ad which shows a clip from the UK show "Britain's Got Talent" from last year. I had to google when I saw this.

Banj...sorry, this is most likely old old news, but I wanted to show the others.

There's a guy called Paul Potts who comes from Wales. He worked as a mobile phone sales man and when you see him - awful suit, hang-dog face and looking as if he's expecting someone to either insult him or hit him. Simon Cowell (on the jury) is renowned for being a git and you see the look that his colleague and he share as if to say "oh lord, this is going to be terrible".

And then the guy opens his mouth. And sings. Bloody hell does he sing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya1xLdnrI0c

I got shivers down my spine and I nearly cried.

Turns out that he won in the end - good on him.

And yes boys, no need to post a comment: Amanda Holden does look as if she's having an orgasm in the clip as she's listening to him.

Ich werde dich zerstören, um dich zu erschaffen.
ich werde dich fesseln, um dich zu befreien.
ich werde dich verwunden, um dich zu heilen.
ich werde dich erniedrigen, um dich zu erheben.
ich werde dich leiden lassen, um dich zu lieben.

I will destroy you in order to create you.
I will bind you in order to free you.
I will wound you in order to heal you.
I will humiliate you in order to raise you up.
I will make you suffer in order to love you.

Courtesy of ulli Roussel

You've got to love SL at times.

I moved house...as in: my last plot was lovely but it was in the middle of a sim and it wasn't green land which I actually wanted. So to give myself something to do I searched for and found a gorgeous corner plot of green land. Added to which the sim doesn't have any others attached so I have two sides of uninterrupted water view, one side is still empty and only one side with a neighbour with different taste to me - I'm busy building / terraforming to "hide" his house a little.

So a pleasant few hours spent pottering about and learning how to terraform and I now have a river (which isn't square anymore) and two ponds. I even have something which vaguely resembles a ridge and a hill. Poppy is proud of herself. Hardly going to open a business in terraforming now, but for my little slice of sl, I am gooood!

I had already emptied half of my inv onto the land and thought that I would tp up to my house to move stuff to where I wanted to actually have it (you just can't find good old fashioned movers these days it seems - they don't even pack your things properly) and saw this:




WTF???

I knew that the economy was bad at the moment, but...where's my fekking house???

Send a SMS for free from SL

Oooh...Auntie Poppy is good to you all!

Whilst I was busy working today (*chokes) I was surfing the web a little - purely for rl research purposes of course - and stumbled completely coincidentally an article which told about rl / sl collaborations.

Swisscom is involved in a project with some others and as part of the promo have organised some kind of freaky system which allows you to send a SMS from inside SL!

They're giving away 50,000 for free. No idea how many are left open, am going to try myself in a minute.

Here are the instructions:

Simply go to the telephone booth and type: /8 followed by the mobile phone number of your friend and then the message. Example:/8 0015551234567 Hi Joe! I'm in SL. Join me! Bob
Don't forget your country code (001 for US, 0041 for Switzerland etc).

Another thing that they do is that you can buy your loved one a bunch of flowers in sl (they have a few different ideas in their gift shop). Give them to her and then she can access the website and put in her rl address and then will receive it in rl too! How fekking cool is that??? And no need to worry about privacy if you're concerned about sharing your details.

I was so impressed at the idea.

Of course, the prices are not quite what you're used to in SL.

Check the site for a slur or search in sl for "Starfruit" (the phone booth is on the east of the island)...or IM me in-world for a LM.

Happy sms sending ;)

(Fuck me...it really works!!!)

Thank you - Banj, Half and Master...

Can you actually believe that I had never looked at the word "vulnerability" and its related connotations with any positive light whatsoever.

And its been quite an enlightenment, thank you.

But...you all missed something:

Vulnerable ability. The ability to be vulnerable.

Which is a positive thing.

See? I AM learning.

I was going to write something intelligent...

...and possibly self-deprecatingly witty on the topic of vulnerability; specifically on my on-going battle with allowing myself to be and feel vulnerable.

And then I looked up the definition (as the "official" meaning of a word vs my emotional response always fascinates me) and I got to the thesaurus part...

...and got depressed.

Exposure, danger, weakness, assailability, destructibility and breakability.

I've just regressed 10 years again in regards coming to terms with thinking that vulnerability can be a positive and worthwhile exercise.

Hardly much positive attached to the word, is there?

There is one person who keeps showing me again and again that I'm safe to be vulnerable with them as none of the above applies, but its a hard lesson to learn and I still don't always really truly believe it.

I hope that they carry on, because after reading what I just did I'm less convinced than normal.

Germany Lost :((((((((((

Well, Germany lost to Spain.

I've already had 20,000 "congratulatory" emails, but that serves me right for having such a big mouth and I can live with it.

Mainly because....WE GOT FURTHER THAN YOU LOOOOOOOOOOSERS!

And Lehmann (our goal keeper)...now if I ever saw a reason for collar and leashes in real life, this is one classic example. A goal keeper...to me these two words mean that you keep your goddamned arse in the general vicinity of the fekking goal!!!!! The poor man is going to be slaughtered in the gutter press tomorrow. But hey..he gets paid enough and he was...scuse me French...he was a twat.

Shoulda attached his left ankle to the goddamn goal post. For some reason he seems to have thought that he was playing midfield or something. Idiot.

So, I'm retracting my application for joint German citizenship and will dust off my England t-shirt and flag for in 2 year's time.

Although Germany....3 (place in the World Cup), 2 (place in the European Cup)......1??? World Cup 2010!!!!

God...where will we all be then?

One thing that touched me though as I was busy teaching the Germans useful English swear words....one of my close friends and I chatted at half time....

Happiness is not constant. It happens in a blink of an eye. It doesn't continue blindly on a continuous basis throughout our lives. It happens in abstract moments.

So true.

In knowing this, we hopefully learn to appreciate the joy. Unfortunately it doesn't take away from the pain; but it gives understanding and reason to the pain. One does not negate the other; my joy does not become less because of hurt.

I hope to have this joy again. I hope that I don't have to wait 2 years. The pain will always be a part of it. And the pain could be a 1000 times worse; the joy always, always shines through brighter. I DO want the high again. The cost of this pain will never ever be high enough. The price is worth paying. I don't expect...I just quietly hope.

And the next match is in November...England vs Germany in the Berlin Olympia Stadium in November. I shall be there.

And either way, I get an "erfolgserlebnis". Rock on!!!