Mycroft Holmes Blog in LA

Management Consultant My Ass

2006-02-23T20:16:00.000-08:00

When I started working for this conference company in Los Angeles almost four months ago, I was hired as a Management Consultant. However I am only 33 years old, I look younger, and I don’t have a diploma in Management Consulting or anything related.

So I wrote all my reports, a lot of it has been implemented, but none of the radical changes I suggested were. For that the company went to real high paid professionals, and now I know they are all charlatans.

Today we were finally told about the great changes which are supposed to build teamwork, make the employees happier and make more money for the bosses. I have to say, I was not prepared for what I have heard, I was certain my role and incentive report would have a huge impact on their decisions.

In fact, they decided on the complete opposite and even went further underground. I have no doubt it will fail miserably. This is the Dilbert Principle all over again, I think I need to buy them the book: The Dilbert Principle : Cubicle's-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads, and Other Workplace Afflictions, and hope they will read it.

I’m sure that consultant helped tremendously in defining that book, since he claims to have worked for many years in his field, with the greatest corporations out there. Well, these corporations must have been in Utah, and not even in Salt Lake City, but in the suburbs where people have no choice but work in the only company around.

Because the only way I will ever see a bonus, will be if I can keep that job for more than a year. And to be honest, with a turn over of staff like the one I have observed since I have started, this bonus scheme will so obviously failed, you would need to be blind or not want to implement one in the first place, to not see it.

In all, it is all very subjective. I may get a bonus at the end of the year if my Manager feels like it. Well, knowing me and my relationships with all my previous managers, I can already tell you that I won’t get a bonus at the end of the year. So why should I even try?

All I can hope for is a maximum of $2,500 before tax, out of a salary of $60,000 before tax. Do you think I will go out of my way and break my back for $1,250 more after tax at the end of the year, that my Manager might decide I don’t deserve? Are you joking?

I tried to explain to them that a quarterly bonus scheme would be a mistake. It needs to be monthly, especially when over a dozen employees have been sacked or have left since I started. Just to give you a good picture, this company only has 16 employees right now. No one will do any effort to make more money. We are too busy wondering about when we will get the sack, and questioning if perhaps it would not be a good idea to jump ship before then.

So now, all my hard work at selling sponsorship deals, and worrying about who would get the bonus, just went out the window. I am starting a new conference tomorrow, I am supposed to contact 30 potential sponsors. Somehow I think I will forget to call them every day next week, as I am supposed and expected to do. They can lick my ass, I am much more motivated in finding the speakers, get the brochure designed and move on with the next event.

And it gets worse. Not only a huge percentage of my salary goes into taxes, but on top of it something like $500 a month goes into health and dental care insurance. Now there are pushing me to spend another $400 a month on more insurance, because my $500 a month barely covers anything.

As if that was not enough, they have finally implemented a new great scheme supposed to make this company more attractive, that will cost me another God knows how much every month, probably $400. A pension!

I don’t need a pension for a job that I am unlikely to keep for more than a few months, if I am not laid off before I decide to go. I am so crippled with all those social securities that I need to pay, that anyway being Canadian I will never be able to benefit from, that I think I will be lucky if I have any money left to survive at the end of the month.

And to assess if we deserve a bonus at the end of the year, they implemented a wonderful little process that the consultant claims invariably makes the employees happier. Appraisals! Quarterly appraisals!

Apparently communications between you and your Manager is important, it helps build a bond and teamwork. I say appraisals are the tools Managers use to get you sack. The Valley Girl will certainly use it well. They are meetings where they can destroy you and tell you how incompetent you are, and that you don’t deserve your bonus.

Appraisals not only take a lot of time in writing reports and all, time that could be better spent producing events, but on top of it the results are definitely to destroy any remaining relationship you might have with management. It is painful and it does not help. It is like officially filed reports about how bad an employee you are, and will definitely be used against you one day when they no longer require your services. It de-motivates the employees.

By all means, communication is important. Meetings to discuss business are important. But not appraisals, where you Manager ask you how bad you have been, and if you are not honest, he will tell you how bad you are and how you could increase your productivity.

Simple, the only way I could increase my productivity would be to tell me: work on your conferences on week nights and on weekends. This is after all the only way I could work harder, because I certainly cannot squeeze more in a day of work than I am already doing. They have me under so much pressure, I am already stressed to death and work twice harder than I ever did in any other job I had.

The bosses are greedy. They don’t want to give any bonus, that much is obvious. They will only hurt themselves in the end, because by not rewarding me on the money I directly bring them from my extra efforts, I won’t make any extra effort on top of my actual duties to confirm one more sponsor.

It makes no difference to me if there are $20,000 or $100,000 in sponsorship on my event, it only means more work to coordinate all these sponsors and exhibition stands before and at the event.

For my own company, I will be willing to lose 15% to 20% in revenue on any sponsorship deal or delegate people will confirm for me. Otherwise, there won’t be any deal or delegate to speak of. Of course, this is assuming that they would be mostly commission based. Otherwise 7% for sure.

And what kills me about this Management Consultant, is that he came twice, talked with us for one hour, talked with my bosses for a few hours, made us fill a non-anonymous report about how we felt (like if we were to tell the truth in there), and then came back with stupid slides of a PowerPoint presentation that he already had and used in all these other companies he worked for before.

So in the end, not only he costs a lot of money, but on top of it he is laughing at us, since it is obvious that his questionnaire was useless and the talk he had with us was equally useless. He was not interested in any of it, he just came back with what you could find in any management book on the market. And only a few excerpts.

I thought I was incompetent as a Management Consultant, I understand now that I was more than competent. I actually did something, I wrote a dozen long reports, based on my real experience in conference companies. The other consultant did not even write a report, he discussed with the bosses for a few hours. He did not do any research in our company to try to understand it, and he certainly did not gauge the pulse of the office with his questionnaire. He was useless.

And yet, it is his recommendations which will be implemented. And it will take my bosses just a year to understand the failure of it all. Then they will listen to me, to my reports. So I guess it was not wasted after all, even if I will be miles away by then on the other side of the ocean.

In the meantime, I will resume my role of assistant for the Manager, despite my ten years experience in conferences at managing teams and whole departments. I won’t do anything to confirm sponsors and I won’t do any more overtime. They have succeeded in de-motivating me completely. Complete success!

In the meantime, the Valley Girl is working hard at getting rid of the new guy. She has repeated today how unhappy she is with him, how he creates more work for her instead of helping her. And what she had to say about him for when we will go at her conference next week in San Francisco, she could have said about me too. She did not, so it shows how unfair she is to him.

Things don’t change. That’s one employee, that new guy, who certainly won’t see any bonus in his lifetime. He does not even know it yet, how hard the Valley Girl is working at destroying him.

The funny thing is, he is ambitious. Listening to him, he wants to become Director within a year. He took the job because he thought there was place for advancement and promotion. He is only 22 years old, he never really worked before. You can see the problem.

He still thinks that people keep their job for life and become Director in no time. We never get the chance, we are sacked faster than any promotion could ever come. And incentives only create more work with no real and tangible reward. So in the end, they have the opposite effect of what they were intended for in the first place.

More stress at work

2006-02-18T20:14:00.000-08:00

So, the conference that I thought was cancelled, with $25,000 already confirmed in sponsorship, which could reach $100,000 altogether in the end, despite that no delegate wants to attend, has just been moved to the autumn. Most probably I won’t be the one working on it, too much sponsorship involved. And my great conference in Europe has also been moved, and so I am not going to work on that anytime soon.

My next project is even more disheartening than the other two. It is the exact same event I just worked on, but instead of being for the West coast, it is now for the East coast. And the agenda is as bad as the previous one. And the sponsors I need to contact, the ones I have harassed non stop for the last few weeks, are also the same ones. So I need to go back and harass them all, all over again. It should be a lot of fun!

Because of that designer who cannot do her job, poor girl, most likely because she was not trained in the first place, I will have to work all weekend to write another 20 pages of comments to make my brochure acceptable. Same for the Valley Girl who is working with the same designer, her booklet should have been finished last week, and now she will work all weekend on it. And she made sure she told the whole office that she will work on it this weekend. How sad.

I also met the Accountant Director in the elevator, I remembered what the boss’ wife said last night when she left, about coming the next day with a better attitude. I asked her if she was OK. She said no. I said: well, I don’t suppose I can ask you why. She said no. I told her I will ask again in six months and maybe then she will tell me. It was a weird thing to say, but the answer was worth it. She said that I will find out much sooner the consequences of all of this.

Now, that is interesting. I don’t think it has anything to do with me. She either will be sacked as well, or she is already thinking about leaving the company. Funny, I had first assessed her as someone I would have trouble with, and for once, I was wrong. She has been nothing but nice to me, she likes me for some reason.

I would feel bad to see her go. And I’m pretty sure she is the most competent person we have in that office, she is a pillar. I’m not sure who could replace her, unless the girl who was helping her will now be promoted to that position. Somehow I doubt it, they will have to take someone from outside.

The Senior Manager said something nice to me last night when he left, and obviously, this time, not in front of everyone. He was pleased with my work on that conference and confirmed that it was great to work with people who knew what they were doing, someone with experience.

Considering that I am about to start my own conference company, I’m glad he was at least able to see that I could do the job very well, and that I had experience. I have to say, he might have not noticed, since I am doing exactly what his assistant with a miserable salary is doing. They have no clue what I am capable of doing. So far they put me on confirming speakers and sponsors on someone else’s programs. Great. Anyway, that’s encouraging, at least.

More tension at work

2006-02-16T20:12:00.000-08:00

Tension has been terrible at work all week. And today was perhaps the worst of all, luckily I was not involved in any of it. A new guy starts on Monday, perhaps the one who never came back after his first day, the one I thought was badly chosen. Well, he may be the one starting on Monday with a salary of $50,000 a year.

He is already dead, I know that much. I give him one month. Why? Because the Valley Girl was so pissed off today, she talked about it all day with the Chinese girl. And at the end of day, she could no longer contain herself and she shouted that not only he is very young, but on top of it he has no experience, and has the same salary as her. Even though she will be his boss.

I was amazed she would so openly state that loud, in front of me (and the Chinese girl), how dissatisfied she was with that situation. It is clear to me that she will do everything she can to get rid of him as quickly as possible. And now I believe that the last one, the one who left two weeks ago because she had enough of the office, might actually have left because she was under the Valley Girl and she must have made her life a misery.

The future will tell us if I am right, it is clear that the newbie won’t last. And then, I have proof that it would be a direct consequence of what the Valley Girl said today.

And the interesting stuff does not end there. My boss’ wife came to the Valley Girl, and she said to her that she had to work him hard, because he was young and inexperienced, and she had to make sure he would be doing something. Considering his salary, I can understand.

I could not sleep at night if I had 20 employees with salaries ranging from $30,000 to $60,000 a year, and I thought that for one second they would not be pulling their weight. Then again, I had another proof that management plays mind games with us, and she is close enough to the Valley Girl to let her know: work him to death. Never mind if he leaves within a month.

There were many other problems today, of course I was not privy to it. When my boss’ wife left, she said to the accountant: I hope tomorrow I will find you with a better attitude! Or perhaps she was talking about someone else in the office, I’m not sure.

I had only one problem yesterday, with the Senior Manager. He freaked out because I did not stop everything once his latest brochure needed to be proof-read, and that a few hours later I still had not read it. So he made a big speech about it for five interminable minutes, in front of everyone else. I felt very humiliated, and I just said: OK.

Again, if I had pushed that one, and if it had gone further, to upper management, as I’m sure he reported me already, my bosses would have understood that instead of reading his brochure, I was in fact contacting one last time all my sponsors before my brochure went to print. Again I would have won. But it never reached that stage, because I did not argue. I said OK. That was the end of it.

It was the first time he felt the need to freak out about me. So I cannot really say that he is that terrible. I did not take it personally, he is a good person. He just felt that it was important that I read his brochure. Then again, he could have just said so very nicely, as he usually does when he tells me something that I still don’t know about the company and how we do things around here.

This panic attack from him suggested to me that the story was more serious than usual, and had already been reported to the bosses. And this is how negative stuff goes back to upper management, and positive things never get reported. And this is how your bosses get to feel that you are incompetent even when you work your ass off.

But who cares, this week this has been the least of my problems. I have a bigger one to confront tomorrow. I should have read my brochure and reported all the changes to be made already. Unfortunately I did not have the time yet. And I should have worked on that tonight. But Leonardo came here to pick up the film script and the DVD of the film I worked on, and hence, I did not do anything. Tomorrow will be again a big free for all.

I am also very unlucky, because the woman who did the design of my brochure, she had never done one before. And so everything is so wrong, it looks nothing like all the other brochures we have. I had to write 12 pages of comments to try to see how she could make it better, and I have not even yet fully read the first page! What a waste of time and money, for each brochure we get designed.

That is why that when I will start my own company, I will have a template, and I will use it every time, and I will do all the design of my brochures. And if I have to get my employees to do it, they will use my template, and it will look nice and it will take no time to produce those brochures, because I will show them how to do it.

I also noticed today that the two managers were getting closer to me. The two girls were trying to get me in their conversation, to include me, to get me to become their friend. Though it is nice that perhaps I have misjudged them, I had to work on my brochure, so I could not indulge. And anyway, it looked artificial and forced. So I went to the toilet, and when I came back they had disappeared.

It may be that, out of what happened this week, they will respect me a bit more. If it is the case, I am truly happy and surprised. We’ll have to see what happens in the next weeks to confirm or deny this new theory.

Oh, I also have to say, that after reading that brochure of my Senior Manager, I felt revolted. It had no sponsor, no supporting organizations, and it was so badly written, it was the worst conference program I had ever read in my entire life. I truly wondered who in hell would want to attend that conference. I did not say anything, I just observed and learned.

It is not his fault if the program is so bad. They don’t expect from him the big events that I am doing. From him they want as many as possible, as quickly as possible. When they claim that we produce 50 conferences a year, well, he writes at least half of them, and then he gets his assistants (which I have also become), to do the rest.

The result is a series of terrible events that no one will ever want to attend. I would be ashamed to have written a conference program like that. Considering that English is my second language, I have assessed that I was writing programs like this 10 years ago, when I started. No research has been made, I’m not sure if he knows what he is talking about, and most of his programs are made of bits and pieces of other conference programs, including his.

The language used, the expressions, it sounds very much like all the other conferences out there. It is the vocabulary and style that all newbie needs to learn when they first need to write a program. They read many agendas, and hop, they write something similar on a different topic. That is what I am trying to avoid. I want to make it interesting and more human, less mechanical and boring.

They put me on the worst conference program of all today. It was also badly written, it had no content, and it flopped many times the previous years. We still produce it because we have one main sponsor putting $25,000 on the table every year for it. And I saw the contract today.

I told the Director, when he asked me if I had already invited the speakers, that it was the first time I heard the full title of that event today. And jokingly I said that I guess they were waiting to have confirmed $100,000 worth of sponsorship on it before finally giving it to me.

Though I said it as a joke, I think I made myself clear: don’t expect to have contacted all the potential sponsors in the database already, and then get me to do all these cold calls to chase them up. If I am not going to get my bonus for these sponsorship deals, then I am not going to call any of them. You do it!

I said in his office, innocently: so I guess I can concentrate on the speakers for that one, I don’t have to contact sponsors. Within an hour the conference had been cancelled. I guess they realized that it was a touchy conference. The bonus scheme has not been implemented yet. I don’t even know if all my hard work with the sponsors on my actual conference will pay me a dime, since the Director closed all the deals, even if I had done all the hard work. They appear to have discussed that all afternoon, in my boss’ office. I guess I did not have to say much to make them understand how I felt. Good.

I have to say, I never thought for one second that the conference would be cancelled. Not after seeing a $25,000 contract on my desk. I don’t know what happened there. Things that probably they have not told me. Obviously the boss did not hear my own suggestions about this event, otherwise we would be going ahead with that conference now.

I suggested that we should research the subject, bin the agenda the Senior Manager had written at lunch time, and do a proper conference with this. With well identified topics. Of course, by saying that, I was in fact insulting the Senior Manager. So it did not go anywhere.

Now they want me to produce their first ever European conference, based on their biggest conference ever they have in the US. I have to say, I love the idea. And I love even more what the Director said about it. He said that I can tell him all about how to produce conferences in Europe, since this is where my experience lay. I told him that it was the same as here, but he said that it was not so.

Well, I hope he is not expecting any magic tricks from me, because producing conferences in Europe is like producing them in the US. Language is not even a problem, we do everything in English. No European database however is a troubling situation. It might very well flop. We’ll have to see.

I will propose to them to do two conferences at the same time. One in London in English, the same one in French in France. We can do a double bubble and confirm our sponsors twice at the same time. Let’s see what will happen then. Of course, I still have to do a lot of research, and many phone calls. So it is not going to be easy. I look forward to that challenge however. It might be finally what will make me appreciate that job.

Think about it. If we start producing conferences in Europe, it means opening an office there eventually. If I were to remain in that job for a long time, and manage to get my baby to move here and work with me, then we would open that office in Europe together. At the very least, all my reports must prove to them that I am capable. No one else in the company would want to move to London, they all have houses and family here.

I’m afraid I might have left them by the time the idea even goes anywhere. If they have anything planned for me, as they led me to believe when they lured me here, I suggest they tell me now or before the end of next month. Because then, it will be too late.

Human nature is a bastard

2006-02-14T23:52:00.000-08:00

It is no longer a choice that I have, how long I will remain in Los Angeles. It is really how long it will take them to get rid of me. Could be before the end of the month.

I am now definitely on the black list of the Chinese girl, and she really went for it. At this time she is going around the whole office to tell everyone how bad I have been, and accusatory as she said. And her voice must be quite strong to have been able to get the sponsorship guy sacked overnight after six years, despite the fact that he was excellent at his job. I have no doubt I have not heard the end of this little altercation between us.

And all I did was to point out that the sponsor I am trying to sign right now, sponsored one of her conferences, and unfortunately after all this time their blurb and logo are still not online on our website. If they find out, they will quickly realize that what they paid for, we did not do it, and hence, why would they want to sponsor again, or perhaps they will want a freebee.

My god, the consequences of pointing out that a logo was not online… if I had known, I would have kept my mouth shut. Of course, now the Valley Girl is also involved, and took her defense, when there was no need to. I have no doubt what it is that they will be talking about at lunch time. How big a monster I am, a threat, and how quickly I need to be eliminated. Pretty sure that if they don’t verbally come to a plan to achieve that, it will be implicit and as strong. They will both work against me from now on, they’ll try to get me sacked.

Unfortunately for them, I am not working for them, or on their events, even if I am going to San Francisco to work on the Valley Girl’s event at the end of this month. I am pretty sure she will find a way to get back in the office afterwards with the most negative feedback about me. I will have to do everything she wants me to do without question.

Anyway, they might succeed in getting me sacked before then, who knows. They don’t waste time. They are so on edge, they have so much work to do, that the smallest hint that they could be incompetent brings the war on. And they have ammunitions, yesterday I add more problems with the Director, even if I can’t remember what it was about.

I have ammunitions too, she is explosive. I’m not the first one she was rude to, I was not the first one facing the sack because of her, the same for the Valley Girl. Surely by now the bosses will understand that they are the problem? Not the rest of the planet? Somehow I cannot count on that, a superior is always right, never the assistants or the ones working for the Managers and Directors. The low life ones, as I am right now from their point of view, are always the ones to go.

I’m surprised that the Hispanic guy is still working with us, being right under the Chinese girl. It is a tribute to his qualities, being not threatening at all, very laid back, nice guy, hard working and, yeah, a yes mam, yes sir type of person, which I’m afraid to say, I am not.

Let’s see how far she can go with this, when all I did was to point out that one of the sponsors did not have its logo and company profile online, and could lead to losing a sponsorship deal. Somehow I’m sure she will succeed and making quite a story out of this.

I wonder how fast it will happen, how quickly I will be called in the office. This afternoon? Tomorrow morning? I’m ready for it, I feel safe about it, I hope she will destroy herself in the process and free her assistant and any future ones from suffering her temper and behavior.

There is no denying that she is excellent at her job, and this is why she won over the sponsorship guy who just could not stand her anymore and must have exploded at some point, even if no one told me about it, and I only heard some rumors. But eventually, if we have to sack half the company for those two managers, as it has been so far since I have arrived three months ago, then being excellent and under pressure is no longer an excuse.

At the very least, if the bosses still want them there, they will understand that I am right in this matter, and she is just continuing her little game of getting everyone sacked as soon as someone crosses her even for one long minute, which is enough to create a story as large as a two hour film. And unfortunately, it will certainly not inspire me a film script. It would be the most common and boring story ever, happening every day all over corporate America.

I don’t feel like going back to work this afternoon, that much is certain. I did not need that stress today. When she talked to me, accusing me of something that was still unclear, I hurt terribly. I remained silent. I went back to my seat and understood that I played with the devil and was now in a terrible situation.

I saw it all before with the sponsorship guy, I saw him doing the exact same thing after he spoke to her and she lashed into him. I thought this could not happen to me since I am not working with her, I was wrong.

Maybe this time around I will get out of it unscathed. They will all talk about it, feel pity for her, see me as the big monster, since she is the one going around destroying me, whilst I am very much passive in all of this. It is not my style to try to get people sacked for banalities. But the next time around, that’s it, I’m finished. This is the joy of having a full time job that everyone hates, working with people who simply just cannot stand each other.

Maybe I am the problem, after all, I always had trouble with everyone I worked with in the past. That is why I need to start my own company, it is clear that I am just incapable of bending, be a yes sir type of person. Shut up and just do my job. Again it is leading me into trouble, and I feel powerless because it is unlikely I could ever change my personality.

I’m back from work now. When I left at lunch time to go back, I was already thinking that I had to apologize to her, even if really I did not have to. If anything, she is the one who should apologize to me, I thought. But this is not how it works, you apologize for an easy life and you do not expect an apology.

The only problem, I was thinking, is that I was apologizing way too late, she probably already had the time to destroy me completely in the hour I went for lunch. The damage had been done.

When I arrived at my desk, she was really active about the sponsors on that particular conference, as if suddenly she had been told to look into it. Of course, all that meant was she went to her assistant and told him everything he had to do.

She was kind of close to me while she spoke to him, and that reminded me of the Director when he felt guilty, and suddenly was going to Gloria hoping to get me in the conversation and show me that he could also be nice. So I could still think he was not a bastard about the fact that he shouted at me that it was too late to call the sponsors now, when he was wrong.

I was right, she was trying to speak to me. I was not interested. And for a second there I was wondering if it would be appropriate to apologize, it could make things worse. I kind of lost my guts and I thought that perhaps the best way would be to forget all about it. But not me, I set myself to go and apologize, and I did.

She was creamy and nice. She apologized herself for over-reacting. I could barely believe my ears. I was not expecting that. She thanked me for letting her know that this sponsor did not have its logo online and that I should always tell her in the future if I find such a problem. She only said that I could have been a bit more discreet and just come to her and let her know. Fair enough.

I was so amazed, I thought, my god, the girl is really something to be able just like that to understand that she was wrong and apologize to me. I’ve been used to people who would suddenly turn against you and would never give up until you were sacked.

Even the Valley Girl, her accomplice, who that morning told me quite rudely that I had to book my own flight to San Francisco at the end of the month, because she did not have the time since it was too complicated now that I had decided to remain there for the weekend, changed her mind in the afternoon and decided to book that flight for me.

Wonderful, these girls have a conscience. When I left for lunch as soon as I could, 11 am, they noticed and felt bad. They probably believed I was sulking. And then they took pity and changed their mind, and decided to be nice for a change.

That was my initial thought. But I’m not stupid. I know what really happened whilst I was at lunch. They both got together, they pumped each other against me, they went to see everyone in the company to let them know how bad I had been, and to get everyone against me. And when they reached the top management, they were met by a brick wall.

The bosses can only think in terms of money, and identifying that a sponsor’s logo was not online after weeks, especially when they were too late to even be in the brochure, means losing a lot of money. Not only we would have to reimburse them for that conference, but we would lose the deal on my conference, and God only knows how much money we would have lost with that company over the years.

In the eyes of any obsessed money grabbing person in the upper management, I was so right to point it out, they did not even want to hear her out. They must have told her that she was very incompetent and should make sure that all her sponsors are looked after. That is why she was suddenly feeling defeated and was making sure everything was done when I came back.

And why they were both creamy with me, must also be because they were told to be. They must have gone in there asking for my head, and they must have been told that it is their head that would be on a platter if they did not go back to work and did not realize that I was damn right to point it out.

Just as I predicted, she has destroyed herself in the process. This time, I knew they would not listen to her, even if I was not completely sure. Bosses sometimes can be so unpredictable and unfair, or blind. Not when it comes to money though. And the Valley Girl was just a bonus. She always is snooping around and getting mixed up in all sort of problems, creating them when it is not necessary, and she was also burnt. And then she became nice.

The way I described all this, you probably think that I enjoyed all that. It is not true. I had no idea she would freak out like that when I told her about the missing logo. That she would feel attacked and try to destroy me in the process. I know she is volatile, I knew she would be trouble one day, I did not think this would do it. Which means, she does not need much to go overboard and create a crisis.

And now that I remember it, the crisis with the salesman, that I thought I had not been told about, I think never happened. It was not a crisis, it was him responding back to her when she was freaking out. I was there, and to be honest, almost nothing happened. And it was enough to get him sacked.

I did not enjoy it, it was more stress than I needed. And it is far from being over. Now I am definitely on their black last. I won, but that is all there is to it. Now they will love to hate me. They will not miss a chance to cause me trouble. I knew from the beginning that it was inevitable, because I know how they are, and I knew I would not let myself be walked all over by them.

Less than a minute after I apologized to her, in hope that it would gain me a few days of peace before the big war, she was already talking to the Black guy to let him know everything that had just happened. He too was much nicer after that. He strikes me as a fair person, but he still must be quite strong. I don’t see him ever coming to me to tell me something, he will instead tell everything to the bosses and they will talk to me.

I don’t know if he was on their side. The fact that the Chinese girl when to him, is because it was to him that she first told the whole story. She made it sound like it was not only her that I was accusing of incompetence, but him also, because it was his responsibility to put that online. And when she told me how angry she was at my behavior, she also defended the Black guy, saying they were both very busy and could not care less about me and what I said.

So it is not him who calmed the girls down. If anything, he is the one who went to report it to the bosses immediately after she spoke to him. So for a moment there, I’m pretty sure she was able to get him against me. Until, that is, my apology.

As he is fair, for him it was a nice conclusion and I think the fact that he was overnice afterwards probably did not mean that he will hold it against me. I hope I am not wrong here. I cannot afford to not have him on my side, even if I am trying to avoid him and hide from him.

What do you think? Do you think my assessment of all that happen in my back for the hour I went to lunch sounds like it could very well be what happened? Of course, you would need to have heard everything they said that was hinting to all that, and I have not here told you all. I think I am very close to the truth. I have seen that kind of behavior way too many times in my past jobs to be blind to how far people are willing to go to get you sacked or destroy you in the eyes of others. This is human nature.

I can only thank myself for not being like that. If there is a way to turn my enemies into friends, I will always choose that way. If I can make sure any problem does not escalate any further, I will do everything in my power to make it so. And then, I will always forgive and not hold it against them if I can see they regret and want to be my friend. In this case, they don’t want to be my friend. They will now work very hard to make my life hell. Human nature, once again.

And now you understand why I can’t stand working with people in an office environment, why I can’t stand that job, it is always like that. Whether you are in Canada, in France, in Belgium, in England or in the United States. We are all the same, there is really only one personality for everyone on this planet.

That was only one situation that I described, many happens like that every day, and each day it is with someone else. And it does not only happen to me, it happens also between them all the time. Sometimes it is serious, other times it is not so important, and yet, it is enough to build a canyon between all of us. To the point that we are now going to work simply to get paid, and meanwhile we are trying to survive as long as we can before someone pushes us over the edge. And most of the time we are powerless to stop it.

Oh God, what will it be tomorrow?

I don’t see the point of writing anymore

2006-02-11T23:14:00.000-08:00

I don’t see the point of writing this anymore. I left a comment in someone else’s blog, and two feedbacks were quite negative. I realize that I will never please everyone, not even sure if I can please anyone with my writings. Have I come to Los Angeles to finally understand that it was time for me to abandon writing altogether?

I know why it took me so long to start a new book of my poetry kind of things. I did not see the point then, and now that I have started it, I think I will abandon it. I will most probably continue to write this blog, but I don’t think I will continue to put it online. That is how I feel right now, I will make a decision in a few weeks, perhaps days.

I am not certain if I wish to have another book published. I certainly don’t want to read critics or stupid comments about how screwed up I am anymore. It is too destructive and saps all my small remaining energy and motivation. In fact, I am really struggling to find a reason to even continue living.

I don’t like this world, I don’t like the people in it, I don’t like what I have to do to survive, to pay for my rent and food, I don’t like this life. Leonardo asked me yesterday if I would lose my wish to die if I were to become rich overnight. Maybe, because then I could isolate myself completely from everyone else, this world, and I would no longer have to work 9 to 5 in a job I hate. Then maybe I could live a better life in my total ignorance.

But then, what would happen when I sit at my computer? I’m not sure if suddenly I would start liking life. I could very well be as depressed. Maybe it is time I start considering taking these pills that would put a plastic smile on my face. Help me pretend that life is wonderful and love is the glue that links everyone together. I’d rather die.

I am exhausted. Dead tired. I cannot do anything anymore. I spoke with Stephen today and he agreed that I should remain one more month in L.A. than originally planned. So I am here for two more months and 20 days. He also said that it was time I got my ass into gear, and start contacting people. Something I have been dreading, and I don’t even know where to start.

What is the point of coming to Los Angeles when no one knows I’m here. I’m so convinced that rejection is what awaits me everywhere, that I don’t even want to bother trying. I don’t want to be a wannabe writer in Hollywood. I think I must have landed here by accident. It could have been Denver or Cleveland, it is Los Angeles.

And that is all there is to it. Sounds improbable, and yet, it seems to be the only conclusion. Unless something happens before I leave, a miracle, falling from the sky, since it is unlikely that I will try to meet anyone or try to sell my ideas and scripts.

Well, now I have met Leonardo, God knows, maybe that is enough. And I got the determination to start my own conference company. If any of these projects go ahead in time, then it would not have been wasted.

However I can’t stop thinking that there was something more that was supposed to happen to me in Los Angeles. A firm contract or the beginning of something huge that should be instant and concrete. Not “possibly something might happen in years to come”. No. It makes no sense.

I know I have at least this blog, but then again, this will not be published. It might end up on my website one day, when I feel the people concerned are too far away from me in time and place to affect them or me. Was it worth coming to L.A. just to write a diary about it, for nothing in the end but hurt the people I have met?

Should I tell the truth to my boss? How I really feel?

2006-02-08T23:13:00.000-08:00

Time to go back to work. It is 5h39 in the morning. Already I am in a panic state. And I have done nothing in my full day off apart from writing this blog. It is certainly not my most interesting entry either. If I had gone to work, crisis might have brought an interesting entry, but I’m glad that if any crisis was awaiting me yesterday, I skipped that altogether.

But now, crisis might be what awaits me. That conference I’m working on is late. I know my boss is counting the minutes I am working in the office, one day off must bring him to a state of shear horror. He’ll probably jump on me at the first opportunity and say: come in the office please. And then I better have a good explanation for not showing up yesterday.

Should I tell him the truth? That I just can’t stand the office anymore and the people in it? That I was dead tired of having him sitting in my back, observing me all day to see if I am working or not? That the voice of the Director alone was enough for me to throw up everywhere? And that now I work with the Senior Manager and it is getting worse because he sits with us, and therefore always knows when I am not working? And what about your little spy, the Black guy, always, always walking behind me looking at my computer screen.

Should I tell him that the thought of going back yesterday was just too much and that I would have preferred anything else but one more day with them calling everywhere to ask for money? I had enough! I needed a day off from all this! I needed a day off from you! I could not face seeing your face again, it’s making me sick. That’s why I took a day off. And I feel the same today, but I have come, so you should be grateful.

Or else I’ll do like the other girl did last Friday, leave you at one minute’s notice. In fact she is the one who has encouraged me to take a day off. If this job is just too much for her, despite the fact that she was quite strong and intelligent, than it is by no mean an easy or nice job. And one day off won’t kill anyone, and might prevent me from reaching the point she reached when she decided just like that, that she had enough.

And then, I think they hired another guy, and one good look at him told me that this guy was not right, that he would never last a day. And he did not. I have not seen him after that. They are so bad at choosing the right employees. And their main problem, compared with London, is that there are no other conference companies in town, and so no one has any experience in this job. Not a clue about what it means. And so, they get that job, they thank God for the money, and then realize that it is the Devil that sent them there. And once they understand their misery, poof!, they’re gone.

I don’t see what they could do to correct the problem. Choose their employees better I guess for a start. People who are desperate enough to keep their job, if they have a house, cars, kids, whatever. Or suffer from discrimination and can’t find a job somewhere else. If I start my own business one day, I will be facing that exact problem. But I don’t want to think about that right now. I’ll take a bath, I’ll eat something, I’ll try not to be late for once, and I’ll go and face the music.

The work day is over now. It is becoming alarming how I just cannot stand the office anymore, and especially the Director who now supervises me contacting those sponsors, while he does not understand that dealing with the speakers and the brochure is already taking a lot of my time.

I showed a lot of impatience, especially when he asked me in his office at 30 seconds notice to discuss the sponsorship situation. Well, I needed to print my files first, and I told him quite rudely. I had 130 calls to make today, sales cold calling calls, and I did less than 20, because I had to deal with the speakers first.

He came to me in the afternoon, three hours later, while there was lunch in between, to ask me how many calls I’d made. Well, five. He was not happy, and he said: don’t bother calling them, it is too late now! And then he realized that my calls were not for the East coast, but the West coast, and he kind of wanted to apologize, and he came around to speak to Gloria, trying to be nice, and I just left the office for 10 minute, hoping he would be gone by the time I came back. I think he got the message loud and clear.

I am beyond caring now. If they wish to sack me, fine, I don’t care. I am seriously considering letting them know in exactly 20 days that I am out of here one month later, at the same time that I will tell the apartment people that I am not renewing my rent at the end of March.

It is very tempting to leave the company in 20 days, and remain here for one more month just writing and getting ready to start my own conference business. At least, when I will make a call to a potential sponsor, I will get the $7,000 all for myself, to be reinvested in my future events, my own company.

It is ridiculous, at the moment I am the producer, the marketer, the salesman, the sponsorship guy, the list finder, brochure designer, everything! The only thing I am not doing is emailing the people in the database or finding the contact details of the lists I find. And emailing the database would only take me a minute, so in the end, I’m doing everything. I might as well do it for myself.

Well, I don’t know if I could make more than $60,000 a year if I were to produce my own events, especially in the first few years, but I think it is worth the risk.

I will lose Los Angeles forever, but I have to be realistic. Nothing will happen here, I never even had the courage to try to meet people apart from Leonardo. And that might be it, all there is to it. Maybe he was the only person I needed to meet and eventually it will bear fruits.

In the meantime, I don’t think I would have understood that I could start my own business without coming to L.A. This is something they taught me, convinced me that it was time for me to take the plunge, and for that I should be grateful, and this trip of a few months here will not be in vain.

I am ready to go back to London in two months time, but not to get my old job back, but to start my own business. And that is exciting. The only question remaining is, should I play it safe and produce those same corporate events charging twice less than my competitors? Or should I go for not much money, the risky world of paranormal? Maybe I can do both?

God, and then it will be to decide which events to choose from, if I am about to do this for money instead of for fun. Telecoms? Pharmaceutical? Should I try to identify domains that have not yet been exploited? That will take forever… a lot of market research indeed. And every time I would hop into another field, that would mean hours of research for database building and identifying sponsors. The truth, is that I would feel much safer with a good loan and hiring people to do the dirty work. But I have to start slowly, doing everything myself, without any loans.

It is not going to be easy with that financial company overlooking all my money entries and expenses, because of my bankruptcy. They will have a heart attack when I tell them that I am leaving my job. They certainly did when I told them I was leaving for Los Angeles. Only the fact that my salary was much higher dampened their crisis. How am I going to do this? I don’t know. But I have to, somehow.

Oh dear, I would need a real miracle now to prevent me from going back to London and keep me in Los Angeles. A real one. And I don’t see what could happen in the next 20 days to change that, well, in the next 50 days to be more precise. The thing is, I love Los Angeles, I would love to remain longer. But not at the price of a job from hell. What a failure! Nothing new here!

A writing career is not compatible with a full time job in the corporate world

2006-02-07T20:00:00.000-08:00

It is now the morning, just got up, it is 7h30. I woke up not knowing where I was, thinking it was Saturday, and then the reality hit me that it was only Tuesday and I had to go to work for another four days.

I could not stand the idea, I called in sick. A four day week is more what I can sustain in my life at the moment, with all the other projects I am working on, film scripts, blogs, other books I am writing, that conference business I want to start, etc.

In London it was easier to be sick, or to miss a day, or to work from home once in a while. Poor Americans, here it is impossible to miss a day even when you are sick. I will lose $250 for not going to work today, it is a lot of money, and I will suffer next month because of it. But it is well worth it.

I have been working like a dog for months, five days a week, the longest hours I have ever done, lots of overtime during the weekends, no holiday over Christmas to speak of. And meeting Leonardo for one day over the weekend, is like another day of work. So I always find myself in a situation where I have only one day to decompress and hence I end up not doing any work on my own projects.

And the thing is, I feel sick today. It is not the salad that I blamed to the girl I just spoke to at work, it is those Molson Canadian beers I bought yesterday. I do like the taste, but it always takes me a while to get use to Canadian beers after a long time passed without drinking any. I’ve got 24 of those things, not sure how I will go through them. My stomach better get use to it fast.

So, if I am to lose that much money today, I better make sure I use my time wisely. I will sleep this morning as long as I can. I won’t watch any Star Trek or TV, I will either work on my latest film script or my conference business. I will not be able to use that excuse that I don’t feel like it because I am too tired, that I’d rather just die on my bed doing nothing. Tuesday is too close to the weekend for that, I decompressed on Sunday.

Today I should be fine. Even if I am sick. God, I’m going back to bed. Perhaps today I should stay in bed all day, contemplate the ceiling for hours. Maybe read a few Sherlock Holmes stories. I think I would need a whole week off to decompress from all that I went through the last few months.

It is so nice to take a day off. I was awakened by two Mexicans who wanted to test the smoke detector and change the filters of the air conditioning. Good thing I was here, I don’t like to have people in my apartment as if this was a hotel. And I would have forgotten to turn the switch so they could come in in the first place. Though I’m sure they would have been able to get in anyway, as they did when it was time to take all my domestic appliances when I switched from fully furnished to semi-furnished at the end of my first month here.

I am still very tired. I might go to bed again. It is so nice to have a day off without the guilt. I cannot feel guilty if I am not getting paid. I feel I have the right to take a day off whenever I want if I am willing to lose money for it.

Money is not everything, and it is useless at any rate if you are working all the time and cannot enjoy it. But yeah, for the first time in m life I took a day off work when I could have gone in, and I don’t feel any guilt at all. It is a great feeling.

The thing is, sometimes you need a day off for your own mental or psychological stability. When you are so wired into all these similar days, and at some point cannot see the end of the tunnel, a way out. It is a lot of pressure on your mind, and your mind can be as sick as your body. And a day off is all is required sometimes to calm you down. Help you continue with this routine the next day. Because you feel you had a break, you changed your mind.

And it is a wonderful day! If I were not supposed to be sick, I might consider going for a swim. But it is too dangerous, my boss’ wife plays tennis here sometimes, she could see me, freak out and sack me instantly. I would not want that now, would I?

It is now 7h37 pm. I slept all day. Perhaps I was sick after all, huge headache, surely it cannot be the three Molson Canadian I drank yesterday. Could it be a lack of sleep? I slept a lot on Sunday, in fact I did very much then what I did today.

So there you are, I did nothing today, no writing whatsoever, even if for one minute there I thought I was going to work on my theoretical physics theories.

This just confirmed what I was saying, that working full time in conferences is something I cannot mix with anything else. I can only work my 40 hours, do my overtime when it is needed, and then forget everything else. Writing is something I cannot even do in my spare time, because that spare time is spent sleeping and decompressing, if not getting ready to go back to work the next day.

I hope there will be better times for my writing career, because it is just about to get back to zero for a while. Until such time when I can work on it full time. I fear sometimes that it might never happen. I am killing myself right now over this, my health is deteriorating. I have headaches, I am a zombie at work, I feel overworked and stressed. Working on my way out is something I simply don’t have the time for. And it is sad.

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 22

2006-02-07T02:00:00.000-08:00

Leonardo just left, again I thought he would never leave. We went to see Brokeback Mountain tonight, and funny enough, though I could not draw any parallel between our lives and the guys in that movie, he saw just about every parallel there is.

Once again he spent many hours talking about his childhood, and how screwed up he is. And I told him that he needed a good slap in the face to get back to reality, and forget about second grade psychology, and start looking at the present and the future.

He seems very much in love with me now, I could see he wanted to kiss me many times, and he did, and I blamed any reason I could find to explain the fact that I tried to avoid him sleeping here for many weeks now. When really it was more about how traumatic it had been the first two times.

He still sees us as a couple destined to something great, he also acknowledged that it was not his place at the moment to try to get more involved, while I had all these decisions to make, like remaining here or going back to London with my boyfriend. That I still very much love and would like to remain faithful to.

Our little trip to Santa Barbara, where he spent many years of his life, seemed to have had a big impact on him. Even though he said tonight that it is because he does not have money to splash on me that he is trying to make me discover the place, to show me that he has something to offer.

I don’t know in which century he is living in. I don’t understand why he repeats to me that he is genuine, that I can believe him, and all that stuff. He has obviously been hurt by many dishonest people in his life, and he is afraid I might think that he has some ulterior motives, when in fact, there is only genuine love. Well, I have not met that many dishonest people in my life, so for me everyone is fine until they give me a reason to believe otherwise, and that never really happened with any of my friends. So he is kind of wasting his time here.

In Santa Barbara, when I was looking at him that whole day, I did not think that I fancied him and would like to sleep with him again. Tonight I thought I would have liked to be in his arms. So I don’t know what is going to happen between us.

Tomorrow I will be a zombie at work again. I won’t be able to do anything. He is again responsible for this. Weeks are passing very fast, they turn into months, and yet we are not going anywhere, it takes forever. That film script will never be finished or be sold this year. That is why my second big idea for our next project, I have decided that I will be doing most of the writing. I cannot wait for him to finish the first one, I will be dead by the time he finishes it.

Anyway, the second script is very much about great dialogues, they are all in my head, and I need to write them. So I will even skip the long synopsis, I will jump right into the script. One thing I have learned through this, don’t waste time writing what the story will be about, just write it now. And that is what I will do this weekend.

And now I am going to bed, I’m dead. I might go to work an hour late, otherwise I will be so unproductive, I will be useless. Again I am risking my job, I could be sacked on a whim, but what can I do?

Los Angeles is a paradise, like a virtual world in 3D

2006-02-03T20:00:00.000-08:00

I don’t know what the temperature reached today in Woodland Hills in the San Fernando Valley, but it must have been 35 degree Celsius, something like 90 Fahrenheit. I slept only four hours last night and so I did not do anything today at work.

I left the office at 16h (4 pm) and I simply feel electrified. A surge of electron cloud bursts filling my body. I feel like I just got out of hibernation and I could scream and dance and sing all night long.

It is not a sexual burst, it is a creative Big Bang. I am ready to write some great stuff, accomplish something huge, anything. I even forgo doing my laundry, I am already on the beers, I have plugged myself onto the Eurhythmics Greatest Hits full blast, I am ready for all the inspiration in the world to fill me in.

It is not the choice that is lacking, I can work on my theoretical physics ideas, a new film script, my blog, even on the long overdue update of my websites. I could also work on my poetry like book that I started some time ago but kind of forgot in the last few weeks. Dear, I could even start writing a novel! Oh, I am even ready to work on my own conferences, my future company. But I’m afraid, I might already be too drunk to care about that.

Gosh, I need to plug the computer directly to my brain, maybe some of those IEEE 1394 cables would do the trick, it needs to be an instant transfer!

But the day did not start like that. For the first time ever this morning, I so not could stand hearing the voice of the Valley Girl in full bloom, that I had to leave the office at least three times. She was also feeling the burst from the Sun, she too did not do anything, she went from person to person and talked all day.

The Chinese girl gave me some looks that told me all, she really does not like me. She can’t even hide it, and there is nothing I can do about it. Yesterday she attacked me for the first time, saying that one of my jokes was not funny. She was defending the Valley Girl.

They are closer together than I thought, even if everything about their personality tells me they should clash like water and fire. They are essentially the only two Conference Managers, and what the Valley Girl worked on the previous years, the Chinese girl is now in charge of. They both feel ostracized by too much management over their head, and not enough control on anything they are working on.

And the Spanish guy who is just the assistant of the Chinese girl, appears to give himself more credit than he deserves. He calls his Manager’s conferences his. And he could almost be right there, since apart from writing the conference program, he did about just everything else. Which makes me wonder what is it exactly that the Chinese girl has done in those last five events they produced together.

Give me an assistant any day, and that’s it, I will never do anything again at work! I will simply make the hard decisions, the decisions I have made all my life whilst doing my conferences, and then tell someone else to do everything else.

Well, all that might change soon. My last report states quite clearly that assistants should be something from the past. They should produce their own events, including writing the programs. That would please the Spanish guy, he wants to own these conferences, he does not understand yet the hell that comes with that. I would not be surprised if he were to leave after three months, the time I guess it would take him to have to write three conference programs. Careful what you wish for, it is a bastard of a job.

I stopped myself from telling them to forget about the huge fairs they are organizing, because it monopolizes the Valley Girl and two assistants for over six months, so basically she can walk around doing nothing all day, and it seems completely acceptable.

I just love my little reports I have written for that company in Los Angeles. Twelve so far I believe. All very insightful of my deep and felt experience in the world of conferences. I could turn them into a book, for a very niche market. They are a piece of art now, and they had a measurable impact on that company, even if for a while I could not see that.

Enough talked about work. I have two days to decompress and do something significant. It depresses me to watch Eurhythmics videos, so much greatness, reminding me that I am not out there making things come true. Just watched the video “You Have Place a Chill in my Heart”, and it was the Californian desert and mountains of the Valley. Even a Ralph’s grocery store. It is the first time I notice that they filmed that in L.A., and it fills me once again with energy.

And “I’d love to listen to Beethoven” and “I Need a Man” have always been my favorite videos ever, and great songs and words to back it up. These three videos are building a wonderful story, and I don’t tire of watching it. Is there a woman more powerful on the planet than Annie Lennox? I don’t think so.

God knows what we would talk about if I were to ever meet her. I fear I would disappoint. She is to me what Elvis or the Beatles can be to people from the older generation. And that they were British made me think they were reachable to me, but of course, they never were and will never be. I used to work in a café just under of where Dave Stewart lives, in Covent Gardens. Same building!

Genius in action, that song “1984 Sex Crime”, it is huge, it is the crossing in time of George Orwell genius work and one of the best songs and videos ever on the music side. Sometimes events can just reach perfection, and it is one of those times.

Wooah, killing me. I need to be doing that, I need to go down in history, I need to produce things, write things, write songs. Which brings me back to Leonardo. He can make it all come true, he can place me in a position to get my songs out, I need to concentrate on that as well.

I sent him all my potential songs, but he never had the time to read any of it. I can understand, it was 250 pages long, and that was only what I thought could do great songs. I could have sent him 1000 pages worth of songs. And yet, I am at zero on that point. I need to restart from the beginning. Sit down and write the perfect new songs that will revolutionize everything.

Even if I need to lose 2 stones and sing them myself with my French accent, even if I have to figure out his Roland piano synthesizer for him in the process. These pianos are such bad technology, even the instruction manuals don’t make sense. And compatibility and connectivity with computers leaves a lot to be desired.

I am now watching the R.E.M. videos from the DVD “Pop!”. Another string of well thought stuff. Killing me. Will I become someone thinking and talking more a about creating things, than actually working at producing things?

I am all over the place now, and I am just a writer. Books, films, theatre, theoretical physics, TV, music, videos, conferences… and what else? If I had been as talented as two of my ex-boyfriends, and my best friend in Montreal, it would be even worse. I might have thought then that I had some future in painting, drawing, filming, gardening, landscape design, cooking, and many other creative stuff as well.

At least I am only talented in one domain, writing. Not my fault if it reaches so many different kinds of media. Just need to concentrate on what might have a huge impact. And at this time, I just don’t know from where it will first spill unto the world.

Yes, I am already recognized, yes, it is out there, yes I have fans from every corner of the world, but that is far from being enough. It is the world’s attention I need to catch. Change on a massive scale, that’s what I want. And less for me than for the impact that it may have, that it will have.

I have dreams of changing the world, you see. No small challenge. So don’t be surprised to read my politico-philosophical treaty one day about revolutionizing politics and justice. This has already been on my mind for over 15 years. I might just write a film script about it.

And being stuck in the South-West of America with Bush as President, is feeding me just the right thing. If the Republicans win the next elections, I’ll be ready to write the book about what not to do in politics and how the system has to change to prevent such corruption. Oh, I can see I am already ready. Just add it to the list of things I have to write tonight. I might get there eventually.

Time for another beer! I’ll definitely need it. Because somehow this will need all the inspiration in the world that I can get. I might as well open a pack of cigarette at the same time. And god knows, are they now selling these cans of oil from Texas ready to drink, shipped directly from the George Bush Airport? I will need a few of those too… a keg would do nicely, thank you very much.

I understood today what it is that I like about Los Angeles. It is that it does not appear to be a real world. It is like a computer game, a graphic adventure, the ones that I have been playing for years. It makes me feel like opening up my old CDs and live in those magnificent and sunny places with palm trees and orange trees, that I have been used to dream about to escape my terrible reality.

Los Angeles is that virtual world I have always been searching for. My freedom to a better world that, until now, only existed on my computer. I finally live in one of those paradises I have been dreaming about and living in virtually for many years.

I did not even think that orange, lemon and grapefruit trees really existed, and yet last night at Leonardo’s place, I picked up some juicy fruits from his garden. Unbelievable! Orange and lemon trees are something, but juicy grapefruits? Surely they are too heavy to grow on trees? I have them on my counter now, they smell good. I just cut into the lemon to put in my Budweiser, and dear me, it is a dream come true.

In the morning, on my way to work, I have been so not observant. It took me weeks to see my first orange tree. And now I have spotted over 12 trees bearing gorgeous oranges, lemons and grapefruits. It is amazing, something that you would only see in a virtual world in your own computer. With the weather to match it. No need to dream of a better world anymore, of better days, it is right there in your garden, on your way to work, on your lunch hour when you walk at the back of your office. In January and February no less. That tells it all.

It is going to be hard to leave this place, I should really try harder to get my baby from London here. But how? America is so closed on itself, it is a miracle that I am here at all. My ex-Line Manager in London has tried all her life to move to America, and she never succeeded to this day.

I don’t think I can leave. It is anyway so much easier to stay. I was miserable in London, for over 10 years, I have to remember that. Oh please, I have written over 10 books on the subject, shouldn’t it be clear to me by now? I am in paradise, why can’t I see it? Why can’t I understand this?

I have nowhere else to go, I have reached my destination, my long search for the perfect sunny and virtual world, Los Angeles. Any moment now I will meet some virtual characters telling me some bollocks, and it will be my game to play, my choice to make, to go somewhere on the beach to find some old treasure buried there for millennia. I have a 100% score to reach, many magical objects to find, many virtual characters to talk to, many places to visit to find some clues, and solve the puzzles.

I have reached my ultimate destination. I cannot let love stop me, annihilate this dream come true. I just can’t. It’s over. My simple life in the Valley is what I have been looking for all my life. My little most expensive studio is just perfect. Not enough money to finish the month, but who cares? It is paradise.

So much to see, so much to get to know, standing in the Topanga Canyon is all I need to feel the inspiration coming in. The thousand different scenarios for the perfect story along Mulholland Drive, all the way to Malibu. That’s around the corner, how about that?

Santa Barbara a few miles down, even if I don’t have a car yet to reach it. Leonardo has, and will bring me there tomorrow. Not sure why he is dying to bring me there, I personally only want to reach the gate of Michael Jackson’s house. But perhaps he feel there is much more to inspire me there than MJ.

Mmh, the Sun in February, hitting so hard, the weird way those palm trees grow, the red bugs with some design on their carapace I observe at lunch time. I even saw an escargot today, this is just too much for my poor mind. Everything should be dead at the beginning of February, even I feel alive. Which is a first in my case.

Tomorrow I need to get lost in the mountains, a lake, Malibou Lake if necessary, but I’ll get lost believe me. I want to walk all over these mountains of the Californian desert. I want to disappear alone for one full day in the canyons. I don’t want to show up at work on Monday, I want to die there. And haunt the place forever and ever. That is my dream, and I might just reach it, as I am so close to that perfect video game graphic adventure world. Available on PC worldwide very soon! My PC-110 Sony DV camera will insure that, believe me.

I have never, never, ever, smell grapefruits and lemons like that before. What the hell are those distribution companies do to our fruits before they reach the grocery stores worldwide? Freeze them to death, until no smell or taste remain? I could live on grapefruits now, I tell you, and I might actually do just that, since the next Ralph is one mile away from me.

No need to be idealistic anymore when you live in L.A., you can now turn to the frivolities of life, write mindless comedies… I might just do that. Life has finally reached perfection.

I knew it! Tears for Fears are British! I knew it! And yet, for a second there I was afraid they were from New Mexico. I could not have loved a band so much, if they had not been from the UK. I’m watching their greatest hits videos now, like I was ten years ago, and I’m glad they reunited. This is not mindless stuff, it is real. Already I have forgotten all about the Topanga Canyon. I’m back on track, with the virtual world far behind.

Disturbing nonetheless. That neither Roland or Curt could find success on their own, like Simon and Garfunkel never repeated their greatest songs on their own. Dear me, am I linked to Leonardo until I die? Even before we have any of our ideas out there? Is it possible that sometimes genius only exist when two great minds collide? But on their own cannot go anywhere? Why is that? Oh God!

Just spoke with Leonardo. He’s supposed to read the first batch of supposed songs I sent to him. Right now. And if he is inspired, his instructions are to write music, melody, whatever.

So I started to read what it is that he is supposed to read now. I had to stop on page 4, I was already crying more than I thought I could. How sad I have become. Some girl I know would say I’m a pussy. Somehow this should inspire me quite a poem. Maybe I should get on with it right now.

A big spamming machine, here are our brooochuuurres

2006-02-02T21:38:00.000-08:00

Today lot’s of stress at work. I think the Spanish guy went around all the girls at work to let them know that I asked if he was gay yesterday. I think they all had a good laugh about it. I can’t blame them, life is so boring in this office at the moment, despite all the background action from all these consultants they hired.

Maybe something will happen to change it all, and somehow I don’t think it will be for the better. Change is seldom for the better, which is why following changes in any office, many people leave right after. Especially if they have been there for years and were used to do their job a certain way that worked for them.

Today, despite sleeping for 9 hours yesterday, I could not stand the Chinese girl speaking, to even hear her say the word Brooochuuure with her accent is just too much for me. So you can imagine I was not in the mood to listen to the valley girl either.

And I managed to insult her badly, as everyone else in the office. When I told them about Bush cutting 40 billions in the social services area, and wanting to make the Terror Laws (Patriot Act) permanent. When I understood that the valley girl found all that very much acceptable, I said no wonder this country is going down the drain. I did not really thought that, it was meant as some sort of joke, but obviously it came out as a huge insult to all the Americans in the office.

So there were tensions, after the valley girl said that she will not discuss these things at work. I did not even feel guilt for saying such a thing, I felt disgusted and tired of this life. I don’t know what else to invent to get back on the train, to be motivated to accomplish anything. I would need at least three days off, not a weekend. Two days is just enough to decompress me and then I have to go back to work.

Dear me, I have to go back to work. Sending emails and call people for money. A woman called this morning to let me know that we were sending them too many emails and broochuuuurres. Which reminds me, that is what I will create with my conference company, a big spamming machine that will bother everyone that will have the misfortune to end up in my database.

I refused to spam people about my literary website, and now I will have to so for my company. This thought only came to me recently, and I don’t really like it. I’ll become one more big spammer on the net. I guess there are ways around this, that could make it a little bit more acceptable. Giving them the chance instantly to be out of my database, but will that be enough? I receive so much spam, if I were to want get out of all these databases it would be impossible. Especially that when you do request that, instead you confirm your email address and suddenly you are added to 20 more lists.

Real spammers have destroyed it for everyone. Not sure how I will live with all this, my conscience, bothering people, in the name of making a few bucks. Ah, if only I was selling such a great service that everyone would just flock to me. But that does not exist without great visibility. And that means marketing, telesales, publicity, other concepts I just hate and would gladly live without.

Like a young actor who has not made it yet in Hollywood

2006-02-01T23:06:00.000-08:00

Oh, what a day. Nothing of any significance happened, and yet I am dead. I spent last night helping Leonardo, my new friend in L.A., figuring out his piano (for god’s sake, he has that piano since 1997, and he still knows nothing about it). After that I helped him sending me the film script we are working on, even though he does that almost every day, 24 hours is enough for him to forget how to do this. And then I tried to help him sort out his antivirus. By the time we had finished, it was past 1 am.

I took two hours for lunch, but I still managed to work 30 minutes more tonight, to send many emails that should have been sent days ago. So it looks good.

I also got the chance to ask the Spanish guy, who has been flirting with me for weeks now, if he was gay or not. He said that he is as straight as they come. I find that hard to believe, however I believe it. So that is at least sorted.

The last two days he came at work dressing like some sort of young actor who has not made it yet. Funky, shorts, bubble hat, whatever. I asked him if he had a date or if it was for us that he decided to dress like that. For us apparently. And the Valley Girl had another one of her comments to make, she asked: what have you decided to wear today? Ah, you’re wearing everything!

He knows he is kind of cute, and he will take any flirting from anyone, even men. At the same time, the guy is fatter than me, so he can’t brag too much! Well, I’m not that fat, and he is not either, so he still has his sex appeal.

Today he referred again to the fact that he knew everything about me, that everyone knew. As if somehow they were aware of my blog and were all reading it. It made me freak out. I probed him, and he mentioned the word blog, about other of my readers having blogs about me (I did show him I think some people blogging about my books in Paris).

I think he realized he said too much and at that point he would have had to tell me that they were all reading my blog at work. At that moment, I would have deleted it. So he concocted that other excuse, that he was talking about others talking about me.

I believe he might have been talking about what the Black guy can read in the files I am sending myself home sometimes. That’s also possible. God knows.

Well, if they are all reading this blog, let’s give them something to chew on. All the girls at work are quite fat, and they are all buzzing around him, probably in love, but he is not interested. Yet, he loves the attention, he needs them to feel better about himself. And now he is exercising to lose weight. I wonder why, something must have changed, perhaps he is interested in someone after all, but not me, that’s for sure.

The only girls who are not fat in the office are the two Chinese girls and the wife of my boss. One of the Chinese girls is so annoying and rude, it does not really matter if she is not fat, she kinds of cancel the fact that she is not fat by her behavior.

The other one is so lovely, I could take her as my wife quite easily. At least she could become a friend, but I just don’t know how to make friends anymore, especially in a work environment. Anyway, I don’t have enough time for friends. Leonardo is already stretching me to the limits. And I have to remind him when it is just too much.

Oh God, I’m bored, I’m sick, I have to go to bed, it is merely 8 pm. I only live to work, I don’t write, I don’t read, I had only a beer, and a full plate of god knows what, thinking it would make me feel better, but now I’m ready to puke everywhere. What a sad unproductive life. Please someone just shoot me in the head!

I don’t even look forward to the weekend. I used to be so excited to regain my freedom, but my weekends are so boring, they have become as routine as my daily job in conferences.

Something has got to happen soon, before they find me dead drunk in my flat, weighting over 15 stones. Because I would have eaten and drunk myself to death for leading such an uninspiring life.

Just shoot me.

The Cool Spanish Guy I am working with, a Metrosexual?

2006-01-30T12:38:00.000-08:00

And after all this, which was just an appetizer, let me talk about that little Hispanic guy at work. The cool Spanish guy, as described before. I think I have been flirting a bit too much with him, only because he let it happen. So how straight is he then? Today I had to fight Gloria twice, she was suggesting out loud that I was interested in him. I had to hit her a bit and call her some names out loud. Hopefully she will calm down.

Well, at least now the cool Spanish guy knows I am interested. It is most probably a tired long running joke in my back at work that I fancy him. I even think that the Director is involved, as at one point some days ago he said that he needed some sunlight, and he went to the Spanish guy and acted weird. As if the Spanish guy was some sort of illumination or positive force. And somehow, I feel this is all down to the fact that I feel it could be that way, and everyone knows.

I certainly like to look at him, he is the only thing that makes this whole job bearable. He usually wears sandals, he has big feet, and a nice face. He seems so pure and innocent, and childish, despite his 28 years. As I said before, there is nothing threatening in his eyes, he is totally genuine. And intelligent and quick. He comes to me to correct his English, can you believe, when his English must be twice better than mine.

I can just imagine what it would be like to be in his arms for one long big night. The Earth will stop turning, that’s for sure. Love would be written all over this special event. But before I get carried away, he is most probably straight, even if I have my doubts.

First he is too comfortable with my flirting, he had girlfriends before, and apparently he had a date last week with one of them. That does not look like someone incapable of accepting his homosexuality, it sounds more like a Metrosexual. Someone who is comfortable with the thought that men could be attracted to them, but ultimately would never go any further than flirting on the edge.

So I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t want either to become the clown of the office, by going for a lunch with him, whilst the only purpose would be to get back to the office to tell everyone whatever I might have implied.

He took two photos of me today, why? What was the purpose of this? Again, I am reading too much into this. It means nothing. But his interest in me seems to have gone higher since I started to wear my black jeans, and black polo shirts, and especially my black shoes. He seemed to think that I can be cool as well. And what he does not know, is that I am light years more cool than he is, so I think anyway.

He is 28 years old, he has nothing to show for it. He is definitely two dimensional. I think I have lived enough on this earth, and in so many countries, and written so much, that I am living in at least 10 dimensions.

Which means that I will have much more to give to him than he will ever have to give back in return. It would most likely be a one way relationship, I will give, he will take. This is how empty I see him. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. A man who’s only friends are the three insignificant girls surrounding me, cannot be that cool. Unless somehow these girls were more specials than I first assessed. Which I doubt very much.

The truth is that he could enjoy this flirtation for months, when I would actually act upon it. That makes a big difference. It means that he is someone who’s not mature enough, despite his 28 years. Nothing will ever happen between us, I know that. It is a game for him. And I play it because I’m so bored in that office.

The difference is, that if he is gay at all, he’s lost. He will definitely fall in love with me as if he had never lived before, a bit like Leonardo, even though Leonardo is much more complex and had some sort of background. And it would not be certain that I will fall in love with him. Though he is so charming and cute, it would be very difficult to resist.

But one thing that being older and mature bring, is that I can stop myself from loving someone. I can understand that it will lead to disaster before it even begins. The head is controlling the body, not the other way around. It may be sad, but this is where I am at in my life.

I have a life, I have a destiny. It spawns many lifetimes, many relationships, many countries. I am going somewhere and nothing will get in the way of that destiny. I might not know where I am going, but I don’t care. I know what I want, I know what’s good for me. I know where I will be in five years time, because it will be exactly where I want to be.

He’s got no clue of who he is and what he represents. He does not even believe he has any kind of potential. I don’t even think he has any dream or goals in life. I asked him if he could write conference programs, for a report I was writing, suggesting that he should, instead of being the slave of that Chinese girl. He interpreted it as if I did not believe he could. He felt the need to prove to me that he was capable, saying that I doubted he was even intelligent. How cool is that, I ask you?

I had to tell him that I sincerely thought he could be responsible for his own conferences, and get rid of being a slave, an assistant. I don’t think it registered in his brain what I was talking about. He has no idea that I am writing reports for the bosses, on how this whole company should be. I can’t tell them either. The bosses have hired these expensive consultants to change it all, and in the end they will all agree that my suggestions are the way to go. Because I have seen the perfect way to achieve what they are trying to achieve, in many companies I worked for before.

They are not asking for my reports, I write them on my spare time. They obviously did not trust my judgment, my experience. They need to pay big money to have it confirmed to them. I don’t mind, I am beyond caring, since my single idea is to get out of this job. And yet, everything I have written in my reports so far, seems to have been observed. Even before I started. I am only realizing now that they have changed a lot before I arrived, based on my reports.

And now they are addicted, they want more from professional sources. Without understanding that it could only come from someone with the specific experience that they are in. They were not crazy when they decided to get me there in the first place. They knew I could help them change, the way they wanted. They are just incapable of admitting great work when it is there, something echoed by my Valley Girl.

Sad that I will have left them by the time they realize what they had. Sad that they will be powerless to prevent me from leaving when I do, as at that point they would want to say how helpful I have been, and how all my reports were on the dot and will lead to happiness and success. It will be too late then. I did not feel appreciated, I was pressured, I was pushed out. I am leaving with a smile on my face, feeling liberated from that nightmare.

I don’t even think that in the next two months they will be able to change my mind, that place is not a nice place to work. If people maintained themselves for so long, it must be out of necessity, good paying jobs they could not so easily abandon from fears of looking like useless people to the people they’re living with. And a lack of guts to get out there and find a better job.

These small minded people make me sick. I would have thought to meet them in Arkansas or Oklahoma, not in Los Angeles.

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 21

2006-01-30T12:31:00.000-08:00

Just two beers and I am already feeling drunk and sick. So in order to enjoy my third one, I have decided to write and to plug myself into Depeche Mode’s music. I already feel much better, and ready to drink a few more beers.

Let’s talk about work, nothing happened there today, enough said about that. Let’s talk about Leonardo, he appears to have disappeared from the face of the Earth these last two days. I will admit that I would have liked to hear his voice, even if I don’t feel anything for him. And am I glad that I don’t feel anything for him. It is clear that where he was, was with his 22 year old kiddo who has been calling him non-stop for days now.

Ordinarily this would have sent me into a spin, thank god I don’t care. I have my baby in London. And I remind him all the time now, I am preparing him for the day I will tell him that nothing intimate will develop between us. Which is sad in a way, I can fall in love so easily, but I guess a red headed guy just does not do it for me. And ultimately this might be what will save our friendship and working relationship.

I find it weird that when he was talking about his kiddo, I thought this was all in the past. And suddenly he resurfaced, Leonardo answered the phone, and instantly flew over there. Is it just the drug that gets him there? Free marihuana? Leonardo is desperately poor at the moment, and yet, very much dependent on his drug. With the rich kiddo, they get stoned, Leonardo leaves with 20 dollars worth of stuff.

Well, it could also be that Leonardo is planning to write a book about that Kiddo one day. So he is gathering more info, who knows. The last possibility is that he is still in love, and secretly desires sex, the perk of friendship as the Kiddo calls it. The weird thing is that it is obvious the Kiddo is straight, yet, he was so abused sexually, that it seems that it is the only way he can get whatever he wants from anyone. Or else he has such a strong libido, and sex is so normal to him, that whether it is a man or a woman sucking his dick, does not make much difference. I don’t know.

All I know is that he has my Leonardo under his spell again. And whatever Leo is inventing to justify the why he goes back to the kiddo, it sounds like a lot of bullshit. He is badly in love and desires sex with the young god. And he will get it. And he will suffer again.

He was already so obsessed with that kid, now it is going to take huge proportions. And I am getting tired of hearing about that semi-god who has a bestseller book written after him, and a fucking big blockbuster of a movie coming in less than three months. Kill him, that’s what I say.

And I am not jealous. Imagine what it would be if I were, if I was already in love with the Leonardo. It would be unsustainable, I would have left for England instantly, no matter the bills that would ensue for my contract for the rent. And since my employers can kick me out at a minute’s notice, I can also do the same.

Leonardo is lost. He is restarting his bad relationship with the Kiddo who, sometime ago was threatening to sue him in justice for sex with a minor. He declared himself a jail bait. And yet, Leonardo is running to him again. Ready for more crap from this, as he says all the time, a manipulator.

Well, I was talking before about four dimensional people, people with a past, the fourth dimension being time. Well, now I can talk about a full 10 dimensional Leonardo. His past has caught up with him, he is again walking in the wolf’s mouth.

You would have thought I would have done everything in my power to prevent it, and if love had been part of the equation, you could rest assure that I would have done so. However he would have just not told me anything about it, and still walk the dark path. And anyway, what do I care what he does with his life? I have known him less than three months, he had a life before me. Let him learn from his mistakes. It is obvious that despite of being aware of the dangers, he walks freely towards it, and he would under any circumstances, whatever I could say to prevent it.

I bet you by now he has experienced again the Friend with Benefits thingy. I’m sure they had sex. Maybe it will unfreeze Leonardo, make him understand a few things. Because my trauma with him has certainly been that he has been a block of ice in bed, and freaked out when my dick was on him. God, how many years would be needed to make him accept is homosexuality now? Never, most probably. Unless the Kiddo, his only love and sexual object ever, changes all that. Good luck then, I have other things to concentrate on. I don’t need that bullshit to make my life more complicated than it already is. No Green Monster, no jealousy, be happy with your life.

Usually this is where I would do a comeback on myself and admit that it bothers me terribly. That I want my Leonardo, and that this damn kiddo is taking him away from me. But not this time, I don’t feel like it, I don’t really care.

Tonight I celebrate my independence! Not only from Leonardo, but from Stephen as well. If I am destined to greatness, it is neither of them that will get me there. Only me can achieve that. I don’t need anyone else, and especially, I don’t need to depend on the friends of my friends to get there. Seems to me to be the best way to never go anywhere.

So I don’t care for Leonardo’s friends that I will never meet. The day I will meet them, is the day I will be able to do something for them, and that day, I will let them down badly. Because I have other ideas, a perfect idea of perfection, and I’m afraid to say, it does not include them. I don’t mind how great they are, what they could do for me, I will get there anyway by my own means, by my own intelligence, my own creativity. It will explode, no doubt, never mind if this is only to happen in 10 or 20 years.

I have waited 15 years before getting published. I can wait before exploding all over Hollywood. The concept is so ridiculous anyway, it sounds very much like the dreams of a child. Somehow being here gives it more credibility in the eyes of my parents, but I would have expected them to freak out and laugh out loud if I had not been here, not done what I have already done, and telling them that I am going to Hollywood. Sounds like: I’m going to Disney Land!

Maybe nothing will happen while I’m here. Perhaps I will just go back to London and forget it all. I will be able to say in a few years time: oh yes, I was there, I’ve done that, I’ve seen it all. Big deal. My success might never happen via Hollywood. Even if my trade is science-fiction, and who else on the planet has the money to invest in such projects but Hollywood? It does not make sense at all that I would be here for no reason, for nothing to happen in the end. I know that, so I know I’m talking bollocks here.

I imagined that to be much easier. Sucking a few dicks, actually enjoying it (that’s the difference here), and get all my projects produced. Simple! It does not work like that, unfortunately. It could, with the father of the kiddo, he is gay after all, and quite old, and quite successful. But I’ll never meet him, even Leonardo can’t stand the idea of seeing him again. And the son would want to get in the way, he would want to have sex with me just to stop it all. But it would not work. It has been a long time since kiddos had any effect on me.

I don’t want to have sex with someone who does not desire me in the first place. As with Leonardo, it is like having a penis on me, it turns me off. Blackmail would not work either on me, I have nothing to hide, I am pure and innocent, and if someone wants to sue me, let them, I will win every time. I have nothing to lose, since I have nothing to begin with.

But I don’t care much for that complicated scenario. Great ideas are great ideas, they go somewhere, even if it is only in cyberspace. And that’s enough for me anyway. My million plus visitors, is fine by me. Even if I don’t make any money out of it. Being greedy, brings our own destruction. Let it all come out in the open! Let my mind come out! You’ll see how far we can go.

So, I still believe I have a great destiny ahead of me. Funny, especially that despite the fact that I am in Los Angeles, nothing hints at this idea. In fact, everything points out to the biggest failure of all, never going anywhere anytime soon, complete delusion. That’s ok, I lived with that all my life, I can die with my illusions.

Anyway, I have already written a book about my stay in Los Angeles. And instead of taking a year, as it usually takes, I did that in three months. Perhaps this is my legacy.

Even if I haven’t met anyone, did not even get close. Who cares? As I said before, it is the idea, the concept of it that counts. Not what happens once you’re there, not whatever I could write about it.

I am so cynical. I don’t want any label. I don’t want to be a successful writer and be stuck writing boring TV series that I care nothing about. With my big house in the hills, and the big car that costs more than whatever people make in one year. I don’t want that lifestyle. It is too common.

I am the Marginal, I want something more, something better, something that not everyone has already gone through. God, at that point, better disconnect me from reality and plug me into a machine recreating a virtual reality. Anything else but whatever else people have already gone through. I think I still need to go to China or something. And write about it. I don’t know. Maybe I just need to die, it would be so much simpler.

Yes it would.

It does not appear like I will be able to live that Marginal life, that interesting life, I can’t even conceptualize it. I’m so disconnected right now. That’s the alcohol for you. When I think I am reaching the real me, achieving real awareness of my situation. Am I too deep for you? Bastards? I don’t care about you.

Leonardo just called, and lied. Did not take long. He said he did not see his kiddo, I don’t believe it. He saw instead Isabella, the girl who has been after him since they have met recently in a bar. God knows, she may also be a danger to our relationship, perhaps he is still willing to try a girl, since he is so blocked on his gayness.

I would not mind to be in his arms again, see where it could lead. Even if less than an hour ago it was completely unthinkable. Maybe it is the alcohol talking. And maybe the alcohol will be talking this weekend once he is here again and I am drunk. I am getting so desperate for affection, even a red headed guy would do.

It would be different now. It would not be casual sex. It would mean something. It would be weird. It would have a lasting effect. If I could get him to suck my dick now, it would give me a weird sensation, a weird pleasure, because it would not come from a stranger, but from him. We have got closer in the last few months, very close. And this is not infatuation, like it was with the Kiddo.

The truth is, I have no idea what is ahead of me. I’m willing to explore, I do not shut myself down. I am not planning my way out to London. I am going to live what it is that I was supposed to live.

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 20

2006-01-29T23:20:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning with the fear of leaving Los Angeles. Like a moment of awareness striking you and telling you: you cannot leave under any pretext, you will regret it. And I have to say, I never thought of how I would actually feel once I am back in London, perhaps in my old job in Westminster, or struggling to start my conference business without any money (as now I have decided that I did not need a loan to start that business, I just need to start selling delegate places and sponsorship deals as quickly as possible, and therefore, I no longer need a business plan, I should concentrate on my conference programs instead).

I would feel bad because this enterprise of coming to Los Angeles for six months would have led to nothing. From my definition of destiny it makes no sense. It is difficult to see where all this will lead, I don’t see myself falling in love with Leonardo, I don’t see my boyfriend in London coming here, I don’t see myself able to continue working in my actual job, I don’t see myself meeting important people in the business, and I don’t see this film script I am working on going anywhere anytime soon. It is a complete disaster, one month away from having to make my decision to leave or stay, for a departure in two months times.

January went by so quickly, it is amazing. We must have passed a patch in space where the time rate was going faster than usual, even this blog has suffered from fewer entries as usual, and I cannot blame Leonardo, I barely saw him this month compared with December and November.

My psychic friend, even though said that he saw me living in this huge house here in the hills in the near future, told me yesterday that he already knows that I will be leaving Los Angeles, that I need to, to realize perhaps that there is nothing for me in London apart from Stephen.

And then, what he does not realize, is that I could never come back to Los Angeles once I go back. It would be impossible. So I have to decide very carefully. And I might not have the luxury of a life changing event in my life to help me decide. I won’t be handed over a big contract in the film industry, I won’t see some sort of possibility for this to come true. So of course I would be thinking of going back to London. That thought is depressing me now.

At least he says he saw that our film script will make it big, it will change our lives. And I think so too now. What started out with another 20 pages I wrote for a film idea, with many new concepts for sci-fi, is now becoming a very well written sci-fi novel by Leonardo.

I told him again yesterday that I did not like to be fidgeting in the background while he writes, he assures me that without me none of this would be happening, since I tell him exactly what to write on a daily basis. I find it amazing myself that I have the whole story in my mind, to the details of every scene.

One cousin in prison, the other in hospital

2006-01-29T09:17:00.000-08:00

My mom just called, my cousin is in prison and my other cousin is in hospital, she almost died. One of the other passengers who were in the car accident has many broken things, and the other one, as my cousin who is now in prison, have nothing.

Apparently there was ice on the road. It is so common these car accidents in my region in the North of Québec, it is amazing that we are still all alive today. I myself had quite an accident once, and I thought I was going to die.

What is less usual, well not exactly, but my cousin was three or four times over the alcohol limit, and everyone else in the car were also completely drunk and were only 15 years old.

I then called my sister, who will have her new baby in less than 11 days. She was so hyperactive, in the end she hung up the phone on me, despite the fact that I was quite laid back. I could not believe it. I then called my father, but he was not there. I spoke with his wife, and she said that with pregnant women, it was normal to be freaked out for no reason. She said to call my sister one week after she had her baby to congratulate her, and everything will be forgotten.

Perhaps, but I call my sister once every six months, if she is lucky. I must have called her less than 10 times in the last 15 years. I can assure you that it will be a very long time before I call her again. Even if we love each other very much and are usually very close.

All of this was quite a shock, but I am watching Ship in a Bottle now, Star Trek the Next Generation, the episode about Sherlock Holmes and James Moriarty. I thought how great an actor Daniel Davis is, and how perfect he would be in the film script I am working on. And then I did a little bit of research and realized that he was in the TV series The Nanny. I wonder if he could still be the right actor now, if he is going to be recognized as that butler. I would certainly hire him if I could, and if this film is ever made.

So sad that my cousin is in prison now, and the other one is dying in the hospital. My mom was saying that a lot can happen in one day, even in one hour. She is certainly right there. And yet, nothing has happened in my life in the last three months. It is just as well, the only big life changing events that happen overnight, are usually the most destructive ones. The productive events in your life seem to take months if not years to come to any conclusion.

I can be sacked at one minute’s notice

2006-01-23T21:07:00.000-08:00

George is finally gone, just like that. He is supposed to come back to help a bit with sales, but he is no longer working here. I have to say, it is one thing to have contracts that can be terminated at one minute’s notice, it is another to leave someone in the hole like that, especially when they have a family and children.

This impossibility to plan your life ahead at least one month in advance, is quite disturbing. Moreover that the guy has been working here for at least 6 years. Unbelievable that after all that, he had no security whatsoever, because apparently he was working on a contract basis.

Well, I have to say that I don't find that very inspiring and I should be prepared any day to be told that I have been sacked. And at that point I am not certain what I will be able to do to pay my apartment and plane ticket, I would just hope that it would come at a time right after I get paid or close to being paid. I have absolutely no motivation today after what I just heard. I feel I will be sacked as well any day now.

However I think that in his case there was more than what we have been told, obviously. I won't be the one to hear about the gossip, that's for sure. I guess the bosses did not know after all that he was developing his business plan for the last two years about that pyramidal scheme of insurance selling. I guess they did not see clearly through his game, they would have realized that he would never have made it in that scheme. Never made any money and probably would never have made the jump.

According to my valley girl, this had nothing to do with him being laid off. And apparently he will get unemployment insurance. And apparently any employer can sack any of their employees at 5 minutes notice without giving real good explanation or justifying it. The employees can do the same.

So I guess that if as an employer you prefer to make sure you can get rid of your employees fast, and don't really care if you lose any of your best employees fast as well, than America is the perfect place for business. I presume it is quite convenient for employers, and I should have known that there would be some sort of capitalist way of doing business here which would be more logical than what Canadians and Europeans have been used to in their cozy little safe jobs.

In those countries, employers often have a damn hard time getting rid of people they don't want or who are useless. And that is why they play this hard game with the personal department where they eventually find a way to make your life so impossible, that you will either leave or they will eventually be able to get rid of you on a stupidity or something.

In a way the American system, even if it leaves you in the shit and does not give you the time to find another job, it certainly spare you the psychological nightmare of going through the long process of being sacked via 3 warnings and multiple hard meetings, etc.

America does not really care about its people, that much is obvious. They would not provide adequate health system, social securities, any sort of security at work or in life, and yet it does collect a high percentage of taxes, and employees still have to pay for their health and dental insurance every month, quite a lot of money actually.

America only cares for what can make money, to make it more successful, the key successful point to be profitable as a whole. They have pushed the ideals of capitalism to the limits, where only companies now have any rights and liberties. And that way they produced a very successful and rich country, with more rich people than anywhere else in the world. They also created a comfortable middle class which profits from all this richness, but are most likely to be slaves to their jobs and living near the depression.

And finally, America has left a lot of people living in such poverty, that there are probably as many people in this country who are hungry right now than what you would find in Africa.

I think it is interesting from the point of view of history to have at least one country that has pushed the idea of capitalism to its limits, and I would not have seen this for myself if I had not come here in the first place. Let's see where all of this will lead them to. Who knows who is right in the end?

Phew, now I can I speak. Before I was at work, so I had to sound nice just in case the Black guy could read. I am so disgusted that he was sacked like that, such a nice guy. I hope he was ready for his new job in that pyramidal thing, even if it is temporary. Hopefully he will make some money there. If he is that successful, perhaps they will give him great potential contracts. Of course, this is if they still believe in his potential, considering that he was sacked.

Bof, I don’t feel like talking anymore. Stephen just called. I was worried for no reason this weekend. He still loves me very much and he is still faithful. And I believe him, at least that’s one person who does not lie to me, so I hope. One person I can actually trust for a change.

Who should have been sacked, it is those two girls, the valley girl and the Chinese one. Who have cost the jobs of so many before through their own incompetence. They successfully blamed their inadequacy on the ones under them. I had quite a conversation with Gloria about them today, she can’t stand them. They sound nice, but they stab her all the time, especially the valley girl.

There is always a bitch in any conference office that will always keep track of everyone’s movement, and will love to make a big deal of if you disappear for five minutes when you were no supposed to. The valley girl is like that. If you go to lunch for too long, she will find a reason to be looking for you and will go and ask everyone in the company where you are and why you are not at your desk, and that you were gone for two hours, etc. I have met them all my life, there is always one like that. And of course, when they are late, no problems, no one is there to do the same to them.

And my valley girl is always late at the moment, she seems to have problems getting to work. And every time, being so perfect, she calls the office to let them know she will be one hour late. And every time we receive an email saying she will be late. I must have 30 of them by now, so she should worry about her own schedule instead of trying to denounce everyone else for the little freedom they try to take back from the company.

I did not have to tell Gloria that I found their voice annoying, that’s the first thing she said. And she even does a great imitation of the valley girl. Gloria did say that the valley girl could be helpful at times, and very nice, and this is also true, I have to admit. She just appears to be incapable of thinking before she speaks, it comes out naturally automatically, and sometimes she can be very rude or insulting. I’m glad I’m not under her, I would have been sacked by now.

One more thing, the lost of our salesman had a horrific effect on all of us. We have all been promoted to salesmen as well. Now I will have to sell sponsorship deals and exhibitor’s space. Something I am certainly not enjoying. Cold calling, asking for money, being hung up on the phone. Not counting how long that will take, considering what we already have to do to finish these conferences in no time.

The one positive thing about this is that I will finally learn the only thing I had not learned in my 10 years in conferences. Sales of SPEX. After that I would guess that I will not be afraid to pick up the phone and ask for money. I might learn a thing or two that will be useful for my future company.

And obviously, all that news today made me want to go home and work on my own business. The only thing that stopped me is Stephen, saying that neither of us will be able to get the money to start that business. Me because of my so-called bankruptcy, and him because, if he puts the apartment for collateral, his parents will never forgive him and will disinherit him. Not counting that his mother had enough of me, and would probably hope by now that I will remain here and Stephen in London.

I have been there before, my first boyfriend and his mother, freaking out when I left for Paris and brought along her son to Paris and London. Her wish was realized, our relationship was over before we came back. But she regretted, me no longer being here. Sebastian slept with something like 50 people and was still depressed, and then met a drug addict that made is life a misery for two years, before finally getting back to normal with someone who looked just like me.

What Stephen’s mother does not know, is that if our relationship ends, Stephen will die of an overdose. And without me in his life for the past 11 years, he would certainly be dead by now. I should have told her that before I left. As it stands, I was hiding in the toilets when she last visited, I could not confront her. I wanted to say goodbye, but she left too quickly. And Stephen was not pleased about that.

I will still do my business plan, you never know.

Could my baby have met someone else in London?

2006-01-22T20:33:00.000-08:00

Funny, I woke up today and I tried to reach Stephen. Yesterday he was not there, and today it seems that he is somewhere else again. I was wondering if what I thought would never happen, could have actually happened. Could he have met someone in London?

It would only be fair, considering what I did in L.A., even if it has been a disaster. And now I am ready to be faithful again, even if that means no sex for three months. First because I owe it to him, and also because I understand now that I love him more than I could love anyone else. And I know now that we will get back together one day, whilst when I moved here I considered that this might mark the end of our relationship.

For the last two days he has not been home, and he had a few gay people buzzing around him at work, even though he would never say anymore than that to me. Is it possible that he found someone else? He might have gone to these gay bars, talk with a few people, god knows, it is certainly possible.

Well, good luck for the guy who will end up with him: heroine addiction, crazy behaviors, virtually no sex for weeks if not months without first begging, suffering someone with a verbal diarrhea problem, with more debts than England. Have I covered everything? You can only love someone like that after spending ten years with them and found out about all these little trifles along the way.

At the same time, I have to admit, that if he was to tell me that he has met someone, it would in a way force the issue. It would liberate me from the return to England option. I would not go back there to start a new life, I already have one in Los Angeles. I would feel as lost there than here. And suddenly that great huge house in the Malibu or Santa Monica State Park would not appear so crazy after all. My whole life could change forever and I could be determined to succeed here in Hollywood.

You will note that I am no longer in crisis this morning, I keep a great memory of my little trip of yesterday around town, I’m back to normal. Even if I am still a bit freaked out and that I am not certain what I will do today.

I slept 12 hours. Again I had those weird dreams about my father and my sister. It’s been three days in a row now, never mind the phone bill, I think I will call them both today, something might be going on over there in the North of Canada, and of course if I don’t call, I’ll be the last one to know in six months time when they decide to call.

Going back to work on Monday, makes you wish for an earthquake

2006-01-21T20:17:00.000-08:00

Now I think I am going to bed. I’m going to try to forget this day. And tomorrow I won’t do anything, so perhaps the day will seem long, and going back to work on Monday will not come so fast. Another week there might be just what I need to tip me over the edge. When the valley girl will open her mouth to shout with her nasal voice, as she always does, I will have to contain myself to prevent me from hitting her in the face. Because I am reaching my limit of annoyance.

The same with the Chinese girl who has the most annoying and loud voice, while thinking the world of herself, and being so condescending about everyone else. She needs to get back on earth. I don’t know what she has to prove, what she has gone through in her life to reach that point, but she seems blind to the fact that she has turned into a monster and I just can’t bear it anymore.

I will also have to work with the Senior Conference Producer, who is becoming more patronizing by the day with me, when I have as much experience as him, and my conference programs have always looked ten times more elaborate than his, and I worked on them alone.

And yet I am helping him to produce that crap event. And not only that, he also has another Chinese girl working for him on this. What the heck has he done on that conference apart from writing two miserable and meaningless pages that I can’t even understand? It makes no sense, and yet it will bring a hundred delegates because… whatever, the subject is of interest to the people who will attend. Even if they will have to go to Utah for this.

Right, I will need at least one full day to prepare myself mentally to go back there for a whole week. Makes you wish that an earthquake, a hurricane or even bird flu will hit Los Angeles next week, to prevent me from doing so… knowing my boss though, it would not stop him from expecting that conference to be finished within two days instead of a month.

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 19

2006-01-21T20:15:00.000-08:00

Two days ago Leonardo told me of a dream he had, about going to that kid’s house whom he had sex with and which has turned into a nightmare for him. He dreamt that he went there because he was invited by the kid, but that the father’s kid was there instead. And then the kid came home with a friend, almost creeping in whilst Leonardo was talking about the song he wrote about their relationship in the past. Leonardo said that he did not think the dream meant anything because he did not feel the usual twitching when he woke up, and that it did not seem to be like his other lucid dreams.

This morning he calls me to let me know that yesterday (last night) his dream came true. He went to these people and everything happened just has he dreamt it. Something important must have happened last night, and in the dream he woke up just as the kid arrived. He will tell me all about it later today when we go and meet his other dying best friend, a woman fighting for her life.

Is he lying to me? Is it just that he had sex with that kid again and the only way he could prepare me for it was to tell me he dreamt about it the day before, and in fact, he met that kid two days ago instead of last night? What would be the point of lying about that? To make it more legitimate, part of destiny, that he could not fight against it?

Let’s assume it is true. What was the significance of the dream then? To prepare him? Or was it so emotionally charged and filled with some sort of weird energy, that it crossed into his dreams a few days before? And the dream was useless after all? He could have decided last night to not go there in the first place, he had the dream before. Does it mean that he had no choice but to go, or else the dream would have never happened in the first place? These are all interesting questions.

If after the dream he had decided not to go, then he would have gone back in a time loop in his life and he would never had the dream before. Even though he would have had it, in a different timeline or fluctuating reality where past, present and future mix altogether to become meaningless. Perhaps he can learn to change his life for the better, instead of just walking right through the warnings that he appears to be sending himself in the past.

However I have not heard the story yet, and perhaps something positive will come out of all of this. If he had sex with the kid, it would make it easier for me to tell him that I do not wish to pursue a relationship with him, just friendship. Because this is how I feel like at the moment, but since I don’t know about if my feelings could change in the future, it is difficult to admit to him at this time. He sleeps here tonight, so maybe tomorrow I will feel different. We’ll see.

I just came back from a whole day with Leonardo. I met his friend. We did the usual tour of the canyons around here and a few towns, and Los Angeles.

I was in a weird mood all day. I could have shot myself in the head instead of doing anything today. My deep existential crisis mode came back and lasted the whole day, on the kind of scale I was suffering when I returned to Canada after London, and I simply could not stand it. I was simply depressed and could no longer understand why I was alive and what this whole world we live in meant.

I call this my moments of awareness. And when it happens, I feel I have let myself be blind for quite a while, especially if it has been sometime since I last felt like that. The feeling that there is something wrong with the universe we live in, that it is all a lie, and that there is something else behind all the smoke that we cannot see. Life is just a game that I just do not want to play. And I am nowhere near knowing anything about what is, what I could call the real world, for a lack of a better word.

Funny enough, it might be this film script that we are working on that brought that crisis. Leonardo’s structure of the universe, which by the way goes much further than our own universe, and the idea that I am not allowed to discuss here, might have made me feel that we are much more insignificant that I first realized. And that anything we could ever accomplished in life is completely meaningless and a waste of time.

I can’t believe that yesterday I spent hours working on my business plan to start my own business, that I was all excited at the idea of finally get rid of the boss and making money. And today I fall flat on my face, becoming all philosophical and all, and wondering why I am alive and if it would make any difference at all if I were to die tonight. That’s quite a shift in my thinking, I tell you.

And what is it that prompted all that? I don’t know. Is it that Leonardo met his own kiddo last night, the one he was promising himself he would always stand clear from because he was too dangerous? It had quite an impact on me, I have to say. He was in love with that kid, he obviously still is, it has been less than six months since this whole sexual thing happened between them.

At the same time, I don’t think I could ever love Leonardo, and the thought of sleeping with him again, and that he would sleep here tonight, is perhaps what freaked me out all day. I was going to tell him that I did not want sex tonight, I did not want to try, because I think our first two times together really sort of traumatized me in a way that I cannot even begin to explain.

So I forced myself to tell him that he was probably right to go and see his kiddo last night. And now I simply don’t care what he does. He was still talking about “when we will live together in our house”, and that we would invite friends and he will cook for them, etc. Well, I say that he is either not a psychic medium, or today was just a weird day and eventually I will end up in his arms for many years to come. Something he might have seen already and he is not telling me.

In fact, today, going around the mountains in Malibu was about that. Finding that house he says I will eventually live in that he saw in his dreams. He could recognize the two houses he saw, if he could see them now. So we went around the area he felt it was in, but we did not find the houses.

Funny that we were trying to find out about a vision he had about my future here in the mountains, when today I virtually made my decision that I don’t like it here, I don’t want to live here. And if I have to sacrifice a promising career in Hollywood by going back to London, I thought that this is exactly what I will have to do.

I don’t think anymore that if my baby in London was here with me, everything would be fine. It is not only him that I am in love with, it is the life we have led for the last ten years in all these towns in England. It is also Europe that I am in love with, because I include France and Germany in all of this. After living there for 11 years, nothing can compare with it. Not even the wonderful canyons and mountains of Los Angeles, packed with all these great houses owned by the greatest stars, writers and producers the world has ever seen. I did an overdose of that today, I’m not impressed. I am only starting to recover now, since I came back to my familiar little room in Woodland Hills.

Of course, the worst thing is that this little trip around here, despite the fact that I was mostly not in the mood, will probably still have a great and positive impact on me, becoming more familiar with Los Angeles, and will make it harder for me to leave. I know that.

I recognize places now, we follow the same roads, it is becoming familiar to me. We followed the whole Mulholland Drive, or whatever it’s called, through the mountains, and this should have been the most exciting thing ever for me. Instead I could only think about how lost I was, and could only remember that I am working on a conference happening in Salt Lake City in Utah, such an alien concept to me. Too much exotism that I could bear at the moment, when all I wanted was to barricade myself between my four walls.

The truth is that I did not want to spend the day with Leonardo today. I did not want to meet his dying friend which looked exactly like my grand mother who died a few years ago. I did not want to be in that million dollar house overseeing Calabasas in such a view, that people would kill to live there.

I wanted to jump in the car with my Stephen, and go somewhere in England to drive somewhere. Visit Yorkshire or something. Go to Earl’s Court to a concert, or Brixton, anything. I wanted my life back, see my cats, kiss them, sleeping with them all night long in my arms, as I have been doing for years. That’s what I wanted. And leave behind Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, and that office and conference job I can’t stand. That white building with a few palm trees in the car park. That run I do four times a day with my bicycle to go there and back to my flat.

I think I have reached my quota of being here, it has barely been three months. And it will be another three before I can leave. God knows what can happen in three months, but so far not much has happened, and so I can guess that not much will happen in the next three months. However three months is not really giving it a chance, and six is certainly long enough for something to develop. So I should not jump to any conclusion.

It does not help either that everyone I speak with has been betrayed by most of their best friends, and that people here don’t appear to be nice at all. They all live in this weird state of paranoia, they cannot trust anyone. Well, Leonardo at least, and I just hope that his experience is unique in these matters. I don’t particularly feel the need to meet his friends’ actors and writers at any rate now.

And his love affair that turned sour with that kid simply disgusts me. I don’t want to hear about it anymore. I don’t want his deep psychological problems to become mine. They also smoke hashish last night like crazy, and the kiddo gave him some. And today Leonardo felt the need to smoke it twice today in front of me in his truck. And I really did not like it.

My boyfriend in London might be on Heroine, at least I never had to look at him injecting it or smoking it. I never knew about it. That’s another thing I will have to tell him that I don’t want him to do in my presence. And I feel bad about it, because from his point of view it would be like telling him to not smoke cigarettes in my presence.

And I don’t think he told me all the truth about his meeting yesterday. Maybe they had coke, maybe they had sex, maybe god knows what else happened. And it is just a bit too much to be worried about that, when I don’t even like the guy that way. He has become too important in my life, he kind of imposed himself and stole all of my time.

We either speak on the phone for hours or we meet for days. That’s just too much. I want to get back to normal. I want to distance myself from him. I want my life back, even the one I had in Los Angeles before he came into my life. If he can feel any of what I feel right now with his psychic powers, I bet he will have horrible nightmares tonight. Let him call me and ask me if somehow I am not being fair to him. I will tell him all.

His friend that I met today, she said that I was very good looking. I thought he was telling her everything, but she did not know who the kiddo was. I realized I made a mistake there by telling her that Leonardo met him last night. When I asked Leonardo what his other two best friends would say about him seeing the kiddo, he said that he would not tell them about his meeting last night. When I enquired about why, he freaked out and I understood that I went too far in my personal questions. That he was getting annoyed that, for once, he was not the one wanting to speak about the kid, but I was the instigator of the subject. He was annoyed and said that he was not supposed to answer the phone, and that the kiddo insisted three times that he should come over, and he did in the end.

He also said that he would not tell his two other young friends because they would tell him it was a mistake. They have a tendency to tell him what to do and what not to do. And he did not like it. Finally I got something out of him, he was no longer mister nice. He is a human being after all. And I also understood that he tells me much more than he tells any of his other “best friends”.

Let’s talk about those two other young guys with whom he developed an excellent friendship over the years. One is filthy rich via his parents, the other is totally poor and has issues with a terrible family. They are both in their early 20s, are both good looking, and never had, apparently, a real girlfriend before. It sounds to me that they are both gay.

However a lot of the porn of the poor one is composed of women, and the rich one had his first girlfriend ever six months ago, and it will finish next week when she goes back to her weird country. Sounds to me that they are both gay, in the closet, secretly love Leonardo, but since they all have the same psychological problem in accepting their “disorder” as him, none of them are capable to make a move.

No wonder they all want to meet me badly, since they’ve heard so much about me, and how great I am, and how a miracle I have been in Leonardo’s life, even though I feel I have not done anything to deserve any of this. And I feel terrible because eventually I will have to tell Leonardo that I don’t want to develop a relationship with him, and it will hurt him.

At the same time, I think he can happily live with a simple friendship, since sex wise he his blocked in his mind anyway. The thought of having sex seems to repulse him as much as he appears to want it, as he asked to sleep here tonight and I had to tell him that I was in full existential crisis mode and would prefer some solitude to write instead.

Again, his deep psychosis is rapidly becoming mine. And I don’t need that shite right now in my life, not when I already have my boyfriend that I love dearly waiting for me in London. The only thing that is preventing me to call him right now is my last phone bill of $330. And I thought telecommunication in this world was getting better and cheaper, with so much capacity and all, and that the deregulation was going to bring prices down, I almost had a heart attack! It is $100 per hour, simple. Bring me Internet Telephony as quickly as you can, I’ll get rid of my normal land line at the first opportunity. To think that I organized the first conferences on the subject 10 years ago, and that it is still not here now, is a sign of times. The human race is not going anywhere any time soon.

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 18

2006-01-19T19:09:00.000-08:00

I have frightened the Leonardo tonight. Well, what do you expect? He showed up uninvited again at the same time that I arrived from work. Stayed long enough for me to get very drunk. So in the end he got to see some other side of me. The pessimistic and ugly side of me.

I had to tell him how I did not believe in ever meeting his great friends, and the desire to meet them had nothing to do with us working on that film script. Only him interests me, basically at this time, and what we can create together. Any other option should have been worrying to him anyway, it would mean that I am only interested in him because of his possible contacts, and that I did not care about him in the first place. Not sure if I was able to communicate that to him tonight, I guess not, I was quite off the wall. Too many beers I’m afraid.

The thing is, he is so engrossed in the one project that we are working on at the moment, he thinks there was nothing before it, and that there will be nothing after. For me it is just one project, and we should not forget everything else in parallel, and other projects we should work on. Because that one project we are working on might not go anywhere, and we need something else to fall back on, to believe in, to work on.

Maybe I am the realistic one of the two, when surely he should be the one who knows best in these matters. He has been in more than one hundred films, I don’t care if he only was a figurant or in supporting roles, that’s more than I will ever be able to conceptualize in my life or learn from.

What I tried to make him understand, is that despite the great success of his friends, things are different for us. It will not fall from the sky, hard work is required, and we need to be on the dot everyday and work hard at making anything happen.

Others had it easy, and from the day of their big break, everything just came naturally. Which is far from being our case. In our case, hard work is required, and even then, it might never happen, no matter how intelligent and wonderful it is.

He’s living in another world, where everything happens easily to everyone. While nothing happened to him so easily. Easy to forget when you are surrounded by success, the success of others, even when they are your best friends.

But then again, I am worried for no reason. The guy has it, he is brilliant. He will get us there, no two ways about it. Why he has not achieved that on his own before my arrival is a mystery, because it is obvious that he has it, more than I. He obviously needed a catalyst, and I am it. So it is going to happen now, only because I came into his life, and that is why he fell head over heels over me. Sad when you meet people with so much talent, but need something to trigger it, me.

God only knows where this will end and what will come out of it. I’m listening to Morrissey right now, and he sings about Battersea Park, a song about a fatty. And I have met a guy a long time ago who was adamant that this song was about him. I have so much history myself about Battersea Park, including a love story with the most beautiful and wonderful young man with whom I worked with in Victoria in conferences, that I don’t need Morrissey to dream about that.

And yet, it convinces me that London is for me, and that I will die there. I don’t care about how many years I have to waste in Los Angeles, but one day I’ll be back in London, I’ll live in Battersea Park, and that road that follows the Thames from Earl’s Court to Parliament Square. I can’t live without it, I understand that now. It is just a question of time. And my baby in London is my only connection to it all. I bet he won’t come to L.A. And that I will join him back in time. Might be a year, I’m sure he can wait. As I can.

My baby in London, god, how I love him. He is everything to me, I don’t think I could love anyone else like I love him. I miss him so much, even if it is nice to have some freedom in Los Angeles now. Ultimately I’m going back to him, faithful completely, like it has been for many years before.

Oh dear, I love him so much, I’m crying again. And it is not just him that I love, it is London. And it can only come with him, it is a package. And I see that more clearly now that I have got out of it for a while.

If it is all that Los Angeles is, to meet the right people, then the day you have met them, you can leave right away. This connection will still exist, and then you can go back to Old England, the only livable place there is in this world. And still rip the profit from your eclectic and short stay in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles is growing on me, but I doubt it will ever be what London and the rest of England has been able to impress on me. It is too late. I had the time to visit every single town in that country, and this love affair is just beginning. I’m still crying for my huge lost. Nothing could replace it, not even Los Angeles. I’m going back, there is no question about it now, though I’m quite drunk and I may think differently tomorrow. But I would not hope so. Los Angeles pales in comparison to England, there is no question about it.

Everyone I have met here so far, are just not real. They are a caricature of life, and could be described as clowns, totally disconnected from the real life I have come to understand in time. None of them are real, how could they, they are so disconnected, it is amazing. We’re not living in the same world, that much is certain.

And that is talking without even having met the celebrities, the ones supposed to be completely off their head, with nothing in common with anyone of us. I’m just talking about normal people, they don’t appear normal to me, they are something I cannot deal with and that I have no wish to connect with. These are people who don’t really live, they have gone through a lot, and yet, it is meaningless, as they are so disconnected. I can’t explain it.

They do suffer, but it is more like a Hollywood film than real life. That’s the only way I can describe it. As if they suffered, but not really, as long as they have a story that could become a film or something, as if their suffering was not that real anyway to begin with. I don’t know.

They seem plastic to me, I cannot believe any of them, they don’t seem real to me. There is always that idea at the back of my mind that it could do a great movie, and therefore, they cannot live normal lives, and it shows. None of them touches the ground anymore, not sure if they ever did. I don’t like it, this is fake, a fake world.

And I have been so fake myself all my life, you would have thought I would fit perfectly into their world. But I don’t. I don’t care to succeed or die. Better continue my simple life in England then, I do miss it. With my baby, who is very real to me. No pretense, no bullocks, just real life.

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 17

2006-01-15T18:55:00.000-08:00

Leonardo takes so much of my time, that I can’t even finish my sentences in my own blog. As I was trying to say, he sees our relationship so consummated already that he talks of moving together, when the guy has never yet touched my dick or laid a hand on my body.

At the same time, the guy is a psychic medium which manifests itself in his dreams. He sometimes has vivid dreams and so far he said that they all came true to the detail. So not only he can see the future, but on top of it, he cannot change it. He said that he never tried to change it, so perhaps he could.

Since his father’s death, he never had any more vivid dreams. And before his father’s death he had a whole string of dreams about it, he even blacked out at his father’s funeral and could not remember anything of what happened.

Since I came into his life, he started having these dreams again, and they are now about me. Not my death, and if it was he might not tell me, he said, but about our future together.

He saw me living in a huge house in the hills somewhere around here in California, I was rich and my mother was helping me dress for a special happy occasion. Leonardo was there, planting trees, and in the bedroom where I was looking at the ceiling, feeling guilty about something I had done. Another girl there was saying that I was not being very fair to him. That “him” was the problem.

To whom was I being unfair to? About what? This dream is a vision of the near future, three to five years at most. And Leonardo immediately assumed that the person I was not being fair to was him, when in retrospect it could have been anyone else, including Stephen in London (most likely).

So Leonardo called me this morning, almost in a panic state, asking me what it was that I was not telling him. How was I being unfair to him. Can you believe? He accused me of not really signing the contract agreement between us, that I signed with my three initials only instead of my full name, and therefore voiding the contract. He thought my name was not my real name in the first place.

Is this paranoia that will develop into something that will quickly get out of control? Is it just that he has been so played around in the past by virtually all the people he thought were his friends, that now trust is the most difficult thing for him to give?

My signature is my signature, whether it is my full name or my three first initials. The contract is fine, so it is certainly not what he was seeing in his dream. What could it be then? What is it about? God only knows, until at least he has another dream which will give us more data. And I certainly want to hear about it, because if I will be unfair to anyone in the future, I better be aware of it and make sure it does not happen. My conscience would not allow it, as his dream appears to be indicating.

Will I be forced to be unfair then? Will I have the choice? When dealing with third parties, I might not ultimately be responsible. And yet, feel responsible in some way. At this time we simply have not enough data. However if he has these dreams now, maybe it is more connected to the present than we think. And maybe we have all the data we need. Something needs to be resolved, but what?

The only thing I can think of, is that at the moment I am very much in two minds about him and our future relationship together. Yes, he can be my best friend, he can remain so forever. But can I fall in love with him? Can I enjoy sex with him? I am not so sure. I still love my Stephen in London, I want to finish my days with him no matter what happens here in Los Angeles.

At some point I am afraid to say, I will have to tell Leonardo that I am sorry, but this will remain a friendship. Now, this cannot be said at this time, since I am between two minds and I am no psychic. I don’t know how I will feel tomorrow, in a few weeks time, or even months. Something might grow between us, I just don’t know. But if yesterday was any indication of the future, and perhaps this is what prompted his vivid dream, then we have a good idea that it just won’t work between us intimately.

It did not help that he arrived here Friday night at the exact time that I came back from work. So I did not have the time to even clean the apartment. He also had to go to the doctor to get his cancer spots burned with frozen hydrogen. So he had all these bubbles over his face and body, and the word cancer spot, even if there is no cancer in this, but could develop in time, is not really appealing.

I was already wondering how I would actually want to be close to him after all that happened the first two times. I am starting to get a blockage as well, from fears that we might do things he might not enjoy.

So when we went to bed, at five in the morning, completely dead I might add, I was not in the mood and he felt bad. He sort of winged that he even used his coconut shampoo to be more attractive to me. It was the whining of a child. I did not know what to make of that.

But I told him he could take me in his arms if he wanted to, and he debated the idea in his mind for quite a while, and decided finally that he would need to have smoke much more grass to do that. He did ask me if I would stop him or reject him if he were to scratch my tummy and grab my dick. I said no, that he was very much welcome to do it.

I was however not in the mood, even if I did not say so exactly. I said I was tired and that we would do more the next morning. And then we did not do anything the next day. It must have left him inadequate, or filled with regrets. I don’t know.

I spent more than 200 dollars in our two days together. I am not usually counting my money, but every time I do at the moment, I know I am one step closer to never buy my used car. It does not matter anymore since my phone bill came in yesterday, and it is $330. So I can no longer buy a car.

We went to eat at Maggiano’s, cost me $70. We went to eat at Bob’s Big Boy on Riverside, another $25. Gas for his car, $20. Cigarettes and alcohol at my place, $30. Gay bar in Studio City, $31. Conversion of a DVD from PAL to NTSC for his actor friend, $65. And every time, I saw my car getting away from me, and I let it all happen willingly.

I don’t blame him, he has no money whatsoever and needs to borrow at high interest rates of 40% just to survive. So I don’t think that he is a leech at all, so that is not exactly a problem. However I will not be able to sustain such expenses in the future, that is certain. And I feel he knows anyway.

Well, at least we had an excellent weekend together, of which I will certainly remember for the rest of my life. We had great discussions about our film script and other ideas. We also went for a whole tour of the studios in Burbank. The Moon in the sky and the black clouds at night (unusual for L.A.) were just so unreal, it could have come out of a vampire Hollywood film.

And he looks just like Ron Howard, and I think people believe he is him. When we were at the Bob’s Big Boy restaurant in Burbank, it was weird to see people looking at us. It gives me some idea of what my life could be in the future if I get to be with known people, though I am not particularly looking forward to it. I hate all that crap of knowing the right people and trying to get into their lives.

Leonardo showed me the apartment of his actor friend, and at first he could not find the place, and pointed out to me the wrong building on the wrong street. My God, when was it last that he met with him? And then the right apartment was showed to me, and it was actually almost identical to the first one, so I believe the mistake was genuine.

In the gay bar in Studio City he was especially interested in “if other people would look at him”. And many did, as he looks like a truck driver, and therefore was the most masculine guy in there. Also that we were in Studio City next to Universal Studios. The place was filled with wannabe actors and one talked to us. Probably thinking that being older than the rest of the crowd, we were some big wig of the industry. When he realized that we were not, he disappeared quickly. I’m telling you, if I ever meet another one of those wannabe actor in my life, I’m gonna start shooting them.

Desperate for a way out

2006-01-12T19:52:00.000-08:00

It is fitting that just at the end of last year, a few days ago, I was saying that this New Year would be my best ever. I was of course talking about my potential success in Hollywood. However, the single first idea that seems to have taken shape in my mind on the first day of the year had nothing to do with Hollywood.

What has been on my mind is that I am ready. I am ready to start my own business. And funny enough, it is that I have worked in L.A., and learned about how they do things here, also in my last job where I learned everything about what I will need for my business plan, that I am now ready to start my own conference business.

It is perfect, this is what I need to free myself from any obligations at any time. And in time I will be able to hire someone to do what I am supposed to do in that conference business, and if it becomes necessary for me to work on a film script for a month, it should not be a problem.

It is also after researching a whole conference about venture capital and private equity at work, that I realized that many people out there have more money than they know what to do with it, and are dying to invest in just about any crazy idea out there. And the beauty of it is, that to start a company, you don’t need any money. You just need a good idea and a good business plan.

So I have downloaded the perfect application to help me do just that, and it has been brewing in my mind for quite a while now, even if it has only been a few days. The fact that I have to start working on my first conference at work, and that I would do anything not to start working on that conference, has fueled me into working on my own business plan.

Of course, I think I am as intelligent as my bosses, so why should I be a slave to them, when they made something like a million dollar last year, when I can do the same and have my own slaves?

Obviously I am not taken the easy route. I won’t be doing business or corporate conferences, which would ensure a lot of revenue. I am heading towards the mass market, the paranormal, the new age stuff, psychics and theoretical physics. I could seriously fail in my venture. But being my own boss of a company I care nothing about is not my idea of fun.

I have to contribute to something I believe in, that motivates me. I don’t want to fall asleep in the conference rooms of my own events. I want to be passionate about what it is all about. This has nothing to do with making money, it is about having the freedom I want and make enough to survive whilst still doing what I want to do in life.

I will not be able to charge $3,000 per delegate, like most companies I worked for. And many times, we barely broke even and get back our investment. I will need to charge as little as possible, and still manage to make a profit. I feel that I might then get more people than just the magic 100 delegates we have always been reaching for, to cover our cost. I will need at least 200 delegates to get back my money, but then I am counting on exhibitors and sponsors to make a profit.

I need to start slowly, only Stephen and I will work on this at the beginning so it does not cost me $60,000 per conference. And eventually, as we get more money, I will hire telesales and sponsorship people. I can take care of everything else with Stephen.

And this means that this business will be based in England, though I am dying to host an event in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Even Paris. That will be my playing field, which is quite large actually, considering that I will start with no database whatsoever.

I will need a good marketing budget, £12,000 at least per event. I am even considering not printing anything and not posting any flyers. I wonder if everything can be done electronically, and advertisement with associations’ members and magazines.

To be safe, I need a budget of £40,000 per conference, and I need enough money to do three conferences in the first year. All sensibly related to the same subject, so I don’t have to triple my costs in all areas. Working on one event will be like working on all three at the same time.

One conference, the big one, will take place in London. The second, more ghosts oriented, will be in York, and the third one, I don’t know yet. Maybe Manchester or Brighton. Maybe even in Dublin or Wales. Oh, that’s it, Edinburgh! Yes, Edinburgh in Scotland. And I will arrange for a visit to the catacombs for all my delegates. Like in London I will plan a night out in some haunted place, preferably in the unused tunnels of the Underground. And York, simply a visit of all the haunted place, tours are already in place.

I am so excited about all this, I can barely wait to write the conference programs. And this is a first for me, because in the last ten years, I always did everything else but write my conference agenda. And the thing is, it would have made my life so much easier to forget everything else and concentrate on the program from the start. Human nature, I hate writing conference programs on subjects I care nothing about, when the profit goes to someone else.

So I need £200,000 to start my business. And within a year I need to have gotten back that money with my three conferences. Seems unrealistic, I will have to cut corners. If I don’t provide food, and I should not be expected to do so when charging so little to attend, I might get away with costs of £30,000 per conference.

I could do it all for £120,000, the extra £30,000 would be to pay the rent, cars, our own food and bills. But I want to be on the safe side, so I will need £200,000 just in case. And keep the extra money for the fourth event.

Once again my blog (and writing my books) helps me to figure out important stuff. Sounds like a plan. And now I am dying to write that business plan and go back to England to start working on this project.

It would be reassuring to know that I can count on my credit rate in the U.K., but it is zero. It would also reassure me to know that I could count on family, but either they don’t have the money or they have rated me as some crazy person a long time ago and would certainly not trust any of my decisions.

Even Stephen at the beginning will not even leave his job, I will be all alone to work on this. I feel that somehow I will make it come true and make a nice profit. That’s the difference between being a slave, or your own boss with the need to survive.

I will tell the bank that I need three years to make my first profit, so it will give me some time to get this company somewhere without too much stress. It is well known that it is in the second and third year running for any event to become huge. And that is what I plan to build in time. The most important conferences on any of the subjects that I will take on.

And I don’t care about competition, I have produced too many conferences in my lifetime which had sensibly the same program and speakers than a dozen other conferences in the same town, and yet, we made a good profit. Perhaps we did not have the same delegates, but we certainly had the same sponsors and exhibitors, and those want as many conferences on the subjects they are interested in as can be.

So, in retrospect, my ten years working in conferences might not be wasted after all. I am 33 years old, still quite young. It is very much worth diving into the unknown of having my own business. I could be working another 37 years for others if I don’t do something and if I have to retire at 70, as it seems very likely now. And if my great topics for conferences don’t work very well, I can change instantly to better and more profitable areas, even if I dislike the topics, and then I will insure my future.

The only thing that could stop me now, is the film script I am working on. If somehow that gets sold, it would certainly change my life and I can forget about conferences forever. I am in Hollywood, and I am connected, so it could get sold. But at the moment I cannot wait to find out, I need to plan my way out, I need to build my future.

And I already have the name of my future company: The Marginal Conferences. It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? And I will film the conferences and publish books about what will be said at the events. So the ultimate name will be The Marginal Productions, and there will be The Marginal Films and The Marginal Publishing. And eventually, perhaps, who knows, The Marginal Grocery Store and the Marginal Bank, but these will be non-profit organizations to help the planet. One can dream!

If I was a bit more adventurous, my company would be called The Crowned Anarchist Productions Company, and The Crowned Anarchist Conferences. But somehow too many squeamish people would be stopped by that. So I can’t afford it for my business. Oh well, who cares anyway? It might never see the light of day.

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 16

2006-01-12T18:54:00.000-08:00

Oh dear, I smoked more than one pack of cigarettes today. That means at least $150 a month I spend on that, not even counting what it does to my health.

My new boyfriend must be about to call me. It is 9h20 pm, he should be getting up soon. He lives at night, you see.

He calls me the next best thing that ever happened in his life, I believe. He told his closest friends about me already. They are all happy for him. He already talks of moving closer to me, and what he means, is moving in my flat.

I can understand that nothing would keep him in his miserable room, even though he has been living there for many years, and developed a special relationship with the owner, a Jewish woman who has been more than understanding with him. Letting him work around the house instead of paying his rent. And now he will start paying again in March, and I bet he would much rather move in with me, as he has hinted many times before.

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 15

2006-01-09T23:57:00.000-08:00

Only three days have passed since my last entry, and yet, I feel it has been more than a week.

I wrote 8 more pages for the script, we are now at 20. He wrote 4. He took forever, but my, it is in the style of a novel, and even poetry. When I read that this morning, I fell off my chair.

First I thought this would not do, our styles are way too different. This is a film script, let’s be practical about it, we’re not writing a novel or poetry. Then I felt inadequate, English is after all my second language, and I certainly could make an effort to write like him, but I don’t want to. It is the same in French, I want to write what comes naturally, I don’t want this to become painful.

The result is of course that some people see in both my French and English, nothing that could be considered literature. And yet I claim to be an author, I have six books published in Paris, I have even written more in English than most authors in their lifetime.

Sometimes it comes back to haunt me, that perhaps I am no author after all, that I simply cannot write in an interesting style. Then I could just try, make an effort, but I don’t want to. I would prefer to top writing altogether, so it is a no win situation.

Some sort of compromise will have to be reached. I will have to polish my style, and he will have to get down a notch in the literary work. Or else, he will have to rewrite everything I write. And it seems to be what he has chosen to do. At the moment, based on all my descriptions of the characters and my main timeline of the events (the short synopsis), he is writing the long synopsis and the story in detail.

This is something I never thought could actually happen. I have never met before anyone who could actually write or really contribute in a writing partnership. I have always been the one doing everything, or almost. Well, that is not true, let’s just say that I was not expecting him to take over what I thought I would be doing and that I had been doing so far.

In a way, it is remarkable, especially coming from someone who looks like a truck driver (and he has a truck), or a construction guy with no intelligence. In fact, he appears to be that genius guy who can be creative and excellent at everything he does. And that in itself makes me feel inferior. Something I never felt before, as I had never met anyone I thought was better than me, despite my doubts about my abilities sometimes.

The truth is, I need that guy. Without him, without his inspiration and talent with English and at writing, and even the music for the film, and his contacts, and god, what else, there is no way in hell I could even achieve anything here in Hollywood.

At the same time, I also feel that without my determination, my hard work, my 16 pages written in less than four hours, my whole thinking process, all my ideas which were able to bring all our theories and other inventions together, he could not go anywhere either. I am the fire in his belly. I am the catalyst. Just as he seems to be for me.

Could it be possible? That each on our own could not accomplish great things, but together we will lay that huge egg that could actually rival The Matrix series? Because our film script at the moment is so complicated, and so ingenious, that it could be compared to The Matrix. Not a poor copy, but an equal. And yet, we did not draw any inspiration from it. I am just talking in terms of scale of the project.

We could also just be dreaming, and this is also important. To be pretentious enough to believe that we could create a revolution and write something as huge as the best sci-fi films out there. Better not think too much about that now, let’s just concentrate on the job at hand.

We have not mentioned again his love declaration since it happened. We have only talked about the script. Tomorrow he is sending stuff to his friend actor about me, we were supposed to send what we have so far about the story. But we have decided to work a few more days on it, for greater impact, also because we have discovered that what he has written so far is so good, even it is all based on what I have written and my own ideas, at the same time, he can transform it into something much better. I’m still learning I guess. I just hope I’ll be able to do the same in my other projects, once I’m working on my own. Or else, I will be stuck with him for the rest of my life.

Or his life, which should not be long anyway because of his heart problems. Same for his friend actor, he discovered today that he has a tumor, and perhaps cancer got in there. This is just great, they will all be dead before the movie gets into production… Perhaps I should stop being creative, maybe there is a link with your life span. Everyone seems to be dying at the moment around my friends, at times it seems it is all they can talk about. And since I have never really experienced that, I can be pretty insensitive at times. I am still living under the illusion that I am immortal, and that everyone else is as well. The others who dies, they are never connected to me, or to the people I live with, it only happens to others and you read it in the newspapers in between the sports results, something else that is totally meaningless to me.

Today I had some sort of memory that came back to me. When we were going around Los Angeles in his truck, and we passed some attraction park on a pier. I saw that again in the movie Bean, and today it all came back to me. These few seconds on the road, actually meant something to me. I could be developing feelings for him, and yet I would not sacrifice my boyfriend for him.

Could I get to that point? Could I fall in love as well? It would certainly make everything much easier for both of us, for both our careers. It is adding a new dimension to it all. Well, he is certainly all that I could hope for, apart from being a Ginger Kid. Even that I was able to get over quite early on. He is a strong man, with strong hands, a well built body, and a bit stupid when it comes to computers and other areas of life like love and sex.

This is so cute, this is charming. He will also do anything to please me, never contradicting me, and yet he is very honest. He is such a nice and great guy, and I am almost realizing at the same time that I am writing it now. But to replace my baby who is alone now in London? I don’t want to! I’m already in love!

Is this not what I wanted in the first place? Is this not what I wished for and dreamt about for many years? It is now all coming true, and I am fighting it, with all I have.

I thought for a second that the Kiddo could have been it, and I have to admit that I wanted it, I built a whole romance around him which has been systematically destroyed by him. He is 53, not 43. He does not look like the photo I had of him. He still has a great voice, and god knows, I will use him for voice over if I can in a video game or a film at some point, but he is ultimately a liar. He again invented a whole story about waiting for a plumber and a mess in his apartment in order to avoid coming here on Sunday. And Saturday it was his famous aunt again who wanted to see him and his sister. And I am sorry, it is just too much, too many times. Something else is going on, and at this point, I don’t event want to know.

It is obvious that destiny is rushing him out of my life as quickly as possible. He served his purpose, he helped me survive the first two months where I was so desperate and alone, I could have gone back to London on a whim, like my boss spitting on me yet again. When it is so important that I try to forget about that and concentrate on what I am here for, to write!

At least what I am writing now for this blog, is different from last year, what I was writing then. Something big was missing, obviously. And it could be just the beginning. Soon I might have a lot more to say here, once I meet these people. And it takes forever, no wonder people drop dead here and there in L.A., they just can’t wait anymore for anything to happen. They have the time to die before anything actually happens. Just give me 100,000,000 dollars, and I will show you what can happen, and how fast it can happen.

I will produce a full scale sci-fi film faster than producing a miserable two day conference with 20 speakers on the program. The project will be so massive, it will surpass even the construction of those gas pipelines in Alaska. I will hire the planet! And we will build that spaceship for real, and I will ship myself outside the universe in the process instantly. How nice would that be…

I am beyond the dream now, I will actually get that spaceship built for real. I can certainly dream that, with all that I thought of to actually make it credible, I might just invent the real thing in the process.

All the stars in the Universe, beware, cos’ I’m comin’!

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 14

2006-01-06T23:59:00.000-08:00

I cannot believe what I have heard tonight! This is just too much!

Dear me, it is nearly 3 am, I am working tomorrow, and yet I have to write down here what happened to me last weekend and tonight. Because both these crisis are so at opposite ends, that I cannot understand how in hell I could have been so blind.

Never in my life did I meet someone I simply could not read. And yet, all these possibilities have ran through my mind, it is why after all I invited Leonardo over last weekend. Leonardo is my musician from North Hollywood. I decided to give him a name tonight, a name he actually likes and that is also part of his real name.

That is why I invited him for a long night discussion that I knew would have terrible repercussions over my life. Sure enough, the next day he was still in my apartment when I had Stephen in England freaking out because he could not reach me, at a moment of crisis where his phone had been disconnected, with no way for him to pay the bill until I had cleared out with British Telecom that they had overcharged us by at least £79.

At the same time, the next morning, Monday morning after the New Year, was the day my Kiddo was supposed to come over. And at 2 pm Leonardo was still in my flat, I could not get rid of him, and I had so many things to sort out. I also had to pay for my apartment and my own phone bill here in Los Angeles before they decided to just kick me out.

It is of course that I did not really care for the Leonardo apart from interesting conversations. That is all he could have provided at that point in time. I had already gone into bed with him once, and I was still wearing the scars of that famous embarrassing night where I have humiliated myself to a level I never though I would reach in my lifetime. Well, the second time around was even worse, if that is at all possible.

He picked me up early in the morning and we went to a car auction somewhere on Venice Boulevard. It was a big scheme of lies and pressure tactics to sell cars and we spotted it all immediately, so we left quickly.

We went to Venice Beach, walked around the little shops, walked on the beach, it was raining heavily, it was cold, and the waves were huge. You would have thought it was real winter and that it would stay that way for months, but today it was back to summer again, on the 6th of January. It was so nice outside, I could have swam at Venice Beach.

After that we went through the canals in Venice, and walked in front of the house of his famous friend, the writer of science fiction, the biggest ever, which I am still supposed to meet eventually, and that will be my open door to the greatest success ever. I never believed it for a second, and yet, it was pretty concrete when we were there, on the canal, looking at the empty house. And yet, I did not care at all to meet that guy, I never thought I would. Now I think differently and I will eventually tell you why.

We then went to eat in a restaurant serving mainly chicken, so there was not much for me to eat. And I invited him to my place for a coffee. I felt like it, I was hoping somehow we would end up in bed and that this time it would be different.

I don’t know what went through my mind, I must have been crazy to think it would be any different from the first time, where he was just a plank of wood on the bed. But this is human nature, hope and faith, so I invited him.

We took the scenic route. We came back to Topanga Canyon Boulevard via the Californian coast, visited Topanga in the mountains, one of the most beautiful village I have ever seen in my life.

A little further down we stopped somewhere to look at the canyon and the mountains, and I knew this was what I needed to see, to appreciate, to witness. And it is so close to me, and yet unreachable without a car. I truly loved it.

So back in Woodland Hills, we talked, and we talked, and we talked. At least we talked about our film script that we are now working on together. I had told him the whole story in my mind that his structure of the universe had inspired me, and it was a starting point.

Eventually it was time to go to bed. What a mistake that was. He was again completely frozen. This time I decided to suck his dick, as he mentioned that, and he also did mentioned it last time. But he was so cold and out of passion of any kind the previous time, I never went that far then. This time I did.

He said he liked it, but that’s all, and I don’t even believe him. I really did want to take him in my arms, share any kind of affection with him, but it was obviously a one way thing. I was embarrassing myself. The guy had no interest in me whatsoever, and yet, he let all that happened, he came to bed with me. What the fuck!?

I forgot to say that before that, that night, I was in my underwear all night with a T-Shirt. However it was not supposed to be sexual. The guy stays in my place over 24 hours at a time, I cannot treat him like a guest, I have to go on with my normal life while he is here. Simple.

But he took his shirt off and stayed like that all night. And yet I thought this was just because he thought this is what I wanted. He was just trying to please me, as he is a kind of guy who cannot say no and will do anything he can to please you.

At some point in bed I became more adventurous. I had my dick over his and I kissed him on the lips. Just that, no more. It did not seem to mean anything at the time, but it did a few days later, so I have heard tonight.

And do you know how this second night in my bed ended? I had my dick on him and he freaked out! He said: I don’t want a penis on me, it is a real turn off for me!

Now, please, tell me, who in this world could continue to have sex with a man who would tell you something like that? No one in the real world, that’s for sure. So we went to bed after that, I can assure you.

The guy cannot feel a dick on him without having a panic attack? Gosh, he must be straight then, but then, he does not like women! He must have the biggest blockage possible in his mind then. And that is even worse!

I was shaken by this whole thing. The next day I had only one idea, to get rid of him as quickly as possible so I could move on with my life which, because of him, was already going into the gutter.

I don’t sleep anymore, I cannot communicate with my Kiddo or my boyfriend, I can’t even pay my bills since I never get the chance to go to reception. I waste long weekends I could have used to write, just to talk to the guy. A nightmare.

So the next day I told him, I said that we will never again be intimate. It is clear he does not desire me, or even if he does, he is so blocked psychologically that I thought, good luck to any guy who will have sex with him, it will be a disaster. And thank god, I thought, I will be nowhere near them when it happens sometimes in the future.

So time passed, I actually wrote eight pages of that script we discussed, a friend of his had the time to die in between and he spent two days with the wife (that is the second time he tells me one of his friend dies and the wife suddenly calls to him for a shoulder to cry on), and then he read what I wrote.

I was not expecting anything, I thought he would say it was all crap. It seems that it opened the floodgate. The floodgate of truth. Came a bit late, I have to say, and at such an unexpected moment, that I am totally confused and don’t know what to do nor can I understand the implications.

Tonight the guy told me he was in love with me! He said I love you on the phone! I could not believe it. Of course, that came after everything else he finally admitted, and as I thought, all of this was not meaningless, something did happen between him and I.

What I did not know, what I could not suspect, is that it had a much more profound impact, and was running much deeper, than I could have ever guessed.

I think telling him that nothing intimate should ever again happen between us, and that he should definitely try to meet a guy on that dating website, that was it for him. It was like telling him that I could no longer put up with this, and that I was not willing to. What we have would remain a friendship and a working relationship, that’s it.

I think he then went into panic mode. He clearly never intended to meet anyone else, as he was claiming before. What he wanted all along, was what I suspected, and yet, he managed to convince me that it was not the case.

He wanted to unfroze, take me in his big arms, kiss me, whatever, but he could not. Something to do with his parents who were too distant and cold, and the straight guys with whom he had sex before, where showing any affection would be laughed upon and destroy everything. Because apparently, having sex with straight guys, is just about sucking each other’s dick and that’s it. Anything else would be considered being gay, and that is just not acceptable.

Oh God, why do you send me such a retard? A word he cannot actually stand, and when I use it, he corrects me, I need to say mentally handicapped people. And that’s what he is.

So tonight he said that he cared about me much more than I could imagine or be aware of. That was news to me. Nothing ever at any time suggested any of that. And now we have jumped just about any steps in between, the guy is in love with me!

I don’t know what to think anymore. I don’t know where I stand now with my Kiddo and my boyfriend. This was unexpected to say the least. And he even had the guts to insult me. He said that for one full hour that last weekend, he observed me very carefully. This is when he realized that he loved me, that I was somehow very beautiful inside and outside, and that the only thing that was stopping him, was that I was a bit overweight. Well, at least, when I get the truth, I certainly do get it fully. And the thing is I have lost weight since I’m here, a lot, without even trying. Probably because I am so freaked out by what I did, by coming here in the first place, and I am so lost.

And now he seems to have been able to go over that little problem, since everything else about me is so perfect, apparently. What he saw in that hour, I reckon, is what my Kiddo saw instantly after seeing me for less than a minute. My eyes and my smile. The brightness of my eyes. It seems to be able to have quite an effect.

And my Kiddo fell in love right there. It is just unfortunate that his sister keeps him home, or whatever else he has not told me yet. Because it is clear that he wants to come back, but cannot or is stopped by something else, and I don’t think it is a lack of time.

So I pretty much already thought it was not going anywhere with the Kiddo. And yet, if he wants and can meet me this weekend, I won’t say no. And I told Leonardo about that, and I certainly don’t feel guilty since his admission came a little bit sudden and late. I had already decided that we would never again be intimate, and I was quite adamant about it. I’m not in love, you see…

Which means that this guy, sometimes in the future, will suffer terribly. Because I will let him fall in love completely, for a relationship that I know will never go anywhere. I won’t be able to love him back, I know that. And I certainly don’t want an icicle for a boyfriend. For once, I can truly say, I would prefer my porno CDs. It will definitely be more enjoyable.

He wants to learn, at 43. He wants to learn to appreciate sex, something I am quite convinced that is now beyond his reach. He wants to have his first French kiss ever with me, and somehow I feel it will actually disgust him.

Am I willing to do that? To teach him to actually enjoy something that seems to go against his nature? I tell you, I thought he was either straight or that my overweight problem was just too much for him. I thought he would meet the right guy and all his blockage would end. I’m not so sure anymore.

At the very least, after all that he said tonight, I can expect him to actually move a mussel next time he sleeps in my bed. I might even hope that he will take me in his arms. Can I now hope that he will actually enjoy it? God knows.

Can we fall in love with someone, and yet, not desire them sexually? Is he repeating the same pattern that he did with his only true love with that first girlfriend he had? He wanted so much to love her, to enjoy sex with her, and of course it never came true since he was gay. Now I feel that after 43 years, he is so screwed up, that there will be no difference between me and her.

I don’t want that. I don’t need that. I don’t feel like it. I want to enjoy sex. That is anyway the only reason why I am not faithful at the moment whilst I am in Los Angeles. That my sex life with my boyfriend has become inexistent over the years.

Sex with Leonardo is worse than being inexistent, it is a traumatizing experience. Of being told that a dick on him puts him off. And dear me, I have not even tried to French kiss him yet. And he speaks of that simple kiss on the lips I gave him as some sort of milestone in his life. Please, give me a break!

Well, he did say that in his mind, on that level, he was just like a kid. Perhaps this is the secret of writing great film scripts. Perhaps this is all the innocence you need to describe what love is, in a way that none of us, normal people, could ever understand. Maybe we skipped that step altogether, or it happened for one long second when we were 18, and now it is completely forgotten. I certainly have no clue myself about what love is. For that matter, I’m not sure if I am still capable of feeling anything.

I don’t want to think about the consequences of what he has admitted tonight. I just understand that for him, it was the hardest thing he ever did in his entire life. I’ve got to be sensible about this, I’ve got to be careful not to hurt him.

I can’t believe that all this time I thought he was trying to spare me, that he was trying to not hurt me and my feelings, and that is why I thought he went that far. But perhaps it was his initial idea, and then he got caught at his own game. One hour of intense observation was all that he needed to change his mind about me. And suddenly, the world he lives in, has changed. Love, real love, got into the equation. And now, probably, he is even more screwed up than he ever was.

Poor him. And I do feel bad about this. I do not wish to be part of someone else suffering. I do not want to be the object of such attention when it is not reciprocated and especially with someone that I had surmised as completely out of order when it comes to the matter of love and sex.

God knows where this will end. What will happen next. What I will be thinking and saying here after the weekend. And actually, this frightens me.

Funny enough, when I told my mother that I had met this guy in Los Angeles, and that we would be working on a film script, the first question she asked me was: is he gay, is there anyway you two could fall in love? And when I said no, she was disappointed.

She said it would have been nice for me to find love and some sort of secure relationship here in L.A. When I reminded her that I did not need that, that I had my boyfriend in London, a relationship of 10 years, it did not seem to have any effect on her. Another mystery of life…

Dreaming or York and England. When will I be famous?

2005-12-30T14:00:00.000-08:00

I was so tired tonight, I went to bed as soon as I arrived from work. I woke up at 1 in the morning, and now I don’t know what to do. Tomorrow is my last day before the New Year, but considering that it means only three days off, it is not exactly the most exciting thing ever. I’m not sure what I will do, however I am determined to do something at least on one of the days.

My baby went to Yorkshire this week, and it was snowing heavily apparently. He brought with him our baby cat, Mr. Weber, even though it is a female. She is called like that in memory of my old boss when I was working in WHSmith at Heathrow Airport 10 years ago. This is where I met Stephen.

This is where I started in London, at the very bottom, when I could not even understand what the customers wanted. You could say I went on to become successful in my jobs, in less than 10 years I quadrupled my salary. However it was directly proportional to my unhappiness and lack of freedom.

I cherish these old days when I did not have to worry about anything, and could barely survive. Strange enough, I am still at the same point financially, I can barely survive. So money does not change anything.

England did, and I learned to appreciate it even more as the time passed. It is hard to conceptualize when you are living there for many years. It is when you leave the U.K. that you can fully understand what you left behind and how wonderful a place it is.

These little villages by the sea side, filled with little cottages with roofs made of straw, and a few shops somewhere in the middle, with all the country side all around of a beauty to help poets no end, this is all true. It does exist. And it becomes normal to you until you move back to America.

Yorkshire for me, it is York, the most beautiful larger town in the world, I would venture to say. And it does look a lot like Québec City with their medieval type of walls all around, and ruins here in there.

I have met a very nice shop owner there, of a bookstore called the Worm Hole, and it was magical. It inspired me a film script, and gosh I would die to film that there. It is also one of the most haunted town in England, ghosts there are just normal. You see them and hear them everyday, and they do exploit it with all those tours. They have an infinite amount of stories to tell about it.

And the most interesting one is at the heart of my film. A story about a little girl who lost the keys to the city, of the main door of the town. Her dad lost his job as the main guardian, and now her ghost goes around searching for those keys that she will never find.

When you add to this that this is the town that gave its name to New York, and just about all the York towns there are around the world, you get a sense of the power and energy that could emanate from this small place in the north of England.

Today I was outside at work, looking at the huge mountain in the background, and the palm trees all over in front of it. I was going through some sort of dilemma, would I like to be going to York right now, have the chance to go at any time like I did one day after a fight with Stephen?

I just got into my Renault 5 and left for York. Stayed in a haunted hotel for the night, filmed interesting stuff, and then came back home the next day after visiting the old castle, the haunted places like the main gate and the museum. Came back with the loveliest story for a film. Perfect weekend.

Would I like to go there again? Or do I prefer now, after ten years, to experience something new, something equally huge psychologically, like Los Angeles? Was it not time for a change, to get to know America better, to learn to appreciate Los Angeles?

The real question I asked myself today, is that I would miss Los Angeles terribly. I just cannot see it right now. I have to give it a chance, and a good one. I would need to live here for years, get to know all there is to know, visit all the places around. And first, reach that mountain as soon as I have a car. I need to explore.

We don’t live very long, not sure how many more decades I have in front of me, and if I will be able to still make huge life decisions like going back to England if I stay here too long. I fear I might lose it, even though it would always be there I would imagine.

I cannot limit myself to one place, I still have to experience adventure, leave just like I did, get to know new people and new places. Live in my memories for the rest, for my nostalgia.

I don’t miss Paris, I don’t miss the South of France that I truly enjoyed, I can go back on holiday and that is acceptable. I truly miss England, as if I belong there. At work they talk to me as if I was British, I translate to them their weird British expressions, I understand that language, they don’t.

I feel more British than French-Canadian. And anyway, who’s interested in a French-Canadian in Los Angeles? No one. The odd province who is just as Americanized as the rest, except that they speak French and could give you a sense of France in America. I’m sure it has its appeal, but not to me, and not to the people I have met so far.

I am more British than French-Canadian, even with my thick French accent which would not fool anyone. When I leave Los Angeles one day, I’m going back to England, it is my home.

I would hope to be in L.A. for a few years, get to know it, get to love it, as equally as I love England. And I wonder if it is possible, and that is what I was wondering about today.

I have to give it a chance. Especially if one day I work full time in films, I will then have to be here a lot, it is a place I will be connected to one way or another. And this is what I am building here, the relationships that will connect me to Hollywood for years to come. There is nothing like being in the place and meeting the people, a website or an e-mail from a stranger on the other side of the planet just won’t do.

Most successful British now live in Los Angeles or New York. A lot of successful Americans now live in London, or at least have a second or third house there. There is a special connection between Los Angeles and London, they are always the two main town you would mention with New York, when you wish to convey some sense of what this world we live in is all about.

And just as French-Canadian are popular in France at the moment, British also earned a soft spot in all American souls. I’m afraid to admit that it is because of those terrorists, and how America and the United Kingdom confronted the rest of the world to clean up some countries, where unfortunately the U.N. failed miserably and shows no signs of ever being able to sort out this world.

A major reform of the U.N. would be necessary first, and a change of mandate. It should be stronger at the very least and its measures more far reaching. And then, the U.N. could become another danger to our civilization, so you can never have it both ways.

I am more philosophical tonight that I thought I would be. It is the end of the year after all. Time to reflect on the past year, to assess where I am, where the world is, and what is to come and if it is worth continuing on the same path.

I lack too much data to even think about assessing my own situation, let alone the one of the world. The truth is, I don’t know what is going to happen next in my life, and I don’t know where this world of ours is going.

I’d like to think that it is not annihilation as my friend in L.A. likes to repeat, I’m not such an extremist in my thoughts. There is hope for this world, even annihilation would leave a few survivors and that would be enough, and perhaps better, even if my lovely England would have disappeared in the process.

So there must be some sort of future for me too, even if I cannot imagine any of it. At least it is not at the past that I am looking, I have assumed my decisions, I have accepted my new life, and now I am sitting here hoping for the best, for the future.

This is exactly where America and England should be now. We have done things we may regret, we can debate it for years to come, ultimately it is to the future that we need to look now.

What is that big destiny we are living? Where is it that we are going? What is the future has in store for us? Will we be happier or more miserable? Will we be hit again by terrorists or Corporate America, can we make anyone happy by our actions, or can only alienate everyone crossing our path?

Will York still stand at the end of this war? York is very close to Scotland, it has been conquered and destroyed many times by the Scottish. Despite it all, it still stands proudly, full of its history and ruins. It is a great example to us all, that today it lives in peace and another war with Scotland is almost unthinkable.

Almost, since we never know what to expect of the future. Nothing is carved in stone, especially our rights and liberties which have been rewritten recently. And these new terror laws are about to become permanent. And I have heard no one scream about this. I tried to scream, of course, I was not heard. We will just have to live with it, I guess.

America as we knew it no longer exists, until at least we get a new President, and then, with all this playing with the voters’ ballots, I’m not sure if we can. Democracy has also gone out the window. Something else we will need to learn to live with.

We might as well have an actor from Austria as Governor, at least it makes politics more interesting, as it is so boooring, it could send anyone to sleep instantly.

At the moment I am more worried about the fact that it is 3 am, that I am on my third beer, and that I still have one day to go before the long weekend. I’m just hoping to be able to survive it without another call in the office to let me know how incompetent I am in my new job.

I was again given two projects to do at the same time, and of course, not enough time to do any of them. So I have done one, and I tell you, I had to be highly creative to get results in less then four hours, when I was given half an hour, and it would have taken me three days normally.

And tomorrow somehow I need to accomplish another miracle. I need to get in contact with the Governor of Alaska, no less, one day before the New Year. I wish to discuss gas pipelines please, dear me. I might just as well try to contact an alien species somewhere in the Delta quadrant, and ask them about weird rock formations on some lost planet. I could do that easy in a script.

In the sixty channels I have between my TV and my DVD Recorder, somehow my TV got stuck on the channel C-Span2 for the last few days. No wonder my brain is no longer working properly. Yesterday a woman told the whole of America that she was particularly interested in how we could kick out a senator from the senate. I regret now not having listened to the answer, I gather it is probably near impossible to do so. Whatever.

They have a senate in this country? Is more likely the question I would be asking if I were to call C-Span2. No, I haven’t learned how the political American system works, well I did, but I had the time to forget in time you see.

America is not the center of the world you know, we don’t know all there is to know about it. And sometimes, against our will, we get to know more about it than most Americans who just appear to love to bury their head under the sand, like an Ostrich would do.

Ignorance is a privilege these days, and the more ignorant I can remain, the better I feel. Filling my head with all that crap, brings me to the brink of insanity. Because so many people are just insane in America. Nowhere else in the world would you find so many people stating things that defy logic and reason, and find many supporters to state the same thing.

Maybe this kind of madness happens when your country has 300 million people, you will always find a few to support any crazy idea, and a few rich ones willing to spend millions and stake their life on it. I guess I am more idealistic than I would like to admit.

Should I get more local then? We have a powerful mayor in the Valley, who from what I have read so far, seems to approach despotism. He is definitely on some sort of power trip that went to his head, even though all I have read so far is on the front page of the newspaper of the valley.

I read it when I eat my toasted egg sandwich in the morning. I don’t know, maybe he is cleaning up the corruption around here, though this is not the impression I got.

The impression I got was that he has the newspaper on his side and if he farts, they report it on the first page the next day. Now, that cannot be healthy, surely… to control the media like that. I would imagine he does most of his politics in the newspaper office. That says it all. One step closer to propaganda.

I did not want to become political, especially that I am so ignorant about it (thank god!). So let’s talk about something else. Music. On my SD card right now I have some Depeche Mode, Gorillaz, Charlatans UK, Golfrapp, Sinead O’Connor (no wonder I feel all screwed up) and some Suzanne Vega.

I’m afraid, once it is on my SD card in my phone, that is all I listen to for weeks and months. Because it takes me forever to decide to change the MP3s on my player. Suzanne Vega is the only artist I have seen in concert more than once, apart from Depeche Mode. I saw her in London in Shepherds Bush, and once in my region in the North of Québec years ago.

It is so special when someone so big comes to such a remote place as my region in the North of Canada. I loved every second of it, I felt in love right there with her. She is also a proof that somehow both my region and London are connected, as she must be the only person in this world who like me went to both these places in her lifetime.

I have to try hard to remember anything that happened to me whilst I was living in the North of Québec, it is like another lifetime to me, a past life. I can barely remember anything after Ottawa, Paris, Brussels, Toronto, New York, London and now Los Angeles.

It is like I would love to forget where I come from, as if it had never existed. However this is difficult, since all my family still live there. I am being brought back there all the time, even if I did not show up once in the last 5 years, and on my last visit, it had been five years since I put my foot there.

I hate it. I hate Québec, Canada, everything about it. Sure, better be from there than Africa or some weird Eastern European country, but this is not how I imagined I would live this life.

Would it not be better to say that I was born in the desert of Nevada? Or somewhere in Texas where they are building their huge Trans-Texas Corridor superhighway? Should I not have been born in the Los Angeles Valley? Or in York, England? Even the Canal du Midi in France or Paris would have done the trick. Then I would have been a nobody, who might have succeeded at some point, with nothing else to say about it.

Being a French-Canadian, you cannot exist outside of Québec. You can have some success in France, be recognized for it in Québec, pass on TV, and then that’s it. I don’t want that, I don’t want to be limited to one lost province of a lost country.

I want to be from everywhere, I want to live everywhere, I want to speak for the whole world, I want to be universal. It is just as well that so far I had more success everywhere else in the world than in Québec, who still don’t know who I am. I could not bare it anyway, I hate small minded people. And they certainly are.

I was born with the idea that I could never achieve anything in life. That I would be lucky to even get heard in Montreal. And such a great achievement would be necessary in order to do so, that it was more in the realm of the dreams than reality to reach that stage.

I am glad I skipped that step altogether and was recognized in France before anything remotely related to Québec. I am even glad that I connected to Hollywood and worked for the NBC before, and in England for Channel 4 (and the PBS).

I am from my time. I could have been born in the Nevada desert as far as anyone is concerned. I don’t have any background in Québec, I just don’t exist there. And if my family was living somewhere else, I would not talk about it, I would not go there anymore.

And yet, after all is done, it is probably the only place on the planet where they will not forget me, my books, my life. Because I belong there, I belong to them. There is no denying it. At least they are proud of their peers succeeding outside of the province, the country. It makes them dream that they could too reach out like this.

If ever all I have written in my life will help me survive, as some sort of pension, it will be because all the students in Québec will have to buy my books every year to read them and analyze them. I cannot say I don’t like this idea. It would be consecration. As I’m sure, this would never happened in France in my case. But then, what do I know about my future life as an author? Nothing, I cannot conceptualize it. Good, there is no limit then.

And that is the problem. Limits. Hard for someone to create anything, and for it to go beyond the borders of where he was born. Why is this so? I was born with the idea that I could never reach out to the world, that no one would ever read me outside of my province.

So little authors made it to France from Québec, it was not possible to think I could do it. But I did! Without even being recognized in Québec. And I love it. This is how small minded you become when you are born in a small and insignificant place which means nothing to anyone else on this planet.

I’m afraid to admit, once again, it does mean something to me. I’m dying to be recognized in Québec. They are 8 million of them after all, almost as big as Belgium. I have skip a step, and like many other authors before, I was recognized first in France, and then usually they get recognized even more so in Québec.

It has not happened yet, but I know it will one day. It should, though it might never happened. Maybe I am the odd one, who will never be recognized in his own land. And just about every article about me so far in my home land has been about that, that no one is a prophet in his own country, or something like that anyway.

They do know me though, a lot have heard of me. I am known there, I know that. But it is not enough. Again, I am ambitious, I need to conquer places, I need to be heard without any doubt. I want to become the most important author that ever lived in Québec. That is secretly what I want, and now openly, since I am drunk enough to say so in my blog. Then again, this is in English, none of them will read this, so I feel safe talking like this here.

And the thing is, I have written enough already that I could become that now, or in time, without writing another word. It is great when at 33 you feel like you have done everything, written anything that you feel needed to be written. That whatever else you might do would be just a waste of time and unnecessary.

You can also decide that all that was a waste of time and that everything great and wonderful, your best work, is still ahead of you. It gives you a second chance at life, the hope to get somewhere, a drive to start that great destiny. And I chose that view. That everything great was ahead of me, not in the past.

So I have a lot of work to do. I don’t even know where to start. I need to break up with my past, with everything I have done so far. It is not a continuation, it is starting from nothing. I am in Los Angeles now, in a different medium, everything is to be built. Better get started soon, even if my motivation is at zero right now.

Meeting the right people might change all that. Let’s keep the hope, let’s keep dreaming, let’s see what will happen next. Let’s just go over the end of this year, and start anew.

2006 should be my most promising year ever, and sure enough, every year in the last ten years has been better than the previous one. And I am at the right place, at the right time, to make that new year my best ever.

I will get somewhere.

A sign of genius lurking ahead…

2005-12-27T23:43:00.000-08:00

I was not expecting both my bosses to be at work today. I would have thought, after such a fright, that it was to make sure we would work while they were not there between Christmas and the New Year. They are dedicated, I’ll give them that.

I had a miserable Christmas because of our conversation just before Christmas. When I walked out of the apartment, finally, to see if I could buy a TV and a DVD recorder on Boxing Day, I could barely breath because of the stress. I was worried because I still had not done any research by then.

I bought a TV and a DVD Recorder with a hard drive, and I felt so guilty for spending $500, I almost brought them back to Circuit City. I saved $100 altogether, that’s why I bought them. I now realize that I probably paid the normal price. Well, I bought an opened box Panasonic DVD recorder, so right there I saved $80, and so far it works fine. I don’t regret buying it now, not sure if it will work in the UK when I go back, but it is leaving with me.

Unfortunately, the damn machine, which states that it can play every sort of DVD, cannot play any of the thousand I brought with me from the UK. I’m not happy about that, I will have to buy another DVD player somehow at some point.

At the moment I can still watch them on my computers, so it is not so bad. I did not think though that I would still be watching my computer instead of the TV and DVD after spending so much money… not sure when I will get around to using them, since I have no time to myself.

So, last night at 9 pm I finally decided to get on with the research for my conference. I worked 4 hours on it. And I thought, dear me, my boss will again bite my head off. However he waited until 5 pm today, the time I was supposed to leave, to ask me what was happening with my research. Typical, so I left 30 minutes later than I was supposed to, and I certainly would have left on time, as I can’t stand the office at the moment.

When he asked me a feedback, I said quite rudely: give me a minute. I regret now, but it had the advantage to set the tone of the meeting. He was nice, I think he gathered that I was about to explode at anything he might have said. Because I sincerely think he exaggerated. And the first thing I told him was that I worked all over the Christmas period. And sure enough, in my day of work and 4 hours yesterday, I was able to bring him something quite tangible.

He is convinced I worked hard all weekend. Thank god! I have been lucky, I tell you. It is almost a miracle. The thing is, he never actually saw everything I had already done, he just assumed I had not done anything. So it looked quite impressive today, when I gave him my usual pile of sheets, 1000 at least.

And now he tells me we will not be doing this conference. Someone told him that it would be a flop. Great! I can stop doing that damn research. And get back to the previous project, or the one before, or the new one he already told me everything about today in his office.

Something about semi-conductors, and billions of dollars of investment needed from capital investors, and private equity. He still explains all that bollocks to me as if I did not understand anything. I did my research, I know a lot about it now, I understand what he is talking about. Gosh, I even know what Shale Gas is, I learned that today, so I would not look like a fool ever again before him.

So there is hope for me. With a minimum of effort, I managed to convince him that I worked hard, and he thanked me for it. So now he thinks he did not waste a thousand dollars on me last week.

But I am train wrecked now, and I feel very bad. A truck passed on the street, the whole building was shaking, and that was it, I was frozen on my seat, completely freaked out. I don’t know exactly what it is that I was expecting, something terrible I supposed. And that would have been nice at any rate.

And my valley girl, lucky her, got a temp today who was supposed to come back the next two days, but she assessed that he did not know Excel and was not very good, so she called the agency and told them to send another one tomorrow.

When she told him at the end of the day, he was so gutted, he exploded in the office, unfortunately in front of my boss’ wife. He said he knew Excel and that he was not happy. I was again frozen on my seat, panicked at any sort of crisis going on around me. God, they turned me into such a wimp.

If that had happened to me, if I had freaked out a temp like she did, tonight I would be drinking beers to forget all about it, because it would have shaken me a lot. For her, as she stated many times afterwards, it was just another day in the office.

I know tonight she will be freaking out about it, I know her, she’s like me. She just hides it very well. Something I haven’t learnt to do just yet, and not sure if I will ever learn.

Oh well, just another day in the office, I guess.

I’m very pleased with my cheap TV, a Polaroid actually. I did not even know Polaroid decided to make TVs at some point. The image is certainly terrible, TVs here have twice less pixels than in Europe. Even my portable VAIO computer has got a better definition than that. I can’t believe that Americans and Canadians have put up with such a bad standard for so long.

They have just discovered HDTV, supposed to finally correct that. The only problem is that the high definition TV must cost a fortune, and only a few channels are HDTV, which I think I don’t get here.

Whatever. Morrissey still looks good on my Polaroid bad definition TV, go figure, that DVD works on my DVD recorder. The first one in 10 that I have tried. Perhaps because originally that DVD was an import from the US, I don’t know.

I feel guilty again, I should be working on my conference. I am already too drunk, and I don’t care anymore. I feel like writing. But of course, I feel like writing something inspired, not that blog.

However I would have needed to start a new book in order to write something inspired tonight. Perhaps I should start writing a new fictional book tonight.

Oh dear, now the big questions. What book? Which style? What about? In French or in English? That is not a bad idea, perhaps I should start writing a new book tonight. You know, this is how it always starts. One night you are inspired, and that’s it, you write a few pages, and you continue day after day. I really should. What about then? What style? Which language? Can I answer these questions and start it?

It would have to be completely wild. Out of this world. Something new that has never been done before. And I am very good at doing just that, and all those books are not the ones published right now. But who cares?

I should only write for myself, especially from now on. Inspired literature cannot be ordered, it does not work like that. It comes from the heart, from deep down, on a subconscious level. And listening to The Smiths tonight certainly helps a great deal. I might just start a new book tonight.

If my life was empty, and if I was still living in Québec City, I might dream up a story about a kid moving from Québec to Los Angeles, and imagine a great destiny. However, I am already living that dream, and that dream is a nightmare.

I will have to think something much better, much higher. Esoteric then, mystic. Out of this world. Cos there’s nothing real or worth it outside of L.A. anyway. So, what can be better?

I just opened my seventh beer, I’m ready to listen to Duran Duran now, The Chauffeur. I better start writing before I lose all inspiration and fall asleep.

Not another one of those complicated books that no one understands? I hear my fans say. True, none of my fans appear to have appreciated my most obscure books. I guess I never met the right fans. The right ones would probably never contact me in the first place, I guess. They just get inspired and create on their own, in their corner.

And I know I have inspired great people, the greatest in the French world, both in literature and films. I have all the proof I need and I can prove it. They don’t hide their inspiration very well. Perhaps they never intended to. They ignore my messages all the same, probably from fears of being sued, stupid of them… I feel so honored, I would never sue in a million years.

It’s not that I feel like being pretentious tonight, not here, not now. Here I am honest with myself. I did inspire great people, and it makes me feel good inside, you know. That I could have reached out so much, even underground, on an individual basis.

It is one good thing, for having sacrificed everything for my literature, that everyone around me thought was the biggest waste of time ever. I even agree with them, I just could not help it. I have to write, not for a living, but to survive. To also understand myself, but mostly to survive.

It is my most basic need, to write. I can go without eating or drinking for days, as long as I can write. I can be in prison and suffer the worst fate, as long as I can write, I will be all right.

And this statement alone, does not make any sense, I know. And perhaps alcohol and cigarettes would be a plus, and music, in my venture. But I can do without.

If I was given carte blanche to do my own indie films, my god, it would be weird. It would be incomprehensible. But I think it would be art. And we all know that art can only exist as long as it is independent. And that’s ok, I’ll be independent soon enough, as soon as I succeed in the mainstream. If ever I succeed in the mainstream, that’s the problem.

I am already very much underground, I’m afraid to say, to admit. I’m like The Smiths and Depeche Mode, and yet, they do reach out and have the most loyal fans ever, who makes it all worthwhile. I may have reached that point myself, with my pseudo-fans. I’m just not sure. And I just don’t care to be honest.

Fans are not on my mind when I write. How quickly we forget that they do exist and have needs and demands. I’m ignoring them completely. Otherwise, I could not do anything, or I would write something completely against my nature.

You are supposed to write what you can, what you are supposed to write. You cannot let yourself being dictated by a fan, a publisher or a producer. You do what you feel is right, and that’s it. Never mind if it means the end of your career or those relationships.

That is how I can only see my art. And I tell you, I never referred to it as art until tonight. I see it more as my own existential crisis, my answer to life and this universe we cannot understand. Philosophy perhaps, something beyond all that crap, anyway.

I don’t mind sacrificing everything, even my existence. That is what I have been good at, all my life. Sacrificing everything for a land which appeared greener. And never mind that no land has ever been greener, I still got all my inspiration from it.

I am still writing, I am still producing something, creating. That is a result. I cannot deny it, hell brings inspiration. Happiness might just shut me up. Though I’m not sure, I never found happiness. Not sure if it is possible to find happiness.

The pursuit of happiness, good title… maybe I’m ready to write that new book after all. Other nice title: Something impossible, like finding happiness. But what if I were to say instead: I have finally found happiness? And write accordingly? I would lie, but maybe it would be a good start. God knows.

I’m brain dead, that’s what I have been, since I have arrived in Los Angeles. I cannot write anything, I could not even think of starting a new book. Let alone a film script which probably would not go anywhere and would be a waste of time. You don’t get inspired here, you get depressed.

Maybe if I were to find a rich and old boyfriend, ready to accept me in his home with one command only: write all day long! Then maybe I would get somewhere. At the moment I am just completely out of it.

It is not in Los Angeles that I will write my best work, I’m afraid. I can only wait and hope to be shipped somewhere else, with nothing else to do but write all day long. I cannot see how it could happen.

Maybe writing is not that important. Living is. How I wish I could at least live in Los Angeles. It could inspire me later on, once I’m gone. I’ve seen it now, I lived it now. There’s nothing more to say.

God, am I already ready to move on? Have I learned everything I was supposed to learn here? I don’t feel like I have lived or learned anything. Then again, it is maybe afterwards, in my literature, that it will all come out. And yes, you don’t know everything that has happened to me since I am in Los Angeles. I have a separate blog, and it is not here for you to read. That’s all I will say for now.

Apparently this year the time worldwide will change by one second. We will gain one second. A woman newsreader in Los Angeles suggested we use that second to drink some more alcohol. I was astonished.

I thought I was the only one drinking in L.A., since everybody else seems to be so perfect, that drinking does not appear in their vocabulary. I guess I lived in England for too long, as drinking myself to death on a regular basis is quite normal to me.

So, your woman newsreader invited us all to do so. So I guess, this is exactly what I will do next weekend. On that extra second we will gain, I’ll be drinking myself to death. And maybe write one more word to this blog. Which word should it be? Sex? Good idea. Perfect word. Maybe I’ll have sex then on that extra second we will gain on the New Year. I doubt it, but it would be nice.

And now you know, by how down the drain this blog has gone, that I have drank ten beers tonight. Sorry, I’ve been in London 10 years, what do you expect? At least I‘ll be going to bed early, and I would not have eaten anything, so I will still lose weight tonight.

I have lost weight since I am here. I did not want to, it just happened. Stress, hell, feeling of being lost, whatever. Eating is the last thing on mind at the moment. And I look much better for it, so I can’t complain.

It seems that I am determined to meet another mister right, here in Los Angeles, despite my lover being in London and being very depressed about it. I might as well try harder, and meet that mister right for real. Maybe it is just a fantasy of mine, but it is a nice one, one I can live with.

Especially at the turning of my 33rd year. I am getting old… one step closer to death. Realizing that we are mortal, is, I think, a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, I don’t have any disease that will speed up the process, and I am not willing to get one either. So again, death will have to fall from the sky. Cheer up, I might get run over by a car tomorrow morning on my way to work.

Merde, I should have worked on my conference tonight. Tomorrow I will pay the price. I am a prisoner of that job. I should try to find a way out, and still remain in L.A. somehow.

That would be the first step to my freedom. And it is ultimately what I am looking for. The freedom to write all day, whatever I want and feel like writing. That day will never come. Being in Hollywood does not change that fact.

There is no solution to my problem. Maybe if I stop eating all together for another few weeks, I will be good looking enough to attract a sugar daddy. I had many of them turning around me when I was younger, and I was too stupid then to accept their offers. I know better now… where is my sugar daddy? I’m ready!!! And beware, I’ll be wild in bed, because I’m so desperate anyway, that I could sleep with a dog.

I am listening right now to the song How soon is now, by The Smiths. And the video. There was never a better song written on this planet, and a better video to go with it. It is killing me that someone was able to reach what I consider to be perfection.

And what I still don’t understand is that none of the songs or the videos from that particular album where the song came from, sound or look like that song and video.

It is a fluke. Out of working hard, out of genius, suddenly something divine came out, something that no one ever will be able to top. Not even Depeche Mode was able to reach that point, I guess they were just not depressed enough.

I wish I had lived such a moment of genius in my life, that in three minutes I could make you listen and see something so perfect, that it would live and survive forever as perfection. God I wish I was capable of doing just that. I could die happily after that, all would be accomplished.

When I listen to How soon is now, I forget everything. I live somewhere, beyond my daily job, and my miserable existence. I reach some sort of new world where I am beyond all that.

It is the ultimate song and the ultimate video. Now, how could I ever write the ultimate book? Tell me? Or the ultimate short story, lasting three minutes, where I could have the same impact worldwide on everyone? It is just not possible.

I am wasting my time in the wrong medium. I don’t need to write books, I need to write songs! I need to learn music, I need time, I need to achieve that perfection! I am wasting my time. It is frustrating, it is killing me.

Somehow, I should be able to reach the same result through my books. I have to, that is all I have to make any sort of impact. And I think I have reached that point before, in my unpublished books, but I guess it had no impact whatsoever.

So I have to do it again, and this time, revolutionize literature in the process. Which means going beyond everything I have written so far, being even more extreme.

I have been so extreme, I don’t think I could go any further. I also think that I am beyond that now. So I guess I will have to live in the hope that one day some people will get back to these extreme books that I wrote, and see them for what they are.

And they are all my earlier work, my first books ever. After that I got lost, I tried to write to be published, and I was. What a mistake that was. I hope I have learned my lesson, and that from now on I will write what my heart tells me to write.

My best work must be ahead of me, I’m sure of it. Just give me the chance, and I will lay that perfect egg, the one which has been dying to get out for years, but never had the chance.

And it better come soon, before I shoot myself, because life is pretty depressing at the moment, and I just don’t know what to do to cling to it. I need another salvation, another savior, or anything, to save me from this hell… that conference job, those people.

Oh dear… is there a way out? I sincerely hope so.

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 13

2005-12-27T11:56:00.000-08:00

The most gorgeous guy contacted me today on the dating website. I had never seen someone so perfect. Of course, not wanting to lie, I send them three more recent photos, and now I know I will never hear from him again. Anyway, for one full second there, I was allowed to dream.

Yesterday I deeply needed to hear the voice of my Kiddo, I called, left a message, and of course, not understand my desperation, he never called back. Well tonight I don’t feel the need to talk to him. I’m listening to The Smiths videos, I’m drinking beers (my fourth one now), so I have all the fuel I need.

Funny how Morrissey’s songs over the years, always appeared to be perfect for the moments I was living, and how perfectly I was thinking everything he sings about. Must be destiny, I always thought. However, he was just very honest in his songs, and this universal. Which brings the question, is anyone else actually honest when they write their songs? Since I cannot connect to any of them, I guess the answer is no.

Which brings me to my own books and how dark they are, and honest, and how people connect to them. I guess to find people as depressed as you are, is a comforting thought and ultimately make you happy. Glad that such black material could actually help the people on the same wavelength. Of course, it is completely incompatible with anyone who I actually happy to live this life. Those people need to go see their doctor, no matter how much it costs here in the U.S., as they are certainly not normal, as it is quite clear that in the life we all lead at the moment, happiness just cannot be part of the equation. I can see you don’t know what I am talking about, never mind. You must be one of those happy ones, go and get lost then.

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 12

2005-12-26T23:55:00.000-08:00

I fell asleep quickly yesterday and I did not have the time to finish my story with the Kiddo. Despite all, he has a very nice body, with a nice dick, nice legs and a wonderful little ass. He is slim and he looks great in his jeans. Only his face looks older, the rest is fine. Which makes me wonder, can a 53 year old have such a great body? So we had sex all afternoon, and it was wonderful.

And call me once he was back home, and I fell in love again with that voice of his, which sounds totally different in person and does not have the same effect. So something might develop with the Kiddo in time, but not really. He will only be able to see me once every two weeks I would imagine, he is not exactly the cute little thing I thought he would be, and all of this made me appreciate my Stephen in London even more.

I am now convinced that I won’t me anyone better than my Stephen and I renew my vows to him on the phone. I told him that I was ready for a second ten years term with him, and that I would very much love to finish my days with him. In a way, it is great news that I now know that I won’t fall in love with the Kiddo. His head looks too weird, however I don’t know what the future has in store for me.

Today I need to work most of the day on my conference, and I also need to check out the shops around for specials on TVs and DVD recorders. I don’t suppose their Tivo machines would be half price? They already have a $200 rebate on these machines, that you need to get back through the post. Sorry, I can’t wait that long and live without that $200 at the moment. So I can’t afford a Tivo box. And I can’t spend too much either, since I will have to sell all my stuff before I go back to London, and I would imagine that I will be selling everything for almost nothing.

But God, I spotted Sony DVD Recorder which can also record 80 hours of TV, and that is the same as a Tivo without any monthly subscription. I want that machine, it costs $800. I would leave with it for England hoping it will work there…

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 11

2005-12-25T23:53:00.000-08:00

It is already 20 minutes to 1 in the afternoon. I am no longer worried about what we will do once my Kiddo is here, I am more worried about the idea that he might not come at all.

I hope he understands that if he does not show up today, it is finished. I will not be calling him anymore, I will no longer hope to meet him. The only exception to this would be if he were to admit why he has been so reluctant to meeting me in the last few weeks. And if he has a good reason, then I might continue. By a good reason, I mean some sort of psychological blockage or another boyfriend or girlfriend on the side. That would be acceptable, but he will have to admit something quite big for me to continue this charade.

I have been warned about people making a fool out of yourself on these dating websites. And I have to say, it is starting to look just like that with my Kiddo. Well, it looked like that for many weeks now, and somehow he always succeeded in convincing me that it was not so.

I am about to call again his two phone numbers, it would be the third time in the last hour. He turned me into some sort of freak who now calls and calls his potential boyfriend when there is no such thing. I hate it.

My god, he will be here within 15 minutes! I’m sorry I doubted him…

He is now gone. He stayed less than six hours. The reason being that his sister was coming back from wherever she was, and he needed to be home for her. Why? Because she worries a lot for him when he is not around, he could lose consciousness at any moment, as he did three months ago. This is so touching, that he would need to go back home so his sister does not worry. I suspect it is also the reason why it took so long for him to finally meet me.

The other reason must have something to do with the fact that he is not 43, but 53. And he certainly made the mistake of the century by showing me his driving license, while I was certainly not asking to see it. The number 6 before the 2, on his birthday, has obviously been changed. He claims that they made a mistake and made him 10 years younger. And he needed to be older to take care of his mother affairs after she died.

Nice try, but I don’t believe it. I’m not certain when his mother died, but it was within the last 15 years. So he would have been old enough to take care of everything after her death. In fact, the only reason I could think of for changing his birthday, is to look 10 years younger so he could find a nice young boyfriend.

He is also the only single person I have met on that dating website who has a verified identification. And now I understand why, because to fool the system is as simple as changing one number on one’s driving license. And a scan or a photocopy of that card sent by post would fool anyone.

So it is pretty clear that he is 20 years older than me, not 10. And I’m sorry to say, it makes a huge difference. It also shows in his face, he has lost most of his hair on half of his head, and his hair chest is mostly white. No wonder he needed to bleach his hair and eyebrows before meeting me.

I have been fooled before about age. My actual boyfriend in London told me he was 29 when I met him, and I soon realized afterwards that he was in fact 36. Today that difference does not make much difference (we have a 13 years age difference), but at that time I was still cute and beautiful and young, and filled with prejudices. 36 would have been too old for me, 29 was acceptable.

As actually, to tell the truth, if my Norton had told me he was 53 instead of 43, there is no way I would have been talking on the phone with him for six weeks and that I would have met him today. So I feel betrayed again. I never thought I could have been betrayed like that. The photo on the website is very old indeed, even if he claims it was taken in the last 12 months.

Gosh I have been stupid. I must be the only damn person on that dating website who’s not lying. At the same time, I certainly will avoid any kind of surprise like that. And I certainly also got everyone frightened to contact me in the first place. It is their lost, because they would be more secured with me, since with anyone else it would be surprise time once they get there.

So I was walking towards him, he was waiting on the corner after he got out of the bus. Even from afar, I knew he was not the guy I was expecting. Once I got closer, I even realized that I would never have recognized him if he had not recognized me. I can tell you that I was not happy in my mind. And that I completely understood why he waited so long to finally meet me.

His bleached hair might have hidden his white hair, but it certainly also made them look very much white, so it did not help his case at all. He looked older than he might have been. My Stephen in London is supposed to be two years older than him, so I know how he should look like. He definitely looked 53 instead of 43.

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 10

2005-12-24T23:51:00.000-08:00

I could have met my North Hollywood friend tonight, but I decided against it. Just in case my Kiddo decided to come tonight instead of tomorrow. I insisted, but he knew he would not come. He said he had to go around town get my Christmas gift, a naughty book that he ordered for me, which actually comes from Canada.

He also took the time to go to the cinema to see that Mountain Brokeback thingy with Jake Gylenhaal, something about a gay relationship. I’m sure I’ve got both the title of the film and the name of the actor wrong. Again, he preferred going to the cinema instead of coming here.

Something is wrong, it makes no sense to me. After six weeks of talking on the phone every other day with someone I was hoping to start a relationship, I would have jumped at the chance to go and meet him as soon as possible. I guess all humans have not been made the same.

I thought it was fear on his part, and then it would make sense to come in the morning. If it turns out that he does not like me, or that I don’t like him, he would not be stuck here for the night. He could just leave or, as he said, we could become friends.

It is also possible that it has been such a long time for him, since he actually had a real date which is not just sex, that he needed to prepare both psychologically and physically.

He bleached his hair today and he will be wearing tomorrow what he most prefers to wear. Something that he rarely wears. I said, oh my god, he is a drag queen! He will arrive bleached with a dress and full make up on! He said no, that what he wears is being worn somewhere else in the United States as a matter of commonality. So I gathered that he will arrive dressed a cow boy, in leather. He did not appear to deny that.

Every person I have met here who are really into films and L.A., either live in Hollywood, or like my Kiddo, lives on a street which reminds us of it. He lives on Hollywood Way. It might all be a coincidence, I hope so anyway, as it is a bit ridiculous.

Though I have to admit that I am annoyed when I tell my friends my address, I write Woodland Hills CA, and though I am one street away to Los Angeles and Hollywood, they could easily think that I live in Northern California. I have also been told that Woodland Hills is the nicest and most expensive place in the Valley, and I must be living in the most expensive apartment there is. Only because it makes no difference how much I spend on my apartment, the rest of my money goes to my creditors. So I might as well enjoy it. However I hope he is not after my money, because I have none. Though I am quite prepared to help him if certain weeks he does not work very much, as he said would be likely just after the holiday period.

So my Kiddo has been preparing for days for this famous first meeting tomorrow. If not weeks. It is a good indication that he does feel this is quite important to him, that he looks his best for when we meet.

What I interpreted as a lack of interest, was more a worry of rejection, I would say. And meeting once might change all that. And then I would hope to meet him at least once a week. That would be too nice.

So today he really enjoyed himself, he went to Venice Beach, enjoy a movie, had a full day of it. I, on the other hand, stayed at home all day, on Christmas Eve, and did nothing. In retrospect I should have took the bus and drag myself to Los Angeles or Hollywood, or even the Beach. It was such a nice day, the hottest ever since I have arrived. On Christmas Eve… another thing that makes no sense to me. I am the kind of person who thinks that on Christmas and the New Year, it should snow like hell. And I have been very lucky in the past, in the North of Canada my wish has been exhausted many times. Here, it was a day for the beach and swimming in the ocean. I should have done something instead of waiting all day for nothing.

I also have to say that this is my first Christmas where I did not have to suffer Christmas music or the fever of Christmas in the shops, since I have avoided it all. For me, it has been business as usual, with nothing to remind me of it. Considering that last year I had 20 days off over the Christmas holiday, and this year it is merely two long weekends of three day each, then there was no Christmas for me this year. And I have to admit, I prefer it this way.

Dear, dear, dear… tomorrow I will be meeting my Kiddo! I cannot believe it! I cannot stop thinking that somehow there will be an earthquake to prevent me from meeting him. Why, oh why did it take so long for this meeting to take place? There is a reason for everything, though I cannot see why in this case. Except that there is now such a build up to this meeting, I am expecting to meet God himself. And if I don’t, I will be very disappointed indeed.

On the other hand, let’s not forget that I am no longer that cute little thing that I was. Without these long conversations on the phone, he might not have wanted to start a relationship with me. So his plans to make me bite for such a long time, to already develop something before we meet, will at least work both ways. He must already feels like he knows me. Like I do know him. And I cannot wait any longer to meet him and fall in his arms. It will be so nice! Especially that I need it so badly. And I’m afraid, it would not work if it was anyone else. You cannot get what I need from a quick sex session with a stranger. My Kiddo is someone I could fall in love with.

It is Christmas in one minute now. That’s it, it is now Christmas. I just burped, but at least I did not fart. What a way to celebrate Christmas on my own. My baby has been alone in London all day, miserable because I was not there. It is the first year he does not put the Christmas light and decorate a tree. I should feel very guilty for meeting my Kiddo tomorrow.

It is so dangerous, what if I were to fall in love? Should I have put a stop to all this while I still could? Can we stop our march towards love?

At the moment I can only think of my meeting with the Kiddo tomorrow morning. I don’t know what will happen, or what to expect. I have such high expectations, it better be good.

Being depressed on Christmas day…

2005-12-24T23:41:00.000-08:00

I feel great today! I just opened a beer, I just finished watching (again) the story of that 33 year old spinster (like me) called Bridget Jones (The Edge of Reason). And now I somehow feel electrified.

I feel like one of those nights when I would drink myself to death and write all night long. And often, writing the best things I ever did. I’m not in the mood today to write, except this blog, however…

Actually, the buzz of that film is now over, and my second beer seems to be killing me instead.

Oh God I’m depressed… I need a lot of Sherlock Holmes now with Jeremy Brett to get back to some sort of normality.

For one full minute there I thought I would actually be happy on Christmas day, well Christmas Eve anyway. I am alone today, so far, by choice. A friend wanted to see me, I don’t think so. I don’t feel like it.

And my baby in London feels the same. He told me that since I left, he has become so depressed, he is not doing anything anymore. The cats are left to themselves, the fish are dying, the letters and bills remain unopened on the counter and he does not eat anymore. God it hurts to hear this.

My baby is a hard worker, and every one of his bosses in time learned to appreciate it. However there is a big turn over of staff where he works and he never has the same boss for more than six months. And every time he has to start all over again. They hate him at the beginning and then he has to gain their trust by working hard.

This time he has a new Manager and he just won’t see it. He is trying very hard to get my baby fired or to leave, and unfortunately for him, upper management said no, that Stephen was the best employee they ever had. The Manager is not happy about this and now he makes the life of my baby a misery.

So I guess it is universal, Corporate America gone wild has now spread everywhere, like a disease. And whole nations live unhappily and stressed out to the point that pharmaceutical companies never had it better.

I told Stephen of my episode at work this week, and how, if I could have, I would have been back in London the very next day. And I told him that it was impossible for me to work for that company even for a year. That I am basically giving myself three more months before returning to London, the time it will take for my contract for my rent to be over.

By then, if nothing happened on the writing side, if I am still not working in films or at least met interesting people, then I’m leaving. I also told him that the idea of him coming here to work for that company, and his visa they are trying to get him, might be something we should forget about.

I would not want both of us working for a bastard. We are still going through getting the visa, it will take time, but let’s say that now we are observing the events and we have made no decision. So either he comes over here eventually or I’m going back. Three months is the limit for us to be reunited.

All this cheered him up. He was complaining that he was alone for Christmas, like me, and that many people invited him over, but that he had lost the will to live and could not do anything. So he is simply depressed while everything crumbles around him. I almost cried, again.

I was reading today some stuff I wrote while in my last job, how I was unhappy there and how I wrote reports that were completely wrong, how I wanted a way out and that anything would have done the trick. And then I realized that this blog is almost identical to the book I wrote about it in French last year.

Do you want more proof that I am stuck in a time loop and that I just cannot get out of it? Whether it is in London or Los Angeles, it is the same thing, and I am writing the same thing about it. What is it that I need to learn that I am not? Where is it that I am failing to understand, to change all that and break out of that loop?

All I got out of this are a few books that are just the most depressing things ever, and as a consequence probably will never be published. So I’ve got nothing out of these nightmares. Maybe there is just no meaning to all of this. I am starting to believe that I do not have any destiny at all and there is no destination that I am trying to reach at the end of the road.

I’m like on a small boat in the middle of the ocean with rows, fighting to get somewhere when I should have realized a long time ago that even with rows, I could never reach the shore. So I am going over these huge waves for nothing, because in the end I will most certainly die and all my efforts simply could never have helped me escape this fate.

Christmas? What Christmas? I’ll be working!

2005-12-22T19:35:00.000-08:00

Of course, my successful track record at work could not last very long. I was called in the office after my lunch break, and my boss really went into it. I had to go to the toilets afterwards, and there and then I was convinced that coming to L.A. was a huge mistake.

This obsession of people to want commitments on apartments, cars, jobs, etc., is the only reason I cannot go back to London right now. I would have, definitely. And I’m still thinking about my earliest way out without it being too costly.

I was at work all week, I did work on the other project I was assigned to, and as I understood it, the new one was only until the director had finished reading my stuff and so we could continue on that first project. Wrong! I was supposed to work overtime every night of the week, to make sure that both projects went somewhere.

And of course, my director backstabbed again, saying that I had not spent that much time on our project, and I should have had the chance to get the other one somewhere.

So the conversation was quite horrid, in which my boss said that I had already been sick three days the previous week, and this week it had been four days and I still had nothing to show about that damn conference. And that was another $1000 for him down the drain. I now understand that he appears to be counting how much it costs him by the day, if not the hour.

I had to point out that my three sick days at the very least did not cost him anything since I was not going to be paid, as I was told by the woman in HR. He was under the impression that it was another $1000 he lost on me. He did not like to be reminded.

So I proposed to work on that huge research of his, which will take me forever, all over the Christmas holiday. And he said yes, that I had to, as it was not acceptable for him to lose $1000 like that. So now, not only I will be spending Christmas alone, I will also be working like crazy. And that is just the thing that makes it all not worthwhile.

This is the decisive argument that convinced me that this job is not for me, that I needed a way out as quickly as possible. I am not going to mortgage my life for any company or for anyone.

If he asks me to work over Christmas, then that’s it, it’s over. Simple. And I won’t regret letting them down eventually when I will announce to them that I am leaving, despite all that they supposedly did for me.

There are mind games, management tricks, and there is crossing the line. He came back from wherever he was for the last few days, and he called everyone in his office one by one to destroy them psychologically one day before Christmas.

Everyone was in hyper drive today, everyone was freaked out. My valley girl did not go to lunch, and she spent at least 30 minutes with the Chinese girl in the kitchen repeating how unfair the boss was. She spent the day calling over 100 companies and sending them e-mails to boost them to act. And she was not happy about it.

This morning it was the sales guy, he too got a bollocking by the boss and came out quite shaken, and also had to speak with the valley girl to calm down. And there is the environmentalist guy, who spent his day calling people, when I am pretty certain that, one day before his holiday started, was the last thing he wanted to do. Even his comments over the phone were telling that he called these people very reluctantly.

I could not tell anyone about my nightmare, but they could tell by my sudden seriousness. I was not speaking anymore, I left exactly at 5 pm on the dot, I did not say goodbye.

The cool Spanish guy try to get something out of me, he even wanted me to write it in French since he can understand that language. I could not tell him anything, my boss is watching me every second of the day, he can see me all the time. Speaking with colleagues is just not allowed, or would be too obvious.

I’m afraid to admit, despite all the jobs from hell that I ever had, these kinds of meetings are so difficult to bear, and it throws you into such a state afterwards...

And though the direct consequence is that I will be working the whole holiday, to be honest, the direct consequence in my mind is that I’ll find my way out. It could have been instant without that stupid rent I have to pay until March. And it destroys something valuable in the mind of the employees, loyalty.

I cannot be loyal to someone who holds a meeting to tell me that kind of thing. Because for me it is like turning on a switch in my brain and it reaches a point of no return. It is telling me basically that it was a mistake to hire me, and if this is so, let’s just go our own ways. I don’t need that crap, I don’t need that job, I don’t need you. If you don’t need me then I won’t stay, why should I?

Of course for him it is just a trick, or is it? When I said that he crossed the magic line, it means in my mind, that perhaps in my case it was going beyond the mind games. It was clearly telling me that he was just paying me too much for what I was capable of doing during normal office hours. He is result driven, yes, but results take time, especially when you are juggling with three different projects at the same time.

This said, yes, I have wasted my time this week. Not a lot, but a bit. I admit that. I was not motivated by the sheer size of that research I need to do, which will require on my part something like a full week of work, including overtime. I also cannot find any information, I can only find bits and pieces here and there, and that is why the size of the research has no boundary, it is infinite.

So I did deviate from my hard work, I thought working on the previous project would save me. There is no such thing as an excuse. I was caught, I was reprimanded quite harshly, now I need to work over Christmas and I better bring him results soon.

The only results I could bring him now, is by calling the industry, which means days of transcribing all that from tapes to files. And of course, everyone else is on holiday, I cannot reach anyone now, or even next week (I will be working four days between Christmas and the New Year).

So I am already destined to fail, I will not bring him any result before the New Year. I might as well give up, since obviously this will not be a good excuse, since there is no valid excuse for anything in that job.

I’d rather be dead than continue in that job full time with overtime. I’d rather go back to London and resume my previous job, now that I have proven how great I was at it, and they have the proof now. They can also recognize good work, for a change.

Though I have to say, at the end of the meeting, he said something positive. He admitted, and something tells me that it was difficult for him to do so, that the director had also admitted that he was impressed with my work on the other project. Must have been difficult for the director to tell my boss such a thing. But he did, and so there is hope for him, he is not completely out to get me.

So there could be better days on the horizon, days where I will not be called in the office for a bollocking. However these better days can only last for as long as I work 80 hours a week.

This is something I am not prepared to do, unless it was for something that I actually enjoy doing, like writing film scripts. So we will have to part company very soon. And I will now actively look for my way out. Obviously it means going back to London.

I just need the time to meet some people here. Make some contact, people I can work with in films. I have not done anything so far to meet anyone. This has to change. I need to work all the holiday in trying to meet them. But how could I, now that I will have to work on that massive research? I can’t!

I’m desperate, and this means that I’m ready for desperate measures. Somehow I need to make this work. Somehow I need to make this whole thing worthwhile. I cannot go back to London empty handed. It is not acceptable from the point of view of my destiny.

And if all I have to show at the end of this, is that stupid blog, then it is not enough. It will be classified as my worst failure ever, my missed opportunity of a lifetime. I could not live with that.

Something has got to happen, and somehow I need to be the instigator of these events. I can no longer wait until it falls from the sky, there is a sense of urgency. I will have to take risks, I will have to act, I will have to do something, anything, to make things happen.

Which means, I’m afraid to say, that we are the ones who make the life we have. There is no destiny all planned out that we are following. We build our own destiny. And I sure will build mine.

That research of is will be on the back burner over the Christmas holiday. I have some more pressing duties awaiting me. And it starts tonight. And I don’t care what time I’ll go to bed, I won’t sleep if necessary. Just like in the old days.

Maybe I became too comfortable in these jobs I am not destined to do as I grew older. It is easy to forget that we have dreams to pursue and to actually spend the time pursuing them. Let it be a lesson to me, I have been reminded that everyday counts, that every hour of work is important and could lead somewhere.

There is no rest for the driven people, sleeping or watching TV is just no acceptable, they have to work all the possible hours of the day in trying to reach their goals. And I will reach my goals, I have not gone that far to get comfy in a stupid conference job. I’m so close to it all, it is now up to me to get somewhere real fast.

I still don’t have a car, I can’t get the loan I have learned today. I still don’t have a TV and DVD recorder. Who cares? I don’t need these things, those ties to this job I don’t want.

I’m finished spending my money or committing myself to spending even more every month. I have goals, and I need to reach them by any means at my disposal. I have been reminded, there is no going back.

Decisions, decisions, decisions. Work, Christmas and Car

2005-12-21T09:00:00.000-08:00

I feel weird today, but what is new. It could be Christmas, the fact that I am not going back to London, the idea of not sacrificing $1,500 for this, even though every fiber in my body tells me it is worth it.

I can sort my car at lunch time, then that settles it, I can't go since I won't have the money. I'm trying to buy a silver Mustang convertible for $12,000. I had to get back to the idea of a Mustang since they are the cheapest convertibles you can buy in L.A.

Of course, I have spotted the car I would like, the new Nissan 350Z Roadster convertible, only because they look like the Smart Cars Roadsters that Mercedes sell only in Europe. However at $35,000 I don't think I could afford the payments.

I can't believe I am talking so much about cars, I have zero interest in these machines. It took me 28 years to have my first car despite my three driving licenses.

I first had the oldest car on the road, a Volvo, then a Renault 5, and now it could be a Mustang. If I can't get the finance, since I have no credit history here, then I'll have either an old banger in the New Year once I get paid, or I might just accept this offer of the Lincoln of my boss.

It is a SUV, the car everyone is disgusted about, and this SUV is probably the largest one of all. It is also a Ford. I dare not imagine how much it would cost to fix it once it breaks down. Like my friend's Dodge, probably $9,000.

However it is kind of luxurious, it is not very old, it works fine even if finding a parking space large enough for it is kind of difficult, and no need for credit history. I could also have it instantly, almost. Not sure if I would only get it in the New Year.

You know, when life throws at you something like a car, and it looks too easy, and you wonder why you should take it, if it is still $20,000 and you never really wanted a huge Ford SUV, still, you should take it. It is obvious that this is all that destiny was able to throw in your way, as it was before with my Renault 5. I practically inherited it as a result of a trade-in where Stephen works.

And I fought it, and I wasted many months without a car, and in the end, since I won't be able to get credit and that I don't want to end up with a very old banger which will need repair almost instantly, I will just take the offer. I should have seen before-hand that I would eventually own a Lincoln. However I checked the Kelly Blue Book, and it is still worth $30,000. At that price, I would prefer my Nissan 350Z. We’ll have to see.

I had a chance yesterday to speak for the first time to the real Management Consultant. The poor guy might have a lot of experience doing what he does, and he might have worked as he said for the three biggest companies around, doing what he intends to do here, but he has no clue about the conference world, which I am sure has nothing to do with any kind of company he laid his teeth into. So in the end I am not certain how he will be able to have such an input into making things better here, and prepare us for the big expansion that we were told would happen soon.

However I am sure that somehow he has learned a way to just gobble everything everyone has to say and propose solutions which I'm sure will make sense. Somehow he will succeed in presenting something, anything, and as a result, things might change. He must know what he is doing, I'm sure he costs a lot of money to the company.

The thing is, he is a very nice old man and he is obviously highly interested in everything I have to say, because I'm pretty sure he has no clue about how the main conference companies have evolved in time.

I told him I wrote many reports, of course he was highly interested. I told him he would need to ask my boss before I can give them to him, since perhaps they wanted a totally independent analysis from him, and see what he would come up with on his own.

So finally yesterday we sent him all my reports, and this is when I discovered that my main report about their main competitor, never reached the inbox of my boss. And the other main report I wrote which is about their second biggest competitor, she had received it but never opened it.

They were not joking when they sad they never had the time to go over them, and no wonder I never got any feedback. And no wonder the Director freaked out completely, since the first two days that I was supposed to work with him, from his perspective, I was writing reports which never reached my bosses.

So of course they never said to him to bear with me, since in my eyes I was working on something quite important, but they did not know about it. Important enough anyway that they are willing to hire an expensive professional to look into this.

I hope for the Management Consultant that he does not intend to do like me, write reports and send them to my bosses. Because then, he might never get any feedback, they might never read them, and the whole thing would have been expensive indeed.

So now I understand why my reports never had any impact. And I was so proud of myself for having written so much and to have been able to actually do it. And all I succeeded in doing at that time was to alienate them all.

Now I actually have the perfect person to be highly interested in all my reports, the real Management Consultant. Who must have been reading all this since yesterday, and hopefully realizes now, how much easier all of this will make his job.

With a bit of luck, he'll tell my bosses what an amazing amount of work that was, and how helpful it was to him. In the final analysis, whether someone tells your boss that you are worth something, or whether he or she finds out on his or her own, makes no difference. So all this work might finally pay off in the end, in the New Year.

If somehow I have a car at Christmas or the New Year, and that I am about to pass it alone for my three days off on each occasion, I will definitely just go and explore California at the very least.

Maybe it is time I went to visit that Grand Canyon. Or I won't plan anything, I'll just go and get lost in California. Find a desert somewhere, perhaps reach Nevada and Texas. I should be working on this conference now, I don't feel like it, but I will, as soon as I run out of inspiration here.

This morning I woke up and I thought, another one of these days. Sounded very much like, for the first time, I felt this whole thing was becoming routine. You know, when you reach a point when every day is so much the same that you cannot remember if something happened that Monday, Wednesday or last week. All those days look the same anyway and you are stuck in a time loop, repeating it over and over again.

However this is crazy that I could feel this is routine, so many things everyday is happening, I got my boss' car, yesterday I got my driving license, today I might buy a car, I never work on the same conference each week, and now the Management Consultant has brought a new dimension to all my work.

So I think that, what I really meant to say this morning when I woke up, was, oh no, not another one of these days from hell where I will be rushing around to accomplish huge tasks about setting myself up in L.A. Like buying a car, or finally buying a TV and DVD Recorder, etc. These things take time, requires a lot of energy, and I am running out of steam.

I am pretty sure now that the Black guy is reading this. I am not certain how he can figure out all my tricks about hiding this from him, or if he can just see the files that I delete or save at odd places, or if he only knows that I am writing but does not know what.

He asked me how I felt today, and you don't normally ask that kind of question unless you think something might be going wrong. And as far as he can tell, there is nothing that could be going wrong with me.

I'm not worried with the new Management Consultant, I look forward working with him and together perhaps we will get somewhere. He could have thought this could have affected me, however I don't think so. I had heated discussions with the Director this week, but only a sort of passion about work, getting somewhere with this event, we did not have any problem.

Remains only that he might have saw that I was writing (he certainly does watch over us), or does he knows for certain and reads this? Difficult to know.

If he reads what I am writing, I might as well, just in case, let him know something that obviously he could not know about all this. There is nothing to worry about me writing my thoughts down here.

People think all the time and I guess it is unfortunate for bosses to be unable yet to spy on our thoughts. What I think at the moment I write it, and I usually forget all about it five minutes later, and may even think something different not long after.

And despite everything I wrote that could be considered like complaints or worries about this new job, I have to say that what I have written in the past about my other jobs was much darker, and then I was not very nice in my description of who they were and what they were doing.

So at the moment everything here is pretty positive, I know so, compared with my previous jobs. And so, there is no need to worry about my babblings.

Breakthrough with my Director! And changing this world on a massive scale

2005-12-19T22:48:00.000-08:00

I could not believe it! Twice today I got compliments from my Director, and hopefully this will mark the end of his non-respect towards me and my aptitudes.

Today he finally took the time to read all the interviews I did on the phone in the past few weeks. And when we discussed it, I said that some of them did not know what they were talking about.

He was so impressed by that simple sentence, he commended me for realizing so quickly that many of these people we call know even less than us on the subjects we are trying to find answers about. He mentioned that other researchers in the company before were misled in believing everything they hear.

And then, less than an hour later, he stopped to tell me that what I had done so far was excellent and that I was very good with the interviews in order to find out the exact information we needed.

In fact, though my bosses will never admit to this, I believe they suddenly thought that I could be an asset to this organization. This is probably why they have changed their perception of me, are much nicer now and I got the car of my boss for almost a full week to go around town and pass my driving license.

Hopefully I will have that damn license tomorrow. I have to go for a second time for the behind the wheel test, in Winnetka this time. With my luck, I’ll probably run over an old woman, or even better, a woman with her kid.

Other news, I won’t be going back to London at Christmas and my baby is not coming here either. Which brings the question, should I take two days off and go see my parents, my sister and her daughter whom I have never seen yet for the New Year?

I feel I should, I asked Stephen what he thought about this. It would be nice to see them even for five days, I have not seen them in five years. So they don’t forget about me and that I am no stranger to my new niece who is now two years old and already speaks! Usually no one remembers anything before the age of three, so at this time it makes no difference if I see her now or next year.

However it is my sister’s baby and I remember that I felt bad a few years ago about my two new cousins not knowing me very much. We have a small family on my mother’s side, it is important to keep contact. And on my father’s side, the family is so large, that it does not matter if I don’t see any of them for the rest of my lifetime.

I just spoke with my mom, and because they are sending me 500 dollars that I should receive tomorrow, they feel it would be criminal to come and see them over Christmas, since this money is to help me set myself up in Los Angeles. So that is now also sorted. I will be spending Christmas alone.

Someone asked me if I talk as much as I write. Yes I do. Though I have learned in time to speak less and listen more. If I'm drunk, it would be advisable to stay away from me. I have a tendency to say all that I think. I could be even more open and honest in this blog, I have to say. But I'm afraid, here, this is all you will get.

I can at least tell you that Stephen is in the process of getting a visa to come and live with me here in Los Angeles. That is why going back to London for me right now is not the most obvious option. He will be working with me in that company. He will also bring with him our two baby cats that I love so much. After that, perhaps there will be nothing calling me back to London for quite a while.

I have been very much alone since I have arrived in Los Angeles. I have only one friend, and I have seen him only twice. He is also the friend who might open me all the doors to Hollywood for me to write full time on big budget films, as he has very interesting contacts and should present me to these friends in the near future. That part of my blog is 20 more pages so far. It is nice to let you all know that on that side, things are happening faster than I was expecting.

Stephen does not offer me much at the moment in terms of emotional support, unfortunately. He is also very good at driving me crazy. He has a hard drug addiction, not counting that he is an alcoholic, and sex has become a stranger in our relationship. Which is very unfortunate. But I'm willing to continue this relationship at this time. We have decided today to remain where we are this Christmas, to save money for when, and if, he makes the big jump and joins me here in Los Angeles.

He was here though, he arrived with me almost two months ago and remained here for one week. At the end of that one week, before I brought him to LAX airport, we had sex. He was so cute naked on my bed with, and it was so nice to be in his arms one last time, I will cherish this memory for quite a while.

I have not yet explored the gay life in California. I have heard there were about four bars on Santa Monica Boulevard. I have not even taken the time to go there and I have no plans at the moment to explore this side of L.A. I must be getting old indeed!

I am back with my own thoughts. Wondering where I am, where I am heading, what’s happening, etc. It is Christmas in less than five days. I will be very much alone, and I actually prefer that anyway. I’ll just drink myself to death and probably write an interesting few pages for my blog. I will probably be depressed, as I always am around Christmas every year. I might meet a friend, though somehow I think it won’t materialize.

Sometimes it is nice to be alone, like tonight. As someone said, I do juggle with a lot at the moment. No wonder I wrote nearly 100 pages in the last two months, and from experience, this is over 200 pages of a normal book once published.

And yet, nothing significant happened. This is just the introduction. My God, this blog will have 1000 pages by the end of my first ten months in L.A. Surely this means something? Or will everything just calm down and routine will take over?

I have important meetings soon, if they come true, and I might start to work in films in science-fiction, even if at the beginning it will solely be as a science consultant or technical adviser. Eventually my own film scripts and synopses could attract attention, and they already did somehow. Nothing and everything could happen any day. To make this whole pilgrim to L.A. worthwhile.

I’m sure that from the point of view of my destiny, something huge must happen soon. No such amount of energy should or could have been spent otherwise. Everything has a meaning, or in other words, it is not possible to accomplish such a radical change in one’s life without experiencing a string of consequences that eventually will make it all worthwhile.

I am saying this from experience. It may not look like it, from reading this blog, and poor souls or lucky souls reading this right now, have no idea of everything else I have written in my life, of all my different moves in the last 15 years in five different countries.

It is not the first time I listen to the cry of adventure, and decides to leave everything behind. It is not even the first time that I abandon my boyfriend of many years to change country to pursue my dreams.

I left my first boyfriend to go and study in Paris in La Sorbonne 12 years ago. He joined me in the end, and together we moved to London. However he was not faithful, I suffered terribly and ultimately it brought about our destruction.

I have gone through so much in my life, that I can assure you that the eight or nine autobiographical books I have written so far, and they are big bricks I can tell you, are quite filled with all of this that I have experienced and all that happened to me in the last 12 years.

It is perhaps a shame to have written so much about my own little person, when I could have been spending my time writing fiction instead, or even better, about how to change this world for the better.

I understand now that it is perhaps more important from the point of view of a credible author, or from the point of view of contribution to the literary world. I can’t really complain though, my last two published books were autobiographical and have been a good success in the French speaking countries, relatively speaking of course, for what an average book could expect to sell, from an author who is not writing bestsellers.

Maybe all this will change soon. Maybe I will be writing fictional bestsellers soon. If my film scripts don’t go anywhere, I will turn them into short stories. And I have spent so much time imagining the perfect stories, that this book of short stories could be impressive indeed. From a point of view of the paranormal, that is. So this is untouched ground really, not much is about the paranormal world these days. Love and infidelity is what they bang us on the head with. And half funny comedies which almost become dramas, since they are so boring and insignificant.

I might never get the chance to write full time, I might never finally break that barrier of having serious journalists speaking about my work. I am just invisible to them, despite all there is to say about my career and my books so far.

Stupid, I got more publicity out of the bombings in London that I ever did in my lifetime as an author. I finally appeared on the French television all over Canada and everyone saw it, and many articles in important newspapers as well.

The French-Canadian author living in London, avoiding the bombs on his way to work to Parliament Square in Westminster, and who saw the blood and the human being pieces being blown out everywhere on the street of Russell Square.

This is how it was presented to the people, and my mom crying over me for all Canada to see. I was nowhere near any bomb. And I have never said the things that they made me say after a crafty editing job. You would have thought I saw it all, I saw nothing. You would have thought it was one of the most terrible moments in human history, and it certainly was not.

This is the wonderful world of journalism, they lie through their teeth, to make it look much worse than it is. And they serve the purpose of terrorism very well, my own interviews certainly frightened me out of my wits. Until I stopped to think and remembered what it is that I actually stated on there.

And yet, after all that, I’m sure there was no surge of visitors on my websites. And yet, I have more than one million of them visiting my pages every year. And yet, I am still nowhere.

It is because I am ambitious, I am pretentious, it is one billion people I want to reach every year. I need to change this world on a massive scale. I had about five Indians from India contacting me in the last two weeks, about my theories of the universe and relativity, a link to my website must have appeared somewhere on the Net. It is millions of Indians that I need to reach, and Hollywood is the only medium that could give me the chance to do just that.

Reading this blog, you might wonder what it is that I could actually say to change this world on a massive scale. It does not look like I could, and I agree, nothing of what you have read so far could convince you that I am worth it. But I feel I am somehow, and you could agree with me if you were to read some of my French non-autobiographical books.

And if everything goes according to plans, you will read them one day in your own language. And the world will be a better place, or perhaps a worst one, since you might also understand from my books that this is an ugly world.

It could make you feel better though, to understand that you are not alone thinking about all that. Unless of course you are living the perfect love affair, and don’t see anything wrong with this world. As most people do anyway.

This world is not going anywhere anytime soon. I talk a lot about my own destiny, what about the destiny of this world? Does it not have a great destiny? Radical changes in sight? Some revolutions coming, in just about every single domain of society?

Is it not the time for a full revolution of how we think and manage this world? Is it not time for a great revolution in Physics which would irremediably change all our technology and greatness?

Is it not time to change our whole political system worldwide and especially legal system to the point of non-recognition? Is there not something better than socialism or capitalism that we have not yet explored?

Is it not time for the paranormal to make a comeback with some proofs from science to make it accessible to everyone? Is it not time to understand this afterlife phenomenon, get some real answers, and change our way to picture this universe? Is it not time to take this U.F.O. and alien phenomenon a bit more seriously and understand the consequences of it?

Is there not a way in this world to actually find happiness instead of this misery of the terrible corporate world? What are the problems, what are the solutions, and can we apply them globally and change this world forever?

Is it too much to ask to desire happiness? Is this an impossibility on this world? Are we incapable to make this place livable? Are we only capable of destruction and annihilation of the human race? Is this where we are leading humanity?

I think that if I believe that I have a great destiny, the world must have one too. We will overcome all these questions, all these problems, and radical changes will be required around here.

And I will work very hard to make it all happen, to be an element of this global change. And I won’t tell you to recycle, I haven’t since I have arrived in L.A., and I find it liberating.

The changes I am talking about are on a much larger scale. And my God, we are ready for that radical change, and we are seriously overdue!

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 9

2005-12-18T22:00:00.000-08:00

I am now outside on the balcony of my studio, it is cold and I am overlooking the car park with all the people walking around. The musician from North Hollywood is still sleeping. He arrived at midnight last night and we talked all night, all morning and finally went to bed at 1 or 2 pm. I only slept two hours and I will need to go to bed very early tonight or else I will be sick again.

I have to say that it has been the weirdest day of my life. He drank something like 12 beers and half a bottle of Porto, and he smoke some grass. He was very nervous, talked non stop for hours on hand and would not leave anymore.

So I assumed that he wanted something more, but since he never had sex with a man except that 18 year old God, I thought he did not know how to tell me. Why else would you stay at someone else's place for over 12 hours, repeating yourself like he did? Well I assumed wrongly, and the next thing that happened was probably the most embarrassing moment of my life.

He eventually came to bed beside me since he was too drunk. He wanted to drive, that would have been crazy. So I got closer, it has been forever since I had any sort of affection whatsoever. He did not push me away. So I got my clothes off, I took his clothes off, and we stayed in bed naked in each others arms for perhaps 10 minutes.

His brain went into overdrive, he spoke a lot about that 18 year old kid with whom it was a sort of a dominating relationship on the part of the kid. It is now turning against him since the kid claims he was not 18 yet, when apparently he was.

He was rock solid, he would not move, he was in some sort of frozen state, perhaps a deep psychological blockage. And we talked about it quite openly, he confirmed it. And eventually he said something like he did not want to hurt me and I understood that this was not going to happen. So we went to sleep.

This whole thing has been exhausting, and I cried again Friday night, and this morning, and I almost did now thinking about my cat. I cannot deny that I am an emotional wreck.

I feel completely abandoned by Norton, who now tells me that the day we will meet will be Christmas day, next Saturday. Except that he did not work yesterday and ignored all my phone calls all day and the previous day.

We would have had the perfect chance to meet, I even had a car for once to come and pick him up, and I said so on his answering machine. And yet it was more important for him to do his washing and go all around town to buy some stuff he ordered at some shop.

This is getting beyond the joke, our phone calls now are just a long litany of complaints on my part and apologies on his part. Talking on the phone has now become too painful.

So I re-invited Stephen to come to L.A. for Christmas, and asked him if he would want me to come over to London. Financially both options are not viable. But I don't want to spend the whole Christmas alone.

You might think that at least I have a friend, however after I tell you everything he said to me in the last 12 hours, you will understand that we are from different planets and that I cannot afford to spend 12 hours talking like this on a regular basis. It is simply killing me.

Well, you remember that I was kind of thinking that perhaps I could influence my future. Well, my friend travels through time and through space using his mind. He can tell you exactly what will happen to anyone in the future, and answer any question about anything. He is connected to some inexhaustible source of information and can get all the information he needs from there. He calls himself an emitter-receiver.

He can also discuss with any dead people, and this in an awaken state. When he composes his music, Mozart and Bach are there next to him dictating what to write. He also met John Lennon and Elton John on the second ring of Saturn. Elton John sang a song for him, and John Lennon told him he was happy, or something like that, I can't remember now.

As to why he could actually meet Elton John on another planet while Elton is still alive, he says that it does not matter, what he connects to is out of time. The past, the present and the future, it is all the same thing.

I am now alone, he is finally gone. It is 9h24 pm, can you believe? He has been here almost 24 hours. Why I did not kick him out sooner, is because he came back with revenge with a new series of statements about his kind of mind powers.

It would take me forever to transcribe here everything he has said, but suffice to say that he is a psychic medium. He can predict the future, see ghosts, feel vibes, tell you anything about anyone instantly.

And then he went on about his vivid dreams about the past, probably of past lives, where he can live periods of 10 years in a matter of minutes. He has déjà vu that he sees first consciously in dreams and then it happens a few days or months later.

He can cure people from any disease and basically cured his own heart problems by thought and concentration alone. Now his doctors are saying that this is a miracle. He also has a phenomenal memory. Never had to study to pass with straight As in school, and can memorize a whole film script of 300 pages after only one or two readings.

However, he never experienced temporal causality loops, or time loops, my favorite. He never relived the same events twice in real life. I would have been skeptical if he had said that he did experience that. Which makes me wonder, how could I not be skeptical about all that he said in the last 24 hours? Oh, I forgot to ask him about aliens.

He said that he never before told anyone all that stuff, and that he told me more than he ever did in his entire life to anyone else. You’ve got to give them that, Americans are just dying to tell you all their most precious secrets. They barely hide anything once you gain their trust. And I am so curious myself, I always ask just about all possible questions.

So, where does that leave him, then? He is the most psychic person alive. Funny enough, this is the story of one of my film scripts. And yet, he does not come empty handed, he is very much believable, and his achievements so far speak for themselves.

Is it possible? If not, he certainly has a lot of imagination. And his brain is definitely about to split one way or another from a huge surcharge. He lives at 300 miles per hour, he speaks very fast and constantly. His thoughts are running through his mind like fire, and he does have an answer to every question.

At this point, most people would have disconnected and told him that he was full of shit. Not me, whether he is that most psychic person alive or simply just completely disturbed in his mind, I have never met someone like that before and I doubt I will ever again. This certainly requires my attention and further study. I wish I could dissect a part of his brain and eat it… I’m just kidding.

At the same time the guy is definitely troubled. Such a genius who knows everything about everything, and can fill a room of his confidence, breaks down completely at the simple idea that he is gay. He cannot accept himself for what he is.

I have learnt that he never had sex with any of his girlfriends, finishing the relationship just before sex was about to happen. I guess it would have been over with me in that bed today when he said that he did not want to hurt me. So he also appears to have a problem with men, and I just wonder if he will ever be able to overcome it. In essence, sexually, he is a very dysfunctional person.

What did not help his case, is that young trouble maker with whom some little things happened, before both he and his father turned against him. The kid is a menace, he has a criminal record the size of a dictionary and apparently destroyed many lives before.

You know you are in Hollywood when a young delinquent inspired three people around him to write books that have all been published. My musician intends to start writing his book about this whole affaire pretty soon, he said that the whole book was already written in his mind.

The favorite hobby of that young person is to torture and kill animals, and he does that on a regular basis. He tried to kill both my friend and his father. He was also very much abused and tortured as a kid, apparently he is the most abused kid alive. No wonder he turned into the devil himself. And now they’re joking, saying that he has the famous 666 mark on his scalp.

According to my musician who can predict the future, in five years time the kid will be all over the news in a story involving hostages and killings. And somehow, my friend knows he will be involved in that horrible story.

There is so much more I could tell, however there will be at least another few books written about that kid in the near future, and oh, they’re making a movie about this. So you will know more than me very soon.

The sexual encounter between that young person and my musician is now destroying the life of my friend. He cannot stop talking about it, it pours out by every pore. You can tell that this is the kind of thing that could lead to suicide.

He better start writing that book soon, so he can exorcize this whole thing. Oh, and he will also write a few songs about this, he has one already done and it is pretty good. That song will end up in another movie, so then again, you will hear all about it very soon.

My God, I had not realized that I just had to destroy a few lives, play mind games like crazy and kill a few animals to become the talk of the whole world (meaning Hollywood). That’s where I went wrong!

I would like to be as celebrated as this kid, he certainly can be proud of all his achievements. He is now part of history, and is about to become global very soon. Well done!

Pyramidal Schemes. God damned America!

2005-12-16T23:59:00.000-08:00

I failed my behind the wheel driving test. I did not fail it once, but at least 6 times, since I have made that many mistakes. Well, two definitely that would have got me a total failure as a result. And a few others which might have led to failure, if the two serious ones did not put them in the shadow. I am now wondering if I will pass it the second time around, since it seems so simple to make a mistake, when I would have thought myself that I did none.

Then my boss offered me to go to a car place this weekend with her to look at cars, since she needs to sell hers and I don't want it. But then she changed her mine and said it would not be convenient. Then she offered that I keep her husband's car this weekend, to help me shop for cars. But then again, she kind of changed her mind, on the spot.

Perhaps these helpful ideas are coming to her too quickly and she realizes afterwards that maybe her husband might not like the idea that much, because it is a bit inconvenient. All of this has been a bit embarrassing today and on top of it, I failed that damn exam, and I am a bit discouraged now about it all.

I finally just got the key for the toilet (and also of the front door so I can come and work over the weekend, like if I would!). It took me only a month and a half to get that famous key, and I think it is more because they got tired of seeing me go to their office and get the key. Also that all the new temps are males, and so probably want the key the second I myself go to the toilet. As in these matters, luck is always against you and we all need to go to the toilet at the same time.

That is a result, I now have full access to the toilet, which is just astonishing. I don't need to advertise it when I need a pee. And also, when I leave for lunch or go buy a sandwich, it will be less obvious since I could be going to the toilet instead. At the moment, they know I am not going to the toilet if I don't go and get the key first.

The new guys who started are the weirdest looking thing ever, and if I had to judge them on look alone, I would never have hired them. So perhaps they have a brain after all, I'm just not sure.

The first guy has many earrings, in both ears and a few in the nose. He is very short and is the splitting image of Jack Osbourne. Poor kid, I feel pity for him. He sits there without saying a word, I almost wonder if he has any personality. He started two days ago or something, so I can understand that he is in a frozen state and might like to disappear in the floor.

It made me appreciate the other people in the office who have a lot of personality and intelligence, and perhaps even style. Though I’m not sure yet if I would venture that far as to say so. They think they have style, I just need to compare with the rest of L.A.

The other new guy looks very weird, almost like a fish. Well his mouth definitely is in the shape of a fish's mouth. He is from South Korea, but when I asked, he said Korea. So I asked him if it was from the North or the South. He said from the South, since the ones in the North are completely locked in, none of them would ever go out of their country except if they were diplomats. So I wondered out loud if they actually existed, how would we know if they are still alive? I don't think he thought I was being very funny. Another boring day at work…

He has two jobs, another miserable one. I think he washes dishes in a restaurant, well, he definitely also works in a restaurant, on top of his 30 hours here. He says that when he is not here, he is at the restaurant, and he did not mention sleeping at all.

Funny enough, you would have guessed, he is an actor. Not even an aspiring actor, a real actor as he states. Even though he only appeared in two commercials and he is a South Korean guy who looks like a fish. Please someone tell me, how in hell is this guy ever going to succeed at being an actor here in Hollywood?

And I bet you it will take him a few years to let go of his dreams, perhaps he will never let go. It is very sad. He decided also to turn writer. He worked as an accountant on a popular show and wrote a part for himself for the show that he sent to the producer/writer.

He keeps calling the guy but the guy is not answering. I wonder why, and I wonder how many of those lunatics are trying to contact him on a daily basis with their own writings and uninteresting written parts.

Come on, who would want in his popular series, a South Korean who had a prostitute for a mother who eventually died, and now tries to find his father somewhere in the U.S.? Is that not already the topic of a popular musical anyway?

And if you thought you had heard everything, check that next one. My wonderful and nice colleague in Sales, who sits next to me, the nice guy, frightened me today. He tried not to assault me sexually, no, that I would have been able to deal with (I would have jumped in his half opened shirt right there on the spot (yeah, I’m getting desperate!)). He tried to recruit me in some sort of secret society or cult.

Well, that was what it sounded like from the very first minute that he told me about his business venture on which he has been working on for almost two years, and will eventually leave his job to be working full time on it.

The way he presented this to me was just too much. And paranoid as I am, I thought there was something beyond the coincidence that was actually frightening. I will tell you all from the beginning, since I have plenty of time to kill this afternoon, since my director did not get back to me with anything to do and I am running out of ideas about what I should be doing next…

Well, I am now writing this at 2h32 am. I did not have the chance to tell you that story at work. As if they were reading what I was writing, almost instantly, my boss put me on a third conference to research. Great, never mind, I much prefer to do many half jobs on different topics than actually doing anything concrete.

So now I can tell you how sad my colleague is, and brainwashed into some sort of pyramidal scheme which is doomed to failure. And he knows it, he told me that there was a lot of negative stuff on the net about what he was about to jump in. But he chooses to ignore it, convinced somehow that he is making the right decision.

If you do a quick search on Google under the name of the company “World Financial Group Scam”, you will completely understand what he is getting into. Otherwise, just do a search on “Herbal Life” without the word “scam”, and it will lead you to the same result. Scam, no money in there for sure, how to mortgage your life instantly, make the biggest mistake of your life, etc.

And I felt so powerless! He is such a nice guy! Who struggled in court with his first wife who liquidated him as most wives do (it is in their title, nature, etc.). And he has two wonderful sons, and a new wife, and everything is fine, and he is about to destroy it all again, to leave his paying job in conferences, for that scam thing which will lead to disaster!

I understood right there that he was beyond saving. He is just not intelligent enough, and he is already completely brainwashed. It was like a religion to him. Simple minded folks, beyond hope, beyond saving. While I was trying to convince him to not abandon his family and sons for that scam, he was actually trying to sell me insurances, and insisting upon it. It was beyond hope.

For a second there, I thought the only way I could save him, was to help destroy that scam company which should be judged illegal anyway. Where would I find the time? It is a destiny thing, and my destiny is somewhat reserved for some higher purpose. Succeeding as a scriptwriter in L.A., not annihilating a scam company when, anyway, it is so obvious what it is, that you would have to have no brain at all not to see it. How it hurts when it gets to people you care about!

Poor guy. There is nothing I can do. He told me not to tell the bosses about his business venture. I asked him, sincerely, why would he tell me then? I’m the new guy? How could he ever trust me? Simple, the will to sell me insurance was stronger than the will to make sure the bosses won’t learn about this. And he already told half the office about it, hoping to sell them insurances the day he actually becomes allowed to sell them, as he still needs to follow some courses and get a license or something.

I told him, look, when you are gay, you only need to tell one person in the office before all six floors of the office and even the sub-offices all around town, know all about it the very next day. It is not possible to keep a secret at work, even if you tell only one person. As soon as you did that mistake, and I know it, everyone knows.

So the bosses know all about his stupid scheme by now, and they also understand it will be the mistake of his life. But can’t do anything about it since it would be admitting that they are spying on us, which they do! Even this could not get into his brain. But who cares at this point, he is too far gone.

The worrying thing was how this whole thing was presented to me by him. It sorts of told me that these people would actually use methods that go far beyond the call of duty to recruit new people they thought would be great salesmen, as my colleague is, despite his shortcomings.

He had a friend, he came home to do a presentation, his wife was so impressed, she said: you need to get into this, you need to become one of them! And then they forgot all about it. Until a 27 year old girl bought a house next door for 750,000 dollars. When he went to meet her, he found out she was working for the World Financial Group, the same company his friend had supposedly created with another guy.

Then there was a party at the girl’s house. There, he met the partner of his friend, who conveniently arrived in a black limousine. That partner immediately knew who my colleague was, and affirmed that his friend was talking about him everywhere all the time (which is so unlikely!).

And since then, my colleague has been working for them for a year and a half without making a penny. He attends these big meetings twice a week, recruiting new people for the bottom of the pyramid, the ones actually doing selling, and now there are probably too many, working for a company with a mortgaged name, as it is getting known now that it is a scam.

I am amazed by all this, and frightened by the extent of what they have done to get to him. And I completely understand why he has been so charmed by all of this, I would have as well. And not only that, he would be their best salesman, and probably would make them a lot of money, and perhaps do some in the process. And we are not talking about herbal life, these deals bring a lot of money in. No wonder he is blind, he thinks he can make a lot of money.

In the end, it is a pyramidal scheme, it is doomed to failure. The days of that company are numbered, not counting that their reputation has already gone down the drain. Bad mistake, bad judgment, unacceptable for a father of two sons who has already done so many mistakes. You need security, stability, not more life mistakes!

It is now my mission to make him understand that, to make sure he keeps his job where I work. Not sure how I will do this. Perhaps it was the whole reason for me being in L.A. after all, and it had nothing to do with anything else.

I will save that poor guy who does not have enough intelligence to see through the greed of others. And it will be damn difficult, because in the process I will have to lose a friend, and will have to suffer being sold insurance that I don’t need on a daily basis.

God damned America!

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 8

2005-12-15T23:59:00.000-08:00

My first day back in the office after being sick for three days. I was expecting troubles. However yesterday I stopped myself to work in this changing the future or parallel universe thing, I said to myself that everything would be fine in the office, everything will be great from now on, and being sick will be fine. And sure enough, everyone else has been sick, my valley girl has missed two days and a half work, three other people missed days as well, so there was no way they could think I was faking it. Thank God. And everything is fine.

I also said to myself that I would meet those actors/producers and I will definitely work with them. That is not very hard to imagine that it will come true anyway, from a destiny point of view. It is obvious I am here for just that and that it would have happened eventually. But sooner rather than later is what counts, I need to get the ball rolling before Christmas and I need to work very hard at convincing them that I am indispensable, because of my imagination and knowledge in the science and science-fiction areas.

And the third thing I wished and convinced myself that would happen, is that I can no longer wait another maybe two to three weeks before meeting my Kiddo, things need to move faster and something needs to develop now. Sure enough, yesterday on the phone my Kiddo said that his sister was sick, and might no longer wish to go celebrate an early Christmas at this aunt they have somewhere in California. I might need my new baby in less than three to four days. I’m sure it will happen now.

Yesterday my conversation with Norton was very deep indeed. He told me more that I could have ever imagined possible, especially that I am still a stranger to him. Again another one of his generation, he took a lot of drugs in his days and still is addicted to some pills called Vitago or something. I don’t understand how painkillers are supposed to give you a high, but somehow he always manages to get 200 of them and get through that without a few months. If that as all it would still be OK.

He told me something that disturbed me so much, I could not sleep last night, and all day today I could only think of it and him, the poor guy. This would have happened in a film, and we would not even think twice about it, but when it actually happened for real, it is something I can’t even begin to grasp.

I feel I should not be telling this in my blog, by respect for him. It is something after all that he never told anyone in his family for decades. And it took his mother to be on her death bed for him to admit to her that dark moment of his existence in New Mexico.

This will remain in my hidden blog and will only be published much later, in a book, if ever a book is published out of this blog. It will not go online. He told me that in his early 20s he married a wonderful America-Indian who looked like Catherine Zeta-Jones, but even better looking. They had a baby girl together and live happily in New Mexico for a while.

Until the ex-boyfriend, a Cherokee, came up with a gun and shot both his wife and his child in the head. After that he went back home to his family, depressed for a long time, and never told anyone even that he got married to the most beautiful woman on earth and had a wonderful little girl with her. All that was now gone as if it had never existed but in his mind. Not telling anyone also helped I’m sure to convince himself that none of it actually took place.

Strange enough he mentioned parallel universes to me, as if I could not run away from this. When he was in a coma three years ago, when he woke up two months later, he said he was convinced he was with them both. I asked him if she had given him a message, and said yes, that it was time to get back to reality.

This was difficult thing to admit to me, and he kind of surprised himself in a way afterwards, as if he could not believe he could have told me this so early on in a relation. He says that he feels so comfortable with me, he feels he can tell me anything.

The poor Kiddo has not gone through one life crisis, but two. The comma and the killing of his family by an American-Indian who never had to pay for his crime since this fell under the law of the American-Indian community and they perhaps felt it was justified or did not know how to deal with this, and finally did nothing, I’m not sure.

This story certainly did add a new dimension to my Norton, he is now certainly a four dimensional person to me, the fourth dimension being time, his past. I really feel for him and it makes me love him even more. I can’t wait to take him in my arms to reassure him that there is more to life, and that someone can still love him genuinely and share great moments together.

Of course all of this would be at the expense of my long time relationship with Stephen. And this is also something I will eventually have to deal with and is not going to be easy. I sometimes wonder how all of this will turn out and if I can actually decide myself how I wish this to turn out. And if so, what I should decide. But I guess I don’t have all the data to make any decision yet.

Norton often wonders how his daughter would have grown and if she would have children by now. He said he could now be a grand father. Heek! What a thought! He is only 43. I kind of don’t really like dealing with people who were heterosexuals in their younger years and decided to be gay much later in life.

He says that without this horrible event, he might still be happy married right now. And this pushed him to the limits of the existence, and it would explain why he took so many drugs afterwards, though he says it is mostly in his past now. Thank God.

I suppose one generation over mine, you could not be gay even if you were, and you had to marry. It would explain why so many forced themselves into marriages and babies, and are now sort of regretting this, though none of them would change anything to how everything in their lives happened.

Maybe I should go for people my age, who have been gay all their lives and were not pushed towards a life they never really wanted in the first place. They seem to have awakened quite late in the U.S. compared with other countries, probably because religion is still very strong and politicians can still openly talk against the gay lifestyle, pushing everyone into a corner from fears of living the life they are destined to live.

However people my age are like me. They have experienced nothing, they could be over 30 years old and not have experienced anything. Not to say I would have liked them to have been drugged to full capacity for ten years of their lives, but still, I would like to have something to put my teeth into, so they too could become at least three dimensional.

Which bares the question, am I at all a three or four dimensional person myself? Or just two dimensional? I have not gone through any real crisis, and yet I have been more than willing to end my life many times because I could not see the point of living. I have not even known what death really meant, since no one really close to me ever died, except my grand-parents and I was not close to them at all. I was already gone when they died, and sometimes I have to think hard to remember if they are still alive or not.

Perhaps it is better this way. I did not need more life crisis just to be able to say that I have lived and that I have a lot of experience. I suffered enough without crisis, anymore and perhaps I would no longer be here right now. And I will eventually have to deal with the death of my parents, I guess. Though it could still be a long time before that happens.

Oh Norton, my poor little baby, who has gone through so much. I know you probably don’t need my support, but I would love to give it to you all the same. And I look forward talking to you tonight and meeting with you this weekend.

Passing my third driving license test in California, after my Canada and UK ones… should be a piece of cake?

2005-12-15T09:00:00.000-08:00

I am at work right now. Strangely I would have thought my Director would have had the time to read all about my conference by now and would have thanked me to have given him the time to do so by being sick for three days. He pretty much seems to have put everything on hold and now I’m not sure what to do until he has the time to read it all.

I could continue to make phone calls, but this is dangerous. I’m not sure how much more I would learn. Every new person contradicts the last one, and it could take me three days and some overtime at home to transcribe one hour conversation in a file. So I guess I will wait and soon enough my Director will get back to me.

I understand why he did not feel like reading anything. Both my boss and I dropped over five thousand sheets on his desk and virtually told him: there, read all that in a day. So today I took it all back under his advisement and came back with three small folders to read, with the third one not being particularly important.

I suppose I could now write a new report about this event and how I feel we should go about it, however I find myself in the situation that I would rewrite the same report I did before, which was qualified as completely off the mark. So I guess I will stand far from writing reports from now on, you never know how it could turn out.

I just asked the whole office if someone could come with me to do my behind the wheel driving test. Hopefully one will say yes. Otherwise I am not certain what I will do. I will have to rent a car and get my new writer friend to come with me. Unless I buy a car this weekend, and then I would still need him to come since I am not technically allowed to drive in California right now.

Who would have thought it was so complicated to pass a driving test. Already that I was supposed to do it yesterday in Simi Valley, which I now understand is too far from here. 45 minutes drive. But I could pass it tomorrow in Simi Valley instead of Monday in Winnetka. That would be a result.

Dear me, I just spoke with my boss and she sorted me out. I will use her husband’s car for the test, she will order Gloria to come with me, and I will be insured to pass the test tomorrow in Simi Valley. It is better tomorrow since early next week the bosses won’t be here. Wonderful! This is so nice and unexpected.

And still part of my idea that from now on everything will be great at work, I will work hard and projects will move on. Of course, now I only need my Director to get back to me to let me know when and where we start. He is about to leave for the day, so not sure what I will do for the last hour and a half. Read probably about the topic of my conference.

I have to call the daughter of my boss tonight to ask her about what the test will be about. That’s nice. She ordered me something though, she said I needed to pass the first time around. And she added: so no pressure! Of course, this was as a joke, however I do understand that it would be extremely inconvenient not to pass the first time.

I am being judged on so many insignificant details, I could easily fail, even with my 18 years experience as a driver and my already two confirmed driving licenses from two different countries, where they don’t even drive on the same right of the road. So I have to be careful here to pass, and I am not certain how I will manage that. Better start thinking positive and convince myself that I will pass. I won’t get a second chance.

What is also exciting, is that the wall between our actual office and the one next door goes down this weekend. So sometimes next week perhaps we will have a much larger office and we will no longer be sitting over each other listening to each other phone calls.

And I will no longer hopefully be right in front of my boss where he can at every single second see what it is that I am doing. This is not nice to feel over watched like this, because I can’t even turn around to check if he is in his office or not, he would see me. So I have to assume he is always in there looking at me and my computer screen.

They have also hired a few more people, and this is always good to shift the attention towards them instead of me. Especially if they are not too competent, since suddenly they can see that I am.

I remember my third job in conferences, they really thought I was bad and they were overlooking everything I did, until they suddenly had to hire four new producers without any experience. Overnight I had them off my back forever. It was amazing.

Wonderful Corporate America

2005-12-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

I feel guilty today for not going to work again. I feel OK this morning, but I did the last two days just before falling into a coma for the rest of the day. I just don’t know if today will be different and if I will be able to survive the whole day without being sick again, or if I will require another 24 hours sleep like in the last two days. If I need more sleep, I would know I did not need to go to work and then I will feel less guilty. If I don’t need sleep then I am fine and I should have gone to work.

Tomorrow I have to go back, and it will be very difficult indeed to face the people and my bosses. I hope they will not think for one second that I was faking it. It did happen conveniently, just when I was put back under the Director. Hopefully they will not draw any conclusions.

I would love to go back home for Christmas, but how can I now negotiate the extra days off I would need to do so, after being sick for three days? Oh dear, I just read my contract sent to me long ago. I have 7.5 days paid holidays the first year, and only three sick days the first year. This must be the worst contract I have ever signed. Surely this is illegal? Wonderful Corporate America.

I guess my pay check will be cut this month, and I can forget going to London. My first two months will not be enough to give me one day holiday. I just have to hope that I could still go to London if I were to not be paid for my holiday. And I will have to wait next week before asking.

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 7

2005-12-13T22:00:00.000-08:00

Something is developing with my Kiddo, we speak on the phone almost everyday, we sound like we are very much in love. Even if I have not seen him last Sunday and that he has already told me that I won’t see him next Sunday. He has to visit his aunt again, to celebrate Christmas earlier since they won’t be together at Christmas.

I know many people who would have already told him to get lost, but our phone calls give me a lot of hope. His deep voice is very reassuring, his whole personality also, I just wish I could meet him once. God knows when that will be now… in the new year perhaps. At least it prevents me from meeting other people, I am still faithful to my baby in London. Only something serious is worth it, just in case Stephen never shows up on my doorstep in L.A.

And now, what you have been waiting for. I have made a new friend who is connected with the great world of Hollywood. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. So I walk in this path very carefully.

My motto is to believe them until they give me a reason not to. Of course, once you start wondering about the truth, it is difficult to judge. Since there is the unlikely or improbable to take into account, which could very well be true. We are in Hollywood after all.

After reading my Mycroft Holmes Blog in L.A., this 45 year old man contacted me saying he was a writer. I thought he would never contact me again after seeing my photos. However, he appeared to have a genuine desire not to sleep with me, but to help me here in L.A., to get somewhere.

Now, I know it is unlikely and improbable that someone would like to help you, after seeing a glimpse of your potential through an anonymous blog, however I have not found any crack yet in his arguments and he has now seen my full website and my true potential.

Already that he does not wish to have sex with me is a good indication that this is not what he is after. Ok, he did not tell the whole truth. He is no body builder and the first time I saw him, I thought I could not kiss him as he is not my type. I don’t really like people in a sexual way when they’re from the red headed league (reference to Sherlock Holmes).

However after one full night speaking to him and his creativity, imagination and genius, I was quite ready to jump in his arms. Weird how life can make things happen. It did not happen however and it is just as well.

He is a heterosexual kind of block who apparently had a series of misfortunes with the ladies. And now he believes he should try the gay world, he is not sure of what he is. There seems to be a lot of that kind of strange animal in Los Angeles. For all I know, perhaps all the ladies in town are downright bitches.

However that part of his profile was true, he only wish to meet body builders who are very slim. Not exactly me. And moreover, he says he never had sex with a man before. Now, that is getting closer to the improbable.

However he was not a full member of this dating website until recently, he became one to talk to me. So it would have been difficult for him to meet anyone there until now, even if he says he receives something like 300 messages a day, which is also improbable. I can go days without receiving a single message. However I am not stating that I am body builder who is extremely good looking, without a photo to back it up. It could explain his success on that website and my failure.

So he spent a lot of time on the phone after our first meeting, apologizing because he thought he misled me since we did not have sex. And I had to tell him finally that I had my Kiddo and that I would much prefer to remain faithful to him, even if we have not met yet in over a month. That seems to have made him happy, I think, and he felt less guilty after that.

The surprise did not end there. He is a writer, but for music. He writes songs, and composes, etc. So first he made me listen to that song that was some sort of a clone of a Celine Dion song, the Titanic. He recorded it in a studio with a woman, and now wants to sell it so some famous singer can turn it into a number one hit, including hopefully Celine Dion.

So he put the CD in the system, and I am listening to it, and then something strange happened. Despite the fact that it is very similar to Celine Dion, the song is actually different and certainly a number one hit! I looked at his bedroom that he rents, how poorly he lives, and then I realized that this guy had a lot of talent and would soon live in a mansion.

At the end of the song he looked at me puzzled, he thought I would say that I did not like the song. In fact I was speechless. For the first time in my life, I would imagine, as it takes a lot to impress me. I am so disconnected from everything.

Of course, I thought right there that this was a fluke. A lucky song, sounds easy to do, he did it, god knows, anyone with any talent might be able to sit down and copy a song? But then he played many other songs of different styles and I was convinced the guy knew what he was doing. He is some sort of musical genius, or at the very least, a very capable one who, as he says, is just about to make it big on the music scene.

I actually enjoyed being there listening to him play on his piano, it reminded me of those long nights when my first boyfriend was playing his compositions and wanted me to listen. He never went anywhere with them, despite being great songs. He did not have the determination, which is an essential component of success.

So, why contact me then if he is a musical writer and composer? He wants to help, he has friends in the business, one main actor who has been around for many decades, who also was in many series of Star Trek. And another writer, who brought us some of the biggest sci-fi films ever made. He intends to present me to them saying that I have a lot of potential, and apparently these people are willing to help people with talent.

That is the part that is too good to be true. And it even makes me feel uncomfortable. What would I say when I meet these people? Apparently it is not the first time that my friend presents people with a lot of potential to his friends. And he says that I am the one with the most talent and potential, of all the ones he presented to them.

So assuming they are his friends - and he wanted to show me that he had their phone numbers on his phone, and I stopped him - then I may actually meet these people and god knows what would happen then. I have no reason to believe he is lying since there is nothing to gain in all of this for him. No reason to lie that I can see. So perhaps the leitmotiv that everyone is a liar in L.A. and just protects their own ass, is not true for everyone. We’ll see.

Now, my friend was also a security guard at one of the big studios, and met many actors this way. He was also an actor, he failed to mention that until very late in the conversation. He showed me autographed photos, and one of them was him with, at the back, all the films and series and plays he appeared in. He has mostly been a special guest star on series, or small roles in movies, but surprisingly enough, all the most important and interesting ones. He has now put that on hold until he can succeed in music.

As if this was not enough, the guy is also into Theoretical Physics, and has read a lot about it, and developed his own theories about the structure of the universe. At that point I did not think he would be able to impress me, however he came up with this extravagant theory of how the universe could look like and I was genuinely impressed to the point of being convinced I was sitting in front of a genius.

I know enough to not be fooled in this matter. I was ready to laugh internally at his great discovery, which in essence would not have been one. But this image of the universe is haunting me now, and even if somehow it could be disproved, the sheer fact that he had the imagination to come up with something like that is sufficient to tell me that the guy is no ordinary guy.

I am the sixth person in the world to whom he has told what his ideas were. All of the others had to sign an agreement of non-disclosure. Why did he decide to trust me? Especially that many people before, apparently, have stolen his things. I come across as someone very genuine, apparently. And I am, he certainly does not need to worry about me, I would never steal any of his ideas.

However the concept of having to get friends to sign agreements of non-disclosure is quite remarkable. Only in L.A. would you find such a thing, I would say. This is so much like the total opposite of my own personality, I have everything online for everyone to see and steal.

And now I have to go back to bed. I feel very sick.

I have been awakened by my new friend from North Hollywood. He says he is visiting a friend around here and was asking if I needed anything like water, that he could drop on his way here. It is the second time that he proposes to drop everything to come and help, since I am sick.

This is a very interesting dilemma. Because even if I needed help, of course I would never ask him to come all the way from North Hollywood. It would be taking the piss and no one in their right mind would keep a friend taking the piss. So why ask? I don’t want to read too much into this, I think he is just a kind hearted person with a lot of time on his hands.

He called to let me know he contacted his friend actor to tell him about me. Apparently that actor asked him many questions about me before considering meeting me. And then, he asked the magic question. He was wondering if I knew anything about parallel universes.

Now, this would also be time for alarm bells, and would be from the domain of the impossible. How probable is it that they are working on a film about parallel universes (now in post-production), that something is not right and they would need me to sort it out? As a matter of fact, I am an authority on the subject, having written the only full report about it you can find on the Internet. Could not be better, really.

If all true, I will meet that guy within two weeks, close to Christmas. I will probably impress him with my potential and aptitudes, and start working with them on their projects.

From the point of view of destiny, once again I must have built up this whole reality, as it seems so unlikely. I don’t even need to wish for my future to be bright, it seems all of this was put in motion at the time when I was hoping for some external help to get me out of the conference world. I might be seeing a way out of this after all…

Driving in a convertible Mustang under an L.A. Sun

2005-12-13T08:00:00.000-08:00

For the last two days I have been in bed with the flu. Missed two days of work so far, not sure about tomorrow, the day I’m supposed to pass my behind the wheel driving test since I passed my written one on Friday with only one wrong answer. I don’t think I could do the test, which means I don’t think I can go to work.

How is this going to sit with my bosses? God knows. I’ve seen people in there dragging themselves to work even when they were sick, one even puked on his desk and yet continued to work. It would probably be the first time in their 19 years history that an employee is sick three days in a row.

However, I have no energy, I just fall in my bed and sleep all day. And at the moment they are doing asphalt outside and they are making so much noise! And now I have started to cough. I feel bad about all this and I’m sure there will be great consequences with my boss, who could not even let me go to a driving test too far away if it meant two more hours away from work.

I did not buy the Mustang, I went to a retailer, the guy was not very nice, and the car appeared to be older than what they stated. I was so disgusted by all this that I will not buy a Mustang anymore. It is a Ford after all, it would probably cost me a fortune in repairs. And this one sounded like it needed a lot of repairs, even with only 60,000 miles on the counter. So now I’ll be looking for a convertible that I can buy cash, and I will wait until I get paid at the end of the month.

Stephen just called from London. As usual our phone call was a nightmare. He just got back from Scotland driving a car for his work, he was arrested again by the police for doing 92 miles an hour and zigzagging on the motorway, the very same reason that almost lost him his driving license three months ago, and this time he got away with it.

The cats in the background were causing havoc, he was speaking very fast about unimportant things, and suddenly, right after he finished speaking, it was time to finish the phone call because he was afraid of the phone bill.

I wonder if he realizes that this is building a canyon between us, that I cannot even find support and reassurance talking with him. The ocean separating us is now both physical and psychological. It does not make me feel like I miss him or London anymore.

And I admit it could all be part of the design, my destiny, to help me accept my life here. If everything back home sounded like a brilliant Christmas celebration around a tree, I would feel bad now for being here.

Neither of us knows yet if he will come or if I will go back for Christmas. Christmas falling on a Saturday, none of us has much holiday this year. He has a lot compared with me, but does not have the money. I could buy his ticket, and this would be taken from the money for the car… we’ll see.

Nothing’s Impossible in L.A.

2005-12-10T23:59:00.001-08:00

That song Nothing’s Impossible on the new Depeche Mode album, it depresses me. As it used to do, their albums, when I was 12. I only realized that when my valley girl at work said that her parents were freaking out because she was listening to Depeche Mode, and that was the kind of music they thought would make her commit suicide.

It is true that I have been very much inspired in writing my best work listening to Depeche Mode and The Cure, and now I understand that it is very depressing music. It is also very addictive, it brings you somewhere else altogether, perhaps what drugs would do to someone, however I don’t have much experience in that domain.

How could Martin Gore still be depressed after all these millions and success, enough to write a song like Nothing’s Impossible? Apparently he is in the middle of a divorce. His wife, as it the oldest fashion of all times, is bringing him to the cleaners, and will probably keep the money and the kids and everything. Worth making millions and getting married, just to see it all crumble to dust when it is divorce time! And that time always come.

At the beginning I listened to it while walking to work, looking at the palm trees and big mountains in the background, and it was breathtaking. I was listening to it with my own interpretation, as I did most of my life in the case of Depeche Mode, since I barely understood English all the early years I was listening to their albums. And it was much better that way. It left everything to my imagination.

Some lines were applicable to me being lost alone in L.A. with the problems with my bosses:

Just give me a reason, some kind of sign
I'll need a miracle to help me this time
I heard what you said, and I feel the same
I know in my heart that I'll have to change

That was so perfect. And this was me and Stephen lost in London while I’m in Los Angeles:

How did we get to be this far apart?
How did we get to be this far apart?
I want to be with you, something to share
I want to be near you, sometimes I care

And at some place he says “How did we get to be so far gone”, and he repeats it twice, and the second time the voice is like cavernous, as if he was about to lose consciousness. This really gets to me.

I see the stars every night on my balcony, and I’m trying to convince myself that Nothing’s impossible, that I can go through this, that it may be my dreams coming reality though I cannot see that right now:

Even the stars look brighter tonight
Nothing's impossible

How you can connect so much with a song is a mystery. And as I said before, I wish I could achieve that in literature. Seems impossible. But nothing’s impossible, Dave Gahan said it, and he is well placed to know.

Dear me! Just read an interview about the new album “Playing the Angel”, and Martin Gore states as a joke, that the album was taking a direction like:

Anything that appealed to dysfunctional people!

And that’s it, I’m just dysfunctional and I have always been. Terrible thing to say. I’m a freak! As long as I enjoy it, I don’t mind being dysfunctional. Better that than having a normal life, no nervosa, no problems, and of course, no personality and nothing to say. You might just enjoy not existing then. I feel the pain, “the pain that I’m used to”.

I just had a flash, listening to Nothing’s Impossible. The building where I work right now, the walk with the mountains in the San Fernando Valley, the cleanliness of it all, my apartment, the building, the car park of the shopping center, everything.

This is the kind of flash I get years later, once I have left the place and listen to the music I was listening to then. And it was a nice flash, great memories which will last me a lifetime. I think I will get to like the place.

Which brings the question, you know, what place will this book I am writing right now will have in all the stuff I have written in my life? Because, you know, I have few of these books already published and they were sort of popular. And since I’m not going to stop writing any time soon, eventually they might get known in Québec and finally be appreciated.

That’s the plan anyway. And a book about the youngster arriving in L.A., I would think, just by the sheer concept of it, might erase my books about my arrival in Paris and London, or at the very least put all of that in the shadow.

This could be my most important book ever. The one I could be remember for if ever I get more known and break that barrier and finally sell more copies. I had not thought about this up until now. Even though, of course, it has always been at the back of my mind. The only reason I’m here, is because of this book I’m writing now and perhaps the fictional one I will write in parallel (and of course, the film scripts).

It just occurs to me now that it was perhaps more than just moving into a new city, a new life, writing a couple of books, and get out. It could be it, it could be the most important thing. And I am babbling like crazy about the most stupid details and emotions I am experiencing. Nothing grandiose, as grand as the new DepMod album.

But that’s it, this is what I’m known for, this is what I do. It is the only content I can get in here. I even made the decision earlier on, that this would be written for me, and not for anyone else. Otherwise I would not speak of my emotions, my fears, how a wimp I can be sometimes.

I would describe to you some sort of paradise filled with actors and actresses and the whole L.A. experience we have been told existed somewhere around here. I would just have to buy a few magazines, talk about what it says, and it would get you the vibe. The Beach Boy vibe. I’m not going to do that. It is perhaps a mistake, I understand now.

For my most important book, which would be in any case, whatever the content or what I might say. Because what sells, it is the concept, the marketing, the idea. Not the content or the style. I know that now.

The young writer leaving everything behind, London no less, to go and succeed in Hollywood. I don’t even need to succeed, a major flop, career wise, would still make a great book. Because one sentence will make people buy it, will make them dream that nothing’s impossible. When we all know that when it comes to our lives, everything’s impossible and is just the worst nightmare. Even though you could be rich and famous with palm trees all around and a bright sun and summer on 10 December, makes no difference.

Am I making history here with these few babblings without realizing it? Am I putting the last nail on my coffin as a writer? Nothing after that will top this book? Another irony, is that it is the first one I actually write in English. None of my fans so far appears to be able to read English. So unless it is translated (and I won’t translate it, you can be certain of that), this will be the one book they will never read, but wish they could.

So I guess they will do like I did for so many years listening to Depeche Mode, they will imagine for themselves what it is that I’m talking about here. And it might be just as well. The mystery will remain, and they will imagine something greater than what it is. A boring blog from just another blogger in L.A.

And now, I certainly will go to bed and forget I just said that. Tomorrow, one way or another, I’m buying a convertible Mustang. It is not my style, it is not my personality, but I have to do it. I have to get the ceiling down and go to Santa Barbara by the beach, and experience that thing we always see in the movies.

And if that does not do it, then I might as well just pack my bags and go back to London. Somehow I have the feeling that it might just work. Because humans are so imbeciles and it is all so psychological. Feel like you are living a dream, and who knows, you might actually live that dream.

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 6

2005-12-10T23:59:00.000-08:00

The one sentence in the song Nothing’s Impossible from Depeche Mode that was not applicable to me is:

I still believe in love at first sight
Nothing's impossible

My Norton. Whom I fell in love with without even having met him. A photo. If this is not first sight, what is? Same for him, if I can believe what he said tonight on the phone. He would not bullshit me, would he? He had plenty of opportunities to tell me to get lost.

On the contrary, another long phone conversation tonight is very much a contradiction to everything I had been thinking lately, as I felt he was trying to avoid speaking with me on the phone. And now it looks like he might work on Sunday. I cannot accuse him of trying to not meet me again, unless he is inventing it and he is not working. Which I doubt.

Perhaps he has something to hide. It could explain why he wishes to make sure I am really biting the bait before meeting me. It would make things easier if it was the case, I doubt what it is that he hides is that bad anyway. And on the phone, his voice, it is so comforting, so reassuring. His personality is so wonderful, everything about him.

And I know he is still slim, his ID has been verified along with his weight and height. Maybe as he said, it has just been bad luck from the start. In the meantime we have developed quite a love relationship at a distance. It must mean something.

My biggest pain is the pain I would cause Stephen by going any further with Norton. I would so hate to have to tell him that it is over, I’ve met someone else in Los Angeles, why don’t you die alone in London or meet one of these cuties that you told me were buzzing around you at work? It would destroy him, and me as well, as I do love him, as I did for the last ten years.

It might not come to that, at this time I don’t need to think too much about it. The chances it would actually work with Norton are very slim indeed. I would be lucky to even hold him in my arms for one night. I’m afraid of how he will react, because I’m very much under his spell and I would cuddle him as if I would like to melt into him. He might not be prepared for that.

I’m too ready to just fall head over heels, and become his slave. However I don’t need much to get back to reality and accept that none of this is real or would ever be, despite his nice words to the contrary.

So cheer up people, it might never come to that. With any luck this is just something to help me survive the loneliness in L.A., it won’t work out, and Stephen will come over. And we will be happy for ever after…

That would also be acceptable. With a bit more sex than what we have been used to, or even affection.

Well, if I succeed this trade in, almost as if I was speaking of a car, I would be very lucky indeed. My third boyfriend might be my best yet, physically and mentally, and they’ve all been great. I never thought it possible that I could strike a third time lucky, and perhaps experience something even better.

Of course, perhaps all of this is just in my imagination, but it looks like it could become real. And I don’t remember having wished for it consciously either, must have been unconscious. But it still works, you can dream the life you want and it happens. So let’s wish a lot of happiness, at work as well. Let’s change our attitude and start to finally enjoy this life in Los Angeles. I do a little bit more every time I speak with my kiddo. Could it be that simple? Throw a little bit of love into the equation? Was Freud right?

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 5

2005-12-08T23:59:00.000-08:00

After all my adventures with my phones, I came back home, called my baby, he was not in the mood to talk. He was awaiting a call from some colleague and could barely speak to me. Four miles I did for him tonight, to hear his voice! Almost destroy everything in my flat for him and he could not speak to me! I was in quite a mood. Thankfully I did not let him see this side of me.

But everything I said was bitter, negative, on the edge. You should have heard my speech about the turn of the new century, and any significance it could have had, when Jesus-Christ could be just a figment of the imagination of some twisted people, and that his date of birth has been established as, at the very least, 24 years after the year zero. God, I could have gone all night about that crap! But I stopped myself, too late I’m afraid.

What do I care about Jesus-Christ anyway!? What meaning does this has on my wasted life in Hollywood? And my conference? Nothing! I don’t see him coming to help me any time soon, neither his father…

All right. I will calm down. This has been a weird day after all. And everything still works, apart from my phone. It’s going back tomorrow…

Weird days in Los Angeles

2005-12-08T22:39:00.000-08:00

Today was a weird day. My first weird one since I’ve been in L.A. Some days, everything goes wrong. And I mean every single detail. And today of all days was it.

I am no longer under my boss, I’m back under the director. Now he has to get back to speed on everything I have done so far to figure out what it is that I am doing. He hopes to do that tonight. Good luck!

I have also learned that the research period was over, we’re moving on with the event. I’m going to start doing this thing, and I feel quite confident about it since I have never researched an event that much in my life. I know more about the topic than I do about my own life, that says it all.

But then I got home, I got drunk, I dropped my beer on my new General Electric phone and now it is broken. I’ll bring it back to Best Buy tomorrow or the next day, pretending I don’t know why this phone does not work.

And then I dropped my beer and my glass of water on my computers. Don’t ask me how I managed that, it was a weird day. Almost destroyed both my computers in one night (destroyed one actually), and both my phones. I hate it when it happens, it would not have been the first time. I was so enraged, I almost destroyed everything there was in my studio.

Losing my phone prompted me to call somewhere. But then, having a stupid T-Mobile phone, none of my cards from any of the three countries they are from, could add stupid credits on it either online or on the phone. So I went out, completely drunk, to try to buy credits for that mobile phone.

My Seven Eleven was shut! At 9h43 pm! For god’s sake! Most Seven Eleven are now 24h! Not mine apparently, they close before 11h pm. So I had to go two miles away, to another Seven Eleven.

Over there, an Indian guy. But this one is not your average Indian guy, he’s from Hounslow in England. The very place I come from. He also has a T-Mobile phone from the UK and he’s not happy about it. I knew there was a reason why I had to go four miles return, to go to that lost Seven Eleven on the other side of the 101.

So we talked, I asked him what he was doing here, he appeared lost, so in the end I said: big mistake coming here, wasn’t it? He said yes. Just what I needed to hear, on this weird day! Thank god there was that Californian woman in the queue. She asked me how long I had been here. I said one month, and still wondering if it was a mistake. And she said: Los Angeles is a great city, you will love it here. And now I wonder if you need to be born in the valley to affirm something like that.

Everyone else I meet who’s not from here, truly wonder why they are here and regret coming here in the first place. And that Indian guy, probably does not have any dream to succeed in Hollywood in the film industry. So why did he come here in the first place? Just because he watched too many movies and he thought he would find some sort of freedom here? Working in a Seven Eleven? What a misery.

And then I thought, gosh, I wish I was working in a Seven Eleven alone at night. Reminds me of my long days at Heathrow Airport working at WHSmith. They have so little stock, and sell so little, I would fill all these shelves in a minute. And then just watch the clock until I can find my new found freedom again. No need to think, just count the minutes. It would be great!

These days are over. Now I am dealing with bureaucracy and social hierarchy. The psychology of it anyway. No time to think about work, that’s for sure. Just the misery of having to answer to bosses and justify myself at every single second of the day.

And I must be very drunk to talk like this in my blog. But hey, are you reading blogs to get the truth or what? Otherwise watch the news, it’s filled with all the lies you will ever need, to feel comfy in your little home filled with stuff bought in Sears. Just don’t admit to any of it. Especially the channel you watch the news from. In America, I hear, it means a lot. Are you watching Fox? Then this is not the news, I hear, it is fiction. Oh well, who cares? Not me, that’s for sure.

I’m so drunk now! I’m sure it would not sit well with the DMV of California. The whatever Motor Vehicle thingy. For which I have to pass the test tomorrow, and I have not revised for the test. I don’t care to fail again, a seventh time, over three countries, over a 20 year period.

I have three driving licenses! Which one do you need? Which insurance policy? Whatever else? I don’t care anymore. I’m fed up with all this and your zero tolerance for just about everything that is worth it in this miserable existence. Get a life! And leave me alone!

Apparently the UK passed a new law this week, I can now marry Stephen legally. Shame it came too late. Shame that it will now cause a lot of trouble. Unless we are married, they will not give us any of the rights we have been used to without being married. Shame. It’s too late anyway, I pressed the self destruct button a long time ago. Was it not inevitable? The minute I decided to move here in L.A.? That’s what I think anyway. I hope to still be wrong.

I just finished my White Zinfadel huge bottle of rosé wine from California. It is almost midnight. I guess I should go to bed. But I don’t feel like it. It is one of these nights where, if I had a gun (and it is legal here so I might just buy one) I would not see the sunshine the next day.

What a shame it would be not to see the sunshine the next day, since the South Californian sunshine is so nice, even on a 8th of December. The thing is, you can only fully appreciate it if you are a lost cause and don’t need to work for a living, for whatever reason. It is not my case, so to hell the Californian sunshine! It won’t help me with my conference which is not going anywhere anytime soon. Dear me…

They’ve hired a real Management Consultant at work this week, he starts next Monday. I guess this is a clear message to me: I’m the fake one. I’m only a Management Consultant by title, by law, for immigration purposes. Not a real one, silly me. How could have I thought otherwise? Was it not evident from the start? I guess these things need to be spelt out. Can’t believe I’m thinking about that now, that’s just too much. I’m going to bed…

God I’m lost. Not only because I am in a strange country, in a strange city… I’m just completely lost. What I am doing here? Why I am still here on this planet? I wish I could end it all tonight. I’m so tired. I’m so tired. I’m so tired…

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 4

2005-12-07T11:32:00.000-08:00

It is lunch time. I fear I might lose Norton. He said he was quite direct and when he is not interested he says so right away. Well, yesterday was a bit of that. And today he is online on that dating website. Not sure what he is doing there, he is not reading my blog or visiting my page, as far as I can tell.

I thought of not calling him tonight, to see if he will. I don’t want to play mind games and I don’t want to lose him. We have not met yet, so he could still decide to walk away. So I will call him and see what happens.

He says he never lies, and yet, that he did not have sex in a year, being on a dating website like that, should have sent me the alarm bell. I would not want to jump to conclusions too quickly, it is just that I am very insecure. Perhaps also I should not dream to start a new relationship on a website like that. Maybe it is just a crazy idea. I am faithful to him right now, I still think he is, but I think he also has an addiction to porn on that dating website, and this could also just be normal.

I have porn myself here, I risked bringing it over to the United States. I would have had a hard time justifying this at the customs. But it went well… I guess they are more worried about plastic knife these days than CDs.

I need to go back to work. Oh Norton! What are you doing to me! I hope we will meet this weekend, otherwise I think I will just forget about him and try my luck elsewhere.

It is 18h27, and Norton is still online!!! It makes no sense! Is he at work or at home? Has he been home all day? He sometimes does not work on week days. He did say he could only use the computer when his sister was not there, she works full time but arrives home early. Being online all day means that he opened his profile and left it on. I hope. Otherwise, he is more addict to porn than I thought, or he is actively looking for sex with cuties around where he lives. 17 miles separate us after all, in public transport that is a big de-motivation.

Following what happened today, I decided not to call him tonight. My first idea was that perhaps I was there in his life too much. He needs some breathing space. And then I kind of reaffirmed my independence. I don’t need him and I can survive without him. I’m already in the process of flushing him out of my life and system. So I won’t call him tonight, I will study for my driving exam on Friday instead. Hopefully he will call, otherwise, I guess it is over. And I will need to live with it. Sooner is better than later, as would say Mila Jovovich in Joan of Arc. It’s over! As would say Morrissey. Sad I never even met the guy! Better be over now than in a few weeks time. As I would say, since no one said that as a memorable expression, to my knowledge.

In a way, I would feel a bit more liberated. I owe nothing to this guy, why should I be faithful when I could meet anyone else in town? It is quite tempting. Short of catching bugs… and not have someone to call every day to reassure me in my crisis… there are definite advantages to have Norton on my side. He seems to have a very nice and unusual personality. He says he feels the same about me, and that he is interested in a relationship with me even though I’m not one of the cuties without a brain. Let’s give him until the weekend to make a move.

It is now 22h26. Norton has not called. I dare not go and see if he is online on that dating website. I just checked, he is no longer online. Either he has met someone or his sister came back and he finally turned off the computer, whether or not he was surfing most of the day. Considering that he was on the dating website today, I think he won’t call. And for the same reason, I won’t either.

God, I had the time to finish reading the Californian Driver’s Handbook tonight, I thought I would never get the chance since we were spending so much time on the phone. I guess it is reasonable for his to still want a life. I am now going to read the online tutorial of the driving test… oh someone please shoot me!

It is the third time, yes you have heard, the third time I had to pass my driving license! Once in Canada, once in England and now in California. Can’t the U.N. come up with a standard international test for all countries and states? At the very least I should not have to do the behind the wheel test! I have been driving for 17 years!

I have noted that one third of the Californian Driving Manual is about Drink and Driving and the consequences and punishments. Way to go, paranoid state! And if you are under 21, beware, they don’t want you to drive and they will severely punish you for any infraction. On top of it, you can have to wait another year before having your driving license, or lose it at any time, for infraction not related to driving or the road.

Whose in charge of these rules and regulations? We should pass them all, one by one, to a general population vote. I would only be prepared to accept this madness if I was certain that more than 50% of the population supports it. However, I would not be surprised to find out that most Californians would support even harsher rules and regulations, if it was possible. Because people have gone crazy. As simple as that, no other explanation.

It is now 23h39. One look at the photo of my little Norton, and I bitterly regret not having called him tonight. It is now too late to call. He is worth it, I will him tomorrow. And now I am debating whether I should send him a text message. I think I will. Well, I can’t, my mobile is still set for the UK for the text messages. That settles it.

Let’s just hope that tomorrow he will be willing to speak. If not, then the message could not be any clearer. And I will get it. And then, he can spend as much time as he wants on the dating website, I’m sure with a bit of luck it won’t be another year before he meets someone up to his standards. I just wish then that these people would not just let you believe all that crap just before letting you down. I never experienced that before, which is why I still give him the benefit of the doubt. Tomorrow night everything will be back to normal, we’ll have a long conversation and I will understand that I was worrying for nothing.

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 3

2005-12-06T11:30:00.000-08:00

I called Norton tonight, I asked him if it was a good time. He said no, and that at least he was honest. I asked him if I should call back later or tomorrow, and he said tomorrow. I wonder now if he realizes the impact of that sentence.

In my mind, now he finds me an annoyance. I call too much, he needs his breathing space. We have not even met yet! That is what is the killer, of all stories.

A second ago I thought he would feel guilty and call me back later. I suspect he ha become addicted to our daily phone calls. But now I think he won’t, because he knows our phone calls last forever.

My brain is going in higher drive. To think that today I was actually wondering how I would tell Stephen that I have met a new boyfriend and that he should stay in London to die alone, wondering what he has done wrong with me in the last ten years. Perhaps more sex would have done the trick? Less winging? Perhaps it would have done the trick, in fact I’m pretty sure it would have. Now it is too late.

There are no longer only two persons in this equation, but three. Breaking up a relationship of ten years is hard, but this is something I have been practicing in my mind in the last few days. I was prepared to announce to him the news that I had met someone else, sweet, lost, alone. And that we had developed the most wonderful relationship. That I was sorry, but that was life.

Useless to say that I don’t feel like that anymore, since I was blatantly rejected by Norton tonight. I suddenly remember the lie I told Stephen in my email tonight, that I would be so happy if he were to come to Los Angeles with our two baby cats. And now I feel I was right to lie. This relationship is solid, I want him to come over here, I want to continue this relationship.

Anything else is just a whim, uncertain circumstances. This is what will have to work around and with, in parallel, my real relationship of ten years, in secret if necessary. No need to sacrifice anything just yet.

It turns out that Norton did not have any other brothers and sisters. He actually did not blocked when I assumed he did. Understanding of family means that his actual sister. Though he is gay and it is obvious, because he has photos of naked men in his room, they have actually never talked about it.

So it means that I need to understand that I will need to be discreet with his sister. Also, the friends part, was about two gay dying friends with Aids that he needs to visit on a regular basis. All that stuff is shameful enough, or simply not easy to say upfront, no wonder it took him days to say so, weeks now.

Oh Norton! What are doing to me? I feel so alone, I need comforting, and you reject me just like that? I’m suffering! I have already drunk five beers, and I now have a glass of Rosé from California. I don’t need much at the moment to be thrown out of this new reality. Getting back to reassessing what the fuck I am doing in the South-West of America, never mind that it is called Los Angeles or Hollywood. I’m lost and alone!

I now feel like calling my baby in London. Tell him I’m coming back by the next flight, since he appears incapable of getting a fucking transcript of his studies. Ridiculous in this day and age to take months to get that sort of thing, when you can buy a convincing fake diploma overnight from any website. Bastards, they are destroying the very institutions they worked so hard to build in the first place, with this bureaucracy.

Norton’s annoying me now. All the very small details about his personality are now surfacing. I don’t like the fact that he does not like to have his toes or his ass licked. Just that! And that he is very grunge with his holes in his trousers without wearing underwear, so every other straight guy can look at his dick and judge him. I don’t like the idea that he has two earrings and try to convince everyone that he is an interesting chap, looking like Popeye on his photo which is three years old at least. Has he got something to prove to all these actors he has been working with? That he is better than they are? By leading life trying to convince everyone that he is different and interesting?

It is useless, I love him already for all that and more. He has me under his spell. I would be ready to sacrifice everything at the first demand on his part. I should be ashamed of myself, but is this not called love? And is it not normal to sacrifice everything for love? Even for someone you have never met?

Just when I thought that my life had reached a new low. Who could have predicted that? No one, except God! If that bugger actually exists. I call it destiny, which makes me as superstitious as any of those Mexicans or Salvadorians I meet. Am I not in control of that damn destiny? Controlling all the details of it despite everything that seem to fall into place as it should, out of my control? Damn!

I’m not in control, or am I ultimately? Is it possible that my subconscious knows more about what is to come, and makes sure everything around me falls into place, while I’m trying to convince myself I have free will in this world? No I don’t! And a few déjà vu I recently experienced proves it. Even though it was so vague! I still see through it all.

There’s no freedom here! Just the hope that there is. Just the impression that there is. I’m following a destiny, all right, I know that much. The path is all laid out in front of me, for me to follow without even have to question it and wonder if something else might not be more suitable.

I got what I want, that’s for sure, but is it enough? Am I still free? God knows. I don’t feel like it at the moment. Everything’s too perfect, even if life throws a few problems and dilemmas along the way. I see through it, and I would not want it to be less perfect. It would only mean more troubles, more obstacles to overcome, and ultimately I could give up.

I guess I’ll just have to live through all of this, and understand later what it was all about, when I read this blog again. Thanks! Have you thought of my happiness in all that crap? Should I not be happy? Do something about it then! Make me happy, make it simple, make me appreciate life for the simple pleasures we have down here. Make me happy to live! Being in Los Angeles is obviously not enough.

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 2

2005-12-03T11:30:00.000-08:00

Oh oh, I think I have asked too personal a question tonight to my dear Norton. I asked him about his family, he had no trouble telling me about his sister who lives with him, or that his parents are dead, but he blocked when I asked him about his other brothers and sisters, if any. What could it mean?

I already knew he had something going on about his family, since he did say before that his special someone would have to be understanding of friends and family. I wondered what he meant by that, and I am afraid to admit that this is what prompted my question.

And knowing myself, I will ask it again soon, embarrassing him even more. I should not, he will tell me in his own time. If I insist, I feel he might cut all bridges. It is one of these things that are very serious. What could it be?

First thing that came to my mind is that he has a brother in prison. Somehow I feel he could admit to that. Perhaps he has a sister in prison. That would be more difficult to say. Especially if she was there for something shameful, like, well, like what? Why do women go to prison for these days that is shameful?

Stealing is of no consequence, sexual abuse could be shameful enough, but somehow I don’t think this is it. People who have a rotten apple in the family, are usually quite capable of dissociating themselves with that member of the family and continue to live on ignoring that the person actually exists.

What could it be then? Mental illness? He said I had a lot of imagination tonight, I guess I just don’t have enough to figure that one out. I did a quick search on the Internet about shameful things about family members. One of them is incontinence or Female Bladder Control Problem. Again, I don’t believe that would be something to get you into depressing mode and send you into a spin whenever we mention it.

Actually, death is probably something that would do that. They are dead, or one is dead, and it has affected him terribly. He still feels a lot of pain, so it must be recent. And if he blocked tonight, it is because he did not want to get into it since he is sick and wanted to go to bed. That must be it.

I should be ashamed with myself! I think my life has become just a film script since I have arrived here, I can just imagined the weirdest and impossible things. But everyone knows that life is weirder than movies. I heard many people say that they often base their stories on true events, and have to tone it down for the films since it would be too unbelievable and people would buy into it.

I am also ashamed to say that the word pretentious came back a lot tonight in our conversations. Well done! One month in L.A., and I feel already so insecure, that I feel the need to boast about myself at every minute of any conversation. I should be shot for this, considering that I have nothing to boast about.

I hope he won’t hold it against me, I tried to correct that the best way I could, under the circumstances, I haven’t been convincing enough. He said that my pretentiousness was part of my charm, I hope he believes it.

There is another big worry here. He has kind of cancelled tomorrow, saying that he nearly froze to death waiting for the bus tonight, and the wind brought upon him all these particles which makes him sneeze. So now he has a cold. We’re in Los Angeles! Catching a cold waiting for a bus? If I had not frozen to death myself less than a week ago while visiting Universal Studios, I would not have believed him. And then it occurred to me that he could have easily invented any other story which would have been more credible.

So will I see him tomorrow or not? He will let me know in the morning. He seems to be a home bunny, so I guess any idea of a cold kills any motivation to get into a bus for two hours to cross 10 miles, and the thought that you will need to do it again to return home when you work the next day, and I will be lucky to see him once a week, on Sunday. And come to think of it, I would be lucky to even meet him once in this lifetime.

I also know now why I have been repeating myself a lot to him yesterday on the phone. I was so drunk the first time we spoke, and perhaps the second time as well, that I had forgotten a lot of what was said. I also went right over the fact that he had been quite sick on the last three years, in a coma actually. He was pushed down the stairs in a bar on New Year’s Eve, he does not know why or by whom, ended up in hospital and was virtually given up for dead. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best chance of recovery, he was classified as 1. Can’t believe I did not get into that subject then and did not remember about it tonight.

He was not drunk, and he has to take pills every day from fears to lose consciousness and never wake up again. Apparently a nerve has been severely damage and he has fainted over a dozen times in recent years. This is why he lost his job working with actors and now has a rotten job requiring little abilities. However he says he suffers no disability except that he cannot lie in job interviews since he could lose consciousness, and he has been discriminated against for years now. He did say that he was not happy about the government of California stating that he was 100% healthy, possibly for financial reasons, it suggests that he is not 100% OK. I bet this is why he does not have a car, which in these day and age, and especially in Los Angeles, is quite amazing. He said it is because he has no money, and his family helps him financially, however it could be because he can no longer drive, possibly because of the Californian State, caring as much as they do, could not let someone who could lose consciousness drive a car.

You know you are living in a paranoid state when at 33 years old they ask you for ID whenever you buy beers. I found it funny the first time, but now it is getting on my nerves. Do I look 16? Or do they ask ID to grandfathers as well? What else is this State paranoid about that I don’t know yet but will suffer from eventually? And the worse fact is that California must be the most liberated of all American States, then again, they voted for a Republican Governor. Obviously, probably, because the Republicans are so desperate to win California, that they hired an actor to play the part.

I digress from my topic of conversation, typical me. My blog is like a phone call to Norton, we can jump from topic to topic, at least there is no blank in our conversation. One favorite subject of ours is Sherlock Holmes, as his favorite film of all time is Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, I am watching it right now on my computer. Why is it his favorite? Because a friend sold to him a laser disc player and he inherited I supposed this laser film with the machine.

That is one way of getting into Sherlock Holmes, I discovered the books because my Manager in my first conference job gave me the book. This is a case of developing a new passion because of technology, and limitation of technology. Not many laser discs were made before these laser disc players died as if they never existed. So he must have watched them over and over again, until that film became his favorite of all time. Anything Sherlock Holmes turns to gold. Oh mighty Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has done it. My favorite of all time is the series of Sherlock Holmes played by Jeremy Brett, also my favorite actor.

And on this note, I will go to bed, just in case Norton comes over tomorrow. I doubt it, even if I would love to. However this is more like a love story, and I admit that love does not require sex at the beginning. Only preliminaries that can last weeks. It is like an investment for the future. I am not that desperate for sex anyway, the thought that he exists, that he cares for me, that he calls without fault every day, is ample for me, for the moment.

Oh, before I turn the computer off. One thing he has said that could definitely be a lie. Especially that it even contradicts things he said before, according to my blog. He has met two persons in the recent months before but he claims they did not have sex, as there was no connection. He apparently did not have sex for more than a year, perhaps more. It would be too good to be true, but highly improbable, since he claims he loves sex anytime anywhere, and certainly talks about it a lot on the phone.

Something interesting though, if he really met two guys and decided to not go any further with them, maybe he is afraid of meeting me for some reason. I have not lied to him, I showed him my recent photos. Now, perhaps he is also afraid that I might reject him, and the two other guys perhaps rejected him. I don’t believe so, but his photo is at least three years old, it predates his serious accident. Could he have changed? He says he still looks the same, that he is still slim. I’m not worried anyway, but he could be holding back meeting me until he is sure I am hooked by his personality and charm, as far as I can find out from our phone conversations, that is.

We’ll soon find out, or would we?

I am in a free fall! God Bless America!

2005-12-03T10:00:00.000-08:00

I woke up this Saturday morning, and once again I acted like I did not know where I was. After a while, after realizing where I was and what I had done by coming here to Los Angeles, I still felt freaked out. It took me a while to understand why, but I think it might have something to do with the fact that I spent over $800 in the last two days to furnish my studio-apartment and I have not even bought the car or the TV yet. I am in a free fall!

Oh, and I don’t have an iron board, but I have the iron. I bought everything in Sears because it was the closest shop. I found everything, I bought the cheapest of all appliances, towels and bed linen. I never realized that you could buy a coffee maker, an electric can opener, utensils and dishes, all for 10 dollars each. I never thought I would say this but, God bless America! Pure capitalism has brought us choice and cheap prices. Never mind that everything will have broken down before the new year, at least at the moment I am all set up.

Everything I did not buy in Sears, I bought from this lovely Indian couple living in the building next door. They are going back to Canada after a short time in L.A., they don’t like it here. Their children have been screaming to go back to Ottawa, but there must be something wrong them, perhaps they have forgotten that Ottawa in December is like a freezer. I have to admit that Ottawa, where I lived four years of my life, is a very nice city. Underrated. They should film movies there.

Anyway, I bought most of the stuff they themselves bought in Sears. Everyone at work told me that Sears was a big no-no, to not buy anything there. My parents always shopped in Sears in the 70s and 80s, everyone in Canada did. They were the only shops of that kind with Woolco/Woolcrest/Woolworth.

And if Sears is a big no-no, I guess Woolworth cannot even reach the scale for being judged as a proper place to shop. And if I had not gone to Sears, where else should have I gone? Wal-Mart perhaps? Targets, which I have been told is an up-market Wal-Mart?

Well, I guess they will need to open even more Targets and Wal-Marts in America, because one mile away from me is too far without a car. We need a Wal-Mart in every square half mile, I would reckon. What do you think? (I hope you can read that I am ironic here, I better remind you, some of my readers have been total spaz in the last few years. Most of what I say goes right over their head.)

The problem with Sears in Canada in the last 50 years, has been that everyone in the country bought the same stuff. You went to your worst enemy’s house, and discovered they had the same fridge and oven as you, that you had the same lifestyle. I bet everyone in my building has bought the same dishes as me, and when asked, they will tell you they bought that in some up-market Wal-Mart. Wonderful!

I called Stephen this morning, it had been a few days since I spoke to him and I was starting to wonder if he still existed or if the last ten years with him were just a figment of my imagination. I found a nice picture of him of when we were in Arkansas. He is standing in shorts with his skinny legs, pointing at a metallic crocodile on the floor. God he is cute! I missed him, until at least I gave him a call.

He went on and on about what I should do about buying a car and the questions I needed to ask. In the end I know I won’t do any of this, and probably just get taken for a ride by the seller. Anyway, he brought me back to reality, it is his way to make me forget to worry about my problems, filling my head with unimportant comments about what I should be doing.

Some days I wish I was a bit more gay, I’m sure I would be clued up about what to do and where to buy. How are these extremely gay people, who know everything, cope with switching countries? I guess they link up with people of their kind and do a data transfer about all this stuff I don’t know about and that by being gay I should have been born with.

Not sure if extremely gay people would have been able to plug two computers together, bought some cheap speakers, and concoct a television with a DVD player on one portable computer, while the other one is free to write on and get emails.

I’m sure most gay people would never have bought towels for $2.38 each in Sears, and now I bitterly regret having done so. They had something like 10 different sorts of white towels, all identical, but with price tags ranging from $2 to $20 each. What’s the difference I thought?

Well, my whole studio is full of fluffy white thingies, and my clothes that were washed with them, and myself. Just great! I guess this is how most gay people learn, through experience. Somehow I feel they would have known better right from the start. Buy expensive things, and you will never have to worry about fluff thingies.

So I better speak about my lunch with the West Hollywood guy. He is officially gay, as if I could have doubted it. I bet he knows what kind of towels to buy, though I’m not sure he can afford them. My salary is probably three times his, even though I feel I have been his assistant for the last month, finding the contact details of the potential speakers he is now contacting daily.

He wrote some musical recently which is produced somewhere, and it is now going unto a DVD. However it is not connected with any big studio or distributor, and hence they will sell 20 copies at most. Maybe 40, if the three guys who wrote that stuff have a big family able to afford a DVD. Maybe 20, family and friends usually don’t buy your books or DVDs.

Still, I only had to speak about my own projects, throw in NBC and PBS, and that was it, shallow people are so predictable. He is some sort of artificial person. He has a radio phonic voice and speaks like a machine. I told him, he agreed. I feel the poor guy is smiling at all time, but inside it is crumbling and shaking, and he just wants to get out and scream!

I have a hard time describing him, apart from the fact that I thought I was fat, and three of me would fit in his clothes. He seems young, even though all his hair is of a bright white. How old is he then? 40 something I would venture to say. I could never kiss him, I would die first.

As a friend however, you could not hope for better. I believe he will be my ally in this office, with the valley girl, now that I had lunch with them and told them that I had a small problem with the management. I’m on their side, and that is important.

However, he is so perfect at work, like a robot, he loves the director. I’m glad someone enjoys that job, that makes one. It is in a way reassuring to find out that it is possible to be happy there. If one employee is fine, then perhaps two can be. And this is how I felt this week.

I actually had an intelligent conversation with my boss on Friday. We spoke like equals, passionately, about the most boring subject you could ever find on this planet. Finance and politics. For once, there was not even a hint that he was my boss. We looked like two kids planning a new event, which could be very successful.

And then, oh surprise, the more we research the subject, the more all my wild guesses get verified. It turns out that I was right all along! So ten years in conferences has not scrambled my brain. My report done instantly, was actually right! And that is what we are going to do. God, give me the energy and motivation!

Kiddo blog in L.A. 1

2005-12-02T19:00:00.000-08:00

I have now an anonymous blog in parallel to this one, for the people who reads this independently of Mycroft Holmes Blog in L.A. (this blog appears at two places, but I assure you, it is unlikely that you will find out about where the second place is).

At the time of writing this, it is too secret for my main blog that I wish some close friends to read. Unfortunately these close friends need not know that I might have met someone in L.A.

Lucky you, people who read this right now, it is going beyond the call of duty to let you read this. It means that this blog will forever need to remain anonymous and secret.

His pseudo is Norton, he calls me Kiddo. I’ve met him over the Internet. Where else? At least it kept me out of the bars and clubs so far. We have been discussing on the phone every day this week. I had to fight to get to him, it took him a while to get back to me. For more than two weeks I did not think I would ever hear from him again.

So I went crazy, I multiplied the messages, I insisted, it was melodramatic. I somehow connected to him even though I have only one photo of him and had read some stuff he wrote about himself. I kind of connected because he looks so much like my Stephen who’s still in London, and might take a few months to sort his visa and come over here, if he comes at all.

It is because he might not come, though I know he suffers a lot over there without me, after ten years together this is quite normal, that I decided to meet someone else. I thought there was no need that I suffered too, like I did in my first month alone in Los Angeles.

Maybe it is not wise to start a new relationship over here behind his back, especially if he arrives sooner rather than later, however it happened like that and I wanted it. It was not part of my plan but sex has become a stranger in our relationship, and I certainly would like to meet that stranger again. I’m only 33, too young to be an old maid without even affection and tenderness.

It is however quite interesting that Norton is basically the double of my little Stephen. They are both very skinny, have a great smile with soulful eyes (as would say Norton), and are very simple people in their own ways. They are both little fiery things and appear to have great amount of energy screaming to get out. It would not take much for them to start a fight or suffer from road rage. My Norton was involved in many fights in pubs, strangely often on St. Patrick’s day, as he mentioned.

I knew Norton before I even spoke to him. He believes a lot in horoscopes, but he is a Virgo and Stephen is a Pisces. I believe in genes and chromosomes a bit more in this case. Norton has a deep voice, more than I would have thought from his photo, but I find it very sexy and comforting.

He also has, weirdly enough, a Scottish, Irish and British accent (all of them) even though he is certainly American. He says he has many friends who are from Scotland and Ireland, and he spent too much time with them down the pub. I know this kind of behavior is usually fired upon, but one has to stop and think about why someone would try to change his accent like this. He must have a deep desire to be British, and his life is perhaps not that wonderful or complicated enough for him to suffer anyone because of that fake accent. So why not?

At the same time I have spent ten years in London, so for him I may be that missing link with the world he probably dreams of. We also have a lot of things in common, much more than I ever had with Stephen. We already speak on the phone like old boyfriends missing each other, even though he is only 11 miles away from me and we have never met. It is difficult to meet during the week, we both travel by public transport, but I should buy a car soon and then I would hope to never see the interior of one of those monsters running on the Orange Line.

This week was a wonderful week. No problems at work, even though I feel I have not worked as hard as I could have. I had something else to make it nicer. I had my Norton to think about all day. It was like falling in love again, something I have not felt or experienced in more than ten years.

To be honest, I never thought it possible for me to have a crush like this, almost like a little girl would have. I thought it was all over for me, until at least I went through an intensive Atkins diet for at least six months, or something even more radical like stopping eating altogether. I understand now why I was not that motivated with my inexistent diet, I needed to fall in love first. So it is like the chicken and the egg, which one comes first, and without either of them, love or losing weight, neither are possible.

Thankfully I think Norton is getting tired of his sex life with morons in Los Angeles. He appears to have connected with my personality and intelligence, more than the idea that I am an author and scriptwriter. Over here it does not impress anyone either, though at least here it might depress a few people who wish to succeed themselves. But not Norton. All I know about his sex life is that he has slept with a few people and that he was picked up by nice and young guys, but that he refused a few and he is quite picky.

That he would suddenly be interested in me without having met me is quite something special. In fact, I think it was destiny. His photo, as I told him, spoke to me. I really needed to meet this guy. I was sure at first sight that I would be capable of loving him very much.

He was not frightened by how opened I have been, on the contrary, he appears to have connected at my first message. This is quite extraordinary. You would have told me this a month ago and I would have laughed. But not anymore!

Norton has worked for twenty years with actors, but now he feels a bit miserable in a computer survey job. He would like to have a better job so he could pay his bills. He too seems incapable to satisfy his boss, so life could not have been so great. His sister lives with him and, from what I can understand, most of his family is no longer living.

He is also two years younger than Stephen, and they both have a similar body. The difference is that Norton does not have, to my knowledge, a heroine and vodka addiction. As a consequence, as he says, he loves sex anytime anywhere. He is kind of explicit over the phone, he feels like me, certainly looking forward to fall in each other arms and enjoy love and sex all night long. Even if he has strange ideas like covering me with food and eating eat there on my body. Not sure if I will enjoy it.

We will meet Sunday, unless something happens, which is quite possible. Tomorrow, Saturday, he is working, and I guess I will be too, transcribing to a file all that was said in the hour and a half conversation with a lawyer about my conference. It is not going to be easy, especially that I still need to buy a car and a TV. After that, I’ve got pretty much everything I need.

Oh Sunday, will you ever come?

Shut up! Don't be a wimp, you are here now, for quite a while, just accept it and move on with your life

2005-11-30T09:00:00.000-08:00

C'est étrange. It is strange what happened yesterday after my meeting. I thought it was the end of it, my boss told me what he had to say. He basically told me hang in there and I will find you something to do, let's forget the past mistakes. And I kind of went through a second honeymoon which lasted since yesterday and will probably finish today.

They paid me for the Thanksgiving holiday, when I should not have for the first month, and now my boss smiles to me again and she talked to me about paying her to get her car, some sort of huge SUV Lincoln, that my ex-boyfriend in Ottawa told me on the phone yesterday to forget about it.

And the woman in HR is nice again. I can usually tell what the weather is by how her good morning sounds like. If she smiles, then the bosses like me, and if she barely says hi, I know something is wrong. And she has been dark lately, but since yesterday 3 pm, she is nice again. So it is nice to be in their good grace again, even though I have not done anything to deserve this.

It is more that perhaps they realized yesterday that I was ready to go back to London and that, until I had paid for my apartment, for me it was relatively risk free to leave now. I must have frightened them, it must have looked like a threat, which was not my intention. I only wanted to offer them the chance to correct their mistake if they had thought for one second that it was one.

I wonder now if requesting this meeting was necessary or just a waste of time, and god knows the consequences of frightening them like that. I think they thought I was so committed already that their aggressive management style would work fine on me. I'm stuck here after all from their point of view.

I think they suddenly realized that I could leave and go back to London at any time, even, I was kind of considering it right now. It was a wake up call, and they moved from putting pressure on me to work harder to being nice again and wanting to help me get a car without having to go through a credit check and all that stuff. They will probably feel safe again once I have paid for my studio apartment, but once again they should realize that I don't mind losing $2,000, and that if it becomes necessary to move back to London, I will at any time.

I am also a bit worried about paying a certain amount of money every month just for a car, when I could spend $2,000 right now for an old one and not have to worry about it except perhaps getting it fixed once it breaks down, which will be soon I suppose. You get what you pay for and I should have learnt my lesson with the bicycle, I should have bought a new one. Well, my salesman here at work told me that at $80, I could not go wrong. So perhaps it was worth it.

I kind of again feel uncomfortable at work, I'm not sure why. This feeling that I don't have something clear to do. Well, I should be identifying the right people to call, but I have trouble doing that, it is difficult for me to start. I'm just afraid that suddenly something will happen, I don't know. It is weird.

I hope I will get into gear and forget to worry about everything. It would be nice for a change. It is all a state of mind. And this morning when I cycled here, suddenly that question of if I really wanted to live here came back to me, if it was a mistake and all, and I told myself quite firmly: shut up, don't be a wimp, you are here now, for quite a while, just accept it and move on with your life. And that second voice at the back of my mind was so powerful, that I think I will listen to it right now and get back to work.

I'm afraid that my ingenious plan to hide what I am writing might not be adequate. I just re-opened the Excel sheet and it opened right where I was writing, Column DZ, Row 503. Not only that, if the Black guys knows about this, from the beginning, then I am definitely giving away everything I am writing. And I have very vague hints that it may be so.

I am also worried that when I delete certain files from my history, it might be going into the Recycle Bin. And I don't have access to the Recycle Bin, so I cannot delete them for real. However I'm sure the Administrator has access to that bin and can quickly see what are these files that I am deleting, which are obviously the files I don't want them to have access to. At the same time, it is possible that I am really attracting attention to them by deleting them.

I am becoming obsessed with these Big Brothers measures (I used to write in French in my files, and it was less worrying), and I now really hate Microsoft for having made it so easy to spy on us like that. I am going to do a huge research on the Internet, I want to know everything there is to know about how employers can spy on their employees and how I can go around it. So for now I will also hide the columns. He might not think of that one and not realize that some columns have disappeared.

No matter how much you are trying to plan your day, as soon as it depends on other people, it can all change. I almost walked here this morning instead of taking my bicycle, thinking I would be dropped home by one of my colleagues after seeing the preview film with Jodie Foster tonight. She is sick, so now I'm not so sure if I want to go alone. I was supposed to have lunch with the West Hollywood guy, but I just had to mention having to go to the bank and he reported everything to tomorrow. I wonder if he too will have a lot to say about management, like my valley girl. Especially that he is right under the director, and also has meeting with the boss.

He does not look affected by anything, he looks all right and happy. And for once I would like it if he were to tell me that everything is fine and that he loves it here. However he always says that he is very busy and he has no time to do anything, and this is why he has reported lunch many times already. So he must be under pressure, that he does not even go to lunch. I look forward hearing his story, I wished I would have heard it today, but I guess it will have to wait until tomorrow.

Destiny is re-organizing my life out of my control, for the best

2005-11-29T09:00:00.000-08:00

Once again I feel quite weird in the office this morning. I know I will meet my boss and I don't know how the meeting will turn out. She might have decided certain things after speaking with my director and her husband. I'm sure the director would not have told her that they should keep me. And her husband could have decided just like that, that it was perhaps preferable that I leave. Ultimately she does not need their word, apparently she is quite the business woman and could decide on her own that it was a mistake.

The director was not here yesterday, he's back today with his deep voice. I'm glad I'm not working with him right now, I know I will work with him in the future, I know he will be patronizing and there will be conflict, that alone convinces me that it would not be a bad idea if I were to go back to London.

And then, right after saying that, he followed me in the kitchen and tried to be nice. I was a bit ashamed to tell him that I went to Universal Studios during Thanksgiving, and he made it clear he disapproved of it. He appears to be kind of anti-tourist or commercial himself, and wrote books about the old history of Los Angeles. I think he mentioned that before, but I had the time to forget. As if I am so freaked out, I am unable to retain anything anyone tells me.

So we discussed Vincent Van Gogh, which really could not have been better since I really feel a special connection with this painter. I went to St. Remy de Provence in France twice in my life since I have a friend there, and this is where he was interned in a mental institution and painted most of his great paintings. He also lived in my town in England, Isleworth, and there is a blue plate to remind us. He was not painting yet at that time however. Not sure if talking about Vincent might have changed his opinion about me.

I thought he had a discussion with my boss today about the meeting, and that he was doing an extra effort today to be nice since I am after all considering going back to London. And I would certainly do so if in any way my boss tells me she feels she has made a mistake. However I have not seen her this morning. I thought I had heard her voice but I must have been dreaming.

Today I am having lunch with my valley girl. Tomorrow it will be the West Hollywood guy. I might learn more right there that I have ever learned in my one month alone in my corner.

We are under such surveillance here, we cannot exchange one word without having our nice black guy following up within seconds to make sure nothing negative is said. A way to feel like a Big Brother state, without the need for cameras and monitoring devices. He checks our computers, as mine had been left on all Thanksgiving when I arrived yesterday, which means someone checked out my files. I would prefer cameras because then you can at least forget that they exist and take a bit more freedom. With a human overlooking you at all time, it is more difficult.

Anyway, I will meet with them and I would expect them to tell me how they feel. They will probably tell me they feel like me and then I will understand that what I have gone through this last month is completely normal and I was not an isolated case. And then it will make me feel better and I will be happy to continue working here for at least four more months. Once my rent ends, I will reconsider my situation.

It is also possible that they are quite happy and have not experienced any of what I have gone through. Especially the West Hollywood guy, he seems to be the perfect employee, always smiling and happy, never in any trouble. I look forward to hearing his story. Might come late though to have an impact on my staying here or not, as I might get my check for the rent this lunch time, and even if I were to wait until tomorrow, we will go to lunch after I got the check.

I am in some sort of dilemma, go and see my boss to ask him for something to do, instead of wasting my time searching the Internet to learn more about Texas and transportation, or wait until his wife arrives and have my meeting with her. It would be sensible, especially that today could be my last day after all.

So I am going to wait, and write, even if it makes me feel quite guilty.

Fuck, fuck, fuck! I'm trying to reach Stephen, but he appears to be on the Internet, he does not answer his mobile phone or read his SMS messages, and he does not appear to be reading his e-mails either. In this day and age, I just cannot reach him!

I have ten minutes before going to lunch with the valley girl. I need to talk to him about my meeting with my boss (his wife was not in today so he invited me in for a chat). So I cannot go to the bank, I could not speak to him! And I am in a terrible mood about it. I'm so annoyed with him! What the fuck is he doing online on the Internet, in the last ten years the guy never even spent two minutes online. It is killing me. The most urgent moment of all, to sort myself out!

There is no more time, in 6 minutes I have to go to lunch. I could not even speak with him if he were to call. I cannot go to the bank, I'll have to wait until tomorrow. And it complicates thing so much!

First of all I need to assess if I should continue to write this blog as I have been, meaning for myself and not caring too much about any eventual reader, or if now that I have put it online and received already a few comments about it, I should try to adapt it to make it more interesting, meaning changing the topics as often as possible. I don't think I want to write this for anyone else but me, and if it interests anyone else, then fine. If it bores them, they can go and read another blog, of the exact type they wish to read. As simple as that.

Now that I have that out of the way, there are three things I need to discuss which ultimately brings me to one main question. The question is, should I get out of Los Angeles while I can, or should I stay for another four months and see how it goes? At the risk of destroying my relationship, losing my job in Parliament Square, losing the apartment in London if Stephen comes over, etc.

There are many risks, and neither my conversation with my boss, my colleague the valley girl or my phone call to Stephen helped me establish the answer to my question. On the contrary, everything is telling me: get out of here while you can, before everything crumbles in front of your eyes while you are powerless to save it!

So my boss repeated to me that he was not impressed with my report and the fact that perhaps he cannot trust my judgment. I had to defend myself and tell him that I read that report again today, and I feel I was quite correct and his conclusions were perhaps biased. It was not really the place to try to save my neck, so I did not insist, the damage has been done anyway. The important is that they don't think it was a mistake to hire me, that they hope to eventually see my potential in action, hence, they want me to stay and discover where our working relationship could lead.

So this is encouraging, even though it is not really. I have confirmed that he did not have much time to look at my reports. He feels they will be interesting to read once he has more time or develop something more specific about what they are about. So of course all this hard work was not exactly appreciated. They sacked too many people recently and he now has to do everything himself, especially marketing.

So he apologized for having left me alone in my corner for the last two days, and to be honest I don't really mind. However now I need to come up with the names and contact details of people I will need to contact to gather intelligence. He gave me that to do since he does not have the time to work on this.

He did not speak about my problems with my director, and perhaps I should have. It was impossible since he spoke mainly about that conference we were working on. It was difficult to bring him back to the subject at hand, which was what he expects of me and Stephen in the future.

Well, me being a conference manager with some report writing when it is the right time, is what is still on the table, as I expected it to be. For Stephen though it is not as we thought. He was supposed to be responsible for their new telemarketing department, but of course, only once they decide to hire more people.

So for quite a while, god knows for how long, what he will be doing is basically telesales, cold calling people all day to convince them to attend conferences. I would not do that myself, how can I expect Stephen to do it? However he did not react when I told him, he was too busy complaining about the whole thing in general, reminding me it was a crazy idea and that he would only come for me, and he would sacrifice everything and the cats, and his mother does not speak to him anymore, etc.

This whole business has turn sour indeed. And yet, I have to remain here, I have to continue, I need to find out where it may lead me. I was not exactly encouraged by my valley girl, who told me, after a while, and only after I had compromised myself enough by telling her everything I really thought, she finally told me what her experience is.

It took her forever but she finally thought I was on her side and she told me exactly what I thought myself, about the director, with whom she too had a lot of trouble with at the beginning. With the bosses as well, who make her feel terrible, incompetent and never encourage her whatsoever. She said she was on their black list.

She did not want to tell me about all these people who appear to have left quickly, some of them lying (one said he had to go back to South Africa, but he was spotted in the Valley twice, so he lied to get out of here) and the numerous people who seem to have been sacked. I would like to know why, so I could at least be reassured that it was justified and it won't happen to me by inadvertence. But no one will speak about it, and I know my boss is lying when he tells me why they left.

So I am pretty much at the same point I was. I have confirmation that my reports were half read because of a lack of time, so I know they did not help establish my potential. I know I won't be able to impress them, they will not admit to work well done. I can only achieve what is expected if I work very hard. As long as they don't call me in the office to spit on me and my work, then I can assume I am in the clear. So it is not going to be easy, I never thought it would be, I just did not expect it to be so bad so soon. My honeymoon was over after 5 minutes.

Now, I am not a wimp, despite what someone could think reading my complaints, and I can go through this, I will survive it. I just have to get on with the job, and perhaps it would be a good idea to stop blogging at work. There are still three hours before the end of the day, God knows how I will survive it.

It has been hard again this week, even though it was more emotional and psychological. Hard decisions to make, depending on certain events requiring full analysis on my part, etc. I just want to go home and relax, especially that yesterday I did not, having to buy that bicycle for $80, which was supposed to be new, but I don't think it is and I had to spend another $46 in tools and lock for it, which means I shopped until 9 pm yesterday. I should have perhaps bought a new bicycle, it would have cost me the same and at least it would have worked fine.

The wife of my boss is here this afternoon. I wonder if she stayed at home this morning in order to avoid meeting me today. Is she still embarrassed somehow, avoiding me? In which case I am not out of the woods yet. Something my valley girl said, she hopes to learn to speak to the bosses, as if somehow communications was a bit like a train wreck.

I think we are very similar, we both worry a lot about nothing, we are both highly sensitive and we take everything very personal. As a consequence we almost become dysfunctional people. And she said it, we are the perfect employees, because one word is sufficient to hurt us, bring us into a higher gear and work all night. They just need to say: have you done this yet? And then we work like crazy and then when we come back to them with the results, they are happy indeed that it works fine.

My Spanish friend, the one in telesales, is actually from El Salvador, from the main city San Salvador. She is however not related to Gloria also from that city. Apparently there are many of them out here, and she said that not everyone was as Patriotic as some people from El Salvador. I don't know what she meant by that, but I suspect that her country is a place where the revolution has been going on for many years, and probably a tyrant has been at the head of that country for years, and America must have supported him because somehow they had some commercial advantages to all that, and what else. It must be the typical story. I do intend to do some research and find out more about it though. I could be completely wrong.

Something was a bit weird this morning in the meeting. Though I know my boss is intelligent, sometimes I wonder. He said to me I had to answer all the questions he put on a sheet, there were about 40 questions altogether. I had to answer all these questions for all the most relevant events. And that was at a time when none of us had established yet a list of all events and certainly not established with ones were the relevant ones. And of course, only he would have known which events were relevant, since only he had in his mind what he wanted to do with this event.

For example, he wishes to keep it very specific, to one particular project. This is something I learned quite late, after I gave him my report. So today again he accused me of not having answered his questions, and he acts very stunned and surprised that I could go away like that, work two days trying to achieve this research, and come back with not having answered his questions. And he again mentioned that he could not believe that I did not do a thorough research, enough to find all the (irrelevant) events his wife found.

Now, I'm sorry to say, but the guy perhaps is not that intelligent. First he would know I did not have enough time at the time to first do an exhaustive research of the market, two, not enough time to write the report, and three, that my report was actually trying to answer the questions on his guide. Now, why would he decide to be so blind and not see what is evident? I told him today but his answer was that in which case I need to be clearer and to the point, he does not have the time to find my answers in my 4 page report. Fair enough.

At the same time, he wanted me to answer all these questions for all relevant events. In the end he identified ten. What he really was asking was actually more like a report of 100 pages, and he wanted that in two days. This is so unrealistic. I understand now that these are management tricks, however you still need to be logical in what you are asking, and reasonable, otherwise we will just disconnect and learn to not take it personally as my valley girl said and does.

Poor her, actually she was not responsible for one person being sacked, but two. Her two assistants, whom she convinced everyone were incapable of doing anything. At the same time she was told she was incompetent and tells me she is on their black list, especially after this wedding of hers which took forever to prepare and was taking most of her time. The wedding cost so much, if they had decided to forgo it, they could have bought a house instead. And now she regrets not having bought one instead.

I don't think I have mentioned yet the guy responsible for sales. Probably because he is such a nice guy, until I guess he finds out I'm gay. I'm pretty sure it won't sit well with him, he is so much into sports and pushing his kids into football and baseball, etc. Just saw photos, very nice family. Somehow I feel he could be gay, or is it just that he reminds me so much of my first boyfriend, with his manners and expressions. Quite possible, and yet he is so tactile, especially with the girls around here, he needs to touch them all the time.

He used to drop me home on his way back home at 5 pm, but now I have a bicycle, so it won't happen again. I feel he will eventually invite me to some sport event or ask me to actually take part in sports, but he has not done so yet in the last month. He mentioned that we should go for a bicycle ride, I'm not sure yet if I will accept. He has two nice sons, and perhaps his second wife has daughters, or I don't quite understand who are all these people in the photos he showed me.

And now I feel terribly guilty that I have been writing all day instead of working. Even though it is clear my boss just gave me anything to do until he finishes what he is doing and can again concentrate on our project. He said: take a few days to identify the main persons we need to contact. Something for once that I actually could do in two hours! So I guess the question would be, what I would be doing if I was not writing right now, wondering how long the last hour and forty minutes would actually seem to last, five hours more like it.

I would like to go and buy myself a toasted egg sandwich, but she only sells them in the morning, and I'm not sure why. This is ridiculous, what we eat for breakfast these days is so heavy and diversified, especially in the U.S., that we should no longer make any distinction between what we are supposed to eat for breakfast or for lunch. And she is losing business, because I am not going to buy one of her three layers sandwich which cannot fit into my mouth, with chips on the side which are not barbecue, my favorite.

Shit, I have just sent another e-mail again with a spelling mistake. I am so terrible at this now, I don't read myself again and I used to depend on Word as my editor for the emails I send. However at the moment I am a bit stuck, because I cannot use Word as my editor, my version of Word is too old. I cannot either set the spelling check, and hyperlinks just don't work.

So in essence this whole computer is basically completely out of date and I can't even download anything because I don't have administrator's privilege. As a consequence the whole thing is bugged, because I have applications requesting updates, which will no longer work unless I download these updates, and ultimately my computer is broken and I am powerless to change anything since I am locked out of it.

It is like teasing me. Here is a computer, but don't dream of using it, this is a privilege for the administrator, whoever that is. I don't know who came up with this great idea of creating users accounts and an administrator, but we should shoot the guy. Thank you for locking us all out of our computers and render them completely useless. At this rate, I might consider an Apple, as long as it is impossible to lock us out!

You can tell this is the end of the day, and that I am forcing myself to write just so the last 20 minutes might pass faster. I'm so bored and tired, I need to get out of here. All my bosses are still here, usually the director and the wife leave at 3 pm and my main boss would still be here by the time I leave at 5 pm.

They must be struggling for real with the marketing of that conference. I bet I could help them a lot, however they are not asking for my help and my success rate recently has not been that great, as he reminded me today in our meeting. So I guess I should let them play with the database, and stand far from anything that they are doing. I should soon enough start working like crazy again, you'll see.

Now that I have a bicycle, and that I will be home almost instantly, perhaps I should stop at Taco Time or McDonalds. Especially since I know I will get my check tomorrow and that I will have access to the money instantly. Now I am not so poor, and I will be able to use my pay check to pay for my apartment, instead of using my debit card from England, which was complicating things.

In fact, being unable to reach Mark at lunch time is the reason why I will now deal with this cashier check for my rent tomorrow instead of today. And I only realized later today that this was great since I will receive my pay check tomorrow anyway and I would have had to go to the bank a second time, and complicate my life to get the money via London today. Well, there must be some destiny involved, it will not even allow me to make a mistake, it will force the events to make sure everything is maximized in my life.

My only mistake was to lose patience over this impossibility to reach Stephen when it was supposed to be like that. Where does this leave free will? God knows, and I don't care, time to go home.