andcurve.weblog - The weblog of Kevin Teljeur. Somewhere within all the noise, there is a note you need to hear.

A small stack of photos from my late May visit to Timisoara in Romania; as you may or may not be aware (But you probably are, since you’re reading this, which implies that you probably know a bit about me) I go there roughly every four to six weeks and stay with my girlfriend, Oana, and work from her apartment. It’s good, because as well as us being able to spend time together, I like being in Timisoara – read and see some more on it here (‘h0t chixx0rs!’) and here (‘I’m back!’).

Incidentally, have all of you managed to get your heads around the ‘click on the image to view the larger, high-quality version of same image’ concept? I don’t actually know, but I’m presuming you have.

A view of Timisoara from Oana’s apartment – I think that’s looking South, over a residential area. Those somewhat dowdy-looking apartments are actually well-built and very comfortable. 13th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »

A view of Timisoara from Oana’s apartment – I think that’s looking North. At the bottom is the tram station and to the left is the local ‘Etti’ store, the Timisoara equivalent of ‘Spar’ in Ireland. 13th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »

Near the centre of Timisoara, a view of some of the more fancy-pancy apartments. 14th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »

Oana’s apartment has a very fast broadband Intarwebs connection, it’s on the nineth floor with stunning views, bright and sunny, and when she moves out I’m going to miss it almost as much as she will; even the screech of tyres burning rubber somewhere down below every half an hour as some tool tries to demonstrate his lack of ability at driving.

Oana (in green) and the girls enjoying a quick glass of drain cleaner at Mario’s birthday. 19th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »

Oana and the girls warming up for some fancy-pancy disco at Mario’s birthday. 19th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »

Oana and the girls enjoying a quick extreme air-guitar driven rock-out at Mario’s birthday. 19th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »

Oana and the girls enjoying a quick karaoke crooning session at Mario’s birthday. 19th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »

Oana and the girls enjoying a quick… Oh, never mind. They’re pretty, and so foarte sexy. At Mario’s birthday. 19th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »

That’s no girl! Mario tormenting Clea at Mario’s birthday. 19th May 2007. Click image to view larger version »

Oana’s mates are a great bunch, and I really enjoy hanging out with them. Mad, bad and dangerous to know… And they know how to party!

Right, that ‘Phil’ business was entertaining – and so was Garret, from time to time – but it’s dying a death. www.make-phil-and-his-fucking-contraption-history.com. I’m in Romania right now, having a ball, relaxing, enjoying myself, having an actual holiday (I was told they were good, and I thought I’d take the plunge, so to speak) and taking about four thousand photos, you’ll have to sit through some choice cuts before long. I’d put up a photo now except for the fact that this damn Internet cafe doesn’t actually have USB on this computer (This USB business is important because it means I can attach the memory card from my spanking new Canon Digital SLR to the computer and… Well, you’re clever people, you’ll get it.) and it’s pretty slow. I know you’re all going to say something like “Hey you, like what is the fuck this, you know?”; to which I’ll probably reply “Well whatever fuckarse, because, hey, you know.”.

Special shout out to the beautiful, clever and occasionally dubious Oana, who is chaperoning me, owning me, taking care of me and showing me around Romania. Shouts also out to Roxana, who has suggested many clever things to get up to, and the girls of ExamPlus for keeping Oana on her toes and being a generally great bunch of people. I’ll be curious to hear what they thought of ‘Intermission‘ featuring Colin Fucking Farrell which I thought was a reasonable Irish film with contemporary Irish culture, and ‘The General‘ which is a pretty good representation of Ireland in the nineteen eighties.

Anyway, better go. Oana’s getting bored and we have a train to catch from (as she would say, and probably will) a dubious train station, else we’ll be trapped in Sighisoara tonight. I’ll try and post again, but I’ll be back on Wednesday night, and by Saturday you’ll all be wishing I’d stayed here; by then Garret may actually seem like a less painful option after all.

Oh, and one more thing; I finally met Ovideo! It was sheer coincidence, but it was icing on the cake for a great week. It really was.

First off, shouts out to Maddy, who is one of my multitude of housemates and who has promised to have a look at my blog tonight, in between managing a restaurant and whatnot, so that was sort of an impetus to actually write some stuff which I’ve been meaning to put up for… weeks, months possibly. I’ve been provoking Maddy probably a little bit too much for my own good recently, and while normally I’d expect to get back as good as I give, I’m starting to worry a little that I’ll wake up one morning and find the head of a Kakapo in my bed. Maddy, with me taking a real risk with my life. That was at my birthday lunch in Castleknock. Click image to view larger versionIt could happen.

You got the vote
Women have been asking me for advice about stuff recently for some reason, generally stuff to do with men, and what’s up with them anyway, why is he doing this or that, that kind of stuff; given the content of my previous post here (which was all about completely misinterpreting the thesis of young Elizabeth from Kilkenny and also trying to be as offensive about the whole sex versus gender roles debate as possible, which provoked a lengthy and thoughtful email from Elizabeth and also a heated comment from Tadhg. Heh heh.) I thought that was a very interesting co-incidence, and of course I’ve been gleefully taking shots at the whole gender equality debate. Ireland has come a long way in a short space of time, from being a country that would be frowned upon as being a bit hardcore by conservative Muslim states – we all know they used to lock up women here in what were known as the Magdalene Laundries (and they were still locked up until the early to mid eighties) for such indiscretions as having a child out of wedlock, or perhaps being molested by someone with authority – to being a country where men and women are reaching a state of equality, and becoming more and more equal all the time. I’ve heard this from women who go abroad with the ingrained view that Ireland is sexist, and come back seeing that, in fact, Ireland is quite advanced in that aspect of society. So, when women start to complain (I’d love to use the word ‘moan’ or perhaps ‘whinge’, maybe ‘whine’, but… Ah, it’s all politically incorrect now.) about how they want some guy to do something for them, such as ask them out, fix the car or whatever, I think ‘Hey, what is this shit I am hearing now, because you know, first you were asking for the voting so you could participate meaningfully in society, so you have it (and we are having the Mary Harney, so personally I am thinking, maybe is not so good idea), then you are asking to play golf which is like stupid but you are having the golf now and this is your own fault, and then you are wanting the same money to earn as men, so you are having this now also, and hey, what I am hearing, you still are wanting the guy to do all the hard stuff, because you know, at the end of the day women are not having the balls and you know it. It is true.‘. I don’t actually say it quite like that, but close enough. You wanted the vote, you got the vote. You wanted the ‘glass ceiling’ to go, and… It’s higher. Probably not gone yet, but getting there. And you still want guys to fulfill the traditional roles! Come on! This isn’t about equality, it’s about having your cake and eating it! So, ladies, now you have your legislation to level the playing field everywhere else, you’ll have to start doing some of the shitty stuff that men have to do too. You like him, you bloody well ask him out yourself.

Heh. I love a good venting like that. And women too, they’re cute when they try to grasp complex issues.

I meant to write a piece about something else too which relates to the gender equality issue, and this is that as a woman if you want to start a family and actually have kids yourself then you’re going to have to start before you are thirty five. That’s it. You can’t come back later on and change your mind about it. I think that the culture of equality now means that women can easily forget about this (since independence from a relationship is now socially acceptable for women) and only really start considering it as a possible problem when they’re too old to actually start a family themselves; I suppose a potential solution is to have the babies with some man, regardless of whether or not they’re in a relationship together. So, girls, if you need to pop one out soon let me know because I’ve got great genetic material, very gifted with… stuff, I’ll get back to you about that, and I’m very sexually frustrated so we’ll all be a winner here.

New layout sign in the Phoenix park, early one morning quite recently. Click image to view larger versionThere’s a rule for that.
Something else I’ve realised recently is that along with that sort of change in culture and society in Ireland is the rise of regulation; Ireland is now seemingly more heavily regulated than anywhere else I can think of. Here in Ireland people tend to subscribe to the idea that it’s a bit of an easy-going free-for-all, by which I mean that you have a lot of freedom to do as you please provided you’re not harming anyone else. This is clearly a myth. I complain about the Irish, collectively, but they are individually smart people with a good understanding of the mechanics of organisation, if not the actual collective implementation of it. The thing is (some might argue, and I’m still sort of on the fence about this point), for a society to move forward and to start being productive as a whole, then the people in the society need to start working together, and collectively understanding and applying rules; if that doesn’t come naturally to them, then the State needs to start making rules and enforcing them across the board. We have tended here to blame the European Union and it’s love of bureaucracy for the avalanche of rules but I see now that the Irish State is coming up with new and innovative directions to take with legislation, all sorts of stuff has rules applied to it here which you’re not likely to see in other Western European countries. During the last month I’ve been in England and Austria, and they don’t have as many rules for stuff as we do here, or perhaps they’re not as worried about breaking them as we are here. If I had more time I’d do some research, but I think it boils down to the fact that in many Germanic countries you can lay down some guidelines for society and people will follow them, by and large (in other words, they do what they’re told because it’s in the interest of the Greater Good). Ireland is not a Germanic country but would like some of that discipline in order to build up the economy, so they’ve applied a rule-making blitz and some sort of infrastructure for punishing those who break the rules. This doesn’t make people here law-abiding, but it gives them ‘training wheels’ until they follow rules and work together for the greater good out of force of habit.

As a contradiction to that, you’ll find that in Ireland there is actually effectively two countries, or indeed three of them. There is Dublin, there is beyond Dublin, and there is Donegal. Beyond Dublin is subject to the same rules as Dublin, but they don’t really adhere to, or enforce, rules like they do in Greater Dublin, and probably wait to see if people in Cork are paying any attention before they do. There is also the county of Donegal, which is not unlike Somalia, in that it is very far away and has no effective government of any sort. Things are looking up however, because next year U.N. peacekeepers are moving in to restore order and soverise them. Really, it’s pretty simple.

I’m not into hitting Ch1xx0rz, but if they’re bad ones then…
Right, one last return to ramblings about women. I had a peculiar dream last weekend which as far as I can tell was inspired by looking at some sites which had stuff about comics. More specifically, comics with superheroes, of varying degrees of quality, or just very bizarre. The upshot was that I was a superhero, one of a group, and we were battling to save humanity or something along those lines, and we had to fight some bad guys which we were afraid of because they were going to give us a pasting. Yeah, we were in trouble and pretty desperate. In fact, I was fighting girls, who looked suspiciously like girls I know personally! But humanity had to be saved and we had to escape or climb into a hole or something like that, so I had punch, slap and throw those girls around like paperweights to save out lives. They didn’t seem overly bothered or fight back too much, and there was someone else I know there, a guy, who was a little taken aback by the beating of the girls, but he wasn’t really getting with the program of beating the evil women and saving the world so I didn’t feel too bad about it. I woke up as things were getting messy, so I don’t know if we won of not, which is unfortunate.

I wonder what Freud would have made of that.

The ‘Media Wall Project’
I’ve been making good progress on my ‘media wall’, by the way. Taken a month or two ago. My bed, in my room, with my little ray of sunshine coming through my window. Click image to view larger versionIf you’re reading this then you may very well be up there already, or there’s a photo of you waiting to go up. I’ve nominated one area as family, another as close friends and family, people I met while travelling, and ‘sexy chicks that bust my balls’. If anyone wants to nominated in that last category then please comment below.
My media wall, the side over the end of the bed Click image to view larger versionMy media wall, the side over the side of the bed Click image to view larger version
So, there are the nuggets for today. I’ve been working on a WordPress site for Keith, friend and former colleague, so that he’ll have a travelog and also been trying to find time to get up posts dealing with my trip to Devon, my trip to Vienna, Kenny’s thirtieth birthday, my trip to Kilkenny, my trip to Wexford, and a number of little events and what have you thrown in too. It’s all a lot of work, and I still don’t know a) where is my time going to and b) why am I doing this anyway? It is a conundrum, indeed.

(Edited on 4th May 2006 to point something out; that guy that was helping me fight the evil ch1xx0rz, was as far as I know none other than Ken Rooney! I’m not totally sure, but I think so. Gotta hesitate a bit less with hitting those chicks, Roonster!)

I have bigger, more important things to post about than this, but… It is funny and seems to have amused a few people so far. Particularly girls! It’s the kind of thing which demonstrates the cultural divide between the skirted boob-carriers and the trousered cock-wielders; interestingly, and largely by pure co-incidence, I got pulled (or forced my way, it’s a moot point at any rate) into a conversation in Kilkenny on Saturday night, at a party, we were all slightly drunk, I’m setting the scene here, bear with me, about gender being a cultural construct. This interesting topic came up because Lise (it’s short for Elisabeth, very important to know that)Lise (who is called Elisabeth in real life; it’s a cultural thing) and Mark (who calls me Chris for some reason) in the cab. Madness ensued shortly afterwards. Click image to view larger version is doing a thesis on this area and had some opinions on the subject to share with group. As usual, so did I, and got stuck in with some opinions of my own, and I’ve actually been thinking about it since. I’ve formed some forceful and no doubt controversial ideas which I’ll happily throw the way of anyone who’ll care to listen, and they’ll get me beaten too. About time, some will say.This single heated conversation had an interesting effect on me in that since then I’ve been thinking more clearly, articulating myself much better and generally been using my mind a bit more. I had, I think, been getting a little complacent. Aren’t young people fantastic?
Props to Lise! I’ll sum up my view as this; I have a cock. It is not the biggest cock there is, it isn’t always the most reliable of cocks, and certainly not the most beautiful, but it is and always has been there, and I’ve always known what it is there for. Now, I’ll admit that use of it wasn’t something that came naturally to me, but that’s just some technical stuff. I’ve always known what I’ve wanted to do with it, and with girls. I wasn’t taught that. I wasn’t taught to have a cock, and cute pair of nuts to go with it. This is because I am male, and it’s part of the package; I know some males realise early on that the skirted boob-carriers are not for them, but that’s not a cultural thing either, they just know from day one that they are benders and that’s the way it is (I’m not a bender, by the way, in case that wasn’t clear. But each to their own. I’m sure Brokeback Mountain is a great movie.). And the same goes for girls who don’t like the the trousered cock-wielders. Mind you, many a time you can’t blame them really. But being facetious and deliberately offensive aside, my point is that these are not learned things. I am what I am, you are what you are, and these things are decided in a large part by your genes.This whole area of discussion is not unrelated to the very politically incorrect and sensitive discussion about race; suffice to say, some human population groups are genetically predisposed to be better at certain things (by and large) than others. These ‘things’ can be a little nebulous, but sport is a good example of what I’m talking about here, and I won’t go into it any further because it’s a tricky one which I can’t tackle lightly without a little research.

So, all that said, there are certain things which while in theory they are cultural issues, I think that evolution and the biology of gender means that there are things which women can’t understand. At all. If you went back in time (or to New Zealand) and explained the offside rule to Maximus Decimus Meridias then I think you’ll find that he would find the time (in between defeating the Germanic hordes) to say “Ah yes, of course, that’s entirely reasonable. Good idea, too!” and he’d be right. It’s a man thing. Girls… Well, you know, the offside rule. That’s the way it is.

This came up when having to explain ‘cock-blocking’ to a finite but seemingly endless number of Romanian women after some of the frenzied commenting on my previous post regarding my going to teach Engleza in Romania, where I had to use the term (in jest, of course) about the women who teach in… It’s a long story. Read the post and the comments to see what I mean. Anyway, here’s my explanation, if you don’t like the semi-official version.

If a guy has an interest in a girl and is trying to chat her up then the cock-block is an attempt to foil the chat up, usually by a friend of the girl (male or female). Sometimes it’s a friend of the guy, who himself has an interest in the girl, or is just very socially inept. If the guy doing the cock-blocking is a friend of the girl, then he is probably cock-blocking in order to keep the girl to himself. On the other hand, if it’s a girl, then she is misguidedly trying to protect her friend from having a good time (or she wants the guy to herself).

Now, entirely hypothetically, let’s say I express an interest in Angela, who is a friend of my friend Jen. However, Jen isn’t happy about this, because she doesn’t want me to get lucky with Angela (perhaps, because it would be awkward, especially if I was only interested in Angela for casual sex), so Jen has to do something to prevent me from getting Angela’s attention. For example, she might loudly ask me in front of Angela if my syphillis has cleared up yet, or if my wife is coming over to join us. Of course, there is the bungled cock-block, whereby for example, Jen may try to block me by saying to Angela “Dude! He’s so not clever, he just lost €9,000 in a stupid investment in some company!”. But Angela might think that there must be more where that came from and be encouraged rather than discouraged… Thus a bungled cock-block. Dude! This would make it very hard for me to ‘get lucky’ with Angela, hence the term ‘cock-block’, because my cock has almost literally been blocked.

Well, I thought I should share these thoughts with group. I’ve been beavering away on posts to finish the Vienna trip write-up (with some truly scandalous and epic stuff in there), the Devon trip write-up (complete with pillow-heads) and Kenny’s birthday. And now also the epic Kilkenny trip, as well as a million other things I’ve seen, done and farted in the general direction of over the last few weeks. I have to finish Keith’s site too, for then I will have a third site out there which I’ve built on top of WordPress, the same fantastic free software which makes this site possible…

(edited on 19th April 2006 to add the bungled scenario. Pretty important possibility, I believe.)

Me, all fuzzy and wearing The Hat, which makes me irresistable to all women. Even hairy ones. Click image to view larger version

Guinness is great; you drink it, and then all too late you realise what it’s doing to you, but it feels so damn good, you just can’t fight it… The downside is that I haven’t had a day without alchohol since last Thursday, which is a lot less good.

Today was interesting, to say the least. I had to write off a ridiculous amount of money (if you crashed your car you would lose this kind of money), but I got a job offer from Romania! Just one line on Messenger really could have some very far-reaching effects on my life over the coming year, and hopefully be a very positive development. So shouts out to Oana, Moni and all their crew in Timisoara!

What a day though. I’ll finish the posts on my recent travels over the weekend, and put those photos up too. Unmissable stuff, I can tell you now!

(Edited on 12.04.06 to add the image)