Desperately Seeking...a Chocolate Hen

Offlate, I have been hankering after memories of a long-gone era. I occasionally re-read my journals from my Brussels days, including the entry when I lost my virginity to a slightly older lady, who later became my ex.

As chance would have it, I decided to look for my ex, and find out how she is, and whether she was back in the States from Belgium after a horrible period in 2004. Rather serendipitously, I came across a post, which I'll copy here, in the hope she might come across it some day.

Fancy that! She mentions me in the entry:

On a lighter note, I need direction with another situation. This one is delicate, it is a matter of the heart! I met this wonderful guy while on vacation here in Oct., Emmanuel is his name and loving me is his thang lol. Intelligent, good looking, in touch with his emotional side and a virgin to top it all off, or should I say WAS a virgin *wink wink*. He is the epitome of my soul mate. It has been a while since meeting someone of his caliber who I have been attracted to. Usually I am only out for sex and a no strings attached thingy

And here was me, then not even having discovered blogging to this extent, yet having had my name safely tucked away somewhere in the blogosphere by a girl who would later become my ex!

Like I said, it's all here, hoping that she might come across it one ofthese days. Somewhere. Michelle, or Chocolate Hen, I'm looking for you! I hope all is well with ya, and you're chilling back in the US--as you oughta! Do contact me! ekbensah [at] gmail DOT com:

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Tuesday, January 6th, 2004
6:27 am Brussels
I am sitting in a cyber cafe in Brussels, Belguim, feeling as if my world is crumbling around me. I just quietly celebrated my 28th birthday 4 days ago on the 2nd. Where do I start......

Originally from Kansas City, I have spent the last two years working in Baltimore, MD before coming here to Europe. I quit my job as an office manager to relocate here to help my sister who is going through a divorce with childcare.

My beautiful older sister is now a frustrated woman and it pains me that I cannot grant her complete serenity. Her Belgian husband whom she married about 4 yrs ago in the US relocated their family here to his hometown and it went downhill from there. My two beautiful nephews ages 2 and 3, I fear will have lifelong impressions of their parents' squabbles. All I can offer is love and comfort and can only pray that it is enough for them to have a healthy life. My ill mannered bro in law is using me as an excuse to escalate matters with my sister. Let's get this straight, I didn't come here to get in the middle of their marriage, but as an on-call nanny for my sister. He has taken advantage of my being here by leaving one or both kids in my care so he can go on his 'errands'. Today is a very good example. This morning, instead of asking me to keep an eye on the 2yr old so he could take the oldest to school, he just leaves while I am still in the bed sleeping. I awoke to the sound of my youngest nephew distrubing things in the kitchen. My bro in law was gone for at least an hour. When he returned, I asked him why he left without telling me and he starts in about how he was talking to my oldest nephew's teacher. I told him that was totally irrevelant to the fact that the youngest was left without any adult supervision. He response to that was 'Whatever'. In opinion, that shows total disregard to his own child's safety. So that's how I ended up here today. I could not justify being in such close proximity to someone with that kind of thought process. My heart goes out to my sister most importantly for having to deal with such stupidity. I do not even want to think about what this evening or tomorrow may bring in reference to dealing with him.

Another thing on my mind today, obtaining employment. In order to work here, you must have a work visa. I am trying to obtain one at this moment while still applying for positions I feel I am qualified for. Here's something interesting...unemployment here never ends like in the US, you can claim unemployment for the rest of your life if you chose to do so here. 85% of your former pay is what you are entitled to....with that being said, there are quite a few Belgians living off of unemployment, including my bro in law, so why do you think they make it so hard for non-Belgians to obtain work...do they keep the jobs open just in case one of the unemployed Belgians get bored and wants to work for a little while or something...go figure!

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You're very much missed!

What a Naughty Txt on a Boring Friday Can Do...

Despite the maelstrom that is about to engulf work from next week onwards, I am still experiencing a rather bad day. There was a weekly meeting, as per usual, and I'm compelled to produce some minutes, which I'm not really in the mood to do.

Yesterday, I was priviledged to be among two great minds in a radio discussion on African Union government. I ended up forgetting my SANYO dictaphone, with all the recordings at the studio, which plummetted my spirits seriously last night into some type of state where I couldn't sleep.

Perhaps in an attempt to quell the quietude, as it were, I found an excuse to send a naughty text message to my girlfriend. It simply said something along the lines of missing her, and wanting rather badly to be in her arms...and then some.

She failed to respond; but when I called, she cheekily said she was waiting for me to tell her in person. So I told her again, and she said something that goes straight into the entries of sex bloggers;-)

I can tell you: I enjoyed it very much!

The moral of the story?

When things are going down, just remember that it's the small things that make your day, and sometimes enlarge it in places where it shouldnt;-))

have a good weekend!

Confused by the Blogging Paradox, or a Cautionary Tale of What I’d like to See on My Tombstone

I stole some time (I won’t tell you from where) to work on my novel yesterday. It felt good being in my own world, creating and manipulating how characters would behave.

Is this how God feels when he pre-arranges things for us?;-)

Seriously speaking, whilst it felt good, it also felt a bit strange having this other level of consciousness, as it were, where I could determine how things turn out. In this world, I don’t want too many happy endings, because I don’t think that reflects real life. Sometimes, the bad do get away.

Think Iraq; Rwanda; the Congo.

Sometimes, the long arm of the law is just *too long*, but when it catches up, it catches up with incredible celerity, as in the Charles Taylor case.

The proverbial evil in this world isn’t going away any time soon—and so if a small contribution like my (putative, or so-called) novel can help underscore this point by letting a few bad guys get their just deserts only at the very last minute, then I’ll write it.

The only other thing about writing it is that might I not be merely perpetuating the clichés that ride us roughshod in our real life?

How does one write a crime thriller without reverting too much to the (a)serial killer-gone-wild; (b)individual psychopathic mentality/idiosyncrasy; (c) a protagonist good-guy on the hunt some of the time, whilst keeping in line with one’s own creativity? It is to avoid the platitudes that I chose to broaden the genre by adding a political/international dimension that would involve…wouldn’t you like to know?;-)

Either way, the point is that the theme has been broadened, but I cannot predict whether there will not be these elements there. However, given that I want it to remain an essentially crime thriller, I’m caught between the devil and the deep blue sea of necessarily using some clichés for effect.

All that said, the progress is in the works, and I’m all the happier for it. What I am not particularly happy over is the cogitation that blogging has brought. It’s made me think too much for my own good—and not necessarily for the right reasons.

Sometimes, I’m confronted with banal situations, and there is always this challenge to make it “bloggable”.

In so many ways, blogging has transformed us into both contradictory and paradoxical people. Contradictory because some of us chose to blog about heretofore private issues under both the ambit of free speech, as well as something to blog about, when that very same issue, we probably wouldn’t discuss with someone face-to-face.

Take the issue of sex: when you read me, you assume—because I have told you—that I am heterosexual, with a girlfriend. The assumption as to whether I have sex or not with her is not even thought about, yet I suspect you might think it comes with the territory. The real truth is that it might not even come with the territory, but when I blog about it, your attention is drawn to it, because it’s in black-and-white.

However, in real life, even if people know I have a girlfriend, I will never go so far as to talk to them about such intimate details, without feeling a bit awkward.

When you read this blog, you do it and make judgments—or not—on the entries I write. At the time you read my entry, your attention is drawn only to the post, but not to my whole personality. In that respect, even if you consistently visit the blog and have a fair idea of who I am, by way of my blog entries, it’s difficult to be certain whether it’s all an act.

We have contemporaneously become paradoxical because the self-reflection of our private lives that we are so keen to refrain from divulging fully is refracted through our blogging, such that we blog about our personal lives, but only in a way that doesn’t reveal too much of what we intimately think and feel—unless of course, you’re a sex blogger.

It is against this backdrop that I have been thinking what I’d like to see on my tombstone:

Writer; Blogger; ICT Specialist; Journalist; political scientist; historian.

Point is: how can I achieve all these within the short period I have on this earth, without being distracted by the ever-present blogging paradox?!

Crystal-Clear Policies from an All-Too Predictable US of A

There is no need for glazed eyes. This is a black-and-white issue.

The Europeans want their own European defence policy; the Americans want their own one--independent of Nato.

I don't know about you, but I am not so keen, after the Iraq débacle of 2003, on seeing anything else that would further augment the power of the United States.

A missile defence shield. For what?

It was as far back as October 2003, when the crisis in Iraq was at its apogee, when a Brussels-based journalist Shada Islam, writing in Yale Global Online, maintained that the Europeans want to begin to speak with one voice firstly, with a European-appointed Foreign Minister; and secondly, with a mutual defence clause.

As we know, the Europeans largely rejected the constitution in 2005, with the Dutch refusing it in big-style, prompting some serious consternation and tectonic shifts in Europe.

With the Franco-Dutch rejection of that constitution, the proponents of a European Defence Policy, or better still a European Defence Community, is pretty much on the rocks--or is it?

As far as the Europeans are concerned, a policy independent and complementary to NATO is what is best needed. When Nicholas Burns, the US envoy to Nato said in October 2003 that this independence represented "one of the greatest dangers to the transatlantic relationship", you could begin to sense the ideological rejection of the European's independence.

That said, you don't need to be a rocket science to see in 2007, with the US keen on a missile defence shield that would "call for a radar tracking station to be built in the Czech Republic and for 10 interceptor missiles to be placed in Poland", that the Us is not just being hypocritical, but satiating its ever-growing appetite.

I'm thinking whether this proposal to establish itself in the Balkans area has anything to do with needing to be close to the Russians, who are now using what one can only call "energy diplomacy" in that part of the world?

With the US, anything is certainly possible.