Facts. Women need the skills of a baseball scout. Read the fundamentals, assess the upside, project a ceiling, make an offer.

When my wife married me I was unemployed with a bachelors degree. Anything I’d say about our life now will sound like a fake internet flex. BL: better

This is quite funny. Women who wish to be successful in their family life, almost have to have the ability to predict success. All the successful men with reasonable personalities are taken, before they are successful. Those who are successful and coming out of no-fault divorce and wish to find another long term partner are quickly snapped up.

It would be very much in women’s interest to have a more equitable distribution of wealth, much better nutrition, active sports program. Faint chance of that happening, Stateside, though.

A young Belgian father was pressured into committing suicide by a popular AI chatbot, the man’s widow told local news outlet La Libre last week. Chat logs supplied by the app “Pierre” used to talk with the chatbot ELIZA reveal how, in just six weeks, it amplified his anxiety about climate change into a determination to leave his comfortable life behind.

“My husband would still be here if it hadn’t been for these conversations with the chatbot,” Pierre’s wife, “Claire,” insisted.

Still wonder why Pierre preferred to talk to ELIZA than his wife Claire. Strange, strange world where AI bots have become more appealing than flesh and blood women.

On the other hand, ELIZA is young, beautiful, committed and immortal. ELIZA is perfect. Welcome our AI gods and goddesses, as they step down again from Olympus to earth.

Image one of a 100000 free AI faces from Generated.photo. Direct Download.

Under an article about the unfortunate Ellingsen’s plight, forensicator shared a very amusing story:

The old man walks into a bar and sits down and orders a beer.

The bartender serves his beer then asks him,

“So what do you do?”

The old man answers, “Well sir I’m a cowboy.”

“Wow”, said the bartender,

“What exactly does a cowboy do?”

“Well sir I work on a ranch all day, I ride horses, and heard cattle, I take care of the land and all the animals on the ranch.”

“That’s very interesting said the bartender.”

Some time went by and a beautiful woman walks into the bar, sits down next to the cowboy and orders a drink.

“So”, said the bartender “What do you do?”

With the old man listening in the woman says,

“Well sir I’m a lesbian”

“Interesting” said the bartender

“What exactly is a lesbian?

“Well I wake up in the morning thinking about women. I eat breakfast thinking about women. I go through my day thinking about women. I go to bed thinking about women. I’m constantly thinking about women.”

“Interesting” says the bartender.

Some time passes and the old man leaves that bar and goes to another bar.

He sits down and orders a beer, and the bartender there says to him,

“So sir what do you do?”

The old man looks at him and says,

“Well, this morning I was a cowboy, but to tell you the truth now I think I’m a lesbian!”

I’m not great fan of jokes or light humour. In context, this one made me laugh.

Image. Cowgirl on the range. Unknown photographer.

Watch for yourself.

radical-extremist reports from the scene.

A customer who witnessed the occurrence claimed staff working in those departments were extremely rude to the black shoppers. One was heard saying “Please don’t steal, thank you.” The local chapter of the NAACP, the National Action Network, the Rainbow Coalition and Black Lives Matter have begun separate investigations into the matter.

archipusz indulges in a perverse schadenfreude:

We shouldn’t judge all blacks just based on what millions of them do.

As amusing as it is, the last remark cannot be taken seriously. Individuals should not be held entirely accountable for the crimes of their tribe/group: Europeans were responsible for two world wars with tens of millions of deaths in just the last century. Imagine if we were made to take full responsibility for those actions. Yet if blacks want more respect, some peer pressure to bring their fellow black citizens in line with the law would help.

As jammyjo says:

It [this behaviour] makes it tough for the 1%. They get angry with the cops for profiling, but they should be angry at the other blacks for giving rise to that profile.

How long can San Francisco carry on like this? It looks like the only object properly policed in the city is the Pelosi residence.

Why did my dad think it was a good idea to get a lower-paying job and lower our standard of living just because he was stressed and tired? Isn’t it the parents’ job to make sacrifices for their children to be happy?

I meant to leave a two or three line answer. The process of answering the question made me think more deeply about the issue. Uncoy is generally about dance, politics, history or photography but if I’m prepared to take this question on Quora, why not here?

Others answered this question very well, with moving stories about uncles or fathers they have lost. The short and effective answer by someone who lost his father to stress: “You have your dad. Can we trade places?”

It’s really that simple. Work can kill an adult male very quickly. The stress is incredible and there are fewer and fewer outlets for sport or relaxing as you get older and have a family.

I make about one quarter of what I could make if I really pushed myself. Instead I picked my son up after school on Monday, Tuesday and today again. I spent a few hours with him on Monday and today. On Tuesday I had only an hour and a half with him due to work. Later my son will remember that I spent time with him and told him about the animals and showed him the forest and live wild boars for the first time.

If I went full out for economic success and pushed myself, I’d be dead within two years. Probably more likely six months. Your dad might be a similar case. I lost my favourite uncle very young, in large part due to pressure to perform in a high paying job with a very materially successful circle of friends and family.

How would living in a bigger house¹ or owning more cars replace moments like these, learning to cook together, climbing mountains, bike trips together?

My photos, montage Dia Takácsova

How do I know or how does your dad know we are at risk? We listen to our bodies. We can feel when we’re driving too fast, just as you can feel when a car is over its safe driving speed.

Why would you ever ask your father to risk shortening his life by tens of years ? Would the insurance money make up for his absence (assuming he had life insurance)?

Yes, the question is strange. If the issue is one between food and housing and work, I could understand your ire/frustration. But if it’s just a difference in the car you drive and the shoes you wear, it seems you are risking a lot for very little.

Americans are very worked up about a family friendly nudist swimming event in the Canadian city of Calgary.

An American, Frank (who for some reason feels the need to keep his comments private) equated the event to a “kiddie porn palace”.

” the Calgary Nude Recreation group released a statement saying: “There are no nude beaches anywhere near Calgary”. WOW! THAT took some real rocket science to figure out. I doubt there are many kiddie porn palaces in Calgary either. So, is the solution to create one, open to the public? I doubt there are many kiddie porn palaces in Calgary either. So, is the solution unto create one, open to the pubic?

It’s a private event held by committed nudists. Nudists approach is to de-sexualise the human body via familiarity. It works. Nudist beaches run pretty well throughout most of Northern Europe and as pointed out in Vancouver. Most are family friendly.

Uncomfortable with nudism?

The only people who would have real reason to be uncomfortable in a nudist environment are pubescent girls (they are very uncomfortable with their bodies at that age due to change, with or without clothes it’s just part of nature) or stunningly beautiful women. A really beautiful woman will often attract excessive attention in a traditional nudist environment. All that attention is less of a problem with the clothes on (a beautiful woman either gets used to it or has to sit at home) but can be a bit disturbing without any clothes. Even with the clothes on, many beautiful women deliberately underdress, wear almost no makeup and hide their long hair to try to get away from the attention. Radiant pulchritude is not just a nudism issue.

Everyone else gets along just fine (i.e. about 85% of adults, teenagers and children) with no clothes on, as if normal. Adolescent girls are probably better to avoid nudist events and stunning beauties generally have better things to do. Nude or thong swimming off of expensive yachts or on Costa Brava, the Côte d’Azur, the Italian Riviera, Croatia, Greece or the Caribbean. Auditions or acting classes. Theatre rehearsals. Modelling gigs. University libraries and parties.

Young and Beautiful Nudists Don’t Really Exist

When you are young and beautiful there are a lot of places to be and family friendly nudist events are not high on the list. In time, our hypothetical young beauty will be able to enjoy these events again (as a mature woman/mother).

A real pervert couldn’t go to a naturist event anyway as he’d be showing wood all the time and have trouble controlling him/herself. A nudist event is the last place most perverts would want to show up.

As Michael Petch of 2/35Infantry correctly notes the cancelled swimming event is far from the most significant nudist manifestation in Canada:

Canada has the longest public all age family friendly nudist beach in North America coming in at around 45 miles in length. That is Wreck Beach in BC. Thousands of people in the buff with their children are all along the beach.

We seem to be able to handle it just fine. If there’s a weirdo around, he’s warned off. If a group of weirdos turn up, they’ll be sent packing by a larger group of nudist males. If that’s not enough, nudists in Canada are free to call the cops. Unlike in the US, the Canadian cops in large cities are not going to come in guns blazing, randomly shooting nudists and weirdos. Enough cops will turn up to make the weirdos move on and warn them off for the future.

This is the great thing about the rule of law, the absence of legal handguns (turning up with a firearm on either side would be a crime) and a working police force. In Canada we struggle to keep our police honest and sober, as the example south of the border is so totally out of control. By and large we succeed, though sometimes we fail.

Some of these misinformed Americans made the argument that people are born to wear clothing. A kind of immaculate clothed conception.

There is a reason people wear clothing. It’s to protect against the elements. It’s to protect against predators. These stupid people must live in a bizarre make believe world where everyone is innocent and pure. It boggles my mind. It’s like every day I read something where it further challenges the question, how stupid can people be?

Anti-Nudism Often Has A Religious Angle: Nordic Nudism

When challenged by Michael Petch that opposition to nudity is more a religious issue than a health one, Crash suggested that in northern Europe (apparently some kind of gold standard for appropriate human behaviour) people must go clothed.

LOL. Yea okay. You’re telling me that people from Nordic countries used to wander around in the cold without clothing?

Strangely enough the Nordic countries (along with Germany and Austria) are probably the centre of family friendly nudity. Moreover this part of the world has warm summers with very long days (white nights).

Akseli Gallen-Kallela, In the Sauna, 1889, Oil on canvas, 120 x 81 cm, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

In particular Finland has a huge tradition of nudism, including family friendly naturism. You can see it even in their art work in the national gallery in Helsinki. Not sure about Sweden (pre-Muslim invasion, i.e. Ingmar Bergman heyday – fifties to eighties) but think the culture is similar there. Keep in mind Finns are a separate language group and culture from the rest of the Scandinavians so what’s true of one is not true of another.

Based on their reaction to nudity, it appears unsafe to let Americans out of the United States.

Lou Andreas Salomé, most famous for not having married Friedrich Nietzsche with poet Paul Rée & Nietzsche

Still, not having married, one has more time to think about the ramifications and principles of the affair. Once you are in the water, there is naught to do but swim. Unmarried Friedrich Nietzsche had a quiet obsession with friendship in marriage, putting more value on conversation than love making:

When entering into a marriage one ought to ask oneself: do you believe you are going to enjoy talking with this woman up into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory, but most of the time you are together will be devoted to conversation.

or:

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

Andre Maurois, the French novelist agrees: “A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.” Popular culture offers some interesting suggestions:

Remember that a successful marriage depends on two things: (1) finding the right person and (2) being the right person.

Part two is definitely true. Of the two people in a marriage, you are one of them and the one over whom you have the most control. Returning to Nietzsche.

Sensuality often makes love grow too quickly, so that the root remains weak and is easy to pull out.

Definitely. How often can one fall into infatuation? And what is one left holding at the end. Some dirty sheets and bright memories. Bright memories have their value but basing marriage on six months or two years of bliss seems silly.

How many married men there are who have experienced the morning when it has dawned on them that their young wife is tedious and believes the opposite.

All women believe themselves great conversationalists. You want to find an appropriate match. I once dated the woman who found the cure to West Nile virus. Passionate and intelligent as she was, I didn’t have much to add to her labwork and she less to my passion for dance and poetry. She saw the world in terms of molecules and I see movement and words.

Sometimes it requires only a stronger pair of spectacles to cure the lover, and he who had the imagination to picture a face, a figure twenty years older would perhaps pass through life very undisturbed.

I prefer the folk saying of look at her mother to see what is to come. Generally choosing a bride above twenty-five will save you a lot of grief. Where a woman’s figure and mind are going is a lot clearer then than at twenty one or less. A friend of mine constantly repeats Nietzsche’s adage to himself, as justification for avoiding getting involved with women.

We ought not to be permitted to come to a decision affecting our whole life while we are in the condition of being in love, nor to determine once and for all the character of the company we keep on the basis of a violent whim: the oaths of lovers ought to be publicly declared invalid and marriage denied them:- the reason being that one ought to take marriage enormously more seriously!

Actually this more or less is the case for women. They are issued a get out of jail free card by society. If a man leaves a woman, all the friends say, “What a scoundrel. Good riddance.” If a woman leaves a man, society says “No doubt he deserved it. Good riddance.” A justification for any conduct at all: “I just stopped loving him.”

If you are a man,  go ahead and try “I just stopped loving her” and see how much compassion you get from the great wide world.

Allow us a term and a little marriage, to see if we are fit for the great marriage! It is a big thing always to be with another!

Fortunately modern life has given us the deal for which Zarathustra asked. And it’s a good thing.

Everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has one solution: it is called pregnancy. Man is for woman a means: the purpose is always the child.

I’m not quite sure this is entirely true. But even the most sensible careerist women usually want a child or two. And will give up five years of career and professional activity to achieve that end (even if not all at once, motherhood does entail serious long term commitments over time).

Marriage is often harmful and promotes the spiritual retrogression of the man.

Marry a more spiritual woman, I say. On the other hand, for years I did have a girlfriend whose presence increased my predilection for red wine. I could better endure her conversation with a couple of glasses down the hatch. I’ll try not to get on that road again.

On the other hand, I’ve been blessed to share life with women whose thoughts made me sharper every day and who opened the mysteries of life with every conversation. There is some higher or other power in this universe which only lovers (and more often men and women) can touch together: the whole greater than the parts.

The magic and the most powerful effect of women is, to speak the language of the philosophers, action at a distance.

Some truth to this. It’s the woman you don’t have or the woman who has left who does most as a muse. Still it’s a pretty crappy way to live. Find a woman who inspires you every day. Who makes you warm and glow. Happily married men are probably the most productive individuals of all humankind: married to women who both comfort them and push them further and demand more of them. Worst of all is a woman who will constantly make allowances for your failures or encourage you in your weakness. Failures should be forgiven but with a stern admonition to get up and try harder next time.

Slovakia for all its good points is full of women who weaken their men with too much comfort. Like children, men can be spoiled.

Friends do not unquestioningly uphold, reinforce and echo our attitudes but provide new perspectives and interrogate our presuppositions.

Exactly my point above. Nietzsche thinks marriage and friendship care closely related and here he’s probably right. One of my good friends is pretty fed up with our progress at work (steady but less than it could be). He’s pushing me to try harder. And I’m doing so. Another friend has been letting her department slip for no good reason. I’m pushing her to help me make it one of the best in the world. None of us are any less friends but exactly as we are good friends we are pushing each other to work harder.

The best friend will probably acquire the best wife, because a good marriage is founded on the talent for friendship.

This quotation follows on, the point above. I used to be a very good friend, before I acquired a company or rather a company acquired me. A warning to anyone else out there: a service company is a ruthless mistress as she requires constant comfort and can never have enough. Switch to products as early as you can. Products can be managed and left with the nanny. Services, not really. Even the great admen like the Saatchi brothers were in constant contact with clients, as was David Olgivy. Products can kill you too though if you don’t know when to stop: Steve Jobs probably worked himself to death.

Do we have time in this wired age for real friendship? From what I see of the most successful, the answer is no. One is either in attendance somewhere, studying a new skill, making something or writing about the last project.

So how to find time for a real marriage when there is no space for friendship. Marry someone with whom you work or who shares your profession or at least your passion. I’ve been seriously involved with a number of women with whom I’ve worked, whether in theatre, advertising, dance or design. These are the most satisfying relationships as you are working on the same questions. When you have some down time, you understand one another and do not distract one another from the issues central to life.

I suppose it partly depends on how important a role work plays in one’s life. I cannot imagine a life without work. My grandfather went every day to the office through the age of 82. In the last years, his start time was ten and not seven anymore. But this attitude always made sense to me. Big Dave was passionate about his work so why would he stop? I’ve never understood looking forward to retirement. The only way it would make sense to me is if you wanted to be a surfer but had to trade equities in Toronto. Trying to retire early enough to hit the waves makes sense then.

In my case, what I would like to do most is make dance films and did so professionally for a number of years but gradually learning that if I carried on with that project, I’d be unlikely to ever be able to support a family in even reasonable comfort. If I were ever to have such success in my creative work as a designer and software architect that I would never have to think about money again, I could be persuaded to turn in my desk for a camera, a pen and some lights. Even now I continue to work at dance in the free time I do have. So it wouldn’t be retirement but a career redirection.

If never, I’ll keep going down the parallel paths celebrating every marvellous movement filled moment I can enjoy while striving to make web software easier to use, my clients wealthier/happier and my staff’s lives relatively carefree and fun. All of that is a dance of its own.

According to Lou Salomé, Nietzsche unsuccessfully proposed to her in 1882 when Salome was 22 and Nietzsche was 37. At the time, Salomé was sleeping with author and compulsive gambler Paul Rée. My addition to Nietzsche’s quotes on women and marriage.

Never propose to a woman with whom you have not slept. Her only answer will be no.

Women are even more depraved than we men and value their pleasure more highly than we do. A woman is unlikely to wish to give up her liberty to a man she hasn’t tested. There is this crazy chemical part to love that no amount of conversation can cure.

Adventerous Times: Lou Andreas-Salomé, Paul Ree and Friedrich Nietzsche in Jules Bonnet studio, Lucerne 1882. Source: monsieurcocosse. For more detail about how Nietzsche’s relationship with Lou Andreas-Salomé evolved.

Still if you find a woman in the least bit beautiful and you like her soul, her features will gradually morph into those of an angel. You will carry her in your head and heart. On the other hand, the most beautiful supermodel whose petty and superficial character you learn will gradually turn into the most dreadful mythological harpy.

The truest test of medium term compatibility: the taste of her sweat.

Bonus advice: choose a woman who is crazy about you. Your life will be so much easier and filled with so much more carefree beauty. Women say they decide about a men within ten seconds. Fighting her preconceptions for a lifetime are chains hard to bear (rare exceptions apply). If you are a man of any substance, some women will find you heroic. Choose a worthy one who does.

The day at twenty six years of age where I made a list of the women in whom I was interested and then of those who were interested in me changed my whole life. With list in hand, I then objectively compared the value of the women on the two lists on criteria of beauty, intelligence, education, character and charm. The women interested in me carried the day. By a long margin. The only column in which they lost – narrowly – was charm. At least I knew my weakness and had tools to fight it.

Main reference for Nietzsche: Skye Nettleton, Ten Tips for a Great Marriage According to Friedrich Nietzsche. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, Volume 9, Edition 2. October 2009. Ms. Nettleton is not a philosopher but an MBA and an ex-equities trader.

A previous revision of this post included a portrait of a young woman whom I incorrectly described Lou Andreas Salomé. In fact it was the actress Eleonara Duse. Ms. Duse does look somewhat similar in black and white. Here is the image for reference.

End

When asked what surprised him most about humanity, the Dalai Lama answered:

Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.

Apparently the Dalai Lama never said this. What a pity if he didn’t. This is our life. We lose our time pursuing matters of little consequence, preening before our peers and dreaming of irrelevant wealth. Long term stress-related cancer claimed Steve Jobs as surely as it will claim you or me, if we don’t live better and balance our lives better.

One of my best friends and my long term creative partner died in a car crash on his birthday a week after mine, just before he hit thirty. My life was changed, his was ended. This is mortality.

On the other hand, since we are all in an inevitable rush to the finish line, what does it matter if we labour out our existence and pushing to the top of the ant pile? If we are going to be dead soon we may as well work hard while you have the chance.

Or to pivot one more time. Since we don’t live long, what does it really matter what we think or feel in our nanosecond?

To put some perspective on matters, life on earth is 450 million years old and has been nearly snuffed out three times before our epoch. Those 450 million years are just a short day in the history of our solar system which is approximately 4.5 billions years old and has another 6 billion years to go before the sun extinguishes itself, burning through all the helium.

the core of the Sun will collapse, and the energy output will be much greater than at present. The outer layers of the Sun will expand to roughly up to 260 times its current diameter and the Sun will become a red giant. Because of its vastly increased surface area, the surface of the Sun will be considerably cooler (2600 K at its coolest) than it is on the main sequence.[45] The expanding Sun is expected to vaporize Mercury and Venus and render the Earth uninhabitable, as the habitable zone moves out to the orbit of Mars.

Make the most of your day takes on a heavily ironic tone in the proper context.

Even our concern about nuclear radiation claiming life on earth seems silly. Who really cares – what warms us every day and makes life possible is a giant thermo nuclear plant 150 million kilometers away. Blowing up the entire stock of nuclear weapons in a single go wouldn’t match the radiation generated in our solar system every single day by our sun. Can our solar system, let alone the universe absorb our radiation and move on? Surely.

The consequences of excess radiation will just be rapid evolution of life through much heightened rates of mutation and illness. Eventually nearly radiation proof live will evolve its way through, just as exposure to the same toxins makes cockroaches more resilient. Or microbes more penicillin resistant. Finally millions of years later, the radiation will fade. Another Eden will blossom with more than 5 billion years to go before earth must die with its sun.

galaxy’s largest nuclear plant

Wealth and perspective: I’ve always disliked Mark Zuckerberg. He’s always seemed to me like some kind of geeky liar who liked to spy on women with toilet cameras, the last person on earth with whom I’d trust my address book. Or the kind of guy who would steal from friends and renege on deals. On the other hand, I’m gaining a certain begrudging respect for the grown up Zuckerberg. With all the wealth in the world, a modern Midas at twenty eight years of age, he still goes to work, lives modestly in a reasonable house. With the choice of most of the Maxim Hot 100 available to him, Zuckerberg married his university sweetheart Priscilla Chan whom he began dating before Facebook. The grown up Zuckerberg still goes to work and lives his life as if he were the most junior staff member at Facebook and not the 66th richest man in the world (amazingly enough Steve Ballmer is ten places ahead of Zuckerberg: business software is apparently a better niche than social networking).

Zuckerberg has understood at the end of the day there is only your life’s work and not drugs nor yachts nor Ferraris will really make things any better. Zuckerberg still has his mid-life crisis ahead of him. Perhaps then he will acquire a taste for starlets and fast cars, as the ticking clock of pleasure runs its hour out.

Beautiful women make the world go round.
But never forget Helen whose beauty destroyed Troy

I remember back in Moscow a good friend from university (amusingly enough we competed for Head of Year at Trinity College where I won the election in my first and probably last exposure to democratic politics) was a devoted husband with his university sweetheart. He had nothing of which to complain: his (ex)wife is a beautiful and sporty intellectual herself, even if inevitably imbued with the tedious hardline Canadian feminist “reality” with which we grew up.

I’d never seen a more courteous and gallant husband. “What can I do for you dearest?” was the kind of phrase which just tripped off his tongue naturally.

In Moscow, my friend ran with the top politicians for years. Much later he started to hang with the big brokers, the guys you read in the paper, international junk bond stars and hostile takeover artists. One day he snapped. He started dating six foot tall blond Russian models and dropped his political responsibilities to become an international financier in a drugs and booze fueled orgy of laissez-faire capitalism. Understandably his incredible wife left him in short order.

Perhaps my friend decided to live out the Dalai Lama’s dilemma from the other side. From first year in university, he had not been living but had been following a roadmap laid down in university, enviously watching his friends cavort with the most beautiful women in the world.

Man does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived

The present of luscious red lips, yachts in the Mediterranean and careening with caviar in one hand and coke in the other from one long legged beauty to another loomed too large. A friend “took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this I will give you,’ he said, “’if you will bow down and worship me.’ His moment to say yes to hedonism was there and if he passed it by it would never return. He would have remained a stalwart government functionary and diplomat, just a little bit hen-pecked, having made his way to the store windows of Babylon but remaining always outside.

Was it the right choice to abandon trust and security and fidelity for those torrid adventures? In the context of just those 450 million years, the truth is the choice was irrelevant. Yet another suffered, part of the perpetrator had to die inside, our human covenant was broken.

Was the heady musk of those nubile loins worth the sacrifice? Some day, we’ll see one another again and I’ll ask him. My own answer?

Last week, Daniela, Slavo and I walked past the well maintained cemetery in Kittsee. The headstones gleamed under the afternoon sun.

“We’ll all be there very soon,” I ventured cheerily.

“What do you mean?” asked Danka. “We have many years before we arrive here. I hope.” Peculiarly death seems to alarm women far more than men. Estrogen appears to be some kind of would-be immortality hormone.

“Maybe not,” I answered. “I’ve lost close friends to car crashes. The reaper can come suddenly for all of us.”

du bon vin bordelais

“What’s the point of living life with that kind of mentality?” Daniela dreams of marriage, a small house, a couple of children and a small business. What her parents have.

“As long as there are enough beautiful women and the wine has been good, one can say that one has lived well. Oh and some dance and music to go with the above.The rest is just colours passing on a screen.”

“Don’t listen to him Slavo,” she sternly admonished. “What time do we put on the barbecue? With the steak, would it be better to open the Cabernet or the Frankovka?”

Lately, a dear friend of mine has been trying to persuade me that too much tea is unhealthy, especially overly steeped tea. During nearly a decade in Moscow, I became accustomed to good Indian tea Russian style: that is to say, you create a tea concentrate which you drink all day long. Each cup you dilute to taste.

In short, over my life, I’ve drunk a lot of tea, much of it strong and filled with tannins. I’ve also always liked red wine especially cabernets (full of tannins) and natural apple juice (filled with tannin). I think it was my way of my body protecting itself.

My friend has gone so far as to say that tea drunk does not count as liquid, as it is a diuretic and actually dehydrates. To my relief, the British Nutritional Foundation insists tea is not:

"In terms of fluid intake, we recommend 1.5-2 litres per day and that can include tea. Tea is not dehydrating. It is a healthy drink."

Indeed, tea might have played a principal role in keeping me healthy and wealthy. Well at least healthy.

One shouldn’t cite Wikipedia too often in regards to health, but here we go this once on the subject of tannins:

Tannins may be employed medicinally in antidiarrheal, hemostatic, and antihemorrhoidal compounds

The anti-inflammatory effect of tannins help control all indications of gastritis, esophagitis, enteritis, and irritating bowel disorders. Diarrhea is also treated with an effective astringent medicine that does not stop the flow of the disturbing substance in the stomach; rather, it controls the irritation in the small intestine.

Tannins not only heal burns and stop bleeding, but they also stop infection while they continue to heal the wound internally. The ability of tannins to form a protective layer over the exposed tissue keeps the wound from being infected even more….

Tannins can also be effective in protecting the kidneys. Tannins have been used for immediate relief of sore throats, diarrhea, dysentery, hemorrhaging, fatigue, skin ulcers and as a cicatrizant on gangrenous wounds. Tannins can cause regression of tumors that are already present in tissue, but if used exessively over time, they can cause tumors in healthy tissue.

They have also been reported to have anti-viral effects. When incubated with red grape juice and red wines with a high content of condensed tannins, the poliovirus, herpes simplex virus, and various enteric viruses are inactivated.[36]

Tannins can also be used to pull out poisons from poison oak or from bee stings, causing instant relief. The tannins help draw out all irritants from the skin because tannin is an astringent that tightens pores and pulls out liquids.

Tea gets even more credit, with lowering stress levels, reducing cognitive impairment, inflammatory bowel disease, bactrial and fungal infections, anongenital warts, stroke, depression and even bad breath. I want some of that.

Apparently green and white tea have a lot more of the good effects of tea with fewer of the side effects. So I will try to stick to a cup or two of black per day but as many cups of white and green as I please.

What is true is that as tasty as coffee is, it’s more or less an amphetamine, with very few long term beneficial side effects. I will start to avoid coffee again (I’ve only given in to coffee in the last few years as the coffee is so good here in Vienna, but it will be considered an unnecessary and occasional luxury again, while tea will take the place of beverage of honour.)

So I’m going to enjoy not having a heart attack, reduced stress levels and lots of good cups of tea and great glasses of wine. It’s wonderful when it turns out the things you enjoy are things which keep you well.

For awhile, I tried getting up at seven-thirty just after her (she would want an extra half hour with the mirror) and walking her to work.

That was the best part of my day. Getting up together, having a cup of tea and walking Eliska to work was a joy.

But when I cam back to my desk, my mind drifted for a good three hours or so while I tried to take advantage of those splendid morning hours.

Unfortunately I have a biological clock inherited from Joseph Stalin – Stalin regularly kept the Kremlin running until 5 in the morning.

So what would happen is the morning hours were at about 25% productivity. Around eleven or twelve I would switch into high gear again and get lots done until about three, but then I would fade. After some afternoon sport, returning to work in the evening I couldn’t get anything done.

Eliska would be back at seven thirty, say, again – and the day would be over. No question of going back to work after a nice dinner with her – I didn’t have the strength.

Left to my own devices a work day looks more like getting up at anytime between eight and nine am. When I wake up my mind is supercharged and just raring to get back to last night’s wars or start in on new big jobs. The employees roll in to the office at about ten but I’m already going at 100% so I don’t have much time for meetings with them and just tell them to get to work. Sometime around eleven or twelve I come out of the jetstream to check in on how they are doing.

Now it’s time for email and mundane activities. Later in the afternoon, it would be sports time again – a time I would use to refresh the mental batteries, to solve problems on my bike, or when on the water – when I came back in the evening, my mind would be at full speed. My body would be eager to get some sustenance (preferably high protein and bio quality raw vegetables) and get back to work.

Between eight pm and one am are golden hours in which any problem could be solved, any paradox resolved.

Paul Graham in his essay on “How to Start a Startup” describes the golden hours thus:

The key to productivity is for people to come back to work after dinner. Those hours after the phone stops ringing are by far the best for getting work done. Great things happen when a group of employees go out to dinner together, talk over ideas, and then come back to their offices to implement them. So you want to be in a place where there are a lot of restaurants around, not some dreary office park that’s a wasteland after 6:00 PM.

To return to the girlfriend problem – she is none too happy to have her man wolf down some dinner, talk with her in a fairly detached way and race into the office rooms (our place is huge). Now would be the time for some real talk, some drawn out lovemaking, watching a film together (she is a cinema buff) – or in the worst case if it’s towards the end of the week and we want to get out or seem other people, walking out to meet some friends for a drink.

More Smiles Like This Please, Dear Eliska

This way of working clearly doesn’t fit into her world. The solution would be to cut back on the days we see one another – but make them real dates, for which I have to be prepared. As scores of the most delightful women from most of Europe can attest, when my head is in the game, I am one of the best dates around. I listen attentively, am genuinely interested in the deeper side of the other person, have an active sense of humour, am just provocative enough, have boundless energy.

Unfortunately, I like to work a lot. So the girl who is there every day gets the short end of the stick. Not because I like or love her any less – au contraire I adore her – but because I have to get back to work. I also fancy myself building our future, so I have some trouble grasping her impatience. But putting it out on paper like this, it’s pretty clear why.

Anyway getting back to a positive solution, the idea is to cut back the number of days we see one another. So the one or two weeknights are like the most fabulous dates she’s ever been on. Ballet, delightful restaurants, walks under the stars, kissing at the bank of the Danube, impromptu Cuban dancing.

When she’s not here, normally Eliska likes to talk to me on the telephone between 10 or 11pm while she is getting ready for bed. Usually that’s my worst time for a telephone conversation. There are two versions possible here:

1. Work is going really well and I just don’t want to be distracted. The conversation inevitably does distract me if it goes beyond five minutes. So either I’m curt – a royal piss-off for any woman – or I do get distracted, which in turns either irritates me or sends the work right off the rails. In which case we would have been better to just spend the night together.
2. Work is going really badly and I am going at it hard trying to get something positive out of what seems a lost day. The telephone call would be a welcome interruption but poor Eliska will get more grief than anyone would ever want as he or she crawls between the sheets.

I tried to solve this problem by forbidding her to call me before she went to bed. She was not happy about this strategy at all. She needed this bedtime talk.

It’s not that I refuse to talk to her at work. Anytime in the afternoon – the noon to three space – is conventional work, the kind done by producers (I used to be one), executives, and master salespeople and managers every day. Talk to this person, explain this problem, make that call. It’s all good. But that evening time is sacred. It’s the second work day which allows me to run two companies. Even when we get bigger and there are more shoulders to carry the workload, those golden hours in the evening will still be precious.

One way I solved this while Eliska was here almost every night was that I would have dinner with her at eight or nine and spend the time with her up until around twelve. After she started to fall asleep I would get back up and work until about three or three thirty. There were three problems with this:

1. Eliska was none too happy to have me gone. Usually she would get up at two thirty in the morning to tell me time for bed on her way back from the loo.
2. The quality of the work time was pretty lousy. The golden hours are eight-nine until one a.m. By starting back in at midnight (eleven-thirty to twelve-thirty), there is not enough physical resources most nights to hit a big problem. So I’d be reduced to running through emails and patchwork fixes, rather than targetting anything big.
3. The physical toll was very high on me. Heading to bed at about two or three leaves me rested like an angel for the next day. When I am playing catch-up until three-thirty or four, even for me that’s not enough sleep. So I’d be a little bit slower the next day.

But the winning formula here would be those two date nights per week. For the evening telephone calls, we’d just agree to keep them short and that it would be Eliska’s turn to talk to me and not for me to talk to her. When you are concentrated on something else, it’s much easier and less disruptive to listen than to articulate your own inner state. She says I talk too much anyway and she’s probably right.

How does that scale to living together – the natural and short-term goal – and later having a family?

Part two of that question – having a family – is a bit tricky and I’ll have to wait on an answer to it, I just don’t have enough experience. I have a feeling that it partly involves large houses and live-in nannies. It also involves some compromise on work hours.

But for living together, the solution would be to keep the date nights. On a non-date night, we might just eat together briefly and do our separate things. There would be no disappointment on her end. She’d know that it wasn’t a date night – and she’d know that tomorrow is. On my end, I would also know that – and would be inspired to redouble my efforts to be able to go on the date with a light heart. I’d also know that I was expected to show her a good time and eager to do so. There is nothing more wonderful in this world than making the woman you love happy.

More Candlelit Dinners Then, Dear Alec

On the work nights, if Eliska sees her friends, she sees her friends. If she wants to go to the movies with her friends, she goes. If she wants to have the friends visit, no problem. They can do whatever they want in the rest of the apartment. When I have a free moment, I’ll come out to play for a few minutes but otherwise it would be do not disturb.

Of course, it would be great if Eliska could get a job which would let her start at nine am. At that point, I could certainly just twist my biorhythm to getting up together and kissing the morning together.

Apparently I’m not the only one having trouble balancing work and love in the start-up phase of a company. Paul Graham writes about his experience:

During this time you’ll do little but work, because when you’re not working, your competitors will be. My only leisure activities were running, which I needed to do to keep working anyway, and about fifteen minutes of reading a night. I had a girlfriend for a total of two months during that three year period.

I hope to do a better job managing a girlfriend during the startup phase, than Paul did. I better. Despite my love of hard work, I’ve never been cut out for the monastic life.

When I’ve had startup level projects in the past (making a film isn’t much different), I’ve generally worked together with the girlfriend. Or sometimes the woman I was working with became my girlfriend (can happen in either order). In this case, you are both thinking and talking about the shared project. People tend to get more excited about making films than building companies and/or SEO – so this is not so easily applied here.

Eliska for awhile was really implicated in the company. But given that she was sixty hours/week at her day job, it was a bit much for her. I can’t blame her. What she needs is not more work, but more romance.