Which closely resembles mine, since I am too busy eating.

Sander

Eating I have been told can be a marvelous substitute for sex.
Please, enjoy your meal.
I’m going to eat now as well.

Arnon

Guess you are on your way to the cheese fondue party? Wasn't that on the 3rd? Unfortunately, circumstances are such that I can't make it; I would have liked it, I'm sure. Thanks for the invite, and enjoy.

Arnon

At the piazza Dante there is a bar called Mexico. Highly recommended.
Also café Gambrinus near the Galeria is a must. Verdi frequented it.

PS

And if you have time visit the Certosa di San Martino. Spectacular view.

I agree with you guys. In fact, this moment I'm enjoying some vanilla ice cream with 'advocaat' (Dutch eggnog), while studying. Good food makes my mind clear.

Monica

Add some molten chocolate and whipped cream for nothing less than an orgastic experience.

Beware of the vicious circle. No sex- eat too much- get too fat- too frustrated--- eat-no sex- no date- too tired- no attraction- eat- etc-etc
so depressing. How to get out and have sex?

Food and how to have sex?

To my knowledge food is seldom for free. And so is sex. (Nothing in the free market is for free). I you are not a king, a money tycoon, a celebrity or a beautiful charmer, you have to pay. Satisfaction is not guaranteed but some nice surprises are not excluded. Until hunger strikes again…

Please read “If you are not a king, etc.”
By the way, yesterday I have got an excellent meal and friendly service for a decent price.

Sander

The cream and chocolate were finished.. (made the better version yesterday).
A friend of mine (a biologist from Prague) is very good at making desserts! He brings ethanol from the lab and makes flaming combinations that will give you an instant culinary orgasm.

Helen

It's true. It is a circulus viciosus.
I noticed that when I live separate from my boyf to study, I'm gaining weight.
Food is a good compensation, but never a replacement.

Jan
everything is so expensive. Can you effort it to buy sex and delicious satisfying food. You need a big wallet. How about marriage?

not a sexless marriage of course and a lot of fantasy

Monica
I know, but when I have no sex I have lovepains and when I am depressed I cannot eat. So no satisfaction at all. Double bad luck.

@Helen
Marriage, yes I thought about it I when commenting. It is a commitment, a promise, a contract, like paying with your heart, at least that is how it feels to me. I not sure I can promise such loyalty.
I remember more than a year ago, a small discussion here on this site about loyalty. To whom are we really loyal? Sometimes I even betray myself.
Happily I am not that short of phantasms (and a reasonable income and not to greedy).

David

I will try to visit these places.

Monica

It's only a matter of time before your boyfriend will be a replacement for good food.
If you don't believe me, ask Sander.

Sooner or later there comes a time when one has had enough of eating alone, whether it is in marriage or outside marriage. The feeling of having to make up for lost time can then make the handle swing to the other side. Aristoteles stated that every virtue is the middle point between two extremes that are each a vice.

@Pablo
Speaking of Aristotle, I am not that familiar with philosophy, but recently I enjoyed the 8 colleges on CD by Paul van Tongeren, about the history of ethics (Radboud University Nijmegen).

@Pablo
Here is the link
http://tinyurl.com/5hdxdw
(‘tiny url’, by courtesy of Sander)

Pablo

If you have enough of eating alone there is always the restaurant.
The restaurant, especially the Italian restaurant, is a viable alternative to marriage.

Thanks for the tip, Jan, seems pretty interesting to me, i'll certainly explore it further.

Arnon
I always feel very uncomfortable eating alone in a restaurant. Ordering and getting a waiter's attention is quite an ordeal to me. I feel watched and mostly end up staring out the window being totally stressed, counting time until it's over. Luckily I eat swiftly (and with style). I'm also afraid to ask for the bill. Which, of course, is not an excuse not to pay.
I often just end up going home feeling bad, spending days and days worrying about an interpretation of a look or a word or hautain service. And I would order a good Italian pizza instead, if only they'd slide it under the door.

Not to worry, lately, I have started to try and tackle this problem and I must say that I've already come a long way. Thinking about lost time sometimes stings, though.

Bon appetit.

@Pablo del Pueblo - I really like your name and it's interesting in light of what you said concerning eating alone, a feeling I very much share. My sister once said "when you're doing the dishes everything's fine until you realize someone was in the kitchen with you all along."
Please don't tackle the problem unless you feel your life will be much better once you do. I feel 'tackling problems' is a problem in itself - we aim to be perfections of ourselves and consequently feel guilty/bad everytime 'the problem we're to tackle' returns. I am envious of people who don't even consider they may have a problem, when in fact we all see they do. Still, they're happier people aren't they? And the world loves happy people, hence they can sit alone in a restaurant and have a great evening because the world looks great to them for loving them, instead of the opposite...

Noa

I see what you mean and I can follow to a certain extent, but if I had the choice (does one ever have that choice?), I think I'd still prefer to actually recognize a problem and handle it instead of being happily unaware. Looking a problem into the eyes offers the possibility of insight and growth. I would pass on the opportunity to 'tackle' a problem and becoming a different person, sure, no doubt about it, but I don't want to be withholding my inner self in the name of protection no longer, since this obviously goes way beyond the satisfaction of eating.

@Pablo, well then - perhaps we could have dinner together.

Maybe Arnon himself can shed a light on ‘lonely customers and their fears’, I recognize very well. At least for a while he stood ‘on the other side’ as a waiter.

Jan,
I suppose you're right about marriage and loyality, but sometimes you have to take the challenge and go for it as long as it longs. Nothing lasts for ever and as you know that you even can be loyal to yourself even when you brake a promise you cannot stand anymore. It's like food..... you don't want to eat everyday the same meal in the same restaurant even when it has 5 michelin stars. You have to cope with that.

You can find lonely customers not only in a restaurant.

@Helen,
You made a valuable point. Maybe I tend to be a kind of a perfectionist, due to uncertainty. Your words are welcome, although I know almost nothing about you, but nevertheless.

Jan,
That's the profit of frequenting a blog being a kind of anonymous ( so I can hide my bad english ) because I'm Dutch ( first clue) and can hide my singing accent ( euphormistic second clue) and my blond image. But I'm not frustrated. I like accents and blond hair and also red, brown, fat, old , young etc. I try to take most things for granted. I try to be open-minded ... however sometimes i have to fight my prejudices and I'm not intellectual but very average. This should be enough. And l"m attracted to humouristic men.

especially in a restaurant

eating asparagus.

Noa

The only thing that scares me more than dinner alone, is dinner for two with someone I don't know. I'm not quite to that stage yet. Otherwise I would be honoured.

On of my goldfish (Grace Kelly) is dying. She is just floating on the surface of the water.
I have put her in an other tank, so Hitchcock (the other one) won't get contaminated.
She's looking miserable, and I was thinking of doing euthanasia on her. The advise from a biologist was to put her in some alcohol. The only thing I have that is strong enough is a bottle of tequila. He said that that would do the job..
I was thinking of giving her some Zolpidem (related to benzodiazepine; sleeping drug)...
Its very sad to see her like that. Maybe someone has an answer?

Jan

I re-read Blauwe Maandagen last week. There's enough light shed in there.

I'd also like to stipulate that I'm not sad at all. I've rather grown fond of spending time alone. The thing with loneliness is that it's addictive. If one could loose the feeling of captivity, it would be a dream, actually.

Yes life's hard especially for Grace Kelly and what about Hitchcock when he stays alone. Probably it's good to play the requiem from Verdi . By the way wrote Grace her testament. Is she going to leave you a lot? Or is it just about love

No problem Monica I just read that being alone can be addictive. So don't worry about Hitchcock. And you"ll also get used to be without fish.

Ciao Arnon

Being in South Italy myself, I was two days ago climbing the Vesuvius and yesterday in Agropoli. Also highly recommended.

Will visit your lecture tomorrow. I am really looking forward to it. Will travel 2,5 hours just to see and listen to you.

Un bacione da Valle dell'Angelo
Natasza

Natasza

Nobody should travel more than two hours for me.
Are you going to use public transportation?

@Pablo
I just hear that Arnon will be working again as a waiter, now on a train somewhere in Switzerland. Quite interesting and maybe more light on the subject.
And yes, most of our habits tend to become addictive, so is loneliness. I think you can become a better observer when you are alone, but that is another subject.

@Helen
I recommend reading Blauwe Maandagen to Hitchcock

Asylum Seeker

I was in Montreux last weekend reading the Asylum Seeker . I thought a lot about marriage, sexless or otherwise. Before I left, my wife mada a little joke about me escaping the marrriage, but in Montreux I realized that one cannot escape marriage. It is a totalitarian institution, except more effective. It was great drinking white wine and enjoying the sun and the book (third time I 've read it) and I savoured this feeling of my life being caught, instead of floating around like a piece of litter someone dropped on the street.

P.S.

Not to say that the sensation of floating around like litter cannot be savoured as well.

Monica

Maybe try putting new plants in the aquarium. They provide oxygen.
But fish are vulnerable creatures.

Pablo
Do goldfish like red lights?

Michel

There is nothing wrong with not being able to esacpe marriage, but it's not a general law.
What exactly do you want to escape from?
Your wife? The kids? The obligations? The sex?

Arnon

I'm sensitive to the problem of overgeneralizing ones own experiences, or other sources with few data points . (Off topic: there is this great article by a famour organization theorist, called: "Learning from samples of one or fewer.") That said, one of the things I really love about your work are the aforisms, which are typically rather ruthless overgeneralizations. I guess I produced my own little aforism here about marriage. Sure, it is not the case for everyone, or even for most, but it seems to me there is an intrinsic element of self-discipline and self-observation going on as soon as you define yourself, though probably not exclusively, as someone's husband or wife.

It sounds as if I have read Foucault and am now theorizing about it, but I was really just trying to find some words to describe how I felt while being in Montreux, far away from my wife and daughter.

You asked what I wanted to escape from, but I don't think I was trying to escape. I do miss the feeling of floating around like litter, not so much the freedom of it, but the lightness of knowing my life is inconsequential to others. I guess part of this is about responsibility and the possibility, no certainty, of failure . In many ways, I have already failed. Myself and others. I'm beginning to learn to savour failure, in fact.

I'm rambling and will sign off here.

Helen
Do chimpansees watch Baywatch?

Pablo,
There is a fly on my screen. Do flies like Grunberg blogs?
Chimps are very intelligent species... but Baywatch?? I don't know if they are interested in Pamela. But they definitely don't like swimming. By the way they draw nice pictures.