Exiting the supermarket, I look at two 7-year-old boys schmoozing and giggling. They’re watching me as they whisper, I wonder why. I pass them by, and one of them shouts: “that’s the sexy man“. OK. I can only hope they overheard their mother earlier, or youth is damned. Then again, what mother would blurp such comments in front of her kids? Very puzzling. Perhaps I was still in eXistenZ.

There’s this magical land at the end of the train. It’s a land with endless seating, in sharp contrast with the crowded wagons. People are drawn to this land with the same intensity they walk in the direction of a train that arrives on the track, no matter where the doors will stop. Trains are magical.

I’ve been working with Poser all week, animating humans as they walk and talk. Poser is a great application that allows you to animate any part of the human body, from the twist of the wrist to the height of the eyebrows. I never understood why animators of feature films claim that their characters had “800 controls” to make it move, but that doesn’t sound like much anymore. God (evolution) could have made the life of many animator easier by giving us 3 fingers made up of 2 joints. But then we’d probably have a tentacle on our forehead.

After years of verbally terrorizing people who stick with paper, blind to the endless opportunities of, say, a palm pilot or a digital shopping list, I bought a paper agenda. Let’s face it (talking to myself): unless you own a small lightweight virtually no battery consuming digital device that allows easy text-input, you’ll be struggling with synchronizations, slow writing and a scratched display.

Since I couldn’t just get any agenda, I got me a Moleskine; the legendary notebook of Van Gogh, Chatwin, Hemingway, Matisse and Céline. I may have said goodbye to my old life as a technocrat, but I will never seize to be a snob, never!

I just got off the phone with my local Mac dealer who will have new Mac Pro’s on display in Antwerp stores as early as tomorrow (= in 2 days). As Apple ram and discs are overpriced, they will test different third party brands and offer configurations remarkably cheaper than Apples. If you need over a gig of ram and a bigger disk, you may save up to 500 €. For humble configurations as the one I had in mind even 250 would be very appreciated. 2 and 3 Ghz models / faster video cards are delayed several weeks.

Let’s just hope that Arrogant Antwerp-Algerian guy in the orange sunglasses is not behind the counter, or I may still switch to Windows.

I dreamt that I was roaming the Antwerp marketplace with my childhood friend Nicholas. He was my best friend between the ages of 3 and 12. After that, we went to the same school but drifted apart. 3 months after, our haircuts, which had been in unison for all these years, were different. He absorbed the big city and city-folk faster than I could, I lost him as he ran me by. At the time, it was no drama. I think I experienced this loss as part of having to change and grow up. Remorse seemed absurd in the light of inevitability.

But in my dream, we had met after all these years and were discussing the years apart. He had again evolved in area’s where I dear no tread, such as cars, but he also had that arrogant boyish look in his eyes that made him the leader of our little gang ages ago.

I woke up and felt like crap. The dreams you try to grab as you wake, slip away as you pull. The ones you want to shake stay with you all day. The loss I never felt when I was twelve and a half and saw him talk to the boys I didn’t understand, seemed to take its revenge. My dream ended as my alarm clock sang, but not before I had checked that I had his phone number in my mobile.

How I wish I could pick up my phone and see that number in there, under the ‘N’. Not even ‘Nicholas’, as he wanted to be called after 12, but Nicky, as it was before. The whole concept of a best friend seems to have eluded me as he parted. Perhaps these I-see-you-every-day-after-school things can’t last in a world with office jobs, mobiles, relationships and responsibilities. I just wish I hadn’t felt a glimpse of the possibility so real as dreams can be.

We’re turning into the couple that invites friends for cosy diners that end in candlelight coffee. We’re becoming dangerously happy. Thank God learning UVW unwrapping is a pain in the ass, or I’d die one morning due to an overdose of dopamine.