I know, entirely my fault. I took a six month break from writing of any kind except my editing work and emails (where some of my best work gets done). So, in the six months since I last wrote to you, I have started a business, acquired a boyfriend and been deported. It’s incredible what can happen, isn’t it? When I was writing every day it seemed like nothing was happening at all, but leave off for six months and write a two line review and you’ve got an entire novel happens to have unfolded in that time. The business picked up after the last time I wrote. I did quite well in April and May, and then everything stopped in June, July and August, along with the rest of Europe. However, it looks as though I may have sold another book proposal. Very early days yet – enthusiastic murmurs but no sign of “Yes, we’ll take it!”, signatures on contracts or advances. When I get the nod you’ll know, the champagne reserves in the world will suffer a significant slump.

I’m currently in Germany, having been deported by the Czechs. You’ll have seen from my last blog that visa issues were threatening to get complicated. They did, horrendously so, until I was finally forced into leaving the Schengen Zone. I had to spend ten bitter days in Sofia, crying in the Czech embassy until they gave me a short term visa. A Czech friend of mine told me I should bribe them, but you know what? I’m Australian. We don’t bribe. We can’t bribe. It’s not in our DNA. So she said, okay, if you can’t bribe, then you should cry. Now that I can do. So I wept, and they took pity on me.

I came back to Prague and left immediately for Germany where the man who can only be described as my boyfriend lives. He’s an American. He’s so American his name is Joe. Can you believe that? Last night I had a searing experience with Joe. He took me out for dinner to a place called Macaroni Grill. It’s an American franchise and it’s run on the US military base here, so it’s owned and staffed by Americans. The food was fabulous—tasty and substantial—but what blew me away was the service. The waitress came up and smiled at us and said, “Hi, I’m Nina, I’ll be your waitress for the evening. If you need anything just let me know.” I nearly fell off my chair. Then she brought us bread which was, if you can believe this, completely fresh and even warm from the oven. Joe asked for vinaigrette and she scoured the restaurant, looking for some. And she kept on coming to the table to check if we needed anything. It was so unlike the surly Czech experience, where waiters snarl at you and the bread is stale and the food is crap cuts of meat and the salads are dull and the same wherever you go. It was so friendly and prompt and fresh and full of good food and decent wine and at a teeny little American price, too, that it was almost a sexual experience for me. Almost, I was swooning.

And it made me realise that I do not think I can survive the Czechs much longer. I think I need to at least go where I can get fresh fruit and veges without having to cross town to the one and only place that sells cauliflower that’s not grey, and that actually knows what fennel is. I may, if things go well with the American, move to America. But if they go belly up, I think it’s England for me. The weather might be crap, but they have good produce and funny television.

Anyway. Hello again! I am back and writing. And just in time to recount to you, in tedious, excruciating detail, the developments in my application for a Czech visa. Stay tuned.

This is bad. It’s very bad. In two months I will be actually clean out of money. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite here before. I have kindly parents who will come to the rescue, but really – I’m a grown woman! I don’t want my parents to come to my rescue. I want to have managed my life better. How did I manage to screw this up? No really. How? By tossing in a well paid career as a secretary to move countries and write novels? Who knew that wouldn't work?

And, to really test my new resistance to depression, my visa expires in a month and I have to renew it. I spent four hours lining up at the Foreigner’s Police on Wednesday, and at the end of it was told that order to extend my visa I needed: a passport, two photos, an extract of my company trade licence, an extract from the zivno office, a letter from my landlord allowing me to live in my flat, a copy of an account statement with 120,000 crowns in it (which I don’t have, just by the way), two years of medical insurance (which I can't afford), confirmation from the finance office that I have no debts and confirmation from the social security office that I have paid my insurance. All these things have to come from different offices around Prague, all of which will involve queues of Kafka-esque length, more Czech than I have at my command, snarling officials, and, of course, money. I will have to pay for each and every one of these documents. No-one’s paying me, but everyone around me has their hand out. I left the Foreigner’s Police wondering if it was worth continuing on in this life.

Debra told me that the secret to this is to NEVER try to do two offices in one day, and when you do go, you should take your iPod and a lengthy novel (not one of the Russian ones), drink plenty of water and if all else fails, pretend that it’s happening to someone else. Also, she said to be sure to do something nice for yourself straight afterwards.

And then last night, as I was heading out to the pub, I put my hand in my jacket pocket and felt a thick piece of plastic. I drew it out and saw my passport wallet. Empty of passport. Yes, either I lost my passport, or it was stolen. Of course, I can’t get any of the papers I need without my passport. I called the Foreigner’s Police to see if I’d left it there but everyone was on a holiday, as they tend to be in Prague on a Friday. I called the Embassy. I can get a new passport once I’ve given them photos, an application form, my birth certificate, proof of residence in Prague, a guarantor who must be an Australian citizen not related to me or living with me, and, of course, money. A fee for the application and a fee for losing it in the first place.

I tried to imagine how this could get worse. My teeth could fall out, I suppose. I could become paralysed from the eyeballs down. I could live in Zimbabwe. None of this helped any. I really felt like giving up and going back to Australia. And then, today, a strange thing happened. A potential client had asked me in for a chat. I wasn’t sure if it was a “here’s some work for you” chat, or a “we may have work some time in 2052 when the crisis has blown over” chat. It was all very casual, just a request that I drop in some time, just let him know what time I was coming.

So I drop by today. He was a strange one, alright. We barely talked about the work—I had to bring it up after about an hour when it seemed to me that at some point we should get on to it. He seemed to want to just chat. He runs a business putting together conferences, mainly on water use and the environment and public-private partnerships. He has two fellows from the UK working in the office.

'The Englishman likes Slivovice,' ...pause...'I suppose that's why he's never in the office. I don't really know what he does.'

That seemed odd. 'Doesn't he work for you?'

'Oh, he's not on the payroll.’ He gave me a rather sweet smile. ‘We're more of a family than a business.'

'Um, so what work does he do?'

'I'm not sure. He does his own work. Although we are working on one conference together.' Pause. He looked around. 'Perhaps you would like to come here to work on your novel?'

'Uh, yes, well I probably would get more done on it.'

'You can come around any time. There is always someone here to chat.'

He was one of those people who is so calm, so peaceful, that I came away feeling almost enlightened. Really. I had a strange realisation as I was going home. I've lost my passport, I have almost no money left, I have bills coming out the wazoo, I have clients whose companies are going belly up, it's March and it's still snowing and I'm freezing, and yet, I suddenly felt okay. I realised with complete clarity that I could choose to respond to this with anxiety and upset, or I could be calm and happy. And weirdly, I felt calm and happy. I still feel calm and happy. Maybe I should go and work in that office after all. You know, I think I might.

One of the exercises in this course asked you had to write down five lives you’d like to have. I put down Mother – because, as it turns out, to my own astonishment, I would like to be mother. It’s possibly just the teeniest bit late to be producing my own, so I’m thinking of maybe adopting, or fostering, or going to live with my brother and interfering in the upbringing of his kids. I have this quite clear picture of me on a farm, surrounded by plants and animals and a husband who understands the love/discipline nexus and lots of kids. Go figure. For my other lives, I put down Hippy. Again. Very appealing. And Mathematician (Okay, I’m a dork, I know, but I really would like to be a mathematician). And Racing Car Driver. And Assassin. Yes, assassin. I really want to kill people for a living. I’d like to be really good at martial arts and a crack shot. You know, so I’d be an assassin who doesn’t get caught. I think that might go a long way to solving some of my anger issues.

Part of this course says you should be asking the Universe for guidance and allowing yourself to be embraced by the Universe. The book says that if you leap, the Universe will spread a net under you. I can’t help feeling that if I leap the Universe will yank the net away from me at the last moment and say, “Ha Ha” as I fall to my doom through a black hole. But then, perhaps that’s defeatist. Anyway, the book says to ask the Universe, and I’m committed to doing this to the full, so around about the beginning of this year I asked the Universe, “What should I do to find a life partner?”

I swear to god that I heard a voice in my head reply, “Couch surfing”. Couch surfing. Me. Can you imagine? (And do you see why I keep some things from you? Can I be committed for this?)

‘I’m sorry, you what?’ I said back to the Universe.

‘Couch surfing,’ said the Voice.

‘Couch surfing?? Are you sure it’s me you’re talking to?’

‘Yes, yes! I’m talking to you! Couch surfing.’

‘Okay then.’

It seemed very certain of itself so I let a couple of days go by, just to give it a chance to change its mind. But when I asked again a few days later, “Couch surfing” was what I got. O-kay. So I signed on to the local Couch Surfing chapter, taking a look at the available talent as I did and thinking, “The Universe has gone crazy. Look at these people. How old is that guy? Three? And look, this one is into computer games. Well, that’s me, isn’t it? Lordy.”

The people at my local couch surfing chapter sent me a few invitations to events of such hideous unlikelihood that I was only grateful I was busy on those days and thus unable to attend. I can’t even remember, but one was something ghastly involving the words “crazy” and “wild” and “slides of my weekend in Vienna”. Meanwhile, I went to Germany, hoping to avoid the whole couch surfing message altogether by falling in love. Results noted in a previous blog entry.

And then, last week, when I started this course again and once more tuned into the Universe, if you can believe it, the first words I heard were “couch surfing”. And just to underscore the Universe’s message, the Voice was followed that very day by an invitation in my email inbox to a couch surfing get together at O’Malley’s Irish bar to celebrate St Paddy’s Day. I have to admit that email did give me a tremor. Perhaps I was meant to go after all? But the thing was that I was going out every night this week except Tuesday and I was desperately hoping for the night off. No, no, I wouldn’t go. (That’s the other thing that’s killing me about having to look for a life partner – I would SO much rather stay home and read. As soon as I get one, I tell you I am never going out again. Never!).

And then, on Tuesday, one of the women doing this course with me said, ‘Oh by the way, we’re going to O’Malley’s tonight, to a couch surfing gig, if you want to come along.’

I could hardly say no, now, could I? Somehow, the Universe was pressing me to attend this event and pressing me pretty strongly. It was a sign. So, on Tuesday, against every instinct but willing to give myself over to the care of the Universe, I donned the glad rags and went to O’Malley’s Irish bar to celebrate St Paddy’s Day with the couch surfers.

And I met no-one I was even remotely interested in, although in one of those moments that makes me suspect the Universe likes to reserve irony for me, I did become briefly infatuated with a girl I saw across the room. It was smoky, boring, loud and late and the only thing it did for me was to make a difficult week even harder thanks to lack of sleep. Whatever the Universe was up to, I can’t help feeling it is now splitting its sides and rolling in the aisles, wiping tears from its eyes and ringing up the other Universes to say, ‘I gotta good one for you! There’s this girl, ha ha ha, I told her, ha ha ha, I told her to go... wait’ll you hear this! Couch surfing ha ha ha...’. I’ve always found it loves a good joke.

At first I rejected it out of hand, but then I told myself not to be such a big girl’s blouse.

“So it’s lard and raw onions. Eat it, already.”

And I did. And you think you know how this story ends, don’t you, but you would be SO wrong. It was delicious. It was so delicious I ate most of the plate and only stopped because I was the tiniest bit concerned about the heart failure awaiting me if I get hooked on lard. Seriously. Lard. And raw onion. Who knew?

So today, I’m in the corner store looking for butter and I see a small, foil-wrapped packet there in the cheese/butter section. I can’t understand what it is from the Czech but I think, “It’s in the dairy section, it must be some delicious, milk based something-or-other. Trying new food is fun. I shall try this one.” Got home, opened the packet and saw... putty. Put my finger in it and felt... putty. Thought, “Surely they wouldn’t store putty in the dairy section.” Put some in my mouth... pure putty. Spat it out and looked it up in the on-line dictionary. It was brewer’s yeast.

I am pretty sure we can’t use that one. Humour, I’ve found, has no place in business. But I cried laughing. See why I’m in business with her?

So, speaking of alone-ness, I have a confession. For the last three weeks I’ve been in Germany, road testing a potential new partner. I can safely talk about it here because unlike every single one of my other admirers, this one has not read my books and does not read my blog. Unbelievable! Aside from this distressing lack of interest in my output, he was divine. Perfect. A man who met me on every level. Someone I thought I might have my ideal relationship with – a relationship of two free, equal people, together because they want to be, not because they can’t be alone. A man who’d be comfortable making up the rules as we went along. A man who would know how to fix my damned ipod. I had the most wonderful three weeks, living with someone I liked. He had a house in the country, and in these last weeks I’ve realised how much I love the country. How much I loved looking out at fields while I was writing. I realised that I was dead right to put my all into finding a partner. I am so much happier when I am with someone.

And then, at the end of it, he told me he wasn’t ready for a relationship. So isn’t that just dandy? Oh, I am sooo happy about that. Yessireee. This I needed. I needed to be hair-close to finding a life partner only to lose him. God. Dammit. How much longer is this going to go on? When the FUCK am I going to find a life partner? What the FUCK else do I have to do? I have been back on the dating site, of course, and can I just say that this world appears to be full of men who have reached the nirvana stage of life where they savour every moment, love everything they do, learn and grow every day of their lives. Either that, or this world is full of LIARS. On a final and happier note, though, while I am annoyed with the Universe for putting a divine man in my way who was too close to his divorce to commit again, I am not depressed. Angry, ticked off, drumming my fingers, yes, but not in despair, no. That, my friends, is a major development for me. And one I do not dismiss lightly.

This happiness is not just the result of ditching the anti-depressants. It’s the result of relentless effort on my part. I’ve detailed it before, so I won’t go into it again, oh no wait, yes I will: I am eating regularly; sleeping proper hours; drinking and smoking very little; eating fish and vegetables and cereals and yoghurt; downing the fish oil; chanting half an hour; exercising for an hour; writing three pages of stream of consciousness every morning; setting myself a goal every day (“accept what is”; “let it go”; “get money”; “be kind to yourself”; “get money”; “get money”. That one comes up quite a lot); writing down what I’m grateful for every day; re-routing my thoughts every time I catch myself sliding into depression-inducing thoughts. I mean, I am working for this. It’s a miracle I’ve got time to do anything else it takes so much time every day.

And for a long time, all that work gave me very little in return. I remember when I started writing down what I was grateful for. For a whole week of that it worked like a charm. I was really quite euphoric about how much I loved my life. I started thinking “I’ve done it! I’ve found the key! I’m free!” when whammo! Misery hit me with twice its usual ferocity. It was like a snarling, foaming dog, straining at its chain inside me, leaping for my throat “I’ll teach you to ignore me!” And it gave me rabies-hell for a week until it had me back where it wanted me, with it’s mouth around my throat.

I said to myself, “Two steps forward, one step back”.

But it felt as though I would never break free of it and now, suddenly, it all seems to be working. And it’s been working for months, apparently. The only thing that concerns me, and the reason I’ve been a bit slow on the blog, is that I am at my most ferociously funny when I am miserable. I feared that, without despair, I would be anodyne. I was a little concerned that this blog might cease to be amusing. That would be annoying. I think my only choice is to keep on writing it, apologise in advance for the lack of bitterly black humour, and hope that I can find other things to be sufficiently ticked off about to at least keep the edge. Well, I mean, come on. Look around. How hard can it be to stay annoyed? Quite – my point exactly.

This quintessential experience was the experience you have with the foreign-owned store which has carefully hired happy Czechs and told them that smiling is part of their job. I had to open a Czech bank account in the optimistic expectation of being paid legitimately for the first time since I got here. Czech banks are like Australian banks in 1952 – you have to pay a fee for so much as opening the door to a branch. There are fees for withdrawals and transfers and using the ATM—even if it’s an ATM that belongs to the bank, oh yes. There are fees for putting money in, as well. There are monthly fees just for having the account, for opening it and for closing it. I wouldn’t spit on a Czech bank, let alone open an account in one. You’d think foreign banks would be flooding here to show the Czechs how to do it, but I’m told that a population of 10 million people means it’s not worth it. Mind you, if ALL of those 10 million signed on to your bank...

At least one bank, m-bank from Austria, did come on to the market offering a checking account with no fees, bless them. Unfortunately, you have to be a Czech citizen to open an account. It’s only when you travel that you realise that “globalization” is a complete crock. There really is no such thing, you know. I’m in Germany right now and for some unfathomable reason my Google mail account won’t work here under it’s usual address. What could that possibly be about? How is it that a service that is without bricks and mortar can be stopped cold at the German border and ordered to turn back? I have no idea, but so it is, and so it is with banks. An Austrian bank can only offer accounts to Czechs if it opens in the Czech Republic. Super. The rest of the foreign banks have some fees, but they don’t really gouge you, with a foot on your neck and their hand plunged into your wallet, the way the Czechs do, so I won’t be gritting my teeth as much with them. I finally settled on Raiffeissen Bank, since it was relatively competitive, and it has a nice new branch opened up just around the corner from me. I have a yearning to belong to a branch that is local to me, and that may even end up knowing my name and face. That’d make a nice change.

So I went around the corner to the shiny new Raiffeissen Bank branch. It was tiny, very bright yellow and cute. A wee little shopfront branch, no bigger than my living room, which is very tiny indeed. It was L shaped. On opening the front door, I was in the small leg of the L with the rest of the branch shooting off to the left. At the corner of the L, facing the door, was a reception booth, a receptionist in it. To her left was a woman sitting at a desk. They were the only occupants of the bank, apart from the security guard who leapt to his feet when I came in. In fact, because he was in uniform and jumped up when I came in, I rather assumed that he was going to march me out again. But no, he had merely leapt up to greet me. So, that was weird. A friendly security guard. In Prague. He smiled and waved me forward the two feet to the reception booth where the receptionist was waiting for me, also smiling. I wondered if I was in fact in Germany, not Prague. I looked at my watch. No-o-o-pe, still in Prague, just in some reality-warp.

‘I don’t speak much Czech. Do you speak English?’ I asked her, my customary opening gambit.

‘I am sorry I don’t speak English,’ she replied, looking apologetic. Surreal.

‘Does anyone else in this office speak English?’

She looked thoughtful. The security guard and the woman at the desk were listening to this whole exchange with interest. Well, they could hardly not – there was only four square feet of space between us all. ‘No,’ said the receptionist, finally, ‘no, I don’t think we have anyone here who speaks English.’

‘That’s okay,’ I replied, ‘I can probably do this in Czech. I need to open a bank account.’

‘Personal or business?’

Good question. ‘It’s for my own business but I am just one person. I just need one people can transfer money into.’

She nodded. ‘Personal, then.’

‘Yes, personal.’

‘Yes,’ she said, then, ‘Please, Miss Svoboda will look after you,’ and she gestured towards the woman at the desk, approximately a foot away, who sat up straighter and smiled at me.

O-kay. So I walked the few inches to the desk—to the, might I say, ONLY desk in the branch—watched by the security guard and the receptionist.

‘Can I help you?’ asked the woman at the desk brightly.

‘Um. Yes. I’d like to open an account.’

‘Business or personal?’

Say wha?? ‘Um..... personal...’

And we went from there, the other two gazing at us like dogs watching for walk time. No-one else came into the bank the entire time I was there. There were no other employees and no more desks. God knows how long this branch is going to stay in business, but you have to give them credit for really trying to get into this, for them, utterly alien customer service thing. How long can it possibly last?

Then on Friday I went for an interview with an ad agency. It wasn't a job, so much as a chat. I'd cold called them and luckily for me they've got this huge new account and a copywriter who might be leaving to write a novel (fool!). We crossed the rubicon of full time work (No! My own novel may yet emerge) and then got to chatting about what I could do in the way of writing and what sort of things they might get me to do.

It was all sounding quite do-able and even moderately interesting, when we got to the topic of the client. There was a pause. The Creative Director looked at the floor. Then he looked at me through his designer glasses, keenly. I waited. He moved his chin and said, a little diffidently and after another pause, "Would you have any objection to working on an alcohol account?"

There was a long, staggered silence, while I tried to compute this question.

"You mean... moral objection?"

"Yes," he replied. Then feeling perhaps an explanation was necessary, "Well, some people might."

I wanted to say, 'Just let me get this straight. We're in the Czech Republic, a country with the highest per capita consumption of beer in the world, and you're asking a writer who’s desperate for money if she's got a moral objection to booze? Do you have a cocaine account? Because I’ll do that, you know.’

But I didn't. I said, urbanely, "No, no, that's fine. I can write about alcohol."

Anyway, we'll see. It was rather amusing seeing all the creative types in their ripped jeans and ponytails smoking feverishly outside. I might enjoy exposure to the advertising world. Well, I might! You never know.

The Buddha says that, she reckons. Well isn’t that just dandy.

I called my best friend in Melbourne and told her about all this soothing effort. I said to her,

‘I remember this guy told me, “Be like water”.’

‘Well, what’s water like?’ she said. Good question. It never occurred to me to ask.

‘I suppose, you know, water is... still. Calm.’

‘And pebbles fall through it to the bottom,’ she said, helpfully.

‘Yes. And water just lets them fall. Calmly. Oh no wait, the water is choppy on the surface, but calm underneath. With pebbles. Sinking.’

‘Yes,’ said Lee. ‘choppy on top, calm down below.’

We thought about this for a moment. Then I said, ‘Unless it’s the sea and there’s a really big rip. Then it’s choppy all the way down.’

‘So “Be like water” means tow weak swimmers to their doom?’

‘Apparently. And have sharks menacing the rest.’

And then I remembered that anyway the guy who’d told me “Be like water” was a complete idiot. Why was I listening to him in the first place? You know why? Because he was Chinese. A Chinese idiot. “Be like water”! What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

And just now, something happened which... well, see for yourself. I have two writer friends here and we have an informal support group. One of them was having a bad day this morning so I’ve been sending her soul-strengthening emails. She just reported in to me that she had done her yoga and

”I am listening to Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden's album 'Beyond the Missouri Sky'. It feels like I could listen to it pretty much endlessly. The last piece 'Spiritual' is really beautiful. It was in the movie Brokeback Mountain. I thought it had no lyrics, but they're just unsung:

All my troubles,
All my pain
Will leave me
Once again, once again”

I was forced to admit that I, on the other hand, was at that very moment watching a three minute video of rather grimly standard porn which I’d found on a free porn site my friend George had told me about.

I think the problem is I just don’t have a fine enough soul.