Alexandra

Last night I got a late call from one of my friends on her way to a party downtown Stockholm. She had came to think of me and wondered if I could join them at the party. I think most people feel they need some sort of mental preparing before going out dancing and for me that is probably even more so. So here I was watching Mythbusters on the TV and wondered what I should do. I thought I better say yes. Partly because a need to come out a bit and I like to dance but I guess also to avoid feeling left out. I am very sensitive for being left out and I think I go out of the way to not intrude or bother people who want to be left alone. Too much of course, probably because I left my childhood home with a bit of anxiety for parties and also of course my coming out process where I was almost surprised when people wanted to hang out with me “although” I was a transsexual girl. I am working on that but it still comes back sometimes in the club environment. This summer at a Pride party I also experienced that feeling of almost being in the way for my company (right or not). I felt like I was the boring girl hanging along. Some serious self-confidence issues here…

So after I while I stood in the wardrobe line and felt almost shaky. Partly from walking alone from my car in the dark night of Stockholm but also a bit scared of how I would handle myself at this party. Of course looking forward to see my friends but also nervous. Luckily my friend spotted me in the line and gave me a hug and some company while waiting. I had been to this place a few times before but that was 8-9 years ago or so. The very first time almost not being let in because they wanted proof of me being a transsexual woman. That time scared because of passing but this time not as much to my surprise. I felt cute in my greenish shirt with a lace top under and my own hair flowing over my shoulders. It seemed I passed well because I got almost no looks at all. Being not looked at is somewhat comforting I guess but also not the best approach to meet someone.

Walking towards the bar I realised that one of the things I have trouble to handle is that the whole experience is a strange mix of people in a party mood which means that they are happy towards certain people but also a bit impolite towards others. You are being pushed or even spilled drinks on and have to fight your way towards the bar. When you meet someone there is almost often not enough room and it is easy to feel pushed away because people need to scream in each other’s ears to get some attention. I guess a have a tendency to back off when being pushed in different ways. The music was load and it was really hard to hear what people where saying which is my next issue.

My voice is something I have written about before. I am proud of the work I have done with it over the years and today I feel more confident than ever. I mean people have several time told me I have a nice female voice or even a “chick-voice”. I found myself thinking about how I sound less and less. However, in the loud club environment I find that I have to muster all my energy down to the stomach to say something. Then what comes out sound very coarse and not feminine to me. However, what is worst is that all that makes almost avoid talking to people because I feel I lose all spontaneity and everything I say feels a bit corny. This strange because in other situations I like to talk to people and think I am quite good at creating a good conversation with most people.

So I ended up around a table with my friends drinking a coke. A little bit surprise that the crowd was reasonably varied (compared to last time!) with different looks and a wider age spread than usual. A flow of lesbian women around me to and from the dance floor pumping out music. Everybody occupied with there own look and checking other people out. I wondered how people see each other and how this instant attraction really works. Of course I am wondering if I am passing and I guess me being not in my best element is visible to people. But I almost felt invisible in that flow of women. Seeing my friends socialising, talking and even kissing people around me makes the contrast bigger.

I know everybody is not up for that but of course I can’t help thinking about Sara Löwestams column in the LGBT Magazine QX where she reminds people that transsexual people sometimes have missed out of all these teenage things. The school parties with the first kiss and the first love. Getting experiences but of course also making mistakes. I did not have these experiences and that can bring insecurity in unfamiliar situations like this. After a while I ended up being there at the table alone because some have went to the restrooms and the other’s I have no clue. The feeling of being lonely or maybe even worse thinking that other people think I am lonely. Especially if they “read me” as a transsexual woman. I did not panic or so but I decided that if my friends or some other that I know showed up in 15 minutes or so I just had to leave. Luckily I got some company just before my mental deadline.

After a while we ended up dancing and I had a great time for the first time that evening. The music were better than earlier that night and it felt nice being in the sea of women dancing. Around 2.20 most of my friends have went in different directions again and it was me and a friend of mine left at the very same table. When she said she was going home I tagged along. Mostly of fear of standing there alone again but also to keep and get some company on our way home.

In the end I think I hope I can master all situations but have to realize that I am more comfortable in some than others. I should therefore accept that I prefer maybe a nice dinner rather than a night out at loud bars. However, I like to dance and it is fun to look at people so I also don’t want to feel like I am not the girl to bring along for these things. Again fear of feeling left out. I wonder how people do it. Maybe alcohol have something to do with it…

Over the years I have given quite a few interviews some of which can be accessed here. I did not accept doing these right away but gave it some serious thinking. The main factor I believe was whether or not the journalist seemed genuinely interested in portraying me in a nice way without any sensation in mind. Doing these interviews have been very nice experiences and I feel fortunate to have these short snapshots of my life. Spending a few hours with a complete stranger and talking about rather personal things is often rather therapeutic and I guess it is also nice to be the center of attention for that time. When I started to come out internet was just starting to exist as we know it today and I remember how hard it was to get information about what it was like to be a transsexual woman. I remember reading the few articles I found in secret and with deep fascination. Knowing that you are not alone in this situation is so important. With that in mind I accepted doing the interviews also to maybe make a difference for other people in my situation and their close ones. Spreading information to the general public is of course also important since it is usually a good way to make things less strange. Misconceptions often come from lack of information.

Lately another aspect of how to deal with interview requests have been surfacing in my mind. Whether or not it is good for me as a person to keep reaffirming my status as a transsexual woman. It does not have to do with denying my past or anything like that but just what is will do for my self-confidence and self-image to have someone look at me as being different. Not that journalists have been negative towards me in any way but maybe the fact that I am special or courageous just because I have made this journey. Maybe also reminding people around me that I am not just another woman. My idealistic heart of course wants to keep changing the world by being out there on the barricades but maybe I have done my part for a while. On the other hand I strongly believe that we need to normalise our situation by also promoting people who actually make it as business leaders or in public office while being open with their transsexual background. When President Obama recently assigned a transsexual woman as the technical advisor to the US Commerce Department that was a big thing for all of us. My own situation is also quite cool when I think about it. I feel rather successful in my line of work and it feels great to be able to do that “despite” my background for lack of better words. It actually is quite nice to just be a skilled woman without having to talk about my personal life as well.

So as you see this is not an easy thing to handle. Lately I have started to hesitate when journalists call me and it has often ended in not doing the interview because the deadline had passed. I am finding myself confused and my “save-the-world”-gene prevents me from saying “no” so instead I have become hesitant. I have also found myself a little bit prudish for the first time in life. I have been asked to particpate in an art project around femininity which includes doing a photo shoot without any clothes but I can use props to cover selected parts if I like. On one hand I really would like to do that and use it as an exercise to feel confident as a woman in the nude and possibly get some well needed affirmations. However, unlike all other media related things I have done I don’t regret any of them and would gladly make most of that public at work for instance. It is not the same if I do this painting I think. I know there is a common fascination around the results of the transition process and the surgeries. Can I handle the fact that people around me will look at that painting to “judge” the results and look for any traces of my old self? I don’t know…

What I think all of this boils down to is how my self-image really is affected in the long run. I need to be able to settle down as a woman and to be able to think positively about how I am perceived or actually not thinking about it at all. The difference in how much time a day I spend worrying about how people would see me between now and ten years ago is just huge. Today it can happen but back then it was the normal state of mind. Moving away from that is not easy and what I am fearing is that recurring affirmations of that by doing interviews could make that process slower. On the other hand these thoughts will come anyway without any journalist in sight. Maybe when I am entering immigration in the US, walking into a store full of teenage girls or meeting officers from other nations. And of course when I am attracted to that cute lesbian woman…

Maybe I am also a bit new to the feeling of not being that sure about what to do about this anymore…

This is probably one of the more difficult aspects of my life I think - to relate to my own history. From the very beginning I have been very open with everything with life hoping that it would make everything easier since there are a lot of misconceptions and lack of information regarding transgender issues in general. It seem to really have helped since I have had hardly any negative experiences in my process. Of course it took me a lot of courage to start being open and “come out of the closet” so to say. That was not an easy process - and a lonely one.

So today I am almost facing the opposite. My dream have come true and I am my true self in terms of gender and sex but as I am probably passing sometimes it brings up the opposite question. When do I tell someone about my background? Some would argue that there is no reason to tell since I am a woman today and it is nobody’s business. However, no matter how you put the whole process have been such an important part of my life, my experience and who I am today. I believe that all people change and evolve over time and this was my experience - maybe more than most people experience but still. So in order to get personal with someone it is very difficult to not feeling the need to relate to my own experiences. Also have experienced the anxiety of waiting for the “right moment” to tell someone and that is not something I want to experience again. So this leads to the obvious Catch 22 when I so like being “just a woman” and also feel that I can’t deny my past.

A couple of months ago I was cleaning out my old office in Uppsala and taking care of the paper piles turned into a travel in time. The closer I got to the bottom I got closer to stuff from the 1990-ies when my situation was different. Seeing my old name is still a bit annoying but not as complicated as it was just one or two years ago. The real shock came when old pictures of me turned up in the piles and in binders from military schools and stuff. There I saw another person that was still me. Things like that of course remind me of my past in a negative way. Brings back memories of how scared I was to talk to anyone about my situation but also a very visible proof of the fact that I was not a woman back then. In my head of course but nothing that people actually saw and knew. I know that it shouldn’t but that of course affects my self image today.

This week a friend of mine suddenly looked at me and said that she just could not imagine me as a man. That was of course very sweet and just that kind of compliment that my still rather week self-image needs to be fueled with. For some reason it means more when a woman says it to me. However, later in the evening she said that she wasn’t sure about what she would feel about seeing pictures of me from before my transition. Not that I ever show people that but it made me start thinking. It put yet another aspect of my past. She said she was scared that these old images would get stuck in her head and I think that was a scary thought for both of us. However, since I do have a fear which is a bit like Cinderella - for lack of better words that the image of me as woman would fall just like Cinderella turns back from princess to an ordinary maid. I realized that things from my past then can be somewhat of a threat to me and my life today. Again, just like me passing or not, something I actually don’t have any control of. That made me a bit scared. I mean how should I know when these images can pop up - hopefully there weren’t many digital cameras back then.

I know, this blog has not been updated in a couple of months now. I think it mainly has to do with the fact that I use FaceBook a lot nowadays and some of these updates are also posted in the column to the right. I also think it had a little bit to do with my last tiny experience with love that took a couple of weeks to process and then intense work made me forget to write here. However, I do like to write and I believe it is really good to do that for me. It is a very good way to process feelings and experiences. Maybe what I write here also means something to other people reading it and that is of course also very nice to know.

So as we enter a new year I realize that each year seem to be even more important than the last one. When I look back I think that has been true for the last 10-15 years of my life and some years brought big experiences and sometimes also big changes as the result of that. The past year started in a rather sad way being sad for lost love. Actually it was not lost love for me but rather my own sense of losing a chance for love. Something like “how would I find someone like her again”. I took it rather hard when I later learned that she had found love and for some reason it felt worse that it was love for a man as well. What I learned from that was that there is no point of trying to be nice in that crucial moment when you declare that you have no romantic/sexual interest in a person. Instead of being nice and try wrap it in by saying “it’s not You that there is anything wrong with, it is me who are not ready”. Usually the somewhat crual but honest fact is that “she wasn’t attracted to me” and I now think it is better to say that to remove any hope and to make the experience of finding out that she have found another person much easier.

Another experience at the beginning of the year was how to deal with not passing and how to react to people saying not so nice things to our about me. I learned to raise my voice but also that it can sometimes feel like being the “touchy” one which is easily hurt. However, it feels much better to voice my reactions than sitting there with a hurting stomach being more and more sad. Partly because it feels good to get the very real feelings out of the system but also getting it out on the table and get some other reactions to it. That can in most cases be a good way to see what others think of the very same situation.

Summer vactions started late for me and I felt a bit low and lonely. Working hard sometimes makes me lose a little bit of the close contact with my friends and during summer time it is easy to feel a bit behind. It takes a while to catch up. Also realised that I needed some therapy to coach me through the daily experiences I have as well as my self-esteem as a woman - a woman that another woman can be attracted to. Found a good woman who gave me support and coaching about my own reactions but not the least to conquer some of these small fears. I think she had an important part in me being a lot more brave about my feelings for a woman I had a crush on. Actually felt a little bit proud that I actually managed to say what I felt for her without waiting for more than a couple of weeks.

Yes, my little love candle was lit in August which seem to confirm that it only happens once a year or so. I had some great summer evenings with her and it felt just wonderful to have these butterflies in my stomach for a while. In the end I learned that she was not attracted to me and in the light of past experiences that was just the words that is best to use in the long run. After processing that for a couple of weeks we started seeing each other again and I now consider her a dear friend and really think that was the best choice for both of us. Sure it hurts to be rejected - especially when I really need some affirmations as an attractive woman. However, another important thing I learned is that sometimes that rejected is also the sweetest thing. It actually means that someone thinks I am a fine person that she does not want to “waste” on a one-night-stand. That means that sometimes refusing to make out or have sex is a much stronger sign of love than doing it.

I also think I learned to come out as a lesbian again. You see in my situation as a lesbian woman with a transsexual background I realised that the main thing for me always has been my gender identity and being accepted as a woman, especially by other women. I have no experience of the day when I started to be attracted to woman - I have always been attracted to women. However, I now realize that my desire of being accepted (or fear of being rejected by women) made me  repress most of the feelings I had for them. A close friend of mine called that “believing in the sistershood between (lesbian) woman”. The reality is however that when lesbian women meet they sometimes experience attraction and that it is a very normal reaction. However, the key thing is how you act on it. In some sense it felt good to know that I did not necessarily “betrayed a friendship” just because I suddenly found one of my female friends attractive.

It is also easy to be way to hard on myself to be successful in every aspect of life. However, it is not always easy to match the fact that I am 35 in many respects but when it comes to relationships are more like 20. Experience the these shifts can sometimes take me with surprise. To handle that during the day I I comfortably stand on a scene in front of 150 people and speaking passionatly about Enterprise Content Management and being one of the “stars” of the conference that everybody wants to talk to. Later in the evening at the lesbian club I become the shy and quite girl who think everybody is way cooler than me and that no one can possibly want to talk to me let alone being attracted to me. Being just a woman in that setting is not that easy. However, I also need to accept that the bar environment isn’t everyones best arena and that I feel much more confident (and charming) at a more quite private party.

The hard part I guess is to relate to my own transsexual background. Feeling great as a woman nowadays and often smiling when I see myself in the mirror. At the same time a need to get some kind of positive affirmation from that cute woman that she actually sees me as the woman I am. No matter how confident I am it is still always in the end up to others to make that judgement. Especially in the rather cruel and binary attraction situation where it is either “on” or “off”. On one hand I should be a little bit more brave but that is hard when I am so adjusted to seek that sign of acceptance that makes it “a green light”.

In all going into 2010 life is actually rather good but there is of course that little love thing missing. I hope that this important year of 2009 made me a little bit more confident and that I sometime will found that woman that can see me more than a friend and thus become my princess. However, in the end I would never have come this far without so many supporting friends. Wish me luck!

Woke up this morning with a sorrow feeling and I think I had dreamt one or two rather bad dreams. Last day was very intense in many ways and I think that had made a dent in my mind. Not a big one but still I was affected. Since mid-august I have been feeling. longing, dreaming and hoping about love but a week ago that turned out to be nothing. I have had a small crush on her and it has been just wonderful to have these butterflies in the stomach. It tends to give me some extra energy and joy. I took it quite good I think and I wasn’t devastated or really sad maybe because there wasn’t really anything there to miss. On the contrary I have got to know a wonderful person I believe it is the right thing to do to cherish that friendship which we do have. The crush quickly fades away for me when there is no affirmations of love so over the last week that was what happened. Still I of course felt disappointed but I guess it is only natural to have these feelings. A very human reaction. Still the past week included my birthday which gave me a lot of positive feelings and work was intense so there wasn’t any time to think really either. That really help processing it for a distance I think.

Last day we met for dinner for the first time since that phone call a week ago and I did not found myself really nervous or anything but still of course wondered what I would feel when I met her. It turned out to be a nice evening where we talked about life as usual. However, both of us was a bit blue and we both seemed to be taken by the realities of life somehow. I think the sorrow feeling started there when I realized that it was over for this time - the butterflies had flown to someone else. For some reason they don’t seem to visit me more more than once a year or so I thought that it could take sometime before that feeling arrived again. Still it was nice to see her and I really want to keep her in my life as a friend. I feels very mature to be able to do so I think. So I guess all of this made my morning today a sorrow one so it was perfect that I had time for therapy this morning.

A month or so I decided I needed an external person to help me process my daily experiences as a woman with a transsexual background. Regular readers here know that now and then things happen that I get sad about and I think I need some help to deal with that. I have found a great therapist who I think mostly acts as my coach in life right now. I had the opportunity to talk about my emotions over that past week and it was great to get it out of my system and I felt rather good afterwords. Proud of myself for actually daring to say to someone that I am interested in her. I did not get the answer I so longed for this time but maybe the next time the butterflies come to visit me I will also dare to ask and maybe that woman will be my princess.

Back home I prepared for getting to work and found myself thinking I looked really good when I saw myself in the mirror. The sun was shining on my way to work and life seemed rather good after all. Emotions can surely shift quickly.

[View with PicLens]

När Puck berättade nästan i förbigående att hon mitt i sin graviditet visst hade skrivit en musikal blev jag lite förvånad måste jag säga. Det var inte det jag förväntade mig av någon som var gravid med sitt första barn. Men än en gång blev jag imponerad av hennes energi och produktivitet som den här gången kom från hennes egna reflektioner kring just mamma-rollen. Inte nog med att hon skrev musikalen och sjöng in låtarna i Garageband på sin lilla vita MacBook (vilket gör mig så stolt!) utan hon har med en liten bebis på armen lyckats att få projektet att bli en uppsättning med en otroligt proffsig ensamble och härlig musik. Drömmen blev till slut verklighet!

Jag har haft förmånen att få se några av repetitionerna men nu skulle jag få se allt från början till slut och bara insupa texter och musik. I söndags var det så dags att få uppleva Musikalen Mammor på plats på Impro & Co. Jag tycker ju så mycket om min vän och det kändes så fantastiskt att få vara med och ta del av det hon skapat och som kommit från hennes tankar. Ett manus som hon sedan format till föreställning där hennes karaktärer fått liv. Det är visserligen “bara” karaktärer som är utmejslade men ger en massa perspektiv på längtan efter barn men också de normer som samhället är ganska snabba att lägga både på ens inställning till barn och hur man ska vara för att vara en bra mamma. Just att det handlar om ett kompisgäng som liksom jag är i trettioårsåldern gör det så mycket lättare att relatera till tycker jag. Själv menar hon att den tar vid en bit efter att många av de klassiska musikalerna om amerikanska tonåringar sluter…

Det blev tårar, skratt och njutning och en underlig känsla av att efter föreställningen verkligen känt att jag fått lära känna nya människor liksom. Redan i första numret tårades mina ögon av texten och den härliga musikalkänslan som ensemblen lyckades skapa. Jag har ju fått en helt ny syn på barn i och med att Puck fick sin underbara supersöta Jonas och det gjorde säkert att ämnet tog tag i mig lite extra. Nu känns det ju otroligt långt borta för mig att skaffa barn men om jag hittar min prinsessa nån gång och hon vill ha barn så kommer jag vilja det jag med. Avslutningsnumret sätter sig i huvudet och det är svårt att inte nynna på texten efteråt.

Musiken har Puckan själv gjort men Emil Nyström har arrangerat den (på min Mac Pro!) och den är skönt varierad och har det mesta man kan förvänta sig av en musikaluppsättning. Både finstämt och härligt pampigt. Artisterna sjunger fantastiskt bra och förmedlar ofta väldigt starka känslor som griper tag i en.

Jag hoppas att ni tar chansen och lägger beslag på en av de sista biljetterna till föreställningarna nästa söndag och och måndag genom att boka här: Bokning Musikalen Mammor

Over a year ago on Aug 22nd I had my last and hopefully final surgery at the Karolinska hospital. I did not think of this until a few days ago but checking the calendar revealed that my anniversary day became a just wonderful one. Definately top five this year. First I attended a absolutely wonderful lesbian wedding where I had the privilege of being the official wedding photgrapher and later that day I had a marvelous evening hosted by a wonderful woman I recently have got to know. It was a truly magic evening enjoying the Swedish summer and talking under a starlit sky.

I don’t think I really could imagine how important this breast augmentation surgery turned out to really be for me. I felt it was the natural and final step for me but it wasn’t until many months later that I really started to enjoy the completeness of my new body. The joy of being able to buy really nice underwear slowly made look at myself in the mirror in a new light. I actually felt pretty even with just my underwear on. I started realizing that using the changing room at stores was much more natural and even the locker room as well. I have started wearing more low cut tops and feel really proud of my cleavage. It makes me feel feminine in a very nice way and I can now wear more styles without being afraid. However, soon I also noticed that they brought some new attention to the game sometimes, especially among men.

I sometimes find myself admiring them because to me they are just perfect and in some way they also are a physical affirmation of me being the woman I have always dreamt of being. It is actually good to be able to feel them being a part party of my body when I am walking and moving around. Some kind of reminder of how lucky I am in that respect and it can actually make me smile just because of that sometimes. Being able to feel very much ok in my bikini among both men and women was another great step for me of course. I even managed to not feel that uncomfortable when a really cool, intelligent and cute woman happened to browse through my iPhone and seeing pictures of me in a bikini just after taking an outdoor bath this summer.

This summer I also started jogging again. Tried with my existing sports bra but it turned out to hurt a lot. Thanks to my good friend Linda A we ended up at a specialty shop for women runners and I got myself a sturdy sports bra together with some cute running clothes. Being able to feel pretty while running was quite a thing. A combination of my old life and the new one in a healthy way.

Lately I have started think about how social rules IRL(in real life) and using digital media really works. As everything else in society all these rules vary to some degree between situations and are affected by who you are interacting with. The question is what is considered being good tone and what is considered to be rude nowadays. Humans are really good at sending signals “between the lines” using diplomatic language with hints and insinuations and using body language to signal different emotions which then other humans are differently skilled at interpreting or even caring about at all.

In normal day-to-day conversations around a table it is generally considered rude to ignore what someone is saying or even refrain from answering direct questions. Over the phone or a voice chat it is similar but body language isn’t communicated (unless using video chats) and you can therefore afford to look bored, do faces or whatever while somebody is talking in the other end. As long as we are doing synchronous (real-time) voice communication a lot of the social rules for IRL seem to apply.

When the mobile phone rings you either answer or don’t but most people choose to call back at a later time to see what that person had on their mind. To me that is a good example of a social rule in modern society. Can one expect someone to call back if we have bothered to call them? Or is the social rule that if it important (enough) you expect someone to try again? Is therefore a repeated set of calls in a short matter of time a sign of urgency?

Getting an text message (SMS) notifying me that I have a voice message usually also signfies a sense or urgency or importance which I usually find results in a call back to me. However, I believe here is another area where we see a change in social interactions because the mobile phone is always with us and always on. Many people today bring their phone everywhere which includes meetings,vistit at friend’s and dinners. That means that is has been regarded ok to not answer because you are not able to talk at that specific time. Reasonable that has also meant that people choose not to answer when someone is calling and you don’t feel like talking to them.

Text chats seem nowadays to bridge synchronous and asynchronous communication. In one sense it is real-time because you can interact very rapidly and if both are typing really fast it can become a fast paced discussion. In general I also think that in the early days of Instant Messaging (IM) the siginificance of a text chat was higher than it is today. If you got that pop-up window with a bleep I usually switched my focus on that and bothered to answered directly. Today, we see IM going really mainstream and becoming a part of corporate infrastructures often with the argument of replacing some emails. That means that IM text chats are to some respects a replacement of asynchronous messaging (often email) where you type something up which does not really require an immediate response but something you want your co-worker to be aware of. You know that people are in meetings, talk to people around them and therefore can’t be expected to pay attention to all incoming IM-messages right away. That IM-message has then became an asynchronous message that gets read minutes or even hours later. Socially that must mean that there is an acceptance of IM-messages not being answered to directly and therefore not considered a rude behaviour. However, I do believe that it is a little but rude to ignore replying to an IM at all or at least mentioning that in an email or the next IM-chat.

I personally think it is really cool to be online at all times but the question is if that also means a committment(personal domain) or responsibility (corporate domain) to also answer and interact as soon as you can? In my personal domain I think the way IM is used has changed a bit over the years. In the early days of iChat we were intensely chatting often but nowadays it has almost shifted that an IM is done only when you have something important to say and therefore almost “worthy” of a phone call but just almost. The way IM works is that it usually doesn’t require your full attention the way a phone call does. Nowadays you do IM while doing something else.

I wonder if this means that all means of communcation changes in the way we see them as requiring our attention or how important they are to us. We I got my first Internet connection back in 1995 I think I considered an email being somewhat the same as an old-fashion letter. It was carefully drafted and sent with some sense of importance and thus requiring an answer. Over time email also became a way to share information “for-your-information” rather than something requiring a direct reponse. Email became a way to share information more casually. Compared to writing a letter it is so much easier to copy a text or just send a link to a web page. More of anything can often mean that the sense exclusiveness goes away somewhat, unless you are in love of course when I guess many love messages only make things better in most cases.

Social media (such as FaceBook) brings the sharing aspect of information to a whole new level. Nowadays you can share your current situation where you express what you are doing, how feel and what you are about to do. Thing that differes social media networks from web pages with information is that it usually assumes you have some sort of relationship to people who you are sharing your information with. The information is personalised and therefore to a higher degree targeted by you. Just as you expect a reaction to something you say over dinner about what is happening in your life I guess many people who post their “status” on FaceBook hope or desire some kind of reaction to it. Congratulations to good things that happen and expressions of compassion when bad things happen in their life. So as we are getting more and more information about people around us the questions how we do handle the social rules about all this social information. Is it rude to not read or try to keep up-to-date about someone you know? Do you expect comments from these people around events in your life? Is a FaceBook message something that require an answer just as we might think of an email or an IM-chat?

No matter if how reactions or response will arrive the increase of information streams (should we call personal ones life streams?) coming from sources you have chosen will most likely affect people who consume them to some degree. In an era of mass information and need for affirmation it can be confusing when different people apply different social rules to all these communication possibilities. Some people apply the social rules of IRL strictly and get offended when people don’t follow them. Others are very relaxed about the whole thing and don’t feel obliged to do anything at all. The thing that confuses me is when the level of obligation is determined out of someones particular view of a specific tool rather than their relation to the person they have a relationship with.

Last evening became a wonderful experience for me. After a terrible Monday effort resulting in nothing (the bath was closed!) we decided to give it a new try on Tuesday evening. We had actually talked about this last summer when she helped me buy my very first bikini. Then I had my surgery and in the end I guess I was not ready to face my fears back then. So this would be my first time in a public ladies locker room, first time public in a bikini and my first time in the water in 7 years or so. My wonderful friend P suggested that we went there together and she had arranged so her boyfriend was home to take car of her little baby. After playing a little with her little cutiepie we headed off towards a spa bath in the central part of Stockholm. I had been nervous all day and it became even more intense when we were getting closer. I don’t think I manage to talk much at all. I was so fortunate to have her beside me but I was very nervous if my wonderful new body would be nice enough. The last thing I wanted was some kind of scene that would hurt my self esteem.

The inside of the 109 year old spa was beautiful and the atmosphere was very relaxed as we slowly made it down the stairways towards the cashier. I was very nervous and I think my friend understood that and took care of all the talking and getting us a locker key each. The girl behind the counter then smiled and said “…and you find the entrance to the women’s department over there”. I smiled and it felt really solemn to walk through the passage. There were only a few other women inside and we both found our lockers at the end of the room. I looked left and saw that my friend was already undressing so I took a deep sigh and starting doing the same as well. Before knowing it we both stood there in our bikinis and agreed that the bikini I bought last summer before my surgery fit me really well. It was nice to get some words of approval and we headed of towards the shower room.

I realised that it wasn’t only 7 years since I had been on a public bath but also in public locker rooms as well (brief visit around Christmas at work though) so it was almost a little bit exciting being there again. I relaxed a little bit when the water was starting pouring down over my body and realised that noone seem to take any notice of us at all. Standing there in my nice bikini and feeling the water almost made me more aware of my body and that it actually was ok and nice. I worried a little bit that my wet hair would affects my looks a little bit but then it was time. We took our towels and opened the door towards the public areas and before I really had time to react I was walking beside the bar area in the entrance wearing a bikini. It was a great feeling to be that natural and not having to worry about makeup and extra hair but also not anything to hide or be ashamed of. There I was, a woman walking beside another women who was my best friend. It was actually a very pure feeling that I had dreamt about for a long time to just the average woman and not feeling different compared to my dear female friend. We explored the relaxation area and passed along the table where some people were sitting and drinking. The rest of the area was taken up by a big bubble bath pool and a equally large salt-water thermal pool.

We agreed on that swimming a few strokes would be a good start and started looking for the swimming pool and after a while we found some signs leading to a stairway. In the stairway I whispered happily that nobody had stared at me and she smiled back almost like she had expected just that. The pool room was a beautfiul place with nice chairs and small cabins by the side of the 18m long pool. I almost felt proud as I walked along the side behind her. Proud that I was finally there, proud of my body and very thankful for her support without which I would never be there.

We slowly entered the water on opposing stairways and it was a wonderful feeling to feel the water around my body and my long hair floating in the water as I took my first swim strokes in years. We swam together along one side of the pool and I felt just wonderful and smiled a lot. After a few turns I realised that I was getting tired really quickly but it felt great to get a little exercise at least.

Back in the relaxation area we had look at the bubble pool but it was cleaning its water just then so we ordered orange juice and a warm sandwich to eat. Sitting there waiting was great, people were walking by and I was feeling just normal (for lack of better words). I don’t remember all details but I think my friend noticed that the bubble pool was bubbling again so we headed off to it to try it out. At the same time what seemed like a bachelor party discovered the same thing and decided to bubble bath as well. The pool quickly filled up and me and P slided in on the front-end and the pool was full. I have to confess that my tension level jumped a few bits then. Here I was sitting in a bikini the first time in a bubble pool together with 8 strange men. I think my friend also was a little bit worried if something could happen. However, they seemed happy about the female company in the pool and I felt just wonderful. After being massaged by the jet streams for a while we switched pool to the warm salt-water one. It was also a very nice and warm to just enjoy the warm water in the pool beside the bar.

After a long time our food was ready and we got some really tasteful sandwiches and I just tried to enjoy every moment of this experience. We were getting a bit cool and closing time was getting nearer so we then headed for the sauna department. We choose the dry nordic sauna and ended up laying on our backs without the bikinis and with hair balm in our hair. Lying there naked with other women and feeling a sense of belonging was just great. It was really warm (around 90 degrees Celcius) and it was a great way to end the bath experience.

We showered and changed clothes in the locker room and headed back home to my friend in a beautiful Stockholm with warm summer wind and a lovely sunset. She called her boyfriend and we decided to pick him and her baby up and find a place to have coffee. Sitting at a nice café with them and enjoying a Latte was a perfect end on a truly magic evening for me. I was definately back on my pink cloud when I came home.

The other evening I was sitting down with my closest friends and her super-cute baby (sleeping) and was talking about life. I think we started by discussing how she wanted us to do a short getaway at a spa or a nice bath to make me do my bikini-debut. It is not just about the bikini, it is the whole thing of being naked in a changing room with other women. I am very proud of my new body but also scared that I will be stared and feel that I don’t belong in a place which I have fighted so long to be in. It is a little strange because some people could easily think it would be easier for me to finally have a womans body and it would be a breeze to enter and feel right at home among the women.

That could of course be the case if it wasn’t for the fact that no matter what I do with my looks there is always that someone who for some reason sees something that makes them see my background. In that moment I am not just a woman but suddenly that strange person. I should of course not really have to care what every single person think about me and I like to think I actually can disregard that sometimes. However, what I am scared of is that I will end up creating somekind of “scene” because someone feel a need to point some strangeness about me to me or most often someone else around them. In the worst of cases that could of course develop into one of those situation where you feel really uncomfortable (or even scared) and just want to run out of the room.

The strangest part is that I had thought (or at least hoped) that these feelings would go away by now. I mean I remember how scared I was just going downtown shopping ten years ago. In many respects my life is so much easier now but I have realised that these situations takes me much harder now because I am less prepared and it feels much more unfair. Back then every step outside felt like a political action of visibility and even if I longed to just pass as the average girl I know I sometimes did not and was prepared for that. Nowadays I feel just great about myself when I leave my house and then suddenly from nowhere I cause some reaction just by being there which makes it so obvious for me that I am strange. Sure a lot of this is just in my head and a girlfriend of mine did point out that I had to learn to handle that some men does not look friendly at women. Maybe genetic women has become more used to this than I have but the thing is that I feel that I am getting these reactions from a lot of women as well.

I remember the joy of finally going to the women’s restroom back then and it truly felt “right” even though I did not have woman’s body back then. Therefore it is a bit sad that I still can be a little bit nervous to open that door not knowing what kind of reaction I will cause in there. Sure, in most cases there is no reaction but sometime there are. Especially late at night in cramped places and where people have had something to drink. I am actually a bit scared for what a group of drunk young women could say to me in that situation. To me that is also the worst thing - to be questioned as a women by other women. In these situations it does not matter what my ID-card says or how my body looks beneath my clothes. Isn’t that rather unfair?

Well, so that is the reason why I need my best friend’s hands when I take my first swim strokes in 8 years or so soon. Wish me luck!

To me one of the biggest news delivered during the conference was the new generation of Documentum full text indexing called the Enterprise Serch Server (ESS). This marks the first official message that EMC Documentum will move away from the OEM-version of FAST ESP which has been in use since Documentum 5.3 (2005). The inclusion of FAST back then meant that Documentum got a solution where metadata from the relational database where merged with text from the content file into an XML-file (FTXML) that could be queried using DQL. Before diving into the features of the new technology I guess everyone wonders about the reason for this decision. The main reasons are said to be:

• Performance. 1 FAST Full-text node supports up to around 20 Million objects in the repository (some customers commented that their experience were closer to 10 M…) and it requires in memory indices. With Documentum installations containing Billions of objects that means 100+ nodes and that has been a hard sell in terms of hardware requirements.
• Virtualisation. Apparently talks with Microsoft/FAST about the requirement on supportin all Documentum products on VMWare made no progress. This has been a customer demand for some time. MS/FAST cites intensive I/O-demands as a reason why they where not interested in certifying the full-text index on virtualisation.
• NAS-support.
• More flexible High Availability (HA) options. Today FAST can be clustered by adding new nodes which leads to a requirement of having the same amount of nodes for backup/high availability.

From a performance stand-point I personally think that the current implementation of FAST lead to slow end-user experience when searching in Documentum. One reason for this is that a search is first triggered to FAST which then delivers a search result set irrespective of my permissions. Instead the whole result set must be filtered by quering it towards the relational database. That takes time. This is also a reason why we have integrated an external search engone based on the more modern FAST ESP 5.x server with Security Access Module which means that acl:s are indexed and filtering can be done in one step when searching in the external FAST Search Front-end (SFE). More about how that is solved in ESS later on.

From a business perspective EMC outlines these challenges they see a need to satisfy:

• End users expect Google/Yahoo search paradigms
• IT-managers want low cost, scalable, ease of deployment and easy admininstration.
• Requirements for large scale, distributed deployments with multiingual support.
• Enterprise requirements such as low cost HA, backup/restore and SAN/NAS-suppprt.

New new ESS is based on the xDb technology coming from the aquisition of the company X-hive and leveraging the open source full-text indexing technology in the Lucene project. The goal for ESS is to leverage the existing open indexing architecture in Documentum. The idea is both to create a solution that really scales but of course with some trade-offs when it comes to space vs query performance.

ESS supports structured and unstructed search by leveraging best of breeed XML Database and XQuery Standards. It is designed for Enterprise readiness, scalabiity, ingestion throughput and high quality of search as core features. It also provides Advanced Data Management (enables control where placement of data on disk is done) functionality necessary for large scale systems. The intention is to give EMC to continue to develop and provide new search features and functionality required by their customer base.

It is architected for greater scalability and gives smaller footprint than current Full-Text Search as well as scale both horisontally (more nodes) as vertically (more servers on the same node). It is designed to support tens to hundreds of millions of objects per node.

This allows for solutions such as Archiving where there can be Billion+ emails/documents while preserving the high quality of search while still achieving scale. The query response time can be throttled up or down based on needs - priority can be shifted between indexing and quering.

The installation procedure is also simplified and EMC promises that a two node deployment can be up and running in less than 20 minutes. The solution is also designed to easily allow to add new nodes to an installation.

ESS is much more than a simple replacement of the full-text engne. It will focus on deliver these additional features compared to existing solutions:
- Low cost HA (n+1 Server based)
- Disaster Recovery
- Data Mangement
- VMWare Support
- NAS Support
- New Administration Framework

The new admin features includes a new ESS Admin interface which has a look and feel very similar to CenterStage. Since the intention is to support ESS on non-Documentum installation it is a separate web client. The framwoork also supports Web Services, Java API, JMX and it is open for administration using OpenView, Tivoli, MMC etc.

The server consists of:

• ESS API
• Indexing Services will have document batching capability, callback support for searchable indication and a Content Processing Pipeline with text extraction and linguistic analysis via CPS.
• Search Services. This will provide search for meta-data, content or both (XQuery based) as well as multiple search options such as batching, spooling, filters, language, analyser etc. It will return results in a XML format and provides term highlight, summary and relevancy. The thread execution management support multi-query and parallell query. It also includes low level security filtering.
• Content Processing Services is responsible for language detection, text extraction and linguistic analysis. The CPS can be local or remote (co-located with content for improved performance). It will have a pluggable architecture to support various analysers and/or text extractors. It will include out of the box support for Basis RLP and Apache SnowBall analysers. However only one analyser can be configured per ESS. (My question: Can I have different analysers on different nodes?). Content Processing can be extended by plugins.
• Node and Data Management Services is the primary interface for all data and node management within ESS. It provides ability to control routing of documents and placements of collections and indices on disk. It deals with index management and supports bind, detach, attach, merge, freeze, read-only etc.
• Analytics includes API’s and Data model for logging, metrics and auditing, ingestion and search analysis and facet computation services.
• Admin Services. The example shown was really powerfull very an admin could view all searches made by a user by time and see what time it took to first result set. The one with a longer time could be explored by viewing the query to analyse why it took so long.

Below that the xDB can be found and in the botton the Lucene indices. The whole solution is 100% Java and xDb stores XML Documents in a Persistend DOM formats and support XQuery and XPath. Indices conists of a combination of native B-tree indices + Lucene. The xDb supports single and multi-node architecture and has support for multi-statement transactions and full ACID support. In additon it supports XQFT (see introduction it here) which is a proposed standard extension to XQuery which includes:

• LQL via a full text entension
• Logical full-text operator
• Wildcard option
• Anyall options
• Positional filters
• Score variables

ESS includes native security which means that security is replicated into the search server and security filtering is done on a low level in the xDb database. This means effective searches on large result sets and enables facet computation on entire result sets.

Native facet computation is a key feature in ESS which is of course linked to the new search interface in CenterStage which is based on facets in an iTunes-like interface. Facets are of course nothing new but it is good that EMC has finally realised that it is a powerful but still easy way to give users “advanced search”.

ESS Leverages a Distributed Content Architecture (for instance using BOCS) by only sendning the raw text (DFTXML) over the network instead of the binary file which can be very much larger in many cases (such as big PowerPoint files). ESS also utilizes the new Content Processing Services (CPS) as well as ACS.

The new solutions also makes it possible to do hot backups without taking the index server down before as it is today. Backup and restore can be done on a sub-index level. The new options for High Availability include:

• Active/active shared data (the only one available for FAST)
• Active/passive with clusters
• N+1 Server based

Things I like to see but have not heard yet:

• Word frequency analysis (word clouds based on document content)
• Clustering and categorisation (maybe done by Content Intelligence Services)
• Synonym management
• Query-expansion management
• How document similarity is handled by vector-space search (I guess done by Lucene?)
• Boosting & Blocking of specific content connected to a query
• Multiple search-views (different settings for synonyms, boost&blocking etc)
• Visualisation of entity extraction and other annotations
• Functionality or at least an API to manually edit entity extraction within the index. Semi-automatic solutions are the best.
• Freshness management.
• Speech-to-text integration (maybe from Audio/Video Transformation Services)

Personally I think this is a much needed move to really improve the internal search in Documentum and make much better use of the underlying information infrastructure in Documentum. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on Microsoft/FAST ambitions to support the Documentum connector. Maybe the remaining resources (no OEM to develop) can focus on bringing the connector from an old 5.3 API to a modern 6.5 API. I still see a need for utilising multiple search engines but as ESS gains more advanced features the rationale for an expensive external solution can change. The beta for Content Intelligence Studio will be one important step in outlining the overall enterprise search architecture for big ECM-solutions. In this lies of course tracking what Autonomy brings to market in the near future.

Another thing worth mentioning is that I during the past four conferences have heard quite a few complaints about the stability of the current FAST-based full-text index. It crashes/stops reguarly and often without letting anybody knowing it before users start complaing about strange search results.

A public beta will be released in Q3 2009 and customers are invited to participate. Participants will recieve a piece of hardware with the ESS pre-installed and pre-configured and after a few configuration changes in Content Server it should be up an running.

Customers will have the option of upgrading existing FAST full-text index  or run the new ESS side-by-side with FAST. ECM will also market ESS for non-Documentum solutions.

Be sure to also read Word of Pie’s notes as well as my previous notes from FAST Forward 09 around the future of FAST ESP.