Universities cry about the lack of lecturers

VietNamNet Bridge – Universities cannot persuade graduates to stay at the schools to work as lecturers, while it is very difficult to “hunt for heads” on the market.

series of universities in HCM City began recruiting lecturers right when the new academic year started. However, none of them has recruited enough lecturers they need.
Excellent graduates keep indifferent

Under the current regulations, the graduates, who become lecturers after finishing schools, would not be allowed to give lectures in the first year of working, while they can only make scientific research, attend teaching hours of colleagues or undertake students’ affairs. Therefore, a lot of new lecturers feel discouraged and decide to give up the job.

“The salary is low, while the job is boring, therefore, it is very difficult to retain them,” said Hoang Manh Dung, Head of the Administrative Division of the HCM City Open University.

Dung said that the school tries to ensure the permanent staff accounting for 50-60 percent of the total lecturers. However, it is always very difficult to ensure the percentage. It launched the campaign of recruiting new lecturers for the school, but only 40 applications were made, and only 25 lecturers were recruited.

Dung revealed that the school tried to persuade excellent graduates to stay at the school to work as lecturers, but most of them refused the invitation. Only several students, who got university degrees at good level, accepted the invitation, but it seems that they do not have high enthusiasm.

In the past, the postgraduate training regulations allowed 5 percent of excellent graduates to continue studying for master degree without having to attend exams. Meanwhile, the current regulations stipulate that all university graduates have to sit exams to enter the training courses. Therefore, according to Dung, it is now very difficult to retain excellent graduates to be trained to become lecturers.

The HCM City Law University has received 72 applications for the post of lecturers after three months of seeking lecturers. Phan Le Hoang Toan, Deputy Head of the Administration and Personnel Division of the school, most of the candidates were bachelors, and only seven of them got university degrees at excellent level.

Nguyen Manh Hung, President of the Nguyen Tat Thanh University, also said that his school finds it very difficult to recruit lecturers.

Working as lecturers while waiting for better opportunities to come

Universities all believe that it is difficult to recruit lecturers nowadays because the income of lecturers is too low.

Dung said that a new lecturer would receive the salary of 3-4 million dong a month for the first year of working, if he has the university degree at excellent level. Meanwhile, a new school graduate can get 5-6 million dong at least if he goes working for a company.

That explains why most of the candidates for the post of lecturers are female graduates, who do not try to earn money at any cost and feel satisfactory with stable lives.

There are also male candidates, but they make such decisions just because they want to have time to follow new training courses for master degree or seek scholarships to go studying abroad. After they return from overseas with the master degree, they would leave the schools for other jobs which can bring better income.

According to Dung, the HCM City Law University has surveyed its students about if they intend to become lecturers. 70-80 percent of them said they intend to stay at the school, but just to make scientific research and have more opportunities to study further, while they did not mention the plan to become lecturers to earn their living.

Source: NLD

Restructuring: Facing facts to develop

VietNamNet Bridge – Identifying hindrances for economic restructuring, Vietnam will be able to overcome them, said Dr. Nguyen Dinh Cung, Vice head of the Central Institute for Economic Management.

The 11th National Party Congress highlighted the mission “restructuring the economy” as the way to change the country’s economic growth model.

At the 3rd meeting, the Party Central Committee solidified this mission: restructuring the economy in combination with renovating the growth model.

The question: “where will the restructuring begin?” is answered because the Party Central Committee has pointed out top priorities in the coming time, to make breakthroughs with three key areas: 1) restructuring investment, focusing on government spending; 2) restructuring the financial market, giving priority to restructuring the commercial bank system and financial organizations; 3) restructuring state-owned enterprises, concentrating on economic groups and corporations.

The three above missions are combined with measures to combat inflation and stabilize the macro economy and more importantly, with the change of thoughts on development.

“The Party Central Committee requires agencies to have thorough understanding of and well solving the dialectical relations between growth rate and development quality, between high growth and macro-economic stabilization; between inflation control, macro-economic stabilization with growth model renovation, restructuring the economy; between economic development with cultural development, implementing social equality and ensuring social welfares,” said Party Secretary General Nguyen Phu Trong.

That is a good sign for researchers because restructuring is not only a scientific topic of researchers but also a strategy that is approved by the Party Central Committee. That is the only way to turn discussions into policies, said Dr. Nguyen Dinh Cung.

That is the “conclusion” of a many-year discussion process on restructuring Vietnam’s economy. Vietnam now enters the process of action, Dr. Cung added.

It is important that the priorities highlighted by the Party Central Committee are “dangerous spots” of economic renovation in Vietnam in the coming time.

The Party Central Committee’s orientations are products of the spirit “facing facts” and “assessing facts” to know the position and the situation of the Vietnamese economy.

Party Secretary General Nguyen Phu Trong’s summary report at the recent Party Central Committee’s meeting said that the Vietnamese economy is now under the impacts of the global financial crisis, global economic recession. The economy has many inner weaknesses, with backward growth model and economic structure; shortcomings in leadership of state agencies at all levels, particularly in running monetary and fiscal policies; weakness in managing planning, investment, land, natural resources and estate market.

By pointing out problems, Vietnam can be able to solve them and restructure the economy, Dr. Cung said.

Around two weeks ago, at a discussion on restructuring the economy, senior economist Pham Chi Lan asked a former member of the Party Central Committee about the unanimity at the central level in assessing the existence and the influence of interest groups over the economy, she received a shrug as the answer.

At that seminar, Dr. Vo Dai Luoc, former chief of the Institute for World Economics and Politics, cited the warning by Dr. David Dapice from the Harvard University about the formation and existence of the so-called “Devil’s Triangle” among officials – businessmen – bankers, in which the national policy is the hostage. Policies are only formed and implemented to benefit this triangle.

Prof. Mancur Olson, from the Maryland University (USA), analyzed in the book “The Rise and Decline of Nations”, any country that has long-enough time for political stability will have special-interest groups. These groups know how to control the nation’s policies and legal system to benefit themselves, which restrains the new motive forces of development, leading to the country’s decline.

However, experts wonder whether Vietnam has the Devil’s Triangle and interest groups? How is the impacts of  interest groups in policy making? Whether Vietnam is capable to overcome hindrances from interest groups?

After the Party Central Committee’s 3rd meeting, which closed on October 6, economist Pham Chi Lan has had the positive answer.

In the closing speech, Party Chief Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong mentioned hindrances for Vietnam’s renovation, including the impacts of interest groups besides partial thought, vying for achievements, subjectivism and voluntarism.

“That is the difference and difficulty of Vietnam in renovation policy this time, in comparison with the renovation policy issued in 1986,” Dr. Cung analyzed.

In 1986, Vietnam changed the economic thoughts by from the centrally managed economy to the market-based economy. That change benefited everybody though the benefit was different.

The current restructuring will not benefit all. The beneficiary will be almost Vietnamese people and the entire economy and those who suffer losses will be interest groups which are holding back the national economy.

“Group interest is great but it is a small matter if Vietnam has highly political determination and creates highly social agreement to overcome it. If Vietnam can realize hindrances, it will be able to overcome them,” said Dr. Cung.

Phuong Loan

SOEs restructuring begins from changing way of thinking

VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam so far has affirmed that the state economic sector continues playing the most important role in the national economy. Meanwhile, economists have continuously urged to restructure state owned enterprises (SOEs).

In 1992, Vietnam kicked off the process of reforming SOEs when pushing up the assignment, sale, contracting, equitization and dissolution of enterprises. Meanwhile, restructuring SOEs remains a hot story 20 years later.

At the workshop on the situation of the Vietnamese economy held by the National Assembly’s Economics Committee two weeks ago, the phrase of words “SOE restructuring” was repeated in the speeches of all orators. They not only have agreed that Vietnam needs to carry out the SOE restructuring, but have also affirmed that the restructuring needs to be implemented urgently.

What are SOEs – the motive force of national economy – like?

The report released by the Committee for Enterprise Renovation and Development in 2010 showed that SOEs are holding 70 percent of the total fixed assets of the national economy, controlling 20 percent of the investment capital of the whole society, using 60 percent of the credit provided by commercial banks. They are also using 50 percent of the state’s investment capital and 70 percent of ODA (official development assistance) capital.

The total stockholder equity of the 21 state owned economic groups and general corporations, not including Vinashin’s, had reached 540,701 billion dong by February 2011.

Though holding big assets and using big resources of the society, the state economic sector does not bring big achievements to the national economy. SOEs only create 37-39 percent of GDP, generate 4.4 percent of total jobs. Meanwhile, the productivity and output increases are always lower by 10-14 percent than that of the private economic sector.

Meanwhile, analysts have pointed out that a half of the contribution by SOEs to the GDP came from the national natural resources exploitation such as oil and gas, coal and minerals.

Vietnam so far has affirmed that the state economic sector continues playing the most important role in the national economy. The most important fields of the national economy are being undertaken by SOEs.

However, economists have pointed out that when assigning SOEs the role of leading the national economy and entrusting the enterprises with too heavy tasks, the State not only puts a heavy burden on the economic sector, but also creates many problems to the national economy, including the inefficient allocation of the national resources and the existence of an unleveled playing field for different economic sectors.

Restructuring SOEs – how?

Commenting about the SOE restructuring in the last 20 years, Dr Phan Dang Tuat, Head of the Industrial Strategies and Policies said at a workshop recently that what Vietnam did in the last 20 years was just separating, merging or dissolving enterprises. This means that in the last many years, Vietnam only focused on changing the model of enterprises.

Meanwhile, the conclusion by the Communist Party’s Politburo about the socio-economic situation in 2011, when mentioning the SOE restructuring, said that it is necessary to push up the equitization of economic groups and general corporations, request SOEs to focus on their main business fields and not to invest too much in non-forte business fields

Professor Vo Dai Luoc has pointed out that he knows no market economy in the world which considers state economic sector as the motive force of the national economy.

Luoc believes that the State should not do business for profit, while doing business should be done by private enterprises. The role of the State is to ensure the macroeconomic stability. “The SOE restructuring should go that way,” Luoc said.

Sharing the same view, other economists say that SOEs should not get involved in all the phases of the national economy’s value chain, but only in the most important fields, or the fields refused by the private economic sector due to the low profitability. Once the private economic sector gets strong enough, SOEs should focus on serving the works for public interests.

Truong Dinh Tuyen, former Minister of Trade, believes that it is necessary to put SOEs into a real competition and not to give preferences to the enterprises, and it is necessary to change the management mechanism of SOEs. However, this would be impossible if the State still holds 70-80 percent of stakes at the enterprises.

Source: TBKTSG

Can Vietnam reap fruits from the “education with excessive universities?”

VietNamNet Bridge – The 2011 enrolment season has finished. A lot of schools cannot find enough students, while many training branches have been shut down. Experts believe that this is the foreseeable result of a problematic education with too many universities and few students.

As easy as opening new schools in Vietnam

Just within 10 years, from 2000 to 2011, the number of universities in Vietnam increased from 69 to 163. Especially, universities mushroomed in 2009 as a result of the policy which allows to open new schools with very easy conditions.

Currently, 62 out of 63 provinces and cities in Vietnam have universities (4-5-year training) or junior colleges (3-year training). In 2006 and 2007 alone, 40 new universities were established.

The sharp increase in the number of schools has put a heavy burden on the Ministry of Education and Training as the management agency. The ministry’s report in 2009 admitted that the capability of controlling the activities of the schools nationwide was limited. If the ministry took an inspection tour to two schools a week, it would take them 3.5 years to fulfill the inspection tours to 376 schools.

Regarding the situation of universities and junior colleges, the report No 34 sent by the government to the National Assembly’s Standing Committee in April 2010, showed that 20 percent of the newly set up schools still had not built schools at the given addresses, and had not fulfilled their commitments. The schools were still renting campuses and rooms to organize the training activities.

Especially, a lot of universities register their headquarters in the former Ha Tay province (now belonging to Hanoi) or Hoa Binh province, but in fact, they seek students and organize training classes right in Hanoi. The same situation can also be seen at some schools in the localities near HCM City.

In August 2009 alone, five new universities made debut. These included the Bac Giang Agriculture and Forestry University, which was upgraded from the Bac Giang Agriculture and Forestry Junior College, the Dong Nai University of Technology, which was upgraded from the Dong Nai Polytechnique and Technology Junior College, the Transport Technology University, which was upgraded from the transport junior college. Especially, the Nguyen Tat Thanh University was established on the basis of the Nguyen Tat Thanh Junior College which was also upgraded from the Nguyen Tat Thanh School (2-year training).

In principle, when applying for opening a school, the investors have to show that they can satisfy the requirements in the land fund for school campuses, lecturing staff, investment capital and other conditions that ensure the quality of training, such as syllabuses and dormitories. However, in fact, a lot of schools still could obtain the license to open schools from the Ministry of Education and Training, even though they could not have such the required conditions.

As difficult as seeking students

The Ministry of Education and Training has vowed to improve the quality of university education. However, analysts still have doubts about the feasibility of the plan, saying that when universities even accept the students, who get low marks from university entrance exams, they will not be able to produce high quality graduates.

In recent years, due to the lack of students to enroll, universities only require students to obtain 13-14 marks from the university entrance exams (3 exam subjects). However, even when accepting such low marks, universities still cannot find enough students.

“What is happening now in enrolment seasons shows that the Vietnamese education system is problematic,” said Le Viet Khuyen, former Director of the University Education Department of the Ministry of Education and Training.

Non-state owned schools are offering gifts to attract more students. Meanwhile, prestigious state owned schools open “special classes” which gather the students, who do not obtain the required marks, to collect high tuitions from the students. Especially, even national universities also try to enroll students for 3-year training courses. As a result, less prestigious schools stay hungry for students.

Kieu Oanh

Fat profit prompts businesses to distribute games

VietNamNet Bridge – A lot of enterprises are rushing to distribute games, despite the legal barriers and the current difficulties, because games can bring attractive profit.

The lucrative business

A representative of a big game distributor said that game distribution is now considered the business which allows to most quickly make profit.

He said that as there are a lot of games available, the royalties are cheap. Therefore, one just needs to spend several billions of dong to set up a small game company. The investment capital of several billions of dong can be taken back soon after the company’s owner buys several games and distribute them.

The man said that it is easy to measure the success and failure of games. In Vietnam, it takes only three months to know if the games attract gamers and if the distributors can make profit.

Therefore, in Vietnam, distributing games has become the choice of many companies, both the ones operational for a long time and newly established. They distribute all kinds of games as long as the games can attract gamers.

In the first phase of development, there were only MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), Casual or MMOFPS (Massively Multiplayer Online First-person Shooter) with which gamers played on computer. Meanwhile, games have become diversified with different modes of webgatme, game mini and the games integrated into social networks, which allow gamers to play games on different devices, from computer, tablet PCs to mobile phones

In general, games distributors mostly buy games from foreign sources to distribute domestically. However, some companies have decided to produce games themselves for domestic distribution. VNG and VTC are considered the pioneers in game production in Vietnam. Meanwhile, many new faces have appeared, including Fgame, MusicKing, or Emobi Games.

Difficulties existing

Analysts say that a successful game can bring tens of billions of dong a month to the distributor, though he has to spend several billions of dong in investment capital. Gunny, which is considered the most successful product of VNG, for example, brings the turnover of over 30 billion dong, while other games also bring tens of billions of dong.

Meanwhile, VTC earns at least 10 billion dong from each of FIFA online or Audition. As for other enterprises, a game can bring more than 10 billion dong a month.

However, the high profit has incited game distributors to do everything to “suck the blood” of gamers. In the past, game distributors always gave enough time so that gamers can get adapted with the new games, and they only began collecting money in the official commercialization period. Meanwhile, nowadays, distributors begin collecting money from gamers right after they launch games into the market.

A gamer complained that game distributors nowadays try to sell everything they have. “They would sell even the blade of grass in the games,” a gamer said.

He also said that game distributors always “play safe”. The rules of the games set up by distributors, always protect the benefits of distributors. Meanwhile, if the games are forced to shut down by the management agencies, gamers will become “empty-handed”.

The problem here is that new games have been distributed illegally, because Vietnam has halted licensing new online games since July 2010. This means that management agencies can shut down any games. In these cases, distributors do not have to make any compensation to gamers.

Meanwhile, proposals have been made to the Ministry of Information and Communication that the ministry should consider resuming the licensing to some Vietnamese online games in an effort to develop the digital content industry, provided that the games do not come contrary to the Vietnamese habits and customs.

At present, though no more online game has been licensed since 2010, more and more new games still have been available on the market, while the State fails to collect tax from the game distribution.

Climate change – the threat comes closer

VietNamNet Bridge - Vietnam is considered one of the five most vulnerable countries in the world which may be the biggest sufferers in the global climate change.

Weather becoming more and more unpredictable

Under the impacts of the climate change, weather performs in a strange way, which comes contrary to the natural law. In summer, temperature goes up to 39-40oC, while in winter, the temperatures goes down to 5-7oC. Storms and floods come more regularly, which cause big damages to the infrastructure, environment, and death tolls.

According to the Institute of Hydrometeorology and Environment, the average temperature has gone up by 0.1oC, while the sea water level has risen by 2.5-3 cm over the last decade. The changes in the precipitation with more rains in the rainy season and less rains in dry season are the main that cause bigger and more regular floods, as well as more serious droughts.

The government and relevant agencies have drawn up different climate change scenarios and solutions to every scenario. However, in reality, the consequences are more serious than imagined.

The three-day rain in October 2008 alone was big enough to inundate Hanoi and neighboring provinces under water, caused 17 deaths, paralyzed the traffic and caused severe damages to agricultural production. During the three days, the rainfall in Hanoi was measured at over 500 mm, and in Ha Dong town at 800 mm.

The historical typhoon in the central region in early November 2011 not only killed a lot of people but also caused a loss of 2,200 billion dong. When the central region still had not fully recovered from the storm, a 10-day flood rushed down into five central provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue, killing 66 people and injured 75, and causing the toll of 2562 billion dong. Two serious typhoons have devastated the central region’s land strip several days ago. People are becoming powerless in face of the nature.

Hoang Duc Cuong, a specialist from the Institute of Hydrometeorology and Environment, believes that the increased impacts of El Nino and La Nina is one of the manifestations of the climate change. Hanoi and the provinces in the north have experienced a long period of serious hot weather which is the presence of El Nino.

But people still keep indifferent

The climate change has become more complicated because of the behaviors of people, who makes upstream deforestation indiscriminately and use too much energy to cause greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, people themselves suffer from the attacks of the natural fury.

Dr Dang Hung Vo, former Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment, has warned that in Vietnam, a lot of people have not paid much attention to the climate change impacts. They simply think that climate change just means the rise of the sea water level. They believe that if the sea water level rises by only 1 cm a year, Vietnam would only have to think of the measures to deal with the climate change after many years.

Vo has also pointed out that Vietnamese people have become subjective when hearing the predictions that the sea water level rise would only affect the Red River Delta in the north and Mekong Delta in the south by 2050.

In fact, the climate change has brought about big consequences to Vietnam. The climate change can be seen in the absurdity and the higher intensity of floods and storms, in the changes in the tide regime which causes floods to HCM City.

Right after the floods had left the north of the central region, another flood rushed down to the south of the region. Big floods never came so regularly in the past. In general, only one or two provinces in the central region suffered from heavy floods, such as Hue or Da Nang. However, things are quite different now: consecutive typhoons came within a short time, causing big devastation to the central region.

Nonchalance – a disease of modern time?

VietNamNet Bridge – A young man who was hit by a truck, many people surrounded to see and go away, leaving him alone; stealing assets of accident victims; patients die because doctors refused to give first aid without money… Nonchalance over the pain of others seems to be popular.

At 3pm, June 16, 2011, this man was robbed by two men while riding at the An Duong Vuong
 roundabout, District 5, HCM City. He pulled back his bag. The bag was torn. Banknotes were blown to the road…




Many passers-by did not help the man but tried to pick up the man’s money. It is so emotionless!

In the latest case in HCM City, a car hit several vehicles at the same time, killing two and injuring 17 others. Meanwhile, some passers-by did not help victims but stole their assets.

The most injured victim, a woman named Hong Ha, lost all of her money in the accident. It took police several days to identity a dead woman in the accident because her bag, with personal papers, was stolen.

Many readers wrote to VietNamNet to express their angry over cold-blooded thieves. However, those who eyewitness similar accidents said that it is popular.

Many people are still obsessed by a terrible accident in Thu Duc district, HCM City, two years ago. The victim is Nguyen Thanh Trung, a police officer who was cut in two by a truck. A video clip shot by someone shows that after the accident, Trung was still of sound mind. He even asked witnesses to call his family but nobody helped him. He was dead after that, before an ambulance came.

The five-minute video clip was post on the internet and it roused up a wave of public protest against passers-by, who only stood to see the victim.

Another example of Nonchalance occurred on July 23, 2011, in Cau Giay district, Hanoi. Hundreds of people calmly saw Nguyen Cong Vinh and his son unarmed resist against robbers.

Vinh said while he and his son were waiting for the bus, a young man picked Vinh’s pocket. Vinh detected and snatched his arm while the pickpocket was handing his purse to another man. Immediately, the accomplice rushed into to beat Vinh and his son. Hundreds of people surrounded to see but nobody gave him a hand. Vinh had to let thieves go.

Police of Nam Can district in Ca Mau province are investigating a group of doctors of Nam Can Hospital who made the death of a girl named Duong Thi Thu Huyen, 16.

At around 3am, June 28, some people saw Huyen with many injures lying on the road. They brought the girl to Nam Can hospital for first aid. However, doctors refused to receive the victim just because she did not have enough money. Until Huyen’s family came to pay money, doctors performed cursory examination. The young gird was dead next morning.

As a result, hundreds of people rushed to demolish the hospital and paraded on the street with the dead body. Dozens of people were arrested and 34 were prosecuted. Doctors involved in the case were dismissed and punished.

At around 5pm on July 28, 2011, this truck was upturned on National Highway 1A in Dai Trach commune,
 Bo Trach district, Quang Binh province. Fruit boxes on the truck were spilled to the road.




While the driver was trying to get out of the truck, locals stole all fruits.

Doctor of sociology Trinh Hoa Binh said that Vietnam is transforming between two civilization of wet rice and industry. The society, therefore, is experiencing the change of values and lifestyle.

According to Binh, this situation is partly caused by competent agencies’ weakness. “If police officers appeared quickly, how can passers-by stole assets of accident victims?”

Lawyer Nguyen Ngoc Hung from HCM City says nonchalance is not new. It appeared since humans appeared, at different level along with the development of society. “We have to find ways to control this nonchalance and one of the important tools are laws,” Hung stressed.

“Policy makers should not pay attention to economic and politic development only and neglect the goal of building a real society in which humanity appears everywhere. A developed society without humanity is a disabled society because economic and politic development is meaningless when people live in nonchalance,” Hung said.

Robin van Persie denies celebrating Arsenal goal with a Nazi salute

Dutch striker reacts to 'absurd' internet claims
• Van Persie scored a hat-trick in 5-3 win at Chelsea

• • reddit this

• Steve Judge
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 31 October 2011 01.30 GMT
• Article history

Robin van Persie scores his second goal and Arsenal's fourth in the 5-3 win at Chelsea. Photograph: Dylan Martinez/Reuters

Robin van Persie has been moved to rebut suggestions that he celebrated one of his three goals in Arsenal's 5-3 defeat of Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Saturday with a Nazi salute.
The Dutchman used his Twitter account to answer claims made on the internet that he performed the salute in front of the Arsenal fans after scoring his second goal.
Van Persie, who touched his right shoulder then his left shoulder with his right hand before raising it in the air, said it was nothing more than an expression of his joy at scoring such an important goal.
He tweeted: "It has been brought to my attention of some ridiculous allegations concerning my celebration of one of my goals yesterday.
"It is totally ludicrous to suggest that my action of brushing my shoulder and pointing to my fans could be construed as anything else but of a showing of joy and celebration.
"To suggest this meant anything to the contrary is insulting and absolutely absurd as nothing else came into my mind."

Five things we learned from the Premier League this weekend

Petr Cech struggles, defences go awol, top work from an assistant referee and the curious BBC commentator

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• Comments (486)

Petr Cech was beaten three times at the near post during Chelsea's defeat to Arsenal at Stamford Bridge. Photograph: Tony O'Brien/Action Images

No case for the defence

It was another good weekend for those with a vested interest in the branding of the Premier League as the greatest in the world. With 35 goals in nine games, teams coming from behind to draw or win, late goals, and plenty of controversial incidents that will not result in a Football Association inquiry. The underlying cause of much of this drama was defending so bad that it would be an insult to the playground to call it schoolboy.
There were some decent individual performances and cohesive defensive displays – Nemanja Vidic impressed in Manchester United's 1-0 win at Goodison Park, Fulham were solid in victory at the DW Stadium while the pairing of Martin Skrtel and Daniel Agger in Liverpool's defence gave Kenny Dalglish's side a mobile and solid look to the heart of their back four. But that's about it. Stamford Bridge was the main "look away now" arena for defensive purists. Andre the Giant would have contributed more to Arsenal's defensive unit than André Santos while André Villas-Boas may be committed to playing with a high-line at Chelsea, as he did at Porto, but on the evidence of Saturday he needs to sit down and explain it to his team a couple more times because they do not seem to have the hang of it. Not that anyone will dwell on that as the game gets filed away on the shelf labelled "Classics" alongside the two 4-3 matches between Liverpool and Newcastle and various other imperfect afternoons.
This season the four games between this season's Champions League sides have seen 29 goals scored. In the 12 matches last season between teams competing in the Champions League there was 32 goals. Does that suggest a new emphasis on attacking, expansive play or merely a new low in the gradual deterioration of the top sides in English football? Sadly it may be the latter. And nearly everyone involved in marketing the Premier League loves it. EF

Cech can't catch

Rightly or wrongly, Monday's headlines will probably focus on John Terry, with the defender kindly recreating his slip of 2008 to give a laugh to all those ABCs out there. Perhaps, though, those headlines should focus on the performance of Peter Cech who had one of his worst ever games in the Chelsea goal. Admittedly the Chelsea defence were poor and there was not much he could do about Arsenal's first and fourth goals but on three occasions the Czech keeper committed the cardinal sin of all goalkeepers: he got beaten at his near post. The final goal, and Robin van Persie's third, will be of particular irritation to his manager, André Villas-Boas. Despite José Bosingwa doing his job and covering the angles, Cech, for some reason, moved to his left when the only real place the Arsenal captain could aim for is the keeper's right. He duly conceded when he really should have saved.
He will also be angry to be beaten by Theo Walcott, a man whose goals come about as often as insightful analysis from Alan Shearer. Chelsea conceded five goals at home in the league for the first time since December 1989 when they lost 5-2 to Liverpool and have kept a clean sheet only once in the league this season.
Nevertheless Villas-Boas said after the match he would be sticking to his open style "because the philosophy is a personal value and a club value. You should never sell it cheap. We will stick to this philosophy." But if they are to have any success in the league, or indeed Europe, Chelsea will need to change something and they will need Cech, and the defence in front of him, to recover the form that once made them one of the most formidable back lines in England. IMc

Downing is failing to deliver

Plenty of criticism has been heaped on the Liverpool manager, Kenny Dalglish, for spending £35m on Andy Carroll and in many respects that criticism has been justified. But it seems Dalglish has got off scot-free for what may be his worst purchase of the summer, Stewart Downing. Whereas Carroll, at 22, has enough time to develop into the player his transfer fee expects him to be, Downing, at 27, does not. Traditional wisdom states that the former Aston Villa and Middlesbrough winger should be coming into the prime of his career but he has been desperately below par since joining the Merseyside club. While his passing is, for the most part, accurate too much of it is in areas that do not hurt the opposition.
And even when he does get into good positions, he wastes his crosses. The match against West Bromwich Albion on Saturday was the perfect example of this. He had a 72% pass completion rate but the vast majority of his passes and crosses near the penalty box failed to find a Liverpool player or trouble the West Bromwich defence. He has also failed to assist or score a single goal for Liverpool in the league this season. For a winger, and one that cost £20m and is a regular start for Dalglish's side, these are damning statistics. Liverpool may have spent big on Carroll but Downing, in the long run, may end up costing them more. IMc

An assistant finally provides some assistance

Lee Mason was right to award Liverpool a penalty at The Hawthorns on Saturday evening. Jerome Thomas's collision with Luis Suárez would have been a foul anywhere else on the pitch, so why not in the box? Just because there was no appeal from Suárez does not render the claim any less valid. It is not an lbw decision. What was remarkable about the incident is that it was a rare occasion when a referee's assistant volunteered to make himself useful. Mason gave the penalty on the say-so of his assistant, Gary Beswick. Far too often the man with the flag will slink into the background when a big call is needed leaving a referee to make it on an incident he is not always in a position to judge. So credit where it is due to Beswick. The problem is that even though he got the decision right, the resulting 83 minutes of abuse he inevitably received as he ran the line may have led him to wonder if it was really worth it. EF

Dan O'Hagan may be Britain's oddest commentator

Watching Match of the Day remains an enthralling experience but thanks to Messrs Lineker, Hansen, Shearer and Motson, listening to it has become a pretty banal pursuit. However, if Saturday's edition of the show is anything to go by there may just be a fresh reason to take that finger off the mute button. Those who tuned in for the highlights of Norwich's 3-3 draw with Blackburn could not fail to have been engrossed by a match that contained two goal-of-the-month contenders, a dramatic comeback and referring controversy, but they may well also have been distracted by the ever-so-odd commentary of Dan O'Hagan.
The BBC's man at Carrow Road started well but then came Blackburn's second goal, scored by Yakubu Ayegbeni after 62 minutes. O'Hagan expressed a textbook grunt as the striker lashed a long-range shot at goal ("Yakubuuuu!!"), but then, as the ball hit the back of the net, nothing. No emotion, no wonder, no recognition that the visitors had just retaken the lead. A one-off, perhaps? Not so. A couple of minutes later Christopher Samba made it 3-1 to Blackburn and this time O'Hagan did not even grunt. His voice remained flat from the build-up to the goal through to the moment the men in blue and white were celebrating.
It was as if he was commentating on another incident entirely. In fairness to the man with the microphone, he reacted to Blackburn's opening goal, scored by Junior Hoilett, as well as Norwich's three, in an appropriate fashion but it was hard to escape the feeling that in O'Hagan – who is described as "one of the world's leading freelance television football commentators" on his official website – we may just have a maverick on our hands. SN

Pluto — No Longer a Planet — Has a Twin Sister

If Pluto's looking for someone — or something — to blame for being drummed out of the planetary corps back in 2006, it need look no further than Eris. The solar system's ninth planet had long had its detractors — purists who sniffed at its tiny size and irregular orbit — but it was in 2005 things came to a head.
That was when Caltech astronomer Mike Brown found a tiny, frigid world orbiting some three times further out than Pluto. Brown had been finding similar objects in the Kuiper Belt — the massive band of comet-like bodies that circles the solar system — for years. But all of them were smaller than 2,320 km (1,440 miles) across, the modest dimensions of Pluto. Eris (which Brown nicknamed Xena, before the International Astronomical Union settled on its official name), though, was evidently a little larger — and that discovery set off an international furor. If Pluto was a planet, Eris obviously was too. And if so, why not Quaoar and Sedna, and several other worlds, which were smaller than Pluto, but not by much? (Read about Pluto's new moon.)
In the end, the astronomical union avoided the whole mess by demoting Pluto and the rest to the status of "dwarf planet," infuriating Pluto partisans around the world (an odd category, when you think about it: there are no rabid fan clubs for Jupiter or Mercury or Mars). Brown ultimately poked Pluto lovers again when he wrote a book titled How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming. The one hope Pluto fans had for revenge was that it was very tough to pin down Eris' size exactly. Maybe it would end up proving smaller than Pluto after all. That wouldn't restore Pluto to full planethood, but it would make them feel better, anyway.
Now a team of astronomers has finally nailed down Eris' size with high precision, and the answer is that it may be bigger than Pluto, or it may not — but the difference is probably pretty small either way. Much more significant, says Bruno Sicardy of the Paris Observatory, lead author of a paper on the discovery in the latest Nature, is that despite their comparable size, Eris is some 27% more massive than Pluto. What's more, it's prettier, with a surface Sicardy describes as "brighter than new fallen snow."
Measuring the size of something 24 billion km (15 billion miles) away is no mean feat. It is, says Sicardy, "like measuring a coin at a distance of 100 miles." Even with the Hubble telescope, Eris looks like a featureless pinpoint. The only way to gauge its size accurately was to wait for it to pass in front of a distant star, in what's known as an occultation. All you have to do then is time how long it takes the star to reappear on the other side and you can calculate the size of the obscuring object. Two years ago, Sicardy and his team found a good star in what seemed to be the right spot — but they couldn't be sure the two bodies would actually cross paths until it was about to happen. "You need to know the location of the star and the orbit of Eris very, very precisely." (See whether there is a hidden planet in our solar system.)
Fortunately, they chose well. Last November, the occultation took place. "It's amazing it works!" says Sicardy, who knew better than anyone how hard it was to predict. "The star disappears and then reappears!"
If the occultation had been spotted from only one telescope, it wouldn't have been very useful, since the star might have barely skimmed Eris' edge rather than passed behind its fat middle. But two telescopes, both in Chile, managed to see the event take place. They were far enough apart and saw it from different enough angles that they captured different parts of Eris. Assuming the object is roughly spherical (not unreasonable), they could use those parts of the overall disc to trace out the rest and thus calculate its size. The answer they got: 2,326 km (1,445 miles), with an uncertainty of half a percent. That margin of error actually straddles Pluto's accepted dimensions. At its greatest possible size, Eris is bigger than Pluto; at its least, it's smaller.
Such exquisite mathematical ambiguity is made less certain still by the fact that unlike Eris, Pluto has a thin atmosphere, so when it goes in front of a star, the star doesn't wink out. It fades. Pluto may be a few tens of kilometers smaller than Eris, or a few tens of kilometers bigger.
Whatever Pluto's exact dimensions, the fact doesn't have much significance beyond cosmic bragging rights. What does matter a lot is Eris' surprisingly large mass, which means it has considerably more rock underneath its icy surface than Pluto. As Brown writes on his blog, "explaining why Pluto and Eris are so different is going to keep up busy for many years, I suspect."
Scientists also have to explain why Eris is so blindingly bright. Its surface should darken over the years as dust and cosmic rays mar its pristine whiteness, and yet it's kept its youthful sheen. The answer, the scientists suspect: when Eris comes closer to the sun in its highly elongated orbit, surface ice warms up to form a temporary atmosphere. When it recedes, the atmosphere condenses again to form a new coating of ice just a millimeter thick. "Unfortunately," says Sicardy, "we will have to wait 250 years to test this idea." But Pluto is currently moving further out, so the same thing might happen to it in reverse. "Within 20 years or so," he says "we could see Pluto begin to brighten" as its atmosphere starts to freeze out, confirming the hypothesis.
Astronomers won't have to wait that long to firm up their understanding of the outer solar system, though: Sicardy and his team already have occultations in hand from other Kuiper Belt objects. Measuring their size and density will help theorists figure out how these miniworlds came to be.
Brown, meanwhile, holds out an even more exciting prospect. "There are surely even larger dwarf planets out there," he writes. "It is only a matter of time before both Pluto and Eris are supplanted." Presumably, one hopes, before Eris develops a fan base of its own.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2098150,00.html#ixzz1cNLGvLxV

Enough Is Enough

The smell was unmistakable. I recognized it immediately – a fungating infection. It’s what happens when a cancer breaks through the skin and the puss oozes out and aerosolizes, producing an unsurprisingly foul odor. This is what late stage cancer looks like if left unchecked, like many cancers were 100 years ago or still are today in the developing world. But I encountered this case this month, and Yvonne, the woman who sat crying before me, lives in Los Angeles. She lost her job two years ago and when her insurance expired, she was too ashamed to seek help for a mass she felt in her right breast.  Now the tumor had replaced her entire breast and blasted through the skin. Being cared for now — so late in her illness — was surely not what she would have wanted; and just as surely, it could have been avoided. How did we let this happen in America?

(MORE: Obama’s Health Reform Popularity Bind)

I was volunteering at the CareNow Free Clinic in the Los Angeles Sports Arena, one of more than 700 doctors, nurses and health professionals who had turned out to serve the local community. CareNow is a nonprofit founded to bring medical care to underserved communities, and the Los Angeles event was organized by Don Manelli, indefatigable president of the group. He was aware of what we would see here today, as was I, having volunteered at similar clinics in Little Rock, Arkansas and in Moorsville, N.C. We also conducted our own clinic for The Dr. Oz Show in Houston in 2009 and saw over 1,800 patients in one day. But simply having been down this road before does not mean you’re ever fully prepared for it.

My radio crackled and I was called to see David, a 25-year-old overweight Latino man with a blood sugar of 355, far above the tolerable level of 100. He came to the clinic for eye problems, a common complication of diabetes, but he had not seen a health care professional as an adult and did not appreciate the classic symptoms of frequent urination, constant thirst and lethargy. I pressed on his gums and pus poured from abscesses cause by the untreated elevated blood sugar. As I walked him to the dental clinic on the floor of the sports arena, he asked insightful, targeted questions about his condition, a conversation that should not have happened by chance in a free clinic. The simple advice David collected could help him avoid the rusting of his blood vessels and the amputations, kidney failure, strokes and heart attacks that would otherwise define his life and cost the health care system much more than a timely consultation. I witnessed the surreal effect of watching David’s teeth being treated where pro athletes usually dribble basketballs until a young mother asked me about a problem with her mouth. She came to the clinic because her children had health insurance from the state, but she was not covered.

(MORE: Same Old Story: Health Insurance Premiums Soar, Yet Again)

It’s this tide of disease and despair that CareNow exists to fix. The group was informally established by a team of first-responders who’d learned the art of swooping in to help after hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires and tsunamis. In May 2009, they held the largest free clinic ever, also in Los Angeles, and a breathtaking 8,000 people showed up. After that, CareNow was formally founded, with the goal of providing care when there is no natural disaster. And on an otherwise unremarkable Friday afternoon in the fall, I was a small part of that effort, gently offering what encouragement I could to a weeping Yvonne.

At what point, I wondered that day and wonder now, will we finally say enough? The medically underserved are, most commonly, the medically uninsured, and they number in the tens of millions. Many don’t have jobs, but just as many do. Their companies may not offer health insurance, or they simply may not be able to afford the monthly payroll deductions that would be required to enroll. Since we held our first clinic in October 2009, federal health care reform was enacted to address this. The law is challenged in many states and ultimately will be decided by the Supreme Court in the next year. I don’t underestimate the complexities of implementing a health care reform law that we can all live with. As with most entitlement programs since the Great Depression, we will have to perfect health care reform over time, just as Social Security, Medicare, Veterans benefits and others were.

But we’re not perfecting the law, we’re fighting over it. Politicians dither and people die. Lawyers argue the merits of this or that technical point, and more blameless Americans grow sick and slip away. This isn’t just a failure of politics and policy; it’s a failure of basic morality. I don’t have to convince you of that. All I have to do is make sure you get to know Yvonne and David, show you their pain and their fears and their x rays.

Surgeons like me have to be irrational optimists, so I am going to apply this trait on a grand scale. If enough people start to say enough, then we will get somewhere. I love working among the selfless people who staff these free clinics, who show patients that someone cares about them. But every time I finish a day’s work I silently pray it will be the last one we ever need. Get to know the Yvonnes and the Davids, and then let your frustration guide us to an America where free clinics are the stuff of history and the simple dignity of the chance to be healthy is the living reality.

Oz is a surgeon, professor and host of The Dr. Oz Show

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2011/10/31/enough-is-enough/#ixzz1cNHWjLsZ

China and India at War: Study Contemplates Conflict Between Asian Giants

There are plenty of reasons why China and India won't go to war. The two Asian giants hope to reach $100 billion in annual bilateral trade by 2015. Peace and stability are watchwords for both nations' rise on the world stage. Yet tensions between the neighbors seem inescapable: they face each other across a heavily militarized nearly 4,000km-long border and are increasingly competing against each other in a scramble for natural resources around the world. Indian fears over Chinese projects along the Indian Ocean rim were matched recently by Beijing's ire over growing Indian interests in the South China Sea, a body of water China controversially claims as its exclusive territorial sphere of influence. Despite the sense of optimism and ambition that drives these two states, which comprise between them nearly a third of humanity, the legacy of the brief 1962 Sino-Indian war (a humiliating blow for India) still smolders nearly five decades later.

And it's alive on the pages of a new policy report issued by the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, an independent think tank that is affiliated with India's Ministry of Defense. "A Consideration of Sino-Indian Conflict" is hardly a hawkish tract — it advocates "war avoidance" — but, by spelling out a few concrete scenarios of how conflict may look between the two countries, it reveals the palpable lack of trust on the part of strategists both in New Delhi and Beijing. The report applauds long-term Indian efforts underway to beef up defenses along the Chinese border, but warns that Beijing may still take action:

In future, India could be subject to China's hegemonic attention. Since India would be better prepared by then, China may instead wish to set India back now by a preventive war. This means current day preparedness is as essential as preparation for the future. A [defeat] now will have as severe political costs, internally and externally, as it had back in 1962; for, as then, India is yet again contemplating a global role.

While a lot of recent media attention has focused on the likelihood of Sino-Indian clashes at sea, the IDSA report keeps its scope trained along the traditional, glacial Himalayan land boundary, referred to in wonkish parlance as the LAC, the Line of Actual Control. Since the 1962 war, China and India have yet to formally resolve longstanding disputes over vast stretches of territory along this line. Those disputes have resurfaced noticeably in recent years, with China making unprecedented noises, much to the alarm of New Delhi, over its historical claims to the entirety of the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh — what the Chinese deem "Southern Tibet." The Chinese even rebuked Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for having the audacity of visiting the Indian state during local elections in 2009.

Not surprisingly, it's in this remote corner of the world that many suspect a war could kick off, particularly around the historic Tibetan monastery town of Tawang. India has reinforced its position in Arunachal with more boots on the ground, new missile defenses and some of the Indian air force's best strike craft, new Russian-made Su-30 fighters. After decades of focusing its army west against perennial threat Pakistan, India is tacitly realigning its military east to face the long-term challenge of China.

The report speculates that China could make a targeted territorial grab, "for example, a bid to take Tawang." Further west along the LAC, another flashpoint lies in Kashmir. China controls a piece of largely uninhabited territory known as Aksai Chin that it captured during the 1962 war. Indian press frequently publish alarmist stories about Chinese incursions from Aksai Chin and elsewhere, playing up the scale of Chinese investment in strategic infrastructure on its side of the border in stark contrast to the seeming lethargy of Indian planners. Part of what fuels the anxiety in New Delhi, as the report notes, is the threat of coordinated action between China and Pakistan — an alliance built largely out of years of mutual antipathy toward India. In one mooted scenario, Pakistan, either with its own forces or terrorist, insurgent proxies, would "make diversionary moves" across the blood-stained Siachen glacier or Kargil, site of the last Indo-Pakistani war in 1999, while a Chinese offensive strikes further east along the border.

Of course, such table-top board game maneuvers have little purchase in present geo-politics. Direct, provocative action suits no player in the region, particularly when there's the specter of American power — a curious absence in the IDSA report — hovering on the sidelines. Intriguingly, the report seems to dismiss the notion that China and India would clash in what others would consider obvious hotspots for rivalry; it says the landlocked Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan would likely be treated as a neutral "Switzerland", while Nepal, a country of 40 million that entertains both Beijing and New Delhi's patronage, is more or less assured that neither of its big neighbors would risk violating its sovereignty in the event of war.

Moreover, the IDSA seems to rule out either side encouraging or deploying proxies in more clandestine struggles against the other. The restive border regions on both sides of the LAC are home to resentful minority populations and more than a few insurgent factions. India and China — unlike Pakistan — have little precedent in abetting militant groups and strategists on both sides would be wary of fanning flames of rebellion that no one can put out.

Yet what seems to stoke Sino-Indian military tensions — and grim prophecies of conflict — are precisely these feelings of vulnerability. The uncertainties posed by both countries' astonishing economic growth, the lack of clear communication and trust between Beijing and New Delhi and the strong nationalism underlying both Indian and Chinese public opinion could unsettle the uneasy status quo that now exists. Managing all this is a task for wooly-heads in New Delhi and Beijing. But don't be surprised if more reports like this one come out, drawing lines on the battlefield.

Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/10/28/china-and-india-at-war-study-contemplates-conflict-between-asian-giants/#ixzz1cNBG04Bm

Palestinians get Unesco seat as 107 vote in favour

The UN cultural organisation has voted strongly in favour of membership for the Palestinians - a move opposed by Israel and the United States.

Of 173 countries voting, 107 were in favour, 14 opposed and 52 abstained.

Under US law, Washington can now withdraw funding to Unesco. This would deprive the agency of some $70m (£43.7m) - more than 20% of its budget.

The UN Security Council will vote in November on whether Palestine should become a full UN member state.

Membership of Unesco - perhaps best known for its World Heritage Sites - may seem a strange step towards statehood, says the BBC's Jon Donnison, in Ramallah, but Palestinian leaders see it as part of a broader push to get international recognition and put pressure on Israel.

This is the first UN agency the Palestinians have sought to join since submitting their bid for recognition to the Security Council in September.

Continue reading the main story

Palestinian UN Statehood Bid

• Palestinians currently have permanent observer entity status at the UN
• They are represented by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)
• Officials now want an upgrade so a state of Palestine has full member status at the UN
• They seek recognition on 1967 borders - in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza
• Enhanced observer member status could be an interim option

"This vote will erase a tiny part of the injustice done to the Palestinian people," Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki told the Unesco meeting in Paris, after the result was announced.

Funding at stake

The UN Security Council is expected to vote on that bid in November. The United States has said it will use its veto.

But at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the US does not have veto power.

"The action today will complicate our ability to support Unesco," the US ambassador to Unesco said after the vote.

"The US has been clear for the need of a two-state resolution, but the only path is through direct negotiations and there are no shortcuts, and initiatives like today are counterproductive," David T Killion told journalists.

A US law passed in the 1990s allows Washington to cut funding to any UN body that admits Palestine as a full member.

That amounts to $70m - more than 20% of Unesco's entire budget.

Widespread applause greeted the result of Monday's vote in the chamber, where a two-thirds majority is enough to pass the decision.

Experience: I'm a man and a woman

The only person I told was a priest who offered to pray for me, but it wasn't prayers I needed'

• • reddit this

• Pedro Juan Perez
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 October 2011 22.59 BST
• Article history

'I hated rough-and-tumble boys' games and preferred knitting.' Photograph: Fabio De Paola for the Guardian

Ihad always been a sickly child, suffering more than my fair share of childhood ailments: asthma, chest infections and flu. Other kids called me a "weaky" because I was skinny and hopeless at sport. I hated rough-and-tumble boys' games and preferred knitting, but I had no idea my feminine leanings were down to genetics.

Then, when I was 13, I collapsed while riding my bike. My immune system was run down and I underwent a series of tests. They diagnosed Klinefelter's syndrome, which means I have three sex chromosomes, XXY, instead of the normal XY for a male, or XX for a female. The condition affects up to one in 1,000 boys – physically I'm male, but genetically I'm male and female.

"You won't be able to have children," the doctor told me nonchalantly. Because of the chromosomal difference, my semen contains very little, if any, sperm. Even as a teenage boy, I was devastated and burst into tears. I'd never even kissed a girl, but I'd always wanted children. I was put on testosterone injections to induce puberty – to help turn me into a man.

I don't remember my parents ever discussing my diagnosis. Perhaps they were too shocked. My dad muttered something about still being able to adopt, and didn't return to the subject. The only person I told was a priest who offered to pray for me, but it wasn't prayers I needed. I wanted emotional support. I felt isolated and confused.

Then, a year after my diagnosis, my sister Teresa was told she had cervical cancer. She died a year later, aged 30, before I had a chance to confide in her. Soon afterwards, my mum was also diagnosed with cancer and died when I was 21. Cancer deprived me of the two women I loved most. My own condition seemed negligible in comparison.

I moved to Segovia in Spain, my dad's home town. I spoke the language, so it was easy to get work. The rest of the time I spent partying, and DJing, anything to dull my sense of loss. I also lost my virginity – it was a hazy, forgettable event, but I remember thinking: "I'm a man now." I was 24, but looked barely old enough to smoke. I'd neglected my testosterone injections because I couldn't get a prescription there.

Two years later, I came back to England and began to face up to my condition, resuming the injections. I became heavier. Hairs sprouted on my chest. At 25, I had my first shave, my hand shaking with excitement.

Physically, I began to look masculine. But inside I felt feminine – and I still do. It's not that I want a sex change and I'm not gay. I just enjoy the things other women enjoy. I love shopping and trying on clothes. If I'm going out, I'll spend ages getting ready. I loathe Top Gear; I'm not interested in cars or football. I'd rather watch Desperate Housewives with a glass of pinot and a face mask.

I'm sensitive and emotional, but every three months I have my testosterone injections, which take 48 hours to kick in. Suddenly I feel like a "man". It starts with a stinging sensation in my legs, followed by a horrible restlessness and anxiety. Then I want sex and feel irrepressibly drawn towards anyone with breasts. If I'm lucky, I'll get a one-night stand. Fortunately the effect wears off after a day or so.

One of the worst things about Klinefelter's is it can make me depressed and insecure. Another problem is I have little sex drive (except after an injection). This makes relationships difficult and I've had few girlfriends. Although I'm physically capable of sex, I often freeze up. It makes girls think I'm either gay or don't fancy them.

So when I met someone online, I decided to be upfront about my condition. I was amazed when she told me it didn't make a difference and we've been together for three months now – my longest relationship. It helps that she's a nurse and is naturally caring. I still feel broody but my girlfriend has two children of her own which feels like the ready-made family I never thought I'd find.

I feel so fortunate to have met someone who accepts me the way I am. There's no cure for Klinefelter's, but given the choice I don't know if I'd change it. I'm sensitive, creative and artistic, and perhaps that comes from my extra X chromosome. I try to see it as a bonus, rather than surplus to requirements. I guess you could say I'm just very in touch with my feminine side.

• As told to Becky Dickinson.