Erm ... At least Betty got a number! Original Photo: TheTim/Flickr, moderated under CC license

I discovered the downside to business cards soon after I got my first one. Handing your card to someone, while seen by most people as a networking gesture, comes across to some as an invitation to swamp your phone or email inbox with flirty messages. Nevertheless, the guy I met last Saturday could really have done with a business card.

I was at one of the trendy pubs near Primrose Hill with my friend Patricia. She had dragged me out with a promise that she wouldn’t try to set me up with anybody, which was a welcome change after a week of failed set-ups, which my girlfriends had subjected me to after the unexpected breakup with Gustavo. So I got slightly suspicious when Patricia’s phone rang and she told the person at the other end which pub we were in. Her boyfriend, Pete, was in the neighbourhood with a friend, she said. What a “coincidence”.

It immediately became clear that Pete’s friend was somewhat of a character. He walked straight to our table, sat down next to Patricia and introduced himself as Shaun, while Pete was gone to the bar to get drinks. Shaun’s eyes were fixed on Patricia – he didn’t seem to notice me. He wore an unbuttoned yellow-and-red Hawaii shirt, with a blue UCL T-shirt underneath. His hair had been bleached a while ago, and the roots had grown out to make his hairdo just a little too long to look put together, but a little too short to be long in the sexy way. He turned his upper body 90 degrees to face Patricia as he leaned forwards and asked her what her name was. “I’m Patricia, and I’m Pete’s girlfriend!” she said and leaned backwards away from him.

He then did a reverse 90 degree turn and faced me across the table. His eyes looked at mine with such an intensity that I had to look away. He put his arm across the table, not quite far enough to touch me, but in a way that made me feel that he gave me all of his attention. “What’s your name?” He asked.

I felt uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure why. He was still staring. His eyes were brownish-green and half covered by his half-long, half-bleached hair, which he kept throwing back with a sudden sway of his head, only to look back at me with even more intensity. He asked me what I did for a living, how I knew Patricia, where I lived and a couple of other questions. At every answer I gave he nodded attentively and looked at me as if I was telling him the real location of the Holy Grail.

Creeped out by his gaze, and furious with Patricia for setting this up, I took my bag, excused myself and walked across the room to a table where a lone man was sitting. “Please play along with this,” I told him and gave him a hug and a cheek kiss. He looked startled and didn’t say anything. I sat down, made myself comfortable and started talking about my day. At the corner of my eyes I could see Shaun get up from his chair. He got closer, but stopped at one of the pillars in the middle of the room and stood still. I tried to concentrate on the guy in front of me, who was actually rather handsome and seemed to find my monologue funny.

Suddenly, my new, involuntary companion looked up behind me with an uncertain expression and a frown, almost like he was trying to apologise and look tough at the same time. Rather cute. Then I felt something land on my lap. A postcard. When I looked behind me, Shaun was on his way back to Patricia and Pete. The card was one of those free postcards you can help yourself to in pubs, with different designs on the front and some advertising at the back.

On the back of the postcard, he had scrawled some big, clumsy letters: “Betty, I think you look nice. I‘d like to get to know you better”. Underneath it he had written a phone number and signed it “Shaun”.

But the front of the postcard is what’s been keeping me awake at night. It was greenish black with a big, gothic-looking tombstone in the foreground, and the letters R.I.P on the stone. Readers, if you have experienced anything creepier than that, I’d really like to hear from you!

I’ve quite possibly just met my first axe-murderer! Or strangler. Or basement monster. I’ve spent a couple of nights imagining what kind of killer he is, but for sake of my own sanity I have decided to believe that he just didn’t think about the front of the card he chose. If he had thought that far, surely he would have picked the card right next to it with two vintage bikes on the front, or, perhaps the one in the bottom row with red hearts – just a thought.

So I haven’t exactly been resting in peace lately. I’m toying with the idea of calling the police. But Patricia says Pete has assured her that Shaun is alright – he is just “a bit different”. I told her to tell Pete to give Shaun proper business cards for his birthday.

Speaking of business cards, I made sure to leave one for the handsome stranger in the pub. It has no references to death, so hopefully he’ll drop me a line.

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Bitter Betty gets a special sms on Valentine's Day

What’s the worst Valentine’s greeting you’ve ever received? Mine is this: “Hi Betty. I have thought about our conversation last Friday and I don’t think I can be your boyfriend. I’m just not at that place right now. I hope you understand”. To make it extra classy, the news was delivered to me by a text message. On Valentine’s Day.

Five hours later I staggered out of my local pub with the help of two of the regulars. “Promise me you won’t text him, sweetie”, said one of them. I could barely text in the condition I was in, but I can tell from my archive of sent messages that I managed to send him these words: “Cloud you gave me an explnation pls?” No reply.

How could I have misjudged Gustavo so badly? Those of you who have been following my column will remember him from such graceful entries as my bikini-waxing accident and bum-flight down a set of stairs, which put me in hospital but didn’t stop him from asking me out on a second date. We had a great time together and, granted, I was so infatuated with him that I completely neglected to fill in my readers in my love column. I guess a Single in the City column just doesn’t flow very well when written by someone who is head over heals in love with her boyfriend. Or in my case, the person she thinks is her boyfriend.

When I woke up the morning after Valentine’s Day, the dry taste of alcohol in my mouth and the rumble from my tortured intestines only distracted me from reality for a couple of seconds. Then I remembered what had happened. I felt so stupid. For shouting out loud in the pub that men are pigs; for knocking over three drinks in the bar; and for thinking that Gustavo actually wanted to introduce me to his family when he clearly had a completely different idea of our future. That Friday evening before Valentine’s Day, I had told him with excitement that I had taken time off on the dates when he was planning to go to Brazil to see his family. Instead of the ecstatic look I had expected on his face, I got a stiff smile and a look of slight horror. That led to a discussion of where we were in our relationship, and we had agreed to think and talk again later. Still, I didn’t expect to be dumped with a text message on Valentine’s Day.

My thoughts got interrupted by the beeping sound of my phone. My stomach contracted. It was a text from Gustavo. “Hi, do you want to come over tonight?” it says. This man clearly had communication problems, so I took it that he wanted to talk about why he had ended things the way he did.

On my way to his house, I got another text: “Do you want syrup or lemon juice on your pancakes?” Now my confusion was total. I smashed my phone on the pavement in sheer outrage and rang his doorbell five minutes later, with a broken phone in my hand and proverbial foam at the corners of my mouth.

His face lit up when he saw me, and he came forward with his head in what I realised was an attempt to kiss me. Without thinking I pushed him back and shouted “What do you think you’re doing? I want an explanation!”

He looked taken back, which is not surprising since I was probably glowing red in the face and my eyes were swelling up again. He led me into his living room where he had lit up some candles and placed two plates and a tray with pancakes on the table. I spotted a couple of DVDs from the rental place around the corner.

“I thought we could have a nice evening in” was his only reply. Confused and angry, I sat down on the sofa and broke down in tears. This was just too weird. Had he broken up with me or not? I didn’t get it.

Gustavo sat down next to me. “I didn’t think you would take it this way,” he said and tilted his head so he could look into my eyes.

“I thought we were just taking it easy. I didn’t mean that I don’t want to see you anymore, I just don’t want to get too serious right now.”

So that was the deal. We hadn’t broken up because we weren’t actually really together in the first place. Good to know. Gustavo actually thought we were going to eat pancakes and watch Lord of the Rings that night, and then probably go to bed as always. Just goes to show how differently two people can view the same relationship.

It has been a week now and my phone just got back from the repair shop. It’s so tempting to text him, and I know he would want to see me if I suggested it. But I don’t think I can handle being the one who wants more but can’t have it. Seeing him would be an immediate cure to my longing but it would eat away my good spirits and my integrity (if someone with my dating record can be said to have any of the latter). So I guess I’m back as The First Pint’s Single in the City. Prepare to cringe.

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Karma is a bitch. Photo credit: Kevin Dooley

Yin and Yang. The good and the bad. Gorgeous Brazilian men and ….well, I shall begin from the very beginning.

 

Once upon a time, a love-starved young girl came to London’s shores. Stars in her eyes, she jaywalked London’s pathways, narrowly avoiding collisions bolstered by the faith that she would definitely find love around the corner a la Julia Roberts in Notting Hill. This was the city of dreams, where Love Actually would sweep her off her feet.

A few short weeks later, this girl had morphed into Bitter Betty, i.e. me. A marvellous combination of bad luck and a mysterious disappearance of single straight men in the city fed into my bitterness. The city gave much, except for that one thing that had had me jettison across the seas (or at least one of the factors being finding love in London).

As I began, this time I am contemplating the rule of opposites. If the city’s energies made me meet a gorgeous Brazilian, this excess had to be redressed somewhere else. After what happened to me today, I feel the universe owes me now, a BIG one.

Hands down south

It began as a journalistic victory for me and my friend, as we had managed to net a real criminal (gasp!) for our publication. The young boy looked smoked up as he sat next to us in one of the courts in Westminster, awaiting his turn. “Go on, ask him what he is here for,” I nudged my friend. She did, and there was no stopping him.

He seemed delighted that we were journalists. “But you’re not BBC right?” he drawled. “You gonna put my picture up on a website? Cool! Send the link to my momma, she will be real proud.”

I almost pitied him and asked him incredulously if his mother would be actually happy, but instead of answering, he shoved his hands right down his trousers.

I am not uppity: I do have discerning tastes, but I am not uppity. But how is one to react when an ex-criminal shoves his hand down the front of his trousers while you are trying to interview him? My guess it isn’t just me who would have flipped.

It was as if he was doing it inadvertently, like a restless mind seeks to meditate with worry beads. I gawped and choked, too flustered to know what to do. My street-smart friend took over and executed a perfect damage control, asking him why he was at the court in the first place.

“Aahh… Me gal threw me out and I have an electronic tag around my ankles,” he said. “I need to make sure the system records that I am getting back home by 8 in the night… Gotta change the registered address to me dad’s one now… You gals going to Afghanistan soon now?”

I stared, but looked away when his hands began travelling southwards again.

“Not all journalists go to Afghanistan,” my friend guffawed.

“Yeah, but all the big ones do,” the wise man spoke. Amen.

Criminal straightforwardness

We later found out that he was under curfew for having bashed up a person in a fight. Also, that he was a trained chef and worked in Covent Garden.

He turned on us again, asking me about my friend: “She is pretty, eh? Is she single?”

“No,” I replied tersely.

“Are you single?”

I could have given a smooth answer and saved the day, but the Heavens were conspiring against me. All powers of rhetoric and speech abandoned me at that precise moment and I was left mumbling lamely: “I have to pay attention to the court proceedings so don’t talk now.”

It was nothing short of divine retribution for some heinous crime I must have committed in my past life. What else could have merited this day? A zoned-out fellow leering at me and demanding to know my love life’s status, and then looking smug about making me turn all shades of purple and mutter incoherently, all the while his hand made regular trips to the South Pole!

As I said, yin and yang, the good and the bad, a gorgeous Brazilian and a jaunty handed ex-offender.

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Brazilians...the other kind. Photo Credit: artie*/Flickr

After my last column, one of my readers suggested that it was about time I get laid. I agree.

It was with that frame of mind that I went on the first date with my mystery man from the tube. We had been texting back and forth since our encounter on the Northern Line, so I knew he was Brazilian, and that his name was Gustavo. He had asked me out to a Brazilian place and told me to prepare myself to be swept away.

On the day of our date, I decided to come prepared for some action. I went to the hairdresser, put on a healthy helping of fake tan lotion and waxed my legs. Wouldn’t want him to be too grossed out by the evidence of a long winter, I thought. I had no idea how long Gustavo had been over here, but if he had just landed, he would definitely be scared off by my European-style hair au naturel, even after my leg-wax had taken care of the worst. So in the last minute, I decided to do something drastic to be sure I wouldn’t frighten him—I went to a beautician to have a Brazilian wax.

Now, for those of you who need to brush up on your knowledge of nation-specific hair-removal, the Brazilian wax is the one where EVERYTHING is removed. It means you have to expose your private parts to an orange-skinned lady with tattooed eyebrows and an appalled facial expression (or was that just my beautician? Not sure if everyone else waits till winter is over before trimming the hedges).

I knew from some of my more high-maintenance friends that getting waxed where the sun doesn’t shine is unpleasant. I did not, however, expect the shrill, ripping sound to be followed by a sensation that can best be described as being peeled with a giant cheesecutter while someone is setting fire to the remaining patches of skin on your buttocks. The orange beautician assured me that the pain would go away shortly. Good, I thought, because I had less than an hour to get to Gustavo’s chosen restaurant.

As I walked from the tube to the restaurant, I realised that the pain wasn’t going away. In fact, my bum was getting itchier for every step I took in my super tight jeans, prompting me to adopt a new, stiff gait to avoid wriggling my sore backside-skin unnecessarily. Luckily, I arrived before Gustavo and had time to go to the bathroom to check up on the situation—this is what those little mirrors they sell in Camden Market are good for. The sight that met me was red, spotty and frightening—suffice it to say that I changed strategy from getting laid to playing coy and getting a second date.

As it turned out, I hadn’t even experienced the worst part of the evening yet. When I walked out of the bathroom, I spotted Gustavo at a table in the dining room downstairs. Trying my best to walk in a semi-sexy manner, I met his gaze and took a step down the stairs. Or rather, that’s what I thought I was doing. In reality, I tripped and flew down the staircase with my legs up and my itchy baboon bum heading straight for the marble floor with nauseating speed. If you’ve ever broken your tailbone, you know what the following seconds felt like. I must have passed out from the pain, because the next thing I remember is waking up in hospital with my trousers down, two white-clad doctors with puzzled faces bent over me and Gustavo looking at the glorious sight with a horrified face. So much for not scaring him off.

Surprisingly, all is not lost. I’ve just been let out from hospital, and he is texting me as I write this, asking if I want to give our date a second chance. This time, I won’t go anywhere near the beautician first.

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Bitter Betty breached Tube etiquette. Photo Credit: Morade Azzouz

Even those who don’t hide behind their literature seem to be afraid of eye contact. Faced with each other, tube travellers appear to enter a meditative state of complete oblivion to the people around them.

I often get away with a staring people for ages without them noticing. Yet I have never been brave enough to keep looking if they looked back. With the exception of a middle aged man who once decided to rub something warm and hard of his up against my backside on a Tuesday morning, I have not yet had a tube romance.

That was until last Saturday.

I am not sure if it was the scar on his forehead that caught my attention, or if it was the pink booklet titled “The Romantic Poets”. He was hot in a rough kind of way with strong cheekbones, long, unruly black hair and this mesmerising scar that reminded me most of all of Harry Potter. He seemed out of this world. And he was reading romantic poetry.

I secretly watched him all the way from King’s Cross to Kentish Town, carefully lowering my gaze every time he looked up at me. Silly, I thought. But now the smile on his face indicated that he was watching me back. We kept playing this game for another five minutes, his brown eyes moving swiftly from his book to my eyes and back again.

Every time our eyes met, I felt a spark of excitement in my stomach and a wave of embarrassment which made my eyes flee to the nearest advertisement or shoe or whatever I could pretend to be interested in.

I finally just held his glance. And he did the same. Then there was a long, awkward moment, in which I forced myself to keep looking and smiling whilst my head turned fabulously purplish-pink—the colour of his poetry book, which he handed to me as he got up and left. Poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge—with a phone number scribbled on the inside.

Watch this space.

Catch up with all of Betty’s observations on being Single in the Foreign City:
Bitter Betty and the online dating question
Bitter Betty goes speed dating
Bitter Betty and the Christmas conundrum
Bitter Betty and the ill-fated literary love
Bitter Betty and the perfect man

Read more from The First Pint, the international's guide to all that London offers.

Dating in Web 3.0. Photo credit: Don Hankin/Flickr

I thought I was done with men. Between artists, businessmen and the Adonis who turned out to be gay I had pretty much thrown in the towel. But then one evening, while I should have been doing some work, I found myself browsing through a dating website.

I’ve never tried online dating before. A friend had told me about her experience and recommended a site. Without planning to I, in the most extreme form of procrastination I’ve ever indulged in, quickly wrote myself a glowing report and posted it along with my most flattering picture.

Then came the exciting part—seeing who added me to their ‘favourites’ and reading messages from potential suitors. I’ve been up there for a few days now and am relieved that a respectable number of gentlemen seem interested.

It’s an unusual experience. You can search for people who match the criteria you select (hot, not hot, kids, location) or you can just browse through profiles. It’s a bit like a social networking site—if you put someone on your favourites list they are notified and can check out your profile and favourite you back. So you can test the water before you take the plunge and email them directly.

I’ve received a few emails—mainly just short messages with ‘how you doin’-type openings. I’ve also received a couple of essays. One wrote me a long message telling me that he really enjoyed reading my profile. He then changed tack and said: “I pretty much decided to contact you on the strength of your photo.”

In the same tone but with a little more style I was sent this message: “Hello…and how lovely are you?! I was just browsing and you caught my eye.”

So far, I’m not exactly blown away. At the minute though I can’t reply to these messages properly because I haven’t signed up for a paid subscription. It’s free to join and browse (it sounds like shopping and it feels like shopping) but you can only communicate directly after you’ve become a paid up member.

There is a very attractive gentleman who has added me to his favourites and I would like to email him but I’m not sure if I’m ready to take the plunge. So now, dear readers, I am asking for your advice. Should I sign up to the website? Or should I buy myself the hot new shoes I have my eye on and rely on them to give my love life a kick up the ass? Answers on a postcard please (or a comment below).

Catch up with all of Betty’s observations on being Single in the Foreign City:
Bitter Betty goes speed dating
Bitter Betty and the Christmas conundrum
Bitter Betty and the ill-fated literary love
Bitter Betty and the perfect man

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Not one but two ideal men Photo credit: Laverrue/Flickr

Forget everything about my married business man and my egocentric artist – I’ve reached a new high on the scale of unrealistic love interests.

I met him at a friend’s party a couple of nights ago. I was instantly charmed by his flirtatious smile and, well, equally pleased with his big, well-shaped upper arms. We laughed and joked and talked for about an hour, and he didn’t seem to take his eyes off me. Then, just as I thought I had nailed it, he gestured towards a man in a suit and said: “Let me introduce you to my boyfriend!”

It is difficult to pretend to be delighted to meet someone who has just ruined your new wedding plans, but I must admit the boyfriend was lovely. He entertained us with the story of how he met the man of my life at the local fire station where he works. Meanwhile, I drowned my disappointment in five cheese and pickle sandwiches that I wouldn’t otherwise have munched right next to two such fine examples of the male species.

Whilst listening to their love story, I kept smirking at the irony that the man of my dreams was gay. His alpha-male aura of testosterone made my ovaries beg to be fertilized.

I couldn’t believe it would never happen. Perhaps it just hadn’t occurred to me that he might be gay because there was nothing blatantly “gay” about him. But then, why should he be indicating a private matter like his sexuality in the way he dressed, talked or walked?

Why did I expect to be able to tell such things about people I’d only just met? Wouldn’t I personally be annoyed if someone thought they could detect my sexual preferences in the course of a party conversation? If they scanned me with their eyes and went “Oh, she’s one of those romantically deprived, try-sexual wannabe-bridezillas who thinks she’s got a chance with everyone who talks to her”. Of course I’d be annoyed.

I guess I’ve been one of those people who claim to be all open-minded and tolerant, yet tied up to my own prejudices of what I’m tolerant of. I think I deserve the irony. When I ended things with my artist, I partly blamed his flamboyant use of hairspray and the way I once saw him run around in his flat with his arms raised, causing his much too tight t-shirt to lift so you could see his waxed lower belly, whilst screaming at the top of his voice because he had found a mouse in his cupboard. Not “man enough” for me, I thought.

Now I’ve found the perfect man, and it turns out I’m the one who is not man enough for him.

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Inadvertent love in the dusty aisles?

I always flirt with men who work in bookshops. I don’t know why, they just seem to have an air of artsy intellectualism and a whiff of “good guy” about them. Today I was buying a book for the egocentric artist I am not supposed to be seeing. It’s a tough job. He is a bit of a literary snob, and I wouldn’t want to come across as daft in my choice of gift.

So I established an alliance with the shop assistant, who seemed like the same sort of type—long hair, stubble, skinny jeans and the kind of eyes that look as deep as a thousand novels. He had clearly had a long night out, so I figured he needed a smile and some friendly attention to get his backside off his chair. But then he devoted an entire half hour to finding the ideal present for my man. We found a perfect book about the art history of my artist’s neighbourhood. I persuaded the shop assistant to make some phone calls to get a first edition from his local supplier. We spoke about the neighbourhood, the artists and the poetry club the shop assistant frequented. I talked my way into a discount.

So far so good. But a surprise awaited me when I was walking home with my present and a bundle of grocery bags an hour later. I had turned around to look at a squirrel when I saw the shop assistant running towards me from afar. Panting and sweating, he reached me and asked if I wanted to go for a drink with him sometime.

As I watched him try to regain his breath, I realised that I wasn’t attracted to him in the slightest. Outside, in daylight and with no books around him, he was just an ordinary guy that I didn’t fancy—and unfortunately for me, one who was standing in front of me, searching my face for a hint of mutual affection and waiting for me to say something. I felt bad. Maybe he had wanted to say something in the shop, but felt too scared. Maybe he had just tried to be professional. Surely, he had had to ask his boss before chasing after me. Presumably, his boss and everyone else would be waiting for a verdict upon his return.

There was no way around it, so I lied and said I had a boyfriend. A little exaggeration doesn’t hurt. Hopefully, this “boyfriend” will like the well-chosen, literary piece of first-edition snobbery that the shop assistant dug out for him. I wonder if my shop assistant would have been this helpful if he had known who the book was for.

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I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

Read more from The First Pint, the international's guide to all that London offers.

A good friend of mine is multi-dating at the moment. She is seeing about four or five handsome twenty-somethings, all with interesting careers or promising interests, yet different enough for the two of us to spend lots of cafe-time comparing and contrasting them.

It’s like going fishing, she says. “You put out a lot of fishing rods, then you lean back in your chair with a beer and wait to see which one pulls first”.

This couldn’t be further from my reality. My latest dating disasters have been more about me trying to desperately catch the one fish that would never eat the bait. The bait keeps getting older, and the fish is appalled.

Of course, the staple advice from my friend in said cafe-sessions is that there are plenty of other fish in the sea. But where does one start?

Somehow, this friend managed to persuade me to start with a randomly selected range of twelve men at a speed-dating event in a champagne bar in Soho last week.

As she said, it’s better than wriggling your crotch up against twelve random guys in a grotty night club. Fair point.

So I went to the event, nervously clutching my third glass of pink house-champagne, waiting with sweaty palms and a sticker tagged “no.4” on my chest.

That turned out to be an unwise place for my sticker, as all my prospective dates began our four-minute schmooze in the dimly lit bar by squinting their eyes and thrusting their neck towards my left breast to get my details down before chatting to me.

After such an introduction, you don’t have many inhibitions.

At least that’s how I try to tell myself that I ended up telling one guy about my brief, lesbian affair in my second year of college. Realising that I wasn’t doing myself a favour, I changed strategy and started each conversation with the conventional “what do you do?”

Seemingly safe and easy topic, except most of the guys wouldn’t give me a straight answer. “Ah, you know, boring stuff… I just sit in an office looking at my computer screen, trading some foreign currency…”

Basically, they were all trying to tell me that they were investment bankers, without using the words “investment” and “banker”. Now, if my question wasn’t answered directly, at least I got an answer to another question: What sort of people go speed-dating?

With the female seats part occupied by me and my friends, it looked like a summit of the most hated kinds of desperate singles on the planet: Journalists and investment bankers.

At my level of desperation, one shouldn’t be picky. So I stayed for a while and spoke to one of the bankers, who came up to me after the event had finished.

He seemed nice enough, and we had a good laugh, until the moment I gracefully ruined it by pulling out my notebook. He had said something controversial that an aspiring journalist couldn’t possibly let slip. So I went all journo on him and managed to scare him away in less than three probing questions.

Needless to say he didn’t tick “yes” to “no.4” on his speed-dating sheet. Even the most despised singles don’t necessarily hit it off. I guess it’s back to the fishing rod.

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