Preaching to yourself

I just caught myself doing something. Well, more precisely not doing something. Something you normally don't want to catch yourself not doing. I didn't follow my own advice. I wrote that hopefully uplifting piece about weekends and how you should start living your life right now. And then on Saturday...I didn't really live it. Well, to come to my own defense I had to work. And before we had to go grocery shopping. Still, I could have done more. And instead I was not using the time that I still had left, but basically wasted it.

In the evening I wasn't really happy with myself. I went to lunch with my boyfriend, which was nice as usual, but a part of me screamed: "you have a huge to-do-list at home. HUGE! And you are taking working as an excuse to do nothing at all." And then the voice in me went on in her very sarcastic voice, that somehow resembled my Mom's voice: "So, are you happy with yourself? Happy with your weekend so far?" And I started to argue with myself that I did actually earn money that day. "Still, you know you could have accomplished more. You could have gotten up earlier. Writing that letter you wanted to. Scan those documents you wanted to. Call someone you wanted to call...."

So, because my sarcastic, Mom-like voice did not really shut up, today I did use my Sunday. I went to vote - Yeah me, for being a good citizen ;) - and then on an hour long bike-tour with my boyfriend and then I cleaned my Grandma's patio and then wrote an important e-mail and then searched for job-opportunities and now I am writing my blog. Yes, me! :D

Now, I need to continue to be that productive and check some more things off of my to-do-list and then I can look back on that "use your weekend"-entry without feeling slightly embarrassed.

Only thing is, I think my legs are going to hurt very very badly the next week.

Schönes Wochenende allen

Fröhliches Wochenende. Ich hoffe, alle hatten eine schöne Woche. Falls nicht, hoffen wir auf eine bessere nächste Woche. Genießt das Wochenende. Falls ihre arbeiten müsst, macht das Beste daraus und freut euch auf das verdiente Geld.

Falls ihr frei habt, tut etwas was ihr schon lange nicht mehr gemacht habt. Geht in den Zoo, besucht eure Oma, lest das Buch, das schon so lange angestaubt auf eurem Nachttisch liegt. Backt diesen leckeren Kuchen, den ihr vor zwei Jahren mal gegessen habt und desen Rezept so langsam vergilbt. Legt eure Beine hoch und schaut den ganzen Tag fern. Räumt eure Zimmer, eure Wohnung oder euer Haus auf. Kauft euch diese Jeans, die ihr schon so lange wollt. Und schmeißt dieses halbzerfallene Ding aus grauer Vorzeit endlich weg.

Wenn die Sonne scheint und ihr einen Garten habt, dann genießt dort die Sonne. Sonst geht auf euren Balkon. Oder geht in einen Park, an den Fluss, See. Macht endlich die Radtour, die ihr immer machen wolltet. Schmeiß diese Party, von der du seit drei Jahren fasselst. Ruf den Freund an, dem du mal einen Anruf versprochen hast. Organisiere dieses unübersichtliche Chaos auf deinem Schreibtisch. Kaufe ein. Schmeiße weg. Verkaufe. Nimm ein heißes Bad mit vielen Kerzen und ganz viel Schaum. Nimm ein nicht ganz so heißes Bad, ohne Schaum und Kerzen, aber dafür sehr netter Begleitung. ;) Geh mit deinen Kleinen in das Museum, das du ihnen schon immer zeigen wolltest. Stell dich deinen Nachbarn vor. Mach einen Kurztrip nach Paris. Nütze deine Möglichkeiten.

Am Ende deines freien Wochenendes, denk daran, dass du endlich etwas von deiner langen, langen to-do-Liste gestrichen hast. Und freue dich daran. Denn das Leben ist kurz und falls du etwas erleben möchtest, dann fange jetzt an.

Es ist eigentlich egal, was du macht. Aber, verdammt noch mal, mach was.

This pwns, n00bs

Ever went to a foreign country without being able to speak the language over there and no translator within reach? You are stumbling through the streets, often guessing what something means. If the letters are not known, this attempt gets even worse. However, even if you know the letters and the words seem to be like the word you know, you still should be careful to assume you really guessed it right. Just because the German "bekommen" sounds like "become" that doesn't mean it means the same in English as well. In fact, if you want to erm...become the laughing stock of the whole shop, try to use "become" in the exact same context like you would use "bekommen". Enjoy!

When I went online it wasn't completley like in a foreign country at first. Things were new and it took me a bit to find my way around, but I understand what most people said. English is not that hard to get. Although, when I got deeper into the whole Internet, I noticed something odd.

I saw letters, Latin letters to be more exact, but I wasn't able to put a meaning to it. And then there were numbers in between. Like 0nw3d. I seemed to have stumbled over a code of a secret society. This secret society, with approximately 1 billion members, bestowed on each member their very own enigma machine that enabled them to communicate in random letters that would only make sense to them.

After some frustration, I figured out that this code was by no means as good as the code used in the Second World War and it certainly didn't need an incredible mind like Alan Turing to figure it out. Mostly it is just a testimony of extreme laziness, bad grammar, even worse spelling and often contained the kind of insider-jokes that were only funny because you know only your friend understood what you said and not because the actual joke was so hilarious.

To be fair, I grew up in an area of Germany were people are also extremely lazy when it comes to language. We tend to incorporate our dialect into the written language which explains a lot of the supposedly bad grammar and spelling. Therefore, I can relate to the Internet spelling and grammar. I'm not one of those people that go crazy and starts calling someone names when I discover a mistake of any kind. It happens with all of us. However, even though I am pretty much addicted to the Internet, and I use some of those strange letter combinations myself, I refuse to use it as often as many do out there.

Yes, I know I'm lame. I'm old-fashioned, don't know any better and of course I'm intolerant. I just can't use some expressions without feeling utterly stupid. Why should I reply to everything that seems to shows a poor kid falling of a skateboard with "FAIL!" or "EPICFAIL!!"? I understand it is just a slang. When I was 14 years old I considered myself to be very cool and above everyone, because I could use some not so secret sign language. And when you are 14, I can forgive you for the need to feel different to the lame grown ups around you. Most wanted to do that around that age. But, to be honest, looking back at it, not everything I did back then made a lot of sense or makes me so proud that I want to repeat it again and again. Running away with one slice of bread come to my mind...Being, 20 and talking like you just hit puberty, makes you look a bit like some social awkward person that hasn't got over the fact yet that their body changed several years back.

That being said, I love the creativity of language use on the web. People are much more daring on the web. They play with language, have fun with it, use it to their advantage and are not bound by it. And that is definitely something to applaud. Nevertheless, just repeating some strange acronyms like FTW or STFU, using the same strange grammar in most posts like "Izhez bad" or reject vocals completely as if they all of the sudden switched into Hebrew, gets on my nerves. By all means, please stay creative, but stop being so repetitive. Create new terms, keep developing your vocabulary and don't just repeat something without even checking if it makes any sense in that context just because you want to belong.

Whenever I use those terms I try to remember that no matter how excitingly new, cutting-edge and different the Internet language sounds to me, in the end it still has to follow the same rule as the language in the real world. People have to understand me. And just because I happen to know some words, it doesn't mean I will belong.

And to follow my own amendment, here are some short explanations of the strange words I used here. noob seemed to have come from online games and originally refers to a new unexpierenced player that is not willing to learn something from older players. Nowadays you can see it used to label any newcomer. Pwn means to own somebody in the sense of humilating someone. It again derived from the gamers community and most likely was a typo. 0wn3d means again owned and therefore means the same as pwn. The "d" in the end indicates the past tense.

Kopf, Decke, Klonk aka Head, ceiling, clonk

I believe. I believe that everyone on the pale blue dot called Earth in English knows one person where they cannot help but wonder "Why?"

Why is he always late? Why is she wearing Black all the time? Why does she run into everything that is and how come she still managed to survive childhood.

Well, okay the last is actually me. I run into things. Today, I saw something outside and wanted to look outside the window. Things is I live under the roof, so the ceiling is narrow in certain corners of the room. I know that. Everybody knows that when they come into the room. Because it is hard not to see. Still, I - clonk - hit my head. I also managed to hit my legs against our bed. Because for some reason my eyes told my brain which told my legs that they just have to lift themselves that much.

Normally, I come out of that pretty unharmed. Sure, some bruises here and there. But normally I rub whatever I managed to hit wherever for some seconds and then go on with my life. You could even go so far to say that my pain-tolerance is very high because I somehow..well, I got used to it. What I didn't get used to is hitting my hard heavily on the ceiling, so at the moment I'm nursing my headache and that's why I stop this post in a few sentences.

Closing off with a minor request. Whenever you should see people run into objects as if they are drunk, blind or, well, slightly mentally challanged, don't pity them. Laugh. Even I have to admit it is funny. Unless, I drop unconscious, then I would kindly ask you to call an ambulance. Just to be sure.

Drama, baby

Anyone who has stopped lurking on forums and got involved will most likely have experienced that. It doesn't have to be a board specified on politics or religion. It could be a forum about gardening and I'm 99% sure you will discover it there, too. What I'm taking about?

DR Not just a bit drama. I'm talking about big, soap-opera-like tear-jerking, yelling at each other in capital letters, posting rude emoticons, nervous breakdown drama. For an outsider, it might be completely out of proportion to argue if a certain fictional character is really with another fictional character. For the people, yelling at each in text, it is deadly serious. And no matter how funny it may appear to the outsider, I assure the humour in posting rude little smiley faces to each other and yelling in capital letters is completely lost to the vast majority.

I once got in the middle of a drama that even now don't fully understand. I was "hanging" out with the usual people in our special thread and suddenly that thread got closed down and some of us got banned. The mods claimed we had not allowed everyone to play with us. Well, they didn't use that words, but that pretty much summed it up. I was just astonished by it. We were talking, that's it. No bad-mouthing, no trolling, not ganging up against anyone or not allowing anyone in.

Another time someone left a forum all of the sudden saying that "the situation" became unbearable for him. I still have no idea what he was talking about. And when I tried to clear it up with him, he just didn't respond. People behave like in some really bad plotted soap-opera people on the Internet. Even though they originally came to a certain forum to hang out with some people that have the same interests. And then BOOM - they go crazy. Well, my explanation is that they are stressed out in real life and carry out their frustrations in virtual life. I guess I sometimes forget that behind those cute user-names like KittenDream9823 or BlueJumper are very real people with very real issues. And they bring those issues to the boards if they intend to or not.

And the law of the Internet dictates that many people act out what they would never dare to in real life. Maybe because they don't have to face the other person they are insulting? Maybe because it is easier to just hit the ban-bottom in virtual life then telling someone in real life why they never want to hear from them again? Maybe they feel stronger in their online personality to shout someone down? I guess the Internet's anonymity - even though that is a bit of a myth - let's people act out what they don't dare in real life. And then we have all the drama that makes soap operas so successful.

Some might think right now, why even bother to go online if those things always seem to happen? I would say, because of the same reason you don't lock yourself up in your own room. Of course you could and will get hurt if you leave that room. However, the exciting things, the fun, the uncountable joys are outside of this room. On the Internet you will have the chance to meet people you were convinced before don't exist. You will find people that have the same obscure hobby like you. And even better they won't judge you for it. You can have conversations with someone on the other side of globe. You will learn new things and get to know so many new interesting people. The joy of being online will outweigh the drama. Just dive into it and don't be afraid. It is going to be fun. Promised.

Ignorance is anything but blissful

I am ignorant. I don't know nearly enough about Africa. My capacity to understand MIT-physics introduction lectures is very low. There are some politicians I haven't heard of before even though there are the head of a state. There are countries I haven't heard of before.

Sometimes in a history-lecture, there were students that raised their hands to a specific topic and then they started talking about a theory that I haven't heard of before. And then they engaged into a lively discussion with the lecturer. Or they referred to a certain book that seemed to be ground-breaking, but I haven't read it. Very often I tried to banish the blank look from my face that screamed "What the hell you are talking about" all over. Actually, I had been told that I looked very interested and thoughtful in lectures. But inwardly, I panicked. Or felt extremely stupid for not knowing something that others clearly had a very deep understanding of.



Now, for some reason I heard the saying "ignorance is a bliss" in various contexts lately. Or the slightly milder version that goes along the lines of "It does no harm, not to know everything". And of course, it is ridiculous to think one person could ever comply every knowledge there is in the world in their brain. But, to think being ignorant doesn't harm, or even helps is in my opinion an extremely condescending, over-generalizing and even harmful attitude.

Condescending in the sense that people just assume that it is best not to tell someone something because they decided that is best for them. You don't know if that is really best not to tell your partner that you cheated on her or him. You just happened to make that - often very selfish - decision on your own. You just decided that someone can't handle something. That, in my opinion not how you treat someone you believe to be equal. That is how you treat someone that you don't trust in handling something themselves. And that is just plain arrogant.

Over-generalizing, because just most people would most likely react badly to the news of being sick, doesn't mean that it will apply to that certain person. Sure, it can be devastating to someone to hear that you are seriously ill. But that doesn't mean it will for everybody. Not everybody will be happy to find out much later that they have been ignorant about something. Some might be, but many will feel the complete opposite.

Which leads me to harmful. One might think and often means well if they don't tell their partner that they cheated. Most people don't want to hurt their partners. But the fact remains that you cheated. Now, I would never advocate here how anyone has to handle their relationships, but consider this. Cheating often means something deeper. Something mostly is not quite right. Whatever it is, it made you to mess up. And to not come clean about it, doesn't magically make the problem disappear. In worst case it will continue getting worse and worse and worse until it blows up in your face with no chance of fixing it anymore. And that is just an example about a relationship.

Just imagine it concerns your health. It is not a bliss to not know that you have diabetes. Not knowing does not mean, you are not a diabetic. You are a ticking time bomb. You could be driving and suddenly your lights go off and you kill yourself and even others. Even if patients claim that they have been happier when they didn't know about, I think there are being angry. Suddenly doctors tell them to stop eating chips every night or have that beer in the evening. And that what pisses them off. And of course that is no fun. But claiming that it would have been better to not know and just being able to carry on like you did before, is just idiotic. That bowl of chips you have eaten every night, the beer you drank a little bit too much was the problem. Not that someone told you that you developed diabetic. Now, you have at least the chance to react.

Coming back to my own ignorance. For a long time I kept telling myself I can't know everything. But in truth, I just tried to avoid to face consequences that I caused myself. Ignorance is not a bliss. It is a recipe for ensuring that you will get stuck in the same state you are in and in worst case it will drag you down.

However, there is only one thing that is worse then ignorance. Not admitting it. Like I said, no one will ever know everything. But to pretend that you know something, while inside you go "How do you spell that word, can you eat that?", then you neither helping yourself, nor the person you are talking to. So, even though it is embarrassing sometimes, I try to admit it right away, when I just don't happen to know. And then I might not be "blissed" with ignorance, but something much better. I gain knowledge. And of that one can never have enough.

Moving along, but still a lot to see

Yesterday I met two of my dearest friends. Not so long ago we lived together for several years. It is strange to meet them now, realizing slowly we are not living together anymore.

To know we won't meet in the kitchen in the middle of night, sipping on Glühwein to heat us up, because the kitchen didn't have a heater. And to come up with extremely funny solutions no one ever asked for. Or cooking our weekly dose of Spaghetti and Tomato-sauce, topped with a lot of cheese and then gathering around the small screen in the living room under one blanket to watch and comment on Tatort. Not being able to run into the living room and start dancing around and someone will join you or at least turn up the appropriate music.

We were there for each other. We disagreed. We discussed. We laughed. Sometimes we cried. I guess, we just had great time.

Now, I'm not the most melancholic person ever. When I left school and then moved away, I didn't feel like crying about. It's not that I dreaded school, but I found the idea of something new, of developing, exciting. I still do. I'm still looking forward how my life will develop. How much more I will learn. What people I will meet. But what makes me sad about my transition from studying to working, is that I won't have my friends around that much anymore. I know we will keep in touch, thanks to the internet that has got so much easier, but I also know that it won't be quite the same anymore as we will have only limited time together.

However, in the end, what counts is that I found a couple of great individuals that I now can call friends and will be happy to have around even if our lives develop in slightly different paths. I'm confident that we will have many great moments, laughs, emotions, disagreements and life together.

So, rather then weeping for something lost, I will look forward to many great years to come.

Cat world domination

The late and great Douglas Adams revealed in his book "the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" that mice are the true lords of our planet. Second came the dolfins and and with that the great muscial opening number of the movie. Even though I would have to surrender if I compared my creativity, wit and wisdom to Mr.Adams, I still would have to disagree on one crucial point. We can agree on dolfins. They even have names in dolfinish - or however you want to call their language - and manage to be considered cute even though they are predators.

But mice are surely not the most clever animals on the planet - nor are we for that matter - I'm convinced cats rule supremely over us.

Most pets we do have serve a purpose. A dog can be trained to fetch your newspaper in the morning. And if you should happen to be too lazy to train it, at least its very existence guarantees that you will get for a walk twice a day. Horses, chickens, cows, all of them improve our lives in some way. And the animals that don't serve such a useful purpose are mostly in cages, so you can go and look at them being cute, study their behaviour and even take them out to cuddle them. They have their fixed space and won't do any harm to the rest of the house.

Cats on the other hand refuse to serve any apparent purpose and certainly won't get locked up into a cage. Well, in the beginning they did hold a very valueable place, hunting animals that would eat our food. But that was just the first step in their evil plan to take over the world. Soon after we let them hunt for us, they managed to sneak into our houses. And then they convinced us that we should feed them and give them toys to play with, let them lie on the cozy heater on soft blankets especially bought for them and in return they will do nothing at all. No, they even crash and shred our house to pieces.

Just imagine you would be the head of a company and someone would apply for a job there. And the guy coming to an interview would demand free access to your office, that you pay for specific food and that you get up in the middle of the night to serve dinner if that person feels like it. During that interview he - or maybe she? - will loose interest several times, throw down your prizy porcelan figure you got from your grandma minutes before she died and in the end end up sleeping on your laptop. And then you would hire that guy. This is what we do with cats.

Cats propably possess the ability of brainwashing us into thinking that we really would like to have a monster in our house that destroys things just for the fun of it. And I think I know how they are doing it. The purring stimualtes a certain area in our brain that switches off the ability for a rational deciscion and let cats do the decisions for us. It is genius. If you now think that it is not as bad as I think, I assure you that this state is just the next step to openly impose cat-domination on us. I just saw this video:



You know what that means. They are evolving. Soon they will drive our cars, take over the government and force us to do everything for them. Now, we at least can get mad at them throw them from the dinner table or just out of the house. But this time we won't be able to refuse anything. We will have to obey. Soon they will grow opposable thumbs and then we are all screwed.

(Here is the link to the original video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVV_HXtEbLo&feature=player_embedded, although I have seen my cat standing up, too ;) )

How NOT to hit on women

I seem to be a very attractive girl. That, or the men in my city have an apparent death wish. Whenever I am down and extremely grrrrr, there will be a guy who thinks THAT is my sign to be hit on.

Like that one guy that tried to invite me to a coffee, while I was desperatly rushing to the doctor to get some painkillers and antibiotics to treat my bladder infection. I highly doubt that the hugh thunder storm expression on my face could have been interpreted as "Ask-me-out-NOW!". Still, this brave man just did that.

Another real bad way to try to get my interest and the interest of my most girls is, chat her up while your breath smells like you nurture on beer alone and look like showering is not really your cup of tea. And then to decrease your already quite low chances, make your move on a total stranger during the week - so that your drunken state really makes you look like an alcoholic - on a tram, while your target looks like she just murdered someone or is considering it and looks straight of the window, so she doesn't have to put that plan in action. And then persist on talking to her, even if you only get tiny polite smiles and one-worders as a response. On top of that try extremely bad approaches like "Oh, i had mistaken you for someone else. Are you sure you are not Kristin?", while you sit a meter away from her. If that's not going to get her attention get up, say good bye, but then come back again and claim you almost got out at the wrong stop. Because portraying yourself to her as someone who is so filled up that you lost sense of time and place will surely make her reconsider her first impression that you are an alcoholic looney.

Still, keep on going that path and be sympathic to her bad mood. Because, after the forth "hmmm!", even you have to acknowledge that. Tell her that your life sucks, too - something she would have never figured out herself being drunk and all -and that you would like to break out of that life and surely she will break out in an excited "Yes, please, let's elope and marry in Vegas!" If even several hints in the "I understand your feeling"-direction didn't provoke that reaction yet, point out to her that she wouldn't have that many options anyway. Say something charming like "You know, the fairytale of the frog that will turn into a prince doesn't exist" and she will suddenly see that you are the best and only option to ever be happy.

If she still just gets off the tram and nearly runs away, she propably was just not worth your attention anyway. Just keep persuing that way.

And if you now think no one would ever act that weirdly, you never took my tram at nine o'clock and met harmless, - but- extremely- drunk- and- socially- inapt guy that did exactly everything of the above. I really don't think I'm that extremely pretty, especially in the mood I was in. If you still met a girl that you think was the most pretty thing on the whole planet, you should hope you are not drunk, unwashed and just be nice, ask her politely if she would like to have a cup of coffee with her.

When it happend to me at my way to the doctor, I was extremely taken aback, because I was just extremely annoyed by my condition, but I thought it was a very sweet gesture and I didn't decline because of my mood, but because I had a boyfriend. So, even though I shoot him down, I was nice, thanking for that offer and explaining I had a boyfriend. I know when I was younger I made a sport out of scaring the shit out of guys, whenever someone was brave enough to chat me up, but that just might explain why I was single.

All in all, just be nice, shower, don't be drunk and be polite. Don't try to kill a lion in front of me. (Which would be very odd, considering I live in a city) Don't come up with cheesy one-liners ("Your Dad is a thief....") If the girl still shoots you down and is unnecessarily cruel while doing it, she might not be a very good company anyway and certainly not worthy of your attention. Just a thought.

Hair, Hair, Hair

We all would like to think of ourselves to as people who base our actions on sound reason and arguments. We would like to think that all our descisions make sense and are not just based on some assumptions. But, if we are really honest, we have to acknowledge that we do things every day that not really could stand any serious investigation. We want to believe that what we do is not just some believe, but in the end we are just delusional. Even I have to admit that some things I do are not based on sound evidence, but a fuzzy believe.

I love my hair. I know superficial. Completely random. But I can't help myself. It is not even that my hair is something spectacular special. It has a quite normal brownish hair. It does get some nice blond highlights in the summer, but that is about it. It is completely flat. Not a single curl. Only about three spins at the roots. And that's about it.

Still, I tend to my hair very carefully. I wash it not too often. When I do, I do wash it twice though. I believe it helps it being more shiny. I don't use conditioner while washing it, but only afterwards to spray it on my damp hair. I always try to avoid to blow dry it or even comb it when it is wet to not break it. Because I read somewhere that it is bad to comb it when it wet. I don't really have prove that this in any way true. I don't know if washing it two times does help or just a waste of shampoo.

Nevertheless, I do it, because I would like to think that my long hair is only that nice because I take care of it the way I do.

Now, you might say, so what? Well, I pride myself to be a skeptic and I should not just apply it to some things, but to every Most importantly my everyday life. I should not just take the word of some beauty magazine that claims that washing my hair twice is better. I should check the facts behind it and then try it. Or maybe even conduct a small experiment and see if there is any difference.

If I have such high standards of questioning before accepting, why do I stop when it comes to my hair? I don't see any reason behind it and there is no reason behind it. Just some vage believe that my behaviour helps. And that is, quite frankly, a very week excuse that I never bothered to check if those claims have any truth to it.

I should not just claim to be sceptic and then dismiss it out of laziness in some areas in my life and being a pain in the ass in others. I guess that just means one thing. Check whatever strange believe I have when it comes to my hair and clarify it. And if it turns out to be right? Wouldn't it have been a gigantic waste of time then? No, anything but. Because then I can say I do what I do, because it is backed up by evidence and don't have to keep on pretenting I know what I'm doing even though it is nothing more then a personal opinion.

And as good as personal opinion might sound to some, to me, knowledge always sounds better.