| Reflections |
[Jun. 26th, 2006|10:15 pm] |
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I remember that while I was studying for my finals, I was really freaking out about what I was going to do over the summer, where I was going to live, what was going to do with my life, etc. And now here I am, everything is going fine, I have two good jobs, I have a nice place to live next semester, I passed O Chem 1, and aside from the fact that Van might not be coming back next semester, my social situation is improving gradually. Its interesting to look back on moments in my life when I thought I was about to break down and see how I have gotten by without too much trouble. It really makes me wonder how much stress and angziety I could avoid in my life. I am way too uptight for the amount of problems I have in my life. How I got this way is an interesting question, one that I have not been able to answer thus far. |
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| My First Day |
[May. 22nd, 2006|09:58 pm] |
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Today was my first day working at Dr. Day's lab. I spent it mostly digitizing x-ray photographs of rat brains. It was tedious, and I was not going fast enough at the beginning, but it was still enjoyable. I got to hang out with the gang, got to meet Elisabeth and Lauren, they were cool, and very helpfull. So yeah, it was worth it. Tomorrow I'm going to watch them do all kinds of other stuff istead of doing it myself just yet, still, I'm going to know how to do just about everything before the girl that got the BURST grant, the other lauren even gets here. So then I can explain the stuff to her. Should be fun. Anyway, I cooked a fish fahita today. Was not exacly easy to find all the crap in the store, and it was not that much. Still, my repitoire of stuff I can cook is growing. I need to update my recipts, but I will get that done soon enough. I'm tired as all hell today, which is not surprising given that I have not slept enough the last four days, but yeah, I really need to get that into shape. |
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| Freedom Issues |
[Apr. 15th, 2006|03:34 pm] |
While I was growing up in Germany, I only had narrow idea of what the US was like. Basically, my parents told me only the pure ideological idea of america, that it was the country that gave all of us (in europe) our freedom, that people there could live out their lives in whatever way they wanted, that there was freedom of religion, etc. Now that I got here, I got a reality check. The fact is, this is a place where torture is comitted, by the military, the police, and various medical institutions, this is a place where there is a lot of racism, this is a place where women are treated like dirt and denied basic rights, and where homosexuals are seen as treated as subhuman based on religious belifs, this is a place where the opression of human sexuality is considered more important than the prevention of unspeakable brutality, this is a place where elections are rigged, and which is controlled by greedy machiavelian power players, this is a place where the poor are given health care equal to that of a third world nation, where people are allowed to join the military before they are given the right to drink, where illegal imigrants needs are put before those of its citizens for political reasons, and where the people would rather invade other countries to take the oil rather than stop wasting insane amounts of it. Now I ask you; can you call that the land of the free? Can you call that a place of human rights?
This is a country where humans' basic freedoms and rights are robbed of them more than in any other industrialied nation, and that is absolutely disgusting! Freedom!?!? I'm going to school you assholes in what exactly motherfucking freedom is one of these days!!!! The land of the free huh!? Yeah, my grandmother once gave me a copy of the constitution of the United States as a birthday gift, and as I read it I realised that her own personal belifs contradicted about half the amendments in it. I wonder if she ever read it, and if so if she ever really conteplated the idea it expressed. For that matter, has anyone? |
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| Massive snow storm at Van's Place |
[Feb. 15th, 2006|09:03 pm] |
So I went over to Van's place today to study some chemistry, which actually went quite well, though we were both quite tired. Vanessa was not so tired. I did manage to take some pictures of Van while she was asleep, that was quite funny. Her facial expression looked kind of stern. Anyway, we talked some more about chem, and then I went to look outside. The entire landscape was snowed over, and it was piling up fast. Van thought it was a bad omen for her chem exam tomorrow, and that she should take Vanessa back to WillVill right away. Then Dan came in, soaked to the bone, red as a stoplight, and with an inch of snow on his head. He said that he was on the hop at the top of Folsom when it stopped running, because the driver drove for six inches and thereby was able to make the bus slide for six feet. Then He helped push some asian girl's four wheel drive out of the road, as it got stuck there. found out she speaks german, and failed to get her number.
Then we decided to put my bike on their balcony, and chain it to the railing, and then drive back to Will Vill using Dan's car. We went out, and found that we could in fact get there without using chains. I got home OK, though the drive was an incredibly slippery one, and I found out only three of the wires in his back window work, so we could not see backward. So now I have to call them and see if they made it home OK. |
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| Home Again |
[Jan. 16th, 2006|04:28 pm] |
So I just got home again after four weeks of vacation in germany. It was a lot of fun, but way too short, as usual. Getting there was a drag, given that the whole house was dark and cold, since resi was at the hospital again, and then got put into a nursing home. But after we got it all fixed up it was OK. My dad and I did some electrical work in the garage, we installed lights and power outlets in various places. We also went skiing twice, the weather was not that great, but I still had a lot of fun, given that I got a new pair of ski boots that actually fit me. Christmas was rather mellow, but that was OK, I have long since outgrown the age when I wanted toys for christmas. What I want now is to find my way in life, figure out where I'm going, what to do with my life, someone to love, etc., and that is something that only I can get for myself. So here I go. There was a lot more snow there that in past years, I routienly had to shovel the sidewalk and the driveway, but that was OK. I spent the last day searching Muehldorf for a pair of shoes that fit me. After searching four places, I found a pair in the fifth place. Its a store that buys random leftover goods from factories at a greatly reduced price, and thus can sell them at a cheaper price, though my shoes were priced down to 30 euros from 130. But yeah, they look pretty good. They're white, which is not exactly my preferred color, but after searching everything that day I did not care anymore.
The flight home was actually one of the best flights that I have ever had crossing the atlantic, which is a good thing considering it was friday the 13th. I guess that means I'm soemhow satanic, if that combination brings me luck? Nah, I'm not supersticious anyway. So what else is there? Van asked me if I wanted to go out with Jennifer, I tried to blow her off as politely as possible, and I think I did it without making her or Van angry. So yeah, thats all for now. |
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| Finally over? Already over? |
[Dec. 15th, 2005|12:08 am] |
That semester went by faster than I have ever had one go by in my life, but at the same time, it was also the least fun semester I have had in my life, so I'm inclined to say that its finally over, but in reality, it was over before I ever realised it had started. I guess that means I have to get a life, though I have actually had more of a life than I have ever had this semester. I guess the right thing to say is that time flies when one is busy, regardless of whether one is happy with it or not. I do realise what I want out of life though. More excitement, and less of this. But that will come, I'm going to make it happen. Starting right now. I also learned something this semester, I realised that I'm capable of far more dicipline that I thought I was. I Studied Calc for three days straight. That's right. Sunday night, all of monday, and all of tuesday, and this morning, all I did was calc. I only studied physics a little before that and this morning, but that was enough to get most of it on the exam. I would have gotten all of it, had I simply studied more.
As for calc, all I can say is HOLY MOTHER FUCKING SHIT!!!!! That was by far the worst exam ever. Literally. Ever. And I studied my ass off for it!!!! Yeah, there was hyperbolic sin and cos series, unfactorable square roots, parametric shit, weird assed Power series. At least there was one question that I got 10 on, it asked me to find some value of N that would make the series accurate to two decimal places. Well, I wrote N=10,000,000,000 That ought to be enouogh. Chris thought most of the people just gave up halfway through it, but many people including me stayed to the end. Anyway, everybody thought it was insane, so there's bound to be a huge curve on it. At any rate, someone ripped up their textbook out in front of the MCDB building after the exam, I saw the pages all over the place while I was jogging.
Now I feel so empty and alone, given that I have really nothing to do. But that'll soon be over. I'll surely not be bored tomorrow, givne my huge itinarary; pack, vaccume, back up files, get meds, bring Van my Eggnog, etc. So, yeah, that's just the way life goes. |
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| Long Time no see, but some good news |
[Nov. 22nd, 2005|06:52 pm] |
Holy Crap I haven't updated in a month, that shows just how bad things have become, I F'd up my last bio test, my Calc test I passed, but could still have gotten 20 extra points on, and I got 80 on my last physics tet, despite the fact that I had no clue what a quarter of it was about, that shows just how good those tests are. So yeah, the speed reading course is going great, that stuff really works, and I can finally read my cell bio book. Probably the only course that I'm taking that's going well. Oh wait, there is Physics lab. Thats fun, mainly because its so easy, and because I can talk to Jennifer about weird, whacked out science stuff and life issues. I really need to meet more people like that, at least she's going to be in Brain thought and action next year. I look foreward to that.
Claire dropped out of CU and left, so now Van is feeling lonely and depressed until she gets a new roommate, which will be either Stephanie or Dan. That'l be cool in any case. Her, Dania, Steph, Jeremy, Dan and me went out to see harry potter 4 last weekend, that was cool, I decided that I like mango chi tea better than vanila chi, and I'm going to get myself some of it everytime I go to flatirons from now on. That was good stuff. I got a new back wheel on my bike after the first got stolen. Yeah, I locked the frame and the front wheel, and they stole the back one. Isn't that stupid. It cost me $120 to get it replaced, so I'm keeping it in here from now on. I don't think Justin likes it, but he'll get used to it.
Right now, I don't have anythig to do, so while sitting around and thinking about what to do, I came up with a lot. I need to get more eggnog and more bred, I need to call patti, update my journal (which I'm doing now) , organise my tea, vaccume my room, etc etc. Yean, guess I have all of thanksgiving to do that, but its going to go by fast. Then just two more weeks, the finals, and then I go home, holy F! that went fast. Oh well, next semester will be different. |
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| Successes and Faliures |
[Oct. 22nd, 2005|10:07 pm] |
That's life basically, you get shit, deal with the shit, get more shit, deal with it and so on. You can feel good about yourself for dealing with it, except there has to be a point to the whole thing, and that's what I'm missing right now, but I will find it. This week, after a long and frustrating time of installing, deleting and reinstalling two different programs on my computer to get my mp3 player to play three songs that I wanted from my library, I finally got it to work. That was awesome. Then however, I got my bio exam back and found that I failed it. That seriously pissed me off. Especially since I felt good about it. It is really about understanding the concepts more than I thought, even in bio, this holds true. But yeah, I will pull through, I just have to devote a lot more time to studying that stuff, but I will, now that I am learning how to focus more and get homework done faster. That's life, but I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. I can see where this all is going, and I think I'm going to like it.
This weekend is parents weekend, so I can't hang uot with Van or her friends, because they are all busy with that. Jen is also not coming up here until next week, but I need this time off, to do some more studying, which I really need right now. The math has gotten a lot less problematic, given that I am now doing sequences and series, and no more integrals, so I guess it just all evens out. I am also in the process of finally figuring out my course sequences for the next two years. Every semester I have a better idea of where I'm going with it, so that's going as well as it can.
Clothes shopping has been a real problem. Apparently, I have gotten so tall that very few stores actually carry any kind of clothes my size. I spent two weekends ago checking out flatirons mall. The longest pants they have at that huge two story sporting goods store is a 32. I need a 34 or a 36. I did find the pants I wanted online, but I haven't had much luck with shirts. Will said he also does not know much about where to get pants or shirts his size here, he told me to chek out the Foalys in Boulder. So I'll do that like next weekend. Other than that I'll just have to check out Germany for shirts. I think that while I'm there I'm also going to have those chickenpox scars on my face removed. I's funny, I've had them since I was 5, and I've never paid and attention to them, I've also only ever been made fun of for them once in my entire life. Strange how that works. But now I can't seem to shake the suspicion that I don't look that great with them on my forehead. I guess if I lived in india, it would be seen as a sort of blessing, given that one of them is right where the third eye is suppoed to be, but I don't live in india, so I guess they're going to have to go at some point.
Last weekend was a fun weekend. I hung out with Andy, Jennifer and Van. Jen is a fun person to hang out with, she likes to play pool a lot, and although I've rarely ever played before, I think I should do a lot more of it. Any is cool too, I should ask him to play sometime. Well, I'll see how tomorrow goes. |
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| Guiness |
[Oct. 9th, 2005|08:47 pm] |
I went out partying with Van, Andy, Claire, Daina, Rocky, Keith, Dave and Dan friday night. That was cool. And it was also the first time in my life that I got Drunk. I had about five drinks before we left. Two beers, one playing mushroom cloud, one shot of some orange stuff I thought was Rum, but turned out to be something else. Then another beer. We went out to some convenience store behind Van's place to get some random junkfood. We started talking about those two Frat partys the other week, in which nime women got slipped enough GBH to kill them, and Claire decided that if guys were going to give date rape drugs to girls, they should at least give them safe amounts. That gave everyone a great laugh. Dave showed Van various pressure points that can hurt people, and a way to strike someones adam's apple that could kill them. Then we went to that party.
I forgot the name of the guy who was hosting it, but It was good. I had another beer, and then a bottle of guiness. Which I later found out is about 60 proof. So Instead of having one drink, I ended up having about 3. Then I really felt it. Holy shit, that was friggin weird. I had 4 cups of water, to keep from getting hungover. I basically just felt dizzy, but my face did not get red at all. Van's face, and the rest of her body get extremely red when she drinks, but she is surprisingly resillient to the effects of it. I guess that's because her mother is half white, so she has the genes that produce the enzymes that break down the alcohol. Only once did she have that animal look in her eyes. So yeah, we then went to I Hop, where Keith got into a pretty heated discussion with some other guy about the Iraq war. He was driving up and down IED alley when he was over there, among other things. So we had a bite to eat, and then we all went home. We went back to Van's place first. Where Dave showed us how to break into an appartment using a card. Then I decided to go home. I was really freaking cold when I rode home, which is probably why I had a good case of the cold yesterday. Or was it the getting drunk. The thing about guiness is that you cannot taste the alcohol, and it does not anywhere on the bottle say how much alcohol there is in it, otherwise I might have been more carefull. But yeah, it was still a fun night. |
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| Week of Hell, Derivative of Week of Hell |
[Sep. 24th, 2005|03:19 pm] |
Last week was the week of hell, and this one as the derivative of it, given that derivatives are not as bad as their functions, but I sure hope I dont have to deal with the integral of the week of hell. I had 3 exams that week, and I had two labs to do, prepare for, and one lab to make up. So as you might guess, the math homework and physics homework meant I had no time to study whatsoever for anything. So I did badly on every exam, and I failed the calc exam, which is the worst I ever did on any exam in highschool or college. Holy Fuck. So this week, I still have really long and annoying calc homework, as well as really hard CAPA questions for physics, and two labs to prepare for as well as one to write up. Nice. And, this will happen again in November. I just hope I dont fail any classes, that would be rally fucking bad.
Now I have to go and keep on working, I really dont do a good job of focusing on shit, whether its math or Cell Bio, I simply cannot fucking concentrate in class. Like, forget it. There is no fucking way I can stay focused, it just does not happen.
I seriously need to figure out WTF I want to do with my life, like, I'm not even sure whether I want to do molecuar biology or not. What I'm learning in this class is really just annoying, and what I learned in genetics too. I guess I should remember what my TA said, Most biologists know a little about everything and a lot about one thing, I guess I should just focus on neuroscience, and forget the rest, because it bores the shit out of me, I just simply cannot find the time to do any research in that matter. I need to keep working now, and holy shit I need to figure out what to do about this. Seriously. |
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| Overcoming problems |
[Sep. 3rd, 2005|11:09 pm] |
Over the past two weeks, I have had to deal with a lot of new crap coming at me. I had to move into my new appartment, get all my stuff out of storage, fix my bike, get a new bed, unpack everything here, deal with my meal plan problems, get food, deal with the insanely hard CAPA homework, fix my printer and get a doctor's appointment about my hernia.
But now that it's all done it doesn't seem all that bad. I dealt with each thing at a time, and gradually overcame everything. I didn't have this crippling fear in my chest that I had last year, I just got on the plane, came over here, and did it. It's like I can finally deal with life the way I want to, and that's a really good feeling.
I's so busy, I barely have time to update my journal, but I feel like things are going my way now, rather than some other way. There's a lot I still need to take care of, but I can see myself hacking it now, whereas before I couldn't.
Well, gotta go, I gotta get some sleep here. Tomorrow I need to get half of my math done, and read more in my Cell Bio textbook. Incidentally, that is going well too. I can read through it faster while staying more concentrated as I could last year. I also managed to get that printer downstairs to print out the lecture slides the way I want to, and without wasting any paper.
HERE WE GO AGAIN! |
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| Moving In |
[Aug. 23rd, 2005|09:01 am] |
OK, so it wasn't all that bad. I actually managed to sleep on the plane, twice, for one or two hours at a time. It took a long time for my luggage to arrive, but it did, and then I was off. I found out the Broker inn is really right across the street from Will Vill. I went over to the Campus, watched all the chaos of the Freshmen moving in. It really was quite funny to watch, and I wasn't at all tired. I then called Patti and went to bed at around 10 PM. My dad called me at 2 AM thinking it was 4 AM and I was already awake. I then did wake up at 6 AM, and then took care of a whole bunch of things, bank stuff, ID stuff and so on. I moved in to BC at 10 AM which was before my designated time, but they had no problem with it. I moved in and found that not only was my room not facing the flatirons, but my bed was too small (it is a full) So that sucked. Anyway, Amber and Patti came over, and we went out to eat, then to check out the appartment. We then cruised around through Boulder and then went to the storage place to get my stuff, though we did get really lost along the way because I forgot exacly where it was. The stuff did not all fit into Patti's car but we got most of it back to the appartment, where I found that I did indeed have a roommate. His name is Justin, and he turend out to be pretty cool. His parents were helping him move in and bought just about everything needed for the household.
So now, all I need to do is get a new bed, an extra long Twin like I had last year in the dorm, and all will be good. I even called Van, and she told me that we could hang out the next day, which was also pretty cool. I still needed to get the rest of my stuff out of storage, but Justin told me he would help me with that, which is really great. So, everything's peachy. |
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| A Quick Update |
[Aug. 15th, 2005|12:49 pm] |
A couple of days ago I was inspecting my wound, and I noticed that one of the little red dots where there had been a stich had been had a little black dot in it. I thought it might be some dried blood that didn't get washed away, so I decided to get some tweezers and take it off. But I didn't take a little speck of dried blood off, I ended up pulling about a centimeter of stich thread out. Yeah. I just hope the doctors didn't leave any surgical tools behind in my wound, but I think I would have fealt that after a while.
So yeah, I'm just sitting around, waiting to go back to CU. I'm starting to bounce off the walls because I can't do anything other than go hiking. At least I get to start doing mild sports again tomorrow. It turns out that Van changed her phone number, and hasn't emailed me her new one, so I can't reach her. Bear Creek changed my appartment number again, given that there are a lot of people there who spontaneously decided they don't want to leave their appartments. Ah well, three more days, then it'll be setteld.
I did meet our neighbor's cat again. He was snooping around my house, checking everything out. So I took him inside, let him check all of that out. He's grown quite a lot since I last saw him, but he's still as playfull as all hell. He met my cat, who is of course a wuss, and chased her all over the yard. It was really funny to watch, that cat is highly agressive, he'll go after any small animal he comes across, including dogs, but given that he's a male cat, he better be. The weather around here feels like autum. Which is good because I can at least do a lot of hiking with more energy. |
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| Things are looking up |
[Aug. 5th, 2005|06:22 pm] |
Its been 8 days since the operation, and I got the threads taken out yesterday. That surgeon really is a freak, he never says hello, and has little concern for the feeling of others, but I guess that's what it takes in order to be a good surgeon, you need to be a tad cold in order to deal with it all. Anyway, I can walk strait for long distances again, but I still am not allowed to run, do pushups or use my bike, which means that my muscles are going to atrophy significantly before I can start doing sports again. A bummer, but I guess it could have been a lot worse.
My dad came home yesterday, we takled about my coursework, hung up both my diplomas and my mineral collection in my room, and talked for a while. He's really tired, as usual, but since I'm not able to do any work we're going to spend this week driving around bavaria checking random stuff out instead. I am however getting really bored around here, especially since I can't go on long bike rides anymore. Well, two more weeks shouldn't be that bad.
I filled out and sent the form for the $50 gift certificate for starbucks cofee to Bear Creek, that way I can have a couple of free snacks there before my meal plans kick in. I have been trying to call Van incessantly for the past few days, without any luck. I think I'm going to try it much later from now on, like 1 am or so. I also managed to write a post card in French to my old french tutor who still lives in Cairo. Yep, when you're bored, you dig up a lot of old stuff to do.
I found out that I did in fact get paid all the money I earned from my job, my mom just didn't recognise the name of the red cross organisation that's responsible for transferring the money to all the employees. So I should go back to CU with abou 850 Euros extra cash, which isn't bad considering it will last me the entire year.
That's all I can think of syaing for now. More later. |
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| Legally High |
[Jul. 29th, 2005|05:03 pm] |
I had my operation yesterday. I went to the hospital at 8 in the morning with my mom, where I then had to wait for 3 hours until it was my turn to get operated on. Then I had to strip down, get some of my pubic hair shaved by a nurse (go figure), then got taken to the operating room in bed, where I got an IV, then had to heave myself onto the operating table where they strapped me down and gave me two shots of some clear fluid.
First I started to feel a little light headed, then my whole body started to go numb, but not in a tingly sense, but a calm, smooth kind of way. Then I had the uncontrollable drive to close my eyes, my whole body became senseless, but I was still concious, and talked to the doctors and then I was out. I woke up exacly half an hour later, and as I pulled off the covers I noticed that there was a funny geometric pattern on my stomach cause by the orange disinfectant fluid flowing around the pieces of tape they had stuck to my skin in order to keep the operating sheets on place. I laid in the wake up room for another hour before the nurse drove my bed back to my little room, hitting all the walls and doors as he went. I laid there for another two hours before I could get up and walk over to the toilet, allbeit hunched over with one hand holding onto a nurses shoulder and the other holding the two pieces of my nightgown together behind my back in order to prevent anyone from seeing my naked ass.
As if getting to the toilet was not bad enough, I couldn't take a dump that easily because I couldn't use any of my butt muscles because that would have hurt the would too much. So I had to sit there for about 5 minutes until my crap slowly slide out of me. Yeah I know, none of you probably wanted to hear that, but misery likes company, if I have to suffer through it, so do you. Anyway, after that, I was allowed to go home, my mom got a wheelchair and I sort of had to walk my way out because there were no foot rests on the wheelchair.
So then I got home, waddeled over to the couch, was finally able to lay down and rest. Eating was still a big problem though, as I couldn't really sit on any of the dining room chairs, and the more food I ate, the worse the feeling of pressure on the wound became. Then at night the painkiller they had given me began to wear off and I had to take a pill with a very powerful painkiller, one of only six I had.
I woke up the next morning and had to be taken to the clinic where the surgeon who operated on me works so he could take another look at it and change tha bandage. Although the wound is only about an inch and a half long, covered by six stiches, its really immobilising, given that I got operated on the part of the body that's supposed to hold up all of you guts, and is close to your leg muscles. So the doc said I should walk completely straight, which makes sense considering that If it grows back together while I'm laying/sitting/walking in a curled up position, I'm going to have a problem won't I. Anyway, I figued out that it does not actually hurt that much, though it does hurt a lot when I laugh, cough, try to yell or move the worlg way. I ate two more painkiller pills today, they last about 3 and a half hours each, so I guess all painkillers have a lower than average effect on me given that it says that one pill should last you for 4 to 6 hours, and I can only take 3 a day. So yeah, that's all for now, I hope it gets better fast. |
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| Issues of the Flesh |
[Jul. 12th, 2005|07:14 pm] |
Yeah, I know I haven’t updated in a while, but traumatic events take some time to deal with. So I found out last Monday that apparently, my DNA is about as useless as tits on a boar hog, at least as far as the elasticity of my tissue goes. I had an operation when I was 14 because some vein in one of my balls was letting in too much blood, and my ball was overheating, so they sliced my belly open in order to get it out. Now it turns out that the pain I have been feeling in my balls is because I have a weak spot in my stomach wall down there and I need another operation in order to prevent it from becoming a hernia. Hahaha, yeah, right now that it might take me to the end of the month to work the 64 hours that I can, and about 5 weeks before I’m going to fly back to the US.
Now I have never been the type of guy who tried to act tough, look cool, be a jock, etc. But THIS, this is just…..fuckin’…. humiliating. Congratulations Conrad, your body is genetically impaired, but that’s OK, since you are living in the modern industrialized world, all your problems can be fixed by medicine. Yeah, OK, that’s great, but I have some ESTEEM issues here! And I don’t care how common this is, and I don’t care how common the issue with the vein is in people my age, this is just, fucking, wrong. I swear, if the world ever becomes a place like it is in the movie GATTICA, I am so going for the genetic modifying of my offspring. No, I wouldn’t be against the discrimination of people that have not been genetically modified, but seriously, I wouldn’t wish this kind of crap on anyone.
So anyway, I started working on my possible course sequences for the next two years, and I got that file from my adviser that has all the websites from the important grad schools which I am going to check out. I got the letter from BC that has my apartment assignment, and it said that Barish was still my roommate. Well, I won’t say anything, when I get there, and they figure out that Barish is not coming, I will get the whole apartment to myself. Yeah, that will be cool. Then again, it might be horrible, living alone. But what the heck why not try it. If I don’t like it I will at least be more motivated to find more friends, and that’s a good thing. I called Will a couple of days ago and he told me that he, Jon, Vinny and that other guy had been split up. They were in two, two person rooms on different floors. Whatev, that’s good for him, he gets a 2 person room for the price of a 4 person place. If that is, they let that slip by. I dunno what is going on there.
I’m going to go to work again tomorrow at 6 AM. Those are the only days when I get a whole lot done anyway. I usually knock off 10 to 12 hours doing that, so why not. I got all the energy bars I need too. |
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| Contemplating |
[Jul. 1st, 2005|08:36 pm] |
OK, I’m officially tired with this vacation. Or, more precisely, I’m not tired of it, but I’m bored, really bored. The more relevant issue however is that I realized I have no goal in life. I’m not aware of any real passion I have for something, any serious aspiration I have to be. My life just sort of is. True, I have tried really hard to get along academically, but I’m not sure what exactly I’m doing it for. I did the IB, mainly because I wanted a challenge, I wanted to be involved in something big, something extraordinary, I wanted to belong to something. And I was, and it was a lot of fun. I went to college because well what else am I going to do? Besides, given that I don’t really have any idea about what I want to do with my life; college is the best place to find out. There is all kinds of stuff going on in college, and it is full of people my age, so logically that is the place to go.
However, figuring out what one wants to do with one’s life is not easy. In fact it’s the single most difficult and consequential thing one can do. You figure out what you want to do with your life, and then do it. Figuring out what to do is the pivotal point in it all, and as paradoxical as it seems, I’m scared to do it, I’m scared to actively look for stuff to do with my life. The only thing I do know for sure is that I don’t want my life to be “ordinary” I don’t want a boring, pointless, meaningless 9-5 life like a lot of people have, though I’m sure a lot of people are happy with a life like that, I never could be. I know that if I took fewer credits, I could spend more time doing other stuff, but then I would lose the one year advantage I got from doing the IB. Well, that will be the case anyway the semester after next.
This vacation I have right here is like a mirror for my life. It’s going nowhere. I just sit around the house watching music videos, going on bike rides, surfing the internet. Of course this kind of a life is good for a while to relax, and if the time you spend like that is not long enough then you don’t get to relax. But in any case I think I’ve just about had enough.
There is another problem I have that hinders me severely; I’m a loner. I often miss the company of other people severely, but I find it extremely difficult to get in touch with people socially. And for some reason, I feel like I don’t really have the drive to have too much to do with other people either. When I do go to parties, hang out with other people or do other stuff like that, then I enjoy it. I feel content, or at least good about it, however I have throughout my whole life never been as sociable as I would like to have been. I never had too many friends, did too many things with other people, and every time I try to start something with other people I feel a lot of anxiety, which usually stops me from doing whatever it was I had in mind. My dad told me he was a real loner himself when he was my age, but unless its in the genes there’s no reason why I should be like he was. I think there were just a lot of bad circumstances that coincided in my life to make me like this. The question is, what am I going to do about it? Maybe I need therapy, or something similar to help me get over it. I know I have to figure this out for myself, because no one else is going to do it for me. I dunno how I’ll do it, but given that I made it this far, I’ll make it the rest of the way too.
In other news, there was a really powerfull storm here a couple of days ago with hail, lots of rain and phenominally strong winds that accelarated the penny sized hailstones toward the ground and destroyed a lot of crops in the area, especially corn. The storm also took out a lot of trees around here. Incidentally, that was the day I went to the movies with Karoline. I drove over all the debris the wind had ripped out of the trees on my way to her house. I did force myself to call her today, but she was not there. At least I seem to be overcoming my apprehension to people.
As for rest, well, I'm sleeping about 9 to 10 hours every day. My mom tells me that this is what people my age normally need on sleep, in that case I don't get why most people my age don't get mental probles due to sleep deprivation. Probably most do, maybe that's what wrong with the people in the industrialised world, the're all sleep deprived! Anyway, I'm going to go to bed now so I can wake up tomorrow at 5 AM and drive somebody around. Well, at least there won't be too much traffic on the B12. |
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| Lightning and Fire |
[Jun. 26th, 2005|04:19 pm] |
Yesterday the air was really hot and humid, which usually means its going to rain, but in any case, I decided it was time to get a fan, a real one, given that the one I have now is a $5 piece of crap that it way too loud. I bought a good one for 15 euros, took it home and guess what, it rained that night. It suddenly started raining and hailing really hard, and the wind blew so fast and hard I could see it whipping all over the roof of our garage. There was also lightning all over the place. I saw it set fire somewhere in Muehldorf, and it killed the power in my entire village. I went out for a little walk after it had died down, and met some guy from the local power company who asked me if he could park on my property since he had to repair the local power line. I told him sure. He got it back in about and hour.
I have never seen weather like that before, a period of calm, followed by a short but extgremely powerfull burst of wind, rain and hail followed by absolute calm again. Whatever, in other news, Caroline is asking me to hang out with her sometime. We agreed to both think up stuff to do, since there are not many recreational options around here, probably why there are not so many young people around here. Caroline is the girl that I am giving tutoring in math. Its mostly stuff that I had in IB SL 2 math and Calc 1. I am getting it a lot better myself now that I am teaching it. Its weird how that goes. |
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| Huge Assed Bugs and other Insect Issues |
[Jun. 23rd, 2005|01:03 pm] |
The day before yesterday I was mowing the lawn around our two cherry trees with the sie, although it wasn't going very well given hat the damned thing needed to be sharpened and that the grass was extremely long and thick, which meant I had to whack at the same area of grass about four times to get all the way to the ground. I got three huge assed bug bited on my right leg. I dunno what they are, have never seen them before. I think they're chigger bites, though I have never seen those for sure either. They're oozing pus at the moment. If it doesn't stop in the next few days I'm going to have to go to the skin doctor. Anyway, I spent a lot of time that night playing with a little kitten our neibors have. I made it so wild that it was panting like a dog, and it did chase the little dog our neibors have down the street. That was fun.
A couple of days ago I was riding my bike past solling where one of the last farms that have cows in their fields is, I noticed that the heard of cows they had there was lined up in a defensive mode and one of them was running after me on the other side of the electric fence. I stopped and mocked the cow for a while, before it jumped and ran back to the others. Then I noticed that there were two huge horseflies sitting on my shirt. I mean they were HUGE-ASSED, they were about an inch long, which is much larger than I've ever seen. I slapped them off my shirt and then raced to get away from them. They followed me a bit, but then broke off. Apparently the north ozone hole has gotten so big that the radiation is getting to germany and is mutating all kinds of life forms. Incidentally, I found two four leafed clovers andone five leafed clover a couple weeks ago as I did find that first five leafed clover a few years ago. I really would like to take a geiger counter to that spot and see if there is any really radioactive stuff in the ground there.
This all reminds me of that one time I was in Australia, at the campsite where Abdullah and I saw that two inch long bug that looked like a mosquito fly by. The thing was so lound that the flapping of its wings sounded sort of like a dull rattle. We zipped our tent up competely that night and put the rubber rain cover over it, mortified that we would wake up in the night and find this thing with its sucker stabbed right through one of our arms. Oh yeah, I was wondering what the radiation from the ozone hole did to stuff around here. Now I know.
And the day before yesterday I found a hornet queen flying around our porch. I got out my fly taser and smaked it like all hell when it flew at me. It was hurled about six meters before it crashed in the grass. I found it and started tasering it with my fly taser, only it seemed to not have any effect on the hornet. It was biting the metal bars of the taser so hard I could hear them clinker. So I put the hornet in a glass jar and sealed it with tape, hoping that the hornet would run out of oxygen and die. But it was still alive in the morning, so I took it out and smashed it with a sledge hammer. The sound of its shell cracking was loud, extremely loud, it sounded like a miniarute fire cracker going off, and thankfully it did finally kill the hornet. Its innards turned out not to be juicy or slimey, but it had varoiuns organs and other not-so-soft tissues in it. Anyway, enough bug stuff for now. Hopefully this heat wave will go away soon. |
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| Hauling ass! |
[Jun. 21st, 2005|05:34 pm] |
I am writing this in a word file at the moment. I can’t get on the internet because my mom is using the dial up connection to check her emails, which given that her computer is a really old, halfway destroyed piece of crap with an operating system that’s too advanced for it, it takes a long time for her to read through all of her emails. It’s the same old story, she rarely ever checks her email, but the one time when I’m in the mood to update my journal and really need the phone line she is on it. We need to get dial up, seriously, I’m not taking this anymore, plus it would be a lot cheaper.
Anyway, I went to the BUGA, the National Garden Show 2005 yesterday. There were a bunch of huge landscape sculptures there that were meant to and successfully did give people and impression of what it is like to view everyday home and garden objects from the perspective of an ant. It was actually quite cool. They also did have some really cool exhibits of how to blend offices with plants and still make them look good. The gardens themselves that they had outside were mediocre considering the even, but that was because they always have flowers there that are in bloom, and every so often they have to take a lot of the flowers in the gardens away and put new ones there which are in full bloom. They were in the middle of one of these change over cycles when I was there. They did however manage to create some really cool flower fields for semi-desert areas as well as a really cool reed filled lake that some ducks were nesting in and some really cool forests. They also built a gondola lift, the kind that is normally found on ski slopes that can take you all over the grounds of the garden show. The layout of the place does waste a lot of space, and the walking around even got tiresome for me after a while, despite the fact that I did in fact use the gondola to get around. You can see a whole lot from up there. I’m thinking we should build those all over Munich; it would be a good way to go sightseeing, and to get around.
One problem I did have as that it was HOT, really friggin’ HOT. Like, I had the A/C of my car on full power on the hour long car ride home, which I also did today when I was driving around. And since Germans naturally are not used to dealing with the heat, there was no real refuge anywhere to get away from it, so I basically had to sweat all the way through it. But other than that, it was a day well spent. There was a short stretch on the way home where I was able to drive my car at 190 kilometers per hour. That’s about 120 miles per hour. I would have gone to 200, but my mom was freaking out, so I had to slow down. But I was scared as hell doing it. I got a huge adrenalin rush, but it was not dangerous, at least not as far as the road conditions go. It was sunny and dry, there was minimal traffic on the autobahn and it was a straight stretch of road. Still I wouldn’t do it too often, but I wanted to do it at least once just to say that I did it. But it was cool.
So what else is new? I got a lot accomplished today, bought a bunch of stuff, washed the car, mailed a CD with all the pictures I took at the BUGA to my dad. The price of gas went up, again, it now costs about 1 euro 24 cents per liter, that’s about $5.73 per gallon. I swear if it ever gets like that in the US there will be an economic crisis there like none the world has ever seen. The German government will be able to dampen the ascending gas price from the consumer for a while by nullifying all the taxes it has on it, but sooner or later that won’t help either. At least with global warming upon us, we won’t have to buy any more heating oil. Incidentally, I have noticed that a whole lot of people are putting solar panels on their roofs around here. It allows the people to pay less money for electricity if their solar panels pump electricity into the local net. Sounds like this whole ecology thing is starting to work out. |
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