Karma? Sorry, I don’t buy it.

Yesterday I needed a book real bad. I checked the catalog from all libraries I can borrow books from – which means about 5 libraries – but all copies were already borrowed. I came back home frustrated. A few hours later, I checked the catalog again: one copy just got returned to Sainte-Barbe library. IT WAS A SIGN: this book and I were meant to be! So today I rushed to Sainte-Barbe – god knows I’d have munch anyone trying to get his claws on it -, ran in the streets of Paris (that’s obviously a lie).

Then something extraordinary happened. The kind of thing you will remember all your life: Paris giving you a finger. This very library was exceptionally closed today.

It’s funny how it changed my way of seeing things from then on. All of a sudden, I got brought down:
- I’m wasting time traveling between my school and the library to get books.
- There is dog shit in the Quartier Latin (I do hope the dog owners will walk in it some day. Preferably while wearing 400€ worth shoes) as if pigeon shit isn’t romantic enough.
- Even old people rush into the metro without letting me step out (I feel a lot of sympathy towards elder people, but this time I really wanted to push him back).
- I saw myself drowning in papers.
- I can’t get the most recent work on the topic I am working on. They are either not available in France (and no, I won’t spend 40 euros on a book), or the only single copy available is in Strasbourg. I had to resort to the interlibrary loan, but the librarian responsible of it sent me an email today. The goddamn Strasbourg U library is moving out, which means that most of its collections aren’t available (included the book I need). She’s going to have to request one from Germany.
- I AM STRESSED!
- I am getting OLDER AND OLDER!
- I am running out of CHOCOLATE!!
- I never have a bag full of books to hit line cutting ladies!!

Ah, Karma and Paris, fuck you.

To chicken out or not to chicken out

That is the question. I know it may be impossible, but try to not mind the religious side of some of the quotes below (faites abstraction).

 

Þar læt ég nótt, sem nemur,
neitt skal ei kvíða því.

-Hallgrímur Pétursson, Allt eins og blómstrið eina, 273

It’s actually a funeral song: Behold my Flower.
(Translation from Wilhelm Friese found in Nordische Barocklyrik (1999, Francke Verlag): “Ich fühle, was immer auch komme / die Angst ist hier nicht mein Schild”)

Nie bój się, nie lękaj!

- John Paul II
(translation: “Have no fear”)

 

Und wenn die Welt voll Teufel wär’
Und wollt’ uns gar verschlingen,
So fürchten wir uns nicht so sehr,
Es soll uns doch gelingen.

-Martin Luther, Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott

———

Edit: I did chicken out.

Winter has finally come

The timing is perfect. I was wondering how I could get rid of this big black spider living outside in the top left hand corner of my window frame. FYI it had resisted the anti-spider spray.

=================

Edit:

- Frozen fingers, frozen feet. Frozen ears.
- Runny nose.
- Big spiders sneaking into my room to find warmth, comfort, light, and eventually a terrible death.
- Frozen dogs’ ‘gift’ covered by snow.

My thoughtful friends

конфеты столичные

I am often surprised to get a gift. First, I never ask for one, I demand one:
- What would you like for your birthday?
- *Sending a link to a book on Amazon*
(Actually, this happened only once. Otherwise, I’m supra nice. 5% of the time.)

Most of the time, people get gift ideas from my whining. Among the funniest things I got:
- a voodoo doll (and no, I have never asked for one)
- food (Milka chocolate, REESE‘S PEANUT BUTTER CUPS, Reese’s pieces, Oreo cookies, конфеты столичные) (that’s amazing I still look quite healthy)
- a tweezer
- soap (that wasn’t a suggestion that I should shower more often, it’s just that I always carry soap around)
- mead (surprising, I know)

————

*Goofy grin* I am thankful for having those friends. I’d starve without them.

R

Childhood trauma

My sister mentioned a name while we were having dinner. I couldn’t remember who he was except that I don’t have a good memory of him.

- Who is he?
- He’s our neighbour’s cousin.
- Why do I have the feeling I didn’t like him?
- I am not telling you or you’d go apeshit.

When I was a kid, I used to regularly spend my vacation at an aunt’s. Her son introduced me to draughts and chess and though I REALLY sucked at it, I was fascinated by these board games (that’s a lie, I just hated losing whenever I played with my cousin). So my aunt gave me a draughts game for my birthday. I brought it back home, played with my neighbour in our garden. Then came her cousin: he took a piece and threw it into the garden sewer. Now I remember.

Languages are weird…?

Some random thoughts on learning a language. They are probably absolutely, linguistically wrong, my bad!

1) Generally speaking, I have always been taught how much important it is to know how to write non Latin alphabets, Chinese characters, kanji, etc. So I have always started learning a language in its written form first, through its print and cursive letters. They are usually not that much different from each other but it not the case Yiddish, at least not to me. I was taught how to read the print form and how to write the cursive one, so that I am always confused at first when I have to read something handwritten.

2) I have never thought of it, but when you’re reading Chinese, you have to recognize the character first and remember its meaning/pronounciation since you can’t guess how it is pronounced – though there are some exceptions. With an alphabet, nevermind if you cannot understand the meaning of the word, you can still pronounce it.

3) How can one make the auditive and the visual memory efficient when combined with one another? The answer is quite obvious for languages phonetically “transcripted” (cf. Italian, Yiddish, German, etc.) but what about French, English, or Danish which have a, say, peculiar spelling? I was probably too young to remember how I did with English (I had a contact to its written form very early through Britney Spears’ lyrics – and yes, I am ashamed. For my defense she’s a good educational material for beginners) but having started Danish later, I did encounter some problems while learning the vocabulary. I first learnt the written form and intentionally mispronounced it so that I’d remember the spelling. But I had to learn the correct pronounciation and associate it to the word. But as time passes by, I remember the sound of the word, but not its spelling: where there some double consonnants? Some mute vowels?

——————

Edit:

I take back what I said in point 2. I have just found out that Yiddish contained Hebraism, that is, words which are not written with vowels. I know, I should have known this earlier. Point is: hard to guess its pronounciation, ergo hard to pronounce.

Most people I encounter are either STUPID or PERVERTS

Odyssea of stupidity

(Except some of you, of course!)

WARNING: this article is quite vulgar.

WARNING 2: don’t tell me you weren’t warned!

I woke up at six, was in a quite grumpy mood, but I wasn’t late. I caught my train and even had my seat. After five seconds, I knew this regional train was going to bring me loads of shit. And any all mighty being did feel the need to prove me right. There was a problem one station (cf. “fuck”) from where I was (cf. “1″) and the line I took (in blue), was blocked. The train had to go backwards. So unless I wanted to go back home, I had to make a train connection there and take another line (in red).

I stepped out. And realized I was surrounded by many, many, many idiots.

1) No one fucking moved. Most people were still on the platform, trying to figure out when the next train was going towards Paris (my answer: in TWO HOURS, and I bet I was far from being wrong), so they could at least give way to let us reach another train line. But no. They were like sheep waiting for some grass. I really thought hard of Panurge’s sheep and wondered what would happen if I pushed one of them onto the railway track (it’s a joke, don’t worry) (in fact, do worry). For those who don’t know what “Panurge’s sheep” refers to, it’s a character in Rabelais’ stories. He got angry at Dindenault and bought a sheep from him. Then he threw it into the sea and all (!) Dindenault’s remaining sheep followed and drowned. Wait, I got side tracked. Point being: it took me 15-20 minutes to cross the platform while it usually takes 1 min top.

2) People with their mobile phones. I can understand the tragedy of the situation, you needed to twitt, FB, call your friends to let them know you’ll be late, which is all fine. But for those who stopped in the middle of the crowd (and believe me, it was overcrowded) to raise their mobile phone/camera to take souvenir pictures… God I wanted to take their toys and threw them away (along with their owner).

3) Same thing with people pushing in the stairs – ever heard of the word “dangerous”? Some of them didn’t even do that to reach the next train, no, just to be at the top of the stairs to take pictures.

4) People working at that train station didn’t make any announcement to passengers from the red line to let them know they couldn’t take the blue one.  So they tried to make their way to the platform I tried to get away from for nothing… while adding more confusion and blocking the platform too.

5) I then witnessed something ridiculous as I reached the platform from the red line: people trying to force enter a full train. Not to mention it was ridiculous, they also prevented the train from departing. Fucking morons, the next one comes in 10 min! Such people were (are) even more stupid since if they used some brain cells, they’d have just gone further along the platform and found wagons with plenty of space.

So there I was, in the regional train E (in red). Its last stop (3) was perfect since I could catch the right metro and reach my uni. Except that it made its final stop one station before (cf. “2″). Fuck fuck fuck. As I arrived at “3″, I got confused because it’s a big train station (come on, give me some credit: I’ve just spent 2 hours bearing idiots!!), took the wrong metro, blabla, and by the end of the morning I had already spent 2.5 hours in public transports. And as I had to move in Paris twice for different seminaries, I have spent 4 hours in trains at the end of the day.

Unlike what you may think, I remained incredibly (physically) calm during the whole process described above. I think I’ve reached a stage where seeing one more or less idiot won’t change much. I also overheard a woman saying: “I just got out of a brain tumor, so you know, what’s happening here is trivial”. Not saying that everything should be relative, and though I can understand we are all depending on the regional train to work/study etc., nothing can excuse a potential dangerous behaviour.

========

Oh yeah, about the title. I’ve met two perverts. How come I am the one encountering assholes?

- The first one was in his car. He waved at me. I waved back thinking it was one of my neighbours before realizing I didn’t know him. He pulled out, and I thought he needed an information (some “where is X” shit). He asked: “Are you going far?” Yeah, asshole, how far to send you to hell/castrate you?

- The other one was looking at me weirdly in the metro. I had to make a train connection so stepped out, turned on my right (so did he) before I realizde I was supposed to take the opposite direction. And all of a sudden he turned on his left too. Might have been a coincidence, but I don’t care: ERK, don’t you near me!

A walk between the shelves

 

Some libraries of Paris

I thought I could tell you more about Parisian libraries. After May 1968 (the student/cultural revolt), Parisian universities got basically reorganized according to their political orientation. As a result, the big University of Paris got split into 13 autonomous universities. I won’t complain about it (I already whine too much) but what is remarkable is that in rare cases it can become difficult to access some books since only some university libraries possess it. Yes, it is rare, but given I’m unlucky, this has already  happened to me. There’s usually a system of interlibrary loan, but it doesn’t apply to all books (in my case: it didn’t apply to the book I was looking for). I had to resort to a friend who’s a student of German at the University Sorbonne-Nouvelle to borrow the book for me.

Here’s a short list of libraries I’m more or less regulary staying at:

- The BDIC (Bibliothèque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine) has a collection of international archives of contemporary history.
- Malesherbes (where the Department of German Studies of la Sorbonne is located it) contains a nice library of books related to German studies (surprised?).
- The BPI (Bibliothèque Publique d’Informations) is the public (research) library. You cannot borrow anything, but the good thing is that it’s open on Sunday.
- The BIU (bibliothèque interuniversitaire) Sainte-Barbe is located in a nice building. The line isn’t too long, and the plus is that you can borrow books yourself (no need to go to any librarian). But it’s really over-heated, which makes it difficult to stay in for a long while.
- The library of the DHI (deutsches historisches Insitut) is quite calm, not far from my place, and is completely silent. Also, I get to hear people speaking in German outside of the library. The collection is however specialized in history only (and not in literature).

Libraries I should probably go to:

- The BSG (Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève) is supposedly one of the nicest libraries of Paris. I have never set foot in there because the line is always too fucking long.
- The BnF (Biliothèque nationale de France) is THE research library. What I don’t understand though is why they make it so hard for master’s students to access it: a master’s student needs a paper signed by his mentor and also a list of books he’d like to read (it’s impossible to borrow for obvious reasons) and then has an interview with one of the librarians (WTF?). And only then he gets to have a card which enables him to visit the library either 3 days in a row (free), or 15 days (in a row or not) (25 €). They make a future researcher’s life quite hard.

 

It’s a bit draining to have to motivate myself to go to a library since I don’t live in Paris. What I miss is probably libraries open on Sunday and until midnight like the ULB Bonn.

Epopée administrativesque, part 2

A little word of warning for people getting enrolled in bi-national programmes:

Here’s a quick summary of what happened:

1) To get enrolled, we were told/assumed we had to get a certificate stating we completed 60 credits at Bonn University. As we hadn’t gotten our diploma(s) yet, we got a certificate. Sadly, it was written in German so we had to ask for another one written in French.
2) I went to la Sorbonne with all those goddamn documents but the uni was blocked/closed by CRS for fear of some degenerating student demonstration (so we assumed).

So I went back to la Sorbonne another day. We finally got to show all those documents and carefully explained what they meant. The lady said: “This certificate is useless since you already have a paper signed by your master’s thesis mentor. Plus, it is totally unknown to our staff and you may even confuse them.” FUUUUU… We dropped our application and I’m now waiting for an update from my student card (it’s already been a week!).

What’s next?

I’ve “just” graduated from Bonn university (a friend took the diploma for me but I haven’t had the chance to touch it, feel it, and rub it against my body yet) but not from la Sorbonne. Why this delay? We weren’t told to register for courses at our home uni last year since we studied in Germany (surprised?). As we came back, we found out we actually should have in order to create a file under our name at la Sorbonne informatic database. Now people are telling us it’s going to take ages to create a file, enter and convert our German grades in their goddamn database, which is necessary to get our French diploma.

And the latest and most ridiculous news I got today: la Sorbonne’s diploma doesn’t even read “French-German” studies for it never states one’s speciality. I think I’mma murder a bunch of people.

What are the odds of dying of dehydration in Paris?

Parisian libraries and universities take good care of their students and want them to feel cosy. So they providethem with heat. A lot of heat. Because, you know, that’s more fun to face students whose lips aren’t turning blue. They look a tad merrier when sweating.

So it’s always the same story whenever I enter one of those buildings. I start taking my scarf, my jacket and my two pullovers off (except when I’m carrying an ashaming top underneath), take my stuff and my bottle of water, and pray for a) being productive, b) not dying of dehydration.

After a while spent indoors, I obviously need to 1) go out to get some fresh air, 2) complain about smokers blowing their smoke into my face, 3) and pee. And no, I don’t pee while I’m outside. Even though it should be a nice contribution to getting rid of weed.

I BEG you pardon?

Some beggars pretended to be deaf and dumb while I saw (and heard!) them (verbally) speak. Then they came to me and other passengers to ask for money. Incredible.

Today, two children begging in the train around 7:30pm. This is not an uncommun scene, but this is a weird one for sure. The girl seemed to think it was a game. She had quite a mocking tone, asking (if not screaming and laughing) for money, while the boy, following the girl, was having fun: he saw an Asian looking girl, repeated “Nihao” twice while bowing. Yes, sadly incredible.

JINX

Well, seems like I shouldn’t count my chickens before they have hatched. The Sorbonne was closed/blocked today, no one could get into it. OH. MY. FUCKING. ARSCH.

Epopée administrativesque

Once upon a time was a French dork who wanted to spend a year in Germany. She met a lot of people, ate delicious as well as monstruous (all cooked by self) food, showed her true face (read: her hygiene freak side), wrote papers and made bambi eyes to have people proof read them. That was fun. Then she came back home. She was lazy and did everything last minute:

- She ended her Bachelor paper late.
- She sent her paper to get proof read late (and almost experienced a stroke as one of her faithful friends/proof readers let her know he was “absolutely fucking drunk”).
- She found out one day before the deadline that three (bound!) copies of her Bachelor paper were supposed to be dropped at the Prüfungsamt (so she hysterically started  to call and beg her friends from Bonn to print three copies of her work and bind them before droping them at the given service).
- She started and ended another paper right after that.

Then she was supposed to prove to the French administration she was holding 60 credits from Germany so that she could get administratively enrolled. The problem was that her grades took time to appear online. Once she got a full grade report, she realized it was totally useless for it was absolutely ununderstandable for French people (it is too detailed, not to mention that everything, the grading system included, was written in German). So she asked the German administration to send her a certificate stating that she has completed 60 credits. The document came, but was written in German. She and friends had to make a fuss over some French responsibles so that things would work out. The document (in French this time!) finally arrived. And, my dear friends, she’s finally getting enrolled tomorrow, that is after one month of administrative black hole and four days before the registration deadline.

Told you she was good at procrastinating.

———–

Vielen herzlichen Dank an diejenigen, die hier zitiert (oder nicht) sind! Eure Hilfe war mir unentbehrlich!

Orgasm. I meant papillae and taste buds’ orgasm.

“I remember the first time I tasted European chocolate. [...] While waiting for a train I bought a bar of Belgian chocolate from a station kiosk, tore off a bite and, after a moment of startled delight, began to emit a series of involuntary rapturous noises of an intensity sufficient to draw stares from 20 yards away.”
-Bill Bryson, Notes from a Big Country, “Uniformly Awful”

I have just experienced the reverse experience. I am grateful for having food at home, but sometimes I feel hopeless when I open a drawer in the kitchen. One of them contains Chinese manufactured food which aren’t to be found in France. I should be grateful to have such exotic food, but I don’t know what the hygiene and sanitary standards of China are. Despite the claims, some assholes would drop bad stuff in the food: you could die or get severe complications, and you get to be beaten or threatened or sent to jail for having complained (just read more newspapers). Sorry, got sidetracked.

So I opened the drawer, and saw a pack of milk chocolate. I checked the ingredient list: vegetable oil (eww). I frowned, opened the package, tasted a single square. It was so disgusting that *I* even wanted to spit it out. It tasted like… sweet plastic? Anything but chocolate. Even the cheap chocolate I get from cheap stores tastes way better.

Bottom line: Chinese industrial food, EWW.

You make me sick

As if it wasn’t enough to be hypochondriac, to experience contrasting temperatures while commuting and getting into classrooms (humid cold vs. humid hot, SO GROSS), I have to deal with people who cough hard in trains without covering their mouths. They are scary.

This is my last pointless post for October. I’ll think of something more highbrow next time.

Why it’s so awesome to be a lady

…On second thought, no, there’s nothing awesome in being a lady, because you behave weirdly once a month. You can PMS, experience mood swings, become rude for no reason, and most of all, you crave for actually disgusting food (comme ces gaufres dégueulasses dans lesquelles on trouve de gros morceaux de sucre. Je les recouvre de Nutella, en fait, j’en mets tellement que ça devient du Nutella au gaufre).

I have sworn to myself I’d look on the bright side no matter what. Thanks to this new way of life, I experience an extremely, unphrasable, powerful pleasure once a month: I get to gross people out by telling them my uterus life.

If I cannot reach you, I will have you come to me

You know I have developed an interest for languages which are not widely spoken, especially from Northern Europe. Wikipedia articles may be the first step to get an overview of the grammar and similarities between the studied languages, but what is more thrilling is to listen to them. This is more enjoyable for obvious reasons: you can memorize the vocabulary, the structure and the idiomatism of the language more easily and more quickly. This method (among many other ones) works only if you sing along and if you listen to the same song again and again and again until you know the lyrics as the back of your hand. So. Having no life, I’m often browsing for artists who sing not to corny lyrics in their native tongue. It is often challenging and time consuming to find songs which match my tastes since I am very picky (I know, you may not think so).

Just in case you ever wanted to learn or discover one of those languages with the same method, you can use the list of artists I discovered below (note that I don’t appreciate all of their music though I enjoy most of them). This post isn’t a review since I am only roughly characterizing each artists. I beg for forgiveness for lacking of precision and using very cliché terms, but I am no specialist and don’t have a very musical ear. So that the characteristics given aren’t meant to be positive or negative.

———

Danish singing artits

Helene Blum: I discovered her music randomly while flipping through a local magazine as I was in Bonn. She sings traditional folk songs, Christmas songs, as well as her own compositions in a very, very (lemme be clear: VERY) clear and emotional voice (in short: YES, I like her music). She has released two albums so far, En Sød Og Liflig Klang and En Gang og Altid.

Laura Mo mainly sings ballads, but her voice is rather up in the nose. I don’t mind it but some people don’t appreciate it. The lyrics are simple enough to be understood if you know basic Danish.

Sorten Muld sings Danish folk tales which tend to be depressing if you understand them. The composition is original and energic, since it ranges from electronic music to meditative rhythms (as if you were on your own at the top of a mountain). I haven’t listened to many of their songs yet, but my favourite remains Venelite: the Danish musicality is well expressed in it and it does sound sensual!

Under Byen: More experimental oriented. I haven’t listened to it with the attention due yet.

Valravn sings in Icelandic, Faroese and Danish. It may sometimes sound like Björk (especially in Koder på Snor): inflexive voice, instrument arrangement evoking a dream (or a trance?). I mostly like their latest album.

———-

Norwegian singing artits

Gåte was the first group I have found. They sing Norwegian folk tales or poems from Astrid Krogh Halse, either in Nynorsk, Bokmål or in some dialects I can’t determine (I am no specialist!). The music is always very aerial (?) and the voice remains clear.

Kaizers Orchestra is a very famous group in and outside of Norway. It’s basically rock with Balkanic rhythms. I have listened to their album Evig Pint all over and over again in Bonn so that my flatmate couldn’t stand the music anymore. FYI the CD belonged to him.

Helene Bøksle sings in a high pitch voice. Folk songs, songs of her own, and also Christmas songs.

———

Faroese singing artists

Eivør Pálsdóttir: I haven’t listened to her songs carefully. Mainly because I don’t get the chance to understand Faroese.

———

Swedish singing artists

Do I still need to introduce Kent? It’s probably the most famous Swedish singing group outside of Sweden. I don’t like all their songs (the very first ones are too pop for me), but I do appreciate Du & Jag Döden. As the album titles suggest, it deals with death, so that the sound is a bit “heavier” (less pop).

———

Icelandic singing artists

Björk‘s Gling-Gló is a jazz album sung in Icelandic!

Mammút: Two songs of their first release match my tastes, but it’s otherwise too pop for me. It’s also a band composed of very young members (around their 20s I think, if not younger).

Ólöf Arnalds toured with Björk if I’m not wrong. She sounds like Joanna Newsom. Minimalist sound, good vocal. I like it.

Ragnheiður Gröndal sings traditional songs among others (I am not sure though). I really like her voice, but some of her songs sound depressing, as in “I am here to tell you you’re dying”.

Rökkurró is what I am currently listening to. The singer’s high pitch and clear voice is thrilling, the instruments create a good balance between folk, classical and a tad pop sound.

———

Yiddish singing artists

Maria Krupoves: I am currently discovering her so I can’t comment.

———

Lithuanian singing artists

Alina Orlova sings in Lithuanian, English and Russian. She writes poems and sings them if I got it right (cf. Wikipedia). The composition is energic and strong. She has a “rougher” (as opposed to “clear”) voice.

I like it hardcore… please!!

To root out the evil/arracher le mal à la racine.

One sometimes encounters a problem which needs to be solved right away, but one doesn’t always have the courage to take the bull by the horns. So a call to a best friend is made. He’ll come, take his gloves off, face the problem and of course eradicate it.

So, my friends, don’t be too coward when you are dealing with your problems. If you want a smooth skin, don’t shave, don’t use your (electrical) tweezer either. Call your unique, competent best friend a.k.a oriental wax, wait for it to harden quickly on your hairs before you chicken out.

Little known cultures make me high

(I admit I was short of ideas concerning the title of today’s post.)

I’ve been thinking of what I’ve been doing lately. Besides dealing with administrative questions, stressing out over my (non existent) future and being told to fucking calm down, I have realized I have always had an interest for cultures which woud bring me “nothing”  in utilitarist terms.

As I was 13, I started picking books on modern Greek and developped an, erm, obsession about the language. I’ve been learning its grammar rules, the vocabulary, the declensions (and all this damn related accent shift system) etc., then I dropped it because I was short on time and most of all because I don’t like conjugation. Also, I wanted to meet Greek people but you can imagine my disappointment as, well, Greeks tend to be rare around my place (except the one in my basement). I met the first person from Greece last year and she was my Greek professor.

Then I happened to start Danish. I actually wanted to learn Swedish, but the professor told me her class was already full. So I thought of Norwegian – since I have a Norwegian friend – but I didn’t like the schedule. A friend told me about Danish, so I gave it a try. Same thing, an obsession came along.

Now I’m starting Yiddish. I thought I’d learn the language one day, like, when I’d reach my mid-life crisis, but not this year. My mentor told me she was offering Yiddish classes and that I should come. I agreed, felt unendlessly illiterate during the first class, got confused by the print and cursive letters. After spending 2 hours reading sentences like “Serele is in class. Serele says ‘Good morning’”, transcripting a poem from Itzik Manger, etc., I can now recognize each letter and manage to read – very slowly though.

And last culture I’m starting discovering at my own surprise: Lithuanian culture. I am attending a seminar which requires that I spend a certain amount of time in central/eastern Europe. Vilnius enjoys a nice location since it used to belong to Poland, Germany, and the USSR. Also, I bet Vilnius isn’t that well known and hasn’t been invaded by tourists yet.

This post is a bit pointless (congratulation: you’ve just lost 15 min of your precious time). Life is weird, full of good surprises.

Procrastination, the cool way of life

I talked about it with a friend who said we have never slept so little and at the same time have never procrastinated so much. I have also read we sleep way less than previous generations. Why? And what do we do?

1) There are nerds who spend their life reading (more or less interesting) papers, articles, etc. (in my case, I read very informative articles, like Fart Lightning on Wikipedia). With the internet, name any crap you want, you’ll find it. And one crap usually leads to another, especially with all those hyperlinks. We, at least I am a click-omaniac. I refresh my inbox every second.

2) I eat (well, not at home though, there’s no junk food at arm’s reach) then whine about how I shouldn’t have stuffed my face. And then I start reading the ingredient list and whine twice as much if I see hydrogenated fat listed.

3) I spend hours staring at myself in the mirror, either counting all my pimples caused by stress or trying to immitate the poor drowned girl in The Ring.

4) I whine about how much time I’m wasting.