So far, there are 2 new blog posts + photos from Oldenburg.
I'd like to thank blogger.com for everything, it's been a pleasure working with you and best of luck in your future endeavors ;o)
Hasty Post II
Haven't been here a while.... Well, I probably need to call Oxford and have them redefine 'while' in their dictionaries. I have been busy, though, and with pleasant things for the most part.
As a good student, I shall listen to my teachers. For one of them has told me I need to brag more (so that people with lesser cognitive abilities know how awesome I am). So if you don't want to hear about it, feel free to skip this paragraph, but you should read it. My short story (http://www.lidovky.cz/i-treti-rocnik-souteze-v-anglictine-vyhrala-divka-fvj-/ln_kultura.asp?c=A090521_174351_ln_redakce_hrn) placed third in this competition, which is quite prestigious. They announced the results in Marriott, with a great buffet afterwards. Livia Klasova , the First Lady, was present as a special guest, her son as the principal of PORG, one of the organizers. The other organizer that is known to common Czech people is Lidove noviny, the editor of which was present as well.
Moving on the the less bragging part, I took the SAT Reasoning test today. Compared to the practice test I took, the general impression that SAT seems to give to and my anticipations, it was easy. I completed most sections on time or a bit sooner and despite the fact that I made a number of 'educated guesses', I am pretty confident about my answers. My variable section was math, and haven't I 'hereby agreed to the conditions set forth in the Test Booklet and/or on www.collegeboard.com' etc., etc., which include not relating the questions by any means of communication, inlcuding but not limited to blah blah blah, not telling anyone the essay topic until the essay is available online...... I'd tell you more. Hopefully, I don't violate anything or anybody by saying that as I was afraid of the essay topic, the one I got was good. I also dare say I did well on the essay - I have one concrete worry that concerns it, but I was able to provide a fair number of 'concrete examples' to my 'abstract definitions', which is something I usually struggle with. .... less-bragging section, there we go....we'll see when the scores arrive.
I shall now leave you, my imaginary reader, as I need to finish my resolution for OLMUN (starting Tuesday; today represents, however, my last chance to print it), write a paper for school, pack for OLMUN and a track meet I have tomorrow. Plus I plan to go to bed early, since I failed to 'prepare like an athlete and get plenty of sleep' yesterday and today, it's actual sports that I'm 'preparing' for.
Radical Artist's day
Today, we went to a very special event. Maybe some of you, dear and loyal readers, remember that my friends and I made a movie for a competition.... Well, this was a ceremony, where the results for Prague 6 were announced.
It started off quite well and during the coffee break after our movie was shown, we were approached by several people who praised our movie, complimenting us on the theme, plot, editing, music etc.
When our category was finally up, the moderator (Honza Musil) suddenly changed the way the results were announced to starting from the first place (as opposed to the more traditional third-to-first). Well, we didn't win. That was kind of ok - although those fans helped our confidence, we knew that had always been an option. It was the way the host announced it that really pissed us off. He made us look like complete morons: at first, they've said that there are 3 movies in our category, but after announcing the winner, the host said that it was obvious, who has the second place and that it's more like a sympathy award. And that we shouldn't make him call us, but come up ourselves....
Considering it was a 'sympathy award', the prices were pretty good, but we were still pissed off..
Fortunately, my day was to be made better.
Later in the afternoon, I've got a call from Lidove noviny, a co-organizer of a writing competition, telling me that I've been chosen to the final round and should be present at (yet another) award-giving event. It's to take place in the Marriott hotel. Hopefully, I won't get mocked for not being chosen by a small group of anything-but-objective individuals.
Past busy days in a hasty post
thanks to Shippy for this picture
And you, my reader, having read to this point, have been presented with yet another burst of my immense awesomeness, shall be left here. Having seen Caprica, I shall now devote my precious self to my mentoring egotist, one truly handsome cripple.
Morning Out with Mr Obama
With the intention of hearing and seeing Mr Obama, I got up at 2 AM on Sunday. I could've stayed in bed longer, but after Thursday's experience I wanted to give myself enough time to put on my contact lenses. (On Thursday, it took me AN HOUR and I was late for school, I excused myself blaming in on 'trouble with unconditional reflexes'....). This time, I was faster, but still had to wait for my 4:02 tram from Narodni divadlo (I enjoyed the romantic night walk from Podolska vodarna).
I was at the Loretanska entrance at 4:45 AM. There already were about 30 people waiting. I got lucky a little after 5 AM ("nothing good ever happens after 2 AM" -hahaha): Katie, Laura, David and Ben joined me and made my waiting a lot more fun. I actually enjoyed it (not that it's my #1 Sunday morning activity, but it was not what you imagine under 'standing in a crowd for 2.5 hours to move to another crowd for another 3 hours').
The Czech Police made an excellent job (as always) when managing the crowd: after pressing and pushing us here and there as needed to take police cordons in or drive cars in and out, the Anti-Conflict Team took over. The guy who seemed to be in charge stood in front of us (hundreds of people) saying he wants us to step back...
Somewhat before 7 (the time when the crowds were supposed to be let in), some people started demanding being let in first, because they had fliers that said "you are invited". The people who had them were really let in earlier and into a separated section.
Then, when it was finally our turn, we walked in and waited some more. Our main diversion were snipers checking the crowd from roofs and windows around us (dubbed 'ninjas' by a guy standing next to us).
We watched Mr Obama, accompanied by - amongst others - Mr Klaus, enter the Castle on big screens and after they had coffee, he came and gave his speech. Which I liked, but I am too lazy to write about it; I am also sure you watched or read it yourself ;).
Lou Reed & the Radicals
Going to the Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures exhibition in Rudolfinum, Prague had affected me more than I anticipated. I indeed expected to like it. In the days to follow, it had, however, had some unexpected major influences.
Fist off, it made me have a closer look on Lou Reed. After having a long, amazed stare at him, sunglasses and a Coke bottle in one of Warhol's Screen Tests, I'm actually listening to his music while writing this.
More notably to anyone but my iPod, me and my friends have made fun of the program: I really liked the movies, but calling Empire daring, experimental and radical....OK, maybe experimental (no one has done a thing like that before) and daring (publicly showing a movie like that sure is daring), but radical? We went on to how ridiculous the proliferation of the word 'radical' is .
The next 2 days, me and those radical-mocking friends were making a movie for a competition. For lack of a better name we called our group 'Radical Art' and turned the movie in just hours before the deadline (the name of our group and the movie were the two things we were most dissatisfied with). Now it seems that there will be some sort of fancy event for this competition and we will be asked questions of the "What-does-that-name-mean?" sort. Since it obviously came up as a joke, we will hopefully elaborate several seriously sounding theories.)
We Salute You!
Unbelievably lucky as I got, I went to see the AC/DC concert in Prague!!!! Can you think of a better way to celebrate St. Patty's day?
But let me start from the top (considering AC/DC, that would be 1973, so maybe I should've said 'this Monday'). In order to actually see AC/DC, I went to get contact lenses. To a proud capitalist - like myself - this could sound easy, but our beloved 'come, choose, pay and go' doesn't work (or at least didn't work for me) when sticking something right onto your eyeball is involved. Luckily for me, the optician also understood the simplistic beauty of 'do your job and enjoy the money'. Or maybe I'm cynical and she really loves trying to keep people from blinking while inserting stuff into their eyes. Anyway, she was incredibly nice and kept cheering me on. After countless tries, I saw the world bright and sharp without glasses again (after....mm,..well, a loong time). It took me unbelievably more tries (unbelievably more than countless.... go logic!) to be able to take the lenses out and put them back in myself (with the optician navigating).
The next day I got as usual(i.e. 6 AM).... to spend about 40 minutes hopelessly trying to stuck those lenses where they belong (that's into my eyes, if anyone's wondering). I succeeded at the cost of cutting down my breakfast time to one inconveniently approaching zero.
The concert itself was unbelievable, something my poor writing skills can never describe. Something one has to hear and see. They are just amazing, aged 61(Brian), 53(Angus) 56(Malcolm), 59(Cliff) and 54(Phil), they gave a 2-hour performance full of pure rock'n'roll damnation, which nobody wanted to end. The band rocked their hearts out and we wanted to stay on the highway to hell forever. I could go on for hours, talking about the video that the show started with, me and the guy sitting next to me jumping from our seats to shout that we are back in black, dynamites and that we win the fight, that we salute to those about to rock. Which was the last thing we got to shout, because after "We salute you, Prague" the band left the second and final time, leaving the fans nothing to complain about. Unless you'd have preferred Czech flag to the AC/DC logo as it appeared on Angus' underpants during his traditional striptease......
Looking like I've cried all night was definitely worth it. ;)
Dolomiti Superski
Firstly, we didn't get to ski as much as we expected and wanted due to bad weather. First 2 days were amazing, but then it fogged up and stayed that way for 4 days. The first two of these we skied, but it wasn't really enjoyable (you have no idea where you are and where the slope is.....). The following 2 days, the resort was closed because of bad conditions (now accompanied by avalanche danger, since it had snowed heavily). The last day of or stay, the sky cleared up but it was rather windy. And an avalanche fell on the slope.
But my brother has come up with some exiting scientific ideas. Although my personal inclination goes the other way, I have to admit that avalanche power plant is a much better idea than, say, a fish night light (shh, a million $ idea).
When he shared his idea with us (sitting on a chairlift), he looked like he was expecting a delegation from Sweden announcing his Nobel Price nomination to be waiting for him up the hill. He also absolutely ignored our lack of faith in his project and turned down every objection we made (sample dialogue: "you're gonna built a super expensive power plant and hope that an avalanche will come exactly where you built it" - "I'll make it moveable").
I have also collected some data that contribute to my 'never get married' theory. I shared a king-size bed with my mother and that is as close to marriage as I shall ever get. The selfish need for OWN BLANKET outweighs everything.
me, the trip-to-Sweden expectant and beautiful mountains
The Postcard Conflict
Having sent about a dozen postcards in the past few days, my old theories about postcards have reemerged. Every time I go somewhere, I promise to send about a dozen postcards and I usually keep my word, but the process is very painful. Schoolwork (like a 30-minute presentation or a 4-page book project) is ridiculously facile compared to a few-line postcard.
Nobody has been able to explain to me what the whole point of writing something was. I would assume that the picture is enough. The recipient gets an idea of where you are, and you can relate all the funny stories later (they are usually too long to be written on a postcard anyway). The recipient is also not interested in facts, statistics or anything of this sort; even if it relates to the place you're at, and even if they would get a better picture of the place, it's at least unusual to give a full weather report as it is on dolomiti.it or elsewhere (not to mention, the postcard is too small for that as well). Whoever reeds a postcard is looking for a subjective evaluation. That's where the problem comes from.
Basically, you have two options: "it rocks" and "it sucks", both of which suck. Whichever you choose, you can't avoid an outcome rather unpleasant for the reader. With the "it rocks" option, what you tell them is "hey, this is awesome, I'm enjoying this wonderful place while you're at school/work". Once you realize this, you try to make your wonderful vacation look a bit less amazing, but what you get is about: "hey, I know that you're currently laboring over spreadsheets and your boss is a stubborn bitch, but this vacation totally sucks, we have only a 3-course dinner and thai massages are extra".
However, I acknowledge the romantic nostalgia of hand-written (and therefore almost unreadable) cards as opposed to facebook/flickr albums and e-cards. In some weird, twisted self-torturing way, I like sending postcards. So please, approach them with understanding and forgiveness, you will be rewarded another upsetting piece of my scribble soon.
Birthday 'party'
It's my birthday party today. I should, however, specify the term 'party': it's a birthday party with my family. Agenda:
1) Grandmas and grandpas come for lunch
2) Grandmas and grandpas give presents
3) Lunch
4) Aunties, uncles and cousins come and give presents
5) Cake, coffee and tea
During 1), 2), 3), 4) and 5): (mostly) grandmas gossip about people the rest of attendees never heard of (apart from grandmas' gossips from last week).
My granny got me a golden necklace. As my mother told her, I can't stand wearing things on my neck and I don't like gold. Obviously, it didn't stop her and along with the necklace, I've received a lecture about the value of gold and how I'll come to like it as I grow older. And that she likes gold. I told her that I don't give her punk records and was right about to say that she should've saved it and give to me when I turn 40, but my mother stopped me. This is a family get-together, neither constitution, nor international pacts apply: there is no such thing as freedom of speech, regardless of being assessed as adult by the law. At least I can drink.
!??
It's my 18th birthday today - the one I've been waiting for for so long; there I am, drinking age - but I don't feel like celebrating.
My father, whom I made fun of in the previous post, died in a car accident this Tuesday. Suddenly, I'm no longer pondering what my first legal beer would be (I have been preoccupied with this idea for months). Being at home makes me cry again and again, being away feels strange.
I can get focused on something else and then I'm probably as OK as I can possibly be, but occasional thought makes it through often.
Quality of underaged's life
Since my parents' time is running out, they've decided to improve the quality of my life by making me clean my room. For real, this time. The carpet doesn't stop being a part of your room just because it is under a table.
Let's admit that this isn't an extraordinary situation, I've been through an enormously large number of such situations and I'm sure that so have you, if you have parents.
This time, real changes were about to be made - a new cupboard was to replace plastic IKEA boxes (stuffed with Lego, one-legged dolls, etc. - the usual possessions of a student approaching her adulthood ;) ). A change, which I have agreed to. Mea culpa. Mea freaking most-culping culpa.
Time setting is essential to fully understand the story. The plans were made during Christmas break and by its end, my father got all the material. With the end of the semester approaching, I told him to wait, because I knew I wouldn't have time.
A week later, late Friday afternoon, I came home as usual to find my room --- well, I won't go into much detail but all the clothes from my wardrobe were piling on my floor, desk, chair and bed. Turns out it was necessary to move the wardrobe about an inch to the side to fit the new cupboard in (yes, it was made, and yes, it was in my room). So my father threw the clothes out and put the cupboard in it's place leaving the empty wardrobe in the middle of my room to considerately consult a minor change he suggested was made on the wardrobe.
All this on the Friday of the weekend during which I was an embodiment of the "Studying = student + dying" equivalency. Thanks, dad.
IF YOU DO NOT LIKE HAPPY ENDINGS, STOP READING NOW!!!
P.S.: To give this story a happy ending:
1) I have survived studying (I'm not sure about coping with them but since this moment hasn't come yet, I'm still here).
2) As I already suggested, my parents are running out of time...... Sweet February 6 is just behind a corner
Jan 1, 2009
As the end of the year approaches, (not only but most significantly) media create an overwhelming excitement and expectation that this is THE END of certain period and everything will be different, starting Jan, 1. I've never understood this all-of-a-sudden-Make-a-resolution!ness, and have never been surprised by the inevitable subsequent forget-your-resolution-and-go-back-to-the-old-you-you've-swore-you-hatedness that usually starts around Jan 15 of the same year.
Another New Years Eve's feature that's been eluding me is the irresistible need to get all orally transmitted infections that are currently present amongst the population of your county. Perhaps it's the desire to lengthen the Christmas holiday or a part of fulfilling the "spend less money on medication by naturally-earned stronger immunity" resolution.
To be honest, however, I should admit that I too have taken part last night. I was wise enough to not make a resolution, but I did kiss a considerable number of people. At least I can blame it on gin and tonic. Champagne. Cinzano.Wine. The first Cuban of my life.....Happy new year everyone!
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