Broken Book

As I am single, having only virtualised friends and living in the most boring city of Germany.........
(Goodness gracious me, was that a pitch-black day when I went to the cityhall to change my passport - I asked the lady to stamp the cities name somewhere where it wouldn't be so eyecatchy...like on the last page for example. However, she refused...).....

.........I somehow slid into becoming a shopaholic. Well, not really - nothing to worry about, but in contrast to my "Oh-Yes-Grandma-You-CAN-Take-Money-Into-Your-Grave"-attitude the frequency of my shoppings has increased to 187% . The interesting thing about my shoppings is that they reveal my despair of being caught in this city and my longing for breaking out and travelling the world again. To exemplify this...since yesterday, I am proud keeper of a glaring red T-shirt showing a Chinese round faced women's figure, surrounded by Chinese letters which hopefully mean something "smart" or at least neutral. Seeing me with this shirt, it is not hard to get my call: "Get Me Out Of Here!"

Further suspicious buys: Goodness Gracious Me, the British TV series dealing with an Indian family living in Britain. This is the best Series ever!

"Oh dear, there were robbers in our house! I wonder, how they could enter - all the windows and doors were closed.."

"Well...maybe...through the cow flap?"

"Through what??? A cow flap? You mean..like a cat flap...but for cows? Cow flap?"

"Yeah, well....you know......Our pet, the cow, she should have the freedom to come in and go as she pleases...."

I don't know what to add - this series is just a fantastic laugh and (coming back to my topic) reveals my affinity to India :) .

Finally, my last buy: Rushdie's Midnight's Children, again something that allows my mind to travel to far away India and forget for the time of reading that I am in the city of B. However, I have to admit that Midnight's Children is not the easiest book I have ever read. Being in the bookstore I couldn't decide between God of small things and this one. I knew both of them won prices and had good reputations, but apart from that I didn't know too much about any of them. Therefore I had to make my choice by other criteria.

Criteria 1:
Title: Which title sounds more interesting and why?
Answer: 1:0 for Rushdie, because I think children shouldn't be outside at Midnight. Thus, I wanted to know Rushdie's opinion. I was sure, he'd give an answer to that. Additionally, I do not believe in God which caused one minus for Arundhati Roy.

Criteria 2:
Design: I did like the God - Design with it's small pink lotus flower. The beige Midnight's cover didn't really appeal to me and I wondered (and still do) how you can chose a light cover if the title inevitably collocates something dark?

Criteria 3:
Reading the first sentences: Midnight's won. Cannot tell why. Just sounded interesting to me.

Criteria 4:
Price: The prices were nearly the same, but regarding that Midnight's has at least twice as many pages as God makes it relatively cheap. Why paying 10 Euros for 200 pages if you can have 650 pages for 12 Euros? I mean...that's usury isn't it? I know it is not the best criteria counting the pages and going for the best page-price-ratio, because it takes a lot of time (especially if you do not have a calculator on hand) and sometimes it's hard to tell where page number one starts...But in my case, the comparison was easy.

Criteria 5:
Do I have the time for reading at all? Well....this criteria would be have been a plus for Gods....but as I had to hurry in order to catch my train I was standing at the counter already before evaluating this (and further) criteria.

Overall evaluation and choice:
No time for a proper evaluation. However, Midnight's won.

Happy with my new book (and being proud to have outweighed all the pros and cons and not just having grabbed anything) I went to the train, took my seat and started reading...

[....]

It took me about 5 pages until I got confused for the first time...

"Am I stupid or does this guy jump back and forward in time? And what do all the '......' mean?"

I did not want to worry too much and I was very optimistic that this would be a pleasure to read. The right travel literature.

Page 9 : "Where the hell are we now? What's happening here? Oh, we are on a boat now...Well, ok...I am flexible....No, I am not surprised or confused...I am deeply enjoying...easy..."

Page 15: "Maybe I should get a pencil and take some notes on the characters and settings...."

Page 20: "Relax, Kangaroo...you can do it!"

Page 28: "Mh...difficult book...well...as mum has always said: 'The most important thing in life is not to understand high literature or belonging to the intellectual circles, no...
The most important thing in life is to be healthy. Fullstop."

Some vague remembrances coming up: "Midnight's children is a very challenging book with special narrative style.......!"

Page 40: "This book is broken. They put the pages together in the wrong order. I want my money back!"
............................................


To be continued......

Forgotten something

Lying in bed yesternight at about 11:03 and 47 seconds pm, something highly important struck my head and I said to myself "You better write that down, because tomorrow you'll have forgotten it". However, my bed was very comfortable. And I am still young (well, at least I feel young whenever I am not at my job teaching the teenies...). If only I would think very very hard, I would remember. I thought about making knots in my tissue - if only I had a tissue on hand....Next, I thought about twisting my fingers in some odd way so there would be no way around remembering the "highly important thing".
As I don't have the time to evaluate the mental procedures while sleeping, I will skip the 8 hours of sleep and come to current situation and the effect of twisting one's fingers in order to remember what you otherwise would have forgotten.
Now, the good news: I DO remember that I have to think of two things.
I do remember, that is has something to do with my job. I am supposed to bring something along with me when leaving my 34qm apartment in about 20 minutes. I know that I will be deeply annoyed and frustrated in case that I forget it...obviously the twisting method works, yeah me. However, this method lacks one tiny thing. It reminds you that there are things not to be forgotten, but it doesn't reveal any contents. Thus, here I am, knowing that I am sitting very close to the "whatever-it-is" and that I will forget packing it and that I will remember as soon as I am close to my work, having no time to return and get the "whatever-it-is". I know that I will be frustrated in about 50 Minutes, banging my head against the wall and cursing for having a brain that is not even worth to be called a sieve and that I will promise myself that I will never ever try again to prove myself that I am a superbrain...
Got to go...without the "whatever-it-is"...
I my fingers- they still feel kind of dumb.

We certainly understand you, Mr.President.....

Wirtschaft ankurbeln

Heute fiel mir auf, dass ich schon lange keine gute Tat mehr getan habe. Daran sollte sich schleunigst etwas ändern. Ich beschloss kurzerhand, dass ich unserem Land etwas Gutes tun wollte. Momentan sieht's in der Wirtschaft zwar garnicht mehr so schlecht aus, aber man könnte ja mal präventiv etwas tun und nicht erst, wenn die nächste Krise ansteht. Ich beschloss also, die Wirtschaft in ihrem Aufschwung zu unterstützen...und ging Shopping.
Ich brauche zwar eigentlich gar keine neuen Schuhe, aber sie sind für einen guten Zweck. Und das Shirt auch...Und das Geburtstagsgeschenk für meinen Neffen sowieso!

Drei gute Taten auf einmal, da geht es mir doch gleich viel besser! Yeah me.

Und wie gesagt - Shirt und Schuhe brauche ich eigentlich garnicht. Aber jetzt, wo ich die Sachen eh habe, da kann ich sie ja auch ab und an mal tragen. Morgen zB. und übermorgen, und wenn XY kommt, dann sowieso, und wenn ich Frau X aus K treffe...und hach ja...die Welt ist schön...

Streitschlichter

Ich sitze gerade an meiner zweiten Staatsarbeit und mir wird mal wieder klar, wieso ich wissenschaftliches Arbeiten nicht mag. Man möchte sich mit einem Problem auseinander setzen und darüber berichten. Dann besorgt man sich Literatur, um sich einzulesen. Dann beginnt man das Lesen, macht sich Notizen. Und relativ schnell ist man verwirrter als zuvor, weil sich die Texte alle widersprechen. Je nach Thema kann es auch mal so sein, dass die Autoren gegeneinander wettern, lästern, schimpfen, jeweils über des Anderen Theorie herziehen....Um das noch deutlicher zu machen, werden die entsprechenden Passagen kopiert und dem Leser a la "sieh hier, so ein Schwachsinn" präsentiert. Dabei sind sie natürlich fest davon überzeugt, dass ihre eigene These die bessere und richtigere ist.
Und ich? Ich versuche die beiden gegensätzlichen Positionen erneut zu vereinen und die beiden Zankäpfel zu beruhigen. "Jeder von euch hat Recht, guys, alles eine Frage der Perspektive".
Ich mische mich eigentlich nicht in den Streit anderer Leute ein -geht mich ja irgendwie nichts an. Am liebsten würde ich schreiben "Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem Thema XY, aber ich halte mich da raus," befürchte aber, dass ich damit nicht die gewünschten credits zusammen bekommen werde. Also muss ich nun doch mal wieder Streitschlichter spielen. Und das ist der Grund, weshalb ich wissenschaftliches Arbeiten nicht mag....

Deeply apologize

First of all, I deeply apologize for the long link of this blog. I didn't mean to get such a long one, but apparently it was unavoidable. Actually, what is worse is that I am blogging again. I should not be here. I should be working. I should not start a new blog again.....CUtomorrow then...