Hay Fever

Yesterday I must have sneezed over two hundred times. I’m not exaggerating, at one point I didn’t stop sneezing for about ten minutes. Afterwards my mother asked me why I was so snappy and easily angered. I snapped at her.

I don’t think anybody that doesn't have allergies can understand how frustrating it is to have allergies. They think ‘what are you complaining about, sneezing isn’t that bad!’ no it isn’t, when you only do it twice, but I can promise you that it becomes an absolute living nightmare when you do it quite a bit more. It’s exhausting. You can compare it to having a niggling cold that won’t go away for a whole season (three to four months, for those uninitiated in the season thing).

And the thing is, I haven’t had any allergies for seven years. Seven years! I thought ‘I’ll probably have outgrown it by now’ and how wrong I was. I just wish that I’d picked up some anti-histamine when I left India. There it was cheap, you didn’t need a prescription and it was available everywhere. Here I basically need to first get insured (which is expensive) then go to a doctor (which is expensive) who will then forward me to an allergy doctor (which is expensive) after which I can finally go to the pharmacy to get my drugs (which is expensive). Yes, I get the last three back, but only in a few months time. My money problems aren’t in three month’s time, they are right now.

And spring is my favourite season! It’s the season I missed most when I was away (If I had a choice, I’d live in a place where the weather constantly fluctuates between spring and summer).

To add insult to injury, all the people around me seem to be completely allergy free. They don’t even know what anti-histamine is. All, except my girlfriend, but she was an hour and a half away by train yesterday, which isn’t really a distance you can just go and travel to stop sneezing.

I just know it’s one bleedin’ plant that grows just here in Holland that I can’t stand; one plant which is trying to kill me. I’m convinced that as soon as I hit anywhere else it won’t be a problem anymore – it just grows in Holland.

Another argument against the Netherland. That makes four; the language, the assumption that all Dutch people make that they know everything better, the weather and that one plant that gives me allergies. Let’s hope it stays at four, because otherwise I might start doubting my decision to come here.

Dutch as a Second Language

You cannot imagine how frustrating it is to have to speak Dutch again. Let me try to find an apt metaphor; maybe you could describe it being a young child and suddenly hitting puberty. Your body changes and grows awkward, your voice doesn’t respond properly and you suddenly lose all that grace that you’ve gained over the last ten years. Suddenly you have no confidence, no faith and feel clumsy. That’s a pretty apt metaphor.

The problem is that people expect me to speak Dutch because I am Dutch originally (actually, I kind of expect it from myself as well, so it’s double up) it doesn’t matter that I’ve lived outside for 2/3rds of my life; I am Dutch, so I shall speak Dutch. I’m actually in a worse position than people that come here speaking no Dutch, at least they can get away for a long time with speaking English and nobody will hold it against them.

Gone is my quick wit, gone is my confidence, gone is my ability to argue anybody under the table, gone is my faultless language control. Instead I now know how people that aren’t good with words feel every day. That’s probably a good thing, now I understand how others feel when I drill them into the ground with my words and my scorn; but that doesn’t help me find a job!

Long term good, short term bad. If I can survive the short term (which might be a bit of a challenge, as my money is certainly not increasing) then ultimately I’ll gain a great deal from this. I’ve got to keep that in mind every time I bumble with the language to keep my spirit up, ‘one day soon I’ll be able to speak two languages at near perfect level. If I survive now then later I have yet another skill.’ It’s like a mantra that I repeat before I go to sleep. Some people meditate, I promise myself I can speak Dutch soon. No, not really, but it would make for a good story!

Memories

The party sucked. I was the only person there from my year and I only slightly recognised one other person. All in all there was maybe a grand total of 50 people there, which is pretty pathetic if you consider that 200 students have graduated every year since 2001 and there’s 600 people at the school right now. In other words, less than 2% of the people showed up.

Being back in Utrecht was fun, though. I had an hour before the party started, so I drifted through a couple of streets and sat at a couple of bars. I visited the place where I had my first job after college and had two beers there (one on the house), I also saw my favourite donor Kebab place was still there – unfortunately I was still full from dinner so I had to forgo feasting there, but it was nice to know it still existed.

They layout of the town is still imprinted on my memory. I still knew where streets led and where turnoffs went. As I wandered around memories kept popping to the surface, stirred loose by buildings and sights I didn’t even remember I knew and now suddenly had whole histories associated with them again. The Thai restaurant where I learned to eat spicy food; the place I discussed throwing bricks in glass houses; the shop I bought all my books; the hot chocolate place where we discussed all our plans, none of which seem to have come to fruition.

The funny thing is, when I walked through Frankfurt it wasn’t the same. I didn’t have all these memories resurface. Is it because it was too long ago, or was my time in Utrecht just more intense? Utrecht is certainly a great deal prettier than Frankfurt. I’d forgotten how pretty Dutch cities could be. I’m surprised no more non-pot smoking tourists come to the Netherlands. You’d think more people would be fascinated by the visible history in places like Amsterdam and Utrecht. There you can see what a few hundred more years of history and a good preservation policy can mean for a place.

I think it’s probably the weather. The prettiness in Holland is so dependent on the weather and the weather is, unfortunately enough, so undependable that a whole holiday can be largely ruined because the weather gods temperamental tantrums.

It’s the same for people that live here, as well. I continue to believe that one of the primary reasons I ran away all those years ago is the weather – while I pray I was wrong.

Networking

Tonight I’m going to Utrecht for the first time since I’ve been back. There’s a party there for the University College Utrecht, which I attended oh so many years ago and I think that it’s a good idea for me to attend. The annoying thing is that the party only starts at 23:00 at night, which means I won’t be making it home till very early in the morning. I’m not really looking forward to that part. Actually, to be completely honest, I’m not looking forward to the entire party.

Still, I’m going. Why am I going to a party that I don’t really want to go to and that I’ll have trouble getting back from? As the title suggests, because of networking. I need to spread my tendrils through Dutch soil; as even out here it is all about who you know.

Some would call that a very bleak world view; with me being amongst them. Going to a party simply for the people you might meet there and the help they might offer you is a rather un Kantian (I think it’s Kant) view of the world around us. Some would argue that it’s the height of not seeing a person as an end, but rather as a means to an end, which is – as Kant tells us – immoral.

So why do I engage in an activity that could be seen as immoral? Well, first of all very few people still really follow the Kantian model of ethics. In fact, very few people even know about the Kantian model of ethics, which isn’t really any sort of argument against the model (It’s probably even fallacious!) nonetheless, it seems a bit pointless to follow an ethical model that is largely unknown and ignored.

What is more, as most realists understand, you can’t always do good if you want to get anywhere in life. When I went to university I was an idealist and boy, did that ever get in the way! Sure, it’s important to have ideals, but that’s quite different from being an idealist. Being idealistic is, in many ways, being naïve. The world doesn’t work as it should, it works as it does.

And networking is a part of that. We must somehow lay the connections throughout the fabric of the society we live in to get the things done that we want to. We can’t see every person we meet as an end in and of themselves because we simply do not have the time. We can’t consider the shopkeeper as a person, or the garbage man (person?). Hell, the police officer doesn’t even want to be seen as a person, as that undermines his or her role as arm of the law (I’m not quite sure why I suddenly went all PC either).

Networking is, in that case, not as bad. At least you try to make a connection with a person, even if the reason for that connection is simply that it makes it more likely that you’ll help each other later, when help is needed. That basically raises another one of those ethical conundrums, should we consider the action or the thought behind the action?

No, I really can’t think about another fundamental philosophical concept today, so I’ll just leave it at where it is. Kantian ethics is nice and good and it can be considered deeply while we’re practicing our armchair philosophy, but can't really be lived.

Cultures

I’m doing alright, thanks for asking. Things are moving along. I don’t yet have work, I don’t yet have my own house and I haven’t yet handed in application for university, but all three are progressing. I was offered one house (I turned it down, it wouldn’t have worked out), updated my CV, sent it out, put it online, got registered in Amsterdam, got a bank account and got in contact with the department in the university that I want to attend (they responded very positively when I told them my situation).

Is it enough? No, not really. I really should be doing a great deal more; but I’m having a bit of trouble getting back into the swing of things. Why? (and this an explanation, not an excuse) I think it’s partially down to getting settled back into ‘normal’ life and partially Culture Shock.

Seven years is a long time. I really have been Asianised in the time I was gone. It’s so strange, when I went out to Asia there were a lot of occasions where people tried to explain to me that how I was behaving was, I'm not exactly sure how to put it, out of sync. I argued at length with them about the why and the what, trying to find out why they thought their way was better. Now I come here and I’m on the other side of the equation. I suddenly understand what those people were telling me when I came out to Asia.

But I’m speaking too abstractly, let me give an example. When I first went out to Asia I was all about honesty, straightforwardness, telling it as it was and speaking my mind (yes, they’re pretty much all the same thing, but it looks much more impressive this way) I was, at that time, confronted with an attitude of lies, half-truths and cowardice.

Now I come back with an attitude of live and let live, avoiding judgement, leaving people in their values and avoiding negative emotions. I am now confronted with an attitude of rudeness, intrustiveness, asocial behavior and holier than thou attitudes.

Two different ways of viewing the same thing; neither of them wrong, but both of them together can cause a lot of problems. Ultimately, of course, this will make me even better at interacting with different nationalities, cultures and peoples. It will give me the ability to manage situations that others can't even understand. For now, though, I'm left with a culture shock and having to adapt once again.

The Basics of Evolution

I met one of those people who doesn’t believe in evolution again. I was a bit stunned, as for me not believing in evolution is like not believing in gravity. I’ve kind of taken to not even trying to explain it anymore, because there are only two reasons why people don’t believe in evolution and those are religion and ignorance (often both at the same time). Arguing with the first is pointless (as they can’t accept evolution since it is at complete odds with their faith) while argueing with the second is a waste of time, as anybody that says they don’t believe when really they don’t understand is really somebody I’d be better off avoiding.

Still, as you might well know I have a tendency to break my own rules (after all, everything I believe will probably be proven wrong at some point in the future) so here I’ll again try to explain the basics of evolution.

First off, evolution is something that works over a very, very, very, very long time. It does not happen in one life time, it doesn’t happen in ten life times, in fact it only happens in thousands of life times. That’s the point. Only when you have that kind of time can evolution take place. The reason for this is that evolution is all about miniscule changes that you barely perceive per generation. It was not that one generation there were monkeys and the next there were people. We are very, very distant relatives of monkeys (for one thing, they didn’t stop evolving either).

Consider a photocopying machine. Every time you make a copy, it is a little bit different from the generation before; a slightly different angle, a slightly different colour, etc. We are copies of our parents (a little bit from one, a little bit from the other) with a very, very small chance of mutations (no copy is ever perfect). The amount of mutations is really, really tiny – so tiny that none of our own copying mechanism compare. Still, it happens. These mutations are generally harmful and the unfortunate child doesn’t replicate, or replicates a great deal less than its generation mates; but on occasion there’s a helpful mutation (a little faster, a little stronger, a little smarter, a little bigger, you get the idea).

These mutations make the fortunate receiver a little fitter (remember that expression, survival of the fittest?) and as a result they get more than their generation mates and therefore are able to have more children than their generation mates. Those children that also get this mutation (not all them will, a little from the mother, a little from the father) will also be a little better than their fellows. As a result the mutation spreads, at the expense of the original, un-mutated version of the species.

Of course, the advantage is very small and therefore can take many thousands of generations to spread through the whole population. That’s why there’s different versions of the same species – especially if the two versions of the species were separated.

Which brings us to the next part of evolution – a new species is formed when two originally same species populations are somehow split (mountains, distance, rivers, what ever) and evolution is allowed to work on both independently. First off, not the same mutations will happen (mutations are random) and secondly, their environment might be different, which would mean different mutations would deliver different advantages (for instance, seeing far would be much more useful on the savannah than in the forest). Slowly these mutations accumulate, until the two original groups have changed so much they can't even mate with each other anymore.

So why can’t we find some in between monkey man? Well, in all probability because we’re an incredibly aggressive species and have long since eliminated the competition. Monkeys have evolved into their own niche, where we don’t feel greatly challenged, but any species that tries to occupy the same niche as we occupy (ground dwelling omnivores with a preference for the savannahs) will have to compete with us - Winner takes all. Apparently it was us that won.

Also, if we would have come into existence slowly all over the world, then there would probably be more versions of intelligent, upright walking creatures; but we only came out of one place, Africa. So there was really only space for once species, us. Of course, there was another species much like us, the Cro Magnon – but they all seem to have kicked the bucket as well.

Another mistakes is to think that evolution has stopped. It hasn’t. We are not the peak of evolution, we are not the end result that evolution was aiming for. All species that exist on this world today are equally as evolved as we are. Evolution has spent just as much time on them as it has on us. They just have different tools than us.

And don’t think that we’ve got the best tools, either. There might be a lot of us, but ultimately it isn’t about how many are around now, but about who sticks around the longest. We’ve been around for a very short time and at the rate we’re going, we won’t be around much longer. In fact, if you really want to know what is possibly the most ‘advanced’ on the planet (as in, it would survive the best what ever happens and is therefore the fittest) it would be the humble (and hated) cockroach.

Now I can tell you more, but I’ve already well overshot my normal length. Instead I advise you to read Richard Dawkins’ book ‘The Selfish Gene’ and if you’ve read that, that and still aren’t convinced by evolution, then we’ll talk.

PS: Please don’t let the fact that Richard Dawkins wrote the book ‘The God Delusion’ influence your decision to read ‘The Selfish Gene’. First off all, that book was written now and the Selfish Gene nearly twenty years ago; secondly it’s the message that matters, not the messenger.

PPS: 'The Selfish Gene' is possibly one of the best written books I've ever read, in case you're worried about that. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it really taught me a great deal. If I could write like Richard Dawkins, I'd be happy as a writer.

People programming

I’m currently reading the book ‘Critical Mass’ by Philip Ball (yes, the philosophical musing is back. And you thought it had gone for good!) which is all about how physics can be applied to human society. Brilliant idea and very well written – though I do put that up with a warning, the first 100 pages or so are all about statistics which many people might find a bit of a drag.

Today I’m going to talk about one element of what he’s spoken about so far. A group of scientists, under the direction of Helbing and Molnár, created a very simple computer program in which simple simulations (called peploids by the author) follow a set of simple rules. These are such rules as ‘don’t get too close to other people’ and ‘move from A to B’ (or B to C and so forth) then these peploids are released in an environment and watched.

The interesting thing is that despite the fact that these things have a great deal fewer ideas running through their simple little programming, the way they move through their environment is very similar to how we ourselves move. For example, if a simulation is made of a corridor with a doorway, the peploids seem to follow a similar burst like pattern as we ourselves do (first a group from this side, then a group from the other side).

This set me thinking about how complex our personal movement actually is. We might think we apply a great deal of consideration and ethical reasoning (letting other people go first, not pushing, etc.) to how we move around, but if such a simple simulation can mimic us so exactly, then do we really do all that we believe we do?

In other words, this helped me once again call into question our supposed sophistication. We believe we’re terribly sophisticated (we have to, as we need to sustain our exaggerated self importance) but are we really? Isn’t it perfectly believable that some of our genetic ‘programming’ is in fact incredibly simple, for the obvious reason that there just never was any need for it to become more complex? We follow this programming blindly and it serves us perfectly well, yet in our minds we’re tempted to add all this non-existent complexity so as to maintain the illusion of our own supposed superiority.

Where else can we see this sort of behaviour? I’m actually asking that, because I haven’t given that part a great deal of thought yet. It might be seriously worth giving some thought, though; as finding other areas were we operate far simpler than we believe would possibly offer some immense opportunities. What kind of opportunities? Well, obviously in terms of sales it would be very interesting. By designing an environment to take advantage of people’s inherent programming we could increase sales and profit. It might also be very interesting in terms of politics and social cohesion (though, obviously, that would be something for the government to look at – I very much doubt they’re going to listen to me.)

And what about the ethics? Some people might object that it is unethical to use people’s inherent programming to ‘manipulate’ them into behaving contrary to what they might naturally be inclined to do. Obviously, I don’t agree. It is a person’s responsibility to be as well informed as possible and avoid allowing others to have an advantage of them by ways of their physiology and psychology. If they let themselves be manipulated, then I believe responsibility lies largely with them. A good analogy would be the law: Ignorance of the Law does not protect you from the law. Ignorance of your inner workings does not mean others shouldn’t use it against you. It is your job to know your own mind; conscious and unconscious.

Face 2 Face

I just found out about this project that's going on in Israel and Palestine. It's caled 'Face 2 Face'and it's a sequence of pictures put up on walls showing Palistinians and Isrealies pulling funny faces. Their idea is that humour will help the two sides find peace.

Not only is it a good idea, but the pictures are also beautiful. Check it out.

What Motivates Me?

The last few weeks have been spent thinking deeply about what motivates me for the obvious reason that I needed to tell the people at the university exactly that and if I have to tell them, well then obviously I have to know.

The problem is that I’m pretty sure that the answer I came up with, self improvement, will not go down too well with the board; for the simple reason that they’ve probably heard it a hundred times before and didn’t believe it the first time they heard it, either.

Which is bloody annoying, because in my case I actually realy do mean it. My life ambition has become self-improvement, with the underlying ambition of being recognised for my accomplishments. Of course, that you really, totaly and absolutely can’t write in your letter of motivation. It’s a bit like them asking ‘why do you want to work for our company?’ and you answering ‘because I want money, your money specifically.’ I can think of worse things to say (e.g. I want to get close to you so that I can sleep with your daughter, wife and/or dead grandmother) but not many.

So why does it matter that I don’t want to tell them something they’ve heard a hundred times before? Isn’t it a good idea to go with the tried and proven? Well, no. I can’t play it safe as I don’t actually qualify for their study. If I play it safe they’ll pick somjebody else who played it safe who does actually qualify.

So I have to hit them with a whopper of a letter that makes them think, ‘hey, maybe we should invite this guy in for a talk’. Once I’ve accomplished that, I’ll be that step closer. From there it will be just a matter of talking my way inside (yes, just. It might not be just, but I’d rather worry about one thing at a time (well, twenty things, I’m also worried about not having a job, not having a bank account, not having a house, not being registered in Holland, not having a great deal of money and what I’m eating for dinner; but that’s not what I’m writing about in this post – stop distracting me!))

And now you’re expecting me to tell you how I’m going to do that. I would tell you, but unfortunately I don’t know yet. I wrote one recomendation letter, but it was turned down by two ‘editors’ so I’ve been forced to do it again. Once I’ve got a result, I’ll be sure to share it with you all (once it’s got me inside, that is).

Good weather, good mood

I’ve moved house. Originally I was staying at my mother’s friend’s house (with my mother, who was here for a few days; it was very nice) now I’m staying with my sister. Here too I can’t stay too long and after that I’ve only got one willing family member left (my aunt). I better hurry up with finding myself a place to stay.

The weather is beautiful and this is a good thing. For the rest, things could be progressing a little faster but I’m relatively positive about my future. Amsterdam is a fantastic city, with friendly people who are always willing to have a chat and those chats will very frequently lead to good advice, help or at least a better mood.

There’s one thing that’s a bit of a drag. A few weeks ago I spoke about somebody that was occupying a great deal of my thinking time. I’ve since met her in Rotterdam (where she lives) and we’ve fallen for each other even more. That is, of course, a good thing. Her living in Rotterdam, on the other hand, is a bad thing. So close, yet still too far!

I’m sure later on it will be easier to live apart, but right when you just start a relationship having to be apart isn’t very much fun at all. Yes, it’s a lot easier to get my work done, but no I don’t really want to be doing my work. I just want to go to Rotterdam!

Can’t have everything. Actually, can’t have a lot of things. I’ve got somebody that I care about and she cares about me; that really should be enough.

Of course, nothing is ever enough. That’s the nature of man.

I imagine some of you are still a bit stunned about the word ‘relationship’ that suddenly just popped into my text above. Even more so, i imagine, for my regular readers seeing as only a few weeks ago I wrote an entry about how I wasn’t in anyway ready.

I wasn’t.

Unfortunately matters of the heart don’t let your head decide them (I’ve discussed that often enough already). No, you still can’t trust emotions, yes I’m still of the opinion that they are geared towards a life style that is completely different from ours, but damn it certainly feels good to feel good.
That is, of course, why we get into so much trouble with our emotions. That sounds rather pesimistic, doesn’t it? And that on such a beautiful day when I’m so positive.

Happy-go-lucky is going to be my motto for the next few weeks. As that’s most certainly the best way to get what you want. I need people to help me and people most certainly help those people more whose energy they like. Stay positive and everything will work itself out.

Yes, I’ve been to the gym two times in the last two days. Can you tell?

Bumpy

And then things start going wrong. They have to, of course. Things always go wrong when you just arrive in a new place. Yet it still remains frustrating when it happens. This one’s an interesting one.

I can’t get a bank account until I have a house where I’m registered; I can’t get a phone until I have a bank account and it’s rather hard to get a home (or a job) without a place for people to call. I can’t register a new phone on my mother’s or my sister’s account, because neither of them have bank cards (weird, but true) and I can’t get a pre-paid because me phone is completely flat and my charger is lying in Germany.

Hmmm…

Of course my mother didn’t tell me she didn’t have a Dutch bank card. I assumed she had one and she assumed that because we’re all part of the EU a German card would do. Both reasonable assumptions, but both wrong. We spent an hour and a half deciding on what deal would suit me best, before we discovered the error of our ways. The lady in the shop tried to do it with the German card, but alas, no bananas.

I also discovered that the course I want to get into in university requires a GPA 0.3 higher than I had first thought, which puts me firmly out of reach. Of course, the that doesn’t mean I can’t attend (seeing as it’s seven years ago that I did attend, so hopefully there’s some scope for extenuating circumstances), but that didn’t help terribly much either.

My mood, as you might suspect, is a bit down once again. Hopefully that will all resolve itself this evening as one thing I did discover is an affordable gym (I’ve really noticed I crash damned hard if I don’t go to the gym regularly anymore – which basically means I’m now addicted to exercise. Well, I guess there are worse things to be addicted to).

Fight the dip is what I keep telling myself. There’s no time for self-pity or depression now. I have no job, nor much else to fall back on. Keep on going and find solutions. After all, all the problems so far are not that difficult to solve.

I’m just worried that with so many problems already looming, what more is going to come along? These are all problems that I could see coming and there’s always at least one major problem that you don’t see coming. What, I wonder, will that be? I guess we’ll see.

Fight the dip – find the strength. Hopefully if I can just keep telling myself that, the next time I look up I’ll be out the other end.

Somehow I doubt it.

Queens Day

Queens day, or ‘Koninginnendag’ in Dutch, has to be one of the best festivals to be found around the world; though, admittedly, a bit of nationalistic pride might play a factor in that. Anyways, I got to celebrate it once again and had a blast. The city of Amsterdam flooded with an extra 500,000 people (which isn’t bad, considering that the city has only just over a million people itself). That isn’t as many as the last time I was here, eight years ago, but then it didn’t go half as wrong this time as it did that time.

The last time I was here the MA (military police) got pulled out because the trains were no longer driving and the people were pissed and charged the stations. Of course at that time there were only fifty cops to stop about 50,000 protesters – so they pulled out the tear gas. I somehow got stuck in the middle of that (and tear gas really sucks, I can tell you that!). No, I didn’t get out of the city that night, instead I had to crash at a friendly professor’s house. Nice guy, by the way.

This time around nothing like that happened – though admittedly it did rain a bit – and instead we just walked around, watched thousands of people (most of them drunk, stoned, off their heads or all three) drank beers, walked, met friends, met family and generally had a great time (except for the bit where I was scared my fingers were getting frost bite.)

Queens day is brilliant, as it’s basically is a free festival where the best Dutch musicians (and a few foreign ones) play everywhere around the city. There’s DJs, Dutch folk singers, internationally renown (Dutch) bands and even the occasional foreign talent (yes, even outside of Holland the Dutch Queens day is semi-famous).

And you know what? Quite a number of people started speaking to me in English asking if I was a tourist. At least they asked – that means they weren’t quite certain if I was Dutch or not. It could have been worse, but the general take on my nationality seems to be Italian or Spanish. I don’t have any Italian or Spanish in me and, unless I need some transplant, I hope never to have any either (straight, I’m sorry).

And that was Queens day. Brilliant. Already looking forward to the next one. Hopefully some of you can join me for that one. You’re more than welcome to!

What to do

So of course, you’re all expecting me to tell you what I think of Holland. Well, tough. I’m going to wait a little bit longer and make up my mind good and proper. There are two reasons for this: One, I don’t feel it’s fair to make a judgement yet, considering I’m in a city where I haven’t been before and Two: I don’t feel like talking about it yet.

So instead I’m going to talk about my poetry and what I’m trying to do with it. Over the last week and a bit I’ve edited through about ten of my poems. I like them rather a lot. Most people think I’m terribly odd and move away from me a little bit after reading one. Fortunately, not everybody; a sculpture friend of mine was so inspired by one of the poems I sent him that he made a sculpture and entered it into a gallery. Interestingly enough, it has my name on it and I haven’t even seen it yet. Odd. But my name will be in the paper.

Now I’m trying to figure out what to do next with my stuff. It’s damned unfortunate that there is no way to make money from just poetry. It would be a great deal less unfortunate it I didn’t need money right now (then I could just do it for fun), but since that is my most pressing concern, I really shouldn’t be spending as much time as I am working on it. Still, I can’t help myself, I’m currently driven in that direction and where my drive goes, I have to follow.

So what that means is that I have to figure out some way to potentially actually make some money out of my weird as poetry. I’ve thought about publishing a collection, but that really isn’t going to go somewhere. The answer, I believe, is making a compilation that is more than just my weird ass poetry. I need to create something that is poetry and more.

So I want to see if I can find artists that want to help me create something more than just poetry. Maybe a coffee table book of imagery associated with my poetry - or a short, very abstract film that is based upon my poetry.

Yes, you’re right; I don’t really have an idea yet. I do have a course of action planned out, however. I’m going to immerse myself in other people’s are (i.e. visit modern art museums, watch plays, read books, etc.) and see what ideas they’ve come up with and, when I chance upon a good one, steal it!

That would be the easy route, the slightly harder (and far more likely) route will be that I will find a number of ideas and fuse them together into something; hopefully something new.

Here’s one out to all of you that actually read this blog: If you know anybody that’s interesting in working together on something with me, I’d be very happy if you could alert me. I think the more artists I can find to work with, the more likely something good will actually come out of what I’m doing.

I need to give something back and the best thing I can give back is my thoughts.

Last Thoughts

If everything goes according to plan (and hopefully it should) I’ll be hitting Holland tomorrow evening. So, here go my last thoughts for my seven year sabbatical from my country of origin.

The first question: Am I ready to go back?

Yes. I think it will be good for me to see the country that helped form me – as well as trying to relearn the language. Now that I’ve been hanging out with Dutch people for nearly two weeks continuously I’ve started thinking in Dutch again. The annoying thing is, thinking in Dutch is a lot harder than thinking in English and I actually feel stupid. There’s only two solutions for that. One: Make certain I don’t speak any Dutch, so that I think in English. Two: Improve my Dutch. I think I’ll bite the bullet and go for option two.

Second Question: Was it a good idea to go away?

Absolutely! It was a brilliant seven years and I think all in all I’ve grown immensely over these years. I feel comfortable in my own skin, happy with whom I am and pleased with my abilities. I think that my seven years of travelling has given me a lifetime of experience that I would otherwise not have. I understand foreign values, appreciate the differences in cultures and appreciate what different places have to offer. What is more, I’ve realised that what I’ve been looking for can be found nearly everywhere, as long as I look in the right places.

Third Question: Will I stay in Holland?

I doubt it. I might be able to find what I’m looking for where ever I am, but that doesn’t mean I’m done looking at new things. This world is amazing and, as the famous quote goes: the world’s a book and if you don’t travel, you only get to see one page (that’s not an exact quote, mind you). The best way to learn is to move outside your comfort zone and the easiest way (though hardly the only way) to move out of you comfort zone is to leave the place you’re in.

Fourth Question: What do you hope to get out of Holland?

I have given up completely on trying to get something from somewhere. I went to India with absolutely no idea of what I was going to get and as a result I got more than I ever imagined. One of the principles that I was introduced to in the Luck Factor (brilliant book) was that one of the most basic principles to luck is being open to it. The more focused you are, the less chance you give the world to give you new opportunities, so I refuse to say what I’m going to get; instead I’m just going to take what’s given.

This time about Portugal itself

So, apparently I didn’t answer the more important questions about Portugal, forget about me, what about the country? Fair enough. I spend far too much time thinking, writing and talking about myself anyway. People no doubt think I’m self-obsessed (which wouldn’t be very far from the truth, but fortunately we’re all self obsessed!)

I actually quite like Portugal. It’s a bit cheaper than the rest of Europe, a bit more backwards and a lot sunnier (I’m told. It’s been raining pretty steadily the last week). I like the nice white houses that you find everywhere – and the people are really nice. The only bad thing being that though they are nice they aren’t very pretty. The men are short and the women are, well, homely. I’ve been told it’s different in Lisbon; but then I’m not in Lisbon so I really can’t tell you that.

Last night we went out for a beer somewhere. Played pool against my brother in law, which he won – which puts us one-one on games with me having killed him in Jenga, that means chess will be the deciding game (yes, we really have nothing to do). Unfortunately the night life left something to be desired (can you say Neon?). I think that shouldn’t be blamed on the Portuguese, however, but on the British.

This has to be said – and I’m sorry if I offend any Brits with this – but when the British are uncouth they really are pond scum; white, pasty, loud, topless drunkards that prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that budget airliners are a really bad idea. Some people shouldn’t travel and most of them are British.

So I really should go explore Lisbon and see what I think of life there. Maybe work there for a bit during the summer months. I imagine working in Holliday resorts will make me more money than sticking around in Holland. Of course, there’s a few reasons why I might want to stick around in Holland (well, really one reason), so we’ll have to wait and see.

So, should you come to Portugal? Yes, I think you should. It seems nice, though I’d like to explore it properly with some friends rather than the family, to get a better idea. So, so far the verdict is still out, but it looks like all but one of the 12 has been convinced. Of course, we’ve all seen ‘twelve angry men’ so we all know what one opposing jury member can do, but hey, I’m blabbering again (maybe I shouldn’t write blog entries right after I’ve finished at the gym. I think the testosterone interferes with my thought process).

Baby toys

I really don’t have anything out of the ordinary to talk about today (or rather, I’ve already spent enough words on the things I want to talk about and I’m not really reading anything interesting.) so I’m going to do what I always do when that’s the case: Blabber.

It’s just a matter of letting the words roll out and hope something at least mildly interesting rolls out along the way (a million monkeys with a millions typewriters).

This is probably nothing new to all of you out there, but I think I might have become terribly vain. (yes, you’re allowed to kick me if you already knew this. You can either virtually kick me in the comments, or keep it till you see me again; that’s up to you). I’ve turned into a gym junky (monkey?) and do care about how I look. No, I haven’t yet turned into one of those creatures who has to look into every shiny surface – but my looks have certainly become important to me.

Or maybe it’s not that I’ve turned vain, but I just didn’t care about it /at all/ previously. Which ever is the case, I’ve certainly started to care about it a great deal more than in years of yore. Is that a good thing?

Well, I suspect that ultimately you can make a much better impression if you look better and if you’re at least a little bit vain, then you’re going to care about whether you look better, but that’s a trade off with how much time you actually spend on looking good. So far it’s basically not that much more than going to the gym and that (with travel time) takes about 10 hours a week – but that fortunately has extra benefits.

Maybe I’m not vain but just arrogant? Am I arrogant or just self confident? (I warned you I really didn’t have anything to talk about – add to that that I’ve just finished at the gym and therefore drugged up on endorphins and you get a pretty good idea why I’m rattling on like a oil barrel full of angry cats). The difference between self-confidence and arrogance is that arrogant people have no basis to feel the way they do, while the self-confident do. So do I have a basis?

I think I do, but then I assume that most arrogant people do as well. Maybe the difference between self-confidence and arrogance is just a matter of perspective? It always makes me wonder how I’m perceived.

That reminds me: Wouldn’t it be great if after you leave a place you could get the honest opinion of the people that knew you there? Like a little book where people get to say what they really feel.

That would have been the perfect farewell present for Palolem for me. Till this day I wonder if people were only nice to me to my face or were also nice to me when I had my back turned.

Unfortunately nobody made a book like that for me and I guess they never will. In the end your view of how others see you will always be affected by the subjectivity of your own view.

Hopefully next post I’ll actually have something to talk about.

Portugal

I’m in Portugal, with my family and I’m broke. It’s quite depressing, to be honest about it. It makes me feel like a child again. I can’t pay for my own food, I can’t pay for transportation, I can’t go away on my own to have a beer and I can’t go and meet people. All of that costs money and I’ve got about 7 US left in my pocket.

I’m very tempted to start smoking again. Oh yeah, I might not have mentioned that. I haven’t smoked a cigarette since I’ve left India. Till now it hasn’t been too much of a problem, but now I’ve got no money and I’m surrounded by smokers again (my sister and her boyfriend both smoke) and my mettle is being tested. Please don’t put any comments on here about that I shouldn’t smoke. I know I shouldn’t smoke, it isn’t a matter of what I should and shouldn’t do. It’s a matter of what’s stronger: willpower or desire.

I’m starting to regret coming to Portugal. I know it’s good for me to be here with my family, but I feel I’m losing time that I should be investing in getting my life together. It’s like I’m taking a week long holiday after an eight month break. It’s overkill.

Life is calling me and it’s incredibly frustrating not being able to answer. A ringing phone in a locked room.

As promised, I have started working on my poetry. At least something good is coming out of this time. I’ve already edited through about four or five of my poems in the last two days. I’m not yet sure if I’m going to put them up here yet. Hopefully I’ll actually be publishing them in some form or another. It would be nice if I finally managed to get something published in some way. It’s unfortunate that poetry can’t make you any money.

It still strikes me as strange that different types of art get paid so differently. You’re a successful musician, so you get paid billions. You’re a successful poet, so how are you going to pay your electricity bill? It is, of course, the matter of mass appeal and poetry is not massively appealing.

So I’m going to have to find a job and if I want to find a job, I better get my head (and my mood) up. I know myself and I can’t get anything done with people when I’m the way I am. So I guess now I know what I’ve got to do for the next five days, namely get myself in a more positive mood so that I can hit the ground running when I hit Holland. That and somehow get together enough money to survive to my first pay check.

I knew the next few months were going to be difficult. I guess I just wasn’t expecting to have a great deal of time to sit around and think about it.

Next time I go on holiday with my family, I’m going to make sure that I have enough time to get away and do my own thing (keep myself busy). If I don’t have that, I’m not going to come.

Live and learn. Hell, that seems to be my life’s refrain.

They’ve gone too far!

Damn it! That’s now the second time that they’ve searched my bag and my person, the second time that I’ve had to take off my bloody shoes and the second time I’ve got really annoyed with the security people at the airport.

What are they afraid of? ‘Terrorist strikes’ I hear you cry, but no, that’s not really what they’re afraid of. After all, the chance that a terrorist strike actually occurs is very, very small. I wouldn’t be surprised that the chance that you die in a terrorist strike every time you fly is about the same as your chance that you die from a lightning strike, every time you experience a storm. I don’t actually have the figures on that, but it can be worked out pretty easily.

I mean, let’s look at the world in the last ten years; from 1997 to 2007 (before these ridiculous new safety measures) and let’s look at the number of airplanes that were actually destroyed by terrorist strikes. I don’t know the actual number (and I don’t have internet access) but let’s be very liberal and say they managed to destroy and/ or nearly destroy 30 planes in the last 10 years. Let’s also assume that every plane was fully Boeing 747 and was fully loaded (again, being very liberal on my part); that’s about 500 people. So that’s a grand total of 15,000 people that did or could have died. Sounds like a lot, right?

Well, now let’s do the other side of the calculation. Let’s say there are 2000 flights a day (a very conservative number, considering that Frankfurt airport itself probably already operates 500 a day). Let’s be nice and say they’re only half-full; so that’s 250 people per flight. That means that everyday 500,000 people travel. That means that per year (365 days, ignoring leap years) a 182.5 million journeys are made. Multiply that by ten years and you get nearly two billion people travelling.

So what is your chance of dying if you flew in those ten years? 0.008% times the number of times you’ve flown. So, in my case, I think I flew about 20 times in that time, which is quite a lot, so the chance that I would have died in a terrorist strike would have been 0.16% chance. And that’s using numbers madly skewed in favour of the strikes. The word ‘negligible’ jumps to mind.

So why do they do it? Quite simply because of the PR backlash if they don’t do it and a plane goes down. You see, people don’t get statistics. They don’t make these types of calculations, they never had to. They hear of one successful terrorist strike in five years and automatically assume the risk is great (the amount of attention paid to a way of dying is the assumed chance of it happening X the perceived horror of dying in that way).

So I have to suffer through half an hour of indignities every single damned time I fly because of the potential PR backlash that will be directed at airports if they don’t implement these ridiculous safety measures, because people are statistical morons! The airports know the safety measures aren’t essential and probably don’t reduce the chance of a terrorist strikes, but they have to do it because otherwise the unwashed masses will have their heads if something does go wrong (and probably even if it doesn’t).

So there we go, the proletariat have once again shafted everybody up the heiny by leaping before they look. Thank you everybody, for once again ruining my mood.

Well, at least I got a blog post out of it.

10 years from now

I just wrote my future self a letter again. I try to do that every year around my birthday. The idea is that I write a letter every year and I start opening them then years from now, one at time. It means an investment of a few hours once a year, for a very long delayed reward that should be well worth it.

That’s the idea, but I’ve discovered today (and probably last year as well, if I go look back through my blog) that I get an almost immediate reward from it. First off all, of course, I get to pause and reflect. That, in and of itself, isn’t that special though (nearly every third entry on this blog requires that I pause and reflect. Hell, with the amount of pausing and reflecting I’m doing I can’t help but wonder how I get anything done!)

The thing that got me going today (and to a less extent last year) was this thought: is the future me really me? It’s not a new thought. It’s been had by people for years, centuries, possibly even millennia; but right now the thought is mine and it goes something like this.

The way we establish that you are you and I am I (is that the right grammar? Bradley, tell me if that’s the right grammar!) is through an analysis of dimensions (or, in plain English, by seeing if we occupy the same spot or not). You might say that we establish it by our history and our memories, but that’s not true. If I happen to have two histories stored in my brain I would still think of myself as the same person; just a very, very confused person who’s somehow picked up an extra set of memories. What is more, we can’t really trust memory; so, in other words, it’s a bad idea to establish yourself as in independent person from the bum rolling in his own faeces on the corner by comparing memory, it’s a much better idea to just think ‘he’s on the corner, I’m here reading this wierdo’s blog, therefore we are not the same person’ (you could of course check if smelled of faeces, but that’s cheating).

Time is, of course, a dimension.

So doesn’t this therefore mean that you are not the same person that you will be tomorrow? Or, if we imagine a day as a very small increment in distance (a tenth of a millimetre?) then you over the next few days, weeks or months might just be a blurring of the same person (as if you and the bum almost occupied the same space), but the you ten years from now must most certainly be a different person, right? Hell, you’d be 36.5 centimetres apart! True, only people close to you get to be that close (unless you’re on a Japanese commuter train) but you’d still be fundamentally different.

So am I writing to myself when I write to myself ten years in the future? Well, maybe I am; because there’s another thought that just occurred to me. There is an actual physical gap between you and that bum. In case of time you occupy the point now and the point 10 years from now, but also every single point in between those two yous. It’s as if you’ve been stretched over the entire 36.5 centimetres and if we did that to you, though it would hurt, we would still see all of that as being a (miss formed) you.

Is your head hurting yet? Don’t worry, you’ll probably have forgotten all of this by tomorrow. That is, if that’s still you.

First Impressions (economic)

So I’ve got back into Europe a couple of days ago and I’ve had a look around. I’ve formed an opinion, of course (me without an opinion is like a dog without legs, pretty damned rare and pretty damned odd when it does happen!) but I’ll immediately admit that so far I’m forming my opinion based on a place of little dotted villages, which is probably about ten years behind the rest of Germany (which, in turn, is about ten years behind the rest of Europe, which in turn is about ten years behind the rest of the world. So, basically, I’ve gone back in time thirty years. That feels about right.)

First, I’m going to talk about the economic situation, my next post will be about other things. So here goes: How the hell does Europe ever expect to survive the 21st century? They’re stuck in a mindset that is (quite accurately) 30 years out dated. The shops close at six, (12 on a Saturday, don’t open on a Sunday) they won’t let you recycle glass at certain times (as if they’re doing you service by letting you recycle glass) everybody goes for a three hour lunch and everywhere is understaffed because the businesses can’t afford the wages that the unions demand.

Prices are skyrocketing (my mother went for dinner at a normal restaurant with two other people and ended up paying over 200 US for a meal, two cocktails and a glass of wine) even as the Euro continues to rise. How do they ever expect the tourists to continue coming if those tourists can go on five holidays elsewhere for one holiday here?

The Europeans are complacent, decadent and arrogant. They believe they’ve got all the answers and they feel that the rest of the world should really change to suit their agenda. Socialism, they believe, is the answer. Socialism, I believe, is the way to make certain that any economic growth doesn’t ever trickle through to the common man. How’s that? Well, I’m much less likely to hire somebody during an economic upturn when I can’t fire them during an economic downturn, due to the unions. So, even when the economy is doing well, businesses still don’t hire.

What is more, socialism also guarantees minimum wage, which guarantees that poor people have to pay more for the stuff they really need (minimum wage pushes up the prices of goods at the bottom of the economy much more than at the top of economy, as basic necessities, like food, gas, power and water, employ way more minimum wage people).

But then, the common man doesn’t really get economics, do they? They believe that tariffs on foreign goods protects their businesses, while in truth all it does is push up prices for consumers in the tariff protected area (since the tariffs push up the prices of foreign bought products, the consumer ends up having to pay more for those products). The problem is that businesses work together to protect their interests, while consumers are rarely motivated en masse to protect theirs, so businesses get away with it.

All the shit I had already suspected from a distance has proven to be true up close. I seriously hope that Holland turns out to be a bit better, because so far I’m not terribly impressed. Sure, they’ve got culture, sure they’ve got style; but that won’t matter when their economy crashes and burns because they’ve lost all their ability to compete with the rest of the world. But then, they won’t crash and burn, will they? They’ll just use some underhand tactic make other places crash and burn. That’s usually what the first world does.

Thoughts During Nothing

I arrived in Frankfurt last night, after my entire grueling journey, and now I’m already bored. Not too surprising, seeing as my parents live – as the Germans call it – Am Arsh der Welt; which translates to ‘the ass of the world’. No, that’s not the real name, but it sure fits the place. It’s a little, tiny village somewhere a kilometer or more outside Frankfurt (which is a boring as fuck city) where there is nothing to do and nowhere to go.

Actually, that isn’t really the problem. Normally that wouldn’t bother me one bit. It would be great to go nowhere and do nothing, except for my university application of course, but right now I’ve got other things on my mind: Woman. Yes, in the singular; for once.

One girl keeps constantly slipping back into my conscious, no matter what I’m doing or where I’m going. One name constantly gets whispered through my mind, stopping me in my tracks. That’s taking all the potential enjoyment out of the situation and making days that could blissfully slip by drag like fingernails along a two-week chalk board.

It’s been going on for a bit over a week now – and it’s quite frustrating. I’m not used to this. It hasn’t happened in a long time. My last relationship was different. That was a more gradual escalation until I, at one point, realised I was in love. That worked beautifully, by the way. It resulted in an amazing relationship that lasted for four years. This is different; this is a great deal more like torture.

I shouldn’t use the word love, to be honest about it; I think ‘infatuation’ is far more suitable word, especially since I haven’t known the girl for very long at all. As a matter of fact, we’ve only physically hung out for a little over two days. Yes, that’s right, two days and no I am not 14 years old, but thank you for asking.

For the last seven months so many people I met ended up harbouring feelings for me. I was flabbergasted (and secretly quite pleased with myself, admittedly), as I didn’t get the entire falling for somebody, thing. It hadn’t happened, that way, to me since the last year of uni. Now that it happened to me just before I buggered off from India, I realise that I might have been quite cruel to those people. A bit of poetic justice, anybody? A side helping of irony, perhaps?

Hold on, before you think that she doesn’t return any feelings. She does. She’s already admitted that she can’t get me out of her head, either. You’d think that would be enough for me. Of course it isn’t. Emotions have the annoying habit of not giving a shit about what your intellect tells them (I’ve talked about that often enough, up here). We’ve spoken every day since we’ve parted ways.

But then that fear starts to play through my mind ‘what if it was just a holiday thing for her, what if she’s starting to forget?’ And you’re all thinking ‘ah, but that won’t happen!’ but it does, you see. It’s happened to me a half a dozen times alone this trip. You meet somebody, you get along real well, you think there might be something happening there and three days after they’re gone (or even before) you’ve already moved on.

This time it might not have happened to me, but that in no way assures me that it isn’t happening with her; that she isn’t feeling as strongly now as originally, but doesn’t have the heart to tell me. Thoughts like these are continuously playing through my mind.

So, as you can see, sitting around here doing nothing is an almost sublime form of Chinese water torture. Psychologists have found that love (or infatuation) is actually a physical addiction and that being separated from the person of your affection can actually cause physical pain. I know exactly what they mean.

AAAAAAHRG!!!!!!

I normally make it a rule not to post twice a day, but I can’t help it today; I have to vent.

Let me start at the beginning.

It all started in December. I was here in Bangalore, under the impression that I could get everything done. That included doing the supposed impossible, namely extending an unextendable visa (many a traveller have been amazed at my gal that I though I could get away with that, for that matter even a lot of long-stayers were shocked). The reason I thought I could do it was because somebody here said they could do it. You know the ones, the ‘don’t worry, it’s no problem’ kind. I should have known right there that it wouldn’t be that easy. There almost as bad as the one’s that say ‘trust me’ and you immediately know you shouldn’t.

I should have flown to Sri Lanka and got a normal extension, but that’s 20/20 hindsight, isn’t it? At the time it seemed like a great idea, what with my short film taking up most of my time and my over inflated ego. So I agreed to it. It cost me a fair bundle; but hey, it should have been brilliant. More time in India and my problems sorted.

They weren’t, of course. The time I would have lost in Sri Lanka, sitting on a beach and sipping cocktails, I instead lost sitting in Indian bureaucracies, watching inefficiency in action. I only finally got my exit permit sorted at five o’clock this afternoon; that’s right, after my gruelling bus journey where I slept on a bunch of bags (see the last entry), I spent a full day in another office (when it was only supposed to take 30 minutes).

Then, when they finally okayed my exit permit I read over me ticket and made a shocking realisation. If you use somebody else’s credit card to buy a ticket, you need a copy of an ID and the credit card, otherwise they can turn you down and refuse you entry to the plane. I was in Bangalore, the person who’s credit card I had used was in Goa, (yes, I’m that broke that I need to borrow money from somebody else to get home; any change for the get me home safely fund? No, I’m not really that broke, I just didn't have enough cash in one place to pay for a ticket.)

Desperately I tried to call my friends down in Goa, but the normally always reachable were suddenly completely out of reach. I nearly lost it. I think it takes quite a bit for me to nearly lose it, but little sleep, stifling heat and bureaucrats more interested in the interior of their nose than in the document you’re just getting them to sign will make any sane man snap and I never claimed to be sane to begin with.

So, since four this afternoon I’ve been texting like mad, calling everybody I still knew on the beach and just generally tearing my hair out (which is a great deal easier when it’s nice and long, much more to grab). When I finally reached somebody, she wasn’t even in Goa anymore, she’d moved on to Hampy (it’s supposed to be very pretty, but that wasn’t really what interested me at that moment in time).

Luckily, she did get in touch with people down on the beach and luckily they finally managed to get me a soft copy of the needed documents; so yes, I can leave. I desperately want to as well. Every traveller goes through intense India hating periods. Unfortunately, mine came right at the end, just as I was trying to leave. Will it colour my perceptions of my time in India? Probably not. Will I be coming back to India anywhere soon? Probably not.

There, vent done. You can go back to your normal lives now.

Tick Tock

If everything goes well I’ll be flying to Frankfurt tomorrow morning. I’ve got a ticket and I’ve been told my exit permit is lying here in Bangalore waiting for me. Yes, that’s right, I’m back in Bangalore. Yesterday I left Goa again (for the second time) and took the night bus down to Bangalore. I was looking forward to a nice night’s sleep; but unfortunately I hadn’t realised booking a bus ticket last minute might mean there are no bus tickets.

I told them I was desperate, that it was essential that I get down to Bangalore. They offered me a seat next to the bus driver, without a bed, for nearly twice the price. I had no choice; I had to take it. I got crammed into the bus driver’s carriage, along with about eight other Indian guys and not much else.

In the end I manage to fall asleep on top of some bags, with my legs folded up under me. Thank providence that I’m such a good sleeper, because at least that way I got to pass out for most of the trip from hell. My gyming is having unexpected side-benefits. Though I was sore from the unusual bodily position, I walked the kinks out pretty quickly once I’d got off the bus.

When I first reached Goa again I was worried whether I had made the right decision. I think, now that I’ve left it again, I have. For a small week four of us occupied my house and just enjoyed each other’s company; hanging out, cooking, chatting, drinking and just generally having a great week.

I also might have met somebody; but I won’t tell you anymore about that until I’ve figured it out myself (yes, I realise that those are exactly the types of things you can’t figure out, but that has never stopped me from trying before!). Her I wouldn’t have met if I wouldn’t have gone back, so that is most certainly a bonus to my bonus round.

I am very much ready to go, now. Play time is over. Reality beckons with a crooked finger.

I’ve decided that when I go to Portugal with my family I’m going to edit my weird ass poetry (I should probably think up a better name). I have about twenty of them now. I’m going to try and publish them in a bundle. Of course, in that case, twenty won’t be enough; but at least it’s a start.

It won’t make me any money either; poetry never does. Seeing as I’m completely broke, I’ll have to start pursuing some avenue of income. I hate looking for work. In fact, I hate looking for work more than I hate working.

I had all these grand plans of leaving India with some money in my pocket. My father told, right at the start, that there was no way I’d be coming home with money. I thought, ‘I’ll show him!’, but I guess he showed me.

Hopefully this trip has taught me a little more self-awareness, because it seems I could use it.

After Math

If I start talking about how I’m leaving Palolem tomorrow evening, I’m pretty sure I’ll start sounding like a broken record. I think I’ve pretty much been obsessed with my leaving pretty much since I got here three months ago. You’d think I’d have learned by now to live a little bit more in the present.

Last night was my birthday party (I turned 29 on the fourth) and my last headphone party as well; it might possibly be the last headphone party over all. As you might have expected, it all went a little bit insane. Dancing, shouting, stumbling, drinking, climbing, abusing, laughing, talking, gibbering, jumping; and that was before we’d even hit the party.

We found a huge boulder to perch on and watch the festivities (when we weren’t in the middle of it). From there we surveyed the mayhem. Since the party hadn’t been held for two weeks previous, we weren’t certain if it was absolutely going to pack out or fail miserably. Luckily, it did the first. I think I eventually got to sleep somewhere in the late, late morning and I was certainly not the last person to turn in.

The reason I’m not sure what time I turned in is because I’ve got a new little tactic that I use now if it gets too late. I don’t look at the clock, so that I don’t know how late it actually is. That way, when I do turn in I can’t afterwards complain ‘oh, I only slept three hours’. I might have, but on the other hand, it might have been seven, for all I know. Rest through self-deception.

It’s time for me to write my letter to me. I’ve been doing this for two or three years now (I think it’s two), where I write myself a letter ten years in the future. It’s definitely a long term project, but I think when I’m older it will be great looking back at all the nonsense I got up to. If I live long enough I might have well over sixty letters. I imagine you could do some interesting self analysis based on sixty years of birthday thoughts.

Interestingly, my birthday letters to myself are pretty much the only things I still hand write. There’s a good reason for that, namely that my handwriting is pretty atrocious. I’ve been wondering if, when I open my first letter, I’ll even be able to understand what it I’ve written. It would be terribly ironic if I spend so much time sending myself letters ten years in the future and then, when they finally arrive, I can’t even read them. A bit of an anti-climax; though I guess not being able to read them already says a great deal.

No, I’m not exactly sure what I’m talking about and why I’m still talking. I need coffee.

Believing is Seeing

You know that old quote, ‘seeing is believing’? Well, it isn’t. A far more accurate saying would be ‘believing is seeing’. The thing about seeing is that it isn’t half as straight forward as we’d like to believe. In order to see anything, we have to make so many assumptions and take so many short cuts that really we shouldn’t trust our eyes very far at all.

The problem with seeing is, quite simply, that we have to ascertain a three dimensional world from a two dimensional image (the image thrown on your retina is, of course, only two dimensional, seeing as the back of the eyeball – though curved – is basically still 2D).

So, in order to form a picture, our brain has to make a huge number of assumptions, such as straight lines are edges, colours are normally uniform (meaning that if colour changes it must be shading and therefore the object must be curved) and objects remain the same colour, even if they may appear a different colour in a different lighting; to give you an example, if you take a piece of coal in sunlight and you take a snowball at night time they actually radiate off the same amount of light; the only reason that you see the snow ball as white and the piece of coal as black is because your mind makes an assumption based on the available light (see this example).

Another good example is that we have just as big a space in our mind reserved for face recognition as for every other object in the physical world. Faces immediately draw our eyes, are immediately analysed and have layers of meaning automatically associated with them that no other object will ever have. Faces are, in terms of data collection, like lighthouses burning in the night. The only reason we don’t realise how much more attention we pay to them (and how much extra processing goes on) is because we’ve always been doing it! We just don’t know any different.

If you don’t believe me, just look at many autistic people. They have the problem that they see faces the same as every other object; and as a result find it very difficult to glean the amount of meaning from them as ‘normal’ people do. The result is that they can’t understand nuances that the rest of us get, based on body language analysis; which in turn means that they seem to waltz across social graces without nary a backwards glance, unaware of the insult they cause.

We have shape recognition ‘software’ in built, especially towards human shapes (as humans were the most dangerous creatures around for our ancestors, even 100,000 years ago). This might well be the reason that often you think you see a person out of the corner of your eye and when you turn to look more carefully you realise it’s just a bunch of clothes. It’s better to have a false positive (as in see a shape where there is none) then to not see an approaching enemy; erring on the side of caution, if you will.

The thing is that we do this with every single one of our senses, interpreting through unconscious assumptions, as we would never be able to understand the raw data. For example, when somebody speaks, we hear individual words, when in truth there’s a continuous stream of sounds (with no breaks).

So, just because you think you saw something, heard something or realised something, doesn’t mean it’s true. It might well be your overactive interpretation mechanisms making you think something happened, when in truth it was just a misinterpretation of a natural event.

Yes, that does mean that not even your senses can be trusted. Bugger, aye?