Anthropomorphism

And then suddenly my mood improves. A few small things on the outside certainly helped (e.g. I got back my grades for my first two courses at uni and both are markedly better than expected, with both being above the cum laude threshold), but they can only be seen as catalysts. All in all, it is the inside that has changed; as it always seems to be. My downward moods (I hesitate to use the word depression) seem to truly be chemical imbalances. Often only the smallest things have turned against me when suddenly I end up feeling truly despondent.

That’s the thing I’m discovering more and more as I get into the Social Psychology literature, despite our beliefs that we are logical, rational, straight thinking, internally consistent and honest with ourselves the truth of the matter is that we’re none of those things. In fact, it is quite spectacular that we manage to function as we do at all. The more I learn, the more amazed I am that society actually works and stunned that we’re not more surprised (or interested) at how it actually does just seem to tick along.

But that’s the anthropomorphism in us; our inability to see beyond our own humanity and our belief that since we work this way, well obviously everything must work this way. Of course this is just an absolutely huge (and incorrect) assumption, but since 99.9% of us engage in it, we’re never really confronted with this assumption. In fact, it is incredibly difficult for us not to engage in this activity. It’s a bit like trying to imagining the world in five dimensions. We’re so used to four that we just can’t seem to shift our perception and that while M theory (one of the more promising theories of ‘everything’ in physics; a derivative of string theory) doesn’t just require five dimensions but somewhere in the order of 13.

But let’s get a bit closer to earth. What the hell am I talking about? Well, let me give you an example. In 1990 a Psychologist called Elizabeth Newton did an interesting experiment in which she got two people together and asked one to tap (on a table top) a popular song to the other person; but first she asked the tapper to predict how likely it was that the other person would guess the song the tapper was going to tap. The tapper’s, on average, thought it was about 50% likely that the other person would get the song they were going to tap out. In truth, the chance turned out to be around 3%. Yes, that’s right, not 30%, but 3%. One in 30 songs was correctly recognised, when the tapper believed about one in two songs would be correctly recognised. It gets even worse, when the listener was made aware of what song the other person was going to tap out and then was asked, afterwards, how much chance an uninformed listener would have of correctly guessing the song they also thought it would be about 50%

In other words, we are completely inept at ignoring what we already know. We reason from our own perspective and find it neigh on impossible to do otherwise. We are human and it colours our perspective, reasoning and belief system in every possible way.

And most of us don’t even know it.

Letter from the editor

I might not have mentioned this, but i recently became the chief editor of a magazine at my University. It doesn't pay and it's only two issues per year, but it's something. I decided to write a letter to the rest of the team (who are also new, the whole old team graduated and moved on, so we're all fresh) and since I spent enough time working on that I thought I'd use it for here as well. So, without further ado, my letter:

I realise it's strange that I'm writing an editor's letter when we don't yet have a magazine, but I felt we had to start somewhere and since this is the start of our joint effort to produce a magazine it seemed somehow fitting. To me it seemed rich in some sort of symbolism, though admittedly not the sort of symbolism that provoke poetry, inspire artists or generates paradigm shifts; but more the type of symbolism that crops up after a heavy night of drinking, the type of symbolism that seems oh so potent when the drinks have hit the double digits, but is fortunately forgotten the next day.

The reason I'm writing this letter is to get the ball rolling or rather, to sharpen the incline, seeing as all of us started it moving already. I want to tell you what I know, what I think and what I hope; so that you can tell me the same, or something similar, or something totally different.

So first what I know: What I know is that I'm happy to be working with each and every one of you. I've said this before and I'll say it again, I'm very impressed with the calibre of my class mates, as well as their enthusiasm and dispositions. That goes twice for all of you, because you've decided to not only take the responsibility of this degree on your shoulders, but also the publishing of a magazine, which is not something to be sneezed at (something that applies equally to publishing the magazine as you taking up this responsibility).

What I also know is that if we all put our minds to it, we'll produce something that we can be proud of; something that when people ask to see it you don't feel the urge to tell them that you've lost your copy but instead you want to tell them over and over again that you were a part of making what they're holding.

What I think: if we manage to do this, if we manage to pull this off then it will create bonds that will serve all of us well over the years to come. Call it friendship, call it mutual respect, call it an understanding of strengths and weaknesses, call it pizza, for all I care, but over the years what I have come to appreciate most are the handful of people who have helped me or I have helped do great things. And if things go well I'd soon like to add all of you to that list.

I will be honest, I am very demanding – but that is because in the past those people who have placed high demands on me and then helped me reach them have made my life so much richer and have brought me so much closer to my potential. So yes, I am very demanding and I expect (demand?) that you are the same way towards me. After all, why be good when you can be great?

What I hope: I hope this letter inspires you, that it provokes you, that it fills you with thoughts, ideas and criticisms. I also hope we'll all be honest with each other and stay true to what we signed up for. I hope that you'll be honest with me. I know I can be loud, obnoxious, autocratic and intimidating. Don't let it scare you. It's probably just me hung over.

What I also hope is that in two years time we'll all be happy with the decisions we made in terms of this magazine. That we all feel we learned something and that we moved ourselves and the magazine forward. What I hope is that this is the beginning of a great working relationship. And I hope that all of you want that too.

Your reality

Interestingly, when you’re depressed your image of reality is actually closer to the truth than when you are – what they call – normal. It used to be believed that people that are sane have the most objective view of reality and that it was the abnormal who’s vision of reality was further away from what was really out there. In the case of depression this has been shown not to be the case.

There are a whole lot of reasons for this. The most important one being that if we didn’t have an incredibly rosy picture of ourselves, our friends, our past and our future in our minds, none of us would ever get out of bed. (Though that then begs the question, who exactly would be building those beds?) In order to maintain our sanity we actually can’t be – as we traditionally described it – completely sane.

For example, we believe we are move clever than we are (almost everybody thinks they are above average in intelligence, which obviously is impossible), have more control than we do (everybody seems to believe that they have a below average chance of getting into an accident, getting sick, or getting in trouble), are friendlier than we are (if everybody was as friendly as they thought they were, there wouldn’t be any more wars, I’m sure!) and have a brighter future than we do (everybody that’s young is certain they’ll be rich and famous when they’re older!)

The question researchers asked, when they saw all this data, was, why – exactly – do we have such a rosy picture of ourselves, our future and our surroundings? Isn’t it true that having an incorrect view of reality means that we’re all the more likely to get ourselves into trouble? (by way of comparison, if we thought a car was approaching differently from how it was, we’d be far more likely to step in front of it.) And no doubt it is.

The thing is, we’re not just observers, we’re also actors. We don’t just see ourselves as being better than we are, we also then proceed to act that way and that is the crux of the matter. We act like we are going to succeed at tasks we really only have a very slim chance of succeeding at and as a result sometimes succeed at them! This is commonly referred to as a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’. If you believe you can do something, chances are better that you’ll actually manage to do it then if you don’t believe you can do it.

And then there are always two final protective mechanisms to guard us when we do fail. The first is that we attribute success to our own skill and failure to circumstance. While the second is that we forget when we fail and remember when we succeed (thereby also establish a more rosy picture of our past, as well as the present and the future).

Depressed people disengage most of these defensive mechanisms and end up with an unfiltered view of the world around them. They see the brutality of the world around them and their insignificance within it. Their depression functions a great deal like the Ultimate Perspective Machine dreamed up by Douglas Adams in his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

We need to be convinced of our own importance. Otherwise, why bother? Therefore, we witness reality through numerous filters and interpretation devices – just to avoid being termed insane.

Gordian Knot

There’s a great Dutch saying that roughly translates as ‘being knotted up into your self’. The meaning is that you’re making things harder for yourself than they need to be, or that you’re getting in your own way. Actually, it’s more a bit of both.

I’ve constituted that that’s my problem right now. I think I’m moving forward, but my break lights are on (that’s not mine, it’s Jack Johnson’s, but then things are very rarely mine, even if I’m not aware of it. The subconscious is the biggest plagiarists of them all). Every night I sit in my room, studying, working, watching movies, reading and generally trying to entertain myself – when in truth I want to be out meeting people, seeing places and doing things.

Yet during the day, when I could be doing something about it, I’m not. I could be setting things up so that I’d have things to do in the evenings, but instead buy a pre-packaged meal, go home and eat alone.

People have tried to help me. They’ve invited me out. They’ve offered advice. I haven’t taken any of it. And I don’t know why. Well, I do. It’s because I’m ‘knotted up into my self’.

Or maybe it’s because I’m so used to it being so easy for me to find nice people, do nice things and see nice places that now that I can’t seem to understand that over here it takes effort, time and patience. Over here I’m not special anymore. I’m just another Dutch guy, wandering the streets of Amsterdam with a pre-packaged meal under his arm.

And yet I find it incredibly hard to do anything about it. I think that’s what happens when you’ve managed to get yourself stuck in a rut; the longer you’re in there, the harder it gets to get out.

I think it would be fair to say that I’ve been pretty unhappy with my situation for quite a while now. I hide it from myself, from others; but when I’m going home alone again in the evening I know it’s true. When I’m sitting on the bus, aware that soon I’ll be in my room and my fellow passengers will be the last people I will see till the next morning, sometimes this desperate loneliness tries to overwhelm me.

Of course it’s gone in the morning. Then there’s a whole day of meeting, talking, discussing, sharing, complaining, ridiculing, chatting and interacting. Then I’m okay. I forget about it, even.

It’s just the evenings.

And what to do?

You see, the thing is that what I miss is kindred spirits. People like me. People that used to be easy to find when I was younger but have been getting progressively harder to encounter as the years have passed me by.

I don’t know if that’s because I’m getting more unique, more choosy, or just less social. I do know that recently I find it easy to make acquaintances, but neigh on impossible to make any friends.

It’s your friends that you hang out with in the evening.

So I go home alone.

My Choice

Even though it doesn’t matter, seeing as I’m not American, (and there are no doubt literally thousands of people doing the same thing at this very moment) I’m going to tell you who I would have voted for and (to make matters worse) why.

If I would have been allowed to vote, I would have voted for Obama. The reason why can largely be summarized in one word and that word is Palin.

But let me explain myself, seeing as one word hardly qualifies as an explanation. Before this election and before the primaries and before all of that jazz, I actually already knew about McCain. That, I realise, isn’t a great accomplishment, but it is probably more than a great deal of Americans themselves can say. I can go even further, I actually liked him.

That’s not hard. He is (used to be?) honest, a free trader, confrontational, clear and in a league all his own. He – in many ways – embodied many of the values that I believe once made the Republican party one of the greatest parties that helped govern America, before all that bible bashing, ultra-conservative empire building, war mongering lot somehow took the reigns.

The problem is that Palin represents the very wing of the Republican party that we really don’t need another four years of. The wing that thinks only in black and white, has no clue about how the rest of the world works and doesn’t really want to find out (after all, everybody outside of America must really be an American in waiting who just hasn’t quite seen the light, right?), believes the bible should decide matters of the state and believes their values should be everybody else’s values too.

By choosing her as his running mate McCain is creating the possibility, however slight, that if something were to happen to him we would end up with somebody who – in all likelihood – is even nuttier than Bush. At least I can understand what Bush was trying to do (though it was often misguided and ill conceived) but I’m not really sure I would be able to understand where the hell Palin would be coming from.

And the fact that McCain chose her says something as well. He’s willing to take somebody under his wing that he obviously doesn’t really like, who’s values he doesn’t really respect (McCain isn’t big friends with the fundamental Christians) and who he won’t be able to agree with on many points, just to get the extremes of the Republican Party to back him. What’s so honest about that?

Is Obama the best choice? Well, it is true he’s inexperienced (though it’s so strange that I can argue that when I’m only two thirds his age), but that’s something that can easily be rectified with a good team behind him. What he does have is charisma and the ability to show the world that America is not the bigoted, discriminating place that most America haters think it is.

And that is really horrible, that race needs to play a role, but unfortunately it does. Race is still a very hot topic in (and outside) America and by showing that a black man can become president the minorities will be energised, invigorated and made aware that they no longer have an excuse. Furthermore, it will prove America’s enemies wrong. America is not a country where the white man oppresses, but instead a country where everybody can live the American dream, not matter what the colour of his skin is – a dream that is still a beautiful notion.

And for the rest? Well, all we’ve seen is Obama the campaigner, with his lines scripted and his performances rehearsed. To judge his ability to lead a country by his campaigning is like judging your surgeon’s ability to operate, by how well he or she can play piano. He’s got pizzazz. He’s got character. And hopefully he’s got the vote on his side.

Lost Days

I lost yesterday completely, as well as last week Friday and some odd day the week before that. The reason? Hangovers. Terrible, day consuming hangovers that make any action besides lying in bed and groaning incredibly unappealing (and even the groaning has to be done in a soft tone, so as to avoid adding to my pain).

The thing is, I’ve drunk so much more at other times and other places that I can’t understand why the hell I’m getting such horrible hangovers now. There is no rhyme or reason to it, no justice and no fairness (and if you’re going to say, ‘well the world isn’t fair’ then I’ll be forced to answer, ‘compared to what?’). When I was in Goa, for example, I can honestly say there were times when we were abusing alcohol, drinking and partying day after day with no respite and no time for recovery; yet, though I didn’t always feel honky dory, I can’t remember even one hangover that compared to the bastards that are costing me days now.

Now I really only drink one day a week, the day – and you guessed it – before the hangovers hit. For the rest of the week it might be a beer with dinner once or twice, but no more.

My father, who is a skilled drinker by all accounts, suggests it might be because I’m lacking the necessary vitamins and that I should maybe try taking vitamin pills. This could be the case, as it is true that I’m not really eating my vegetables (They are actually really hard to get, if you try to avoid cooking like I do. I though Europe as well about healthy eating, but I might have been eating healthier in Asia than I am here).

Another theory I’ve heard is that the hangovers are hitting me exactly because I’m drinking so much less. My body is no longer used to significant amounts of alcohol, while my mind is still used to consuming like I did previously, so when I do go drinking ‘properly’ I end up drinking too much for my current tolerance level.

This would seem to fit with my memory of falling of my bicycle on Friday night (I also have physical proof, as in a hurt hand that I obviously acquired during the fall). The reason I fell off, if I’m not mistaken, is because a curb aggressively attacked me on my way home. So, either the curbs are slowly awakening and planning to take over the world, or I really shouldn’t have done those two shots right at the end there.

So what is the solution? Take vitamin pills and drink less. The first step is easy, the second one, as anybody that drinks regularly well knows, is a lot tougher. There is, to paraphrase Yoda, ‘only drink and no drink, there is no try’. So I guess that means I’ll have to do the no-drink thing. The trick there is to get my ass out of a steady drinking environment, where the beer flows freely (in both senses of the word), and into a more sober setting; yet another reason that it would be nice if I could get the research assistant job.

Breaking habits is all about removing the habit cues from your environment and since I do not drink at home the only real habit cue I’ve got is my place of employment. Well, that and weekends, but it might be a little harder to get rid of those.

Six cups

Today I drank way too much coffee; six cups, or something there about. The reason was that I was distracted. The first two were drunk during my first Motivations meeting (it sounds like a self-help group, but it’s actually a social psychology concerned with understanding human motivation, why it happens and when it doesn’t.)

The second two I drank as the result of an impromptu job interview. Last night when I got home from work there was an e-mail from the secretary of the research masters course saying that somebody was looking for a teaching assistant and where I should send an e-mail to if I was interested. I decided to respond, but because I was tired (and had had a tequila shot – a drink that apparently doesn’t agree with me terribly much I’ve discovered) I decided to keep it brief. I said something along the lines of:

I might be interested in the position, could you tell me more and what would you like to know about me?

That was sent around one o’clock in the morning. I didn’t get a reply this morning, but instead found out one of my class mates (who had responded earlier) had been invited in for a talk. I and another class mate decided to tag along. I can’t tell you why, it seemed like a good idea at the time. They ended up telling the two of us that weren’t invited that they had probably already found somebody for the teaching position, but that they did have two other openings that they were just starting the search for. Were we interested? I barely noticed the third and fourth cup going down, seeing as the potential position that was being offered was quite definitely quite interesting. The woman asked when I could start and that she would look into it. She didn’t even ask to see my CV.

The last two cups happened after the job interview, a few beers and dinner (we had to celebrate our possibly good fortune). The reason I didn’t notice those two going down was A) a few beers and B) a good conversation.

Now I feel a bit ill in my stomach and woozy in the head, despite it already being two hours ago that I had my last cup. Still, that fails to distract from possibly a very good day. The motivations class was very promising (possibly the most interesting class to date), the job possibility is exciting and the dinner (well, the conversation, the dinner itself was a bit of a disappointment) was a nice way to finish it off.

Besides, the slight sick feeling gives me a perfect excuse not to study tonight, so I might just curl up with a good book, some odd music and wait till the caffeine wears off enough that I can get some sleep.

For today I feel I’ve already done enough. Tomorrow is another day.

The Fundamental Attribution Error Post Rationalised

The Fundamental Attribution Error: The error of attributing to other people’s character what we would attribute to circumstance it we did it ourselves. Apparently we do it a lot. I don’t actually have any trouble believing that. I do believe that since I’ve learned of the concept, however, I’ve tried to do it less. I try to take into consideration more often that people might be tired, hungry, upset, drunk or yet something else. There’s only one problem with that, of course, in that it introduces even more uncertainty into every action. Not only do I have to keep track of people’s character, I have to keep track of what might be influencing their character as well!

That’s probably why the F.A.E. occurs in the first place, because it’s just too demanding for us to be able to keep track of everything; or maybe it would be better to say that there’s no need to. Yes, we might be making an error but is the correction of that mistake worth the amount of brain matter we would need to devote to correcting it?

That is an evolutionary question. What is more valuable, the brain space or the absence of this error? And of course that question has already been answered. We have the error, so it would seem that our brain space is more important. Or could we say that we’re still evolving towards a state where we will no longer have the error? That the error was much larger before, but has been shrinking as we’ve been evolving into ever more social beings?

“And now for something completely different” – Monty Python

I’ve bought a new notebook today. It’s thick, has a hard cover and is unlined. I decided that I needed to start writing by hand again. Some time ago I had a notebook full of my own poetry that I had spent literally hundreds of hours on. Then I lost it. I left it on a train. Since then I haven’t written any poetry.

This book won’t exactly be a book of poetry. I decided to call it a book of beginnings. The reason being that since I seem to have trouble writing anything to completion, it might at least be a good idea to keep a lot of those brain farts in one place. Then, if I do want to finish something I’ll know where to look for something to write on.

At least, that’s what I say now. It was such a spur of the moment thing and it happened such a short time ago that I haven’t yet post rationalised it into something potent with symbolic meaning.

In a few weeks you’ll probably hear me proclaim that I bought it because otherwise the world would have ended.

It will probably be just as true as what I wrote above. That’s the great thing about spur of the moment things. They aren’t really rational. The rationality comes later, when we try to understand ourselves.

Susan Blackmore said something along the lines of: We don’t actually actively think in the moment, we only think about the moment afterwards. You could imagine it as if your conscience was running after you shouting, “of course it’s obvious why I did that!”

The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

In 1959 two experimenters, L. Festinger and J. Carlsmith did a very interesting experiment that you’ve probably already heard about. They took a group of students and made them do an incredibly tedious, useless and uninteresting task. Then they asked those students to tell other people how the task was so much fun, so that those people would also participate. They offered to pay them a reasonable sum for the lie (20 US) or a paltry sum. Then they asked if the participants enjoyed doing the task. The researchers found that those who were offered a reasonable sum to lie still said they didn’t enjoy the task. Those people who had been offered the paltry amount, however, suddenly said they enjoyed the task a great deal more than other groups.

The reasoning for this shift went as followed: when a person has two conflicting views or positions (they have internal dissonance) they will try to resolve that conflict by moving those views closer to each other. The people that were well paid for their lie didn’t have this dissonance, as they believed they were well rewarded for their deception. For those paid near to nothing, however, no such excuse would hold. They couldn’t tell themselves they had lied for the money and they couldn’t unsay the things that they had said, so instead they had only one option left and that was to move their viewpoint and decide that obviously they weren’t lying and the task was actually enjoyable.

It’s a bit like when you try to get something, can’t get it and then talk yourself into believing you didn’t really want it anyway.

I wonder if I’m now doing the same thing with my solitude? I have always hated being alone and yet lately I’ve been shouting ‘I like being by myself. I like having my own time. I like my time to myself.’ Is this not a classic example of me trying to reduce my internal dissonance? Since I’m having trouble finding people I really want to hang out with, am I not perhaps trying to convince myself that I’m not really interested in hanging out with people? And then, once my internal views have shifted I start to avoid people (believing that that is what I really want – which it is, of course, it’s just not what I used to want) so as to continue my supposed solitude.

I wonder if my studies of social psychology will actually help me gain a better insight into my own behaviour, or will just lead to me second guessing my intuition and ending up with a worse understanding of how I fit together.

There’s research out there that claims that psychologist are no better than other people at figuring out what makes other people tick.

But then there has already been research that counters that research.

Round and round she goes, where she stops nobody knows.

Exams, funerals and economics

And suddenly I’m hearing from all sides (well, two sides, so at least it’s in stereo) that I’m not just mumbling to myself, that people are actually listening and that people are actually out there paying attention. To what, I’m not exactly sure, but they are. Maybe it’s because of what Pyrrhus said, it’s because this is the only way they can keep up with what’s going on in my life. I’m not exactly sure what’s so interesting about my life that people want to know about it, but who am I to judge (after all, I wouldn’t want to switch my life for anybody else’s right now. Hell, I have enough trouble keeping track of what’s going on in my life, imagine having to figure out how somebody else’s fits together as well! Too much work, I’ll just be content with what I have.)

Yesterday I had my first exam. It went alright, I think. Not terrific, but then it’s been a very long time indeed since I’ve had to sit and write. Annoyingly part of this exam was knowledge based as in ‘does X mean A, B, C, D or E?’ (yes, a five pronged multiple choice question, so that guessing was even less effective). I not only dislike stamping facts into my brain most of which I’m going to have forgotten the day after the exam, I also severely dislike wasting space in my internal memory, when I’ve got an external memory out there to define these terms for me exactly. If I’m not sure what X means, I’ll look it up!

That’s what the internet is for, and libraries and tutors and notes. They are my external hard drives where I keep extra information that isn’t directly essential. My brain is where I store the overarching ideas, the concepts and the information that is directly relevant to what I’m doing at that moment in time. These kinds of tests are from before the era of mass communication and easy information, when it still took a great deal of time to find these exact definitions. As you might have guessed, my professor is trailing behind the modern times a bit.

As they say, “Science advances from funeral to funeral.” (which is probably paraphrased from Max Planck, whose original quote went something like this, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”)

I guess that holds true for technology as well. People cling to what they are used to. That’s why the paperless office is only now slowly becoming a reality (as the generation of people that grew up reading from screens starts taking a solid stake in the working world). Even when technology allows for things to happen easier, people find it mentally easier to do things the way they’ve always done.

I think economists are correct to an extent when they say we are rational beings, but they forget to calculate the mental costs of every action. Often we don’t do things differently because we already know the method we’re using. Better the devil you know, you know. Yes, blind typing is a great deal quicker than ramming away at the keyboard with two fingers, but do you know how much anguish and mental trauma switching over would cause? (well, neither does the person who’s ramming away with his or her two fingers, but they can obviously well imagine).

I quite enjoyed that

I haven’t written a blog entry in a while. I just haven’t felt like it, to be honest about it. Still, I really shouldn’t let that affect me. I should think about what it will be like in a years time, when I look back at this big hole in my blogging during what will have been an important part of my life. So without further ado, I hereby am starting the blogging process again. Hopefully I’ll even enjoy it. It used to be about sharing my experiences with all of the people out there, but after my sporadic blogging of late I doubt that many people will have stuck around. So instead I should just accept I’m writing mainly for myself and the few die hard readers that have chosen to stuck around.

Thanks die hard readers.

So what has been going on? As you know from my last few posts I’m back in university. This was something I spent about a year building up to (mentally probably more than physically, I left everything to the last minute, as usual physically). The first group of courses are just about ending. I somehow managed to survive and even do well. (I hesitated to use the word excel, but I don’t think I can really say I’ve been excelling. Maybe that will happen later, but for now I will stick with ‘do well’.)

I got an eight for the presenting part of a course (a 15 minute presentation got me part of the way there, a few questions did the rest). An eight is equivalent to an 80%, which is pretty crap by American standards, but then they grade more harshly in the Dutch system so if I manage to keep an eight average I will graduate cum laude. That is the goal I’ve set myself, by the way, to graduate cum laude. Since I worked so hard to get into this program, I thought I should at least try my utmost to finish it at that level.

For the rest I’ve largely been keeping to myself. I’m down to only two days a week at the café. When I first started at uni I was doing three days a week, but that was destroying me. I just had no time for anything but working and studying. Now that I think about it, I probably already discussed that before. I always type these posts in a word document off line. I somehow feel I can be more honest that way. It’s an extra level of abstraction, thereby creating a bigger distance between myself and the text that I make available for general consumption. Of course it’s the same text, but it doesn’t feel the same. Maybe it’s because Word somehow feels more like a letter, or an essay, and typing something into a web page more like a chat, or a forum post.

Anywho, I’m rather enjoying a lot of time on my own. It’s quite different to all the socialising I used to do, but it somehow seems to be part of the Holland experience, this solitary thing. It’s probably also part of the reason I haven’t blogged a great deal, I guess I’m just not in a terribly sharing kind of mood.

I imagine it’s just a stage.

And maybe one that is just starting to pass, as this blog entry could possibly attest to.

Did I ever mention that I always write my titles at the end?

Mob Moods

I’ve been really interested recently in the herd mentality of people. It’s been impressing me how herd driven we are; how we so easily pick up on signals from our environment and let them influence us; most of the time without us even knowing. It isn’t really surprising once you think about, seeing as we’re social creatures, which move in flocks very similar to other herd animals, but I don’t think many people actually sit down and think about it. Which is a shame, because it means that you’re even less in control of your actions than you think you are.

To give you a couple of examples. In the café I work in you can really see the herd mentality of people – you can sense the energy changing around the room as different things happen and different moods grip the crowd. For example, people never leave one table at a time. It is almost always several tables that leave at once. The more tables that leave, the more other tables that suddenly decide to leave as well. Sometimes the whole café will empty in the space of a few minutes. All of these people believe, of course, that they are independent and exercising free will. In many ways they are. It just happens to be the case that their free will is heavily influenced by the will of the people around them.

The same thing can be said for drinks and food and such. Often there will be waves of specific drinks being ordered. We’ll have cappuccino rounds, for example, or suddenly everybody starts ordering orange juice (which is really annoying, because you only have so much fresh orange juice at any one time).

Tipping is another one of these wave things. When one or two tables walk away without tipping, suddenly others seem to tip less or not at all. If a group of people walk up to pay, however, and the first person obviously gives a tip then suddenly you’ll find the whole group doing it. And if the first person is so nice as to say that your service was spectacular and fantastic (you might be surprised, but it does happen!) then suddenly everybody’s tip goes up! That person’s experience is completely different from everybody else’s, after all they were at a different table, but nonetheless their opinion influences the opinions of others.

Mood is another one of those amazingly contagious things. Sometimes I have to take over the terrace from somebody who isn’t really all that ‘on the ball’ or service oriented. Often, when that happens, there’s a negative energy over all the tables. The thing is, this negative energy infects newcomers – even though they don’t realise it. They directly act more critical, tip less and generally hang around for shorter. It normally takes me about an hour or even an hour and a half to change that mood around; then, when that mood is changed, suddenly everybody that arrives new takes on the mood of the rest of the terrace and is far more accepting, generous and friendly. I’m not making this up. Admittedly it’s anecdotal evidence, but it something I have experienced time and again.

The people subconsciously take in the mood cues of others and seriously let them influence their own. The thing is, they aren’t even aware of it happening. In my opinion, this gives their environment an immense amount of power over them. Or, to put it another way, it gives the people an immense amount of power over you. You can’t change it, but you can certainly try to be aware of it happening.

The first step towards being honest and objective is to be aware of your own self-deceit and subjectivity.

Power or the lack of it

Let’s talk about some research they’ve done in social psychology, so that you can get an idea what I’ve been learning. It turns out that the amount of power we have directly influences our mental capacities. People with power and people without power think differently. With that I don’t mean that they think about different things, we all already knew that, but rather that they way their brains work actually changes as their levels of power change.

Research has revealed that when people do not have power, their ability to plan is affected. They find it harder to make long term plans and to keep their minds concentrated on the task at hand. Instead, it seems, that a great deal of their mental activity is occupied with taking in their surroundings and observing what is happening around them. This actually manifests as the same person doing markedly worse on an IQ test when they feel they have little power, then when they feel the have a great deal.

There’s more.

Powerful people are less able to take on other’s perspective and instead they are much more likely to think from their own. This extends to being able to take into consideration other people’s emotions and their ways of thinking. People with little power, on the other hand, are much better at putting themselves in somebody else’s shoes. In other words, empathy goes down as power goes up.

The reasoning for all this is that more powerful people need to be able to plan better, seeing as probably others depend on them and they can’t depend on others. On the other hand, they do not need to worry about their surroundings as much as people without power, after all, the powerless are the most likely to be the first to fall prey if the group is attacked.

The empathy too is relatively easy to explain. After all, the powerful really don’t need to care as much about other people’s feelings. Instead it is the people without power who take care that others like them, since they can’t use their power to get what they want.

The interesting thing is, that this both fits our stereotypes (the uncaring boss, the less bright worker) and shows that it isn’t really that person’s fault. His or her mind is actually being effected by the world around them. It also means that something can be done about these things. People are much more a product of their environment than we realise.

What’s more, it can be used to make our lives better. You want your kid to learn better and plan more for the future? Give him more of say. Do you want to be more empathic to the people around you? Let go of the reigns a bit and let other people take charge.

And that’s just ideas off the top of my head. No doubt there’s a whole bunch of other applications for this research.

Man/ Machine interface

Sunday was the end of my grandfather’s birthday party and the town he’s from made quite a feast of it. He’s quite the celebrity there, you see. His music (he’s a composer) is actually performed in quite a few countries, it seems, especially out in the former East Bloc. My mother, my sister and I decided to go for a few hours (my studies didn’t permit me to go longer). Because we were so late in making that decision, there really weren’t any tickets left, not even for family. Still, we ended up sitting outside of a large tent where inside they were playing one of his earlier works, quite beautifully.

I fell asleep lying in the grass. I guess I really was completely exhausted. So I didn’t catch much of the concert at all. Still, the little bits I did hear were quite nice. I’m not sure if it was worth driving an hour there and an hour back, but hey – there were other reasons to go.

Like seeing my mother, who I really don’t get to see very much of. She came down last Wednesday and left yesterday. In total I only managed to spend about four hours with her. That’s about how long she needs to drive one way to get here. Of course I’m not the only reason she comes down. She’s got quite an active social life (more active then mine, at the moment) and I’m sure she wasn’t bored for a moment. It’s just another symptom of the underlying problem of too much to do and to few hours to do it in.

I still try to motivate myself to put in all the hours by saying ‘yeah, but I just spent eight months doing nothing in India’. Of course it wasn’t ‘just’. It was six months ago. I wonder how much longer I’ll be able to use that, before I’ll start telling myself ‘that no longer counts, that’s ancient history’.

Fortunately, yesterday there was suddenly some time left over and today class got cancelled, which gives me a short reprieve. In true me fashion, I directly started wasting time. Buy furniture for my room, read ahead for class, or get new sport shoes that actually fit in my bag? Why? Let’s instead download a really old game and spend the next hour and a half playing it.

What to do? What else is there to do but try and work harder and hope that I can survive these moments of wasted time. Truth be told, where formerly it used to be easy for me to waste days and even weeks doing what was entertaining but ultimately useless, now it has been restricted to a few hours at most. Maybe one day I’ll be able to avoid wasting time. Maybe that’s when I’ve finally rejected all of my humanity.

I wonder what I would look like in chrome steel.

No, I don’t really know what I’m talking about either.

The plot

I guess I’m starting to show the strain. Yesterday I wasn’t the nicest of people to work with. I was in a foul mood, snappy and generally hard to be around. The causes were numerous. First and foremost, I felt that it wasn’t going well. I was standing at the bar, which is definitely the hardest working position, but – according to me – not the most essential position. It’s basically all about producing the drinks; which yesterday meant producing cappuccinos (for those of you unaware, cappuccinos require just a bit more precision and work than other coffees, making them fun to make when it’s not pounding, but a pain when the shit hits the fan.)

The problem is, from there you don’t have any oversight. You’re tucked away in a little corner, with barely any idea what is going on outside. All you see is the tickets coming out of the machine and the other staff coming back to pick up the drinks. You can try to infer how busy it is from there – but generally you’ll be wrong. Often, the bartender will be slamming drinks out and the waiters will think it’s relatively quiet.

I’m better in service, because I know I’m good at keeping the people happy. After doing this for five months nearly continuously I can feel what’s going on on the terrace. I have the oversight to know which tables are new, which are content and which are ready for another drink, often without them even needing to signal. It’s all about reading their moods.

Recently we got a whole host of new employees who don’t have this ability to sense the mood yet. They are where I was, down in the nitty-gritty trying to cope with the information overload that initially comes your way. They are still reactive (rather than proactive, obviously). The problem is, I can’t put them behind the bar either, because the drinks were coming way too hard and fast. I couldn’t do it all and I felt the service was suffering as a result.

And that pissed me off; especially since I worked so hard over the summer to improve our service.

Normally I can put myself past that. I can get positive, happy and content relatively quickly and this is where the other things are paying a factor. I’m once again learning to cope with a new environment and a way of thinking that I haven’t employed in a long time, indeed. My brain once again has to be re-tooled and that always takes energy, concentration and time. In a few weeks time I’ll be able to take the strain of working and studying at the same time, but right now I’m mentally strained and it seems that then I can’t completely control my anger nor my annoyance.

What can I say? I am human. I have my limits and I will continue to try to transcend them. Since I can’t get out my own way, hopefully people will be smart enough to get out of the way when I fail to be more than I am.

Arcane Mutterings

A few hours ago I sent in my first assignment for my master’s program. It was a short essay. In fact, it could be compared in length to one of my blog entries. In many ways that’s where the comparison ends; for the simple reason that the university essay is a completely different animal from the blog entry.

Psychology claims to be a science (is it? I’m not sure) and therefore requires a great deal of precision. The problem with precision, however, is that it means that terms and expressions should vary as little as possible. This can make the average university essay a rather dull affair.

This point is being rather admirably driven home by the reading I’m being asked to do. I will immediately say, in the readings defence, that the more recent articles seem much more interesting; though whether this is because they actually are more interesting, or because I’m getting used to the format is not clear.

The danger I see now is that my writing here will be influenced by my reading there. I’m hoping I can separate the two; because quite frankly I abhor the tendency to try to write so cleverly that your writing becomes almost unintelligible and this is something that I’ve long accused scientists of. Of course, there are a number of reasons why they might do this. The first is that they aren’t very good writers (which is very possible, since writing is only one of the skills that a scientists should possess and not one of the most vital ones at that). The second is that they write the way they do because they think it is actually perfectly clear. A third reason I have only just discovered is that they do it because they don’t see writing like I do. Perhaps they see it more as mathematical prose.

I’ve realised (largely through an article that I just read) that I’m going to have to learn an entirely new set of skills and – possibly more importantly – a new set of values. Entertainment, for example, is not very high at all on the list of important things to consider when writing scientifically.

I think that’s a shame, but I can understand why. If you want to be entertained, you don’t read science, you read science when you want to be enlightened.

So once I’ve learned to write to enlighten (or maybe just convince) can I still write to entertain? Well, the thing is – I think that a piece of writing is far more enlightening (or should I say convincing?) when it is also entertaining. For one thing, you manage to keep your audience far more present and attentive. After all, you need your audience to be attentive in order for them to be convinced of anything you propose.

So in my quest to learn how to write enlighteningly (oooh… five syllables – university’s working!) I should never lose sight of my attempts to entertain. Losing the latter will negatively affect my ability to do the former.

Or, in plain English, if nobody’s going to read what I write, who cares what I’ve got to say?

What I want

I’m in the middle of my first week of university. So far I’ve been assigned about 15 articles and two essays to write, all to be finished either during this week or by Monday or Tuesday next week. It’s obviously going to be a piece of cake.

The first thing I’m going to have to get used to is being forced to read. I mean, the reading that I’ve been assigned (and the essay writing as well) is not something I haven’t done in my own time before. I’ve easily consumed as many pages in written text and filled as many empty pages as they’re asking from me now. The only difference between then and now is ‘want to’ and ‘have to’.

My first lesson in psychology is the fact that ‘have to’ and ‘want to’ are often inversely correlated (or, in layman’s English, when one goes up the other goes down). I’ve now got the material, I’ve got the reason, all that is partially missing is the desire. I have to finish this article because I still have to read three others before tomorrow. I have to write this essay because tomorrow I’ll have to be working on the other one. I have to understand what I’m reading because tomorrow I might have to answer questions about it.

I have to learn to want to.

And I will, I’m sure. It will all become easier. After all, I haven’t worked like this in a long time (well, for ever. I never did all my assigned reading when I was last in uni.) so I’m sure that in a few weeks time I’ll adjust. After all, I adjusted to my job managing a café. In the beginning I nearly approached a burn out and now I can manage it quite easily. I’m sure the same will happen with this new stage.

Still, it’s quite a system shock. I hope I can live up to my own demands. I’ll have to. After all, I worked way to bloody hard to get into this damned program to now fail while I’m in there. Besides, the professors pretty much already admitted that I’d already completed the hardest part; namely actually getting into the program.

Of course, the hardest part for me isn’t that I want to finish the program, its that I want to finish the program with the highest honours. I’m making rather high demands of myself. But, as they say, if you don’t aim for the stars you’ll never reach very high.

I don’t just want to get very high (I’ve done that often enough in my life) I actually want to get to the burning bastards in the sky. I want to etch my name across the sky and burn my initials into the moon.

Originally I wanted to be God, but then I realised I should aim for something slightly more attainable; so I’ve set my sights on complete world domination.

Completing my Research Masters Cum Laude will be a good start.

Stage(d)

My summer of work is over. The Dutch summer has been over for quite a while, of course; but that’s secondary. For me it’s all done, I just did my last shift of my last full week at the place I work. From here on in I’ll be down to three and I’ll somehow have to make ends meet that way. Hopefully I can quickly find some extra freelance work. Let’s see what happens.

Still, I’m very happy that the next stage is about to start. My ‘getting my life sorted out in Holland’ stage took all of four months. Of course, it’s not completely sorted, some of the tail end of this stage might have to be dealt with in the next stage, but the line is definitely five days away; for then the stage ‘What the hell am I doing at university again’ will begin.

Hopefully that stage will quickly be followed by the ‘ah, so that’s what I’m doing at university’ stage, but nothing is certain. Well, that’s not true, one thing is certain, the Dutch are very good at pulling cash out of you any way they can.

I experienced that again today when I called about getting insured. You see, in the Netherlands you have to be insured. It’s THE LAW (did I mention that already?). So I called them up (because I have to get insured within four months) and asked about how much it would all cost, what the benefits would be and so forth.

They told me that they would love to insure me and they would need my bank details so that they could take the cash for this month, oh yes, and the cash for the last four months as well (seeing as you need to be insured, as that’s THE LAW (did I mention that already?) and therefore they would kindly insure you retroactively for the last four months. Somehow if I’d got into an accident in the last four months I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be so keen to insure retroactively).

So that is yet another attempt to extract cash from one of my bodily cavities. There’s a saying in Dutch that I rather liked when I first came back (I hadn’t heard it previously) and it roughly translates to ‘you can’t pull feathers of a naked chicken’. They might have the saying, but unfortunately they don’t pay it much heed. They’ve definitely managed to pull feathers from under my armpits and other ‘a’ areas (now my cheeks chaff).

I know this sounds very feathery (no pun intended) but it would be nice if they would sometimes let some of the down grow into full fledged plumage.

Of course, that’s not their primary ambition. They are probably also getting plucked by yet other organisations and their primary ambition is therefore to survive. And as we all know, to survive you need money. I just wish they wouldn’t need my money!

On loneliness

Last night – for a moment there – I was overwhelmed by that bitter sweet feeling of loneliness. Sweet because it’s such a strong emotion, such a physical emotion; bitter, well I guess it’s pretty obvious. After all it isn’t the nicest of emotions.

I haven’t felt lonely for quite a while there. I’ve been quite happy living a half-cloistered existence. I’ve purposefully been keeping to myself because a) it’s cheap b) I’ve really been enjoying doing my own thing and c) I see quite enough people at my work every day, thank you very much.

But yesterday was different. My boss’ son turned 20 and had a party in the café I was working in. That meant I was pouring drinks and making small talk with a big group of boisterous, loud and (after I’d poured a bit too much alcohol into them) quite drunk early 20 somethings.

Then – when I closed shop – they all left to do their own thing.

I was left behind and that warm social feeling just dropped away. Suddenly it was just me left to lock the door bike home alone, return to my (quite literally) empty room and my crumpled bed.

I think the thing was that I had no control over when the social thing ended. Or maybe I did (after all, it was my choice when to close the shop); but my responsibilities today played through my mind yesterday and forced me to hold back – forced me to act responsible.

Generally I dig that entire acting responsible thing. I enjoy having the feeling that I’m not wasting my life away. That I’ve got a purpose and a reason for doing things. That I’m building towards something. Still, it’s hard to let go of all those irresponsible thoughts and deeds that clouded my past. Being irresponsible is so much fun!

Have I finally truly grown up?

That’s a scary thought, isn’t it? Maturity even for the likes of me. Not to worry, though. It can never truly claim me. I sometimes forget that I have to be able to laugh at myself, but when that happens, life always conspires to teach me that lesson again – possibly even more roughly than last time. For he who can’t laugh at himself is in for a world of sorrow. I think all true humour comes from being able to take yourself with a grain of salt. I hope I never become so old that I forget that.

I also hope I never get so old that I become truly lonely. It’s a great emotion to feel every so often, just for the strength of it; but it could destroy you if you felt it every day, waking and sleeping.

I think loneliness is worse than depression. If you’re depressed you can share it with other depressed people and gain some traction. If you’re lonely; well, you’ve obviously only got yourself.

Help(ed)

I’ve been thinking about it and I have realised that I’ve been living an incredibly blessed existence since I’ve come back to Holland. Yes, things have been tough; but that’s largely been because of my own mistakes, loose ends and carelessness. Everything that’s come my way seems to have come from others.

People have been truly kind to me. My parents, my sister, her boyfriend, my ex(?), my colleagues, even the people at the university (who would have ever thought that?). The people on this blog, on face book and on e-mail have also been supportive and kind – it doesn’t matter that it was only in words, all that matters is that it was there.

Why am I this lucky?

If the Luck Factor is to be believed (a book that I read quite a while ago, now – but that I still refer to often, as you’ve probably noticed) luck is of our own making and in four specific regards 1. Maximise your Chance Opportunities 2. Listen to your Lucky Hunches 3. Expect Good Fortune 4. Turn your Bad Luck into Good Luck.

I’ve definitely been trying to do more of the first and the third has come by itself (I expect things to work out for the best and for some reason that actually seems to work!) But I can hardly say that I’ve changed my life around so much in the last year and a half that I deserve everything that has come my way.

Of course you can never say you deserve anything somebody else gives you of their own free will. I think that’s one of the big dangers. When you start expecting things, you become ungrateful; when you become ungrateful people don’t enjoy giving you those things anymore; and when they don’t enjoy giving you those things anymore, there’s a great likelihood that they will stop giving.

So I will not expect and I will truly appreciate. In a way this entry is an attempt to show that appreciation. It is an attempt to let those people who’ve helped me know that I am grateful for what they have done and that they can always come to me to ask something back. I know not all the people that have helped me read this blog (though quite a few do) and I will make certain that I tell every person again in person how I appreciate what they’ve done for me.

What’s more, I will gladly help anybody else that needs it. I believe that you don’t always need to give help back specifically to the person that’s helped you. I feel that it is okay to help others instead, if the first person doesn’t need it. After all, if everybody followed that rule then the person that helped you would end up getting helped by somebody else when they needed it as well, though long loops of helpfulness.

Of course, not everybody follows that rule; but it’s a start if I do and we’ll have gone a long way if you do too.

See Saw

A few days ago I tried to find the website that I originally used to sign up for my university degree, as I wanted to know the exact amount that I would have to pay. I remembered that it was somewhere around 3000,- Euroes for two years, but I wanted to be sure. I entered a number of searches and couldn’t find the website. Then I checked through my bookmarks and my e-mail and found the link. I clicked on it. It led nowhere.

The link was dead.

Alarmed I started searching for other websites about the research master I had just subscribed to. I soon found one, but there was one significant difference. The cost was 5000,- Euroes per year.

There was, of course, no way that I could possibly pay that amount. With my heart hammering in my chest I contacted the university and asked how much I would have to pay. ‘5000,-’ they informed me. I explained what had happened and the lady at the other end of the phone said, ‘well, the best thing you can do is write to the head of the department. There’s no guarantee, but he’s in charge of scholarships and finances.’

I wrote the man a letter in which I explained my predicament. I wrote emotionally, honestly, and frankly. I admitted my mistakes (it was quite a list) and then admitted that if I didn’t get any help, all my hard work would be undone.

I didn’t snivel; but it did come quite close to begging (in a face-saving manner, mind you).

Then I left for the city and wandered around in a daze. I pretty much admitted defeat. I said, ‘if they can’t help me. Well, then obviously it wasn’t meant to be. I will accept my fate and postpone my studies by a year.’

That night I came back (I watched ‘The Dark Knight’ to console myself) and I checked my e-mail. I’d already received a response and the response amounted to a 2500,- Euro scholarship.

I literally punched the air (something I thought was only a literary device, until then) and did a little jig. They’d kindly placed the study within reach again.

When I told a friend what had happened she said, ‘well, they must be really desperate for students’. I retorted, ‘maybe they’re just really desperate for me!’

‘Maybe,’ my sister said later, ‘it’s a little bit of both. Maybe they’re desperate for high quality students, which means they’re desperate for you.’

I liked that interpretation.

Trees and Forests

University starts in about 20 days and I’m in no way ready. I just got my first e-mail about what books to buy, with the helpful hint that I might want to think about pre-buying and pre-reading.

The book I’m supposed to be pre-reading is a book about methods and statistics. Right now I can’t even generate the energy to read about stuff I /want/ to read about; how the hell do they expect me to find the drive to read about methods and statistics?

The first and foremost problem ghosting through my mind right now is still very much ‘how am I ever going to pay for all of this?’. I’ve told the people at work that I’ll have to go back to three days of work a week. My study will take four days. That leaves me zero days to raise extra money, and as things stand right now I will only be making just enough to cover my base expenses. No fat, except for the little bit of extra money I’m raising this month.

How can I be thinking about methods and statistics when that’s all hanging above my head?

What I really need is some kind of fund or scholarship to help me out, but those don’t come knocking on my door either. I have to go out and look for them myself. The people at the government department that help most students with funding (Except for me, of course) helpfully compared finding a scholarship like that to ‘finding a needle in a haystack’. Oh boy, oh boy, I’m really looking forward to that.

Am I whinging? Yeah, I’m pretty sure what I’m currently doing is whinging; but then I’m terrified. I’m scared of the years ahead, I’m frightened of the poverty, I’m worried about whether I can do the degree and I’m deeply concerned about what further snakes are creeping through the savannah.

I must say, the people around me have been really supportive and I’m incredibly grateful for that. As always, I wouldn’t have been able to make it without those people. They feed my soul, they nourish my willpower. They take my annoyance, my frustration, my fear and let it wash over them without a sound, without a complaint. I owe them big time.

Maybe one day soon I’ll be able to repay them. When that light’s there at the end of the tunnel I might have a chance to do something back that will make their lives better. Till then it’s just a matter of looking at my own two feet and willing them forward a step at a time.

Don’t look too far ahead, because you’ll lose heart. A book has chapters so that we have a feeling of progress, a journey has steps so that we feel we’re getting somewhere. Just like a piece of text without chapters, pages, paragraphs, lines or breaks we’d rather not begin, in the same way will power is all about looking at the trees and not the forest. Just doing that little step now and worrying about the rest of those steps only when this little one is done.

And of course wisdom is keeping track of the entire forest. The big picture. That’s why they call people with too much of the first ‘stubborn’ and too much of the second ‘hesitant’.

So what if you’ve got both? Are you then ‘stubbornly hesitant’?

Films

Over the last few months I’ve watched some fantastic films and I’d thought I’d share a few with you here, in no particular order.

Air Guitar Nation
Yes, it’s a docu, but you have to watch it. This has been one of the most entertaining, uplifting and just plain weird films I’ve seen in years. It’s all about the Air guitar world championships and the people involved. Air guitar is where you act like your playing guitar, while you’re not holding anything. Kooky, strange, bizarre and ultimately fantastic.

Lola Rennt
A German flick that retells the same story a number of times through the application of chaos theory. You know the one ‘if a butterfly flaps its wings…’ Lola does run a lot – which might irritate some people – but she’s got fabulously red hair, which makes up for a lot. It’s good and I advise it to anybody looking for something different.

Stardust
There’s been a lot of children/ adult fantasy movies in the last year or so, but Stardust has been head and shoulders above the rest. I admit I might be biased, as I rather like Neil Gaiman’s work, but then everybody around me loved the film as well (and they don’t know Neil Gaiman). Plus Robert De Niro puts down a fantastic atypical performance.

Das leben der Anderen
Another German film about East Germany before the fall of the Iron curtain. Great colours, original story and deeply moving. This is one of those films that proves that there are other styles except for the ones done in Hollywood and they can work at least as well.

Paris je t’aime
A French film about love in Paris, told through rather a lot of short stories. The great thing is that each short story has been done by a different director and as a result affects a completely different style. Of course the individual quality of the short stories does vary (different directors and all) but overall the quality is very high.

Miller’s Crossing
I’ve watched a lot of Coen Brothers lately and I think that Miller’s Crossing (along with the Big Lebowski and Fargo) has to be one of my favourites. Great characters, good storyline and deeply engaging.

The Darjeeling Limited
Odd. Beautifully shot and entertaining. It gives an idea of what India might be like and the types that get lost there. The stylised, colour saturated shots make the film a visual feast, while the flawed characters are a great glimpse into your own family’s screwed up relationships.

Screaming

Apologies ahead of time, but I need to vent for a bit. A great deal isn’t really going my way right now and screaming it out into the cyber world might be better than screaming it at some random passer by on the street.

A lot of stuff isn’t going my way right now. You know, the usual; bills to pay when you really don’t even have enough money to eat; a mounting wave of incoming financial obligations with no real idea of how you’re going to deal with them; exhaustion and a complete lack of interest in reading, writing and other intellectual pursuits; a university education that’s going to take a huge amount of time that I don’t really have; a job that’s so tiring that I don’t have the energy to search for another one and to top it all off a place where I’m starting to enjoy working less and less.

It’s that last one that I’m going to talk about. More specifically it’s the last one yesterday that I’m going to talk about. Yesterday was probably the worst day that I’ve had at my job.

It was gay parade in Amsterdam. That meant that the city was flooded – not just with gays, but also with tourists who wanted to go and see the gays break loose. Of course, this meant that it was incredibly busy. That’s nothing new, though. Busy we can deal with. Unfortunately not just was it busy, but nothing seemed to work.

It started with the computer system. We use these mobiles to take orders on the terrace. Unfortunately, we’ve only got one left (after two died horrible deaths in the last couple of days). This means the main responsibility for taking the orders falls on one person. The first person to take this role was lax. When the second person took over and walked out onto the terrace they were basically attacked by mobs of coffee desiring, apple pie demanding and hot-chocolate craving customers.

I was standing bar and trying to give these people what they wanted, but there were no coffee cups (the washer didn’t think it was necessary to pick up his pace). Then there was no apple pie because the kitchen didn’t think it was necessary to listen to my insistent beeping on the intercom. Then I had apple pie, but no whipped cream (because the canisters hadn’t been sent down to be refilled) and of course everybody wanted whipped cream.

Apparently the customers all took it in good stride – but I certainly didn’t.

And then there was dinner. Already frazzled from the afternoon of madness we went into dinner hoping that things would be better. We got to close the terrace because of rain (bad for business but good for overworked staff) and run the insides as a restaurant. All was going well until suddenly food stopped coming up. Thirty minutes passed and customers started looking at us expectantly. Suddenly I remembered the pink stripes that had come up on the food order tickets that had last been sent up.

They weren’t that stupid, were they? Downstairs I went to ask if they had replaced the paper roll in the printer, seeing as those pink stripes meant the paper was nearly out. ‘You need to replace the paper rolls?’

Fucking idiots.

It’s a Saturday night, prime time, during a festival and they don’t even think ‘hey, we haven’t had orders for quite a while, maybe something is wrong’.

We rewrite out the tickets, by hand and get them back to work – then we go out to the floor and offer all the affected tables drinks on the house. The peace is restored. New tables walk in and take orders.

These new orders come up before some of the old hand written orders are finished! These people get their food in ten minutes, while the table next to them has been waiting for an hour. How, pray tell, do you explain that?

I told the rest of the staff that if something like this happens again I’m running away screaming. I’m not sure if I was serious.

Friend Wheel

There’s this application on facebook that’s called the ‘Friend Wheel’. It’s an interesting little app, in that it shows how all your friends are connected. Who knows who among your friends. The important thing being the ‘among your friends’ part, as it doesn’t show anything more than that.

This screwed me up, originally. You see, quite a lot of my friends don’t know each other. There are quite distinct groups, where every friend might have met within that clique, but the only connection between the individual groups was – obviously – me.

This meant that I had lots of white space in my friend wheel. The connectivity simply wasn’t that great. I saw this as a bad thing. I looked at other people’s friends circles and everybody seemed to know each other. I thought ‘am I doing something wrong?’

But I’m not. You could say they are.

Let me explain that. The fact that their circles are incredibly interconnected means that all their friends know each other; which basically means that they are all the same group. The group may be very large – but the person with the very interconnected friends wheel is basically not very good at meeting new people by themselves. They are reclusive and depend on others to meet new people.

The less connected your friends circle, the more you are the one to go out and meet new people (and the less these new people you meet meet your former friends, of course, but I’ll get back to that). The outgoing extrovert with the large social network that can get them things done, because they always know somebody who can help them is the facebook persona who knows a lot of people, while these people barely know each other; the friend circle with lots of entries, but few spokes.

Of course there is another good reason that the people I know don’t really know each other (there’s always as second explanation) and that’s distance. I move around so much that the people I know will have trouble knowing each other. So that deflates my extroverted outgoing bubble a bit.

Still, it just shows that our instinctive desire (many lines between all the people) is not necessarily the right one. Ultimately the network with fewer spokes will be more useful (as there will be far more people from different walks of life in it – giving you both more fulfilment and more resources).

Yes, I’ve just spent an entire entry on a facebook application.