Climbing Schild's ladder of life

Wondering what Schild's ladder is? I thought so. And guess what, it's not as simple as it sounds: Look here. And don't tell me I didn't warn you :P.

I don't know what it is about Belgium. But it makes you want to sleep long. There was not a single day while I was there when I was out of bed before 11 o'clock (I think my average time of getting up was around 12.30 :P). But today I woke at 9 o'clock already by myself. It was weird. And managed to do a lot of thigns today, from washing to playing badminton and unpacking.

Tomorrow's New Year and I predict it will be a bit chaotic. I'll just have to take things as they come, I have no definite plans for anything :P. And I should probably begin reading up on biochemistry for the exams, as well as write that weird article about domestic pigs for anatomy class.

And I found the weirdest thing in the supermarket today. I bought a burger that you can simply heat and eat for lunch. But the packaging was very weird. I didn't notice it until I got home. On the front of the package the text was written in Flemish and French, the languages I'm so used to from everyday Belgian life. But this was bought in a Danish shop. It made no sense. I'm so used to reading it I didn't even notice it when I bought it. I imagine normal Danish people notice it immediately and think it's kind of weird. Which it is. And on the backside of the packaging the text was in Danish, which is even stranger. A combination of Denmark and Belgium in one burger. Quite a serendipity (how I love that word) I must say.

In other news, there are no other news (I could be bothered to write about right now). Except perhaps that my hair is getting very long and I'm getting more smiles from girls than usual, and wondering if it's connected or not. Hmm, the world is full of mystery :P.. (look here and here)

Am I blind?

I slept until three o'clock yesterday and played a lot of wii with my brother. That's all I remember :P. What an unsignificant day.

Today I had my old friend from Belgium (who now studies in Warwick, England) visiting. We had loads of fun. Talked a lot, played wii and cards (not just any type of cards; hint: MTG). Didn't go for a walk with my family because of a series of annoying decisions by my parents that kept making it impossible to find the time for it. It had to be the perfect time of day with perfect weather and temperature. And of course they manage to postpone it every day except today, when my friend is coming over. I'm getting the feeling that they aren't that enthousiastic about going on a walking trip after all :P.. Ah well.

We also spoke about holidays today. My dad says we'll probably go to Iceland this summer and my grandmother invited me and my brother to New York or another place in the US of choice afterwards. I'm looking forward to it =D. My grandmother has been to 90% of the countries in the world. It's quite incredible. In two weeks she's off to China for "only the 15th time" according to herself. Well, she's worked a lot of her life in an airline company, so she gets both hotels and flights for nearly no money at all. And it works for family members as well. New York (or other random destination of choice in the US) here i come =D! (And Iceland sounds really cool, but my Dad HAS been known to make empty promises, and this wasn't even a promise, sooooo..)

I'm going home to Denmark tomorrow with my suitcase stuffed with presents and food (yes, my Mum insisted..) so I will have enough cakes and sweets to live on for a month. It's going to a be a bit weird getting back. There's New Year, which I'm looking forward to, and exams and back to university again and all. It's weird, it feels like a whole other world right now.

I'd better get some rest. Travelling always drains me of my energy, and I need it for getting home :P. Cya!

Duck

Uhm, and I also found this: Quite fitting, isn't it? Now, how can I make this thing sit to the left of the title..

Je ne parles pas français en ook niet nederlands

Sorry for not posting the last two-three days. I've been kind of busy with all kinds of stuff. I'll just give a brief summary:

• Christmas was great! Got loads of good presents, and it's going to be impossible for me to get it all home in my suitcase, so my dad told me he'll drive the rest of my presents up to me in Denmark. Well, it's only more than a thousand kilometres plus you need to take a ferry and all, but what the hell :P. Of noteworthy presents are: A toaster, an external 500GB hard drive, a multifunctional pump, two great books, a special scarf designed fr biking, designer bowls/dishes, a full pizza slicing and eating set, black towels, a glow-in-the-dark condom (from my little brother, wtf :P..), a steak knife set and a really nice painting. Oh, and I also won the almond prize and got a huge pig made of marzipan.
• I had two friends visiting yesterday. We really had a good time. Lots of playing table football (yes I have a table football game, but it was too big to have in my apartment in Denmark..) and I'm getting quite good now =D. I'm also abusing my parents' amount of food a tiny bit, but well :P.. They always ask me if I eat enough, so I'd better do it now that I have the chance =).
• Today we went to see the film "The Day the Earth Stood Still". It was a good film and I can recommend it. A little weird at times but great graphics, so go see it. And it's a bit cold outside. I'd never think I'd hear myself say it, but I'm really looking forward to summer! And my Dad kept asking in the car if I shouldn't get a girlfriend soon, now that I've been in Denmark for three whole months or so. Grr, sometimes he really annoys me.. I neither have time nor do I think I want to, I'm still not completely over my last one =(..

Well, that about sums these last three days up very briefly.
Happy holidays to all of you!

Oh yes.

Merry christmas!!

And now that that's said I'll MERRY CHRISTMAS!! Yes.. ok.. again.. that was uncalled for..

In other news. Today was quite fun. Went for a five hour walk (without breaks) in the woods and I got to see a lot of cool things. I chanced upon the railway when I took a path I hadn't taken before and stood about 5 metres away when a high speed train passed by. That was really a scary experience. I also saw ducks.

And, darkness here in Belgium first begins to fall at around half past five to six o'clock!! I feel cheated that it happens so much earlier in Denmark :P. No wonder I felt the days were so very short there, when I'm used to this lavish delivery of sunshine. Cold and dark Denmark. But I like it anyway =D.

I was used as a translator today when we watched the Miss Belgium competition in tv. One of our neighbour's daughter was a contestant, but she didn't win unfortunately. It was weird realising that I could sit and translate from both French and Flemish into Danish. I'd never fully realised it before. It's ind of freakish that I understand so many languages. Perhaps I should give up Japanese. --- Nah.. Never :P.

Had a conversation about coolness today with a girl in Denmark. And I rediscovered how scary it is when people read your thoughts, dude! Seriously, imagine a world where girls could go like: "Don't even think about that!" and actually would KNOW if you thought it or not. Scary.

Not much more from sunny and warm (oh yeah, 15 degrees outside all day, baby) Belgium.

I love holidays ;D!

Just arrived in Belgium this afternoon. I sat next to two Danish girls on the plane who studied biochemistry and who were on the way to climb the mountain Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. I was pretty impressed. We talked a bit about random stuff and economy etc. Quite nice.

Other than that, a pretty nice day. It was nice seeing my family again, and my grandmother came here too. My mother has become a bit thinner, but it's far from as extreme as I'd first imagined. We talked a lot about the operation and my grandfathers death and funeral and about my life in general. Also discovered my brother had been SO close to buying me an Xbox 360 (which I want so much), but he hadn't been bothered because it was a bit heavy to carry. And it had been a specially extreme low price, much lower than I'd heard about anywhere else. And they kept asking if I ate enough at home, and telling me that my hair was getting just a "little" long :P.. I guess that's what parents/grandmothers HAVE to say :P.

I always get very sleepy from travelling (and it became pretty late because I stayed up talking with my mum and grandmother) so I'll go to bed now. Goodnight ^_^!

Pursuer of Dreams

Just finished packing everything for tomorrow. I had to STUFF some of the presents in there, I hope they won't break :P. I'm taking the plane early afternoon tomorrow to go back to Belgium for christmas. I'm looking forward to meeting my family again and I hope for a nice christmas =).

I woke today at 5 o'clock in the afternoon. I thought it was early morning because it was still dark outside, but no, it was evening. Not really any more news than that. I felt a bit sick from the night and I can still kind of taste the alcohol. Gross..

Well, not much more from here today!

Proud

I can barely keep my balance right now. I'm pretty proud that I'm reallly able to write this, even though I got a lot of help and it's going really slow. And I'm having such a random conversatison with another drunk guy who studies in London :D.

I can't write anything more. It'll go so wrong. Also speaking to a girl from Portufal right now. I wonder what she thinks of me :P...

So, goodnight!!

Wow

Started today with badminton and gift shopping with a friend, then had two friends over, one of them baking bacon. And had an ultimate weird conversation with the guy afterwards. "BeKON", wtf :P. But fun it was.

Christmas dinner was. Great. I'm so drunk at the moment of writing this, it's ridiculous. Had loads of fun there, played games and talked a lot. Found out my hair colour was kinda neutral/boring and talked about colouring it darker. I'm considering it. And a girl told me I was a great guy, and I smiled a lot at that (positive way).

And I also got my belated birthday present from one of my friends today. A Mao t-shirt. An inside joke of course. I laughed so much at it. And I got that ugly Chinese doll I so much wanted to have, at that christmas dinner gift game. And my carrot cake I also got, was baked by three girls, and they kind of killed it. Poor carrot cake =(. I knew it was a bad idea to let them bake it for me :P.

And now it's bedtime. Tomorrow is another christmas dinner. I hope it doesn't get too much out of hand!

The evening report

In other news. Today was sort of fleeting. Went to Copenhagen again, bought a few more presents (I should have enough now, I've bought for so much money now). I also wrapped some gifts and washed clothes in preparation for travelling back to Belgium on Monday. I'm looking forward to christmas.

And I also realise how much I like the new friends I've made at university. I wish I could tell them in some way how great people they are and that I'm so happy I've met them, in a way that didn't sound stupid :P.

The noise of childhood

Yeah, I remembered it again today. That noise. And the weird gray lines. Nearly slipped into that state of mind again. Stayed there for almost five minutes I think. I'm happy that time is over.

I have no idea what happened today. Everyone in comparative anatomy think I'm colour-blind now. They think I can't see the difference between blue and green. That type of colour blindness doesn't even exist. Tritanopia is the closest to that type of colour blindness. But it's so rare that it's nearly impossible. And even if I had that, I would also confuse yellow with violet. As I said I don't know what happened. I just said it as a joke. And they all believed it.. And I just couldn't get myself to say it was a joke, it was so funny to see their reactions. I'll tell them tomorrow.

I don't like that it's so easy for me to convince people something is true.. It's the same as in games, I've been told I'm nearly a perfect bluffer. Some people from my old school said they were happy I didn't lie in real life to get things. I did that when I was little, I know. I even made grownups do stuff they shouldn't have done. Yeah, I wasn't very nice I guess :P. But that's the past, don't be scared.

I went Copenhagen to buy gifts and I found almost all that I needed. And I nearly decided to buy an Xbox 360. I've heard much bad about the PS3 and the Wii is not for me (my little brother has one anyway).

I'm tired now and I'll go to sleep. Goodnight!

Sometimes green and blue are the same

I was so tired after today. I don't really know what it was. And the stuff we're doing now in biochemistry is quite frankly the Sausage of Death. Yeah, that expression may not make sense and that's exactly what biochemistry is not either at the moment. And I really don't like the lecturer, he sucks.

Nothing much else to say today. I finished reading The Little Prince. I can strongly recommend the book. It's quite frankly, genius. And I started a new book I also got as a present called Schild's Ladder. A science fiction book; one of the grand ones. I found out it's in the same league as Revelation Space, a book I read about a month ago. They're special because of the fact that they introduce completely new ideas not seen anywhere else before. And that they're mindboggling and make you think about a lot of things. I've only read about 20 pages and I'm already hooked.

Oh yeah. I fixed my keyboard problem by doing a system restore. Now half of my pc is fucked though. Shitty price to pay for just three letters. I'm slowly fixing things, right now I'm fighting with Firefox not wanting to open.

Tomorrow I'm going shopping for presents to my grandmother and an elder woman who lives in my apartment complex. I'm blank concerning what to buy, but going to Copenhagen tomorrow. I'll find some new ideas there, I hope.

Hmm, I'd like to say something intelligent here. But nothing really comes to mind. Wo bu zhong guo - I am not China; about sums up what I've learnt about Chinese language structure so far. So I'm finishing this post by quoting a famous chinese philosopher:

Ching lung hua gong gong gong er chungling gua karaoke.
Chong ching-chang namnam.
Ni men you fan yi yuan ma? Shi, wo chou yin. Duo xie.

The mirror of your soul is affected by alcohol

Or that's about the gist of what a guy told me today at a Christmas fair. He operated a kind of psychic healing stand or whatever it was supposed to be. I saw a sign where he claimed that you could get perfect eyesight if you follow ten of his courses. I asked him about this and he spoke about how the eyes are the mirror of the soul and that they're connected to your liver through energy lines. (Shift to Vector Cannon Mode. All energy lines connected. Landing gear and climbing irons locked. Inner chambing pressure rising normally. Life ring has started revolving. Ready to fire. BOOOOM!!) Yes. Basically; don't drink!

Both today and yesterday were pure genius. I had the nicest birthday ever, with so cool gifts and loads of fun the whole day. The bowling was really great. I hadn't bowled for years :P. I'm really, really happy it went so well, and they even enjoyed my attempt at baking and making cakes. Success =D! And today I saw a part of Copenhagen I had heard a lot about but never really seen. And honestly, I can't understand why so much bad is said about it. True enough, it's different. Very much different. Almost like stepping into another world. Couldn't kind of shake the feeling away that I was back to that hippie gardening/nature spirit community that, no matter how hard I try, I can't remember the name of.

I fell asleep as soon I got home today after my little city adventure. I think I had weird dreams like usual, but this time I can't remember. Another thing. I'm learning the English keybaord layout by heart. I don't know what's wrong with my pc, but whenever I set it to the Danish language keyboard layout it doubles some characters. It's really annoying. It doesn't do it with other languages. So I've set it to English now. It's extremely different than what I'm used to, but I'm learning. The only annoying thing is that I can't write the three special Danish characters æ, ø and å easily anymore. I have to use the old trick I learnt in Belgium where we didn't have keyboards with inbuilt Danish charaters. Alt+145, alt+155 and alt+134 are the three commands for the characters. God knows how I should have found this out for myself :P.

I've begun reading Le Petit Prince - The Little Prince. It's really a cool book.

Remember how my mum has been in hospital and everything this last month? Well, bad things never come alone as I've experienced. My grandfather died three days ago. I cannot say I hadn't seen it coming. But that doesn't make it any less scary or sad. It's really been a hard year for my family. I don't think this christmas will be like the others. My grandfather was always one of the people who made christmas special. He always made the best christmas dinners you can imagine. And I remember as a child when he would dress up as santa claus and deliver presents to the children and I told him I was SURE I had seen santas sleigh parked on top the roof. We'll miss him..

Reaching out to catch the sun. To hold it in our hands. Longing for something strong to hide our weakness. Soon the light may disappear. Nothing is meant to last. Yet we believe our world. Searching for happiness. The blue bird flies away.

Ato sanbyaku meetoru de migi ni magarimasu

"After three hundred metres please turn right", says my GPS in Japanese and I end up in front of the hugest lake. I was quite surprised. I had no idea there was this huge a lake so close to where I live. And I just realised today that if there was a university course that studied time, I would probably be attending that.

Time is fascinating and I wish we could somehow learn to know it better and perhaps get an understanding of how to change it. I know it would be chaos and all hell would break lose and that it could be misused big time. But I'd still like to know how you can put a clock in a spacecraft and let it travel quickly around the Earth a few days, and then pull it back in, and see that time on board the spacecraft has passed slower than time on Earth. I really don't understand it. I remember doing calculations about how time would change depending on how fast you went. But how..

I made the coolest presents for my brother this Christmas, really spent a lot of time on it. I'm so happy we share the same type of completely random humour, and THIS item is surely a piece of art in what concerns randomness. He'll laugh himself to death trying to open this thing. I won't reveal anything more than that :P.

I've been busy these last two days. Delivering newspapers, wrapping gifts, cleaning, buying food and drinks and everything else that needs to be done that takes time. That's why I'm going to bed a bit early today. Looking forward to tomorrow! (My birthday :D).

What's in a name?

Yeah, another way to ask: What is reality actually? Do we all see the same reality? The answer is invariably no. We create our own realities. Let me try to explain. The following are the thoughts of a boy who wanted to run away from everything in life. Don't worry, this text is not about me.

Rain. Dark shadows of gloom hang above me. That's how I feel. This isn't how I wish it to be.
The setting sun. The ending of life. This is not how I wish it to be.
Morning. The beginning of a day. The beginning of another terrible day. This is not how I wish it was.
Blue sky. Something warm. Something unfamiliar. Something that fills me with horror. I don't want this. I don't want it to be this way.

Everything! Everything! I hate everything!

What do you wish?
Do you fear anxiety?
What do you want?
Do you want peace of mind?
What do you want?
Don't hate me!
Don't hate me, please!

What I fear is..
Rejection
What I want is..
Another's touch, anothers respect
Can I stay next to you?
May I stay here?
Do you like me?
Do you love..
..your mother?

Do you want to be with your real mother?
No. I don't.
Do you want to be with your father?
No. I don't.
Why not?

Because I'm afraid

I'm afraid of being hated.
My identity might start to disappear.

And so?

What is it that you wish?
Dissolution of Anxiety
What is it that you want?
Erasure of Loneliness

You're very insecure, aren't you?
To become secure I have to..
Value! I want to be worth something!
I want to be worth enough to attract the attention of others!

You seek your own value.

That is something you have to find for yourself.
You have to find your own value for yourself.

That's why I do the one thing I'm good at

I have no value without it.
My life is worthless without it.
Then, what are you?
Then, what am I?
What am I?!

Your body

Ths is..
..me!
This is the Shape that lets others recognise me as myself.
It is my symbol for myself.
This is..
This is..

Your name

.. a representation of myself. Everything is merely a description,
not my real self..
Everything is simply a shape, a form, an identifier to let others recognise me as me.
But then what am I?

What am I?

Your memories

Is this me?
My true self?
My fake self?
You are you.
There is little difference between how you interpret yourself and how others interpret you.
Right.

My clothes..
My shoes..
My room..
These are all parts of what make up my Self.
These things are connected through your consciousness.

So what I think is me, is me.
What I recognise as Self is myself.
But I don't understand my Self.
Where am I?
What am I?
What am I?

You wished for a barrier, a wall to seal off your world.

Nobody understands me!
What are you. Stupid? Of course noone understands you!
Nobody can ever understand you.
The only one who can take care of you and understand you is you, yourself.
So you must take care of yourself.
But I still don't understand myself!
I don't even know what it is that makes me myself!!
How could I love myself?!

You are afraid.

You are still unstable.
That is, the present you.
And the people around the present you.
And the environment that surrounds the present you.
None of these last forever.
Time continues to flow, and time brings change.
Your world is in a state of constant change.
You are capable of change anytime your Mind perceives these changes.

Emptiness

What is this?
A world of nothing?
A world with nobody in it?
This is the world of perfect freedom.
Freedom?
A world of perfect freedom, a world in which you have no restrictions.
Is this really freedom?
Yes, that is what it is.
However this world has nothing in it.
Unless I do something?
Right, unless you do or think something.
But..
..I don't know what to do or think!
He is uncertain.
He has no self image to orient himself.
There's nothing solid here.
It is a world in which there are no obstacles.

This is true freedom?

This is a world in which you can do anything you wish.
But you're afraid, aren't you?
Don't you know what it is that you want to do?
What should I do?
Let me give you a restriction.

Law of gravity and a floor

There! Now you have a top and bottom.
But you've lost a degree of your freedom.
Now you must stand on the ground.
But now you feel easier, don't you?
You have less to trouble your mind.
And now, you can walk.
This is happening because you will it to be.

Is this my will?
This world with the floor is the only thing around yourself.
But now you can move around to anywhere you wish to within it.
You could even turn the world upside down if you wanted to do that.
And the position of your world is not the same either.
It changes with the passage of time.
You can change yourself as well.
What forms your shape is its interaction with the world that surrounds you.
You can do anything here, because this is your world.
This is the shape of your reality.

What is reality?

What is this?
An empty space.
An empty world.
A world where nothing exists but me.
With only myself, I have nothing to interact with.
It's as if I'm here but not here at all.
It's as if I'm slowly fading out of existence.

Why?

Because only you are here.
Only myself?
Without others to interact with, you cannot truly recognise your own image.
My own image?

The image of myself?

That's right. In the act of observing others, you may find and recognise yourself.
Your image of yourself is restrained by having to observe the barriers between yourself and others.
And yet, you can not see yourself without the presence of others.
When there are others, I can perceive myself as an individual.
If I'm alone, then I will be the same as everything else.

There will be no difference between myself and nothing!

By recognising the differences between yourself and others, you establish your identity as yourself..
The very first other person is your mother.
Your mother is a different individual.
Right, I am me and she is her!
But are you really sure that others form my Self?

It's true.

Man, has it taken you this long to realise this simple fact?!
You idiot!

You have a choice in how you live

I see, this is another possiblity..
..another possible world.
The current myself is the same way, it's not my true self.
I can be any way I wish to be.
I see, I can exist being different from what I am now as well!

If you take that into consideration, perhaps this world isn't so bad.
Still, even though the reality itself might not be bad, I could still hate myself.

It's your mind which takes reality and separates it into what's bad and hateful.
It is only the mind which separates reality from truth.
The position from which you view your reality will change your perception of its nature.
It is all, literally, a matter of perspective.
There are as many truths as there are people.
But there is only one truth that is your truth.
That is the one that is formed by whatever narrow point of view you choose to view it from.
It's a perception that protects you from the twisted truth.
That's true, and sometimes one can have a perspective that is far too small.
But a person can only see things from the perspective that they choose.

One must learn to judge all things by the perceived truths that one receives from others.
For example, sunny days make you feel good.
Rainy days make you feel gloomy.
If you are told this is so, then that is what you will believe to be so.
But you can have fun on a rainy day as well.
Your truth can be changed simply by the way you accept it.
That's how fragile the truth for a human is.
A person's truth is so simple that most ignore it to concentrate on what they think are deeper truths.
You, for example, are simply unused to what it is like to be liked by others.
You've never learned to deal with the fear of how other's feel about you, so you avoid it.
But don't others hate me?

What are you. Stupid? It's all in your imagination!
But I hate myself.
One who truly hates himself cannot love.
He cannot place his trust in another.

I'm a coward.
I'm cowardly, sneaky and weak.

Now that you know yourself, you can take care of yourself.

I hate myself.
But I could love myself.
Maybe my life could have a greater value.
That's right! I am no more or less than myself!
I am me!
I want to be myself!
I want to continue existing in this world!
I am worth living here!!

Congratulations!
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
Congratulations!

Thank you all!

Thank you to my father
Good bye to my mother.
And to all of the children..

Congratulations!

Memories of rope bridges, the secret forest mansion and everything that follows

A long time ago (or so it seems) I lived in a completely different world. Stories, bike trips and astral travel. The exploring in the huge forest and the adventures in that old large building in the middle of it. We only got to explore it once a year and every year we found something new. I remember how we always found a new way to get to a place we hadn't been. The hidden cellar full of old books, ancient furniture, weird metal numbers and old coins, the attic full of doves and mirrors and the huge glass room with the weird faded photo albums of trees and people. And everywhere the candles and red feathers. And those weird messages on the walls. And that day when we entered the room full of running computers in a normally locked part of the building in the forest and ran away because it was too scary. We never did manage to get back to that underground hospital again, which was hidden under the old building. I remember how we used our phones to light up the rooms because there was no light. I haven't been scared like that before. There was always another unlocked door that we could open, we kept going forward getting deeper and deeper underground. The things we found there were scary. The pictures and tools we found there. All around the dusty air and the darkness. It was like a dream, it didn't seem real, too much like a horror movie. When we tried returning next year, we couldn't find our way in again. Doors that used to be open were now locked. So that year we missed our chance. Of course, had we looked better, we would have found the open window that appeared to be locked, but actually wasn't. There was always a way, but that year we missed the one day where we could get all the way back. It was like a film, but it was all real. That was last year. The day of exploring this year passed last Saturday and we won't be able to enter until next year. I hope I'll make it back next year, there is so much more to discover. And I'll be sure to bring a flashlight.

So much has changed since then.

Sorry for reminiscing. It sounds like some story I just made up or something, I know, but all this actually happened. What happened in that old building in the middle of the forest is just too hard to properly explain.

It was once an old mansion, and later a huge horse riding track was built next to it together with a stadium where people could bet on horses. But all this was many, many years ago. Only one day a year in connection with a fair, the power is returned to the whole building, and that's when it's possible to enter a hidden area of the place. Me and a friend found the place by chance one day and we've been back the same day each year and explored further. Every year we've found something new, it's really really freakish, like we're being shown something more each time. There is an old elevator behind three locked doors. But every year we've been there, different doors have been locked. There was always a way to get past them though. One year a huge window had been destroyed, so we could crawl through that and get past the first door. Here was a stair leading down and ending in a huge door. And it was unlocked. Behind it was a huge room without any windows. In the middle of it was a round table and on it were stacked at least 10 computers with unknown people sitting around them. I'm afraid to say that we both turned around and ran away from all this. It was so weird. What were they doing in there? They had nothing to do with the fair..

The next year we came back, this time with a Flemish friend I knew. The window had been replaced by someone but now the two first doors were open. We tried going down the stairs again but the big door leading to the computer room was locked this time. There was also an elevator. He came back down again and told us it had stopped at a weird area, but that it was completely alright to use the elevator.

I don't know where the idea came from, but one of us pressed the elevator call button and it arrived once again, empty. I'm afraid to say I wasn't the one to use the elevator first to check out one of the floors (I've always had a fear of elevators suddenly crashing). The friend I had explored this building with first time the year before went into the elevator. I asked what the hell he was doing and that he could be stuck and everything, but he just told me to call the police if that was the case. I watched the doors close and thought, shit, this is totally fucked up. A click, and the elevator ascended. The humming soon ended and we stood breathless, waiting. Another click, a hum and silence. What was going on? About a minute went by and then the humming started again. It came back up. As the doors slid open I sort of half expected the elevator to be empty, but he was there. He told us that there were three floors. We were on the second.

We went up one floor and entered a sort of old bar. There were refridgerators here and glass windows looking high over the woods, but there seemed to be no power. And it looked so unused. There were still glasses and furniture but everything was covered with dust. Then a really scary thing happened. because the elevator was moving. And it really shouldn't. Really freaked out we ran to a small alcove and hid behind some chairs. I was totally freaked out and just wanted to get away from there. It seemed like some kind of horror story taking place in real life and I just couldn't believe it. Then the humming stopped and we could hear the elevator opening but nothing happened. A click, and the doors closed again and the elevator went on its way down once again. Relieved we got out from our hiding.

The bottom floor had ended in a small, dark corridor leading in a direct line from the elevator and then turning a corner. He had been to that corner and saw that a set of stairs led down into a sort of semi-darkness where he could make out a corridor with many doors at each side. But he didn't want to go on alone.

I don't know why, but we all three got into the elevator. If the power went now, we would truly be fucked I remember thinking. But we got to the bottom floor alright and went down the corridor trying the doors as we went by. There were a few small windows at the beginning of the hall providing some light, but it was still quite dark. All the doors were locked though and the others said we should probably go back up again. But I sort of had the feeling that this was all a sort of game and wanted to see if this weird luck of there always being one single door open could be true. As we reached the last door in the corridor I said to the others: "If this door is open, then I am officially freaked out and something not normal is going on". I actually half-expected it to be open. As I pulled down the handle and pushed the door opened smoothly.

We couldn't open the door completely. We soon found out why: An old table had been put on the other side of the door, partly blocking it. But we could press ourselves through the narrow opening as we went one by one. I remember going first and standing breathless waiting for the other two to get inside in the now complete darkness inside. I took up my mobile phone and used it to light a short distance around me and so did the other. The room was huge. And it was connected through open doorways to what seemed to be many, many other rooms (probably the ones behind the locked doors). On the floor were all sort of weird things. We found weird files and pictures and notes. There were weird schematics for what looked like really complicated machines. I couldn't help myself from imagining that this was some horrible place and that something would come out of the darkness and get us. But there was complete silence.

We started going further into the place using our phones, being very careful. I can't really explain what we saw there. Weird things. It's still kind of like a dream to me. I remember finding what looked like schematic for a diving chamber. And all those weird rooms. Completely dark and silent. I remember a room with a ladder having been placed in the middle of the room, just standing there. And I remember when we found a old, rusten defibrillator (the machine you use to send shocks through someones heart when they undergo cardiac arrest). Especially that freaked us out. And that's when we decided to leave the place. We never got to go into all the dark rooms, even though they continued for quite a while probably. And everywhere were papers on the ground. It was just too much. I took a weird metal thing I found lying on the ground with me and I still have it today.

We decided we would go back again next year and properly explore the place, but we couldn't find the way in. We found that there had been way later though. I thought that the rule of there always being a way worked, so I went there with the friend one day in the weekend and we started looking. And when I tried pressing on a window, it sort of clicked a bit and could then be opened. We helped each other haul ourselves up and climb through to the corridor on the other side. But the power in the building is only there once a year, so the elevator was dead..

There is also an old mansion that we've explored which lies right next to the old stadium building. In it we found an attic with mirrors and doves both dead and living everywhere. And there was a glass room in there as well full of weird pictures of trees and candles and red feathers everywhere on the ground. And weird writing on the walls which said sort of prophesising things like "the power is inside you" and "this is the house where dreams come true". And just last year we found a cellar entrance hidden in the side of the house. The entrance is hidden behind some trees, and you can't get into the cellar through the house, you need to go from outside. Down there was complete darkness, but this time I had a flashlight. What we found there I still don't quite understand. We found lots of burnt candles and a stack of old rusten numbers spread out on the ground. There didn't seem to be any real pattern and it was quite freakish. As we went further we found old books spread out everywhere on the ground as well as pieces of broken furniture. And weirdest of all were the pictures. Albums of old and young people with distorted faces and warped colours. And they all seemed to have something old, brown and sticky on them. And it looked a whole lot like blood, but I don't want to think about it. I also found what looked like a pill case, but it was full of old coins and I brought that home with me too and I have that as well.

One day I will return to that place again, perhaps this winter if I can. It's the most different and surreal place I've ever found in my life and it has some of the weirdest and probably most frightening secrets. I wonder what happened to the place. Why is all the furniture still there. Who put all the candles there and who wrote the things on the walls? And what the hell are those computers for, and where do you get power one day of the year in the middle of a huge forest? So many things to find out and so little time =).

This post has been too long. Once I started writing all the memories of that place just came back and I just had to write down what I was seeing in my mind, reliving it. I'm going to end this post on a whole other note. Something I found on the internet a long time ago and that still seems surprising to me. Can you read and understand it too?

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid, too.
Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe tuo fo 100 anc.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm.

Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

Meh..

Depressing day. Nothing much to say.

I failed to get up an hour earlier like I wanted to, being woken up by my alarm after a nightmare of me cutting open snakes and seeing yellow fat bodies, that looked like the ones in the frogs we dissected at university, crawling and wiggling their way out of its body. Gross. So I just laid there on my bed drifting in and out of sleep for the next hour until I finally managed to get up.

It was cold, dark and raining outside. Noone to greet my by the bus stop and noone I knew in the bus. I nearly didn't speak to any of the people I normally speak a lot with, I don't know what it was. Got to play some cards and do exercises, and I forgot to buy lunch which I felt quite strongly when I realised I had three hours left without breaks and no chance to get anything. And then our teacher began talking about food. Not fun.

I'm slowly beginning to shop for a true feast of cake/buns and "æbleskiver"; a typical danish type of dessert thing for my birthday. I'm really in trouble with paying everything since I also have to pay for the bowling alley rent. So I've been saving on everything for myself the last week now to fund it :P. Every second glass i drink now has to be water from the tap. This way bottles of coke or whatever last twice as long as usual! And I've been eating oatmeal porridge for breakfast every day now, because it's cheap and there's a whole lot of it in a package (yeah, I AM getting tired of it now :P). I'm looking forward to getting my money back! If for some reason I can't get them back, I seriously will do something drastic (eg. tell my parents)!

One good thing though. I've decided to get another job. And I've already found the right one for me. Thanks to people at the university recommending it to me! I'm 99% sure they'll hire me. And the pay is good and they give bonuses too. Only problem is you have to be 19 to take the job.. But then I realised that's only in a week! Joy :D!

Don't know yet what I'll do with my old one, maybe I'll just keep it as well. I looked into the company and it seemed that they've been known to pay an excessively low pay and they've even been to court and in the media here in Denmark and all kinds of things. Just great I didn't know that before I took the job. But well, I'll survive on the inhuman pay for now =). I'm not giving up. Never :P. Delivering newspapers makes me get up early and keeps me fit ^_^! And I get the occasional large clementine from a friendly woman, and that makes my day =)!

And a girl just told me she has bad news for me on msn. I just kind of expected that actually :P. Seems an agreement we had has been postponed. Ah well, that happens, and I can't blame her. She does have a valid excuse :P. It's just funny that all bad things come in cascades. Haven't you noticed that too? Bad things never come alone.

次の朝は常に嬉しいです。

In Japanese that means: The following morning is always delightful. It's a typical saying. Ok, I just made that up, but what the hell :P. If the saying doesn't exist, then it should =)!

I'm sure tomorrow will be a good day.

Wakey, wakey!!

Up at 6 o'clock this morning after having fallen asleep at 2 o'clock the night before. Woke up directly from a nightmare about a weird form of tree that wanted to kill me and my family (because I had said no to being friends with it) growing in the kitchen of my old house. And it could hear every little whisper we said, and my mum was in the kitchen and she refused to stop talking, and she started cutting it with a miniscule pair of scissors and I was freaked out and then my alarm clock rang. And I was completely awake. For the first ten seconds or so.

This is the first morning I have ever drunk coffee. I made it extra strong. And, let me tell you, wow :P. I became hyper. I've never been so awake a monday morning at the bus stop standing in the still dark, freezing madness that is the bus stop at monday morning daybreak. I thought it would only last a little while. But no. It lasted the whole afternoon. I even tried to take a nap (because that's what I usually do, since I'm normally completely exhausted). But I couldn't fall asleep. It's completely insane, I know. I actually felt like doing stuff! So I read some (not biochemistry :P) and practiced some piano; I can now almost play the Tetris theme flawlessly with two hands. And it reminded me of the Ducktales theme, so I'm gonna see if I can't find the sheet music for that and learn it too. But of course the coffee-boost lasted only so long. And I eventually had that nap. And boy were my dreams fucked. I feel like sharing, so you can see how fucked my midday nap dreams sometimes are. Don't worry if you don't understand everything. It has a lot to do with everything I thought about today. I think almost every thought today was in that dream in some completely absurd way. For example, I had written my parents a Christmas wish list and got an email about details of a registration system for university (somethink called punkt.ku) before I fell asleep. Well, enough of the explanations, here is the dream:

It started at home, in my old house that is. I was talking to my mum about going to university. I somehow knew what the time was and I knew it would take me thirty minutes to get to the university, but classes would begin in ten minutes. My mum, who was at the time sowing a fullsized double bed out of silk strings, told me that I had lots of time. And I believed her, because I could see the non-existant logic in what she said. Then I went and found the Christmas presents I had bought for my family and put them in our driveway. Which looked a lot like a driveway into a parking cellar (you know, those circular roads that you use to drive up and down levels). I have no idea why I placed them in the middle of the driveway, I just put them on a line there, because I knew it was the right thing to do. And about a second later my dad, who for some reason had been out collecting my brother, drives into the driveway with crazy speed, running over all the presents. I'm completely shocked, not because all the presents have escaped miracolously and are in perfect condition, but because now they've seen what they're getting for Christmas. I once again enter the house and start speaking to my mum. She says (while sowing frantically; the double bed is now nearly finished, made entirely out of silk threads) that I should better drink some alcohol. And bam! That comment makes me drunk on the spot. In my drunk state I now realise that the lecture started two minutes ago, and I try to decide if I should go or not. I decide to go, and realise by the same non-existant logic that you so often find in dreams, that I will only be two minutes late if I leave immediately.

And then I'm in the lecture hall. And it's nothing like how it looks in reality. It's a sort of cinema, with sofas and armchairs. "This is my first real lecture", I think in the dream, "and I'm really looking forward to meeting my lecturer in English". Because that was what I was taking my Bachelor's degree in. During the first lesson we would be handed out the books in English literature. The first thing I noticed was that our lecturer was Danish, seemed to be quite a nice guy and wore huge, pink glasses which resembled diving goggles with an including snorkle. I shook hans with him, because he wanted to know each of us personally, and I thought that was quite a different approach than I was used to. Then he kind of disappears and I start talking with some of the people in the hall (some were real people from my real university class). I noticed they were all eating cake.

I was still extremely drunk, and I couldn't really keep my balance and I kept falling down into the huge sofas. I actually didn't really want the cake for some reason. But as I went into a small corridor in the side of the hall a girl is standing there while cutting a piece of cake for herself, and I see there are nearly no cake slices left. She is sort of mumbling to herself, and then asks me in a whisper if I want the piece of cake. I gladly accept and start eating it. I go back into the hall and start talking to a guy that also exists in my real university class. Now both our mouths are full of cake and when we speak it sounds really really weird. In the beginning it only sounds muffled, but soon both our voices change completely to some really high pitched, tube-like, sci-fi sounds that sound a lot like a duck quacking in a falsetto voice (yes, that was what I thought in the dream). We can't understand a word, so I go back into the corridor by half jumping half flying.

Here I understand that a girl I know has stolen a guy's university access card (we all have one of those at my real university) and for some reason it has been given to me. Right next to the cake tray is a small pincode scanner. I swipe the card in front of it and it beeps. For some reason I instinctively reach my hand out to the keypad and press a small icon called delete. A confirmation screen comes up asking if I really want to do it (that is; delete the person who owned the card). By some unknown way I know that it would be wrong to do it. And suddenly and old secretary-like woman appears and tells me that yes, it would be wrong of me to do it. So I remove the card and the machine logs out again. I once again enter the hall.

Here I strike up a conversation with the guy again, feeling more drunk than ever. But suddenly he starts saying weird dut-dut-dut noices. And then I start doing the same. I keep repeating the same word again and again. I can't control it, and I can't move. And people begin flying all around the room. And they're flying so fast they begin spelling names in the air. And I suddenly realise that someone had hacked all our university cards via the punkt.ku web portal system and used it to control us all like robots.

I then opened my eyes (waking up in real life) but I was still in a dreamlike state, so I couldn't move. I thought that was quite natural considering that someone had just hacked my study card, so I lay in my bed drifting continously in and out of sleep. I woke up by the mailman ringing the door bell to my apartment. And like usual I remembered what I had dreamt, but I was still quite shocked at the absurdity of this particular dream. Even though my usual midday naps are normally weird, this one beats them by orders of magnitude :P.

Well, that was it for today's dream. I got about 10 pages of reading done here in the evening, and I'm quite proud of that. I know I'll have to read actively this week because of not so much time in the weekend, so it's a good start!

On Wednesday I'm going to a Christmas fair, yay :D! Looking forward to that! Other than that, I don't think there's much else to say about my day. Oh yes, I got quite negatively surprised at my incredibly low salary (after taxes that is) but I'm not sure if I'll get some of the money back from the government since I don't think I have to pay full taxes when I don't earn that much. I'll have to ask some people about this though. I really am clueless about tax issues :P. Well, that should be it! I'll be going to bed soon.

Sweet dreams!

Searching the fort

Today was nothing really special I'm afraid. I somehow managed to read really effectively right after breakfast by doing it in the living room instead of my bedroom. I guess it's because I don't get distracted or want to fall asleep there. I guess I've found my own little study room :P. Nevertheless I can't remember a lot of the stuff I've read because, well, it's some really weird names and I didn't take the time to come up with mnemonics for everything. Ah well, those quizzes are only for ourselves anyway.

At around 3 o'clock I decided it was my last chance to go geocaching (it gets dark shortly after 4 here in Denmark) so I biked to a really old fort that was really well hidden behind a circle of houses. It was really a cool place, and I would have never guessed it was there. It's sort of lowered into what could have been a huge empty lake, and the houses all around entirely prevent you from seeing it. And it's not because the fort is small or anything. It's huge. And it continues a long way underground. The hint for this cache was "find it on your way up or down", and I had guessed it meant it was close to some stairs. And the coordinates fitted with a pair of wooden stairs leading onto a huge area covered with grass and trees. This was actually the roof of the fort. Yes, there were trees. See how big it was :P? Anyway, at this time it was too dark to really see a lot and I tried searching a bit with my hands but to no avail. I ended up using my bike light as a flashlight. Hurray for improvising! And I ended up finding the medium-sized box hidden in an alcove set into the rocks of the fort, partly hidden by the mounting stairs. Very well hidden. It's really a great feeling finding these hidden treasures. The feeling of finding something that's meant for you in the middle of nowhere put there by someone you don't know. You should try it sometime!

I didn't really get to wrap up any gifts today (lazy, lazy :P) but I managed to put the present on my living room table, so now they're there waiting for me. I wonder how I will get trhough next week. In the weekend I won't have much time (making cakes and bowling :P) and then there's the wrapping of gifts, reading (not complaing!), buying food, badminton, sleeping, enjoying life ( =) ) and uhm.. yeah you know, all the usual :P.

Well, tomorrow it's up at 6 in the morning, so I'd better wrap it up here. Goodnight!

Scooters, holidays and autumn

Today was GOOD =). My newspaper rounds went remarkably painfree and a woman even gave me a huge clementine. It didn't rain and that made it a hundred times easier. I think this job can actually be enjoyed once all the right conditions are met :D. And I'm getting real pro at handling all the papers. Every week is actually a challenge in finding the right way to pack the ads the right way for getting it through the letter boxes as efficiently as possible. Yeah, you'll probably have to try it yourself to see what I mean. I've gotten a lot of respect for postmen this last month. Letters don't just magically appear in your letter box. Real people traversing all sorts of perils actually bring them to you. Even if you live at the edge of the world in a 150-storey building and it's raining like the sky was falling down. Think about that =).

Wondering about the titles of my posts? This one is from the suggested labels for posts in the bottom of the posting screen. Yes, to answer, they're quite random. It's whatever I hear/see/think/feel right before writing the post.

I didn't get to wrap up any gifts yet. I'll try to do it tomorrow!

Responsibility? Does that come with salad?

A short day today. Finally got to sleep late (I get to do that every Friday every second week) . So for ONCE I actually had a lot of energy. I didn't take a nap today at all :D.

Tomorrow is newspaper delivery day, yay (should be read with complete lack of enthousiasm). I have to get up really early. As long as it doesn't rain I should be able to manage. And of course they've promised showers tomorrow.

I went for a two-hour shift today in our student bar. A lot of people there today. The ones studying physical education (university-level) were having their christmas dinner, and like is custom in Denmark, they drunk a small lake's worth of alcohol. 400 alcoholic drinks already sold by 16.00. Yes.

I'm looking forward to Sunday in two weeks. That's right. It's my birthday. And that also means its soon christmas. And usually christmas rocks big time. And then comes new year. Which will be quite different this year. I haven't got any final plans yet although I've been invited to three different things. Oh, and by the way. Those green highlights aren't random.

I've begun playing an online game called Shin Megami Tensei Imagine Online when I have time. It's so long since I last played an online game, and this one is really different. If you've tried a game in the series Persona then it's from that. You don't have to shoot yourself in the head with a gun to summon your monster companions though (yes, you actually had to do that in the games. don't believe me? look here).

And I'd also like to propose a toast to the penguins. Some of you even compare to ducks. Where would we be without you?

It's past midnight now and I'm getting very tired. It's been a tough week with lots of sleeping, reading and freezing. Now it's time to take it (relatively) easy this weekend. Wrap some gifts for christmas and read a bit (NOT only biochemistry :P). Also probably go biking and finding some geocaches. I'm looking forward to it =).

I'd like to end this post with four random quotes celebrating today's sign: beer.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."
"24 hours in a day. 24 beers in a case. Coincidence?"
"You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on."
"I got so drunk one night I waited for the STOP sign to change. And it did."

I feel like abusing the word "China"

Greetings! Nothing much happened today. Except something completely extraordinary.

I did not fall asleep a single time today. And didn't feel tired during lectures and calculation classes. Coffee (yes, I know, I gave in to it..) can do WONDERS! Now I can finally catch up with my reading!

It's quite cool, I'm slowly beginning to understand how the body metabolises food and uses it to make all sorts of things. And it makes me wonder what kind of a freak metabolism I have. I can't get fat no matter how much or what I eat. Perhaps I have some kind of hyperoverproductive enzyme that refuses to store fats and instead use them for some mysterious other purpose. I'm definetely not complaining about this freak enzyme, it just makes you wonder what it is that actually makes such a difference. I'm beginning to think like a real biochemist now :P. I will never be the same agan, muahaha :D. Ok, enough with that.

I realise again that I forgot to post what I promised yesterday. So I'll post the translation to that dutch letter now (phew, that took a little time, Dutch is very differently built up than English):


Dear Son,

I'm writing this letter to you to let you know that I'm writing to you. If you've got this letter, you received it. If you don't receive it, then please return it to me, so I can send it to you once again. I'm writing this letter very slowly, as I know, you can't read that quickly.

The other day your Dad read somewhere that most accidents occur less than one kilometre from the home. We've therefore decided to move and live a place that's further away. It's a wonderful house, with a built-in washing machine. I just still don't know exactly how it work, because yesterday I put the laundry into it and flushed. I haven't seen the laundry since. But well..

The weather's not so bad. Last week it only rained twice: The first time it lasted 3 days, and the second time it lasted 4 days.

Concerning the coat I bought you: Uncle Jef told me, that the buttons are too heavy, so it's going to cost more to send it to you. That's why I've removed the buttons and put them into the pockets of the coat.

Your granddad has been buried in the meantime. We found his body by chance in connection with the moving: He had been sitting hidden in the closet since last time we played hide and seek. On the other hand, we haven't seen uncle Isidor since he died last year either.

Not so long ago we had a gas explosion in the kitchen, so your Dad and me were flung out of the house together. What an event: It's the first time in years that we've been out of the house together.

Now that we're speaking about your Dad: He got a promotion at work and is really proud. He now has 500 people under him. Now he cuts the grass at the graveyard.

Your sister Julia, you know, the one who's married to her husband, has become pregnant. We still don't know if it's a girl or a boy though. Consequently, I can't tell you if you've become an aunt or an uncle. If it turns out to be a girl, your sister will name her after me. It's a bit weird to call your child "Mum". Your other sister, Mia, has also been pregnant for 5 months. You know she's a very loose girl, that's why I asked her, if she was sure that the child really was hers.

Last week, your brother Kristian had closed the car door and accidently left his key in the ignition. He had to take the bus all the way home to fetch the reserve car cars so he could get us out of the car.

And so my son, I won't write our new address on the cover of the letter, for the reason that I don't know it. The previous owners took the house number with them to put it up at their new house.

If you should run into Marianne, greet her many times from us. If you don't see her then don't say anything to her.

PS: I thought I would send some more money with this letter, but then I had already sealed the envelope.

Greetings from Mum!

On my way home I remember

Today was sort of floating, so it'll be a compact blog entry (symbolising no connection between anything today :P). Nothing really special happened. I'm afraid someone is angry at me, and I don't really know why. And I don't know what to do about it, but I'm sure it will be alright. I fell asleep again once I got home (STUPID..) and I once again had completely fucked up dreams. I remember dreaming about two people from university sitting together with my dad and he told me that they didn't know the difference between Swedish and Norwegian and that meant they were stupid. I told him that that was not the case and he started reading a letter aloud for me that made no sense at all. I can't remember its contents. I finally managed to wash all my clothes today (our washing machines have been down for a week, while they were being replaced). I accidently coloured all my handkerchiefs a deep shade of blue by washing it together with my blue bed sheets. Not the best idea.. But at least it wasn't anything worse than handkerchiefs =). I managed to read a bit today, and I think I'll read more tonight. And I promise I'll try not to complain about not having time to read from now on. That should be all for today. Over and out!

Longer yet, further still!

No real news today. Got to use some English again, speaking with some friends still in Belgium by voice. It was nice, but I'm afraid I'm getting a bit rusty, even though it might just be a result of me being tired = muchos gibberish.

I spoke with my mum today as well. She came home yesterday from hospital. I learned too that she had been in much more danger than I had been told. Well, at least there's no danger anymore. I'm looking forward to seeing her for christmas, even though she says I'll probably be a bit shocked to see her now. She lost over 10 kg lying in hospital and gets very easily tired now. But this episode has got her permanently off smoking, and she'll get better soon. So it's a good thing the worst is over now!

I've been playing a bit of a psychologist today as well for someone else, but I guess it's private stuff so I won't write about it here. Why do I so often find myself with so many other people's problems on my mind.. I'm not complaining, I guess it must be something good that so many people are able to confide in me.

It's my birthday soon. I'm organising something for the day. I need to find a bowling alley not too far from here and reserve two lanes for the day. I really need to pull myself together and get it done soon :P. My dreams are getting weirder too. I'm dreaming stuff about people from the university that really are "wtf" worthy. I even have dreams where I "remember" things that have never happened. It's a really strange feeling. I'm sure you've tried it in a dream. Where you're so sure that something has happened in the past, and that it's completely real. And when you wake up you think, "uhm.. where the hell did that come from?" :P.

I also found a letter I once translated from Dutch to Danish. I'll translate it to English tomorrow and post it here. It's kind of fun.

I'll end this entry with some cryptic thing I found in a document. I think I wrote it myself once. If you understand it feel free to leave a comment. To be honest, it's kind of scary and I can't remember writing it.. It was written next to two phone numbers that I have never called.

This is a memory. Maybe I'll write this to the end. Using others as a projection for my own mistakes is not the right thing to do. That is why I have to either succeed or fail with all of those consequences. I don't think it will ever happen, but all good things come to an end. I can't even realise myself. No reason for these feelings, but I can't control it. My future is very uncertain if I don't find myself soon. I wish everything was safe and known. This way I would always know the right way to do things. But it would be a world without excitement, I guess. But do I really need that? Some would say yes. Because their excitement is generally positive. I don't like reality. Some day I have to face it though and it's slowly happening now. At least I'm trying.

Weird

Something's wrong. I can feel it. I have no idea what it is, but something isn't right. And I'm afraid I'll find out what it is soon. It's really weird..

This morning, I woke up about 10 minutes before my bus left for university, and it normally takes me ten minutes to get to the bus stop. But guess what. Without breakfast, shower, superhuman speed dressing, a lot of running and motivation in the form of a girl calling me and telling me I had to (and I quote): "PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER AND RUN!!" I actually made it. I was quite surprised too. Yeah, today was weird.

Other than that it was a ridiculous day in the sense of catching up with reading. I'm quite annoyed at myself. I fell asleep for 3 hours when I came home. Then I went Christmas shopping, and I've got all the pressing things bought now. I got my parents the fourth season of Lost (which the whole family has been watching up until now) and I got my father two football books of the year 2008 for his birthday. I'm quite sure they'll be happy for the gifts. I just hope they don't find this blog, or it won't be a surprise anymore :P. That would be kinda weird.

I'm allowed to make personal withdrawels from my bank account now, so that's where I got the money from (about time). But I've decided to lay off my spending big time, and actually make a budget. I can't really do the budget before January next year (since taxes won't kick in before then) but I'm spending an absolute minimum now. Water is not so bad after all =). And pretty soon I'll probably be discovering the wonders of instant coffee and tea :P. It's weird thinking of myself becoming a coffeine addict all of a sudden, so I hope it doesn't go that far.

Today I've only managed to read 7 pages in the book, but I'll try to read more later. The quiz today didn't go so well. I made some pretty stupid mistakes. But well, it's only as a reference to ourselves so we can see our level. I don't actually think our marks are ever written down. Weird.

And. I want to go to Egypt. I saw some pictures of people who had been on holiday in Egypt and it looked so cool! I want to see sphinxes and pyramids :P. Going to Peru is a priority as well of course. The only problem is getting the funding =).. But I guess it would be weird for a first-year student to be able to finance some extraordinarily exotic voyage, like I want to go on. So I guess I'll have to wait a few years before undertaking such endeavours. (Did you notice that? I didn't use a certian word in this paragraph's last sentence. Which, according to some, might actually be this one. Wow, that was weird!)

I saw an ad for a Christmas present consisting of a roll of toilet paper all filled with sudoku grids. For the real sudoku fanatics who can't stop doing them even when they're going to the toilet. "Mum, dad has been in the toilet for 3 hours straight now, and I really have to go, and I'm afraid there'll be no toilet paper left for me when he's finished =(!" Weird thought, isn't it.

I'd better stop now. People would think I was writing a whole novel by now.

And wouldn't that be weird =)?

I art Cookie

Yes. Today was really really great :D. I went to the Christmas dinner today, and it was really fun. They have the coolest new dog, and they're really great to talk to. I even got a contact at the pharmaceutical university (an American lector) who promised me lunch and wanted to show me around the faculty. She said she might even help me with books! So cool. I also got a ton of cookies (literally, they filled my whole backpack up with different kind of cookies made from American recepies), so I won't need snacks for a month now =)!

Tomorrow is a new week. Not looking forward to all the reading I need to get done. I need to find the time to post that letter I got from the city hall and send it to my parents in Belgium. My dad seems to be getting impatient about it already, even though it's only a few days since I got it signed. Ah well. I'm too tired to write much more.

Cya!

Rain, rain and more rain

Sorry, forgot to post yesterday, i was quite busy. Had badminton practice right after school, and then had to desperately read afterwards in an attempt to catch up in biochemistry. I went to a friend's place in a nearby town in the evening, where I had dinner as well. It stayed a bit longer than I had expected (I ended up leaving at 00:30), and I was on bike. Probably the latest I've ridden a bike before. But what the hell, Denmark is a bike country =). I had fun playing a game called Cat Mario, it's the most hilarious and evil game ever :P. Click here to see what I'm talking about.

Today was a very wet day indeed. Once again out delivering ads and newspapers like every Saturday. It was hell. So hard to keep things from getting wet. Two people felt so sorry for me, that one gave me a coke and another 20 kr. (Danish currency - about 2,5€). Also met some weird people like I do everytime. I asked a woman who opened the door as I entered an apartment block, if it was okay to put the newspaper on her porch instead of trying to squeeze it through her tiny slit of a letterbox and her answer was: "Come on, honestly.. I don't know!!" I was a bit confused by that and silently thought "Wtf..", while smiling, of course, and wishing her a nice weekend. Now I'm home. Tired and exhausted, but I have to read (I'm getting tired of this :P).

Tomorrow I'm going to a Christmas dinner at some Danish friends' place. They've invited an American (who speaks perfect Danish) who's an expert at biomedicine and teaches at a Pharmaceutical university here in Denmark. I'm really looking forward to meeting her.

And now, I'm posting that article about sleep I promised a few days ago:


Sleep

Why do we sleep? Good question actually. All mammals, reptiles and insects do it. Even the annoying, blood-hungry mosquitoes in your room at night, that never ever seem to tire, do it. Some sleep lighter than others of course, but the fact is, they do sleep. Except fish. But that is not really the point here.

The point is that we do not really know why we sleep. There are many theories of course, but none of them have yet been proved. One states that we sleep simply to restructure our brain nerves and reorder the impressions we got during the day so as to make our brain run more efficiently. That is, of course, just a theory and is therefore potentially laughable. Other better theories suggest that we sleep to cure sleepiness or that we sleep because our dreams miss us. This seems much more likely as everyone would go around being tired if they did not sleep.

Many people love to sleep, but if you think about it, sleep is actually the biggest waste of time known to man. We practically spend a third of our life sleeping and probably even more (think of you as a baby and imagine how much of that time was actually spent asleep). We literally sleep our lives away. And yet, we can not run from the fact that we do need our sleep however big an obligatory waste of time it may be.

How we get this sleep depends on the person of course. The general rule states that it happens by the person first falling asleep. This usually happens lying down on an often comfortable, flat surface. But of course there are many exceptions to this rule. Sleeping can occur sitting, standing, upside down and (in rare cases) while falling. The sitting variety usually occurs during operas, lectures or at the dinner table. In unexplained cases, young people, who have not been able to apply the general rule of sleep and therefore not gotten enough sleep the night before (usually as the result of a very pressing party or night in town), might suddenly find school desks unexpectedly comfortable. The reason behind this is still unknown, but is expected to have a connection with teachers’ soothing voices. Teachers have through the times often found ways to combat this anomaly, but the nature of their techniques remain clouded.

When the general rule of sleep occurs it usually involves a phenomenon called “dreaming”. Scientists agree that this usually happens in the R.E.M. stage of our sleep. For some reason our (for many) sacred sleep has been divided into “stages” with funny acronyms. These include SWS, NREM and the before-mentioned REM. These are further divided into “types” which include alpha, beta, delta, theta, spindles and k-complexes. Why scientists have chosen to do this is not known, but it is suspicioned that it might be to make themselves feel superior to other non-scientists by confusing them. What else would spindles and k-complexes be doing in that list?

REM is short for Rapid Eye Movement. This is said to be because our eyes have been observed to move rapidly when we are in this stage of sleep. Others believe it is short for Real Entertainment Moment, as we finally see something that is entertaining enough to prevent us from moving for hours. The fits of anger normally exhibited by a sleeping person being woken too early also argue for the latter theory. But, like with all things related to sleeping, dreams can not be explained either.

So, to conclude, the best answer to the question “Why do we sleep?” is probably “Because we do.”

Snowflakes are actually popcorn made of ice!

Greetings from this most tiring of Thursdays.

Today can be described in the one word. TIRING! And very much so. I had to fight to keep my eyes open during both exercise class as well as the lecture. I'm actually not sure it was THAT boring, I was just so tired. I was happy to get home. Except that I still had a lot to do.

I went to the bank to get the credit card fraud thing sorted out. My advisor said everything I had provided was perfect, but that it could take quite some time until my money was refunded to me. And it would take about a week to get a new credit card. It's good I still have some moeny left, but difficult with Christmas coming up. I'll have to save my money like crazy. No more cakes or other random stuff, that's for sure.

I went to the town hall today as well, where I talked to the craziest old hag of a hysterical bureacrat. I didn't get any of the papers I needed to get signed filled in, but she gave me a letter with signature, saying what I guess was the gist of all the forms I needed filled out. I won't bother going down there again anytime soon that's for sure.

And I realise that the tiredness is really getting to me. I'm happy I slept so much today (even though I'm still behind with reading), so I can finally see things clearly again. I suddenly realise that the article I posted yesterday was an article I had written about time, and not about sleep, as I had promised. I'll post that article tomorrow then.

Today will be a full-fledged "catch-up-reading-day" for me. So I'd better get to reading. And uhm, happy thanksgiving too!

Dreaming the days away..?

Here is that promised article of mine:

Time

Have you got enough time on your hands to do what you want to do? Are you running out of time? Or maybe time seems like it is moving too slowly in classes and too quickly once you finally start having fun? Perhaps you feel like time is against you. Is it some kind of evil entity that only tries to hurt you? Maybe it feels like that. Maybe you should take your time and read this article. But what exactly IS time?

Time isn’t something you can control. It is not something you can hold in your hand or sell to someone. And yet you can measure it and sometimes you can practically feel like time has changed its pace. How many times haven’t you looked at your watch in class and thought: “WHY do the minutes go by SO slowly?” And at times it feels like time has passed you with light speed. Unfortunately enough, this always seems to happen when you want the moment to last longer. This clearly shows that time can move at different speeds according to who experiences it. A second can last longer for someone who is bored than for someone who is having the time of his life. So it seems that time is subjective. You might imagine it as a river flowing. At certain points the water flows quicker than at others. And at times it can almost seem like it is standing still.

Still confused about what time is? A general definition might be that time is the continuum of experience in which events pass from the future through the present to the past with no means of altering the process. However, in various novels and works of fiction we find the famous time machines which never seem to be able to alter the course of events in a satisfactory way. Do not mess with time, or time messes with you, is usually the message. It seems that time can get quite angry at you if you don’t leave it alone. Might that suggest a certain personality behind time?

For example we can prove that women are evil using the concept of time:

Maybe time has a sense of humour that has gone previously unnoticed. Time might be laughing at you behind your back while you’re sweating over some difficult exam question, and it suddenly decides to speed up and leave you stranded there as it flies by. Or it might take personal pleasure in making your best moments of life seem as short as possible. Whatever the reason, time is not exactly the most friendly of fellows.

So, always remember that you should enjoy the time that has been given you. Or else it might end up being time that is enjoying, what it is giving YOU..

(Note: This article was written with the TIMES New Roman font)