Are you a friend of the hidden society?

Yay, it's nearly Christmas now. I'm looking forward to going to Norway and spending some time with my family there. Exams are well over and they went well. I feel a bit weird about things though. This vacation didn't come as that big an elation as I had hoped. I still have two days to prepare for the trip to Norway, and I need to buy one more Christmas present as well as wrapping up the other gifts I bought.

This may sound weird, but I'm actually looking a lot forward to going to Australia, if I'm accepted. I miss the different culture from my old school. Talked on the phone today with a girl from my old class who studies in London. She told me that they have a very different mentality there. Plus they're all my age. It should be the same in Australia.

Another reason I want to go, is that I'm a bit tired of some people at my university. And two of my friends seem to be considering switching courses and taking medicine instead. I really hope that they decide against it. With such a small amount of people in our course it's bad if people switch. I already had two other friends change over to medicine, and there's a limit to how many personalities that I can become friends with.

Events these past many days: Not a whole lot. Went to a nice dinner with a group from my university this Friday. And yesterday went to the annual Christmas dinner of our bar group. I got very drunk, and had lots of fun. I was one of the last three people to leave =). I remember really weird things happening. Like a Christmas tree suddenly appearing on top of a guy's head at 2 o'clock in the night, and dancing around in our university canteen singing Christmas songs. I'm a bit sad that there were some girls who could all remember my name and even though they told me their names too, I just couldn't remember when one of them asked me later. She got quite upset at that, and I was like "argh" afterwards. I don't like when stuff like that happens.

There's been a lot of snow here these days. It's nice when the wind isn't blowing, but it becomes way too cold when it is. A few days ago I experienced something really weird. A kind of midnight sunshine. But the light didn't come from the Sun. It was kind of really bright, golden moonlight being reflected by the snow. At 3 o'clock in the night it was brighter outside than it is during the day. It was really weird and cool. I just sat in my room and watched it for almost half an hour.

I also had a strange and exciting experience. I was once very interested in the phenomenon of astral travel, and still am to a lesser extent. Astral travel is a type of out-of-body experience. It involves you consciously deciding to "separate" from your body before falling asleep. If you can do it, you can travel around in a kind of parallel plane called the astral plane. Here you can fly, teleport and move through things and stuff. It's said to be a really impressive experience. Well, whether you believe it's a real plane or not, there's substantial evidence that the phenomenon can be experienced. And I really don't care whether it's just a hallucination or a real out of this world magic thing.

There exist a number of techniques out there to reach the goal of actually leaving your body. By leaving your body, it's not literally stepping out of your body, of course - it's more like your consciousness leaving your body and being free. It's said that your consciousness takes the shape of a silvery body much like your own (but with some minor differences) and that it's attached to your real, physical body, through a silver cord attached to you. It might seem dangerous, but really, it's not. The minute you start worrying about if it's dangerous, or if you can't get back, you re-enter your body and wake up.

I've had very limited success with these techniques in the past. Actually no real success to be honest. I always end up falling asleep when using them. I have had episodes where I just accidentally entered states that are "pre-astral travel" though. These are really weird. I've had two types so far. In one of them you suddenly can see the room you're in even though you know your eyes are closed. You can't really move either and it's as if you have no body. You aren't asleep, but not awake either. It's sort of like a mix between the two. I usually wake up pretty quickly from this, and afterwards curse myself because I didn't use the chance to advance the state into a real astral projection.

The other state is kind of scary and I have only tried that a very few times. In this experience you suddenly see very clearly around you, as if your eyes are open. But you can't move at all, and it feels like there's a heavy pressure everywhere around you. It might seem like you're not breathing and it feels like you're fainting non-stop. It's a feeling of very light-headedness and not being able to do or say anything. The first time I had this experience I wondered if I was dying or something, and it was really scary. Panicking is what makes me wake up those times. The really weird thing comes when you open your eyes and see exactly the same as you saw when you had your eyes closed and as you slowly realise you can move yourself again.

A few weeks ago though, I third kind of experience, and that's the closest I've ever come to an astral projection. I had taken a midday nap. And for some reason the dream was EXTREMELY lucid. I was very much aware of myself and my mind wasn't clouded like it usually is, when you're dreaming. I remember running across a huge field with a really bright and warm sun shining above me. I see everything in great detail, feel the warmth as if it was real and I can hear my footsteps perfectly. I actually thought that inside the dream. I knew I was half-asleep, and that my mind was slipping to the state of becoming unaware it's a dream.

But suddenly I came to a cross-roads. I had the choice of taking the right path into a cool, dark forest (it didn't feel scary at all though), or the left past into a bright, sunny village. I instantly think: "I'm going to go into the forest because I love dreams taking place in forests - plus it's what I should do". But then suddenly I decide to go to the village instead, because I feel really happy in the sunshine. I'm pretty sure, that if I had chosen the forest, I would have lost myself in the dream and slipped away from this lucid state.

As I turn left a thought suddenly occurs to me: "This is about time to go astral travelling". The instant I think this something REALLY weird happens. Suddenly my viewpoint zooms away from the ground and I watch myself standing in the field from really high up. Then it becomes really dark, and it doesn't feel like I'm dreaming any more. I'm still asleep though. Then suddenly I reach the stage that comes right before you leave your body. You feel something called the "vibrations". There's a lot of talk about how it feels on the internet. I can't really explain it. It's sort of like a very real tingling sensation in your whole body - as if it was charged full of electricity. When I started feeling that, I thought: "Shit, I'm not prepared for this - it's actually happening". And then of course I became scared, and opened my eyes. I cursed myself for letting yet another chance pass me by and then tried to reach the state again but failed.

It's funny that I always have these experiences during afternoon naps, and never at night. It's probably because it's much easier to reach that half awake half asleep state, when you're not mentally prepared for a full night's sleep. I hope that one day, though, I'll succeed in performing a full astral projection. I think it depends a lot on luck for me. I'm very bad at visualising, and a lot of the techniques normally used for inducing the heightened state before sleep requires you to imagine certain images in your head. And I just can't seem to do that.

Well, that'll be all for today. Hopefully I'll start updating this blog regularly again, now that I'm finished with that insanely intensive course. Lastly, I'm giving you a picture to think a bit about. It's not a faked photo, and the English translation accurately reflects what is written in Japanese next to it (I translated it just to check). And no, hehe, it's not a joke or some kind of theme park attraction.

I like to make myself believe

Wow, it's been nearly a month since my last post. That must mean I've been lazy, I guess.

Well, it's not entirely true. I've just been so damn busy with university. This course "Cell Biology" is kind of a nightmare. You need to read in three different books all the time, do exercises non-stop, prepare for classes and experiments plus write lab reports. This course contains both cell anatomy, biophysics, biochemistry, histology, a bit of signal transduction and genetics in one single bumper version of doom. We have no holidays until Christmas and our last holiday was the summer vacations. There's also no free time before the exams, so we have absolutely no time to read besides the exercises and lab reports we have to do all the time. And did I tell you we have three exams? Yep, first a 4-hour mix-mash exam of all the aforementioned subjects minus genetics. Then a 2-hour genetics exam and finally a 20-minute practical microscopy exam, where we have to diagnose 10 different tissues just by looking at it for 2 minutes through the microscope (example: "This is an exocrine seromucuous merocrine gland with endocrine islets containing trabecular structure"). It'll be quite a mouthful. And it all starts the day after my birthday.. Meaning the day everyone is most stressed including myself, will be this day. I've heard it said by older students that 40% of all students attending this course, fail. Goddamn it.

So I've started reading every day, as much as possible. It takes about one hour to read 20 pages in one of the books, so it's seriously tough going. I'm rarely this serious with studying. I didn't use to have to really study much to do well before. I guess the difficulty is finally catching up :P.

I've also become a fan of a band called "Owl City". The first song I heard by the was this one. I also like their song "Vanilla Twilight" and "Saltwater Room" a whole lot.

What have I done other than school-related stuff lately? Not a whole lot to be honest. I've been to the theatre, an art exhibition, a board game night and a LAN night. I also went to a huge anime convention with two friends from my Japanese course. There I bought a hood with cat ears. Pictures from there can be found on Facebook for those who know me. I've been to the cinema to watch "Inglorious Basterds", been to two parties and applied for half a year of studying in Australia.

I've also had the nastiest virus ever, which had me resulting in having to reinstall Windows. And then discovering that it had managed to copy itself to my external harddrive and infect the pc once again. It was one of the worst virus types around, I discovered. The type is called Virut; it copies itself to all other programs it can find (so even stuff like your own antivirus or your task manager begin creating the virus). And it's polymorphic - changing itself all the time. Luckily I managed to stop it the second time around before all hell broke lose (again). And my pc is back to reinstalled normal. Good thing I have all the important stuff backed up. Probably all my passwords are compromised now.. Meh.

Well, I'm off to bed after this rather meek post. Tomorrow I have the final lab report of this course to write. It's about our gene manipulation experiment. Yay..

I'll find something interesting to write about once this is all over!!

It's getting cold outside

Wow, I've been neglecting this place a bit lately it seems (two weeks since last post). It's not like that many huge things have happened anyway. I'm tired almost every day, and I don't get a lot done other than school related stuff. There's still tons of working on reports and trying to catch up with the reading to be done.

My dream log helped me finally get less vivid dreams, so I'm a bit less drained when waking up. I've had a few dreams since my last entry, but I haven't really had the energy or time to write it all down, since the dreams are usually complex and long. I remember the one from this night, for example, but it was in two "chapters" and would be way too long to write down.

I got some really, really huge bills this month (let's just say that if I had no income at all this month I would have to pay my total savings simply in bills), so I'm getting a loan. It's not really that I can't afford to pay the bills (since I DO have an income) but it's a way of saving up for my (hopeful) half-year trip to Australia next autumn. A good things with bills is that I have now learned to keep my electricity usage down (advice: do NOT use electric floor heating unless you're prepared to quadruple your energy bill).

Of noteworthy events these past weeks are:

• Going to the theatre to watch a kind of "theatre concert", which was really cool. 
• Learning that some of the things we study are governed by quantum mechanic laws meaning we can only change something "with a certain probability". For example a certain membrane gate that only opens when certain conditions are met, might suddenly open anyway, just for the heck of it - I like the idea that the probability of seemingly impossible things are more than 0.
• Watching Inglorious Basterds in the cinema with two friends.
  
• Writing a secret coded email that could result in a cake or three beers.
• Biking to Japanese class with a huge chocolate cake (I really, really love those Japanese classes).
• Reconsidering some people from university.
• Getting addicted to this ridiculous song: LINK HERE
• Had a meeting with my employers where I got a new task, I will be doing for some time now. It's not the most interesting of tasks, but it's easy, and I won't have to think about what I'm doing, so it's alright. And the pay is the same, so I won't complain :P. The meeting took over 3 hours, of which about 2,5 were spent just talking about random stuff and hearing stories of their time working at hospitals. It was really nice. Some of the stories were really unbelievable :P.
  

 I've become a bit tired of all the work lately, and it's become harder and harder for me to pull myself together and read in our huge cell biology book. I've also put in a lot of effort in the report writing. Perhaps more than I should have. Although I let the others in their group do their part, I always end up reading through their part so thoroughly that I understand everything better than the ones who do the part. It's hard work, but rewarding in the end I guess, because it's really good preparation for the exams. This way I also can help them point out where they make mistakes and explaining to others is the best way to learn things for yourself.

Now for something else. Have you ever wondered if people really think like you? Perhaps they're just there for you, and you're the only person in the world that really thinks. They would be kind of like robots, and would be nothing but an outside shell reacting like machines. Insanely complicated machines maybe, but still just following a strict program. Would that then mean, that since there were no thoughts behind people, that your actions would have no true consequences?

No, of course not. It wouldn't make a difference if everyone actually were robots. We have no way to tell if people actually think like we do. But just the idea that people are actually robots is enough to make us feel like what we do wouldn't matter. It frees our conscience to imagine that other people just react to our actions by instinct, and not by conscious thought like our own. Isn't that kind of weird..

Zeitgeber

Well, now it's October. And it's getting really cold outside once again. I'm not exactly happy about it. And it doesn't help a whole lot that it seems my room heater isn't working properly. It just seems to not turn on. And it's a water radiator, so it isn't just so easy to fix. Well, I'll wait until next week to go and complain to my apartment complex' janitor.

This week was eventful indeed. I managed to bake a cake for my Japanese class, and they liked it. It was a bit stressful to actually go and fetch the cake. The day before I had submitted my application for studying half a year in Australia (I'll get the answer sometime in December), and to celebrate it we went to our university bar to get a beer before going home. Somehow we ended up playing games and suddenly it was kind of late. I hurried to the bus stop, where I soon understood that the bus had been early, and had not waited. So I had to wait 20 minutes for the next bus. I ran all the way home from the bus stop, grabbed the cake I had made the day before. Then I ran to the train station. Took the train to Copenhagen again and hurried to class. I was 5 minutes late, but the cake made up for it. I was kind of exhausted at that point, so I wasn't exactly brilliant in class. But well, it was only my second class on the advanced course, so I think it's alright.

At the end of the lesson we get a Japanese essay for homework. This was kind of crazy, and I liked it. I've already done the essay now. It's really a nice idea to think I've become good enough to write short Japanese essays. It's not something I would have imagined a few years ago =). I'll spare you the posting of that essay here. Suffice is to say that it's about a girl from Thailand named Sally, and that she likes looking at stars on Sunday nights, when she isn't studying or sleeping.

It's been some really tough days lately. Up at 6.30 and home late. This Friday went from 6.30 to 5 or so the next morning. Yep, lessons at the university from 8 to 16 first. We were kind of smashed, and there was to be this huge October party at our university bar later so our minds were really drifting. I hate having classes on Fridays anyway :P.

All the boys from our year had planned a really huge lunch. And we had all brought tonnes of food. Seriously, I don't even think we managed to eat half it. But it was really cool, and so much fun. We had speeches and sung dinner songs and lots of people smiled and laughed at us, hehe. We even had our own T-shirts that someone had brought for us :P. Afterwards we went to the medicine university bar and had a single beer before our last classes for that day (we had no classes from 12 to 14, so this was when we had the huge lunch). The medicine university bar was completely packed already there at 13.30, it was kind of crazy. Everyone were drinking like it was midnight or something, even while the sun was shining through the windows. It was kind of weird. Someone had brought packets of biscuits, and we played a completely ridiculous game with those biscuits, where you had to see how many of them you could stuff into your mouth without swallowing. It was hilarious, because you couldn't swallow the biscuits because they completely dried out your mouth. So you're stuck with a mouth full of dry biscuits that you can't do anything with in the end. And you're nearly throwing up because they're poking the back of your throat. Not surprisingly the floor was completely littered with biscuit crumbs afterwards. But it was fun :P..!

After the last lesson I went home to get some much needed sleep for about 1 hour before going to the October party. I didn't even manage to get any dinner. I met up at the station with a friend from university and we had a beer on our way to the bar. It was packed. And people were drunk. Not surprisingly. They had been selling half a litre of German beer for 5kr. (about 0,7€) in the afternoon. It was crazy. They had sold shitloads of beer, and had even had queues outside the bar. It wasn't that surprising though, we had done a lot of PR for this event (I had helped hang up posters everywhere all over the Northern University Campus - and others had gone around handing out flyers while dressed up as traditional Germans in beer festival costumes).

The friend I had gone with was worried that we wouldn't have fun, because we were still sober while the others were quite drunk. But I told him not to worry. And we really didn't have to either. I immediately enjoyed myself, even when not having drunk anything. Maybe I was just hyper from lack of sleep, but everyone were so happy and I couldn't help but feel just as happy myself. As the evening progressed I got some beer drunk myself of course, but I think I actually just paid for about one small flask beer myself. People just gave me beer all the time, it was crazy. The girl I had been together with some time ago was also at this party. And we ended up being together again :P. I don't really know what to think of it.

Heh, there were a lot of funny episodes that night. I remember having to go the toilet and two guys from my year suddenly come running shouting my name again and again while hugging me in a huge group hug while we're jumping up and down, haha. I remember a guy I had never seen before asking me if we could go pee together, hearing about how some of the new freshmen had been driven to the hospital after an accident (concerning jumping down stairs in a sort of stupid competition) and another one had had a street lamp fall onto him while walking outside. I also remember an episode where me and the girl, I was together with, sat talking to two new freshmen at a table. At some point we began kissing and after a few seconds it suddenly became quiet from the two others and when we looked back afterwards the two freshmen were also suddenly kissing. We couldn't stop laughing at that. It somehow seemed like they just wanted to follow our example xD.

I had a shift in the bar from midnight to two o'clock in the night, and boy was it busy. I've never made so many drinks before, and I've begun to really like it. It's actually great fun. At the beginning I was hesitant to mix drinks, because I could never find the right bottles. But I'm getting better to recognise them, and enjoying putting the stuff together.

At around 4 o'clock I took the bus home with a friend. The bus didn't go all the way to his own town because it was so late, so he ended up sleeping over at my place. Before going to sleep though, we went and had a kebab at a place right next to my apartment that I didn't even know was open that late. It was truly delicious. I had never tasted kebab before, and he smiled quite a lot at that. Quite a lot of people tend to smile at me when I tell them I have never tasted kebab before. But now I have!

The next day I didn't have a hangover. But I was very much tired. So I slept insanely long. I think I slept until 12:00. Then I went to bed at 13:00 again. Slept until 15:00. Then slept again from 16:00 to 18:00. Then I bicycled to a friend's dorm through completely torrential rain and near-zero temperature. When I arrived I was soaked like a drowned mouse. Well, we then ate dinner, and played computer with a whole lot of other guys until 5:30 the next morning. Yes, I realise that this is a very weird turn of the story. I then bicycled home while watching the slow sunrise and freezing my ass off. At least it wasn't raining.

The next morning I woke up at 15:00. My circadian rhythm is now completely fucked up. It's around midnight now, and I finally feel completely energised. But I just can't get myself to read any cell biology. It really requires a lot of energy. I'm now three weeks behind with reading, and I really don't like it..

Tomorrow is up again at 6.30 for another long day. Goddamn it.

100th post

Hi there! Are you alright? You don't look so good. I was kind of wondering if you could do something for me though. Please? Can you make me a drink? It should contain a bit of friendliness and sincerity and be consistent without any regrets where applicable. It's important that it makes you smile and laugh and forget yourself. You can't do that, you say? Well, what can you do then? Ah, that's better. Thank you for your time. See you around, maybe!

Together wisdom go for it, please!

Goddamn it I'm exhausted. I finally finished going through all of the stuff I had to do today at around 23:00. That's hell of a long day.

I'm still way behind with reading. But I think I can make it. These next weeks aren't that tough concerning the amount we have to read. I do have to do a report on a biophysics experiment we did about membranes for next Thursday, but I have it under control. I find it quite easy and natural to understand. So that's good =)!

Another thing is my Japanese. My Japanese teacher made me do a Japanese test. I had to translate written sentences from Danish into Japanese. For example one of the sentences was this one: "My friend is holding a party tomorrow together with her younger sister". The translation is: Watashi no tomodachi wa imouto-san to ashita paati o shimasu (literally: me (possessive marker) friend (topic marker) little sister (the -san ending then changes it to another's little sister) ('also included' marker) tomorrow party (object marker) make). NOT exactly easy, eh??

But I did alright! And now I've just skipped a whole year. And I'm at level 2. And wow, it's tough. The first lesson today was kind of 'what the fuck, what am I doing here' :P. But luckily I learnt quickly and during the second half of the lesson I started answering questions and stuff too. The teacher was really evil, hehe. She kept asking me to read out my answers for the class. But I did alright and didn't answer (much) wrong. And I now have tons of homework for next week. There are a lot of words I need to brush up on, and our teacher even gave us a Japanese cross-words we have to do for next lesson. Intensive, but nice!

That team is way nicer than my old one. Much more fun people. And I made a new friend there too :D! He lived quite close to me, so we took the train back home together and we talked a lot. Fun, fun. He studies software enginerring at a place called DTU (The Danish Techical University). And I promised to bring a cake with me next time. I'll be sure to keep that.

I also went to a meeting today at our university bar. It was a kind of introduction to all the new prospective voluntary workers. We heard some short speeches about the different aspects of the work we do there, as well as played a fun game where us, who had worked there for some time, were blindfolded and then had to be guided around to different places of the bar by the new ones. I managed not to fall, and my "team" (each 'oldie' each had two 'newbies') had fun, so success ^^!

Tomorrow I have no lessons. Well, except a course that's supposed to help you understand biophysics better, but I don't really need that. But I do have a few things that day anyway. Washing (needed! I think my washing machine dream had to do with that, actually), a 7-hour shift in the bar and finishing the stuff I need for my application to the Australian university I'm applying for.

The Continuous Dream

Just a quick post here.

In the recent development of my constant dreaming, I've finally decided to do a dream log. I've heard that writing down what you dream every time you remember is both healthy and fun. And it should also be fun for myself to read later on, I guess. If all goes well it'll also lead to more frequent lucid dreaming, which is of course always fun (lucid dreams are dreams where you are able to consciously control what happens). You can find the link on the right (under "Other blogs") or click here.

I've also added a sort of "reaction" comment thing underneath each post. So if you won't bother leaving a comment, you can at least put a checkmark in the box saying if you found the post funny, cool, boring, interesting, weird, stupid, clever or all of the above.
EDIT: I can't get that stupid thing to show more than three options, and I have a headache after looking through all that html coding to try and find the problem. Until I fix it I will just give three options to choose from. Weird, stupid/boring and cool. That should about cover every possible feeling you might have towards the post after having read it.

There's also a nifty little search box on the right if you for some weird reason want to search for just that special post that you can't quite remember the weird title of, but would like to read anyway.

Quietly bouncing up and down

I'm really tired. No wonder, really, since it's 3 o'clock at night. Once again another Saturday gone by. Once again, I managed to read an impressive 0 pages. And once again, I have a lot of reading to look forward to tomorrow :P..

This week has been unremarkable in the occurrences of chronic weird dreams. I still remember my dreams every single time I sleep and they're as weird as ever. A few days ago, I dreamt I was a Russian paparazzi photographer who had learnt how to stop time by a special hand movement. I won't recount the plot of the dream (yeah, this one actually had one) but it had to do with global conspiracies, robots and me saving the world from a would-be dictator.

Believe it or not, but I'm actually getting a bit tired of remembering my dreams after every time I wake up. I wake up feeling a bit drained, still thinking about the weird stuff I dreamt. I hope I'll get back to normal soon.

Yesterday (Friday) was up early for lectures, then home and sleep a bit, and then I was off to a dinner with two friends. It was a feast, I tell you. We were only three people, and I dare say we'd made enough food for at least double that amount. And the food was exquisite. It's been a little time since I ate that much good food :D.

After that glorious dinner we went to the theatre. I'd never been to the theatre before. And it was truly great. It was a comedy called "Dwindle" ("Skrump") and it's truly a long time since I've laughed that much. It was epic, and I loved every minute of it. It even had a famous Danish actor in it that I knew, and that made the experience even better.

Afterwards one of the two other friends I saw the play with had to go home, and it was only me and the other guy. We decided we would only drink a single beer and then head on home. Well, I really wanted to see a bar I had heard a lot about, called Wall Street. But we couldn't find it. So we wandered a bit around aimlessly, talking and seeing a bit of Copenhagen by night. After a while we decided to just head into the next pub/bar we saw. And that place happened to be an Irish pub called "The Dubliner". And what a cool place! Really nice area with loads of decorations and a really weird, huge, circular window in the ceiling. Plus a live band that played epicly well. And they made the best Guinness I've ever tasted. Seriously, it was good. I could have drunk ten of them. It's got to be the only beer where I actually like the foam as much as the beer. It's truly delicious if the beer is well poured. And the bird in the picture is really cool too!

And well, one beer somehow became many. We were enjoying ourselves a lot and after the first promised beer it was suggested we had another. And well, suddenly it was around 3 o'clock or so (I had no idea what time it was, but I remember getting to bed around 5 o'clock). And we were both a bit/quite/very drunk. I had left my backpack at the guy's appartment (it was the same place we had the huge dinner) so I had to go by his place first. And once I got there it was so late and he kind of commanded me to sleep over :P. I really couldn't be bothered to take the bus all the way home at that point either, so I was happy to oblige. We drank some more beer, had some cake and leftovers from the dinner, talked and watched TV.

First we watched a French TV channel. It was really weird hearing French again. It was a random program about a fishing boat in France. Afterwards we chanced upon an episode of MacGyver. It was truly ridiculous. After having seen him in a Family Guy episode I had always thought MacGyver was just a joke character, but he actually is from a serious series (haha, sounded funny). And he can seriously make weapons from the most ridiculous things. In this episode he set fire to a pine cone and tossed it under a car, and the car promptly exploded. I mean, come on. He could probably make an atom bomb from a used pencil and three bent nails.

The next morning I awoke by myself at 8 o'clock. That meant I had slept little over 3 hours. But I didn't feel tired. Just a slight hangover. On my way home I was met by quite a lot of looks. It might be connected to the fact that I was dressed way too nicely for a normal day. One good thing though, was that I now have semi-short hair, and since I use wax to mess it up, it hides morning hair really well. So I didn't look completely hopeless =).

As I came home home, I immediately went to bed and awoke about 6 hours later with one hour to spare before a friend came visiting. Change of clothes, shower etc. Then off to badminton for one and a half hours and another huge dinner. It was really nice.

I do realise that this post has been quite full of snippets. I'm just so goddamn tired, so I can't be bothered to connect things in any real meaningful way. I'm so tired I'm even starting to see things. On my way home on bicycle from the friend's place I sometimes thought I saw people in the shadows. That they might actually have been real people is another matter. It was Saturday and 2 AM, so it was absolutely possible.

Ah, well. Now I'm finally off to sleep. Hopefully I'll have a quiet night of dreams.

Beacon

I'm beginning to get a little bit worried about my dreams.

I've always considered myself very good at remembering my dreams, but lately I've been able to remember my dreams every single day for over two weeks. And the bad thing isn't that I can remember it all, but that I'm beginning to confuse parts of them with reality. They're all about my life here at university at the moment. And while some of the dreams are weird (like people competing in the Guiness World Records for the title of "World's Biggest Drinker" or asking me to make them green pasta), others are way more realistic.

Just this evening I dreamt I was reading in our cell biology book. And I remember what I read. It's scary, because I don't think what I read was actually true. It had to do with gene expression being connected to a group of Rho and Ras GTPases and kinases, respectively. I mean, come on, wtf is this. What kind of sick dream is that.. Ah, well, I guess I'm finally going insane?

On another note, I got a little further in Eternal Sonata yesterday. And I have my second Japanese class tomorrow that I'm really looking forward to! I've learnt half of the katakana (one out of two Japanese phonetic alphabets) already in just this one week by practicing a bit during lectures, and I'm quite proud of that =). I'm also going to the theatre this Friday with two friends, and that's gonna be really nice. I've never been to the theatre before, so I'm sure it will be quite an experience!

This Friday I had a huge dinner at my place with a friend. It consisted of entrecôte, french fries, bernaise sauce and everything. Quite exquisite. Afterwards I was invited to a concert by a group named Infernal. I kind of wanted to go, but because I had plans the following day plus a built-up lack of sleep I decided not to go.

The following day, Saturday, I went to that birthday party. I managed to get lost twice on the way there (I travelled by bike). And on the way home again (around 1 o'clock) my GPS had somehow lost its battery, so I had to go all the way on memory. And my visual memory sucks. But anyway, I made it spectacularly well. And because of that experience, I can now find my way there again without any help :D. The birthday party was really fun too. Got to talk to a lot of people and had lots of nice (free :P) food and wine.

On a more general note. I kind of feel like I'm moving in shadows. That is to be understood that time is moving without me being able to see anything. These days are kind of fleeting. The weekends disappear, and there are not that many days I can truly single out from the others. It's weird, because new, distinct things are happening every day. I hope it's not this way it feels to become old :P. Meh.

Merlin is a protein

Don't believe the title? Then look here. Kind of a ridiculous name to give a protein, but what the hell :P. I've seen worse names.

Methionylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamylserylleucylphenylalanylalanylglutaminylleucyllysylglutamylarginyllysylglutamylglycylalanylphenylalanylvalylprolylphenylalanylvalylthreonylleucylglycylaspartylprolylglycylisoleucylglutamylglutaminylserylleucyllysylisoleucylaspartylthreonylleucylisoleucylglutamylalanylglycylalanylaspartylalanylleucylglutamylleucylglycylisoleucylprolylphenylalanylserylaspartylprolylleucylalanylaspartylglycylprolylthreonylisoleucylglutaminylasparaginylalanylthreonylleucylarginylalanylphenylalanylalanylalanylglycylvalylthreonylprolylalanylglutaminylcysteinylphenylalanylglutamylmethionylleucylalanylleucylisoleucylarginylglutaminyllysylhistidylprolylthreonylisoleucylprolylisoleucylglycylleucylleucylmethionyltyrosylalanylasparaginylleucylvalylphenylalanylasparaginyllysylglycylisoleucylaspartylglutamylphenylalanyltyrosylalanylglutaminylcysteinylglutamyllysylvalylglycylvalylaspartylserylvalylleucylvalylalanylaspartylvalylprolylvalylglutaminylglutamylserylalanylprolylphenylalanylarginylglutaminylalanylalanylleucylarginylhistidylasparaginylvalylalanylprolylisoleucylphenylalanylisoleucylcysteinylprolylprolylaspartylalanylaspartylaspartylaspartylleucylleucylarginylglutaminylisoleucylalanylseryltyrosylglycylarginylglycyltyrosylthreonyltyrosylleucylleucylserylarginylalanylglycylvalylthreonylglycylalanylglutamylasparaginylarginylalanylalanylleucylprolylleucylasparaginylhistidylleucylvalylalanyllysylleucyllysylglutamyltyrosylasparaginylalanylalanylprolylprolylleucylglutaminylglycylphenylalanylglycylisoleucylserylalanylprolylaspartylglutaminylvalyllysylalanylalanylisoleucylaspartylalanylglycylalanylalanylglycylalanylisoleucylserylglycylserylalanylisoleucylvalyllysylisoleucylisoleucylglutamylglutaminylhistidylasparaginylisoleucylglutamylprolylglutamyllysylmethionylleucylalanylalanylleucyllysylvalylphenylalanylvalylglutaminylprolylmethionyllysylalanylalanylthreonylarginylserine for example is worse.

I couldn't even bother to colour all the 267 amino acids that make up this thing. As you can see, I gave up after colouring ten.
Luckily some clever people have decided to shorten it to tryptophan synthetase A. For which I am quite grateful.

Be happy I didn't write up the scientific name for the protein titin. That one has 189819 letters.

I've now been at university for one and a half week of my second year. And I've decided to go to Australia to Monash University for the first semester of my third year. It's quite a process to apply for this, and right now I'm going around asking teachers to write a letter of recommendation for me (which the universities need). So far I've gotten 1 out of 4, that I plan to get. By the end of this month I need to have gotten at least 2 as well as having researched exactly what courses I want to take at the university, plus writing an essay about why I should be the one to be accepted to the university. Meh.

I've also met the freshmen who started on my course this year. They seem alright, even though according to the tutors from my year, the girls (who outnumber the boys 5 to 1) are skanks. Yep. And they sure can drink :P. Last Friday I drank shots with two of them, and omg they're crazy :P. That night was generally pretty weird. I ended up missing the last night bus at 5.30 and had to take a taxi home. Never tried that before, and it wasn't especially fun. Luckily I shared with two other people, so it didn't cost me a fortune. I slept until around 4 the next day. Meaning my Saturday was kind of lost. And I can't really remember what I did Sunday. Fact is, I'm way behind with the reading. But I'm trying to catch up now.

I also had my first Japanese course yesterday. It was kind of fun. But it annoyed me that I already knew everything we were taught. And the next lesson we're having I know all the stuff as well (the use of the particle "wa" and the word "desu"). But I'll see what happens. Some of the people there were REALLY weird. So I don't feel so weird when I'm there, lol. It's also weird that nearly everyone there also knows some Japanese like me and watch anime. I'm really not used to that. And it freaked me out that an emo guy dressed entirely in black with black coloured hair who sat in front of me to the right, kept looking back at me during the class. Scary. I haven't really talked with any of the others yet, but I plan to do that next time. The trouble is that we don't really get breaks, so we don't have that much of an excuse to talk. Maybe group work will be introduced though, and that should be alright.

The first thing we had to do in the class was tell the others why we had chosen Japanese. The weirdest explanation came from a guy whose job it was to program. He told us that while he programmed he had a second screen beside him which would play television series. And since he had now watched about every long English series that existed, he had turned to Japanese anime. The only trouble was that he had trouble programming while also looking at the subtitles. So now he wanted to learn Japanese so he wouldn't have to look at the subtitles all the time. Yep.

As the last thing that I'm going to bother to recount, we had some quite weird lectures these past few days. We tested some kind of new lecturing system, where we're each given a kind of remote control, with numbers on it. During lectures, multiple choice questions suddenly pop up, and we have to press the button that we think corresponds to the answer. It's actually really fun, and makes you not fall asleep and actually listen. I really hope they're going to implement it.

Finally, I'm getting a bit tired of those annoying spam mails, that claim to give you such amazing "opportunity". I don't know how many people from Nigeria who have offered me millions, if I would just help them transfer money to some weird bank account. I've also won the British lottery about five times now, I think.

The Stranger

It's been a while since my last post. A few things have happened of course.

I've been (by bike again :P) to another friend's summer house in Northern Denmark. It was lots of fun, and some really weird moments occurred. I haven't acted that weird in ages, and it was really nice to be able to act like that once again. The people I normally talk to are making me more grown up, I guess. It's much more fun to be able to act completely random. Even though I probably should not make a habit of acting that weird xD.

Also went to a birthday last Saturday. Very casual and private, but I like that way much better than huge parties and wasting yourself.

Sunday was a completely relaxed day, and on Monday I departed for a three-day camping trip in Northern Denmark again. I've been there a whole lot, I realise :P. But this time I didn't go by bike. It was the first time I've ever slept in a camper. It was a good trip. These friends are different, so this time a lot of drinking was involved. I did indeed up getting pretty drunk the last day before we went home. The first day we were all kind of tired, so nothing major happened. We played a lot of frisbee, and had a really weird walk at night along the beach towards a lighthouse. Even though it was like 5km away, we reached it.

I've never seen a lighthouse like that up close. It had this huge old-fashioned rotating prism and a central light that shone in all directions. The huge, rotating prism then directed the light into three major beams that shone really bright. It was quite fun to watch.

On the last day I got introduced to a fun drinking game, where you're supposed to kind of bound a coin into a cup, and then the next person drinks what's in the cup (beer). I got the technique nearly immediately, but since the other two had been drinking whiskey (which I don't like) I kept making myself lose on purpose.

After a little while one of the two friends who were with me on the trip suddenly became very tired. It was only around 1 o'clock. He then pronounced loudly that he would go to bed. When the other friend then said "Fuck it, I'm not going to bed, I'll drink with you (he was referring to me)", the first friend suddenly (again loudly) changed his mind. I laughed so much because it was so failed. He's supposed to be older than me :P.

Later I got into an idiotic discussion with him concerning the ability to imagine a feeling by intensifying a feeling you had already felt. For example, if you had had a burn wound in the past, would it be possible to imagine amplifying that feeling many times? I believe that is absolutely possible. He didn't. And when I told him that we would never reach an agreement in this, and that we should end the discussion (which was not a fun discussion at all since he began taking it so seriously) he went as far as to say that he had "lost all faith in me". I was like wtf. Not surprisingly, I took that quite seriously. The next day he apologised and said it was just because of his "narrow view on the world" and that it couldn't compare to my "much greater perspective". Bullshit. I still haven't decided what to do about it yet. But this much is certain: A friend would never say something like that.

Anyway, then he sort of passed out. And I sat up talking with the other guy. It was seriously nice. We opened up a lot, and before we knew it the sun had risen and it was around 6.30. Insane :P.

Next day we were all tired and pretty smashed. Me and the guy I had talked to all night were still quite tipsy. So the return trip home by train was sort of hazy. I had a bit of a hangover and I ended up having to lie down, and then I promptly fell asleep and woke around midnight. I hadn't had any breakfast, lunch or dinner. Not so much fun. And all milk I had was too old.

Then came today. Where I got my package from Sweden :D! I went up at 9:30 just to not miss it this time. And the package came. And in it was a completely new Guitar Hero controller with even included batteries. I nearly couldn't believe it. I mean, I got it completely for free. I just had to send a mail saying my controller was broken and they send me a completely new one? Without even asking me to pay postal fees or returning the broken one. I wonder what would happen if I made another request, and said the new one was broken :P. Would I get a third for free? Such a Guitar Hero controller is normally quite expensive in shops. Ah yes, the world is full of mysteries.

After receiving that package from on high, I cycled to my university to meet up with a friend and buy the third book I needed for the next half year (goddamn it I'm tired of buying expensive books). We spent some time researching a bit about what university to go to abroad for our third year. It's between Canada and Australia right now. Universities in the US require a lot of really weird information, and are really a pain to get accepted into. It's a pity, because I really wanted to go there.

I also got to see the freshmen which are starting on our course this year. It was quite fun to remember back at how it had been when I myself was a freshman. Got to say hi to a few of them and talked a bit with a guy who apparently is 18 and comes from France where he also went to an international school. Just like me. He actually reminded me of myself. When he learnt I came from Belgium, he even asked if I wanted to speak French. I would have asked that a year ago too :P.

And here I am now. I think I've done alright. The future right now looks a bit meek, but I trust that nothing is entirely what it seems.

Darkness of white

I've been reading a lot lately. Some Discworld novels actually. They're quite fun to read, and I love the random "breaking the norm" way they're written in.

I've also been working a lot (and so earning money, yay :D). On Tuesday I went down to the main office to fetch some special envelopes which I needed as part of my current "tasks" (which consist of sending approval letters to patients, who've been accepted for early examinations before operations - it's not as easy as it may sound :P). Well, I was approached by my boss who told me: "We would like to ask you to do some more difficult work for us." I was like: "YEAH!!". And it turned out I was FINALLY to start the translating job, I had applied for at the very beginning. It consist of "translating" from medical terms into layman's terms. For example, I translate such terms as "nerve root blocking", "cerebral palsy" or "neuropsychological examination" (it's all in Danish of course). It requires a lot of research, its very much relevant to my study, I learn from it and I get paid for each and every minute I use. I love it. And I still keep my much easier (in comparison) side job of sending patient approval letters. Which I, of course, also get paid for.

On a more annoying note scale (once you've played Eternal Sonata for Xbox 360 for a while you seriously start thinking about every annoying thing that reminds you of music - seriously, the characters you can control in the game are named March, Salsa, Allegretto, Beat, Falsetto, Polka, Claves, Viola, Jazz, Crescendo, Serenade and oh yes, Frédéric) I got a ridiculously huge heat bill this month. Believe me, it's blown out of all proportions. I normally pay a little bit each month towards the heat bill, and at the end of the year (which for some reason seems to be sometime in july) they check to see if I paid too much or too little compared to how much I consumed. And it seems that during the winter I heated enough to raise the temperature worldwide by a degree. It's ridiculous, and I've also sent a complaint to the company to get them to check this. I was very, very careful with how much heat I used. I nearly only used my bedroom heating system and not the one if my living room. And guess what, the bill shows that my living room heated over three times as much as my bedroom. Make sense? No. Anyway, I hope this all gets sorted out.

I watched Godfather I yesterday, since I had never seen it before. I hadn't expected it to be so long, but it was really, really good. I'm going to watch the other two over the next few days.

Have you ever heard about a plant called Salvia Divinorum, or Sage of the Seers? I just heard about it today. It seems it's this really weird plant that can give you some very special hallucinations and experiences if you smoke/chew it. And it's totally safe. There's no side effects, you can't get addicted and you can't die of an overdose or anything. It was used in the past by Aztecs and Indians for spiritual insights and experiences. It's said by a lot that it's the only herb in the world which is termed "existentia" meaning that it somehow provides experiences concerning the very act of existance. I'm not exactly sure what it means, but I heard of a guy experiencing a white room, where a machine kind of "stapled" reality to a globe which was supposed to be our Earth. This plant is also unlike the other hallucinogens that exist. It's not for parties, not made for groups and not a "fun" drug as such. It's said that you will respect the plant after having tried it the first time. The real high of taking the plant starts after 5 seconds and lasts five minutes if you smoke it, and starts after 30 minutes and lasts up to one hour if you chew the leaves. That's not long. But it's said that the experiences are well worth it anyway. While under the effect you normally simply let yourself lie down with your eye closed in a half-dark room. It's said that light will make the experience quite confusing. If you get the most vivid experiences, which are said to be the best, there's a chance you might walk around the room a bit like a sleepwalker, and that's why many suggest having a sitter with you the first few times. They're supposed to help you by gently guiding you around the room (so you don't collide with stuff) if you start walking around.

Anyway, it's a pity that the plant is beginning to become illegal. It got banned here in Denmark as of 2004, so it's relatively new. It's still legal in the UK for example. It seems that some people tried driving while under the influence of it (wtf..). So yeah, it's a pity. It sounded like quite a harmless thing, that yet could give some quite profound experiences. I've always wanted to try something that wasn't dangerous or addictive that could give you an experience out of this world (they say that the ultimate effect is the feeling of becoming one with the world and knowing Everything). I've also always wondered how it might be to hallucinate.

The closest I've ever gotten was when I was sick. Although that was quite a horrible experience that I never, ever want to try again. It had to do with feeling feelings like pain in a sort of 4th physical dimension which was swirling all around me, while I felt like I was continuously falling sideways and thinking that medicine would not work on everyone because of displacements of that 4th dimension, since noone could ever get close enough to the same locations in that dimension. Yeah, it was fucked up, and scary.

Now I'll go and play a bit of Eternal Sonata. I'm currently in Aria Temple waiting for prince Crescendo of Baroque City to reach a decision about whether or not he will support the resistance group of Andantino in an attack on Count Waltz. Because Count Waltz is distributing mineral powder (mineral powder?) mined from Mt. Rock which turns people into mindless soldiers to fight for him, so his nation of Forte can become supreme. Oh, and by the way, that guy on the right is Frédéric from the game. And guess what? His weapon is a baton stick. You know, the thing you use for conducting symphonies. Yep.

/Care

Well, it's Sunday today. The week went by quite rapidly in fact. Work is starting to get routine, and I'm busy all the time now. It's quite nice being busy actually.

Summer house thing was actually quite fun (although the bike ride of 55km each way was a little challenging), even though I was a bit surprised at first that there was going to be a third person my age there. I'd only met the guy once before, but he was quite fun actually, although I didn't always agree with everything that happened. But that's bound to happen with three people.

After the bike ride to the summer house, I was met by two grinning faces congratulating me on a good job biking all the way there, as well as about 12 different beers, which apparently were for me to drink that night. And drunk both me and the beers got. We drank it in this huge holiday centre that had all kinds of cool facilities, but everything was kind of deserted at night. so we had it all for ourselves. It was quite cool actually. There was even a piano. And I discovered that it's actually not always so easy to remember all the notes when you're drunk. Even though I think I did alright. The next day I can't actually remember what happened other than I ate a huge ice cream which was really cheap. And that we went and found a geocache with a flashlight in the night. Quite fun. And the next day we went up early and swam in the sea (which was surprisingly not so cold after all). And then the bike trip home, which took three hours because of a strong headwind. Once I finally got home to my apartment, I was smashed.

The following day I had to get up a 9 o'clock for a badminton game with a girl my age, her younger brother and my younger brother. It was actually really fun, and me and the girl got invited to play a double with some older people, who were training that day. They won, unfortunately, but they were really good. They told me afterwards though, that they could see by my playstyle that I was really good as well, and I was quick as hell :). I was really proud of that. And I asked them for a rematch some other Saturday with my usual playing partner, and they agreed. I look forward to it.

In the afternoon a friend from university suddenly came around, and we ended up drinking a couple of beers. We had fun talking and suddenly time had passed quickly. There was this reunion in the evening with people from my old Belgian school, and I missed the train I was supposed to take. So I was 40 minutes late. But it wasn't a problem. I managed to find them in the park where we had agreed to meet. And it was loads of fun. There were quite a lot, and it was really fun seeing them again. And there was, of course, more beer. I stayed for dinner, but I didn't follow some of them to town, because I was simply exhausted and had another appointment the following day. I was home a bit past midnight.

Sunday, today, was sunny, and meeting up with two people from university, we went on this kind of tourist barge that tours the canals in Copenhagen. It wasn't very impressive (at least I didn't think so). There was, inevitably, also beer present. In nice quantities. But we had fun and the hours disappeared quickly while we hung out. After having lunch we decided to go to the cinema in the evening. So after a bit more time (and beer lifespan) had passed we went and saw The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. I really liked it. We had dinner at McDonalds afterwards. Quite a lot of money was spent this day.

Some other stuff was also planned for later in the holidays, but it's not finally decided. A canoe trip, a birthday party and a camping holiday in the exact same town as the one I biked to to visit my friend's summer house (this camping trip would be with other people, though). I don't know if they'll happen or not, but we'll see.

Tomorrow I have nothing planned at all. And I'm happy for that. Except for a bit of work in the evening, I can relax completely. And there will be NO beers :P. I do have one beer left from today in my refrigerator, but it will have to be lonely in there for a little while longer.

That'll be the end for today. I'm going to watch Brüno tomorrow, I think. Or maybe tonight. I haven't decided yet.

"Where we learn how our hero fares"

Wow. That wasn't fun. Food poisoning. Yep. And that was not fun. I cannot stress how not fun it was. But I think it's over now, finally. And I can function normally again. And eat normally again. I won't go into any more details about this five-day period of extreme dread and malaise, other than to say that during this time I managed to read two books, eat 200g of yoghurt and a few bananas (and nothing more during those five days) as well as drink about 50L of water (and gross salt solution thing, that was supposed to help me not die of dehydration - yay).

Yesterday I was at some friends' house for dinner. First day that I managed to eat alright again. I also bought a new Xbox 360 game called Eternal Sonata. It has the potential of becoming a really good game later on, although the story and constant reference to music seems absolutely ridiculous to me at the moment. And today I had a friend over, and it was lots of fun. Tomorrow I'm going to a friend's summer house for two days.

I also started work yesterday. And I'm actually beginning to enjoy it. It's not that boring at all. And I like that I have so much responsibility =). Also what happened yesterday, was that I went for a bike ride. And right when I'm about to turn around and head home, my pedal falls off. Yes, it somehow managed to dislodge itself completely and fall off. And OF COURSE you need some special kind of umbraco key to turn it back on. Which I went out and bought hastily today, and finally used to fix my bike. The bike trip tomorrow to that summer house will take more than two hours tomorrow. I seriously dread how much bad luck can be managed to be squeezed into such a huge timespan of opportunities. We'll see, or rather NOT see, I hope.

I also had my brother come and visit me from Belgium (mind you, it was not my choice - I had no say in the matter whatsoever). But we have a weird relationship of extremely weird humour (I wonder who he got that from :P) and mutual understanding and misunderstanding. So it's alright.

About that package. My guitar hero replacement. The one which apparently had been sent all the way back to Sweden, but I really hoped hadn't. Well, turns out it has. I contacted lots of people, but they all confirmed it had been sent further and further away. I of course watched all of this with the smile of beginning insanity. That guitar is seriously mocking me. As a last resort, I wrote another mail explaining my situation to the ridiculously stupid help-desk. I did that Friday. No answer as of today (Tuesday). I'm thinking about resending the mail again. 50 times. Then they ought to notice it. But I'll wait until Friday and hope.

Until then.

Spirit of the Hawk

Home, sweet home. Yep, finally home. After carrying that sickingly heavy shoulder bag which was my luggage. But I'm not complaining.

After a rather uneventful start of the day I got to the airport. And as usual weird stuff happens to me. An older man in front of me suddenly turns around while we're both descending the escalator. He says something I don't understand. I ask "what?". He says again: "What does the thing on your shirt mean". Me: "Napapijri?". Him: "Yep." Me: "Dunno." Him: "Ok, so where are you from?". And from there the conversation started. All the way to the security check it continued. We got over such varied subjects as Italian influence on Croatian architecture (he was a diplomat from Italy on his way to Budapest) and weather change in Southern Europe. I've never really had people strike up random conversations like this with me in an airport. Only with the people I sit beside on the plane. It must have been because of my very nice shirt.

While walking towards the gate later on a person suddenly walks really close to me. Really close, I see out of the corner of my eye. Actually brushing up against me now. I'm like "ok, wtf, is this person sick or something". But nope. It turns out to be one of the kids from the bus I took every morning while I lived in Belgium. He was kind of annoying, so luckily he wasn't on the same plane to Denmark as me. But it just proves that it's a small world after all, or I just know a lot of people who are likely to travel a lot, as well as on the same flight routes as me.

I come home to a surprisingly pleasing (but later evil mail) box. Just the day before leaving for Belgium I had placed a "NO ADVERTISEMENTS please" sticker on my mail box. So it was delightfully spacy even though so much time has passed.

The only thing I didn't like was a meek, innocent-looking letter from a transport company lying stealthily on the very bottom of the pile of mail. My fears are confirmed once I open it. It's dated the freaking same day that I left for Belgium (remembering that I left for the airport in the morning before the mail had arrived). And in short it basically says this:

---
Hi there,

Remember last time you heard the door-bell at 7 o'clock in the morning, and you thought it was just the regular paper boy, who always rings everyone's doorbell to get inside the main hall with the newspapers? Well, this time it wasn't. Oh no. It was us. With a big, nice package for you, that couldn't fit in your mailbox. It was probably something really nice. Something you had waited a long time for. Like the new Guitar Hero controller, that you used hours and hours to get sent to you, by talking for hours with useless online help desks. Oh yes. It probably was that.

But now, you see. You didn't answer the door. Because you still had your night clothes on, you were tired and didn't know who it was, since you expected no visits that day, and definetely not that early in the morning. Well, that's just too bad. Because when you didn't open we just left. And waited a nice few days before slipping a letter into your mailbox telling you that you now have five days to get back in touch with us regarding a new delivery, or we will return your package to sender. Yep, you heard that right. We'll return it. What you probably used ages to get, we will now send back. Just so that everything will be completely messed up.

But hey? Now it's not our problem anymore.


Greetings and happy wishes from
General Logistic System Denmark A/S

=)
---

I had three options after having read that.

1. Cry about the futility of it all.
2. Pretend I hadn't read the stuff about the package being returned after five days, and send them a nice mail asking to have the package delivered the next day, hoping desperately it would still be there or somehow remotely returnable.
3. Kill.

I chose the onyl truly sensible option. No not 3, even though it was briefly considered. I chose door number 2, and hope that it will lead me to some vanishingly small speck of hope.

Ah well. I have quite a few things to look forward to though. And that's more than enough to keep my spirits up. It will just require a lot of planning and initiative to get everything started and done, and with work every weekday, I definitely won't get bored quickly.

Right now, I will perform a weather control trick to get nice(r) weather for Thursday, where there's a picnic for my old classmates from the school in Belgium. Let's see if I've still got a bit of that stuff left.

Decision

Tomorrow I'm going home to Denmark again. I arrived here in Belgium yesterday night after having stayed a whole day in Southern Germany in the weirdest town ever.

All their houses were so huge and weird. Really. It's tough to explain. Nothing there was normally sized. I felt like a small doll in some huge weird Austrian yodelling fantasy. Every house was in the typical Austrian style (imagine very square house with huge V shaped roof with overly flower-decorated balconies). And the smallest houses were about 40m wide. Yep. And to add to it all, everyone was dressed in traditional beer festival clothes. There was even a frigging HUGE Maypole in the town square. It must come as no surprise that when I asked for a small coke at the restaurant, it was only a half a litre. The big coke was 2 L (and oh yes, it came in a 2 L glass).

It felt so ridiculous (but funny) to be so small compared to everything. That didn't mean that there were no details. Oh no. Every little nook and cranny was decorated. With flowers, teapots, draperies, you name it. Here's a picture my brother took of the Maypole together with one of the smaller houses (at first we thought it was a place we could stay, but when we went inside, the man told us that it was merely a small café - I ask myself what the hell a small café needs four floors for :P).

The following day on our way through the rest of Germany we were 1 minute from a huge accident. Suddenly all traffic on the motorway stopped right in front of us. Then came multiple ambulances, fire trucks, police cars, emergency doctors and even helicopters. It was quite alarming. I'm not sure what had happened, but it must have been quite serious. It took about half an hour or more, before we could finally drive on. It was a bit weird being able to walk around in the middle of the motor way with everyone having stopped their cars and gone out as well. This kind of complete stop also happened once on the way to Croatia, but it didn't last as long nor was it as serious I assume (due to lack of before-mentioned pleura of siren-equipped vehicles).

I will end this entry with a picture of the promised blue water from that nature park in Croatia (there were other, more aestetically pleasing photos of lake pleateaus and waterfalls of course, but the showing of the blue water was prime objective here). Following that is a picture of the sunken ship we could dived at. And lastly a picture of the town we stayed at on the island. And note: Although it may not look it, all these pictures were taken by my younger brother with his own camera. I hate to admit it, but he may be good at this kind of stuff. Notice the picture of a cool sigil we found on the docks of our small town, which I will be posting in the next post.

"OooOOOoo"

Leaving Croatia tomorrow early morning. The drive through Slovenia, Austria back to Belgium is waiting for me. This time it will take us two days to get home though. I hope to get to visit the town of Pula on the way home (even though I doubt it will happen) as I've recently found out it has its own huge coliseum. Weird, huh?

I went snorkeling today for hours in a coral reef about 20 minutes swim (exhausting, bwah) from the beach. There were loads of cool fish and not-so-soft sea urchins. And in place of my sunburn my skin has turned very very dark. Especially concentrated on a spot only on my left shoulder. It looks like someone dabbed it in dark brown paint while the rest is only lightly coloured. Yes, it's very wtf.

I tried a long island ice tea yesterday, After having heard so much about it. Either it was made very well, or the cocktail just normally tastes great. I really liked it. It is therefore recommendable to try it out. (!)

I've acquired a certain taste for an old Danish band I had a few tapes of when I was little. It's called Shubidua. Click here to listen to one of my favourite songs I remember from when I was small. You probably won't understand it if you don't understand Danish (and if you can without knowing Danish, then I want to know your secret). Anyway, most of their texts are really clever. Those understanding a bit of Danish politics might also like their song called "Folkeparty no. 179". I unfortunately can't supply a link for that song, as it's apparently not uploaded on Youtube (quite a shock!).

I'm looking forward to meeting friends in Denmark, and getting the hell away from my family. They get very much on my nerves. Very much so.

And it's fun reading people I know's blogs, and being referred to. Right, friend ^^?

Repeating pattern

Lots of things have happened since last time. Lots.

I managed to get a sunburn (sob), but it wasn't too bad, and it should be pretty much gone by tomorrow.

We went on this cool boat trip as well, where we visited random islands. One of the islands was this huge nature reserve. And we got to swim in this magnificent lagoon with a big sunken ship in the middle og it and loads of fish swimming around inside it. Rich opportunities for snorkling and scuba diving!

On our way home with the ship we chanced upon a group of wild dolphins. That was more cool that I can describe. I've never seen anything like it. It's so much different than just seeing them at some show. They were doing all these cool tricks in the water and it looked like they were genuinely having fun. They liked getting close to the ship and riding on the ship's wake. Nice :D!

Today we went to this magnificent (yeah, I know I'm using a lot of grand words here, but it truly was :P) nature park in the middle of Croatia. It was extremely splendid :P. It had these really, really blue lakes and huge waterfalls and everything. You can see a picture of it by clicking here. I realise that this is some promo photo shot, but it really did look like this. I'll show you some pictures of my own once I get home. It was also really cool that you sort of walked on the waterfalls on these wooden walkways (you can sort of glimpse it in the top part of the linked picture). And the colour of the water was indescrbable. If I hadn't seen it myself I would have said it was coloured that way in Photoshop. It was THIS blue. We were told it was because of some chemical thing in the water. Carbanic something. But it was perfectly healthy. The drop pools and lakes were full of fish (and ducks!!). I can quite highly recommend visiting this park should you ever suddenly wake up in Zagreb or similar area situated in the general vicinity of the Plitvička jezera park.

And I've had weird dreams these last two days. My first dream was simple enough. I knew how to save the world. In three easy steps. And I actually formulated those steps to the UN. And I could clearly tell people what those steps were and how they would work to save the world. This normally never happens in dreams. It's ok to think you know how to save the world in a dream. But actually formulating the necessary steps is a bit weirder. Anyway, my only problem is that I can't remember steps 2 and 3 after I woke up, and I only remember very little of step 1. I was awoken in the middle of me formulating the three points to the American president.

I remember the 1st point consisted of advancing technology to a sufficient state, and it only required a very simple iteration sequence. And it had to do with a mathematical formula or method or something like that. And I remember thinking "heh, that was really close to what my friend once told me, it's just an expansion of that..".

I apologise to the world for the fact that I can't remember any more details of that dream.

The second dream I remember more of. For some reason I was in Japan and could only speak to people in Japanese. And I suddenly had to take the plane back to Belgium to do a Danish exam concerning a particular bird which I don't recognise. It was kind of stupid. But weird :P. And so, interesting.

Tomorrow we'll finally have a bit cooler weather (34 degrees celsius today..). There's going to be a thunderstorm tonight and so we'll have at least a tiny bit cooler weather for a single day. And then the temperature will skyrocket back to normal once again.

And I got really started with my work now. And I have the responsibility of sending answers about medical insurance to loads of patients now. So I'll get paid nicely :P. It's so nice I can do everything from home.

I'm looking forward to playing a certain game of cards (I've optimised my own collection now) and a certain board game once I get back to Denmark. I'm also looking forward to the canoe trip, the visit to a friend summer house and bike trips to faraway living friends in Denmark ^^!

Treasure Cove

Greetings from Croatia. It's 30 degrees outside, and it's supposed to be a rather cool day today. Yep.

Sorry for not writitng before (I've been here three days already) but my brother has been hogging the pc, playing games and refusing to let me use it. Even just checking my email took quite an effort in convincing technique.

The drive to get here was somehow done in one single day instead of wto as originally planned. And it was quite astonishing really. I didn't enjoy the drive at all, even though it was quite some nice scenery we passed (such as the Alps and landscape in Austria and Slovenia etc). When we arrived we were all dead tired and irritable and so an extremely good mood didn't exactly pervade.

But after the first night of sleep it got a bit better (with certain relapses into quite hefty arguments). But that's was to be expected anyway. It's a really nice place we're lodging though. It's in this bay with mountains on all sides. Quite a view from our balcony. When I get home I'll see if I can't post a picture of it.

In the days we've been here, we've managed to drive around the island a bit, visit the only publicly accesible underground cave area (a measly stretch of 110 m), rent what sounds like a really cool boat trip for tomorrow, go to random towns, buy a new towel, sunbathe, swim in the sea, sail in this kind of bicycle boat thing, play cards and eat lots of food (important!). I also somehow managed to catch a cold, but it feels like it's finally cured today.

And my parents continously complain (heavily!!) about me not wanting to go out to bars and stuff with my little brother. It's really annoying. I'm afraid they won't lay off it though. Bwah..

One of these days I'm going to take off walking on my own. My dad gave me a walking guide map of the island. There seems to be some quite nice routes to take. I just hope it will cool down a little bit (they've promised only increasing temperatures until Friday, it's going to be torture). I won't be able to walk very far in this temperature.

Well, not much more from here. I wonder about some very weird reflections out at sea at night. And I was kept awake last night by a frigging sheep that just wouldn't stop bleating until around 3 o'clock in the night. Baaa..

"The crock is brinking!!", said the Chinese puppet

Well, I'm off to Croatia in a couple of hours. It's going to be quite a trip to get there. we're going by car and stopping over in most of the countries on the way there. I wonder what the place we're going to stay at will be like as well. I really have no clue what's going to happen :P..

I've brought with me a book on this unknown journey. "Consider Windward" by Iain M. Banks, one of my most favourite science fiction writers. It's a book I've wanted to read for ages and I finally got it for Christmas. It's kind of the continuation (only kind of) of another book by him called "Consider Phlebas". I remember the verse from the poem those titles comes from by heart for some reason. It's short. The poem is titled "Death".

"Gentile or Jew,
O ye who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you."

It's weird that the first title of the two books actually is taken from the second line, and the second title is taken from the first line. I wonder if some weird logic will present itself at the end of this second book. In thee first book there was no clue what so ever to the poem.

On other notes. My short time here in belgium has been great. I've visited friends and had fun. And I'm going to meet them all again in Denmark. It's funny meeting people you've known for so long again in a different country like this. First in Belgium and then in Denmark. And between those two gathering we're again going to be spread all over the place. I'm going on holidays to Denmark, another to Iceland and a third to southern France.

It surprised me a bit today when I realised how different these people are from most I know from university. We're able to be so much more weird (and I guess, more true to what pops up in our minds) than with other people I know. It's so much fun. I wonder if it's because most people from university are a bit older (even though I doubt that that's the reason) or because they're just a bit more closed with each other since noone knows each other that well yet. And so they're a bit on guard from doing (in their eyes) more non-acceptable stuff. Or maybe I'm just lucky to have had friends who are more weird than average. And that's only meant in a positive way ^^. Weird people are more fun and entertaining. I know that for a fact.

And something I was told today made me wonder. Have I changed since I moved to Denmark? Well, I guess I have changed in a way. It's only to be a bit expected, I guess. I live for myself now, I have much more responsibility (yay ^^) and I can frankly do whatever I want. Be that for better or worse :P.

But I'm still me. I guess we can't stop ourselves from changing. We can only go one step at a time, and try to stay on the right path. Unlike a certain Mr. Pan who broke both his own legs on purpose, so that he would stop walking down that path of miniscule, but additive, change.

Well, I'll be leaving in an hour, so I'd better get a little rest and prepare myself. I normally just hibernate on long drives. The only requirement is a pillow, a book and my iPod and I can stay going for days on end :P.

See ya!

Swoosh!!

I had the weirdest dream this morning. A dream I forced to continue each time my alarm rang, because it was so interesting. Well, at least in my drowsy state I thought it was. I ended up having repeatedly postponed my alarm so many times that it gave up (after only trying for 2 hours, lazy alarm clock).

The dream basically was about me being able to control the four elements, although I don't recall using fire in the dream. The trouble was that when other people looked on, I sort of became shy or something, and I couldn't control the stuff. I had to be confident in myself before it worked. To prove to the others that I could really do what I said I had to make a rotating ball of water in front of me. But I just couldn't do it while so many people were watching. I had my hands stretched out in front of that glass of water but I could only manage to get a few drops of water to fly into the air. And that wasn't good enough.

I could make a pillar og earth rise up in front of me and use wind to lift myself and fly a bit with no problems, but that wasn't enough (and I even thought so myself). But I kept trying until I woke up. I normally like dreams about element-bending, but this one was kind of annoying :P. I wonder why it was exactly water-bending that gave me trouble..

I don't know if it was that dream or not. But I've been sleeping on and off the whole day today. And I have to get up relatively early tomorrow. I'll never fall asleep tonight, bwah.

I just realised how huge a difference there is between summer and winter in this country. For example, there's a difference in nearly 9 hours between shortest and longest day here.

I'm going to Belgium tomorrow and after a little while I'm continuing to an island in Croatia called Krk (I'm looking forward to learning how to pronounce that correctly). All in all I'll be gone about a month, so I probably won't get to update this much. Or maybe I will.