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.

Up, down, circle, up again and a Yevon greeting

I washed my clothes and all now, so I should be pretty much ready to leave after tomorrow. It's weird having to be gone a whole month. But I'm looking forward to the glorious food I am sure awaits me :D.

And for ONCE it wasn't way too hot today. I'll finally be able to sleep at a normal time (if I choose to, of course :P). And the same applies for Belgium. No horrible nights of the heat forcing you to turn from side to side.

I have one complaint though. I want some sweets right now. But all I have are some biscuits and a bag of chips. I have half a mind to walk all the way to 7-Eleven to just buy a single bag of sweets. But I know it's a waste of both time and money, bwah.

I'll get my exam results in two days. I'm pretty sure I've passed, but we'll see :P.

Nothing much more I'll bother to write about now. Except a French quote by Jules Renard I'll translate to English for ya.

"Happiness is being happy,
it is not making others believe, that we are happy."

That was..

Well. Been some time since I wrote stuff that has been happening lately. But there's too too much to write about in a single post. So I'll list the stuff in as concise points as humanly possible:

• Went biking with two friends in Copenhagen, finding two geocaches with them.
• Before that, I went treasure hunting alone in Copenhagen on my bike. As a commercial stunt 50.000 kr had been hidden in the streets of the capital. The hunt started at 6 o'clock in the morning. I've never before voluntarily gotten up at 5 o'clock in the morning :P. But it was great fun!
• I came up with a theory about ducks while on that trip in Copenhagen with the two friends. It's quite scary actually. I imagined that if you plotted the nodding movements of all the ducks' head in the whole world you would find the pattern of something called the Hilbert Transform with respect to the Earth's inherent field. I can't remember what that field is called. It's not a magnetic field or an electric field..
• I'm going on a holiday to Belgium and then Croatia which will last the whole of this month.
• Then when I get home I'm going to a friend's summer house.
• I'm also going canoing with two other friends.
• As well as bicycling to another friend again who lives about 60 km or so from here, it will be quite a trip ^^.
• I've got some tasks for my new job finally. And completed some of them. Pay is really good and the work is fun! I love that I can do the stuff from home and then just write down how much time I spent doing it. I've also got my first payment. My job title is "Consultant". It sounds cool, doesn't it? And on my bank account it doesn't merely state "løn" (pay) as the title of the money transfer. No, it says "honorar" (I don't really know the translation for this; it's kind of what you would call the money you pay honorary people for their hourly services).
• I've completed my first year of uni! My last exam was alright, even though the conditions were so weird. We had to go to the exam place by a tourist bus with no air-condition (we were told the bus would break down if the air-conditioning was turned on, bwah!) and we had to wait in it for an hour. Horrible. I lost all concentration, it was ridiculous. And the whole exam was on pc. But we had to use a pen for it. So weird. Inside the pen was a camera that could see what we wrote and the transferred it to the screen and converted it with some seriously advanced technology. Because we had to write on special paper it knew exactly where on the page we wrote or if we wrote on the backside of it etc. But I'm pretty sure I passed the exam, even though it weren't exactly my strongest subjects. (How the hell do you explain tetanus and summation in connection with a muscle fiber twitch myogram, argh xD!!)
  
• I had two very fun "end of university" parties, where I ended leaving very late both times (around 4 o'clock in the morning - last bus).
• I realise I've made some great new friends, and that it's limited how many more I can make because our study is so small. I wonder what the freshers next year will be like. Probably still all older than me :P.
• I'm going to take Japanese as an evening class next year (for real!). I've already ordered the exercise book and everything. I talked with the study leader for Japanese and she told me my level was already enough for the intermediary course. I'm going to test myself first though before I decide which level I'll start at though. Besides that, I've been going trhough some online courses in Japanese, and I'm proud to say that there are rare times now where I don't need to look at the subtitles in anime. Because I get what they say. Sometimes it's more like "ah, when I read the english translation I can translate to Japanese and it fits with what they just said" though.
• I'm a bit annoyed at how different Japanese sometimes is. They have double negative ffs :P. If they say "I do not 'not want' to go school" it means "I do not want to go to school". Yep, double negatives in Japanese just reinforce each other, unlike in most other languages where they cancel each other out. But on the other hand, if you say to a Japanese person: "You speak Japanese, don't you?" they will answer "No". Yep, in a sentence like that the negative answer cancels the negative in "don't you". Confusing, right?
  
• I went to a VETO concerts in Tivoli in Copenhagen, which was really cool. I'd never heard the band before, but I must admit it was really good.
• I've watched the anime Death Note to the end (wow, good one, and poor L) and I've started watching another one called Eureka 7.
• Also saw Transformers 2 in the cinema. And before that I watched Slumdog Millionaire and Transformers 1 at home. And I want to see that new film Brüno (same actor and style as the Borat film). It looks hilarious!
  
• It's been so hot here these last few days that it's impossible to sleep. I have every window open + a fan running nearly non-stop. And I still wake early in the morning because of the heat. But luckily the weather is going to cool soon enough.
• I did a complete cleaning, polishing and oiling of my bike today. So it's completely fit for fight.
  
• I went biking today at 22:30 and it was a brilliant mix of moonlight and weak daylight outside and around 20 degrees. It felt like it was the middle of the day and not late at all.
  
• I've taken a certain liking to making burgers for lunch.
• As well as a certain liking for cocoa.
• And cake.

It's 2 o'clock here now, and a friend is visiting me tomorrow. So I'd better go to sleep now or risk being tired (yeah, right, as if that will be prevented). There is quite certainly quite a few things I forgot to list there. Such as learning a new piano song (Sleepless Beauty - Sacred Air remix), going to a very cool type of non-religious communion in Norway with live concerts and really true speeches about life (and for the first time discovering that Norwegians use traditional clothing called "Bunads" (which are a lot like Scottish kilts with emblems corresponding to what area they're from) for special occasions) and having my Dad visit.

So that's all this time folks.

This last picture I couldn't help myself from uploading. It's so cool that this picture was captured :P.