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.