Aug 30, 2018

Journals Waiting

Property of Stormberry
Yesterday I had a chat (via WhatsApp, mind you), with my dear and Best Friend Arjen about all things related to post, paper and how much we totally and absolutely love each other, and how we make each other's lives so much better. Well, for sure Arjen makes my life a million times happier and brighter. Do you have any friends like that? You know, the kind of friend with whom you feel so well, share tastes, someone with a like mind, and with whom suddenly you have the absolutely best ideas in the planet? Well, that is Arjen for me.

So, Arjen and I were talking about how long it takes for a parcel or a letter to fly between Costa Rica and Belgium, mostly because both of us sent out our letters pretty much at the same time. Let me explain this quickly for you: I actually wrote to Arjen sometime in Spring. She got the letter and was sending me her reply. However, life has happened and with all the things in my life (thesis, friends gone, friends found, etc.), I HAD to talk to her. Sure, I could have sent an e-mail or chat her up on WhatsApp as we often do, but these things needed the long winding quality only handwritten letters can provide. On the light of this, I sent her what we call now "Letter Volume II: The Second Installment". I can't wait for her to get the letter! I even sent it with the courier service because: 1. it is faster, 2. it wasn't that much more expensive than the normal version, and 3. it comes in an uglyu plastic bag that will at least save the letter from water damage.

Source:  Fendrihan Canada
She showed me then a notebook she's going to use for a Bullet Journal Workshop she's taking. Oh my! I was so envious! :-) Can't wait to see the end result of it. That brought me to remember the A5 dotted, copper Leuchturm 1917 notebooks we've bought last year in Budapest. I remember that day with such joy! It was December 2017, and the both of us went to the 11th district looking for a paper store called "Fiók". It seemed like we would not find it in time, but then we did, and when we went into it, there they were, the beautiful Leuchturm 1917, hardcover notebooks! By then I had been on the hunt of A5 blank, lined or grid copper notebooks, but never found one. I didn't even think much, just grabbed the notebook.

Though normally I prefer blank pages for my journal, somehow I wanted this book to be more of a bullet journal (ain't gonna happen), and for that I wanted dotted pages. Arjen decided she wanted one too, and she also got the A5, dotted copper notebook. After that we were taken by the copper love and grabbed copper metallic Sharpies and other coppery washi tape.

Source: Pen Heaven
By the begining of the year she was already bullet-journaling in her copper notebook, while I was pondering what should I do with mine. I mean, I bullet-journal, but I do so in my A5 Malden filofax. In other words, my prized copper Leuchturm was an impulsive purchase I had acquired for the visual pleasure of its supple aesthetics. Then it went into my trunk, which is being currently heavily guarded by all the books I've bought since June... that no longer have a place in my bookshelf. (This is the reason why I'm posting pictures from google rather than pictures of my own blank notebooks). For my regular journaling, I've been using lately books from BomoArt. These books have blank pages and the paper is thick enough to handle fountain pens, which is what I use for... anything that has to do with handwriting.

In this same trip I was refering previously, Arjen and I went to Bomo Art in Budapest, in the Régi Posta utca, close to Váci utca, and I've bought that would have been my next journal. 

Property of Stormberry
Would have been? Yes. I had planned to use the latest Bomo Art book as my next journal, but after yesterday, we decided to return to our A5 coppers. You see, while talking about the paper world, Arjen mentioned that she had abandoned her copper Leuchturm. I'm myself on the last pages of my current journal, so the next logical idea came to mind: we should retake our copper Leuchturms at the same time! Isn't that the most fabulous and totally Super Best Friend thing in the world?

Since the journal is copper colored, and I have some copper washi, I thought it would be cool to use it with copper ink. Yeah, it would be cool... if there were copper ink. Now Arjen and I are on hot pursuit of cooper ink. The closest we've found is a Diamine Caramel Sparkle she has spotted. The closest I currently have is a Pelikan 4001 brilliant brown.

I know, who would have thought that the world of pen and paper could be so complicated?

Aug 22, 2018

Thoughts and Updates

Source: Pinterest.com
In recent days I've been floating in a sort of haze. First of all, allow me to update you in matters of which I've posted previously. So, how did it go with the defense of my thesis? Swimingly. :-) I'm proud to tell y'all, that not only did I made it, but I gotten the rare honor of scoring a perfect grade: 10 out of 10. This is so rare, that my thesis director (we call it "tutor"), told me he hadn't seen one such case in his two years of experience. This is my third degree, and one could say it is my third thesis (if we don't take in account the fact that I had to write two with my team for the Accounting degree, in which case this would be my fourth thesis), and this is the first time I get a 10 out of 10.

As you remember, I was freaking out the week before the defense, and I mean fucking-freaking-out. I was obssessed with the timing of my presentation, that juts didn't want to go under 25 minutes. The topic was one I know thanks to my job and the involvement I've had with it since it became an issue in our industry. Just to put you in context (quickly and easily, I promise!), my thesis was about the impact of the LRIC costing model applied by the Costa Rican Telecom Regulator (SUTEL) on the capability of Dominant Operators to generate profit. In plain English, if the rules applied by the Government (throught the SUTEL) allowed companies considered big to make money. 

I took three days of vacations to prepare for the defense (the day of the defense and two days ahead of it), and so I went on and on and on, mixing down time and reading (novels) with rehearsal. I wanted to be rested and relaxed to be in peak conditions, but my brain would not stop. During my morning exercise routines, as well as I was walking around the city running my errands, I went on talking to myself, repeating over and over my presentation. Each of the 32 slides were etched in my inside of my eyelids, and so constantly I invoked them in my head in order while I repeated the loosely scripted speech I planned to give. Time and again I had to cut here and there, calming the protesting voices inside me with "Look, if they really want to know, they will ask, and if they do - fuck - give'em all".

Source: Pinterest
The day of the presentation I trusted myself to my gods - Minerva, Mercury and Neptune - and drove to meet my Fates. There were more people than I had initially expected, among them a professor who had been my detractor previously. I've got a little more nervous because of that, mainly because I didn't want to be rude, and I wasn't sure how to properly explain the things he had objected previously without sounding like I was ridiculing him for not noticing. Yes, diplomacy is definitively not my strong suit.

When the defense began my voice trembled and broke, and I've got tongue tied with easy words like "market" and "telecommunications", but I kept pushing on. I had this by heart. The one professor I had invited to be my supporting audience was left out, but my thesis director was there and smiled at me encouragingly. Then I loosened up, and soon switched into a different mode. I was looking at my audience in the eyes, talking to them vehemently, the same way I would at work, because I felt like I was at work, in a meeting trying to make understand a mixed audience about the importance of my work and why it must be supported and brought to the Regulator. I passed from slide to slide, but I wasn't looking at the slides. Those were aid for my audience if they didn't get what I was telling them. Each slide offered a simple scheme of what I was telling them. Imagine it like an economist, defending a Finance project to financists while using the subtle art of Marketing to attack them on all fronts (auditive and visual) so that they would open up to my message. And it worked.

I was within the timeframe alloted to me, and when the questions came, I used emotion to spice my words. My topic was about Regulators and big telecom companies, but with words I landed my issues into their pockets. I rose their spirits, made them feel like the company I was representing was theirs and that they had to defend it whatever the cost. I made them feel aggravated and ready to jump, because what I was denouncing felt to them like a personal blow. I owned them and their hearts.

When it came to an end, I felt like crying. The professors applauded and smiled so bright, I felt in a dream. One of the coordinators present at the defense asked me little after the end of the process, if she could give my work to a colleague that works at a higher Regulator body. She explained that she had commented my work with him and he wanted to read it. Oh goodness! By all means!

I stayed around because I planned to stay for the defense of my classmates (that was in the afternoon, while I defended in the morning), so as I met with professors from my other careers (Accounting and Marketing), and all of them were told of my results, soon started encouraging me to submit my curriculum vitae so I could start teaching.

I met then - almost by accident - with an old classmate of mine, from my days as an economics student. I knew he worked there, and I had intended on inviting him, but somehow it had escaped my mind, and when I remembered that I would have loved having him there, it was too late and felt improper. I still was happy to see him. For sake of simplicity, lets call him Friedrich, in honor of Friedrich Engels.

Friedrich and I have had always an uneasy sort of relationship. Back in Economics, we were mostly classmates, but he wasn't really in any of my circles. He wasn't someone I would have called "a friend", but not an outright rival either. I don't think I had ever smiled at him in those days, and though we talked here and there - and when we did our conversations were long - there wasn't an easy environment. As I cast my mind back to those days, perhaps I could describe my feelings there best as "predatorial", or maybe "on guard". I was on the lookout for him, watching him, measuring him, cataloguing his comments and running my minds about meanings and counter messages. I do know we had played poker together and he improved my poker education, which by then had some grounding on what I had learned in Hungary from my Kenian and Jordanian friends.

Those years ended in silence, as we had a fall off. Actually, I don't remember much (and I haven't actively sought my journals of that time to find out what had I recorded of the incident), but Friedrich said I've got mad because he forgot to come to a meeting we had arranged to work on a project. Curiously, I have one image in my head, of him looking at me with so much hatred and anger as I have never seen on him, while I just wondered what the hell was happening. Be it as it may, we definitively fell out with each other by the last years of our career.

We met again when my team and I defended our first Accounting thesis (the program required us to work in teams and prepare one thesis in Accounting and another in Auditig). That first time, after over fifteen years, I remember he walked out into the hall were we waited and didn't see me. Having all tense feeling fled from me since then, and having recognized him, I called him. He turned and froze. To this day I remember him there, in the hallway, frozen as he saw me. His beautiful green eyes had widened, but not a muscle moved in his body, halted by what looked like paralizing fear. I smiled and came closer, but dread came into my soul as I searched my faulty memory for whatever sign of damage, anger, violence or any other type of bullying I may have inflicted upon him.

There is one thing I said to him, etched in fire in my mind, so poisonous and unsensitive, which filled me with such unadulterated, pure hatred it had fed me and made me smile in my youth. Then and today, it makes me feel bad, and incites in me the need to atone.

He recovered his composture, and then little after invited me to his office, where we talked. If my mind serves me well, I think I then apologized for that awful incident and all other insults I may have hurled at him in our youth. From then on we kept a loose e-mail contact,  based mainly on the discussion of some economical topics.

Back to the day of the defense, I found myself apologizing again for not inviting him. I made my apology short and to the point. There was no need to tell him how much I regretted it, and how I would have love to have his familiar face and his luminous eyes supporting me when I needed courage. Funny how the world turns, right? The one I was distrusting about was the one I would have loved to hold my hand and tell me that all would be well. Then, for the first time ever, he embraced me.

No, let me put this clearly. Though we've had hugged before, as a usual form of greeting, this time around his embrace had an entirely different quality. More than friendly, his embrace was warm, sustained and felt like a pull into the heart. I've mused much over this touching embrace and the one way I can describe it best is to compare it to the longing embrace you would give to a book you've thought long lost, and which suddenly comes back to you again. A lost little treasure. That's how he made me feel, like he was happy to find me again. That warmed my soul. We talked and agreed to meet for lunch in the week. Through out that meeting and the subsequent lunch, I caught him staring at me, those glass clear green depths fixed on my features, past my skull, as if searching for something beneath my skin. His gaze held long at time, and I had no idea of their intention. On any other person I would have thought they held the questing look of someone trying to build up courage for a move, but given our current circumstances and our raw, charged past, I would put such considerations far from him.

Our correspondence seems to have taken again the old, paused pace we have kept for a couple of years now, but that has not diminished the green flame in my solar plexus. I'd like to reach out and grab into his wrist, wrap my fingers securely around it and hold like Grettel would into the hand of her brother. I think I would like to have him in my life, like a sort of another brother with whom one could be silly, goofy, and sneak out to gorge on chocolate while talking about economics.

Aug 7, 2018

A Week of Tests

Wow, I'm nervous! This week is going to be a big week for me. It's funny how I feel like I want to write, but I also don't want to be typing, but then I need to write too. Do you get it? Neither do I. So, what is happening this week? First of all, today I have the second test of my B2C course of German. I'm one course away from completing the B2 level, which would mean that my language skills (in German) should be pretty much near advanced. I don't feel it.

I had a previous test in this same course, for which I didn't study - this is what I do in order to measure how much I actually do know, under regular circumstances - and it went well, though I have no idea whatsoever how did I manage to do that. This time? Yeah, I studied. Hopefully it will go well.

However my nerves today are not entirely due to this test, but to what's in store for me on Friday: the defense of my third thesis, this time in Finance. At this point, the usual helping lines don't work for me. "Remember that you are the expert, you are the one who knows this", "You already have the largest and most difficult part done, this is just presenting it", "People hardly ever flunk their defense, that's what all the preparation and filters before hand are for". Dude, this is my THIRD thesis, I know this and I have already heard all these comforting words. That's not my concern. My concern is that I'm prone to forget things, AND I have a very limited amount of time. I have 25 minutes. What can be said in 25 minutes!? Well, I tell you what: the bare bones. 

Source: Property of Stormberry
My topic is really complicated, so I feel that in 25 minutes I'll leave the tribunal examining me more confused than even before I start (though they are supposed to have read the thesis before hand), so I don't know if they will even have an idea of what to ask. No, that's not a good thing: the thesis must be clear, and I want them to understand what I am proposing with my thesis.

The first time I made my presentation at a pre-defense, I was 10 minutes ABOVE the allowed time frame, so though the presentation itself was ok, I needed to improve that. It wasn't so bad, as only one of the other three classmate presenting was under the timeframe, and the rest were well above my surplus, with one lady going over 40 minutes. That is 40 in excess over the 25 alotted. Compared to that, I didn't do so badly, don't you think? :-)

Yesterday I did my first trial after the pre-defense, and I was again at 35 minutes total (10 minutes in excess). Considering that I had to add one slide to my presentation, I actually saw it as an improvement. What I did then was trim the presentation by scripting it, so I would give myself clear talking points, and try not to deviate from it. My thinking was: "I won't explain now. If they don't understand, they can ask me later".

Today I gave it another try. I must admit that I had to stop my temporizer several times in order to remember some parts, which I hope to have completely nailed down for Friday, and then I also was stopping at my 5 minute marks to make sure I make the notations on my slideshows so that the next time I know where am I. The result? Currently I'm only 2,5 minutes over my timeframe. :-) Hey, I'm improving! :-D

I have taken tomorrow and the two next days off, so I can prepare myself peacefully for this defense. Wish me luck! 💚🍀