Freedom

The second week will start tomorrow, the second week of freedom after I decided to step down from the German lessons I was taking at the Goethe Zentrum. I can't even begin to tell you how happy and relieved I am! I have more time to concentrate on the book we are reading at the Lesenklub, and the language becomes again something enjoyable.

It may have taken me a long time, but I think I stopped in time, before the circumstances and external conditions ruined my relationship with the language. I get out of it in time.

So, here is my lesson to all of you: learn to give up, to let go, to recognize when something is no longer working, and brave up to part ways. It's not easy because a false sense of pride can get in the way, or maybe it's a bit of OCD. We might already be used to it. But be it what it may, remember that keeping up with something that no longer makes you happy is the surest way to get to hate it. So, is it worth to take things to the point when you hate everything when you could step away, walk away and keep sweet, beautiful memories, mazbe even with the chance to come back again to it later, in better terms?

A Few Updates

I'm again running behind with my proposed schedule. Why on Hell did I ever made this a New Year's Resolution? Truth is one should only post when one wants to and when one has something to post about.

Ok, it's not like I don't have a lot of things to talk about - I can yap all day long, and those who know me personally can attest to that. However, these past weeks have been sort of a drag on me. They have been grinding down my nerves and I just want to... I just want general vacations from everything. I think I want to be retired, without a care in the world. See? Nobody talks about the burdens of being "still young", "still in working age", or more to the point "too young for retirement".

So what has been bearing down on me?

House of Seven Gables

My house is finally being built, which is so awesome and so, so wonderful, BUT. So, there have been some issues with the finances, and not precisely mine. There was a part that my folks were supposed to help me with, which they can't afford now, so I'll have to go great lenghts to get the money from another source (namely, an unplanned loan, that will hack into my plans for the future, regarding buying inane amounts of books - ok, maybe those won't be affected - and traveling).

This has really gotten to my nerves, and so on my parents' nerves. The issue is complicated and can be tracked to a particular couple of someones - who shall remain unnamed - who have been going all happy-go-lucky spending freely the money they didn't have and making changes on the go that cost quite hefty sums. The result? Now my folks and my brother have to start looking for ways to reduce costs in what's still missing (all de details), and I have to see how can I foot the bill for my house.

There are ups in this, like several savings that can be made on my house thanks to some special discounts my dad can get (since he has been buying building material on bulk), and I can also use up a lot of material that was purchased for the other houses but never got used.

The Gods willing, all is going to be ok.

Meanwhile, it does make me so happy to see my little house raise up from the ground, from its foundations and become the house of my dreams, my very own House of Seven Gables.

Marketing Thesis

This topic shouldn't be pressing anymore on me, since I'm really about to finish it. All chapters have been written, the tutor finds everything "perfect", with some details here and there to fix, and I happen to know that I am the only student actually presenting each chapter for revision and grading on time.

Eight of us started the process, only two of us are still in the run (with this tutor), and I'm the only one that seems to have a hope of graduating. So, what's the problem here? That I realized I don't like marketing. It's not my thing and I don't enjoy it at all. Of course, it's a plus for me to know about this, and be able to gauge the proposals marketing experts present me, understand when they go all "technical" on me, but this is not what I want to do by far. Not like I would, I mean, I am an economist, but I have to think like I want to do this for the benefit of the thesis I'm writing and it just fills me with ennui.

When I'm done with this, I think I'll only keep on studying further in Economics. I don't want to strand away from my true path.

German Classes

Ok, this was a headache, but now it's more like a release. My issue with the German lessons was that I wasn't enjoying them anymore, attending them felt like a drag and for a while I've been feeling like I'm not learning a thing. It wasn't because my teachers weren't good enough, because they are amazing, or that the textbooks were boring - they are ok - or because my classmates were obnoxious - they are ok. My problem was that I hate the place where I had to go. It's far, ugly and boring. I had to struggle through around an hour of traffic to get there - oftentimes more - only to arrive to a desolated place, with an awful parking space (ok, at least there was parking space), far from any coffeeshop to make it more pleasant.

Then, when classes were over, I had to drive home for over 45 minutes, to get home past 22 hr, to wake up the next day at 3:45 hr. Not fun. So, as result I was no longer paying attention to class and studied only for the tests. In the end, I was passing the classes but nothing remained in my head.

I like to finish everything I start - therefore I am struggling with stupid Marketing - but this was more that I was willing to keep on doing.

So, after much thinking and mulling about it, I decided not to enroll into the next class. It took me some time, but I finally decided that my need to finish stuff shouldn't go against my better judgement. Why keep paying to get nothing from it? And why should I keep learning more through classes? I don't need a German Language diploma? I need to practice. So I shut the door on that one, and decided to keep up only the German Reading Club, which I enjoy, it's located in my favorite building, at agreeable hours, much more relaxed, and I get to practice with stuff I do like: books.

I still get some discomfort from leaving the class, but at the same time I feel so... liberated. :-) I just need to get fully into this new reality.

Quick Notes of Books and Language

Blogging has been getting kind of hard for me lately. My head is really dispersed right now (and generally, but now more than usual) as I have (again) million plans in my head and everything seems to be floating up in the air like... space scraps. The most accurate way to write about this would be in the free format a paper journal can give you, with fragments of lines here and there, with no order, and maybe some collaged half pages in between. Alas, I can't afford that on blogger, so let me give you a first idea, a dump of those loose ideas in my head.

Why is it that someone 

who is good at his job has to go 

and someone who is a 

complete, lazy idiot can stay?

     Why is nobody here making the needed 

     connections between what has happened in 

     France Telecom/Orange and our current 

     Public Employment Scenario?

        There is people out there, 

        whose lives are so meaningless, 

        their days so grey, they seek for 

        adventure through manifacturing troubles.

There is people out there 

who rather escape their real problems 

by creating a series of inflatable fake ones.

          People minding other people's 

          businesses are unwilling to 

          face their own.

I'm so uninterested in my Marketing degree.

What settles my mind right now is German. Yes, odd as it sounds, learning and reading German - with all its difficulties, settles my mind. Today I have classes, and I would rather not go. I just... don't feel it. But I'll power through it and I will go, because otherwise I know I won't fare well enough at the next test. I do want to learn, but the classes are taking a toll on my mood.

Source: Wikipedia

Curiously, though, I find the Lesenklub very satisfactory and I look forward to each day we meet. My tongue loosens then and I speak freely - mistakes and all. I enjoy the reading (we are currently reading Der Vorleser, by Bernhard Schlink), and I'm always full of ideas. I am thinking really about giving up the lessons and just concentrate on the reading club.

This is a thought I've been playing around with. It does upset me that though I am in an advanced language class, I just don't feel like I know enough. I imagine that it must be a struggle for the teacher to keep us interested in the class, but half way through it my mind is uncooperating and rather amuses itself by thinking up things in French. I just no longer enjoy the classes. Yes, I want to learn, I want to know, I want to gobble up the knowledge, but I am terribly uninspired.

However, this does not happen with the Lesenklub, where I spy the clock wishing the minutes to walk as slow as possible. It's half as long as the class, and it's not nearly enough. I haven't taken a break from German since I've started, and I'm pushing through it for as long as I can, as long as it lasts, but now, it's like shoveling money to something that' not giving me much (or anything) since... a year or so? Things come and go through my mind, but nothing stays.

This is the main issue occupying my thoughts. (That I can talk about here.)

Dating Amid Turbulence

Life as a single person... is quite a busy thing. Happy but very busy. I still have a pile of letters to reply and my reading of books for entertainment is going really slow - though that's in part due to the fact that I have read three of the Anne of Green Gables novels, and by the end of Anne of the Island I couldn't be bothered with reading another of her books. The first one was enjoyable, the second one was also quite nice, but the third one got to my nerves. Be it as it may, 2016 is proving to be a year full of activities and tasks for me, with my trusty filofax nearly bursting at the seams with things to do. Between the German classes at the Goethe Zentrum and the classes I've taken at the University to get ahead with Finance and Marketing, I'm finding myself again at that point where I really don't seem to have much time to do anything.

I must admit that I take it as a wonderful blessing that I can live this phase in my life being single. I know that for many people a life partner means support and companionship and someone with whom to share the burden of daily life, but that hasn't been my case. I'm too much of a lone wolf to find much solace in company when I need to power up to charge on life, I guess. Between studies and lots of plans for the future, I've also been experimenting with the world of online dating. Some of my friends have tried it out - more than I thought - and I find this world quite interesting. Haven't actually met with anyone yet, but no like I aiming towards that either. Hyne, I think I might be doing the whole thing wrong, actually. OK, not like I'm putting much effort in it, truth tobe told, but then I connect with these people, we exchange messages and start chatting, and I feel really good with them. I make friends and I act accordingly, and so, when suddenly someone says something more flirty to me, I'm startled thinking "why is he flirting with me?" until I remember that this is a dating site and I'm supposed to be out there looking to date people, not just friending them.

What am I supposed to do there? Honestly I'm a little at lost there, because though I know a lot of women complain about how many men approach them butnever want anything serious, in my experience, I'm always the one that just wants to have fun why the guys that apporach me all are aiming for the white picket fence and the 2.1 children. So, am I looking for dating? I don't want a relationship, but I do would love to meet people for some casual get together, have a drink, share a good conversation and then maybe - if things click right - have unattached sex. The operative word being "unattached". My life is speeding ahead and I have so many wonderful projects in my plate right now, that I really don't need something else to pay attention to. But then is adating site the right place for me to find those loose tied, entirely casual brushes with like minded people?

Some people are nice, some people are really loving and smart, and then some are players that like to lead on others, or see how much can they jerk other people's chains. People can be so strange sometimes. I don't know, I'm still thinking about this all, about what should I do about this part of my life, and then thinking about how I used to solve these questions before, only to realize that I have never worried about it, it has never been my thing to go look for people, but people happened, I flashed my smile and things somehow got going.

I'd give it more thought just for the fun of it... it I didn't have so much studying to do.

A Freshly Baked New Week

Monday Morning. I started AGAIN the 15-Minute-German little program, with all the intention of taking it to the end (instead of drifting away hardly three weeks away from completition (three out of twelve)). Now that I know how the system works, and how much does it have, I know also what kind of stuff I have to investigate in alternative sources. I'm back at the "Guten Tag, Ich heiße Martina Li, freut mich"-thingie, but I don't mind it at all. Repetition is the key to success in language learning (though over repeating is the key to language forgeting, which is why I always suffer with my French conjugations - particularly with the verb faire - ). The morning was cold, clouded, stormy, and so I was happy. Perhaps "happy" is too soft a word to express my feelings. I was exhilarated. Stormy mornings are my favorite kind of morning. The chill, the cold, the promise of a diluvian rain sparkled with loud thunders made me dreamy, hopefull and inspired, and so, starting a learning regime, such as this German program (again) was puuuuurfect!

I also fed the masses - or the proletarian people, if you wish to see it that way - with bread and sour cream. Nah, not some metaphoric bread, such as the bread of hope, the bread of education, the bread of information, but actual, freshly baked flour bread, from the local grocery store.I asked around if anyone knew who was supposed to bring bread today, but nobody seemed to know, so since I had to go to the store to fill the tank, I decided to cooperate with the cause and bring them a baguette and some sour cream. Probably the one with the bread task sorted for today would bring one or two bars of bread and I really didn't want to leave too much leftovers. I mean, bread from various days accumulate in Cyn's old office getting old and ugly in several paper and plastic bags, wrinkling up, hardening and becoming sort of gummy, like the limbs of old people.

Well, no bread was left over today, for nobody actually brought any bread, and so my humble, only loaf of bread was the one that abolished hunger in the office. Go figure. Tomorrow the Ants plan a breakfast-sale, for which I offered a bottle of Salsa Lizano. I guess that, in solidarity, we shall not gather to partake in our communal everybody-brings-something breakfasts, but buy from them what we ourselves have offered. Wonder if it will work.

Among the things that fill me this new week is the novel "Emma", by Jane Austen. As I wrote (somewhere), yesterday I saw (again) this movie "The Jane Austen Book Club", where plays one of my currently favorite actresses, Emily Blunt, and I was taken away  - again - by the wish to read Jane Austen's books. Well, as far as I know, we don't have Jane Austen's books at home, though I could have asked my mother, since I believe she's the only one who actually might have an idea about what volumes to we keep in our so called library. (We had Kurt Vonnegut, to my surprise, and also the book about Genghis Khan... all of them in Hungarian, of course.) Anyway, I was browsing the Amazon, when I came across this comment of a man who gave a 1 star grade to a compiling book I was cheking out, and so I found out that the novels could be read FOR FREE online. Go figure that. So I sought and found and saved the link. Read the first chapter yesterday, from Emma, the first novel in the list (and the first read in the movie) and found it strange. Yeah, strange. Getting used to the type of English used in the book, such as calling a woman "handsome" (my devious slashy eye made me wonder if Emma Woodhouse wasn't actually some Emmerson Woodhouse), or the reversing of numbers, saying ages such as four and thirty instead of thirty four; but the strange way in which the whole thing is dumped on you, with a basically selfish Emma, who feels herself superior to everybody else, surrounded by repression, passive-agressive blows and who herself deals out a great deal of them, well, that's not at all expected. There's so much crammed into that first chapter and it is so strange to read, you feel like you need a readjusting at some point. Oh well, I've clicked on the next chapter so I'll continue my discovery of Emma, and hope this book will be NOTHING like Dorian Gray.

Workwise, my alotted work has been slashed in two for today. Ro will tackle one batch and I'll tackle the other. And here I expected both to be dumped on me today. Oh well, we shall see, we shall see. This is, after all, just the first day of the rest of the week.

Deutsch: Now or Never

So I've decided that it's today or to-never, and so it had to be today. Got the book out of the case, the CD in the CD-Rom, and in the first minutes of the day, after talking to my boyfriend, I completed my first 15-minute German lesson. So far so good. This is my n-th attempt at learning German by myself, which is mainly due to my stubborn idea that I really want to do it by myself, or otherwise I'll end up bored out of my head and piling up a debt in class fees I really don't need. aNow, do not misunderstand me, I'm sure the Goethe Institute is awesome, but truth is that so is the Alliance Française, and I poured into the AF truckloads of money in course payments and books only to hate each day I went because it was so damned boring I ended up totally unable to conjugate irregular verbs. (Then again, for some strange reason, I kind of actually can... now... is it due to the Alliance or my readings?) So I was thinking, why to go through all the ordeal with German? I know myself (I know I bore easily), and I know the way I can take off with a language: give me the basics, and then give me a book, give me a TV channel, a few movies, some Internet sites, and soon you'll have me babling around, first quite horridly, but if there's something I don't have is lack of confidence or shame. Mistakes do not make me back off.

The book I already have it: Seine Grosse Liebe, a book I chose once upon a time because it was the only one which title's I understood: "Her Great Love".

My plan currently is simple: complete the 15-Minute-a-Day plan, not jumping ahead, but maybe listening to the lessons twice a day to engrave it in my brain better. When I feel I've advanced enough in this, I'll start checking my old books, with the bit of knowledge I will already have, in order to intensify the flood of information, so I get more tools, because, really, 15 minutes daily for 12 weeks are no way to get a decent foundation for a language. I am not stupid, nor I expect the knowledge to painlessly and effortlessly download itself into my brain. I have no Neo complex. My objective is to be able to read short texts in German, and be able to speak a tad more fluently by the time we go to Vienna in January. No, I do not set for myself irrational goals, like being able to read and fully understand "Das Kapital". However, on a mid term I would expect myself to read Seine Grosse Liebe for december of next year.

Teaching oneself can be quite a hard task, specially because you might have the tendency of granting yourself too many permits, skipping days and lessons, but also can be quite cool, for you don't have to wait the whole class to catch up, or try to catch up with a class that runs at 10 thousand verbs per hour and you have not a clue yet about how the freaking conjugation is done. You have all the time in the world to stop and mull and research and get it right, and then all the freedom to fly as fast as you wish, as high as you can without the dead weight of dunderheads that can't get in their puny brains something too simple just because they are too lazy to even try.

It worked for me (in a way) with English, though the base for it I've got it from lots of useless lessons paid to lots of language academies (okay, just one) and the idiotic highschool teacher that spoke the Charlie Brown version of English. (Years later we learned that she actually didn't know English...) Hopefully it's working with my French, which has been pimped up and pumped up by readings, TV5 Monde and the always adorable Air France Flight Attendants, God bless their beautiful hearts and beautiful... rest; as well as my promenades through Paris, where live, crispy, beautiful French was poured upon me like the sweetest rainshower.

Now German is next, even though I haven't finished with French, nor can I say the same about English, but those two are set on the way.