Rainy August

Property of Stormberry

 I had a reading last month with Madi Murphy, an a-mazing intuitive astrologer, and I had a hoot at her reading! She has a podcast and I TOTALLY recommend it to... everyone?

Like I said, the reading was fantastic, but on a bit of a forecast she warned me about the period between mid October to mid December, as it was going to be a trying time. She told me, thought, that even though it would tax me, I should not worry because I had what it took to go through it, and that I should just let myself go with the flow. If you know me, that's easier said that done, as I am the flow. And, of course, it got me worried.

Well, this month things got a tad... unpleasant. It has been raining quite hard, and we even had hailstorms. And well, I found out that my windows have not been sealed as they should, and rain pours through the frames. But also, I found I also had some leaks on my roof. I was very worried because curretly my financial situation isn't the most comfortable, so I was quite anxious about the bill I would have to foot for the repairs.

Since this is a very important job and needs to be done well, I called a very responsible, trustworthy team, and they came yesterday and fixed my roof. And the bill was such that I could very much afford it. I was so happy because I didn't go over budget, that I decided to be  responsible person and save the unused part, and so I invested it. It's not much, and it will yield just a little of interests, it's a first step towards my future financial security. Savings always make me feel safe.

However, today the rain came and an old leak came back with vengeance. I felt like crying as I saw the water pouring down the ceiling over my staircase. It was far worse that before!! I quickly took pictures and called the workers, who had promised to come tomorrow first thing in the morning and fix with within the warranty of their job. Of course I'm still anxious about the leak, but I feel so much better now. Before them I had have issues with other worker teams that charged over and over for the same job, and in the end you had the feeling the problem wasn't so bad as much as they saw a chance to milk you for as much money as you were willing to fork over.

All the other leaks were solved, only this one got really bad, but hopefully, tomorrow this will be solved as well. I just hope my whammy period got scheduled earlier and this was all, because, really, I would rather not have to go through more worries for the rest of the year. (Or next year.) (Or the next ten years.) (Or the next twenty years.) (Or for the rest of my life. Yeah, that sounds about good.)

Getting Settled

Property of Stormberry

It's been more than two weeks since I moved into my new home, and I'm slowly but surely I'm getting settled. It hasn't been as easy-breezy as I thought at first - I have moved a couple of times in the past - but I think I'm getting there.

Building a house isn't as fantastic as one would guess, though in our case there has been a lot of issues because our contractor and the foreman were not the best, and made a truly sloppy, incompetent job in many areas. I would definitively not recommend them to anyone. However, issues are getting ironed out slowly, and many decisions had to be made on "next steps". This is how I'm still using my old laptop instead of having bought the MacBook Pro I wanted to buy, as I planed. If you ask me, that plan has been pushed forward a couple of months more, as I want to fix my laundry room and get some issues fixed from the building process.

One thing I thought I would start sooner was my witchcraft practice, and though I've meditated and cleaned the space a couple of times with sage, it wasn't until yesterday that I did a spell.

I guess this is a process, and not only for the house, but for me as well, as this is a new way to live. One thing are the things we dream about, and aother is how we ease into them. Slowly, a thing here and there, it's perfectly fine.

Just get a go and savor the process.

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.

The End is Nigh

Property of Stormberry.

In my last post I wrote to you about a book, written by the father of a friend, which I didn't really like that much. The book, not the friend. Then, I've got a book from the same author - given to me by this friend - and I was over the moon. It was a book he had written (my friend's father, not my friend) about Rosa Luxemburg, a Polish socialist revolutionary, who lived in the turn of the century (like, the past turn of the century, from 1871 to 1919, or so), whom I like and whom I want to research a little more. Yes, I could have started by reading her letters (which I have... in German), or her books (I just realized I actually already have some of her books on my Kindle, because I could lay my paws on it for free...), BUT my friend had said his father had written about her, and I wanted to read that book. I actually pestered him for a while since I had to wait until the book actually hit stores here.

The first third of the book I really liked. It's about Rosa's life and her circumstances. It does have a few things that make me cringe, like a notorious disregard of the use of commas and other puntuation signs, a profuse use of outdated, obscure terms nobody uses anymore... since the Middle Ages, a strange tendency to call Wrocław "Breslau", and never noticing that today is called Wrocław, among other strange things. Mr. Quesada's misogynistic views still came across regarding Ms. Luxemburg, but after reading his novel, I guess that was to be expected.

Then I passed the first third and... and I lost my cool. Strange things happened in the book, like a chapter finished with a page and a half of back-to-back quotes, pretty unrelated one to the next, and no reason as to why they needed to be included. To me it felt like an unfinished chapter, where he had dumped the pieces he wanted to develop, but then forgot about it and sent it out to print. Then the grammatic errors started to pile up, like separating the subject from the verb with a comma, when it had no need to be done that way, sentence connectors bracketed between commas, because HEY! Commas are trendy. Aaaaaand then came the graves error of all: crass mistakes about economical theory and economical interpretations. Like what? Like claiming that the "merchandise WAGE" has a price... when the mercandise is Labor and Wage is the price of it. Because, you know, you can't go to the market to buy a wage, but you can buy Labor by hiring someone, and you pay that Labor with a wage. Or claiming that Jean-Baptiste Say claimed the contrary to "production creates it's on market", when M. Say said that "the Supply creates it's on Demand", and Mr. Keynes proved him wrong.

And to think that this man's son is an economist that could review and correct his father's mistakes.

The book also includes circular chapters that go on and on and on about one single idea. Like a pile up of all the ways the same thing can be said. The piled idea? Imperialism is the extended Capitalism, and it needs wars to keep gobbling up more and more resources to keep the increasing production and profit creation. No less than four chapters are devoted to this one idea without adding anything to it. No historical frame, to facts, no nothing, just this one idea repeated over and over in different ways.

I'll finish the book, because maybe it will have a good ending, and because I want to extract as much of it as I can, but from what I read, I can no longer trust a single word. If the economical material in it it's flawed, how could I trust the rigurosity of the research behind the rest?

Property of Stormberry

Other than that, the days have a tinted, mulled quality to them. It's the last week of work before out mandatory vacations, and nobody wants to work, everybody wants to party and drink wine, or use the time to chat with friends at the office. Goodness yes, we all have stuff to do, of course, but we don't want to do it. The sun shines just the right way, the way we here call "Christmas Weather", and trade winds chill us all.

I haven't made my holiday shopping yet, which is so funny, because usually I'm already done and ready by this time. Ok, normally by this time I am in Europe, unpacked, wrapped in my winter gear and again confronted with the strange selection of veggies at the Hungarian supermarkets, and profusely planning all my errands and visiting my favorite places along with planning out all my visits to my friends.

This time around I'm staying put in Costa Rica because I have Grand Plans: I have to be here for when the building of my house starts! :-) House I am already calling House of Seven Gables. It will have five gablets and two gables, BUT it shall be officially considered as a house with seven gables. Because I say so. :-)  Cool, right? I also have to save some more money for it, of course, because there's not such a things as too many precautions, and so I want to be all prep'd up. It's so exciting! ^_^ I'm just so over the Moon with this.

So yes, I'm being a responsible adult and staying here for my beloved house. It feels so good to say that. ^_^

I've also had a couple of other successes this year, like I managed - after great obstacles and issues - to get the director lady of the Marketing Faculty to give me the green light with my thesis project. Not like she had anything to object to my topic, but because she was objecting things that she should have done previously. It didn't sit well with her when I pointed out - with evidence and sending a copy of the e-mail to her boss - that the things she was objecting where her responsability to fix. It took her until the last day of work at the University for her to finally give me the go. So next year I'll start my fourth thesis project.

I also managed to pass my B2d German course, which completes the B2 level - which is the highest middle level - and which means that next year I'm in for the C1, which enters in the advanced level. Not like I really feel like I know all that much German, mind you. So, in the light of that I'll take a couple of summer classes - I'm thinking about a class in German Literature and another in German Art and History - to practice. In this same line I've also started considering taking an intensive course of German in Germany through the Goethe Institute. This is still a raw idea, as I have to consider things like how my finances will be after the house building, maybe a trip to Europe in Spring that's still not fixed, the remaining vacation days I'll have left, how things will stand with my thesis by then, my workload, and how things will fare with my Accounting.

However, if this comes true, I'm planning on picking Düsseldorf for studying, and a four-week plan somewhere in the Fall.

Property of Stormberry

But this are all plans for the future. Currently I want to live and enjoy this time of relaxed days, "mulled" as I called them earlier, because days do seem infused with the taste of mulled wine, even if it's not customary here. In case you wonder, we did have mulled wine or Glühwein to end our German class, because that was given. (And we had also Lebenkuchen too!)

I haven't been much at the city center, but last week I went once, and I liked it. It's not a pretty city, with low buildings, lots of dirt and crumbling places, narrow streets that can't cope with the amount of cars and busses crammed through them but I kinda like it.

This year - due to the self imposed budget constrictions, I decided to go for books for most of my gifts - and keep my gifts to the minimum. (A good thing about finally cutting some of my toxic relationships in my life is that I'm no longer obligued to scout for gifts for people I know won't appreciate them.) I'll concentrate on family and my closest friends, and that will be it. For that, I plan to make a few trips to San José city center, and wander around, checking shops and coffee shops and allowing myself to be seduced by the taste of a city that doesn't carry a tropical flavor, but that has warmth, and umph and some strange creativity. Where the garbed cosmopolitan vision of sadly pusher-uppers try to imprint upon a culture that will always, always prefer simple comfort and laid back attitude to over-processed confections.

Hey, these are we a nation that likes to lounge on a hammock, that do like skyscrappers and high tech... as long as we don't have to sweat for them, because we love our free time, and our free time means time to grab a beer with friends, laugh and be completely impulsive and spontaneous. Blame it on the fact that we have beaches 45 minutes away... we are used to the easy way of life and we really don't want to change. And these days, are Our Biggest and Easiest Days.