Sunday Breakfast

 

Property of Stormberry

These last weeks have been really something, and I mean that in the most stressing and absurd of ways. I wrapped around my witchy side, my path and flicked my hand and said "Oh, this is all Mercury Retrograde", and though I want to believe it has exacerbated some things, trust me, not all of this crazy is due to a god up there - or a planet - doing a rendering of Michael Jackson's Moonwalk. 

But what has been happening? Well, let me tell you. It's quite crazy, I promise you.

First of all, there was this project at the office on which I was working last year, and which had a lot of "special circumstances" surrounding it. You know, the typical case were a task gets wrapped in office-politics. A lot of people had to give data for it, a lot of it wasn't matching, and then there were differences in opinions about how to do this or that, what should be included, what not, and so on. It becomes extra-complicated when there are a lot of opinions, but basically only one person actually doing the document, and trying to fit the unfitting parts others want in it.

But, in the end - the last workday of 2020, the project was finished, reviewed by the group and sent on its way. Or... well, maybe. Anyway, then it seems that other people were also working on the same project, and they didn't know about the document I compiled, and so some feathers were ruffled. THEN, in these past weeks, it happens that we noticed that one of the annexes of the document weren't updated. The info in the document was, but not one item in one annex. Well, that was enough for hell to break loose. Before you ask, no, actually the outdated data wasn't all that different from the previous one, and the impact on the whole was minimal. Not like it reflected on the content of the document, because there the calculations were done with the updated information.

So I checked, I found other mistakes, corrected them, and sent the document revised, corrected and updated. No biggie, right? Well, no. Those who were there, giving opinions and sending a flurry of documents my way, act as if the London Bridge has fallen down. It did upset me, honestly, because it was an honest mistake, and the ones berating me actually were tasked with revising the document, so they should have caught the slip earlier. It took me sometime, some meditation, calming rose quartz and grounding hematite, but I let it slide. You know, it must be the Mercury Retrograde.

Found at
 https://www.horoscope.com/

I did consult on my Tarot decks, and the first one showed me The Tower. Yeah, catastrofe, but also the moment when false ideals fall, and the truth is revealed. This certainly was a moment where this sort of message seemed to fit like a glove.

Then... because these kind of things never come alone, classes at the Master's Program really got heavy. We had accumulated for this week four projects for three classes (yeah, in one we have two), and though I had worked in one of them before hand, and on the other I'm with some classmates that really pull their weights, all of that got toppled with an insane amount of readings, just for this week. There is an average of how much our readings add up per week, and the normal amount is about some 60 pages per week. There have been outliers, like weeks were it goes up to 120, but this week alone we've got  600 pages just for one class, and a homework that's taking most of us over two days to at least have the outline.

I haven't been able to read anything (I mean, like novels, my leisure readings and stuff like that), because I'm constantly busy, and it's driving me crazy because it feels like it never ends.

And my house also got a leaking pipe (there was one, but now we found another, and this is really big, and in a complicated place), so yes, there are plenty of issues to keep me even more occupied.

So, what to do?

Property of Stomberry

Well, first, make yourself a coffee, maybe order some brain-sustenance (donuts, I ordered donuts), and make a plan of what can you do, what needs to be done now, what can be pushed back for later, what can you just leave without doing (like summarizing tasks or sharing them with others). Break those tasks in smaller chunks and do as much as you can. So you may not be able to finish it all, but see what can you finish and what really, really needs to be finished and when it is due.

I know the assignments and the essays need to be done because my grades depend on that, but not the readings. I can skip reading, or do it later, after the class, just reading the parts that weren't clear from the presentation. Thankfully, these classes have no tests, so there's no problem with that.

And when you have had such a stuffed week or two weeks or month, take a break, start your Sunday with a special breakfast. Today I tried making a poached egg for the first time, and I made a hot sandwich with roasted mushrooms (crimini mushrooms), chives and pepper slices. A nice tea, and then ordered my donuts and made a coffee, and sat down to blog.

A much needed break, before delving again into homework. And you know what? I feel less stuck, less blocked already.

Happy Sunday!

Giving a Second Chance

The last time the last TWO times I ordered my breakfast from Bagelmen's, I was let down spectacularly. Twice I ordered poppy bagels and got bagels barely sprinkled with poppy seed. BARELY. Further injury was also added to insult, as once they exchanged my regular coke for light - I don't do light - and the second time they've got me the smallest bagel available on the planet. But I love bagels, so I wasn't going to take on any more of this "out-bageling" thing and decided to give them a second chance (or might it be a third?). So I ordered my bagel and SPECIFICALLY asked for the bagel with the MOST POPPY SEEDS on it. The reply? The bagels are already made, they can't add more poppy seeds to it. Yeah, I don't exactly know were "choose the one with the most poppy seeds on it and send it my way" for "make one specially for me, packed to the brim with poppy seeds and embroid on it my family crest".

Sometimes we are like that with other things, and by doing so, by hoping against all hope, we might be closing the door to new, better chances. We give a second, third, fourth and n-th chance to a family member in hopes for them to just get their act together and stop depending on us or getting to our nerves. Also with significant others, we shower chances upon them hoping that the miracle will come sometime their way and we all be able to live happy, fulfilled lives. This happens also at work or with our studies, when teachers keep giving chances to students while wishing they won't stay eternally incompetent, or when you keep giving chances to coworkers to stop leeching on you, pushing your way their work, or even bosses, as you give them a chance over and over hoping that one day they'll realize you are not a slave, but a professional capable of thinking, and not only good to run their errands and print out their notes.

The question here begins to be: who are we giving the chance to? Are we really giving the chance to someone or something that simply won't change, or are we giving ourselves a chance to believe, a chance to live in the clouds instead of the Earth? Chances can be dangerous, as we get so focused on making something work the way we want it to, and ignore the motivations or the nature of the person or the thing for what it is.

It's not that we shouldn't give a chance when someone or something deserves it - for not everything or everybody deserves a chance at rectifying, and that's exclusively up to us to decide - but we must realize when the chance stops being realistic, when are we trespassing beyond a fair chance and walk into hanging hopes where there's nothing to hope for.

This reminds me of Scarlett O'Hara from Gone With The Wind, and how she held her hope and her undying love for Ashley Wilkes, a man who had never intended to marry her. As I read the story I'm surprised at how everything looks different than in the movies. As it turns out, Ashley never tells her that he loves her, but confuses her with several tokens of appreciation that can be taken the wrong way. He leads Scarlett in a rather cruel way to think that he does harbor feelings for her, keeps her in confusion with his actions, but withhelds from her the one thing that could materialize the ideas he himself has planted in her head.

You would stand confused, looking at an improbable scene. How can Scarlett being so strong and determinated fall for the cheap antics of a feeble, cowards, weakling like Ashley? Well, because that happens all the time. We live in a world of Ashleys and Scarletts, peppered with self-centered saints like Melanie, who act goodie-two-shoes, but can't pay attention to what happens around them, doesn't bother asking, but rather rely on their own conclusions, be those wrong or not, and thing that everything is always about them; as well as unsatisfied rascals who find pleasure in making others feel bad, using goodness only as a tool to later "prove" how people are despicable. These would be the Rhetts.

We are surrounded by people toying with our feelings, and yes, we ourselves might be Ashleys, deliberately keeping things on a very thing line of indefinition. It is our choice, however, to let our Ashleys yank our chains or if we are willing to turn them down, cut our their chances by ourselves and stop being their rag dolls. Yes, it can be done, after all, they need you to give them another chance. Deny it to them, spend your energy cleaning the space they've occupied and filling it with something new.

Don't devaluate your chances - those you give - don't spend them on people or things that won't appreciate their worth.

Feeling Happy!!!

Goodness Gracious! I'm feeling so incredibly, absolutely and completely Happy! Sure, it could be the effect of my delicious bagel-breakfast, which this time around was poppy (though there weren't many poppy seeds on the bagel), or the effect of the Light Coke that I mistakenly got, since I don't drink light coke, I only drink regular coke. Now, life would be just perfect if I could go out into the beautiful, warm, sunny patch of street some yards away from the office building, and sit on a concrete half-wall with a cup of coffee and a cigarette. Sadly, I can't smoke (stupid asthma not going away) and I forgot to make coffee. But still, I'm about to go out and fetch myself some lunch (I was supposed to go lunch with my twitter friends, but all of them balked out in the last minute), and I'll enjoy that wonderful warmth, walk in the sun and be simply happy!

I've been meeting with friends, getting stuff fixed - meaning restoring things to the state they were in prior to me going to Hungary in February - and now I'm looking forward to a weekend full of more programs with friends and exciting things to do.

Sometimes life is plain AWESOME!!

Thoughts with Coffee

The store at the corner of my job got robbed around 8 am by gunmen, who shot three shots and run over a pedestrian while they were escaping. They got caught, though, and will probably get processes swiftly, and maybe just as swiftly let go after a ridiculous prison sentence, so that in a couple of years - if not a couple of months - they can come back and continue their burgeoning criminal lifestyle. Will this make it to the news? Nah, not likely. This is one of the many crimes commited in the capital city, so why would it make the news unless something truly amazing happens - okay, they did catch the robbers quite quickly... so maybe they'll be in the news after all.

That store was the one I used to go to every workday for the past three or four years to score myself some snacks or breakfast stuff (coke, yoghurt, Red Bull, croissant or bread, sour cream, salted and sliced green mango...you know, the usual breakfast stuff), except on those days that I felt really, really lazy and rather ordered breakfast from one of my favorite express companies, most often than not, from Bagelmens', because I'm crazy about bagels.

Most main streets are collapsed, and my Twitter is full of messages from people who got caught in yet another traffic jam caused by the Governments ultimate ineptitude AND lack of any care about fixing the General Cañas highway, which has been giving problems for a while now, but particularly since the "platina" case, and now with a rather large crater, further "sinkings" which end up also in a crash - because people here just don't drive like in Europe - turning a Friday morning drive to the office into an impromptu parking lot case. Imagine, waking up early in the morning and rushing only to get trapped into the dark machinery of a collapsed highway. It's like the Hunger Games: you don't even kill the engine because you want to believe, you want to hope that you will be able to make it. (BTW, I saw that movie again on the plane - I also saw Iron Lady, which I didn't like much, 21 Jump Street, which wasn't so bad, but I'm glad I didn't pay for it, and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and this time around I didn't like it much.)

I'm back in Costa Rica, to the amazement of many. A lot of my coworkers stare at me as if I just came back from the grave. "Holy Shit! She's alive!", and many ask why I came back, and all of them simply assume I must be devastated for being here. Weird, I'm not. It feels just like having taken the train to go to another city. A city with much more rain, much more criminality and wider lanes. Oh man, how I love to drive!! And how I love my car!

I'm acconditioning again both my place and my office, fixing meetings, appointments and dates with friends, banks and all sorts of bureaus. I'm loving the weather! I'm still deskless, which I hate, but as I slowly get back in track, things go falling in their old place. For how long? That's the question in many people's mind, but only a few know the answer, and that's the way it will remain.

Pistachios

Take the bag, open it, eat one and I dare you to stop... stop anytime before the bag is empty. Yes, I know, you can't. Neither can I, and I tell you, I'm not much of a nut person. So yeah, I'm nuts, but I'm not nuts about nuts. Peanust are fine, and peanut butter only if inside a Reese's pieces. I hate almonds in all their forms and varieties, pecans are not one to take my breath away, nor hazelnuts even though I like to eat them from time to time because they look like brains; and I like chestnuts only as mashed cream. But pistachios...

Let's start with the fact that they sport my favotire color: green.

Early in the morning, I come to the office talking on the phone with my boyfriend the last 100 mts, since the system manager decided AGAIN to close all verbal communication forms thought the Internet, and yet I want to hear his voice everyday. Yes, you gara be in love to do that.

So we are talking, mainly me bitching about the thesis and our ever-so-adorable-and-understanding tutor, Hyne bless his soul, and eventually things turn to: "Let's meet online". Well, when you have to deal with monthly calls from Hungary to Costa Rica and vice versa, you do want to ensure the "financially healthier" choice. Well, my boyfriend was about to fix himself some lunch (yes! he can ... well, maybe not Iron Chef Hungary in the kitchen, but he does know his beginer's way around the stove!), and so we agree to meet around here when he's finished. Phone placed on the receiver, and I'm left to my devices and find my own food. Sure, I could pick up the phone again, dial and have Bagelmen's deliever me a bagel with butter, toasted and two regular cokes, or maybe go to the seven-eleven and pick some bread, some yoghurt, some coke (I actually have to replenish my coke reserve. It's depleted, truth to be told.), some Raisins Kellogg's Komplete and Hyne knows what else can I dump in the cart before hitting the exit. Never, never send a compulsive buyer alone to the seven-eleven. We can spend an average medium-low family's monthly food budget on one breakfast.

However, due to the world crisis and the food crisis that stroke down months ago, and will strike again soon, plus all the banking crisis, the bailouts and the growing unemployment, I decided to have breakfast from what I have in the office, assuming I have something. I found a bag of pistachios on my desk, and first I thought "what a drag. This will be a poor breakfast". I opened the bag and that was the end of it. I did found in my food drawer all I need for a wholesome oatmeal (the one with pear pieces. Haven't been able to find the one with apple and cinnamon, my favorite, or the one with peach), which I did started to prepare, you mind, but I just couldn't lay off the pistachios.

The rhythm with which you eat them borders maniac behavior. You compulsively reach for more and more, peeling the hard shells off, risking to get your tips nipped by the clamping shells, and fiddlesticks, getting them nipped! (Fiddlestick: for those whose English is poor, it's the name of that long, straight arch like thing that people use along with the violin to play the violin. In this case, fiddlestick replaces an "f" word I don't want to use. Yes, I've been watching The Skeleton Key again.) There's hardly pause and therefore there's no way you can multitask while eating pistachios. When you are with the pistachios, you are only with the pistachios! You may really like to do something else, but both your hands are engaged in a fierce battle to free the green, salty, tender nutty trapped in the armor of two clamping pale shells.

It is a battle for the pistachio, for the taste and for the joy.

At the end, well, I had a very nice breakfast put together: oatmeal, tea, Everess beverage, Reese's Pieces... you can't ask for more... and yet I had to finish my pistachios. ^_^

What drives YOU nuts?

Bagel For Breakfast

The day I move to Hungary, to my beloved birth city, Budapest, I hope they'll have a Bagelmen's or some sort of bagel shop that does express delieveries or I don't know what will I do for breakfast. Usually I try to have something really healthy and good for breakfast, such as oatmeal, which I really love, but lately, since I have no cash on me, and the only credit card I still carry around (only Hyne knows why, though) has the astonoshing amount of 900 colones left to be used. (How do I do that? It's one of those mysteries of nature science is still trying to understand.) I order from this store with the number of a still working credit card, which I don't carry around with me, or most likely I would have pumped up long ago. Not like it would be something bad, you mind, but that's not the point.

The point it that it's becoming a daily ritual to heat up a cup of water to make a cup of strong coffee in my French Press, and wait until 7 am to pick up the phone and call Bagelmen's Escazú and ask them for my breakfast.

Two regular cokes, this is a MUST. All my orders have permanently incorporated these two. Coffee or no coffee, I live for this stuff.

Hot bagel, not toasted. It remains softer, though by the time it arrives is kind of cold again.

Bagel with poppy seeds or sesame seeds. Recently I've been going for the poppy over the sesame, but from time to time I make the change, because I like sesame seeds too.

Cheese cream to the side, not on the bagel! they send me more cheese cream than what I can put on the bagel, but I like to dose the amount of cheese cream on my bagel.

Chives or garlic and herbs for cheese cream. I have tried once the pesto and the sundried tomato, but they weren't that good. Lox is a lottery: sometimes it's good, but some other times the fish has a rather "fishy" taste to it. It's simply too stale and too bad, and stinks like the 3G project. I wouldn't go for the sweet cheese creams because it's already too odd to think of raising cheese cream or cinnamon cheese cream, but then, after tasting their tooth-breaking brick coockies, their brick-and-dust-no-flavor brownies or their what-the-hell-is-this muffins, you kinda learn to stay away from their sweets and stick to what they know the best: their bagels. And my sweet Gaia, do they KNOW about bagels! Hmmmmmm.... it's an awesome breakfast every single day!

I think, right know I could answer to you that one question I never know how to answer: what's your favorite food? BAGELS!

Well no, I actually love Hungarian food much better than bagels.

Today the morning started on the sour end, since I was so pissed thinking that my boss was once again thinking I'm some sort of secretary or assistant of him. I am not. Then again, someone who has no idea what should he be doing wouldn't even be able to make the difference between his job or any job, and all he can think of is how to get someone to do all these things he wouldn't understand even if they were explained to him using games and crayons. Maybe he's just too stressed out by... realizing how inadecuate he is to the position or something, but for instance, I was telling him that some people made a mistake by saying that an index was a brief. I thought it was clear the mistake, but he said:

"Well, they are very, very similar."

O_O Ex...cuse me? So I tried speaking slower. Really, slowly and enunciating.

"No boss, I mean, they wrote in here that THE INDEX is a BRIEF."
"I see nothing wrong with that."

So I explained to him that a brief is a document where you summarize several observations, maybe several indexes, or maybe no indexes at all, and concentrates only on relevant items, and explained them, analized them and exposed the influence or effect on other items, WHILE an index took a number of variables, always fix and defined by the very construction of the index, and showed always information with the same composition. An index shows a relation between variables, or the status of a given variable, while the brief explains it.

"Why are you trying to such fine level of detail?"

My... Goodness. Better not to try and explain him the difference between a house and a cardboard box. I felt totally like a pre-school teacher bringing up funny examples. I had to use bones and exrays to explain to him the difference between a brief and an index, and even then it took him half an hour to understand. It did. I know. By the time I came out of his office (and I'mnot entirely sure he did understood the difference), it was almost MY lunchtime.

Anyway, I asked him to read the documents, write down his comments and so I could work using his expertise and point of view as well.

"But I have so much to read already!"

O_O .... Dear Hyne, is he for real? No, really, he DID said that. I mean, if some ant like me complains that he or she has so damned much to read and so damned much to do, it's kind of acceptable because we are ants. We deal with it and all, and juggle our responsabilities, but basically, the only solution for us, if we can't take it, is to quit the job. However, when someone who wants to be a boss complains about all the work he has to do, dude, step down! Didn't he know that the job of a boss entitled a hell lot more than that of an ant?

I feel like watching Supernatural. Yep, I'm addicted. Hopefully today after the class at the University, I'll meet Víctor and we will go over to his place and watch the next chapter. Can't wait to see it!

On other news, thesis news, I've been checking the documents I've got from Carlos Manuel about this reseach they did in 97-98 and it's not only astonishing, but I would dare to say it's exactly what we were looking for. Kind of outdated, but it gives us a nice footprint to follow. It's amazing, but the more I learn about this activity, the more I love it and the more I want to know. My mind is spinning around the subject, and though I'm not much into the research of production, I kind of start thinking of it. Yesterday I found myself thinking of the Commodity Chain of the embroided goods made by the women of Mezőkövesd. You know, things like this can make you feel alive. These are the things that really matter. Doing what you like, living your vocation, developing in the area you have chosen, there where your soul lives. This is something a lot of people can get.

Recently, dear Husband was questioning me about my wish to live alone and give my head to my career. According to him, Hyne bless his innocent head, that was the sure road to depression and eternal sadness. He claims to believe that only a stable partner, and stablished, sedentarian "lovelife" can provide you with happiness, and a job could never fulfill a person. Well, it is not my desire to change his mind (thanx Hyne I'll never be caught dead getting married to him! Eww!), but one must understand his circumstances: uneducated, lazy, dependant of his environment, his only creative work is to make up lies and alternate lives for himself, where he's a maffia don, a condecorated, high ranked army official or karate kid. He's, the poor thing, completely unable to make an actual living for himself. Probably it fills him with dread to see how his actual life is so different from the life he brags about and the one he wants to have. My poor dear Husband, may the world have mercy of his deranged soul, is the kind of person who lives hoping for a miracle, winning the lottery, getting an unexpected inheritance, marrying a rich woman (now you start to see why I was the dear Wife, right?), or just finding a bag full of money on the metro. Well, with his education, and the muscle he actually puts in it, the speed with which he retrieves whenever he should make an effort, and then stays at that instead of trying to find a way to get around things, it's rather unlikely he would EVER move out of the slump he's inhabiting.

For someone like him, who really has no preparation whatsoever, talking about a "career" is like trying to explain... my boss the difference between an index and a brief. For someone who has no vocation and develops none, a "job" is an impostion he must endure in order to get money. A job it's entirely about getting money. So, getting "satisfaction" out of your job? How can that be possible? My poor thing probably wouldn't understand while would someone do something pro-bono. For him you change of jobs if you can get more money, but the idea of going to a new job that pays you less than the one you are living, or passing on a job offer that pays you more because it doesn't fulfill you as professional (or in my case as scientist), or because it doesn't allow you to grow career-wise, this not being a chief position, but to acquire more knowledge of a given area of interest... that's absolutely demented.

I pity him.

I do not seek a relationship or any kind of formal, semi-formal or informal-but-sustained-in time relationship because my goal, and the source of my happiness is my career. I don't need some guy, no matter how steaming hot and how good in bed, soft spoken, independent and out of my way he might be, to wake up with me, to be with me all my life. I have friends, I don't need a "partner". Some people need it, but I don't. What I want and need to be happy, is to be given the chance to work my field. I believe there are among you those who know what I mean. It's that sheer, bursting pleasure at working with something you love, you are passionate about. The way your brain feels inside your head, and the surge of something great from the back of your head to the front and down your chest and back as you figure something out, and start builing up something new, finding answers, turning here and there and create, just create something so magnificent! It's not only knowing that you can help a lot of people with what you do, but above all is the feeling of finding something, learning about something and realizing that you could use this in this way or that way, that you can explain now this or that and, since you understand it, you can also help fix this or that or make something entirely new and absolutely fabulous!

From my point of view, it's kind of hard to understand how can someone prefer a person with whom someone has ocasional sex and makes commitments and have to give up a lot of things one like, to something as extended and magnificent as science. Science is HUGE and new, and changing and full of so many mysteries and details you'll never get bored. You don't need to be young or beautiful to work with it, and it's intense and dynamic and fulfilling. People get boring. People get in fights with you. Science is... always building you, making you grow and be bigger, better, brighter... and I sound like a nerd.

I do would like to work on research, particularly on the areas of social welfare and technology applied to labor and it's macroeconomical effects. That's my thing.