The dangerous quest to a perfect cup of coffee (subtitle: I’ve forgotten everything I ever learned in Chemistry)

So it turns out I have allll the ingredients for a perfect frothy cup of coffee right here, at home, except the correct amount of stamina, it seems.

After resurrecting my old milk umm… ‘frother’ with a fresh set of AAs the other day I realized that the key to actually making milk foam with it is making the milk hot. It just never occurred to me that milk steamers do this too. (Although after 3 years of chem you’d hope the idea that steam is very hot water would have sunk in) Anyway, having had this realization, I proceeded to plop a mug of ye ol’ cow juice into the microwave and got brewin’ on my coffee. When the stuff was done I managed to be extremely smart for the second time that morning and in a horrifying sequence of events (I touched the mug, then screamed) managed to burn myself quite badly. Forgotten chemistry lesson of the day number two: When you heat things up, they become hot. Also, hot things are HOT.

When I had finally managed to fluff up the milk and begrudgingly spooned the froth into my coffee mug, my mood was down in the basement, bordering rage against all consumable substances. To be fair, I had not actually had any coffee yet, but in retrospect it still doesn’t justify needless discrimination against what is otherwise quite a nice category of things.

In my dazed state I couldn’t even manage to turn on the automatic focus on my (wayyyy too fancy and technical for me) camera and had to angrily do the focus manually.

That first hit uh… I mean sip of coffee felt darned good, I tell ya.

love

I haven’t written in a while.
I don’t know why I say that every time; after all you know it yourself. So really I don’t need to repeat it, but I still feel apologetic about my lack of posts either way. But what can you do, when the muse is visiting other people?
Work has been tough. Doing an internship is thankless and hard and nobody gives a damn about you. Well I shouldn’t say that. At times some of my coworkers have been incredibly kind to me. But I’m like a kid dragging her mom through the candy shop yelling “more, more, more!!!”
Everybody I love is so far away so I’m kind of starved for love. That’s probably the reason why it’s so hard to see the value of those little nice things people do. When you’re starving you become extremely narrow-minded. With insatiable hunger your eyes see only the things around you that are eatable. But your mouth dries up. That’s the irony of it all: if you eat too much too fast you’ll just puke it all out again, so you have to take in the food in small amounts.
Chewing something you want so much with so much patience. That’s the hardest part. Having to take such little bites, when you just want to stuff it all in your mouth and be full for one glorious moment.
It becomes worse when you’re talking imaginary food. [Yeah, I know I’m taking this metaphor quite far, too far, perhaps. Whatever, just roll with it. ] Because then you stuff your face with things that don’t exist you don’t even get the feeling of glorious fullness, you only get the nausea.
I miss my friends and my home, or what it used to be anyway.
It’s so hard to believe in something you can’t see right in front of you, but I know that you guys are there. You’re love is what’s keeping me going right now. Still, I just want somebody to hug me and tell me it’s going to be ok.

The pictures... I know. A miracle.

Photobucket was finally merciful and let me upload the pix yesterday. sadly they were huge.
It took me until just now to resize them on Gimp .... thank God I had something to procrastinate otherwise this might never have gotten done X_X

this here would be my room. as you can see I had already dumped most of my stuff on the bed before I took this picture... I'm a proper traveller after all ;D
I didn't spend much time in my beautiful abode - after all I was in Leipzig on what can be called business, which meant getting up at 7:30 am so I could be at the Project conference at 9am with a coffee in hand and halfway dressed/awake...
Most days I went with the rest of the team after the day's work was done (around 5pm) to talk and have dinner together. I'm kind of glad I didn't stay there for the week (they offered, but I'd already booked my room). It would have just been too much, especially considering my bathroom rituals. XD We'll all be rooming for the summer filming so I'll have that experience soon enough...

Besides, their view wasn't half as great as mine...
Check it out:




If you ignore the big construction site you can see all the beautiful old buildings across from my window.
I was right by the city center, five minutes from the trainstation. INSANELY great location. :)

I promptly went on an excursion to check out the city and frankly, that was my only one... after that I was so busy with the conference and getting to know the film crew that I had very little drive to go sightseeing by myself. But I'll be back - most team meetings and project conferences will be in Leipzig. Plenty of opportunities to see the Völkerschlachtdenkmal, eh?

The first thing I found was ... you guessed it... STARBUCKS XD
see it's gorgeous signature green to the right?


another street:


Anyways... as I already mentioned in the post before this one (the one that ended in rage... yes that one) I didn't really take great pictures on this trip... half the time when I saw great stuff I didn't have my camera with me (that thing is heavy)and (as I also mentioned) fog descended upon Leipzig soon after my arrival.
You've seen the window before... check out the after:






yep yep the only thing that looked good in that light/environment was this crazy sculpture thing that some people mistook for a place to put their shoes...




that's it for pics for now... I'll be posting about the actual project conference as soon as I can :D
for now just amuse yourselves with the pretty pictures haha

Update. Finally.

I promised Alice (HOI ALICE! this is a blog shout out! mwahaha) I'd update this baby yesterday, but I've just been too busy, so it had to wait until today.
So now I'm sitting here watching Castle (I'm still determining whether or not I like it or not ... ) and using my womanly multi-tasking skills to write this post.
Ah who am I kidding!?! I'm awful at multitasking. I'm typing this during commercial breaks XD
but the point is that it's getting done, eh?

But I know you're waiting for the juicy stuff, so I'll get started ;-D
My trip to Leipzig was AH-mazing. The city is beautiful, full of old architecture - old and ornate and goooorgeous. I thought I loved Berlin, but I hadn't been to Leipzig. Well, they're not really comparable - Berlin is the new world, Leipzig is all Goethe and Bach - like a frilly baroque dream.
It's much smaller than Berlin of course, but full of greenery and life. There are a ton of young people there to offset the oldtimey feel (it's a University city - my grandma went there) and if I may be so blunt: THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL. It's been said before that the girls of Saxony are the prettiest in Germany, but somehow they forgot to mention the boys XD * giggles * can we all say "Major Eyecandy", please?

Either way, I took my big, fancy camera with me to shoot the city in unpixelated splendor, but the weather didn't really cooperate. I took few decent shots on my first day, which was the only sunny day during my trip. After that, fog descended upon everything and you were lucky if you could see where you were walking (aka not great lighting conditions for photography).

But believe it or not, there ARE pictures. Sadly (and let me tell you I am currently trying to control my rage right now... I'm typing REALLY forcefully) neither blogger nor photobucket will let me upload anything.
Seriously. I'm starting to hate the internet. First I can't post on google chrome and now this...
Well, until it's fixed (and by then I'll have banged my head against the wall a few times) you'll have to deal with the big fat lack of pictures. Blame the internet. Yes.

Vladimir

So I've been trying to improve my sketching skills. I'm generally not bad at drawing, but I can't capture reality quite in the way I want to - which is quickly but still accurately. To remedy this I've ordered myself to practice practice practice, because when it comes to drawing and art in general that's just the only way to get better.

Anyways, this morning after breakfast I thought I'd start my journey towards a better-sketching-me with a quick sketching practice. I grabbed one of my magazines, my sketchbook and a ballpoint pen and picked out a high contrast photograph for my drawing (high contrast = awesome shadows).

Let's just say I failed miserably in the difficulty assessment department... this drawing of Vladimir Klitschko (picked because of my recent faible for boxing and the wonderful lighting) took me three hours to do. THREE HOURS.
I mean it's accurate and all, but the time component ...agijoawigjiap odjbcviuowrjkvcioeRGURGLEgurglegurglegurgle.....SIGH
PS sorry about not posting lately! I've been vewwy busy and google chrome won't let me use the blogger page for some reason (it's beyond me, really... after all blogger is google owned, am I right?!) so I always have to switch back and forth between chrome and firefox, which just makes me infinitely unmotivated..... XD

Walk the line

Giddiness... :D

I have a job. Well, really I have two. But I only earn money with one of them. With the other I earn awesomeness.
Yessssss, maybe I'm boasting a little right now, but I'm just so unreasonably happy that I can't help myself. I've been skipping around for the past 10 minutes and also ate a celebratory Hanuta.
Glory. Pure and utter glory. (noooooo not udder. utter!)
I finally feel like my life is getting some direction, if only on a small scale. Baby steps right?

On other news, I went to the 'advanced' kickboxing class today and found it was easier, but strangely less fun. Who would have thought!? Sadly I'll be missing the beginners class on Friday, which makes me sad because my teacher is hilaaaaaaarious (yes, he really merits that many a's) but the sadness really only goes so far... Because I'm going HERE.
I can't even begin to describe to you how excited I am. No amount of celebratory Hanutas will suffice. Tomorrow I'll be going to stock up on energy drinks, because music starts in the early afternoon and gets better and better until, yes, 7 am. And I will be there, going manically strong.

Then on Saturday I will once more be missing my hilarious boxing coach to sleep and do the whole thing over again (different music, duh!)

Sunday, me and my friends will hopefully not miss the train back home and leave Berlin in what I predict to be the most complicatedly mixed state of bliss and exhaustion ever.
I cannot wait. I am counting the hours. I'm thinking of doing one of those cheesy countdowns on my iGoogle page AND facebook. It's THAT seriously exciting. I've also been seriously studying (aka listening to) the music of all the AH-mazing bands that will be there (hot chip, the editors, caribou, Adam Green, .... .... ... look at the list yo) and if that fails I've created the perfect combo of random words to fake lyrics whenever I don't know them. Serious Epicness requires serious preparation.

Beware Berlin, Lies is coming back!

my mind is. by e.e. Cummings

my mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and taste and smell
and hearing and sight keep hitting and chipping with sharp fatal
tools
in an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of chrome and ex
-ecute strides of cobalt
nevertheless i
feel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am becoming
something a little different, in fact
myself
Hereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings.

Compromises?!

This weekend was truly a learning experience for me.
I'm never sure whether having to go through certain learning processes are worth the lesson.
You know what I mean?
Sometimes I do things, just to try them out, and then I ask myself afterwards: Why did you have to compromise your integrity - your beliefs that way?
But at the time it didn't seem that way. At the time I just wasn't sure what I wanted or what was right or wrong. I can be so focused on being easy going and just trying things out that I don't even realize that something is wrong.
For example, I never learned how to be angry.
There are things that should make me mad! Raging mad... but they don't.
And afterward I wonder why I had to behave that way, because in retrospect it was 103% stupid.

But I'm so fixated on being liked that I forget myself. I forget who I am and what I stand for. I forget that I don't have to live by other people's standards.
I'm not going to forget anymore. Because it doesn't matter what other people think.
They don't have to live with my conscience. I do.
And I'm sick of putting those people first, those people that don't care one bit about me, who would drop me in a second and never look back. I don't need them in my life.

My friend Alice told me the other day that life is the worst kind of teacher because you learn the lesson after the test.
But then you know ... let me tell you... i know

Inception

Hello Neighbor...?!

My brother informed me today that people on the street can hear me while I'm piano playing or singing. I've suspected as much, since once after an especially intense jamming session on my piano (this can be translated to very ... very loud and repetitive) somebody rang the doorbell. I didn't answer it, because I was in my pajamas and looked a bit tousled, but when I left for the dentist about ten minutes later I saw a police car driving out of the street. Now you have to realize my street has a dead end... so they weren't just passing through. I just thanked whatever power there is above for great timing and went on my merry way to get my teeth checked.

So when my brother informed me of my musical activities leaking onto the street I was not really surprised. Thus far I had successfully evaded all noise-disturbance-complain-attempts (or possible packages being delivered by the mailman) by not answering the door during my prime practicing time (right after I get up, when I'm obviously too pajama-ed and sleepy to face anybody) A meeting with the law enforcement just wasn't really on my agenda...
Anyways, I'm not sure if my brother had just joined the conspiracy to get me to stop (since I practice for at least 3 to 4 hours total each day) or if he was just innocently making an innocent observation while walking by the house on his way home.
Since he often complains that I practice too much and with little variation in songs (Repetition is good I tell you!) I'm guessing it's not the latter. Nonetheless, he is wrong to think that telling me that everybody on the street can hear me will get me to rethink my practicing schedule. I have already considered this and decided that a little cultural awakening couldn't really be bad for anyone. In fact, now that I have hard proof of my involuntary audience, I'm going to have to practice even harder... It's for their sake I promise!
I don't know about the singing... I might cut down on that. I sound a little bit (very) raspy in the morning since I can't count on talent balancing out the fact that I'm not warmed up etc. and if you ain't got the goods when it comes to singing, then you really can't do much. Although I'm not sure if that theory has been tested...
When it comes to piano however, practice really does make perfect. I'm also a tough case, because my left hand consistently lags behind my right hand (after 13 years of playing... yes) so I find that I have to practice even more to make up for it. This hood better get ready for some entertainment!
I'd even go out on the street and give them a truly un-wall-muffled experience, but that would require me to get dressed into something other than my pajamas and I'm afraid it's just not happening. Oh... and if you ring my door bell please do it in rythm...

Home

Today many of my friends moved in to college. It got me thinking about this thing called home, because going to a new place is hard and finding out how you belong even harder.

So I was on facebook looking through random photos of my friends and people I know or used to know, that were especially important to me throughout the years. (YES I realize this is borderline stalking, but come on, I know these people! They've practically given me their concent!!! :P)

Anyways... it made me really homesick.

Not homesick in the "Gosh darn I hate it here, please let me go back to [random place]" sense but homesick the way you get when you remember all the fun times you had and how it felt so right and like you belong.

To find home in that way isn't easy.
I wasn't going to admit that I miss high school, but I guess I do.

I miss the community and I miss the feeling that no matter what happens, tomorrow I can go back to this place and know that these people will be there.

Then again, high school was crushing in that way too... each year some of the people whom I dearly loved went on to go to college and find a bigger, better community there, where everything was exponentially more exciting, simply because of the lack of parental supervision.

I think that it was mostly this transition between life stages that got to me, because I just couldn't shake the feeling that they were trading up and I was staying behind.

Sometimes I'm also surprised by who I miss. Half the time it's not even someone I was particularly close to. It was just the special combination of people around me that made for the feeling... some people took active parts in my life, others just temporary ones, but they were all part of the scenery and thus hugely important.

What's great about school is that you're not only around people you choose to be around. I used to think this was a bad attribute, but things tend to loose their shine if there's nothing different around, if their special glimmer becomes commonplace.

I miss being exposed to the world that way every day. I miss having to interact with all kinds of people. Now half my life is spent putting myself into situations where I can have chance encounters with people I might not normally talk to or don't already know. All these little every day communications have gotten a new glow in my mind. I need them.

I now get excited to go to the grocery store, because I'll be able to talk to the cashier for a brief moment or ask where a product is. It seems silly, but it makes me happy to talk to someone random.

I think all human communication should be relished that way, so maybe learning this lesson is exactly what I needed.
The tough part about moving in general is that you aren't immediately part of the community: Each time you have to find your own little niche, where the people are nice and interesting and you feel good about yourself and the world. You have to find somewhere to belong.

So I wish all my friends at college the strength to put themselves out there and find that place.

I wish them strength to go walk their path and to meet new and interesting people.

I wish you the strength to love and be loved.

I'm so excited about your lives and where they will go... :)

....and i hope you don't forget me... stuck on a different continent, in a weird and messed up stage of my life. We'll both find our ways... you'll see :D

It feels like this is happening in tree time

Do you ever feel like the future is just too far away?
I'm sick of waiting for something to happen.
The whole application process is quite draining to me.
It's like you're waiting on heaven's door, waiting for some random person who doesn't even know you to decide whether or not you may enter. For some reason that's quite daunting....
And, yeah, I guess I'm impatient. I just want to start working and doing something meaningful. I'm doing my best not to waste my life, but sometimes it just seems like it's out of my control. I hate that things just don't happen by themselves - that in order to get to anything I love in this world I have to jump some sort of barrier. I guess you have to prove that you want it enough.

Why can't just wanting something enough be enough?

Poetry

In your light I learn how to love
in your beauty, how to make poems,
you dance in my chest
where noone sees you,
but sometimes I do
and that sight becomes this art

by Rumi

Even if you blocked me from facebook... -__-

The deep end of the pool

Man oh man. What have I gotten myself into?
My friend Ranya figured out that I have a blog and prompted me to kind of change the tune here a little bit. Yeah, you guessed it, I'm going to write about my FEELINGS.

But how to start?! If you've read my art page, which I don't assume you have, you will know that my thoughts are probably the weirdest, most convoluted thing ever. (although I'm not going to claim that crown. Who knows, maybe somebody can top me out there. Yes. that's a challenge) I don't know. For the longest time now I've kept a journal. And one of the things I found was that at times I was afraid to write down things even in my journal. I mean, a journal is just about as private as it gets right? So what does it mean if you can't put something down in words in something that might as well be your outsourced brain?! It means you're ashamed of your own thoughts in front of yourself. I mean come on. How dumb is that? It's like having to wear clothes in the shower because you think it's wrong to see yourself naked. (I realize that's a weird example)

Anyway, I started forcing myself to write down what I really thought. I started to really try and write down the honest truth. Because I don't have to prove anything to myself. I know who I am and I know my faults and fears. I don't have to hide that from myself. I think what I was afraid of was that I would go back and be weirded out by who I used to be. But isn't that always a possibility? I think it's worse to try and keep up appearances with yourself. But we all do it, don't we? We try to convince ourselves that we are who we aren't. It's hard not to lie to yourself. But it's important. Because it you admit the truth you're already on your way to become something you don't have to deny, not to yourself or to anybody. This will be the only time that I'm going to refer you to the alcoholics for advice, but the first step to improving is to admit there's something wrong, right? Right. Thank you AA for that bit.

Getting more complicated

I'm currently in the process of adding pages to my blog and I've started with a portfolio of my student work, which you can view under "student work"... go figure...



I couldn't control myself, because I was taught to elaborately explain everything I do in art, so all of it is accompanied by descriptions of my thought process.
I will add some sort of link to a simpler compilation of the images eventually, but right now you just have to ignore the writing, if you're looking to just see the images. Of course I encourage you to read what I wrote, as everything will make more sense that way ( or less?! it's a bit Memento style... as in the movie... and if that didn't give you a headache I don't know what will...)


Pages for animations and musical creations of mine will be added soon as well...

This may just be the happiest thing ever

It's up there anyway :)
Tah Geggy - Whoever you are

Thought-trash aka in defense of our modern culture!

I've been reading "Denkanstöße 2011" which is a German collection of essays about Politics, Philosophy, Culture and Science meant to convey the state that we're all in now, in 2010. The title can be loosely translated to "Stuff we should all think about going into 2011" (yeah, I know, I just made a 2 word title a 9 word title).

A lot of it is bullshit. I've read almost all of the essays and a few of them I didn't finish because I got so MAD at what they were saying. (sorry, if you just realized this will become an angry rant - I congratulate you and won't be offended if you leave to go do something more positive)

I was especially intrigued by the Philosophy component of this book. I'm a big philosophy nut, but I do have principles. For one thing, you can't turn Philosophy into religion. It's not the same thing !
Scrambling the two by hypothesizing that the philosophical and emotional changes in culture due to the information flood that's been tsunami-ing our world are somehow evidence for an emotionally detached society in need of religious salvation makes me ANGRY.
Clearly these people have never been on the internet.
I mean yeah, it's a scary place, but it's also made something like community possible for millions of people out there.
I'm talking loners, yeah. And do you want to know WHY they were loners before the internet? Because there was noone around who shared their interests.
The world is annoyingly large and the likelihood of being near someone who's like you is probably around, you guessed it, -30.903284092384% .

Can we pleeeease not turn this into a religious issue?
I mean I get that all those religious people are upset because less and less people are turning to them for guidance, but puh-leaze!!! Leave the kids alone!
This essay actually suggests that the increased quest for knowledge evident in our modern society has turned us into heartless monsters who lacked spiritual guidance in our childhood (*cough church cough*) I'm serious.
They didn't use the word monster, but I'm positive they were thinking it.

Instead of badmouthing our newfound sources of endless information, can we please remember that the internet has brought us all closer together.
Just look at me, happily typing away into the black hole of cyberspace!
What's so bad about the internet? What's so bad about knowing about science and math? Knowing more about these things doesn't make us less inclined to be nice to each other! Only because modern people know how to use computers and phones doesn't mean they had to cut out and sacrifice the piece of their heart/brain/soul that conjures up shiny, magical looove and empathy.

In fact I think it's added to our understanding of what these things are!
People who don't feel at home in there actual home can turn to the internet and find love and compassion there! The internet has made it possible for us to expose ourselves to a ton of horrible and dreadfully sinful things, but it's also made it possible to find examples of kindness and charity that might not be present in an everyday community.
Religion isn't the only way to develop a moral compass. By learning about the things that make our world work (which you know... kind of mostly are sciency things) we have become more responsible about living on this planet. The green movement is huuuugely internet based. Alternative shops that wouldn't be able to reach a broad audience can now cater to all the crazies out there over the web.
I'm sorry, dear secretly-church-funded scholarly neutral essay, but I have as of yet to find something as mindbogglingly awesome as the internet.

Now, to finish my rant, I would like to inform Mr. Robert Rowland Smith, the author of "In bed with Kant or the feeling of nothing in the early morning" that even if I woke up with Karl Marx, Thomas Hobbes or Emanuel Kant by my bedside, they probably wouldn't give a shit how I have my cereal and even less about the fact that I don't learn in a very loving way.

I was looking to be blown away by this book TED-Talk style but what I got was a massive waft of fecal matter fluttering my way. I think people who have lost all connections to modern life (/never had any) should not be allowed to write about it.

Doodles = Fine Art in my humble opinion

Although I'm not sure you could call THIS: a doodle.
I wish I could give credit to whoever drew it, but I stole it from my friend Kyle's facebook page. I'm not sure if he drew it or somebody else did, but whoever you are... I am in awe of you. 0_0 * respect *
I'm still hunting for ideas for an art piece in my new room and thus found the beautiful drawing above. (Yes, I conduct research in my artsy fb friend's albums - don't tell me you don't, because I shall believe you... )I LOVE the color blue and just the idea of having maybe a series of sketches in the same (above) style makes me a tad excessively excited.
I'm also currently working on a short to accompany one of my piano improvs. (I'll post some sort of link to the music if I can figure out how) You'll see it once it's done :)

Me and time have always had a difficult relationship.
I've always found that the way I'm supposed to spend my time and the way I want to spend it are 2 conflicting things.
It's gotten to the point where even if I want to do something, I'm reluctant to get it done because I'm also supposed to. How wacko is that?

Looking back on years of battling with chronic procrastination I now have strategies to avoid the worst of my antics, but I sure wish I'd figured all this out earlier. There's nothing like looking back and thinking: "Hey maybe I should have written that speech instead of rewatching the first season of Stargate SG1... Maybe I should have done Math instead of sitting in a cafe for hours and reading some trash magazine." But to this day I can't quite say I regret doing these things...even if I know I should :)

I just think it's one of the of the most important lessons I've ever learned, that time is valuable and to do things you love is just as important as doing things that are vital to getting your life ahead. There has to be a balance I guess... Also, who knows, I might just end up liking whatever I rejected for some dumb reason initially.

Judge a book by its cover?!

I'm an avid reader of all kinds of books - old, new, long, short, I'll read it all. They're like a little package full of hours and hours of joy.
I feel that especially about old, well-read books. Not only are the two-color print designs on the covers simply gorgeous, but each scuff mark or grease stain on a page becomes a new reminder of all the people who read it before you.
My parents have quite a collection of vintage books that I love to sift through when I'm at their place. I'm just never going to get used to this kindle/iPad/e-book era we live in...