Respect should be earned, not demanded.

As we all know, the Royal Wedding is going to be taking place tonight. As I live in Australia, where the Queen is still OUR Queen and therefore William is likely to be our King one day, the wedding is a Big Freaking Deal. Every major TV station is going to have coverage of the wedding on at least one digital channel.

Unfortunately, it seems that some commentators missed out. The Chaser, a group of comedians known for heavy (and yes, sometimes tasteless) satire were going to host an alternative coverage of the royal wedding, but that has been stopped by the BBC / representatives of the royal family, because they do not want any footage of the wedding to be used for the purposes of satire. The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia's public broadcaster and the only non-commercial coverage of the wedding) was forced to cancel The Chaser's broadcast.

Oh, COME ON. Free speech, anyone?

Okay, sure, we should be respectful of people, but I am SURE that The Chaser would have kept things tasteful, and they have said as much. When you turn a wedding into such a huge media spectacle, how can you expect people to not want to satirise it? It really is bewildering, especially when you look at other Australian channels' coverage of it; one of the other channels is using Dame Edna, Australia's favourite drag queen, to commentate the event.

REALLY.

I guess I'll just have to watch the live stream on YouTube and rely on twitter for my satirical humour :(

Is anybody else going to watch the wedding?

Bunny days

Sorry I missed last week. It was my birthday on Thursday, so Wednesday was spent hunting down groceries and preparing some of the foodstuff, before unexpectedly being invited to a barbecue by one of our neighbours. Thursday was spent at uni, preparing most of the dinner, and then obviously eating/drinking/playing games. We would've gone out, but thanks to some lovely laws from the fifties, public events involving dancing aren't allowed during certain public holidays (including Good Friday). It was nice though, just would've been nicer with dancing rather than with growing irritation about outdated laws forcing a religion down my throat. I don't particularly mind having bank holidays on important Christian holidays, as long as people of other religions have the right to take days off on their holidays as well. It's nice to have a day off every once in a while, for whatever reason, but I'll bloody well dance whenever I want to. It's not like clubs being open would interfere with church services, or in fact anyone's life except those who work there and those who choose to go there.

As for the actual Easter days... Sunday we decided to be fancy and went out for brunch xD. The food was so-so, but there are worse things than sitting in the sun for a few hours with cold beer infinite food (including roast lamb (nomnom); I might be almost vegetarian, but darn, cute little baby animals are tasty). Somehow we ended up spending the rest of the day playing cards in our garden. Monday there was more barbecuing, and more cold drinks, and more cards. One of my roomie's friends brought her pet rabbit to explore our garden and its rabbitness, since it had never been outside before and seemed to be rather confused by all the green stuff at first xD. So all in all a nice holiday, despite the lack of dancing on my birthday (and the hangover on Friday, and the cleaning on Saturday...). Oddly enough more than we've ever done on Easter at my parents place, where it usually consisted of a nice breakfast and maybe dinner with my grandma on Easter Sunday (and hidden chocolate eggs, of course, when we were little).

Although I don't really partake in holiday traditions, I think they are rather interesting in their “oddness”. Or rather, that everyone seems to take their traditions as normal, no matter how wacky, but immediately crack up about equally weird traditions from elsewhere. The Slovak kids I worked with thought the whole egg-laying bunny thing was hilarious and kept on asking whether German kids were really stupid enough to believe that, only to burst out laughing when I said yeah, well, sorta, the little ones. On the other hand Slovak Easter traditions seem incredibly weird to outsiders as well. The short version: Men beat women and throw buckets of water at them and then get a small present in return (a painted egg, or some chocolate, or some booze, depending on their age). Traditionally it's supposed to bring purity & fertility to the women, but if you don't know that (or only get the condensed version) it sounds rather cruel, misogynist and nonsensical. In reality most people stick to the water part, and it's a lot of fun for all involved (especially the kids), although it does make it rather dangerous to go out for a woman (at least without a second set of clothes) ;) My French predecessor apparently hadn't been informed about Slovak Easter traditions and got a rather nice pelting with water balloons. I tried to avoid it by staying put, but of course some of my Slovak friends felt they had to introduce the German girl to Slovak Easter xD

I like the idea of rituals as such. The idea that some apparently random, nonsensical thing can be invested with meaning. We all partake in rituals, they all make equally little, and equally much, sense. AJ Jacobs puts it quite well, pointing out that if an alien came to earth and witnessed one person blowing out a birthday candle, and a second one avoiding to wear clothes of mixed fibres, it would hardly say “This one makes sense, but that one, that one's just crazy.”

Fat Tuesday I

Not Mardi Gras but recipes of mine that I would like to share to everyone. Mostly because I have nothing better to share LOL unless you want to hear about work which I highly doubt.

Cheesecake

Yeild: 9" Cake

You will need a spring form tin

Buscuit Dough

Biscuit Dough

125 g    Pastry Flour Sifted

60 g      Sugar

1           Egg Yolk

1/4 tsp. Vanilla Extract

125 g    Butter

Pre-baking the Crust

First combine the flour and the sugar in a bowl. Make a well and add the rest of the ingredients in the center. Rub everything together with your fingers until it all comes together. Wrap the dough tightly with the plastic wrap and let it rest in the chiller for an hour.

Preheat the oven to 200C. Lightly grease the bottom of your spring form tin. Place the rested dough on the base of your tin and roll it out. to about 4mm thick. trim the rest off and dock the dough with a fork. Rest for another 10 minutes in the chiller before baking the crust. bake fore 15 minutes or until pale gold.

Remove the crust from the oven and allow to cool in a rack. Then raise the temperature of your oven to 230C.

Cheese Filling

Cheese Cake Filling

1kg        Cream Cheese

400g      Sugar

3 tbsp.   Flour

1/4 tsp   Vanilla Extract

5            Eggs

2            Egg Yolks

6 tbsp.   Heavy Cream

Baking 1

In a bowl cream the cream cheese, sugar, and flour until light and airy. Add all of the vanilla and one egg mixing until well incorporated before adding each egg. Add the yolks and cream the same way. This will ensure you a smooth filling.

Attach the sides of the spring form tin and place it on a container larger than your pan with about the same hight. I used a 14" cake pan. Pour in the filling on your pre-baked crust then put it in the oven.

Before closing the oven door, pour in some water until half way up the sides of your tin. This is called a bain marie. This will ensure an even distribution of heat throughout your cake tin and will make sure that your custard will not split.

Finished

    

Shock your custard for 15 minutes in that temperature then lower the heat to 100C and bake for another hour and a half or until it looks like a set gelatin.  let is cool for at least 2 hours before removing from the tin. I let is cool and set overnight in the chiller before I take them out of the tin.

If you don't have a spring form tin you can do this with a regular pan, but I suggest you freeze it before taking it out because this is a very smooth cheescake so it can be easily bruised.

QOTD: What is your favorite cheescake topping?

Hello sunshine,

Good morning nerdy bunch it's Monday!

So I graduated last Sunday (insert happy dance here). The ceremony was short and sweet. The whole time I had a headache born of stress, illness, lack of sleep and excitement. The whole time I was also beaming I was so proud of everyone walking across that stage. Anyway I woke up Monday massively sick, which means that I did nothing all week. Seriously I read 20 pages of a book and watched old episodes of criminal minds. Good Friday I managed to haul myself out of bed and do to very pleasant things; eat dinner and play cards with my family, and have an awesome Lord of the Rings marathon. I slept though most of Saturday having stayed up ridiculously late to get through LOTR. Sunday I went to church and and then sat around drinking beer with my friends. All and all a pretty good holiday weekend. Tommorrow I'm going for a interview at what is going to be my practicum placement, so wish me luck.

Best Wishes,

Allysa

p.s. did you guys watch the impossible astronaut? what did you think?

once upon a time there was someone who lived and mattered

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, there was a mighty civilization situated on an island. These mighty people understood and used technology like no other before it or even after it. This technology was offered to the people of the island by great visitors beyond our Earth. The visitors saw this nation to be wise and provided them with crystal in the form of thirteen skulls, in which they had encrypted all the secrets of the human kind, so that one day they would be able to prevent a great disaster facing the feeble human kind.

Centuries passed and the mighty nation and its home island, which we know by the name Atlantis,perished in a turmoil of the oceans, never to be seen again in the glorious form it had once been. But some of their knowledge survived; the crystal skulls containing the data to save man kind survived. The knowledge was passed down to the Maya and the Aztecs, the successors of the great Atlantians.

Unfortunately, like Atlantis, these mighty civilizations mysteriously perished without a proper explanation. However, the knowledge has once again survived through the ages, the skulls still exist. Many have already been found and it has been discovered that these crystal skulls have truly great powers. It is said that when you bring together all of the thirteen skulls, they will reveal the secrets of the human kind and help prevent the apocalypse that has been predicted by the Maya to arrive in 2012.

And this is what I had my presentation on this week, during pseudo-archaeology classes. Lovely story, isn't it? Quite sadly, there is a whole bunch of people who actually believe it is true.

Conspiracy theories and mysteries have always intrigued people, it's only natural. It's much more compelling and exciting to think that, say, crystal skulls like the Mitchell-Hedges skull are really pre-columbian and the tests proving them to be a sham were by some dark figures working for the Illuminati, trying to hide the truth from people. It's not so glorious to think that a magnificent crystal skull was simply sculpted by some Mexican guy in the 60's, with a normal wheel-cutter used for jewellery-making.

Image of the Mitchell-Hedges skull, from http://www.mitchell-hedges.com/

The entertainment and intrigue value is really what makes pseudo-archaeology (especially popular among pseudo-scientists), other pseudo-sciences and pseudo-scientists themselves thrive. Television programming is practically bustling with pseudo-scientific documentaries because they are great for their entertainment value. I can understand the appeal, heck, even I would think it would be more interesting to live in a world with these kinds of mysteries. And I do enjoy watching these documentaries.

But one should stop to think about the things they believe, the things documentaries present as fact and what they might imply. A lot of archaeologists find it extremely frustrating to face people adamant on believing pseudo-scientific sources and their authors. It can of course be entertaining too, but often it's just plain frustrating or even disgusting when one has to really face it.

A friend of mine, after getting extremely frustrated with pseudo-archaeologists, stated something rather interesting. She said she was actually mad at these people because she feels that they are disrespecting the past and the people of the past. It seems that pseudo-archaeologists try to see conspiracies and turn past into some sort of a "more interesting" version of it, a version that appeals to them, because the past as what it was somehow isn't enough for them. This is offensive towards the people who truly lived through those times, people who did things, thought things and said things. It is as if their lives aren't enough, the way it really likely was isn't enough.

A Finnish pseudo-archaeologist theorized that there was some ancient kingdom in Finland before the Middle Ages, some civilization with mighty kings and the ability to understand complex geometrical data. A civilization that was the mightiest of its time. This view is more glorious than the likely truth of wandering groups of people here and there, acting as hunter-gatherers, occasionally trying out farming, living through their lives trying to survive.

It seems like this pseudo-archaeologist wants something more, he wants to find a history that would nudge the nation's ego upwards. History that would say that Finland was once mighty - mightier than Russia or Sweden, who once ruled over us. He wants there to be more than just hunter-gatherers. At the same time, one could think, he happens to undermine the real lives and actions of the people who lived here before Middle Ages, because it's not interesting enough for him. That does seem like something one could get offended over, doesn't it? Imagine if someone looked at you with a displeased expression and decided that you weren't enough, that your life wasn't interesting enough.They would then proceed to make complex connections enabling them to connect random dots into a story that is simply not true. You would be made a king but your real accomplishments would go unnoticed because they weren't interesting enough.

If this happened to me, personally, I don't think I would mind since I've yet to be particularly proud of my life and accomplishments (plus I would hopefully be dead by then). But it is a good point. We go poking around the past, don't we owe the people whose lives we poke to at least try to get it right, no matter how "dull" their life seems to us? Maybe it meant a whole lot more to them.

P.S: I'm sorry my entry is late again!

It's still Thursday in Hawaii?

I THINK? HOPEFULLY?

Anyway. Hi, Nerdy Bunch, how are you? I'm good. Great, actually: I handed in the last of my due assignments yesterday, and now I am on mid-semester break. It's Easter, too, which means chocolate and homemade buns and omnomnomnom.

It was my mother's birthday yesterday (Thursday; it's Friday for me :3) so today we had everyone around for lunch and things. I got to see my nephew who is nearly 2, as well as my oldest brother and his girlfriend. It was a fun time, since they got back from a holiday to Bali recently and they brought presents--I got HP7 part 1 on DVD, and a new watch, which is awesome!

We don't have any special plans on Sunday, it's going to be a fairly relaxed day.

In other news, I bought the original Portal game yesterday and it is AMAZING! After seeing Hank play it I was convinced that it was good, which it is. I currently can't afford Portal 2 but I'm still going to watch Hank's commentary because it's just fun.

What are you folks doing over Easter?

Holidays and Mondays always gets me down

This week is Holy week. Which means everyone is on vacation, except for me.

Holidays are always work days for people in my industry. We earn the most during holidays so we work when everyone else enjoys the festivities.

Mondays though is my slowest day and it is when I usually take my days off. Sad thing about it is that you can't really do much during Mondays plus a lot of my friends are too tired to go out because of work.

Easter is coming and it is time to make chocolate eggs and bunnies. 

QOTD: What part of the bunny do you eat first?

another QOTD: What is your favorite day of the week? besides Tuesday/Early Wednesday because of my blog =P

Hear from you guys soon,

RUBEN IV

Tiny Chickens

Good morning, Nerdy Bunch, I don't know what day it is.

This is not a blog post. Tiny chickens have invaded my face and also there is an angry badger living in my chest and occasionally trying to claw her way out. Hence no blog post.

Best wishes,

Allysa Lovatt

Today’s drama was brought to you by a skull-bucket

Nothing much going on today for me, not off the computer anyways. Instead I got involved in some departmental drama via Facebook: A former teacher of mine, and a fellow student, had left a human skull into a bucket at the archaeology lab. Apparently some cleaning lady had found it there and gotten freaked out. Now there’s some ethical drama going on - discussion on whether a bucket is an appropriate place for a human skull, even for temporary placement.

This doctorate student had used the bucket because it is a safe place for a skull; it will remain protected and it has some space around it. She had left the bucket unattended because it was there waiting for an osteology (=study of bones) class and she had things to do. She did this all in advance because she didn’t have time to do it at another time due to travelling. She didn’t really expect someone would poke around the bucket, rather lone get freaked out over it. Honestly, in the same situation I wouldn’t have expected it either. Frankly I think this is rather ridiculous, the drama over it I mean.

It’s an archaeology lab, not a carousel. It’s like going to a dissection room right after a dissection and being utterly shocked to find a little smudge of bodily fluids on the autopsy table. I do find it a bit surprising that the cleaning lady didn’t know there might be remains in the lab. Maybe she was new, I don’t know, but I don’t think the archaeologists should be the only ones doing some rethinking.

I still think bucket is as good as any place to keep a skull, buckets are multi-functional and it’s not like she used a kettle to keep the skull in – that’s actually what I imagined based on the shock described. Furthermore, a bucket is certainly more protective than just placing the skull on a shelf without anything around it. If the archaeology department is really going to raise fuss over this, they should be prepared to reserve a corner of the lab budget to buy actual boxes for the skulls, boxes “dignified” enough to be appropriate for human remains – if that really is the problem here (it was stated to be the issue by the lab’s head conservator). Or alternatively the university should provide an osteology lab that is bigger than a shoe box, so that people can actually work there.

So, as I mentioned, I got involved in this via Facebook. I made a light-hearted comment on the situation and a teacher of mine, who has always been humorous and snarky, actually got snippy with me. I was rather surprised; apparently this is more serious than I thought. More serious than it should be, I’m fairly sure. I had to tell the man to calm down. Later he conveniently deleted his comment, which I don’t know how to interpret. It’s just down right stupid.

Slap a warning sign on the archaeology lab door, let people who do not get freaked out by the possible presence of a skull or two do the cleaning and call it a day. I can fully understand someone getting creeped out by a skull, but the situation and the drama derived form this particular incident is just….eh.

What do you think would be an appropriate and affordable temporary container for a skull in teaching and research use? Is a normal and clean plastic bucket so horrible for temporary placement? Is it truly desecrating the decades if not centuries old skull?

Procrastinationnnn

I have somewhat of a routine when it comes to my studies. When a semester first starts, I usually vow to be a good student, go to all of my classes, keep up with my reading and study every day. By around the sixth week, I barely have the motivation to go to uni once a week and will read something only if necessary for an assignment.

I begin to regret this by the time we actually need to start handing things (like now) and after mid-semester break I usually turn back into a good student. At the moment, though, with two assignments due next Thursday, all I want to do is sit on Youtube or play Minecraft all day.

The only way I can get anything done during these study slumps is to create a very strict structure for myself. I'll give myself one hour of working-on-assignment time, then one hour of minecraft-or-youtube-or whatever time. That usually breaks things up enough for me to get things done. Unfortunately, I rarely use it because I somehow still think "bah, I'm a uni student, I'm so mature, I don't need to give myself structure!"

UGH. I infuriate myself sometimes.

Flowers are evil, they make me sneeze.

I've never been much of a garden person. God knows my parents tried to get us interested, even gave us our own little corner of flowerbed & veg field, but both me and my sister turned out pretty apathetic towards gardening. I did, however, always enjoy the fresh veg and fruit you could find all over the garden. In my teens we moved from a house with a field in the back to one with a proper (and quite fancy) garden, so the space allotted to veg & fruit was quite a bit smaller. My parents desperately tried to grow things for a while, but most stuff refused to ripen in the shade, so by now they're down to a few no-hassle berries, salad and herbs. I never really had a garden afterwards, so I stuck to keeping a few herbs on the windowsill until they died of neglect or overuse. Then, about two years ago, I ended up living in a nice old house with a decent sized garden.

The thing is, though, that it's a flower garden. With the exception of a few strawberries and an ancient cherry tree there's nothing you'd usually eat around. There's a rose garden, and some nice little flowerbeds, and a few trees, but it seems like the house, in its late 20s grandeur, turns up its nose at the mere notion of growing food on its grounds, like a lowly poor person who has to do such things. At least our neighbour downstairs – lovely, but ancient, rich & old aristocracy – seems to think so. She's usually excited when we talk about ideas for the garden, and while she didn't object to us planting stuff, it was clear it wasn't something she was overly happy about.

We'd been talking about it for a while, but lately “we could” turned into “we should”, so we picked a sunny spot, and today (finally!) headed out to buy some plants. Not a lot, really, but it's still quite exciting. Lots and lots of herbs (nomnom), and I caved & bought some stuff that's hard to find (fresh peas), or expensive (artichokes & chillies), or of a bad quality (tomatoes :( ) over here. Maybe I went a bit crazy. We both don't really know what will grow here, since we're from up north where it tends to be cold & rainy, but there definitely ought to be peas. We'll see about the rest.

So apparently I can get into gardening as long as it involves food. I don't really “get” flowers. I mean, its nice to have dots of colour in the garden, but there are easier ways to achieve that than nicely groomed flowerbeds. I guess my ideal garden would have a patch of grass for sitting-in-the-sun, and food, mostly berries, veg and herbs, maybe two nice fruit trees for a hammock. No flowers. Flowers are evil, they make me sneeze.

So I guess the obvious question would is, what would your ideal garden look like?

Vacation Bible School

First, sorry i'm late. I'm always taking some of Wednesday from Enika.

Anyway, it's summer vacation here and I volunteered to teach students in our church every morning for a week. I actually already teach 6th grade Sunday school so I am already familiar with some of the students.

I am also the team captain for one of the 4 teams. This posts extra pressure on me considering that I am responsible for the 1/4 of the attendees, which is about 50-60 kids from 1st-6th grade, during the games portion of the activities. Part of my duty is to choose players for each game. Our protocol is to make sure that all the kids participate in the games at least once everyday, but only those who are willing so we don't force them to play if they don't want to.  One morning a parent approached me and said that not all of the kids are given a turn to play. So I said that those kids didn't want to play and I also apologized and asked if she may point out the student , just in case I wasn't able to notice, so I can give him/her a chance. She decided not to be proactive and said "NO!! That's your job!! You're not doing your job!!"

Question for Tuesday/Early Wednesday: What would you have done if you were in my position?

Hear from you guys soon,

RUBEN IV

The good old hockey ... films and books

Good Morning Nerdy bunch it's Monday!

So this Saturday I did one thing besides think about exams, I went out for a drink with my lovely friends on Saturday night and (pause for dramatic effect) I watched the Mighty Ducks movie. Oh yes, what an amazing movie, that movie and the second one in that series plus the book Scrubs on Skates made me want to play hockey. Despite actually not liking sports and being massively uncoordinated, although I do skate relatively well. (It comes from starting when your three) What's really cool about the book is that it is actually based in Winnipeg and I may be distantly related to the author. Anyway that's just a little story of my Canadianess I though I'd share with you all.

Best Wishes,

Allysa

The Week When Friday Arrived On Sunday

This entry is late due to the fact that recently I’ve started to get tired a lot faster than before.

On Friday I spent my morning trying to contact fellow humanities students to see if they had any business at the university that day. I didn’t have any classes but I wanted to sign up for the hoodie of our archaeology organizaion, which I’ve been wanting for a while now but couldn’t afford before. Unfortunately, seemed like no one I knew had to go to uni on Friday, no one had classes or any business there at all. This meant I would have to go to uni just to sign my name on a piece of paper. This would be far less annoying if I didn’t far enough to either have to spend an hour walking one way or riding two busses. This simple trip would hence take at least an hour. Well, I did it anyways. Took me well over an hour but at least I managed to sign that paper.

After I got home, I got on my lap top, but for some reason it decided to shut down Windows. This is not the first time my lap top has been acting up. Mind you, this is a new lap top but it didn’t take 6 months till I had to take it to repair. Well, I got it back a couple of months ago and recently it’s started to act up again. It constantly required me to do start-up repairs. It was unusual but I thought nothing of it, computers act up every now and then. After the Windows shut-down it told me to restart my computer, I did so…only it wouldn’t start up. It required to repair start up once again, only this time when I hit enter to do so, it wouldn’t perform the task. I tried and tried and tried for hours and hours and it just wouldn’t work. I tried everything from system restore to diagnostics. I even called my uncle, who is a bit of a computer geek, but seemed like he was at a loss too. He suspects my hard drive’s a goner. I gave up on my lap top on Friday night. It wouldn’t run Windows at all, hence I couldn’t do a thing on it to try and repair possible problems. It’s days like these that make me wish I had gone into computer science instead of archaeology and anthropology. I have a really burning desire to understand these machines - I want to know how to program, code from scratch, and twiddle with tech stuff like those wonderful tech savvy nerds that can build a working computer in 8 minutes. Unfortunately, I’m nowhere near to that. I can’t tell anyone what could possibly be wrong. I think I’d do better at analyzing medical conditions than I would do trying to analyze what’s wrong with my god forsaken lap top!

I’m now using my old desk top till I get my lap top fixed (thank god for two-year-warranty). It’s a pretty useless slow piece of crap but I can get online on it. That’s the thing I want most out of a computer. I miss my wonderful lap top but hey, at least this piece of crap start up. Although, at first it wouldn’t, which was a point at which I was about to throw a hissy fit. This lovely computer suddenly claimed there was no operating system installed on it! It was like it had caught the stupid from my lap top! Luckily I got this bastard to work. Otherwise I’d be staring at the ceiling and sleeping all day. I’m not even kidding. That’s what I did when my lap top broke the last time and hadn’t realized my desk top would actually still work. I just stared at the ceiling, bored out of my mind and then napped a couple of times during the day. All of my entertainment and work is on the computer. I’m pretty dependent on these little machines. But I digress, after I got my old computer set up, I rushed to the bus stop.

My pal would be picking me up from the bus stop. We were going to our mutual friend’s and her boyfriend’s house-warming party. The two have known each other for only two months and already moved in together. In her speech at the party, my friend did mention that it was a short time, she knows it and she knows that people have been raising their eyebrows at it. Honestly, before this I hadn’t even really thought about it. Mind you, I’m always the pessimist (or realist, however you look at it) and I will think about the worst case scenarios. I’m the one shaking my head when a 19-year-old gets married or gets a baby before getting a steady income going, before getting through their education. But this time, I hadn’t even thought of how it was really too soon to move in together for this couple. I still don’t seem to think it was too early. I seem to be in a constant state of shrugging it off. It seems that like them, I’m going with the flow and seeing where the road will take them. I really don’t know why I’m not bothered with my pessimistic thoughts in this particular instance. Maybe it’s because I saw the change towards happiness the guy caused in my friend? Maybe it’s because I had already talked to the guy before? Maybe it’s because he seems like a nice guy? Eh, I don’t know. And honestly, I won’t even bother mulling over it too much. I’ll just be the depressing couples’s counsellor for someone else at another time and place. xD

The house-warming party itself was really fun. It was drinking, eating and talking. Sure there was music, but it was so quiet compared to the jolly conversations going around. There were quite a few of us who didn’t drink, which I was happy about. I don’t drink, and I’m always more comfortable talking to sober people. This is because when they are sober, I’m more familiar with their thought world, I know where they are at, I know they will have some recollection of our exchange. When a bunch of archaeologists, anthropologists and geologists get together, I’ve noticed there will always be rather interesting conversations afoot. I reckon the most interesting conversation of the evening was when I, a couple of students and my B.A. thesis counsellor (yes, we invite even the teacher types to parties, hehe) got into a discussion of determining gender (mind you, not sex, sex and gender are not synonyms) from archaeological remains and how much of it is guess work. The main point was that today, even professionals who have delved into gender archaeology, professionals who are feminists, seem to make interpretations based on 50’s idea of what a woman’s position and job was, not just 50’s but AMERICAN 50’s for some strange reason. While we’ve made great progress in equality, people still insist on using and fitting the mold of 50’s American housewife onto a body from, say, Finnish Iron Age. They will look and look and look for evidence in the body that they could use to prove this “fact”. The crude stereotypes of modern gay men are also projected onto these ancient remains on the side. One finds an ancient grave that seems like the grave of a woman, but woops, there’s a sword in there. A woman couldn’t have possibly had a sword in times we know nothing about, no Cherie, this must be a gay man! No. Just no. Wrong focus, in a wrong way, and wrong projections. I think my thesis counsellor said it rather well: “I’d sure hell like to know how you can tell what hole they liked to tap when looking at just their bones.”

*Cough* I won’t go too deep into that bucket of a rant. The evening went well, but something was left bothering me. We were describing our traits and discussing people’s conceptions of each other and I said that no matter how much I talk, people still describe me as the quiet type. Most often I really am but among friends I’m not. Yet, even these people who I’ve rambled a lot to describe me as a quiet one. Well I mentioned this and another person said to me that she thinks I’m rather annoyingly loud. Which made me go “huh?” in my mind. It kind of hurt me but I kind of wonder when and how have I been annoyingly loud. Yet again, this was a person who’s not really hung out with me besides that party and I did laugh loudly and speak loudly because, well, otherwise I wouldn’t have been heard and I was laughing loud because…we were talking about pretty hilarious stuff, like a whale species that has a 3 meter long penis, how that thing could crush an inflatable boat, and how that would be the most ridiculous death ever: getting swung by a giant penis. I tried to stop thinking about this description of me and my loudness but I really couldn’t after I got home. I just had me pondering. I really do not think I’m loud. I talk amongst friends, sure, but otherwise I’m quiet, painfully quiet and awkward. I guess I should just shrug this off.

As the evening progressed, some people started getting drunk and tipsy. One guy apparently started to try and grope the friend who gave me a lift to the party. This girl is the innocent type, the good girl, a romantic, so I don’t think she was particularly comfortable with this experience. And this guy is a guy who, during last year’s Halloween party, while drunk, also tried to grope and get it on with the friend whose house-warming party we were at – she was not happy about it either. Well, luckily our male friend was with this innocent girlfriend of mine and actually got the guy to back off. After the party three of us left together and discussed the incident outside. I made sure my gal pal was okay. I think her romanticism is slowly dying, which I find rather sad. During the same friend’s house-warming party a year ago, the girl’s ex made a pass at my friend while drunk. It was uncomfortable but the guy was hurt because he had gotten dumped. The guy did apologize to her the next day when he had sobered up. But my poor romantic gal pal told me how this was the first time someone of the opposite sex had shown interest in her, told her he liked her, and it happened in these crappy circumstances from a drunken ex of her friend’s. She had been imagining a more romantic instance; naturally she had wanted it to happen in bright circumstances and all. Now with this other drunken incidence, she has started to think that no one ever shows her interest in that way unless they are drunk. That’s just sad. And it kind of makes me want to slap the guy who started groping her even more. I’m not one for romantics really, intimacy kind of scares me, and I’ve pretty much decided I will not hunt for a guy (or a girl) - I will remain dateless for the rest of my life if it comes to that. But I still feel for my friend who does care about this stuff much more than I do.

Well, after the party I got home, around midnight. I immediately started to try and write this entry but I was very tired and my mind was buzzing with all the stimulation it had gotten during the party, all the thoughts and feelings. I just couldn’t get myself to write, no energy and the second I typed something I felt like I had thrown up on the screen and had to get rid of it. On Saturday I was still feeling rather blah about writing a blog entry I knew would end up being long and messy. I guess I didn’t get good enough sleep since my eyes were hurting like hell. Not to mention I had to conjure up the energy to go shopping for pants since my only pants broke on Thursday. Had to sew up another pair so I didn’t have to go out naked. Going to shop for pants has always been very troublesome for me. I’m a big woman, I’m not a stick like the clothing industry seems to think everyone these days is, or at least should be. It’s bit of a hell to shop for anything really. Not only are clothes tiny, they look ridiculous! I can’t help but to wonder where all the normal non-slutty and non-ridiculously-tight clothes have gone. I don’t even shop at stores usually filled with that sort of stuff, I shop at super markets! But even those are filled with that stuff - luckily at super markets there’s usually also at least some clothing for the bigger people. Few times I’ve also discovered normal looking shirts. *deep sigh* Clothing industry, the bane of my existence.

Well that’s about it for me this time around. What did you guys do during the weekend? What are you up to? How are you doing?

Originality?

I'm currently participating in BEDA (Blog Every Day in April). The funny thing about it was that I was watching some VEDA vlogs and I was like "Oh, I'll BLOG every day in April! I bet nobody's come up with THAT idea before! I'll call it BEDA!". I then found out that people have been doing BEDA for a couple of years now.

*SIGH*

Coming up with original ideas is harrrrrd. You get really excited about something you think of and then you realise: OH WAIT. SO-AND-SO HAS DONE IT ALREADY. You know how that is. It's so hard to ignore it, and you constantly compare your efforts to everyone who has gone before you, and you end up resenting the idea and thinking that it is 'unoriginal'.

The thing is, at this stage and at this time, there aren't really many ideas you can have that somebody else hasn't already had. It's been happening for years; the Internet just makes it easier for us to find out how unoriginal we are. It's so hard to silence that voice that says "just give up, you won't do it better". NO. SSSSSTOP IT.

Your particular version of an idea is original. YOU will create something unique and valuable. So don't let the fact that other people have done something before you get you down; strive to make something that is truly yours, and I know that it'll be appreciated :)

Good stories...

Sorry I missed last week! I'd had a lovely week full of annoyances, which was supposed to magically get better on Tuesday night, seeing as there were plans for awesome stuff; only, as these things go, the awesome turned out to be overshadowed by more annoyances, and I spent Wednesday being a little bundle of rage I didn't quite want to inflict on you guys.

I was supposed to roam the streets of Bratislava these days, but sadly things didn't work out and I'm stuck at home preparing for next term. At least hanging out at home means I'm cuddled up in my bed with good music blaring out of my headphones and a glass of red on my bedside table, instead of spending the night in an uncomfortable hostel bed surrounded by drunk tourists trying to recreate scenes from Eurotrip (well... possibly minus the incest).

Going back to Slovakia has been on my mind for the last five years or so, and by some weird whatever my favourite Norwegian live band (singing in Norwegian), and a Slovak band (singing in Slovak) I'm rather fond of played a gig together in Vienna, and I really wanted to go for the sheer linguistic mindfuckery (a second support act was in English), and could've easily hopped over the border afterwards and spend a few days in good ol' Bratislava drinking cheap Slovak vodka and pigging out on bryndzové pirohy (what could be better than pasta filled with mashed potatoes and stinky sheep milk cheese, drowned in fatty toppings?).

Admittedly, I left in late 2005 rather fed up with the place, although it had less to do with the country as a whole than with my particular situation. Maybe I should've known when I arrived and found out my predecessor had mysteriously disappeared. I was a volunteer at a youth centre, and since none of my colleagues spoke English (or German, or French) she was supposed to show me around etc. Yeah, that didn't work out. Instead I got a rather queasy gut feeling (not to mention friends & parents freaking out back home), and an endless hassle with rather incompetent policemen and the like. After three months we got a call from one of her friends saying she'd been so fed up with the place she decided not to take a flight back to Slovakia after a vacation, but bought a ticket home instead. In the meantime I spent two months without a functioning stove, still didn't have anyone to teach me Slovak and lived in a hotel that didn't allow me to have visitors in a town void of anyone my age. On the up side I had lovely colleagues, the kids were great and there was a lot about the place I enjoyed. But when my time was up I was more then ready to leave (and stay away a few years). I never regretted going though.

I wish I could explain my Slovakia, but lack the words to describe it adequately, and in enough depth to not reinforce stereotypes. When you move abroad you expect most stereotypes to turn out to be untrue, but I somehow always ended up in places where many were reality. My town in the states was European stereotypes of the US come alive; rural, conservative, run by extremely conservative white Christians despite being 80% Mexican, full of oversized cars, oversized people and oversized flags, full of fast food, teenage mothers and teenage binge drinking. My biology teacher apologized for having to teach evolution, my history teacher happily explained that Darwinism = social Darwinism, and I once almost got detention for saying “crap”. I usually throw in a disclaimer when I talk about the place, but I think most people here are aware that there are other towns in the states that are quite different.

Slovakia is more difficult, since hardly anyone knows anything about it (and a lot of people confuse it with Slovenia). It's somewhere there, out east, where all the places are rather run down and corrupt. In fact the Austrian border is only a stone's throw from the capital, and the west is quite comfortably hanging out with the rest of western Europe. Things are different (read: more conform to stereotypes) out east, but it'd be unfair to reduce the entire country to that. Every time I offhandedly throw out an anecdote, I feel the need to explain, but people tend to lose interest once the story is over. And really there isn't much I can say besides “it's different out west”, because I haven't actually spent more than a few weekends there, or to go into an extremely long rant about things I can't quite explain, least of all to people who've spent their entire life safely tucked away in western Europe or North America. To me it's such an amazing place, but it's hard to convey, especially since good stories rarely make good stories.

So I guess that's what I ought to do... find more good stories that are worth telling.

Photo Finish

As you all know, My commissary is opening tomorrow!

Yesterday we finished all the final touches for the construction of the kitchen so all that I need to do is to put all of the equipments in and arrange them in the most efficient way possible. This is the time to use skills we've been honing since we were young toddlers, spending all that time trying to fit the square piece in the circle hole.

Puzzles are all around us and it comes in different shapes and forms. Sometimes a circle piece can fit a hexagon hole but will leave the hexagon piece with nowhere to go. So here are some things I keep in mind when something that needs to be solved comes my way:

1. Stay calm.
2. Be aware of your time.
3. Lay all the pieces down.
4. Approach it one piece at a time.
5. Enjoy the finished product.

Tuesday's Questions: Do you like puzzles? Tell me about a puzzle you're trying to solve or just finished solving.

Hear from you guys soon,

RUBEN IV

Diamond tipped, with laser like precision

Hello Nerdy Bunch,

It's Monday!

I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with anything to post today. That is because I am extremely focused on what's going on in my life. I spent the last week and a half reading a ton of books for a final project which became the only thing I could think about. I took this weekend off to sleep and attempt to recuperate so that my eyelid would hopefully stop twitching (it pretty much has). Which bring me to today, right here right now, I just finished drawing out my exam week schedule and sticking it up on my wall. Basically I have to do a quick transition from focusing on one paper at a time to trying to study for 4 exams at once. Which is why i have now gone into full on obnoxious lady who can't talk or think about anything except exams mode. LUCKY YOU! This whole time of year springtime+examtime makes me antsy I want to be up and out and doing stuff and I want to be focused on my exams and my head feels like it's going to explode so of course I am going to take the only rational course of action go grocery shopping at least it will get me out of my chair. What I really want to be doing is hopping on a bus, or plane, or in a car or just putting on shoes and a backpack and getting out of here. To climb out of my cave where I have been hibernating for the past six months and just do something.

Can't wait to here more from all of you

Best Wishes

Allysa

Friday's Monday

This Friday hasn't been all that interesting since I didn't have classes today and I've pretty much just wasted time. I got a text message from a museum teaching assistant telling me to call her on Monday about a job, I tried to practice playing guitar and I worked on a sketch of a drawing I'm making for a friend of mine.

_{All rights reserved! Do not use, modify or reproduce
the image in any way without my written permission!}

(my doodle, needs some fixing in face area...it's obviously very much unfinished)

So, nothing much was up today, hence I'm going to tell you about my Monday and how two people managed to ruin it:

Today I woke up thinking that it would be a nice day. Seemed like nothing terrible would be able to happen, I just had one decent class (animal osteology) to attend, after all. Unfortunately I was wrong. Two hours after I woke up, I had to hop on a bus and that's when my day took a turn. And I got pissed off.

On the first bus (I need to change buses mid-way) the ride was fine, I was still hopped up on sun shine and cool air. No one even sat next to me, breaking my personal space, so I was comfortable. But when I got to the stop I was supposed to get off on, the driver wouldn't open the door! He only opened the door in the front half of the bus, which people use to get on.

Some other passengers and I just stared as the driver started to put on his jacket, figuring he'd push the button once he got his jacket on but no...he actually gets off the bus! and start chatting with another driver, who would be taking over for him, outside instead! IN NO HURRY, it seemed! Someone even called out to the driver before he got off but he didn't seem to notice, or care.

Mind you I'm always in a hurry when I have to make the switch to another bus and make it to university before the lecture starts, so I was not up for waiting till the other driver would get on and get her act together. After a while of confused and frustrated waiting, I got pissed off, stormed to the front of the bus and angrily hopped off ignoring what the other passengers did. I wanted to say something snippy to the drivers but I was too pissed off and in a hurry...I had already seen one of the buses that usually take me to uni leave the other bus stop across the street.

So I rushed to the crosswalk but the light was red for pedestrians. While I was waiting, another bus passed by. This particular crosswalk always pisses me off, the green light for cars is always insanely long, making the red for pedestrians annoyingly long. Then the green light for pedestrians is ridiculously short - I always feel bad for old people, who might actually have to take longer than ten seconds to get across...

Well, anyways, I finally get across and manage to catch another bus. I have 15 minutes to get to uni, if I really want to be on time. 15 minutes, plenty of time, I figure, so long as the bus leaves asap. But nooo. Some goddamn idiot, who is not mentally retarded but clearly has a rather low IQ (I suspect he had drunk himself stupid or used drugs, really looked and sounded like the type), starts digging the multiple pockets of his shabby pants, hoodie, and jacket for his ticket but can't find it. He asks the driver to wait and she does. He digs and digs till he gets on the bus... and digs some more. Then his friend, who had already got on, comes back to the front of the bus because the idiot asked him where he put the tickets. The pal says that he put them in his pocket....the guy digs and digs and can't find it. After what seemed like forever he finally comes to terms with the fact that he won't find them, so he buys a ticket for him and his pal while blabbering like a moron.

At this point I have to mention this was the kind of an idiot that doesn't seem to know how to control his voice volume...AND his voice was low and gravelly making it unbearable and unavoidable to listen to him, though I think the content of his ramblings was the thing that made him more unbearable to listen to.

Anyways, after buying a ticket, he starts walking to the back of the bus and growls with his gravelly voice that "Ni***rs have it so much easier" as if black people here don't have to pay for a ticket or something (which they do, even if they don't know Finnish). The whole trip I can hear his low, loud, gravelly blabbering and my urge to murder someone keeps rising. Then, in the middle of the trip, he walks up to the driver because he found his goddamn ticket. He tries to get his money back from the new tickets he purchased, but the driver cannot reverse a transaction so late. They debate over it for a little while and then he starts walking back. As he's right next to me, he suddenly loudly growls "FUCK" in English. I was not pleased to have a sudden loud noise right next to my ear. I wanted to get up and punch him right in the face and then bash his idiotic face against the floor till he regretted the day he was born.

And that is how my nice day was ruined. It only took one driver and one low-IQ jackass.