Living in a sauna...

This week went by incredibly quickly, mostly because it's been so insanely hot the last few days I barely got anything done. (Okay, not that hot by international standards, but that hot by humid, German, no air-conditioner, not-used-to-it, living-on-the-top-floor-of-old-badly-isolated-building standards) It finally started raining an hour or so ago, so hopefully I'll catch a decent night of sleep. Saunas are not a good place to sleep in ;)

The worst part is that the heat fucks with my eating patterns. I eat (a small) breakfast when it's still reasonably cool, and then have to force myself to even eat fruit or something else "summery" until it cools down in the evening. And while that might be an effective way to get rid of winter chub, it's not exactly healthy (considering I eat massive carby dinners, possibly scratch the chub-loss aspect ;) ). So basically my body is sulking half the day because it doesn't get enough energy (and it's hot), and then turns into a hyperactive six-year-old on candy once it's pumped up on rice & veg, and that six-year-old really doesn't want to go to sleep. That all the grocery stores seem to be continuously out of chillies and salad doesn't help. *sigh

Tomorrow I get to spend two hours in a tiny lecture hall with a giant lecture hall with 150 students and no air conditioning. My uni chose a great time to remodel the main lecture building. Woot.

To jump on the QOTD bandwagon, What do you eat when it's bloody hot outside?

OPM

There are quite a bit of famous international Filipino singers but i'm not sure that they write their own music. And honestly I don't listen to any OPM (Original Pinoy Music) so I have no Idea what to put here. But I have been to a few gigs and here are the bands that I actually enjoyed enough to remember their names.

Urbandub is from Cebu which is another metropolitan island here in the Philippines. This band is actually pretty famous here in our country. I saw this band because I was invited by my friend to watch their gig and they opened for this band.

Here is another band that I heard and actually bought an album of. Their music is just so easy to listen to and they add a little bit of the filipino sound to their music. The Rinka Collective. This isn't my favorite song of theirs but I couldn't find the one I liked in youtube.

Here's another musician who adds a bit of our native sound to her music. Finally someone who sings in our native tongue. Cynthia Alexander is one of the few current folk singers we have here in the Philippines. I love to watch her perform. The album version doesn't give justice to her live performances.

I never actually leisurely listen to any of these songs but  after watching them live, if they had a gig or concert, I would actually go out of my way to watch them.

QOTD: do you guys sing or play any instruments?

Hear from you guys soon

RUBENIV

Good "morning" Nerdy Bunch it's Monday!

So I don't know what you know about Canadian music. It is entirely possible that your idea of Canadian music is that is all Celine all the time.

NOT TRUE my friends, there is also Nickleback and Avril Lavigne. sigh.

To be fair there are also some big name classic rockers who are from Canada, like The Guess Who and Rush.

Also Neil Young who I am very distantly related to. None of those are really artists I listen to with the exception of the above song which will inexplicably get stuck in my head on a regular basis.

So who do I listen to that's Canadian? Well I listened to the Bare Naked Ladies quite a bit whe I was younger and this song still makes me smile.

I don't love the Arcade Fire like some of my friends do but I think they are worth mentioning. This spring my friend threw a graduation party. When this song came on everyone (minus me and like four other people) came down to her living room and sang along to it. It was actually super creepy.

This song has the tendancy to get stuck in my head whenever I don't want to get up in the morning.

The Wooden Sky are from Toronto and I love the sort of slow folky music the play. I also have a lot of good memories tied up with their album "If I don't come home you'll know I'm gone" so here is a couple of songs by them. I would just post one but I couldn't decide.

This is a little sample of some Canadian music. It is limited to stuff I actually listen to so it's not the most broad sample, I could have hunted down something french, or celtic influenced from the East Coast but let's face it I don't really listen to that stuff and I don't want this blog to become a Mask of Lies.

I'm loving listening to all the diffent music being posted. Misspronounced, hi good to hear from you again *waves*. that is all.

Best Wishes,

Allysa

*pokes head out from under mountain of paper*

Ohai.

So, I feel terrible for not keeping up with the blogs; life, both scholastic and personal, has been rather hectic in the past month or so and I have just not had the inspiration, nor the inclination, to write a post. Add that to the bout of flu that hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks as soon as my exam finished, plus the fact that the Game of Thrones books that just arrived in the mail are beckoning, and you've got a recipe for uber procrastination. Anyway, the point is that I'm here and am now writing a post :D


So, music in my home country. Australia has pretty strong musical influences from England and America; we do have a pretty good bunch of home-grown artists who have been successful internationally (Kylie Minogue, AC/DC, etc). But most of you will know about those guys already, so I'm going to tell you about the great indigenous music that we have here.

I'll start with the two great Aboriginal rock bands from the 90s: Warumpi Band and Yothu Yindi. Warumpi Band actually did the original version of "My Island Home", made more famous by Christine Anu.

Bet you didn't know that!

Yothu Yindi were a little less pop, a little more rock, and their indigenous roots were more pronounced. They were a little more political, too.

More traditionally, you probably know about the more famous indigenous musical instrument, the didgeridoo. Though I don't listen to it much, I like the tone and the sounds that can be produced from what is ostensibly a long hollow stick.

The level of musical and rhythmic skill involved in playing the didgeridoo is astounding. It requires mastery of circular breathing (basically, producing one long and unbroken note by a crazily hard breathing technique) and rhythm, as well as being able to produce vocal tones while creating the vibrations through the actual instrument. It'd be like asking a trumpet player to hum a completely different tune while playing.

Anyway, that's enough from me; hope I entertained/educated you guys at least a little. See you 'round! :3

Ze Boogie Times

Much like Enika, I don’t really like many of the musical performers of my country. A large portion of it, especially the so called summer hits, is such utter bull crap that I sometimes wish I could cut my ears off with a spoon and feed them to a monkey. You'd think that was an exaggeration but the more I think about it, the more possible the scenario seems. However, there are some performers I do have a soft spot for - thank sanity/deity of choice.

One of those artists is Nightwish. The band that basically created the so called operatic symphonic metal genre. I listened to them all the time before the lead singer of the original Nightwish, Tarja Turunen, was kicked off the band. Haven't listened to the new one after I realized how much lousier it is without Turunen. I don't think there is even comparison between the new vocalist and her. I could rant about this for a long time but I think I will leave that out and just link to some videos already:

Sleeping Sun - Nightwish | Over The Hills And Far Away (cover) - Nightwish

Oh god, watching those sent me to such a nostalgia trip. Both of them are slightly bad quality but I couldn't really find better ones so, eh.

Another artist I have loved for a long time is Kaija Koo. I practically grew listening to her music so no wonder really.

What she is often categorized in is a genre we call iskelmä. What it's described as in wikipedia is pop-like music directed to older people (German equivalent according to wiki is schlager), often telling about love and life. I suppose this is a rather fitting description, though rather vague and doesn't really cover everything. Some of Kaija Koo's songs do fit in this definition of the category but some do cross over to pop and even to soft rock. I reckon she's in iskelmä category because her most well known song, Kuka keksi rakkauden (Who Invented Love), is rather iskelmä-ish: easy listening, tells about love etc. Here are a couple of her older songs:

Kuka keksi rakkauden - Kaija Koo | Tuulikello (Wind chime) - Kaija Koo

It's likely she sounds crappy in the ears of many but hey, I have an undying love for her stuff. The nostalgia alone is keeping me glued onto her. She still makes new stuff, which I'm glad of. Say what you will about her songs and music but her voice is awesome.

The last performer group I'm going to list is Apocalyptica, which is definitely among my favorites. They are a group of cello players who, after gaining a background in classical music, pretty much began their career by playing Metallica covers (My favorite out of those is their cover of Nothing Else Matters).

I even went to their concert not too long ago (Early last year). They were performing in the city I live in and the tickets were cheap, so I decided to buy them for mom and I. It was a good concert, not too many people in the audience, and they introduced music from their new album.

Nothing Else Matters (cover) - Apocalyptica | I Don't Care - Apocalyptica

They've collaborated with a large variety of Finnish and international artists, from HIM to the singer of Flyleaf, so they do have a lot of variation in what sort of pieces they make. Most of the time, however, I think they are at their best when they are working on their own. What can I say? I love instrumental music and cello is one of the most beautiful instruments there is, in my humble opinion.

I think that's enough of this stuff. I could mention a couple of others but meh, I reckon this is sufficient as it is. :D

(I figure I should try out that QOTD Ruben keeps doing so: What was your favorite lullaby or children's song when you were little? I think mine was Tuu tuu tupakkarulla - which I can't find a good version of but it was sung to this traditional Kalevala melody- or possibly Hyvin hiljaa)

World Music Day Week.

While I was checking twitter for the umpteenth time today (yesterday...), procrastinating trying to come up with a theme for this week, I found out that today (yesterday...) is World Music Day. So I thought "ah well, that's a theme there" and figured we could all share some music from our countries. Great idea, wasn't it?

Only then I realized that I don't actually listen to German music. I could spontaneously name at least seven countries on three continents whose musical output I like and consume more than Germany's. Our music scene is sadly overrun by sleep-inducing "indie" bands, who I can't get into no matter how good the lyrics are. There are a few mediocre rock bands, and mediocre other bands, but very few that suite my (admittedly somewhat odd) taste, and even fewer I'd actually recommend to others.

But ah well, here goes. Three current(ish) German bands I actually listen to.

To reaffirm stereotypes, let's start with a Lederhosen-wearing brass band ;). Considering I'm not from Lederhosen-country, and hence somewhat despise those stereotypes, you can bet these guys are really good for me to include them :P. I think they're all classically trained, but play everything from updated Bavarian brass, to Balkan, to reggae (as Oly Popoly and the Holy Moly Fistfucking Band, playing songs like "I like the battyman", because they're awesome), to rock to... other stuff. They also happen to be hilarious.

LaBrassBanda - Des Konnst Glam

To crush stereotypes, Dancehall (or variations thereof) is a huge over here, mostly thanks to these guys. They have a knack for writing songs you just can't not dance to (I've just had a little bedroom dance party while looking for videos).

Seeed - Music Monks

And finally my favourite, sadly incredibly unsuccessful, singer, Thom.. He was the frontman of one of the best German rock bands of the 90s, but his solo efforts never quite took off (I think he's mostly doing soundtrack work nowadays). I stumbled over him 'cause I got the CD for teh cheap and the cover looked like I might like the music. It ended up being completely different than what I had expected, but it is still one of the most mesmerizing albums I ever encountered.

Thom. - Love is Real (with a video that drives home just how quickly topical content becomes outdated)

thom. - Love Is Real on MUZU.

... and that gives you an entirely wrong picture of what kind of music I listen to, but...

ANYWAYS. Your turn, share a few songs from your country with us, will you? (Preferably stuff you listen to, not stuff you feel like you ought to recommend).

What to do?!?

Hi guys...

I have a dilemma. What do you do when you know someone likes you but you don't like them back?

I've never thought that I would be in the position of the prey (sorry but this may come out as a double standard) but I am feeling really trapped and spent that the predator might just bite me in the neck and swallow me whole.

I just want this week to be done and over with.

Hear from you guys soon

RUBEN IV

Lurking on the Internets

Good Morning Nerdy Bunch, It's Monday!

I bet you missed that cheery exclamation every Monday morning. It's lovely to be back and be able to read you posts. I'm glad to see we are doing some themes and I like the set up described in Your Pants. Now onto My Internet Life.

---

I am a lurker, I lurk around forums and I lurk around blogs. Aside from this blog I don't really interact with people on the internet. I use the internet as an entertainment and inspiration machine.For entertainment I; watch TV shows, movies and YouTube videos, read comics and stories, and play games.For inspiration I; read blogs and look up crafts and art (also spend way to much time on tumblr.)

I do have, and use email, for the obvious things. My Facebook friends are all people I've had face to face conversations with. A big part of why I keep the 'real' me off the internet is because i'm pretty paranoid about identity theft and stalkers. Also I am more honest in some ways online. Some of the opinions I share on the internet are ones that I don't share IRL. So I don't necisarily want my IRL friends and my family reading them. I'm much more comfortable being nerdy online, I don't mind sharing my nerdy and slightly embarrassing hobbies with you guys and the anonymous masses but with people who I spend a lot of time with... not so good.

The other reason is because keeping up a presence on a bunch of different internet sites takes a considerable amount of work and people on the internet can be pretty negative. I'm pretty intentional about keeping people who want to be jerks out of my head. At one point in time I was active on some forums but I've always been someone who would rather read content than post it. So that describes my internet life.

---

News time;

I'm back and posting. (duh)

I have reinvigorated my personal blog where posts that are to personal or political for this blog will go. http://picklivingflowers.blogspot.com/

Do you guys have personal blogs?

That is all.

Best wishes,

Allysa

a piratey soul full of vinegar and stuff

Real life and online. Usually people divide those two into clear separate boxes, like the two had very little to do with each other, like internet was the land of fairy-tales and wonder while real life was, well, real. I don’t really do that, despite the fact that I recognize that there is a border between the on-line life and so called real life. Essentially, I consider on-line life to be a part of the so called real life, it‘s a part I like to keep some people out of.

Despite the fact that it is easier to cheat on your identity on-line, the people you interact with are still real - unless you actually got fooled by some of those crummy chat bots. They live, breathe, they have emotions, histories and reasons for why they act the way they act, why they say the things they say. On-line you often act in a social environment. So the way I see it, you are not being anti-social; you interact with other people - often without seeing their faces, which is not really that different from talking on the phone or writing a letter. Other people are involved and you are not alone. The way I see it, it indeed is a form of “real life” (a term which I feel the need to keep within quotation marks, much like enika).

The reason for the way I think is probably that I’ve come to consider internet my main way of social interaction with other people. A lot of my best friends I got to know via internet (though not by simply walking up to them and asking if they want to be my friend...I actually got to know them like a normal person) and it’s the way I communicate with most of my “real life” friends too when I can. It’s easy and cheap. Then there are the perks of not having to show your appearance - you can be as shabby as you want, you could be nude for all they care. It's quite liberating and convenient. Usually upon meeting a new person, the first judgement comes through observing their appearance - you create a prejudice based on it. On-line, this factor is removed if you choose to do so and you take a short cut into personality and behaviour. Hence for many people it is easier to get to know others via on-line methods. I know it is for me. Plus I get to be in my underwear all day and be social at the same time (I just made myself laugh with this line - you'll understand if you have gutter goggles on).

So, what do I actually do on-line? I don’t think I will go through everything I do but mainly I chat with other people. I quite enjoy it. While I’m insecure to the point of paranoid when meeting face to face, I’m more relaxed and open when writing on-line. I’ve come to realize that I’m far wittier most of the time, which is definitely a sign of me being more comfortable.

I’m also heavily involved in forums, a variety of them. I’ve maintained and helped maintaining several. These days I’m mostly involved in post-by-post or play-by-post forum role-playing games (often referred to as RP or RPG forums) or forums related to them ( RP resource and discussion forums). It’s like acting in text form, or writing a collaborative story. You have a setting, or a plot, and you have your created character or characters. You play as them, so you write from their view point and other people in the game do the same with their characters.

Here’s a quick example:

Player 1: The floor of the old house creaked as John snuck in. He blinked as he peered in. The thick, worn curtains were closed and it was so dark that he had to blink over and over again just to make out the figures of the nearest furniture. “Cassie? Are you here?” He whispered with his voice quivering slightly. John took a careful step towards the living room, allowing the door to shut behind him. “Cassie?”

Player 2: Cassie slouched on a moth-bitten arm chair with an apathetic expression on her usually worry-ridden face. She had come to the conclusion that a particular problem would not go away and she could not do a thing about it. All she could do was close the curtains and tend to her looming migraine. Suddenly she heard a creak. Her now alert eyes darted around in the dark, looking for what ever it was that had broken the silence. That was when she heard a feeble voice call for her from the direction of the hallway. “Shut up and get in.” She said with a flat tone. “Did you get the good stuff? I think Rowland is hungry again.” A faint smile rose onto her lips at the mention of Rowland.

So, there’s that and then there are the art circles, which I try to be involved in as much as possible. It’s enjoyable and possibly beneficial financially since I do try to get commissions (orders for art) every now and then. The more the merrier, since I’m not in a financially good situation. I don’t have my own official portfolio set up just yet (I had one, using deviant art‘s new portfolio feature, but I scrapped it because of all its ridiculous inhibitions and bugs). I have designed it, actually several times over, but since I’m not all that good at coding, a friend of mine is supposed to start coding it any day now. She’s also gracious enough to offer me web hosting, which is just plain excellent for me. I, in return, make art for her stories and so on.

*Cough* I'm not really going to discuss certain piratey things but they are definitely there too.

So, yeah, that was a peek at my internet life. I reckon that’s enough about it for now. While I could probably write a novel on this subject, I doubt anyone would want to spend days reading it. xD

My internet life (creative title is creative)

I don't even know what to say about my internet life. It's just sort of always been there, parallel to "real" life (oh how I hate that expression). I think we got internet when I was about thirteen, and I found fandoms and penpal sites pretty much right away. I even had the oh-so-scary older male penpal friend overseas, who I think really freaked out my parents, but who, from all I can tell, was actually a quite decent guy, and it wasn't really his fault I'd claimed to be 21 'cause people my age tended to annoy the hell out of me xD. He got me into literature again, after I'd stopped reading entirely, mostly thanks to a truly awful teacher. Considering that I study literature now I can't quite help but consider him a positive influence on my life.

So yeah, I started early, and I started right away to spend a little more time online than many people would consider normal. But growing up in a tiny, quite old-fashioned place it was a way to get out.

Recently my way of socialising on the internet has changed though. A lot of my internet friendships only exist on twitter anymore - possibly because do most of my online stuff on my iPod nowadays, where chats don't work and writing more than 140 characters is kind of a bitch. I'm actually trying to get myself to work on my computer more just to get more involved.

I wouldn't say the internet is detached from "real" life for me, but I definitely try to keep "real" and "online" apart on the net. At first I felt extremely queasy about friending online friends on facebook. My RL friends don't really know what I get up to online, most of my online friends know very few "hard" facts about my "real" life. But in the end that's actually turning into a problem for me, because with the kind of jobs I'm looking into you need a network, and you need an online presence, and really a well-kept not-too-personal blog, for example, would look quite good on my CV. But I'm quite freaked out about attaching my real name (or my face!) to anything on the internet (it doesn't help that my parents still attempt to spy on me online).

(Sorry about the rambliness.)

Internet Life

The video really shows how ridiculous socializing in the internet can be

It is my day to suggest a theme for this weeks blog and I would like to know more about everyone's internet life.

Last year was the most active I have been, because i'm currently too busy to really sit down and do anything social network-y. In fact I feel like I made good friends here in the internet and actually met one of them in person during one of my vacations. But when do they exactly become IRL Friends as suppose to just people you sometimes interact with in the internet?

Internet for me is extremely detached to what is real. So you really don't have a gauge in terms of what is True or False. But meeting my friend in person really made it a bit more personal. In fact my friend is visiting me and will be arriving this coming friday.

QOTD: 

have you met anyone in person that you've met through the internet?

hear from you guys soon

RUBENIV

Mini post

This is just to say Hi, I'm back. I've been trying to write an actual post for a day now and can't do it so you are getting this very short post. I should never take blog breaks again, I am finding it so hard to start up again.

Best Wishes

Allysa

song of costello

I started work on Tuesday. I work as an excavator for the National Board of Antiquities at an archaeological site. The site is in a forest next to a place where they dig for sand for one reason or another. We're digging what we're estimating to be a prehistoric site and we expect very few findings beyond some quartz left from prehistoric people carving things out of them. Maybe some burnt rock here and there. I'm going to be working there till the beginning of July.

Anyways... I'm fairly sure the seventh circle of hell has black flies and Dante just forgot to mention this. When I dig, all I can hear in my mind is the lyrics: "This is hell, this is hell, I am sorry to tell you, it never gets better or worse".

On the day we started work, a heat wave began in the country. So it's around +30C ( 86F) or warmer all day long and we have 8 and a half hour long days. It's hell when you are doing physically straining work outside under the sun, with barely any shade. Alone this actually wouldn't be so bad (pretty bad, but I think I'd survive somehow). What makes it hell are the god damn bugs, namely black flies.

We each always end up with a big swarm of black flies around us (if you don't know what black flies are: they are teeny tiny flies that like to swarm. They bite and it usually hurts since, unlike mosquitoes, they actually bite off a piece of skin. So you end up bleeding and the bite gets swollen and itchy. They will search for places with thin skin and they will do anything to get there). We have repellent that should work on them but apparently they are hungry enough to ignore it almost completely, no matter how much you use it. At one point, I swear they only got excited about it! So there I am, covered in sticky and icky smelling repellent and it does nothing (not gonna stop using it though - it works for a very short time sometimes...I need that time. And I might have seen a couple of them die while trying to eat the repellent covered skin).

The bugs are driving everyone nuts. It's hard to try and eat, they get into your nose when you breathe and they get at your eyes. My friend swung an axe at herself in a desperate attempt to get rid of some of the flies! Yes, with the sharp end, yes she actually hit herself with it. Yes she's okay ... she later proceeded to hit herself on the head with a bucket trying to do the same thing. My other pal almost did the same with a trowel.

And the other night, before falling asleep, several people actually hallucinated a swarm of them around their heads! I was one of them. I almost started swatting them with my hands but then I realized it was a hallucination. And while yesterday I was not hallucinating them, I still felt like flailing my hand around to get rid of them. I swear they will haunt me in my dreams for weeks, I'm fairly sure since I still have a lot of time to spend at the site. Wednesday a large portion of both of my arms were swollen because of the bites.

I HATE THOSE GODDAMN BUGS! AND THE HEAT! DEAR LORD THE HEAT!
HEAT AND BUGS AND PHYSICAL LABOUR.

I'm fairly sure that if anything could drive me
into becoming a psycho killer, it's the black flies.

I really miss winter. I am not a summer person. A week of +30C (86F) is slowly but surely killing me. I'm just ridiculously happy it's Friday and I have the weekend off. I get to rest my aching muscles, I get to let my sun burns heal properly and NO BLACK FLIES for a while!

Birthday Eulogy

Sorry for not being bale to blog last Tuesday. My week has been full of ups and downs. Sadly the downs have greatly outweighed the ups.

My birthday, last Wednesday, was the interment of my grandmother. Just to give you a background, wakes here lasts 5-7 days. Enough time for people far away to come and view the dead. Being one of the youngest grandchild it was weird, although an honor, to be asked to do the eulogy for our side of the family considering the fact that I have the least amount of time spent with my grandmother. But I took it on because the passion we share helped shape me to who I am now.

My grandmother has aways the in charge of the food. Specially during "fiesta" she would be one of the "Fiesta Hermana" (sister in Spanish) and would be one of the few houses in charge of feeding the whole town. I'd love to think that I got my love for everything delicious from her.

QOTD: What is something you share with your grandparents?

Hear from you soon

Ruben IV

How to not ruin tzatziki

I really had blogging on my schedule for yesterday, but had somewhat underestimated how long cleaning the kitchen would take. As in clean. As in we started at 1pm and were done by midnight. But now it's shiny (well... as shiny as a dingy old kitchen gets), and there's space, and there's no longer any food that expired five years ago. Afterwards we ordered some Greek food, which turned out surprisingly nice for a delivery service... with one exception: there was bloody mayonnaise in the tzatziki. For some reason Greek restaurants in Germany (which there are loads of) as a rule serve really awful tzatziki, with ingredients that shouldn't really come anywhere near it (mayonnaise!). I think it's one of those recipes that are just too simple, so that people think they need to refine it by adding more stuff... I've met actual Greek people from Greece that use mayonnaise (blegh), American recipes often feature sour cream, and I'm sure there are different variances elsewhere. This is the basic four-ingredient recipe that's made me friends at every potluck for the last fifteen years :P

Tzatziki

- Greek/Turkish/strained yoghurt (the 10% fat kind)

- cucumber

- fresh dill or parsley or mint (dill is the most traditional, but I actually prefer/only ever use parsley)

- 1 clove garlic

- salt & pepper

Put yoghurt in bowl. Press garlic into it (or mince it finely). Add a little salt & pepper. Wash cucumber (don't peel, don't deseed), cut some thin slices (~1mm). Stack a few slices and cut them into ~2mm sticks, then half them, you don't want cucumber nunchucks. Add them to yoghurt. Chop parsley, mix everything. DONE.

Grating the cucumbers will make them lose water too easily (--> soggy tzatziki). You can add a splash of olive oil or lemon juice, but really it's just fine without.

If you can't get Greek yoghurt (10% fat) you can strain it yourself. (I guess there are decent substitutes, but the only one I know of involves a dairy product that seems to only exist in German-speaking countries.). Real traditional Greek yoghurt is made from sheep (or goat) milk, which I guess would make this even better, but sadly I've never been able to find any to actually try it