Rant #596, Stardate 1524.562.6

The mystery has been unveiled. It was the neighbour after all, hammering the whole flat down. The bathroom tiles, the living-room wooden floor, everything is gone. No wonder it’s taken him so long (he was still banging up until two hours ago or so). One would expect some serious sledge-hammer business for that kind of work, but I guess the nut cracker seemed more appropriate.

Getting that out of the way, I thought I might write about what happened yesterday at lunch and what got me so edgy in the first place. I was just telling someone about it and I reckon I’ve chilled enough to write it in peace. I don’t think I overreacted, but I think I could’ve handled it better. Or different. Or both.

So, what you need to know is that I’ve been at university for ages. Starting off with German and Linguistics and taking Swedish as a minor in the meantime, I ditched German (seriously creepy psycho professors) and took Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology. I like what I’m studying and I find most of it quite interesting.

Nevertheless, life takes its own toll and direction and sometimes one’s forced to press the pause button. Unfortunately, not everyone is always keen on asking what one’s been doing, but rather choose the path of blissful ignorance and with it, almost necessarily, a fair amount of prejudice. If I tell you I’m in my tenth year, I’m quite sure your first thought would be yikes! Yeah, I think the same, no worries about that.

Anyway, I won’t go an about why it’s taking me so long, but I’ll just say I’m two exams away, with my final thesis already approved and all. The problem is that not everyone in my family takes is the same way I do. I mean, I can’t blame them, since I really should’ve taken care of it ages ago, but I sure as hell can’t bite my hand off now, can I?

My older brother has finished business and is a director in a major firm. My sister finished languages and is working in a big construction firm. And me?

I suck:
- I don’t have a degree yet
- I’m not engaged or in an already serious relationship
- I don’t have a flat of my own (and a thirty-year-long loan from the bank)
- I don’t have a steady job yet (tutoring, writing, editing, translating and such doesn’t really count around here much)
- I’m a complete outcast since I don’t stare at the news and gossip around
- I like travelling (which makes me a complete lunatic not appreciative of his home land)
- I go out as much as I can and enjoy open-air parties, walking through the forest and just sitting in the grass (what a weirdo)
- I’m a pretty short-fuse type of person (and people tend to cope with that even harder than I can)
I suck.

The list goes on and on (I could really pull off BagLady’s Ten Things, haha), but I won’t prolong it any further. It just boils down to what’s important for yesterday’s event and it boils down to one fact. I suck.

When you suck, the problem is no one really gives a crap about what you say. Or what you think. This is in fact fine by me, since I still didn’t seem to manage the better-keep-your-mouth-shut routine quite yet. Discussions usually end up with someone – usually me – pissed off and annoyed.

But when it doesn’t even come to the discussion, I just feel like someone had just fast forwarded, seemingly clairvoyant and already presuming what I had to say. Well, this is what happens often when my brother is around. Geez, I so don’t want to turn this into a Dear-Oprah rant (I don’t even watch TV), but it might sound like one.

I’ll try to make it short:
- my brother is the oldest and therefore obviously the favourite
- my sister is the only girl, so that’s hear deal
- i’m the last and left out there, stranded and left alone without a life
- whatever my brother and sister do is fine
- whatever i do is a semi-revolution, rebellion against everything dear to them and a step away from a train wreck

In fact I’m not really that bad – it’s just that I’m interested in some things that they aren’t and I’m a bit off the mainstream, so I’m considered weird. Here comes the topic. It’s linguistics.

I don’t know why, but people get goose bumps when they start talking about the language. Maybe it’s the errors that we all make on the daily basis, I’m not sure. But it’s really not a really popular topic, believe me. My folks even appreciate the whole ethnology story, learning about cultures, preserving our old customs and stuff. But when it comes to language, everyone takes a step back.

It’s not that I bite. I’ve learned not to even think about starting the topic. It’s like talking to people who champ. You can train yourself to ignore it or leave the room. There’s no making it right. I suck at that and usually take a platter and go away. Actually, people find it very weird that I eat standing up. They say that’s why I’m so thin. Well, that’s what keeps me sane.

So, my whole family meets up for lunch on Sundays and it’s already started by the time I enter the dining room. I’m not late, but they just didn’t wait for me. Figures. I say hello to my nieces (8 and 6 years old and the nine-month-old munchkin) and play with the little one a bit. She’s walking around, so she needs to be watched over.

She stares at me with this look that you only see on small kids. She knows my face and she’s examining it like it’s a map. And she can’t seem to get used to my laugh. I have a really weird, loud, tractor-like laugh. She’s not scared; she just can’t seem to work out the whole machinery behind that sound coming out of my mouth.

So I sit down on the floor next to her and I talk to her. Under my breath. I’m not the type that goo-goo-gah-gahs kids, so I simply talk to her. She’s doing her own business, playing with a piggy bank, but carefully leaning on my bended knee. She isn’t so stabile yet and she knows it. Now, I’m in a pretty messed up state: I’m scared and edgy and tired and hopeless and no one is looking up from their plate.

As if she read my thoughts, the kiddo drops the piggy bank, catches my eye and gives me this peaceful but intense look, as if to tell me it will all be OK. I swear, sometimes I have the feeling like she can relate to what’s going on in my head. Now I regret storming out because I only spent two minutes with her in the end.

Now that this came back to my mind, I find the whole fuss so irrelevant. I don’t even see the point of writing further, but I might as well finish it since it’ll come back to my mind eventually.

After my first bite at the table (since I had my soup standing up in the kitchen) my sister-in-law asks me about something which is not only a bit, but completely into the language sphere. My family members lift their heads like gazelles at the water trough sensing danger. I'm a tiny colourful bird on top of a rhino, trying to get some minerals from the mud behind its ears. I know this is a dangerous ground, but fuck – I'm riding a rhino!

I don't know what bothers people so much about talking about errors in speech. I mean, there's so many different languages and there's so many people and so many rules, but everyone's so sensitive about it. Talking about the world order, war crimes, recent disasters or someone's placenta are no uncommon topics at the table, but mention grammar or spelling and everyone will instantly put up a force field.

So I do my best and try to envelop it in a really short and acceptable answer in order to wrap it up as soon as possible, but the avalanche has already started. I know I'll be the one thrown off the mountain, but there's no point in pushing someone in front of me either.

We talk about some common errors (something like your and you're in English) and by we I mean my sis-in-law and me. She’s the only one who talks to me normally, listens to me and is indeed interested in a topic she asks me about. My bother cringes, because if it's not business management or soccer, he's out. Like my dad. My sister is avoiding the whole story, because she knows she's as edgy as me, but at least she has a way out as soon as the lunch finishes. My mum is blissfully chewing her mouthful, acting like she doesn’t see the gigantic tsunami in front of us.

So my sis-in-law and me’re talking onwards and by the time I’m on my second bite, the whole bunch has already hijacked the whole conversation. Damn.

Don’t you dare tell us how to speak. We know our language and you can say what you want. We’re older and we know better. Where did you get the nerve...?

At this time I place an imaginary mouse trap over four of my fingers and hope there’s a meteorite coming our direction. Since it’s my profession, I try to point out (with the calmest voice ever) that it’s simply grammar and spelling and that I’m trying to lead a conversation here.

So, they’re yelling, I can’t get a word out of my mouth and my sis-in-law is slowly aware of the fact that she could’ve chosen a better timing – purely for her sake. In a family where offspring gets muffled down, she’s smart enough to know she doesn’t have a chance. Not with my whole family in one corner of the ring. Well, not my mum – she’s still blissfully chewing.

I’m not going into details of the football-field debate that followed (it’s just pointless), but before my third bite I just got up and left the table. My brother made what he obviously thought was a funny remark and I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I hope one day I win a Nobel Prize or marry the princess of Jordan or something – and then I’ll show him. Haha, I’m such a dork.

Anyway, I got up and left the room. He didn’t come by to say bye on the way downstairs. Nor did my sister. Nor my parents. I’m quite sure my sis-in-law would’ve, but I get why she didn’t completely.

I understand them. They think I’m too edgy, that I have a short fuse, that I’m impatient and that I can’t shut up. Umm, excuse me, but don’t they think I know that?! They’re quite much the same – or even worse; not willing to pay attention, let alone to listen. I’m aware of the fact that I’m fucked up and hard to deal with, but at least I don’t think I’m perfect. I guess they are.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure they just shook their heads, made another bad joke and finished their tasty lunch. It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s just going on in my head. My dad asked me why I got angry. He doesn’t have a clue. They don’t know me at all. If some of them ever read this, they might get to know me a bit better. Because we don’t talk about that. No one cares.

I’m a stranger in my own home.

Slow Fingers

I'm not sure whether it's slow fingers or fast brain. Well, a fast brain isn't such a bad thing. really Unless it's combined with slow fingers. I get annoyed by the fact that I simply can't write down all that's on my mind. And I seem to type quite fast, according to people's observations.

It would be nice if I could type faster and more proper though. The right way, I mean. All ten fingers and all. Would probably make things much easier. I've been forced to type as fast as possible because of the uni. Writing all those papers sure does make one wanna be done with it as soon as possible.

But what often happens is that my thoughts run too fast for me to catch them. I remember sitting on a train in India, going south. Well, half lying in fact, since the roof is way too close to the upper birth, which doesn't leave you with much space. So I'm trying to write some thoughts down, but the train is wobbling all the time and I have to make if work somehow. Constant braking and sudden all-direction movements make it even worse. And I just want to write this down, so that I can hopefully fall asleep again.

The ride takes around 36 hours and, as much pain it is, it's a special experience. A lot of tourists travel first class while in India, but I usually just take the regular ticket and travel with the crowd. Doing that, I get so many thoughts going through my head that I simply can't work them all out. Sometimes I just write small sentences. Or even words only. As much as I can.

But when I re-read the notebooks, there's so many gaps. I remember the situation and I remember writing it, but I don't remember the thought. It's like there's something on your mind that you have to do. Call someone or add something to the shopping list or find a piece of paper with an important hint (even if it's Call Whoever). I know it's there - I was just thinking about it. It's at the tip of my tongue. I look around, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever: the thought, the hint, the paper, the number, the phone, the person... I think to myself I might start doing something else and it'll surely come to me. That's even worse. My memory sucks harder than my typing. Way harder.

And I see myself sitting on the train or leaning against the wall in a Delhi hotel or riding the tram, thinking of a hilarious word I could use for whatever. And I take my phone out of my pocket. Number one, I have to write stuff down since the pen-and-paper duo is regularly missing (I know it's ruining my memory even more, but I can't seem to shake it off). Number two, I use the phone as an opportunity to disguise my fits of laughter. Not to mention that someone starting to laugh out loud after a memory pops in one's head is frowned upon, while a bunch of rednecks demolishing the tram is regularly being ignored. So if I get that, I take my phone out, like there's a funny text on it. Then I can giggle. At the non-existing text, at the people and at myself.

By the time I get to the write-a-message option, the word is gone. A lot like whatever I was trying to say with this post. But it's coming back.

Someone has been constantly making noise since lunch time. Lunch was around two and it's nine now. I didn't finish lunch, since I got pissed off beyond limits - but that's a story for another post (that might come later). I barely started it, actually. It was a rabbit. Now I have a feeling it's a cosmic vengeance. So I go downstairs and redo the furniture order (I tend to do that quite often, especially when I need to clean my head). I chucked the TV on the floor, with the screen to the back. I've started to hate TV.

I created a third working surface (besides the huge desk and, well, the floor) from that trolley thing the TV used to stand on. I can't find the right word, but it's something like a commode on wheels. Super handy. It's filled with papers and books now and alas! I can move it around the room. Now I really have a mad-scientist look on my face...

So, even though there's two desks (if we put it that way), I'm sitting on the floor. Well, more lying, again. But there's only a thin IKEA rug and I'm so thin as well and the wooden floor is too hard on my bones and I can't keep lying down and I'm even more annoyed and why can't I gain some weight and it's all oh so fucked up, so eventually I sit up. So yeah, I'm sitting on the floor.

I'm trying to make some sense out of the whole material, trying to compare Latin declination types to the Greek ones and then Sanskrit and Old Slavic and finally Lithuanian. It should all make perfect sense, but somehow it doesn't. I'm rusty, that must be it. I'll do my best though, since the exam is in three weeks and, as occupied as I've been with it, I still need to prepare it better. Way better. But it's OK - I like doing that. I like linguistics, I've wanted to study that and now I'm almost done. It's the final exam and it's supposed to be huge, right? I console myself.

In fact, linguistics was actually the reason I stormed off right at the beginning of the lunch. I was going to write about that, but I better finish this one off first. Suppresses and ignores the whole lunch story...

And as I'm trying to position myself so that I don't end up with any cracks and bruises in my anatomy, someone seems to be cracking nuts or something. I don't know what kind of nuts and whose nuts, but it's annoying as hell. (I've fast forwarded a couple of hours, since it'd be a mega boring read.) So it's been five hours and I can still hear it. I don't know who it is and maybe it's better that I don't or I'd be breaking into someone's flat Mad-Max style.

Considering the mood that I'm in, I figure I better imagine a nice meadow full of flowers, drown myself in incense sticks and wander off seriously dangerous to flipping out by remembering nice places and sweet memories in my head. It's shit cold and I'm out of incense, so I simply play the most relaxing music I've got. Since I tend to listen to some really chill music, it's quite of a challenge to find something yet slower and more relaxing.

So I run into something called Native American Flute or whatever and play that. I air the room out and hope a condor will fly in and instant kill me while the window is open. Now I remember someone telling me that their perfect way of dying was being killed by a pigeon flying into their head. Imagine reading that in the newspapers, she said. Alrighty then...

I listen to the flute and it's nice. In my head I see Anna climbing to the Machu Picchu, kicking lamas (or whatever they are) off the mountain and, despite the somewhat disturbing imagery, I manage to relax a bit. The music is nice and there's still some sunlight coming in and it's all nice and calm and fuzzy and shit.

And the hammering is still on. The light turns into dark, the warmth into cold and the soothing flute becomes the most annoying imaginable sound in the galaxy. I get up, look out the window and I can't figure it out. It's weird since one neighbour lives in Sydney (so it's probably not him) and the flat on the other side is vacant. I'm clueless. What I do know is that I'm very edgy indeed.

I'll check my Facebook page - maybe someone's suggesting a kick-ass going-out thing. Not really. I download my photos from there and plan to liquidate the account. Fuck Facebook. Then I go and play some cards online. Need I say I lost? Three times. I red-x the window and check my blog. Nothing. Who cares anyway.

I run into some blog suggestions, write a couple of posts and see what cool ideas people have to write and keep writing regularly, often also including other people and seeing what they had to say. At this point I wonder whether I'll ever stop ranting. The blogs that I've ran into say whatever, it's ok to rant, we all do it. Good.

So I think to myself (and I'll write it as it is, since it's a big mess): I could actually write something. But I've read so many stories and have so many ideas now. If I start typing, I'll surely leave something out. I always leave something out. I wish there was a mind recorder. Damn that Dumbledore! Oh, I'll open the pages in Recently Closed Tabs. OK, write fast. Paper or Word? Or blog? Not paper, I'll never type it again. Like India. Oh my, I'll never finish that book. So-called book. So many thoughts lost. Can they be lost anyway? Maybe if I read it again, it'll be easier. Shit, it won't be easier - it'll be crappier. Thinking about India, you moron. With this hammer smith around. Geez, will he ever stop? OK, start typing, you'll lose it all. Okay, okay.

What was I gonna write again?

Shit.

Brain Drain

Sometimes a thought crosses my mind that I should just shut up. And smack myself on the head. And simply not care. In no particular order.

I might possibly the only idiot out there who gets really annoyed by stuff that's happening around. Some get upset about people eating animals or wearing fur or crossing the street at a red light or littering or smoking in the public transportation or not apologizing for breaking your toe with their high heel or whatever. Human stupidity is what does the trick for me.

Not the I'm-a-teen-brat-and-I-don't-care-about-anything style. Just the conscious lack of usage of brain. And you have to admit that happens more often than ever.

Now, I'm not excluding myself from the whole story, since I can be such a gigantic moron from time to time. I'm aware of that and I'm working on that constantly. But that's another story.

I just don't get people who're incompetent. I might not hold a shovel the way I'm supposed to (if there is a proper way to hold one) and maybe I'm too clumsy to do certain things, but some people are beyond me. Maybe it doesn't have so much to do with incompetence, but with organizing things.

Well, I suck at that too, so maybe I shouldn't be pointing all this out, but anyway. Some people like to make a complete mess out of whatever their task is, so they have to repeat the same thing several times. When I do something with my dad, for example, I have to make a plan for myself since he surely hasn't got one. So before we even start I ask him what he wants to do and what the end goal is. I feel like an ass doing that, but I've learned it's just easier for everyone to do it this way.

He has a way of seeing things one step at a time, which makes him have to do the same thing at least three times. Whether it's moving something, measuring it or simply figuring out what to do with it. Now that I think of it, it must be him who I got the disorganized gene from.

Let's say we have to cut down some old trees in order to plant new healthy ones (which happened two weeks ago or so). He's worrying about the trees falling down on other trees, so we simply pull it away in a certain direction and crack the first one down. We get the smaller branches out of the way and put them on a pile and then we cut the trunk in smaller pieces, so that we (meaning me) can get them ready for the cutting and all. Wow, I'm really making this long.

What I wanted to say is that his deal is that he puts the branches right next to the trunk. So I say, let's put them aside now, so that we have more space to work around. That's not important, he says. Well, I know it isn't because it's not him who's gonna be taking all that shit from that pile to a new one, further away.

The same with the trunks and the logs. Let's put them here. Then we have to move them. So in the end, after three migrations, he figures I should get them up to the house since they'll get wet. So I get half of them up and I'm dead, since they're so heavy and it's uphill all the way. So we leave the rest at the bottom of the meadow and plan to cover them so they don't get wet.

And when the time comes, we'll get them out and cut them so that we can use it for the fire. And then we'll get those from under the house as well. And then we'll take all the cut-up wood and get it into the cellar. Or maybe just a part of it.

You can imagine my face when he tells me we're going to the weekend house.

The same happens with everything. Getting the carpet out of the living room to air it out demands moving the 200 kg old-craft dining table at least six times. Gah!

Anyway, this is not where I was going. I was gonna tell you what has happened to day and what blew me off completely.

It's a well known situation that most of the people are just incompetent for their job. Often doing something they're not skilled for for work makes it a long-term disaster. Especially in countries where bribe is an everyday occurrence, where bakshish does it's thing and where it's literally impossible to get a decent job without knowing the right people. And by a decent job I mean something you went to school for, have a degree in or, heaven forbid, have an interest in.

No one here seems to do what they want to do or simply do whatever they can in order to survive. People often end up doing jobs they're not trained for, so you have illiterate people making street signboards, tone-deaf people making TV, colour-blind people making videos and what not.

(This is why I think the tax system in Denmark is a good thing. You pay your taxes according to the amount of you income, so in the end everyone does what he's best in and everyone's happy.)

The talented, hard-working people here are usually doing someone else's work, most often during the toughest times, when the bosses usually take a sudden leave of absence and let the others struggle through the piles of crap. No one asks them and they simply do whatever work needs to be done. And this is the problem.

So, I go to the public transportation office today to renew my ticket. Something like a year ago there were finally magnetic cards introduced as a way of settling the whole paper card story. Everyone gets a plastic card which says whether you're a student, unemployed or whatever. The system works like everywhere in the world: if you put some credit on it, it gets deducted from the balance every time you enter a bus or a tram and you validate it. If you're a student, you get free public transportation (you only pay for the card itself), so it only says your ride is validated.

If the company people come to check whether you have a ticket, they have a little gadget which says who the card belongs to, what type it is, how much credit there is on it etc. So, I got mine last year and, since me prolonging it depends on my student rights, I have to confirm that I'm still a student with every passing year.

The system works like everywhere in the world. Unlike here.

I get the paper saying that I'm still a student at my university and go to the ticket-office to fix it up. I figure she'll just read the chip on the card and add another year worth's credit (which is none, since it's government funded) and it's done. So I give her the paper and my card and she asks for my grade book. We have this book where you have all your lessons listed, together with the grades, your rights and all that stuff. So, she has to check that it corresponds the stuff on the paper. Like I could get the paper otherwise.

So, she looks at those two papers for at least four minutes. I'm waiting at the cold and windy side of the window and count six different brands of coffee in the cupboard. Staples are located in a small plastic bowl that you buy cheese in. The creamy one that you put on the bread.

What she should do is check the data, look me in the face to see it's really me, take a sticker with a number, stick it on the paper and write that number in the computer. Not in this world.

She checks the card and the paper and lifts her head towards the monitor. And she's suddenly turner to stone. I start thinking I'm in one of those music videos where everyone's frozen but me and I'm the only one involved in time and the whole story. Or she's seen the terrifying scene from The Ring where that scary girl is crawling out of the TV. So after what feels like three centuries she looks back down to the papers again. Now she has to write the number from the sticker to the paper and confirm it on the computer. It's a five-digit number. Five digits. I see The Cardigans' whole discography in my head while she writes that down with a pen.

But that's not all. She takes out another piece of paper. Something like a small ticket, which belonged to the system that we formerly had. We used to have a plastic film with two separate pockets: one for the plastic card with one's name and photo and another compartment for the monthly ticket that you get, well, every month.

So, she takes out a card and it takes her another light year to write the five-digit number once more. Then she takes out a plastic film with two pockets and by this time there's already seven people lined up behind me. I see the plastic thing and I'm blanking out. I see those little stars and then it all gets dark. But I don't faint. There's a brick wall in front of my face, followed by a jail grid line. Then some barb wire, a five-meter high-voltage fence and a vast swamp behind a Sahara-style desert.

I blink and it's all gone. I come back to reality because the lady is poking me with a bunch of papers through the opening in the glass. I feel like I've been handed a law-office folder that I should do something with, but I have no clue what. So I take the grade book and put it in my backpack, since it's the most valuable thing I have. She took the big paper, but I'm still stuck with a decent-sized library.

My bus had already left the station, so I have to wait almost half an hour for the next one. I dare not look down into my hands again. It's my plastic card, a two-pocket plastic film and a small paper tickets saying it's valid for a year. So what I ended up with was this.

(It's a bit blurry because of the foil.)

An enfoiled magnetic card with a small paper determining its validity.

I mean, does that happen anywhere in the world? Upgrading to nothing and downgrading to the useless? So instead of making a computer program in three hours, they bring back the old paper ticket system that increases everyone's work and expenses.

This is what I meant by planning. Someone in the management must've thought it would be a good idea to finally have the whole thing digitalized. So, you see the stop names and there's a TV person saying the stop names out loud. You click the button, get on to the bus or the tram, bleep your card and that's it. When it's about to expire, you prove your rights, go to the ticket office, bleep it and it's done.

What is this dreamland that I live in?

I put the card in my pocket, get on the bus and stare out of the window.