Monthly Archives: September 2015

Thoughts

Five Things That Make One Feel Exposed

Being halfway to work and realizing you left your phone at home. Wanting to go back and get it but knowing you’ll be late otherwise. Wondering how you’ll coordinate getting to tonight’s spontaneous get-together at that new cafe. Forgetting things like email. Feeling so alone. I forgot my phone, alright?!

Your longer socks sliding down from underneath your pant legs. While you’re trying to walk through the city like a put-together human being. All the pulling up in the world won’t help.

People with time on their hands who want to tell you their life story and who don’t see that your hands don’t have time on them.

Hearing questions like, don’t you want to be doing something else for a living?/ you really think this city is cool?/ do you know (insert any male or female name from the country you’re from if you’re a foreigner). Get me out of here.

Suggestions at a flea market stall that you try on a skirt or trousers right then and there, and you know that asking, “Uh, do you have a changing room, or something?” is not a valid option, based on preliminary scanning of the perimeter. Oh, well. We’re all just doing the best we can.

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Thoughts

Facts of Life Worth Knowing

Chocolate is also a dish (sometimes) best served cold. That cool crunchiness carries happiness in it (just don’t bite down too hard).

You can match your umbrella to your bag and it looks cool. This is something I saw on the street in lilac. Style idea! Fashion statement!

Not jumping down to the level of a person being full-on, directly nasty to you and even smiling at them while they are is actually fun (not that this needs to be repeated often and if you can get out, do). It is entertaining to see them being perplexed.

Going online to find fan fiction if characters you were rooting for in a book did not work out as a romantic couple has an oddly therapeutic effect, within reason.

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Seen/Heard/Read

AquaDom: World’s Largest Free-Standing Aquarium

I recently posted about surfing in Munich Airport. It turns out there is another attention-grabbing water attraction in Germany that is built in to an urban space you might not think of immediately. Or rather, you might not think of building something shaped like a cylinder in the middle of a hotel. At first.

But here you go – presenting the AquaDom in the Radisson Blu Hotel in Berlin. 1,500 tropical fish swim around a cylinder containing 1 million litres of seawater, oblivious to being surrounded by a city. Some 100 rooms face the aquarium, according to the hotel, so you can literally spend an evening in Berlin gazing at Finding Nemo come to life. Proudly said to be “the world’s largest cylindrical aquarium”, the AquaDom is 25 meters high. It also has a built-in two-storey glass elevator. Now I’m not sure about going in there, but having this view from your room balcony is one interesting experience:

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Seen/Heard/Read

Grace’s Guide. The Art of Pretending to be a Grown-Up

As I’ve said before, I’m on a memoir/ non-fiction kick right now, so the latest read in my stack selection was the aforementioned book by Grace Helbig. The Internet knows of her YouTube channel, it’s Grace, as do I.

The book is fun to look at. Even before you start reading, you leaf through it to see all the what you quickly realize to be quintessentially Grace photos and inserts. A bit of colour never hurt, and for someone who still loves holding an actual book copy, this one was enjoyable to pick up.

Grace’s personality and the characteristics that set her channel and her content in general apart reflect in the structure of the book – the self-proclaimed love for to-do lists is evident in every chapter. As a fellow list-maker I enjoyed this immensely, especially since her lists were in line with what (I think) she wanted to say in the book, thought through and clear. They were also summarized at the end with amusing acronyms that softened and further humorized the “self-help” part. “How to throw an adult party: Fist Biscuit.”

In fact, regarding the self-help genre/ category, Grace is frank and disarming in her foreward, making it clear that this is not another one of those books: “What you’re about to read is (hopefully) a fun and funny Millenial’s handbook… I’m going to try to help you with school, work, social activities and lifestyle stuff to the best of my dubious abilities. Trust me, I don’t have definitive answers, but I do have plenty of misadventures and lessons learned the hard way to share.”

Finally, not a book that promises (and then fails to deliver on) immediate success in something without practical tips, or rocketing to sky-high levels of whatever the author thinks you should aim at. Grace’s Guide is an honest, thoughtful, funny, individual, but very relatable look at being yourself while navigating life, and growing without compromising your core (though not grossing or freaking people out while doing that is also something she succesfully stresses).

It’s interesting to see what seems to be an increasing trend towards writing down life, including the neurotic moments, the worries, the awkwardness, the daily struggles and concerns modern society brings with it, while at the same time making clear that all this does not take away the possibility of enjoying yourself. Those I-know-this-too moments occur regularly while reading Grace’s Guide.

And iust like the rest of us, Grace also has screws left over when she finishes assembling a piece of furniture from IKEA.

“Being an adult is both super cool and super scary.”

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Walks

I Love Going to the Movies Because…

Buying tickets is fun. Choosing seats provides you with necessary decision- making exercises (love seat – might want to move one over; four seats in front of chosen spot occupied and it’s a chick flick – might get loud with the giggles; splurge on the back row or not; almost everything is full, but I really wantto see this movie NOW etc.) Buying tickets online is even more fun, because the usually present ticking clock indicating for how much longer this operation will be reserved for you provides that extra kick.

It’s the only place where I can really cry, and since I’m not a loud cryer the cinema suits me just fine. Shedding a few tears during a well written and well acted sad scene is satisfying and cheap therapy (this also works at home – try the scene in Homeward Bound when Shadow slips in to a pit and is talking to Chance after he realizes he can’t get up).

For an hour or two the world outside is forgotten. The lights go out (yay!), the screen lights up and there is only the story, sights and sounds in front of me.

Seeing a good movie with your favourite actor(s) is a special kind of joyful experience. Seeing a bad movie with your favourite actor(s) reduces the amount of spitting afterwards regarding the badness of the movie due to the presence of the favourite actor(s). Seeing a movie where everything is bad reminds you that the things you love doing include a risk and some money.

Sometimes the audience claps and that is extra cool, because while we all know the people on the screen can’t hear us (though just maybe), letting emotions like happiness and enthusiasm in to the universe is a heart-warming shared experience.

 

 

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