Infected

Random Observation/Comment #188:  It’s been a while since I’ve lived this zombie life.  I’ve almost forgotten how terrible it was until I had fallen ill the past couple of days.  Only a day and a half has passed without doing anything productive, and yet, I feel like I’ve lost a large chunk of my youth.  Every wasted moment not doing anything suddenly slaps me across the face.  I find this feeling strange because I didn’t used to see things this way.  In the past, I’ve said, “time enjoyed wasted is not wasted time.”  Although I had fun watching a few episodes and sleeping most of the day away trying to somehow stay warm and cool at the same time (I had one of those shitty fever/chills), I guess it wasn’t enough for my mind – nay, my soul – to be satisfied.  I still felt I had been infected, even though I was really bed-ridden and sick.

I think I’m being too harsh on my own rules regarding productivity.  If not for the fact that I’m supposed to be enjoying my freedom through the beautiful weekend trips in the different beautiful cities in Europe, I should be at least sympathetic to my degraded mental and physical state.  I tried typing, but every two minutes, my head would lean back and my eyes would roll back even further.  If I didn’t have eyelids, I would have probably been staring at the floor behind my chair.  The only thing I managed to do was double-click the next episode of HIMYM.  The funny lines (from this fantastically awesome series) made my throat hurt and my stomach turn.  Sometimes I couldn’t decide whether or not it was a poorly written joke that made me throw up or the fact that I was unable to throw out the overly-used bag two times ago (don’t even ask how many times it takes for a bag to be “overly-used”).

My organs felt like they were bleeding, and somehow it made me wonder what the body looked like between organs and muscles.  Because of those water percentage facts, I imagined all those empty spaces from that old health class 2D cross-section was filled with water just sloshing around freely.  It was, at this time, that I realized that I was going crazy.  My pillow had become my best friend and my blanket – my closest lover.

I felt so weak, yet all I wanted to do was write or read, or learn, or do something – anything would have been fine.  I was not only powerless, but useless.  The sickness did not bring me unhappiness – everyone gets sick once in a while.  Instead, it was my reaction to the sickness that made me miserable.  I had become a zombie when there was nothing I could do about it.  Now, I definitely have no excuse to procrastinate when I get better… maybe I’ll just realize this last remark a little later.

~See Lemons Feel Less Crappy

A dangerously time consuming hobby – Picnik

 

Favorite picture

Random Observation/Comment #187: There will always be new hobbies that distract me from my careers, but the most important thing to remember is to choose the ones that yield the most gain of personal satisfaction with respect to time.  Throughout this past year, I’ve found that time, not money or power (or lack thereof), was the true value of my life.  Sometimes it slows down to a crawl in the most unbearable awkward silences, and other times it just breezes by no matter how much I beg for just one more minute.  As of late, I’ve been trying to control it by maintaining efficiency.  I keep considering productivity and reevaluating my world to reflect a concentrated powdery mixture of happiness.  It’s so happy that no matter how much I stir it; there will be chunks of sugary deposits at the bottom of my glass.

 

I love photography because of a simple fact: tens of thousands of people can take a picture of a place or a thing, and yet there will always be something in the weather, the environment, or the angle that exude a different emotion or message.  The colors, exposure, and filters all give that infinite degree of freedom to capture someone’s appreciation.  This being said, Picnik [www.picnik.com] adds the extra layer, and therefore a large dimension of possibilities, for emphasizing your unique points of view in your artwork.  It’s not a full-on Photoshop program (like Aviary, which is also free), but it allows for enough simple filters and edits that keep things simple.

Picnik just happens to be one of those applications that doesn’t take a long time, but gives this overall feeling of accomplishment.  I could spend 10 minutes on altering 1 photo (out of 26,000) that I’ve taken and see it in a new perspective.  It’s within this short amount of time that gives me this overall feeling of success.  I guess it’s the same thing with taking a picture – that one moment also becomes frozen in your mind with the rest of the emotions.  It becomes that connection to my past that bundles all those good feelings into that one image.

Although one picture may take 10 minutes, it’s difficult to stop feeding this accomplishing feeling – especially in the beginning of this journey.  It’s another addiction that can be a huge time-waster, but in moderation, it could be that creative release you’ve been searching for.  For me, it replaces ambigrams and has been added to my long list of fun times.

~See Lemons Creative

Badass skier

Chef Clemens

 

Never be afraid to be creative

Random Observation/Comment #186: I love cooking because I tend to taste a little bit more than I should while making the meal.  Cooking for myself makes me half-full before I even have the plate prepared.  There is a level of laziness in presentation and utensils when I’m really just trying to learn by keeping track of past mistakes and successes.  After the chemistry experiment with these ingredients is over, the enjoyment of these fruits of my labor are not always the same.  I am my own worse judge – some times to the point where I ignore that it’s actually tasty and just devour it to fill my stomach and move on to the next activity.  Sigh – Es ist eine schade.

 

If you’ve tasted my mom’s cooking, you’d know why I was a chubby child.  Instead of a promise for a new car or a large sum of money to keep me from moving far away for college, night after night, she consistently cooked me wonderful meals that I will never forget.  These dishes were one of the main reasons I miss (and still miss) home.  I must admit that there were many times where I concentrated on my own “important high school life” instead of observing a master of the art, but I was not completely numb to my taste-buds’ expectations and holiday questions about meals.  It’s expected that my hobby of cooking didn’t grow until after I moved to college – how can I compete with the master?

My mom and dad protected me with huge stashes of MSG-filled instant noodles, but I wanted so much more than a reduced life expectancy.  I learned to cook to: 1) stay a little healthy, 2) save money so I could waste it on girls, and 3) impress girls.  Their cooking discouragements and heavy critique gave me the impression that they were protecting me from this secret to somehow maintain their hold over this part of my world.  Psychologically, it was magnificent and an absolutely genius plan, but now that I look back; I don’t think they needed to claim this role in my life as a heavenly, magical food-bringer.  They should always know that they have maintained their role as the most selfless and Clemens’-interest voice, and I will always ask them for advice and confide in them my burdens.  If not just that call once in a while, they should know that this is my view of family values.  I love them and I trust them (especially when it comes to recipes). (They are frequent and dedicated readers of my blog ^^).

Anyway, I started cooking like everyone starts.  I jumped in head first and burned a few pots and pans.  I’ve suffered through those terrible trial-and-error experiments, and slowly created (or recreated) new (or most likely, preexisting) techniques and systems for making specific meals.  Of course, there is need to follow a few recipes in the beginning, but after some time, I was able to walk through a supermarket and just see these ingredients mesh together in some higher dimensional food space. 

This particular eye for cooking has just recently begun most probably because German cuisine does not extend further than really tasty coleslaw and wurst (hot dogs, but 10 times better).  I currently walk the aisles of the supermarket feeling like an old woman – sniffing fruits and knocking on melons for no apparent reason.  In reality, I’m just grabbing whatever the person next to me grabs while I wander around enjoying the music and observing the price ranges.  As I pan around each section, my mood greatly determines my meal for the next few nights.  I always buy the backup pasta and potatoes just in case I have no idea what I want to cook, but lately, I’ve been looking at trying to make different sauces.  It’s hard to go wrong with tomatoes and those canned beans and corn actually combine to make some interesting concoction.

At the end of the day, I’ve made this hobby absolutely delicious and monetarily friendly (plus, girls love guys that know how to cook).  It really makes them take off their clothes.  Oops, that was supposed to be in parentheses.

~See Lemons Cook

 

Throwing random stuff together

Berlin Nightlife – a day and back

 

Memorial - epic.

Random Observation/Comment #185: When I was in Japan, I was doing weekend day trips like it was my job.  I’d take the train for 1.5 hours and walk around a random hike in the middle of nowhere for about 6 hours and still make it home for some dinner.  Why don’t I do this now?  Hamburg is not as close as I thought it was to all the major cities.  3-hour one-way commutes are not cool and doing this all by myself isn’t as fun as it used to.  I don’t mind the train ride, but for some reason, I feel like I need to see the history of a city in groups.  I don’t particularly mind nature walks because I take twice as long (from all of the picture-taking), but I rather have the twice as long walks from old German war stories or adventures about traveling. 

 

This particular day trip was one that I would not forget.  There are some details about a certain random girl intentionally spilling beer all over me, which I will omit for this blog entry, but overall, it was pretty kickass.  I met up with Andy, the guy I met in Interlaken (I know, how crazy is that?) and he basically showed me a shortened version of the free tour.  As we had already crossed paths, he tolerated my picture obsessions and told many of the interesting historical tidbits about the area.  The stories would be repeated in the actual tour during the University trip a week later, but the more fun stuff was the exploration of the famous Berlin nightlife with a good wingman.

I knew it was easy to meet people in hostels, but I didn’t know that flocks of beautiful women sit around the common area around 8PM starting the pregame drinks.  I might be going out on a limb, but I think this pregame exchange of names and travel stories was more enjoyable than the club scene with deafening music and faded denim jeans from the excessive grinding (she basically hand washed the thighs of my jeans with her sweat and some beer – no complaints).  We drank a few bottles of wines (each) and then wandered the streets following different crowds to do some old-fashion club crawling (it’s exactly how it sounds by the end).

It was during this deeply profound and drunken conversation with Andy, that we realized the quintessential key to a successful club hook-up.  It’s so simple and everyone does it, but no one actually has written it as one of the rules.  The key is: Know the girls you want to hook-up with before you enter the club.  This way, once you’re in the club, you have become a “familiar” since you were already screen-checked at the door.  Even if it’s some loose connection in a large crowd, a girl would most likely choose to dance to avoid dancing with strangers.  If you met at the same hostel, it just adds that extra convenience factor.  Check and mate (get it?).

We had realized that we were already preparing for such a technique all along, but now that we had solidified it as a hypothesis, it was time for some trials.  We went to the Diamond Club north of Alexander Platz and next to a Chinese-like restaurant called “White Trash Fast Food.”  It’s difficult to explain the details, but the aftermath should paint a picture.  I still think the bad luck spawned from the fact that I wore my Diesel shoes.  Whenever I bring something that I don’t want to get dirty, they always wind up being brought along to the worst situations.  I’m still trying to wash off the puke, beer, and wood chips that these troopers have gone through. 

Apparently, the loud music and high concentrations of alcohol tend to make girls overreact to half-heard, misunderstood conversations.  I don’t know how I got the reaction where she proceeded to throw a beer at my Armani pullover, but she probably misheard me say something as bad as: “you’re f-ugly and I wouldn’t do you with a 5-foot pole. Oh, and you have fake eye-lashes.”  In real life, she was a very nice girl and I was just complimenting her on looking rather stunning for the night’s events.  Now that I think back at it, it was pretty funny.  She might have thought I was someone else, but either way, I wound up alone on a train at six in the morning.

Honestly, I could not even scratch the surface of Berlin’s history or major landmarks with a full day’s walk.  The nightlife, on the other hand, was probably enough to keep my feet off the dance floor and away from dangerously drunk girls for quite some time.  I didn’t sleep for 24 hours, and there was a lot of frustration and confusion between misread signals, but I would definitely do it again.  The only problem is that the day-trip railpass really defeats the purpose because I had to use two days for the commute.  I guess it was nice sleeping on the train and smelling like beer.

~See Lemons Run back and forth

(Write time: 37 minutes)

I miss those school trips... sigh. Now I just party with hot girls until 8AM.

Mind mapping >> Note taking ?

 

Brain Rules from litemind blog

Random Observation/Comment #184: I have decided that I would rather be intelligent than beautiful.  I don’t think I am saying this because I am not beautiful.

 

It was 4 years ago (after freshman year of college) that I realized that the value of this education was not determined by the bell curve or the number of parties (or lack thereof) I attended.  It was more important to pick apart my mental state and familiarize myself with the intricate complexities behind my own subconscious – I was studying to learn how to learn.  Since then, I’ve devised my own ways of improving my memory, processing my thoughts, and organizing my world.  I’m always thirsty for new methods that can advance this odd intelligence, and I think I found a blog with that same thing in mind. 

His entries are all inspiring, but I’ve found the mind mapping method to be the most interesting.  I looked at this nice radial tree and everything automatically clicked for some reason. It was a filtering method I had developed and understood, but could never put into an image.  The freemind program provides for an easy platform to take notes and summarize events.  I will just reference his article because he does a better job explaining the pros and cons.  I am considering adopting this to a complete mapping of my brain on several subjects.  I think this would feed my ranting stream of consciousness and hopefully help people ignore that which they seem irrelevant in my blogging.  I’m hoping that this will help my mind focus.  Another side project…

~See Lemons Mind Map