And then I realized...

that I actually wanted to write about, or show, at least, something totally different. I spent last Wednesday in Amersfoort, where Máire organized a social gathering with a couple of friends of hers so that I could test them. We had food, I tested the girls, their sons were playing in the garden, it was such a pleasant day. That's where I also started to read the book about science. During my coffee break I was introduced to a site where they give you a personal profile based on your birthday and time of birth. I don't believe in horoscopes, but I thought it might be interesting to read what it says so I entered the information. (I don't believe in anything, in God, angels, destiny, predetermination or anything of the like. It's not so easy, you have to figure stuff out for yourself and people are not always very accepting.) This is what the site spit out. Feel free to comment if you think something really matches or if something is just so evidently off.

Sun in Virgo, Moon in Pisces
Although you have a real desire to serve others, your ideals are usually distant and consequently unreachable. A person with your introspective and highly emotional nature needs a stronger person to mold and contain this fluidity of character. To you, the abstract, the mystical, and spiritual are more real than any other realities. You are reflective and in touch with your subconscious, searching, probing, and exploring the labyrinths of the mind. Critical of yourself to the point of self-censure, however, you will hang a veil over what you have found in your soul.
Almost always you will find life difficult and will attempt to find release in mysticism or related subjects.
You must allow your Virgoan practical individuality to exert more force and tighten the reign on your actions. This is the key to a better balance and harmony in your nature.

Ascendant in Aries, Mars in the Sixth House
At the time of your birth the zodiacal sign of Aries was ascending in the horizon. Its ruler Mars is located in the sixth house.
Aries is the first sign of the zodiacal belt and its natives seem also desirous of being "first" in all activities with which they happen to be involved. The cardinality of the sign makes you extremely active and capable of displaying ambition, impulsiveness, courage, and boldness in order to satisfy your desire for prominence in the world.
The general course of your life will be filled with many 'ups' and 'downs' and changes conforming very much with the psychological nature of your temperament. Whether you triumph or not in life depends on your ability to develop your most positive inborn qualities and, simultaneously, exert some control over your less favorable characteristics, such as a lack of prudence, and a certain disregard for the feelings and opinions of others.
Aries gives a tendency for its natives to be inclined to politics and public work. You should be successful (or at least attempt to be so) in any work or activity that necessitates pioneering ideas and/or a militant disposition. You also appear to have an ardent attitude in any project that somehow or another involves new concepts or original work and in which you are given a position of leadership. One of your problems is that in your love for achievement in novel projects you tend to destroy old concepts and former contributions which would, perhaps, have been useful for your endeavors. Impulsive, critical, despising mean or dubious acts, you will create many excellent friendships but also important enemies. Your life is rich in passion and ardent love. In sexual matters you are quick, aggressive, and to the point. You also are a lover of pleasures, which you feel with a bright, open, and sparkling character.
Mars, the ruler of your life events, is found located in the sixth house. This location of Mars, is not altogether harmonious with the sign which it rules. The sixth house denotes subordination and limitations. Unfortunately, the more you resist these impositions of destiny, the more tied and bound to them you will find yourself. If you can view the naturally imposed limitations with perspective, the better and faster solution will come flowing throughout life as if magically produced.

Venus in the Fifth House
Venus was found in the fifth house at the time of your birth. At first glance this denotes rich, intense, and pleasant emotional events that will enhance your psychic nature. You are a person who could be regarded as fortunate in love and very successful. Whereas Venus grants the basic capability to reach full enjoyment from love and emotional involvements, it also indicates a tendency to be somewhat inconsistent, volatile, and changeable in romance. Although you are capable of loving intensely and with devotion, the tendencies are to lose interest after a certain time. You would be in a better position if you could exert some control over your span of interest.

Sun in the Sixth House
The Sun was found in your sixth house at the time of birth. This position indicates that in all your activities you will be subjected to the impositions of the environment. The overall orientation of your existence is that of accomplishment through fulfillment of professional responsibilities. In matters of health, this astrological combination is not ideal, as the vital energies of the Sun here have less power, causing you to feel an occasional lack of physical strength. You are, however, inclined to be careful with your health. In your dealings with work associates and subordinates you will show dignified, strong, but open- handed attitudes.
You work with a well-developed sense of pride in everything you do.

Saturn in the Eighth House
Saturn was found in the eighth house at the time of birth. Because of the restraining influence of this planet, matters concerning legacies, inheritance, and the financial dealings of your partner or associates could be severely limited and may be frustrated by what seems to be harsh fate.
Psychologically you are rather serious in connection with sexual affairs. You approach sex with caution, rationality and planning. Excess reason and thought in this direction may create some frustration in sexual matters.
Note: Saturn is technically near the end of house 7 and is therefore interpreted in house 8.

Moon in the Twelfth House
The Moon was in your twelfth house at the time of birth. Secretly, you enjoy a love of romance and adventure that lends a bit of excitement to your daydreaming.
It is possible that the little popularity that you may enjoy in this life will be from some very reserved and secretive circles where your merits are recognized.
It can be expected that you will be successful in positions that call for solitude or remote locations.

Late night procrastination

I'm paying the price for the recent late nights: I'm unable to fall asleep before 2 or so. I read about another hundred pages of A Short History of Almost Everything and was just as puzzled over the miracles of this planet and life as on the first 250 pages. This book opens your eyes to the complexity of our world. It's stunning. No wonder it didn't make me fall asleep. Next step: check e-mails. 6 new mails, mostly through facebook, people commenting on old photos, and Kata, an old classmate of mine writing that she would like to meet up. See, it was good to send out that e-mail. Next step: facebook. I mean, I had to check the comments on the photos anyway :) They were hillarious. Some of the worst pictures in my life; I don't know how some people have the heart to put those on public display. Ok, since this picture is up there anyway, here you go:

We look like a bunch of hippies... This is the core of the YB group, which I was the general editor of. The guy on the left, Aleks, looks generally scary. I look like a rainbow, it's seriously embarrassing, but it was 3 years ago, I must be forgiven. Furthermore, you can't see my eyes, which always happens when I smile, because I start to look Asian. No idea why. Maybe I shouldn't smile. Eduardo just looks cool and casual. The discussion started about Swathi's clothes (the girl in the long skirt) and how wonderfully unmatching every single piece of clothing is on her :) Laura (very right) then commented on everybody else, including her own pink flipflops. Ah, good times. From facebook to Youtube. Initially, because I remembered that I asked Laurens to upload a couple of videos that we made when we were in Houten, enjoying the playground. They are so funny. Here is a sample. (I got the trousers from his mom, since I was completely soaked by the time we got there... by bike, remember?)

Naturally, when you're on Youtube, you start clicking around randomly. Well, I do, but that gets boring, so I started to expand my collection of dance videos. And now, since zouk and bachata are the dances that I encountered most recently, and to educate you on latin dances, here are my favorite videos of them. The first is a video of zouk, a dance I can absolutely not dance, but I believe it all depends on trying. It is starred by Max and Larissa (I'm mentioning the names because they have dozens of videos on Youtube) at the 2007 Zouk-Lambada Congress. They are amazing. (Don't be surprised by all the hair flowing around, it seems to be an important part. I usually don't like sexist things, and in zouk a woman is everything but strong, but the way she's made rely on the man is quite sensual.) The second video is a bachata. According to Raja, bachata is romantic, but I somehow cannot find anything with so much ass wiggling romantic. You decide. The guy is great and the girl is not bad, and I like her energy in any case, so here you go, enjoy!

Bye Utrecht! - Hello Budapest!

I couldn't have imagined that these three weeks would pass by so quickly. Something that started out as a hassle became a great couple of weeks! I was looking for participants and I found friends. I explored a part of the dance scene in Utrecht and started to get to enjoy bachata and zouk. I found people who love latin dancing and are extremely good at it and from whom I could learn a lot. I've been to yet another gay party, this time at the Ritz and had a blast. I just love gay guys. I went to Amersfoort to test 4 expat women from Britain and had a very nice day with them. I started exercising. I met friends from UC; Britt, Nicole, Laurens, Gijs, Bart, had food, danced or enjoyed the playground. I started to read A Short History of Almost Everything, a book about science and I love it. It gives you the kind of satisfaction you get from being very sleepy but just being unable to put the book down.

To summarize, I managed to get my data while having such a good time. :) So, contrary to what I said earlier, please do not hit me if I'm planning to do something like this again.

Now, I'll have three weeks to spend in Budapest. I arrived last night, saw Sali already and I'm hoping to see many other friends later these days (of those who remained after 4 years...). I sent out an e-mail today, and it already seems sure that I'll meet András, my 6th year, and Varga Peti, another good friend of mine who is also an ex-UWCer. I'll get my kitchen assembled (it's standing in boxes now in the "kitchen") and then my flat will be almost ready!

There is life outside campus :)

UC is such a convenient bubble. We have everything there: food, friends, the bar, a small gym... No wonder we hardly ever go off campus. And even if we do, that's usually limited to the Albert Hein and to a couple of parties maybe. After two years in the Netherlands, my experience of Utrecht is severely limited... and it's time to change this!

I met a lot of lovely people in the last couple of days. The first group I got to know includes quite some Eastern Europeans and they are all Elspeth's friends. I had this cool idea one evening that I should drop by the Irish pub to find participants for my experiment. After all, there must be some English, Irish, American etc. people hanging out around there. I sat down by the bar, drinking my orange juice and in a couple of minutes I saw Elspeth, my (Joram's, to be precise) ex-unitmate. We started talking and she introduced me to her friends. It's a very international bunch and it even includes a Hungarian guy from Transylvania. They all looked very open and friendly, and I think I'll meet them again in the future.

I found the second group, another group of international people, on the Internet. I was following a couple of links from a website for expats and the links led to a yahoo group. I joined and in a day there were e-mails sent around about having a drink at Havana. Europe, North-America, Latin-America, Asia and Australia are for sure represented in the group :) We had a nice conversation and a couple of drinks. I was talking to a Venezuelan guy and we were discussing the music of JLG and the latinos is general. That evening, I really started to miss Gregory and Laura, the rest of the little latino community at UC and the latino nights at Sosh.

So, I was looking for participants for my experiment and I found friends. Pretty good, eh?

The highlights of the past days were then the following:
1. Laurens, Gijs and Bart dropping by my place without notifying me in advance. I actually thought that I forgot a participant. It was a nice surprise. :) We were having dinner together.
2. The day after, Gijs and I biked to Houten and back (in the rain!!!) to spend the afternoon at Laurens' place. It was my first "long distance" (well, long enough for me) biking, and by the time we got there, we were totally soaked. Still, we enjoyed the pleasures of the playground behind Laurens' house. If he manages to upload the videos to Youtube, I'll link them in. We act like 10-year-olds.
3. The same evening, I went out dancing with Elspeth and a Zimbabwean friend of hers. We started at the Neude and we were doing some bar hopping around the centre of town. We were quite a sight: three girls who were actually dancing. I got the impression from that night that Dutch people don't go out to dance but to hang around and check out the rest. I definitely go out to dance. We had some inconveniences from a couple of guys at almost all of the places, so even though the dancing was great, I had a sense of disppointment when I finally got home.
4. The day after, Britt came over for a bit in the afternoon. For the evening, I invited Laurens and Nicole over for a drink. Later, Laurens went to a concert by his friends, and Nicole and I went to the PANNfeest. People really go there to dance and to have a good time and nobody is pushy or aggressive. And watching guys singing along with the tracks by Madonna or Cher still makes me smile. :) The whole event has a very nice atmosphere.
5. The day after that, so yesterday, I found out that there was a salsa party at the Trianon in the evening, and since so far it has always worked out whenever I went out, I decided to go. Raja, an Indian guy in the group that I joined gave me his number because he was planning to be there too. He is a very good dancer - much better than I am - but I think we still managed to have a good time on the dancefloor. Some of the people dancing there were very impressive, especially technically. I was just standing there, staring. Now I know what the aim is :) On the other hand, there were loads of people around who knew fancy steps and turns, but who didn't even smile. I prefer those people who might not be so advanced technically, but who radiate how much they enjoy what they are doing.

This coming year, I'm soooo going to spend more time off campus with people from other places!

Ah, and I've been testing people too... Just as a side note.

Honors Thesis blues

Please hit me if I ever want to do something like this again.

For those of you not from UC, let me explain what the concept of an Honors Thesis is. Every student is required to do a Research Project, which is a 300 level course (advanced level) and which is an individual research that you write up. There are pretty big differences between Research Projects in different departments and fields, but the one I decided to do consisted of an experiment and a report in the form of a journal article. An Honors Thesis is something that you can decide to do but you're really not obliged. It's a 400 level course (the only 400 level you can take), you take it as an extra course in your curriculum and it's like a Research Project but bigger. I'll tell you a secret: actually, no one really knows what the difference is between the two.

So, I'm here to do my Honors Thesis. I arrived to Utrecht a bit more than a week ago, then took a couple of days to socialize, a couple of days to cope with motivational issues and a couple of days to work really hard on the stimuli for my experiments and on the experiments themselves. /While I'm writing this, my sister is distracting me on messenger, asking for advice on her love issues. Somehow I don't feel like an authority in this, especially not now, but it's sweet. I'm re-experiecing the time when I was 15. It's just that I never had anyone to ask.../ I'm creating three experiments, which are supposed to test the stimuli and which will hopefully lead to the main test, a cross modal lexical priming (CMLP) experiment, which I will run when I'm back at UC.

Right now, I'm seriously doubting whether I'll have enough people to test around here. Only one person replied of all the contacts that Jocelyn and Frank gave me. I'm trying to contact people who might still be around, but it still looks rather hopeless. The worst thing is that I realized what I should have done. I should have stayed at home to make the experiments (which would have also enabled me to spend more time with my friends) and I should have gone to London for a week with my laptop. I know at least 10 people in that city who could have housed me, I could have enjoyed the city and I could have tested more than enough people very easily. And now I'm here suffering with getting enough participants... Grr.

Furthermore, two days ago I realized that I didn't pay attention to something that Frank didn't point out either. It's an aspect of the original stimuli that could have easily been tested in my Research Project (oh, yes, my Honors Thesis is the continuation of my Research Project) but now I had to change the stimuli just to accomodate for that, which made the 3 tests altogether 67 minutes, which is far too long. So now I either have to test more people with less stimuli in a Latin Square type of system or I have to pray that people will actually be able to complete the full hour of testing. The first option doesn't seem very reasonable to me because I'm lacking subjects already. So, it will be the second...

If you are, by any chance, a native English speaker residing in the Netherlands, and willing to participate, please contact me! 0625373815. You'll be my hero.

Forgot...

I forgot to mention but I think it's quite evident: I redressed my blog! Do you like the picture? Any complaints? (Suicide notes?) That's what I saw from my unit's balcony for a semester. The view from my own window was more depressing but this scenery made up for that.

This has been a pretty productive day, by the way :) And it's not over yet...

A virtual life

I've been living somewhat of a virtual life the past couple of days. Since I have been working on the stimuli for my experiments (and I've been taking my time, but now they are finally done...) my laptop was on all the time, and what do you start doing when you are connected to the virtual space of the www? You start searching it, browsing it, writing it and talking to people online. So, my stay here started very actively with the visit to Bennekom, seeing Joram's family, going to Roel's party, having Kristina and Gijs over, going to the Hague and then having Andrea and Will here, and now I'm once again pretty much closed into the bubble of the web.

I've been mostly talking to Sali (who is always busy fund raising for BEST), Dávid (who is actually a friend through the net - we only met once and that was one and a half years after our first conversation - and he's also doing research, but in physics), Kiss Gergely (who would be Gergely Kiss in English, and no, kiss does not mean kiss, it means small, and he's my 4th year in AC, absolutely sweet, always supportive and he was left by his girlfriend too), Jamal (a friend from AC who might visit me in Budapest when I'm back) and Szekér András (again, András Szekér, but the names of these people become iconic in their full state, and we were discussing relationships, of course). Irma is always too busy and Joram is either too much involved in whatever he is doing or he blocked me from his contacts once again. This week, the highlight of my virtual existence was creating a facebook profile for Walter, the cat I'm taking care of... You can imagine. It's actually kind of cute.

To keep my real life going I invited Frank and Jocelyn over for dinner for Sunday, Rosemary for Monday, and Britt is also coming at some point the week after. Everybody, come over for dinner! Or tea! I hope I can find some people with whom I can go to the PANN next weekend.

Well, these are quite conscious cries for company. It is a bit lonely here. Walter doesn't talk much and he's sleeping half the time. Yesterday was the lowest point in the week and today is already a bit better. Could PMS stand for Post-MS?

A small Sunley 2005 reunion

Andrea, who was my roommate (or dormie, as we used to say in AC) for two years, contacted me a while ago about her travels through Europe. She has always wanted to see me in Budapest but this time she didn't have the time, and so we had to arrange a randez-vous in the Netherlands. We had a friendship that definitely had its ups and downs. In the first semester, we were hanging out and talking a lot, and maybe because we spent so much time together or maybe because of my depressed mood in the second semester, by the end of the first year, we didn't talk at all, even though we shared a room. We couldn't communicate. The tension erupted at the dorm meeting at the end of the year, where the four inhabitants of the dorm decided to split up into two dorms, with Sophie and Brittany in one room and Andrea and I in the other. It wasn't a choice of Andrea or me, but we had to accept it and at least we claimed our old room on the first floor of the house with a nice view of the woods and the sea. The second year we were good again and I still remember the moment when she found me in the crowd to say good-bye in front of the bus I was leaving on... It's one of those pictures and feelings that is burnt into my memory.

The time Andrea spent in the Netherlands conveniently coincided with Will's visit. Will also lived in Sunley and we were very good friends, especially in the first year. I actually heard rumours that we were going out but that was not something we were aware of :) We did spend a lot of time together though. In the first months, I shared with him all the stress of leaving my home behind. It was a very hard period; I didn't even speak English properly yet. He was my first friend at AC.

Given that Andrea stayed at Jo's place in den Haag, I decided to go and see her there. It would have been very silly to miss her when she was finally in Europe. (She's Mexican and she's studying in the US.) I met Andrea and Jo at the train station in the Hague and we picked up Will some time later. It was quite a task: Will had long and wavy red hair in AC, but we knew that he had cut it, so the big orange cue was gone. Furthermore, we didn't know which train he took, from where he was coming and at what time exactly he was supposed to arrive. We figured we would surprise him and since he didn't know I was going to be there, when we saw him approaching, I "accidentally" ran into him. The surprise worked very well :)

The four of us, all Sunley graduates of 2005, spent a very nice evening together. It felt as if nothing had changed. Time continued from when we were still in AC, everything was the same, only the setting was different. That evening, I thought that I could go back to AC and live there again with these people. It was funny how everybody looked a bit older. Of course, an obvious sign of passing time, but you don't realize it when you look at yourself in the mirror. Looking at us, I had to conclude we grew up.

That evening I made poffertjes (I hope that's how you spell it), small Dutch pancakes, which we had with Nutella and Ben & Jerry's. They were yummy. We were sitting in the kitchen of a huge house, talking about the old times, the present and the future and we were gossiping in the company of some bottles of beer, a bottle of wine (which I finished myself) and some cigarettes till late at night. I think that was when I convinced Andrea and Will to come over to Utrecht to check out the city and our campus.

So, that was what we did yesterday. We had brunch at Jocelyn's place, walked around the inner city a bit, went to see campus and had coffee back in the city. We said good-bye with a warm hug at the train station and with the hope that we will see each other soon. I definitely have a place to stay in Edinbourgh and next year I might do a trip of Britain, visiting old friends from AC.

Back in Utrecht

Smooth jazz, pear tea, stimulus lists, cat-sitting, cold: I'm back in Utrecht.

The way here was somewhat adventurous. I asked Sali to bring me to the airport because my mother was busy at a meeting. He arrived a bit after 8 in the morning to pick me up, not really hungover but still drunk after the pubcrawl he was organizing for the Spanish. To help him drive so that we would both survive, I took an active part in driving, saying mainly "break!", "red light", "slower" or "change lines". We made it :) He's amazing. I hope he made it back too without getting into trouble or hurting himself.

Of course, the flight was delayed again, but only for about an hour. I started a conversation with the guy sitting next to me in the lounge (Péter) and we continued talking until we got to the train station where we had to take different trains. He is also studying in the Netherlands, he has lived in Hungary most of his life, but he is of Bulgarian origins. We discussed living abroad and how hard it is to keep in touch with people at home. and how we hate travelling back and forth between home and home. He shared my dislike of fraternities and sororities and we analysed how different Dutch mentality is from Hungarian mentality. The most intriguing was maybe that we felt that money is somehow more central here, even though our countries are much poorer. Just think of the lists of unit expenses (given to the cent accuracy) on the fridge. Think of people whose parents would like the person's girlfriend to pay rent just because she would sometimes sleep over. Think of guys who give their parents the money they spent on gasoline when they brought them to the airport. This would be such nonsense at home.

I was completely exhausted by the time I got to Jocelyn's place. I fell asleep on the train and I was lucky enough to wake up when they said Utrecht Centraal. I dragged myself and my luggage through Utrecht. The first thing I needed was a shower (and a sleep, but I didn't get that yet)... yes, I very much needed that shower. Christel, Jocelyn and I had dinner at home, and even though it was Jocelyn's birthday, she had to suffer from an ear infection. It's a painful thing, I remember. I hope it will be better soon. We still went to a short and small jazz concert which was very nice and where Frank was playing the piano. (He's a pretty cool guy. Is there a younger edition around?) Then I slept completely unconsciously until 10 this morning.

My plans for now are to meet Andrea, my Mexican ex-roomie from AC who's apparently in the city today with Jo, to go to Roel's party on Sunday and start working on the stimuli. I actually started that already. Is there anyone who would like to meet up?

A short holiday in Budapest

There should be a post here about the very last days at UC, an account of the ASIC barbecue, the packing that lasted for 3 days, the 50 cent party and the rush to the airport. It's kind of late to write about that though. You'll have to be satisfied with the following two short videos that I took after the 50 cent party at 5.30 am in front of the Bar.





And now? I'm in Budapest. I'm trying not to sleep at home as much as possible, because I have better places to sleep at and because I've had enough of my mother already. She's driving me mad with her way of controlling everybody around her. Well, mainly me.

Reconstruction is the main theme of my life in these two weeks.

- My room was painted, I threw out half the furniture and the "stuff" in my room, and I built a new wardrobe (all alone).

- I had a haircut. I haven't had my hair this short since I was 13.

- I started a diet and I'm losing weight.

- I organized stuff that I'm emotionally attached to into a scrapbook.

- I finally decided to have my eyes checked again. Now, I'm looking for the right glasses.

- I'm getting massages and other types of treatment that makes me suffer but will apparently help in getting back to my old shape.

- I bought a substantial part of the new kitchen from IKEA. It's now in pieces and boxes, standing in my flat.

I'm spending a lot of time with Sali, especially when he's not busy with the Spanish group that is visiting the organization that he's involved in. We can give each other exactly what we need. And I even got to see Irma a couple of times, even though she's working and hardly has a minute. So, it's all good here. Soon I'll leave for Utrecht again...