Suppose...

Suppose that you need to hand in two assignments over the weekend and finish another two for Monday. Suppose that you went to bed at 1.30 am on Friday and then got up at 3.30 to be the "responsible BarCo member" as we call the BarCo on duty for the after-Prom shift. (Ooops, did I say Prom instead of Charity Ball? Oh dear. Sorry.) Suppose that you get home from the after-Prom shift around 7. (I think I just did it again...) What do you do?

You download GIMP, start searching on the web for sites that tell you the basics and start making your yearbook entry! :)

This has probably been my most creative weekend at UC, ever. I made fried coated bananas on Friday for the picnic that we organized on the evening of Prom. (I give up.) We were planning on going to the woods, but eventually we stayed on campus. We picked up the table from Lynn's living room, set it up on the middle of the Quad, and Laurens, Gijs, Lynn and I had dinner right in the middle of our lovely pebble field. What a nice atmosphere! We're going to organize the large version of this during summer term. Have a huge row of tables and a Communist dinner.

Then came the Prom after party, which started very slowly and became quite entertaining eventually. By the end, I managed to wake up properly and as I just said, I started working on my YB piece right after coming home. I wrote the piece a couple of days ago already, but I had to create a nice layout for the whole page. Now I understand what Rosemary means when she maintains that UC students can do anything. You just figure out yourself how to do it. I did the same with DirectRT and now I did that with GIMP. And the end result is surpisingly okay, I think. Now that I got you curious, I won't paste the picture in here until the YB comes out. Otherwise, where's the sense of curiousity and excitement if I show it right now?

In the afternoon, I went to town to pick up the prints that I ordered for the two new collages for the Bar. I think I have about 100 pictures printed now and I'm afraid that it will be way too much for two frames (2 big frames though). But that's fine; I'm going to put the leftover into the small frames and hang them up where they used to be. I also bought the two big frames, so now one of my beds is completely taken over by two frames and 100 pictures. I also bought a top and earrings, and pesto and sundried tomatos, thinking about summer term already... It was such a nice afternoon - sunshine, shopping, crowded town (that reminds me of Budapest). I got started with the collages, but then I realized that I should do something else...

... the BarCo YB page. Since no one seemed to be willing to make the YB page for the bar, I sent an e-mail that I'll do it. I guess I was quite enthusiastic after the small success of my personal page. Somehow, however, making two pages takes longer than one... So, I started yesterday evening, and I finished it after getting up today. I think it looks fine and the rest of BarCo likes it as well, which is quite important.

And what now? Get started on my assignments. Then dance! (Btw, I just found out that Peter, one of our stats teachers, who is an absolutely cool guy, is also dancing at the Winkel van Sinkel. We have never actually seen each other there, but maybe I'll bump into him one weekend. :)

Did I say that I am quite tired?

Post-Gents' Night Post

Okay, 6 and a half hours on high-heels and in a corsette IS really too much. But once in a lifetime it is bearable.

Sanne, Saskia and I started out with a little photo session in the empty bar. After all, it doesn't happen every day that you're there, dressed like a - hm, how to put this nicely... I think I'll just restart the phrase - showing a lot of skin. People slowly started to arrive around 10.30, and in half an hour everything was soaked in the smell of cigars. So were we.

It was very weird to have only guys in the bar, especially with the overwhelming majority of girls on campus. Luckily, they were all very peaceful, and the only manifestation of the overflowing testosteron was in the amount of beer drinking and the checking out of our boobs. Since they knew us, there weren't many inappropriate comments, and those which were probably the most insulting ones came from our friends who (think) can afford it.

The climax of the evening was of course the stripper, who did have a beautiful body, but whose face wasn't exactly the prettiest I've ever seen. (Girls, why oh why do you have to get your lips filled up?) She was the Dutch pole dancing champion. Unfortunately, we didn't have a pole :) So, she prepared a simple stripping show and abused one of the guys slightly. I would have been freaked out if I was him, but he dealt with it pretty well. It was interesting to see the same kind of anticipation in the guys now as in the girls on Ladies' Night. Somehow the guys were a bit calmer and more sophisticated, while our excitement was very obvious for an outside ovserver, maybe reflecting not only gender differences and the differential availability/use of porn materials for males and females, but also the unequal gender ratio on campus.

The best picture I took of the stripper:

And my favorite picture of the sexy ladies behind the bar:

The bartenders showed up after the stripper's act, which was really a relief after having been through something like an early shift already. We could finally stop for a while, sit down and take a break. Officially, the bar was supposed to be open till 2, but it was quite obvious that with this many people we couldn't close at 2 and that we would be lucky if we could close around 3. Closing was actually quite problematic. Eqvites and Allure once again thought that they enjoy some kind of priviledge in terms of what rules apply to them and what they can do. They behaved extremely annoyingly. We already asked them to leave twice when one of the guys stripped off half naked and started to do the haka. Now, performing the haka is beautiful, entertaining, a form of art, but not at f*cking 3 45 in the morning, when we are trying to round everything off and close after having been in the bar for 6 hours and having kept the bar open almost 2 hours longer than we should have. Seriously, as if they knew what it was like. As if they would have ever washed a single glass behind the bar. The girls were bitchy, the guys were cocky that we insisted on them leaving, so we got to the point of "get out! now!". I was simply annoyed, but Sanne was very emotionally upset that people afford themselves this kind of attitude toward the work that people put into running the bar. Sometimes I also wonder why the hell we are doing it if people are so extremely rude to us... Bouke tried to talk to Sanne when he saw how really upset she was, and as much as I understood their conversation, which was in Dutch naturally, he tried to make up for it and he put up a couple of chairs. But one person's attitude will never make up for the whole group's and I just don't see anything changing in that.

Pre-Gents' Night Post

Fishnets, black high-heels, Sade in the background, denim mini skirt. Leyla wanted to convince me to wear a black lace skirt of hers that would have hardly covered my ass. No. Black lace corsette still to come, but it's impossible to put it on alone. Sanne is coming over in 20 minutes to dress up, so she'll help me and I'll help her. That thingy is really a corsette in the traditional way - I can hardly breathe in it. I only ate half of my dinner thinking it will be more comfortable this way but I doubt that. It's ridiculous what we would do just to look good. The guys just got rid of their t-shirts on Ladies' Night and that was it. Now, I'm sure that they would appreciate if we did the same, but it's highly implausible that that will ever happen. It will be exposing enough to work behind the bar in this outfit. So, after 3 years, my first and last Gents' Night is to come :)

On the theme of happiness

I have two hours till my next class - and this time period is what we would at AC call a free code and would label as an hour with a hole in Hungarian - and even though I know that two hours is actually a time span that could really be used efficiently to work on something, it wouldn't be me if I did that during the afternoon.

It's so fascinating how easy it is to make people happy! A girl from my year asked me whether I would help her with statistics. She is analyzing the data from her research project but she found it quite hard to get started with it. I agreed to meet her last weekend and we spent a bit more than an hour cleaning up her data and arranging it into a format that is easily analyzable, and she looked absolutely relieved after seeing that we're actually getting somewhere with it. Same thing with a masters student working with Jocelyn. I met her to discuss the skipping pattern in her experiment. She initially looked very worried that it wouldn't work out and she was literally glowing when we said bye. And finally, I met two girls from my neuroscience class yesterday because DirectRT wouldn't run their files. Now it's all good. I might be selfish and arrogant but I love jobs that make other people happy.

Yesterday I found out that Anne-Thora, a Norwegian co-year of mine from AC just got married! I was browsing through some friends' facebook profiles and one of my former housemates profile picture was taken at the wedding. First, I didn't recognize the bride but it was suspicious that all the girls were Norwegians from AC, and looking closer I realized that it was Anne-Thora... Wow. I left a congratulating note on her wall. She married a Zambian man and as I understand is living with him there. I hope they'll be very happy.

May is also engaged... This is how informative facebook is :)

I'm so not prepared for these grown-up things. I'm not going to give up my freedom for a while. I'm happy this way.

Salsa!

In the Winkel van Sinkel...

Inspiration

Creative writing is going to ruin my life. As Jelena put it: "taking creative writing will discourage you from writing for life" (or something along these lines). Ok, it might not ruin my life. My GPA, surely, but that's another issue.

I'm supposed to write a draft of a personal essay for tomorrow. I thought this will be the easiest one. Every single time I write here, I write about something personal. And now I'm lacking inspiration. I was considering writing about social status at UC. Maybe about sharing a room. Or delaying the decision to choose a direction in your life. One of the example topics that Simon came up with also seems quite appealing: multi-cultural society or assimilation? I say assimilation, baby. GA attendance. Ok, so I do have ideas, now I need to choose and write. I guess I'll do what I usually do, start somewhere and let it flow.

Ah, I'm wasting my time again.

Long time no see...

I thought that these two weeks would be quite laid back, so I said yes to Rosemary when she asked me to help out with her experiment (and how could anyone say no to Rosemary anyway?), but so many little things came up on the way that my days now look like the following:
1. get up 2. go to class 3. work 4. go to class 5. work 6. do groupwork, prepare presentations etc. 7. go to bed. What is missing from the schedule is something called free time. Plus some time to study. Yesterday I felt so anxious about the rest of the week that I was considering not going to my own graduation drinks with Floris and Rosemary. I was also in a pretty bad mood, to be honest. But I figured that I have to go and that it would probably be a nice experience. And it was. We started at the Cafe Hofman (very bad mood still...) and then we walked to a tapas place close to the Neude. 6 glasses of white wine and 2 glasses of sangría did do what they were supposed to and we engaged in a funny conversation about life at UC and the future of this place.

At half past 9 I was doubting whether I was working in the bar later, so I asked the waiter whether I could check my e-mails anywhere. He said he knows an internet café close by, so I rushed away saying that I'll probably be back. I didn't find the internet café, but I did ask the bartenders in several bars whether they could help me. My saviors were working in a bar on the Oude Gracht and after asking whether it is urgent they just let me use their computer in the office. Now, how absolutely lovely is that?

This somehow reminds me of when I was 7-8 years old and I had anxiety problems. Well, nobody defined it that way, but looking back it really seems to be the case. In primary school (and also in high school) you have a small book called "ellenőrző" (literally, the checker) which contains all your grades and which you have to bring to school every single day. The idea is that every subject has a page and whatever grade you get you have to note down in there and when you get home your parents have to sign next to every single grade. It's a system of double checks: your parents check your grades and the school later checks whether your parents have seen them. So, I would pack my bag in the evening and then I would go to bed, and sometimes I just couldn't fall asleep because I thought that I didn't put my ellenőrző in my bag. It was obviously a silly thought because I don't think I ever forgot to put it in, but I actually got very nervous about it. I would have to get up and double check. And if I knew I shouldn't get up, I just couldn't fall asleep and couldn't divert my attention from it and I think sometimes I even started crying. So, I got up and checked, and of course it was there. I think I was a very anxious child...

Today's program is an open house in Amsterdam for neuroscience masters. I thought I should check it out, maybe it's wonderful and it will change my life :) Or not. In any case, it's good to be well informed about the possibilities.

It's actually the second time in a week that I'm going to Amsterdam. My mother was visiting me for a couple of days and we went to the capital on Saturday. We picked the worst day in terms of weather but we did do some sightseeing, walking around, coffee drinking... It was nice. The visit itself was surprisingly ok. It could have been much much worse and we actually had some pleasant moments together. Some awkward and tense ones too, naturally. I took her out to dance and introduced her to Enrique. She participated in a salsa/merengue workshop and I tought her some bachata, so I got Enrique dance bachata with her. That was so cool. She took her videocamera with her, so now I have some recordings of me dancing salsa, which is something I have always wanted so that I could see what it looks like from the outside and what I need to improve. I already have 3 points to keep in mind, but in general, I was quite happy with what I saw. I need to pay a lot more attention to my hands, which is where lady styling comes in. If I had time, I'd go to Trianon more often.

Qué más? I took her to the bar for a party night and I got her dance with me on the dancefloor, we had a lot of drinks together, I showed her the city, we did a lot of shopping, and she really liked the place. Next time, she's coming for graduation and she's going to take Béla bácsi out to dance salsa. I am very curious to see that...