Dear Stalker,

I don't get what kind of aberration makes you take pleasure in stalking me. Get your act together and please stop humiliating yourself by what you are doing. Gondolkodni ingyen van és nem fáj, right? So, start using your little brain and realize that you are acting like a 5-year-old. Keep at least a tiny little bit of your pride and act like an adult. I did no harm to you; leave me alone.

Great things

I'm halfway through preparing for my Macroeconomics exam. Or almost. This means I should have (another) break.

Great things are happening these days. I started driving. I passed my theory exam in October or November but had little time afterwards to start taking lessons. I started working and I was happy if I had the time and energy to go out dancing once per week... Driving lessons seemed impossible at the time. Then Christmas came and then the exam period. I called 3 numbers by the time I found someone who was willing to get started immediately. I'm quite satisfied with him. He's not impatient, he explains things clearly and he doesn't freak out if I'm having a bad day and I'm messing things up with the pedals. On average it's going okay - on odd days it's going great and on even ones it's quite horrible. (Igor said that then I should get a car with an odd number on the license plate just in case there will be another smog emergency with restrictions :)) It's something I should have started a long long while ago and so I'm glad I finally faced the challenge.

My exam period is slowly coming to an end. Hungarian exam periods are weird but I can see the point in how they work. My grades are good - I have no reason to complain at all. One more exam tomorrow and I'm done. Hopefully, by the time my next exam period starts I can drive to Veszprém to take my exams.

Christel is coming to Budapest tomorrow and I'm having dinner with her. It's almost unbelievable that she's going to be here for a couple of days. I miss having people from UC around. I wonder what kind of stories she has to tell about the new administration and about how things go at UC nowadays. Probably life goes on without us, but who knows, it might have stopped :)

And Kaszi said something really beautiful today.

Ooops

Ooops, I think I must have pressed something.

K1

I have always thought of fights as something destructive. I was maybe scared of them. I'm not sure why. (I don't remember my parents fighting a lot; I guess I was too small when they divorced.) With my mother I definitely tried to avoid fights because she was way too powerful for me to confront and she has never tolerated any contradiction. If she said something, it had to be that way. As I grew up, I started rebelling a bit, of course, but I never took things too far.

I realized now that the effects of fighting can be quite positive. You say things out loud that you maybe wouldn't say otherwise because you want to be sensitive. Sure there are some topics that might upset the other person. Those issues are still there though. And when you are upset, you don't mind all that much what you are saying. So, the issues surface and maybe for a second you go "ooops, did I really say that?" and you realize you did and that this fact cannot be changed so you just have to go with it. Maybe it's not even that bad that you said it.

But I don't enjoy fighting. Fighting is stressful. It's a power struggle where somebody needs to win and the other one needs to acknowledge it, otherwise all that remains is sheer frustration. You have to be quick and sharp. Me being quite an emotional little creature influences the extent to which I can be quick and sharp... not in a good direction, for sure. And the worst part is if it seems you are talking about the same thing but you are actually not. It's not about the standpoint - that must be different; otherwise you wouldn't have an issue. It's about some basic assumptions that have to be the same to be able to have a debate. Maybe that is the difference between debating and fighting. Debating is boxing. Fighting is K1.

So, we tried a bit of K1 yesterday and it wasn't good. Real fighting makes me physically sick. My head feels as if it could explode any second. I said some harsh things. Such as "of course these things have never come up before; you've never had an educated long-term girlfriend before" (uh) - which is true, but not something anyone should say. (But then again, him arguing that so far everyone has been fine with something is not a valid argument either...) Well, this is what being upset can do to you.

And then you go home, spend a couple of hours apart and you realize that you miss him and he realizes that he misses you and you meet up, watch a movie, have dinner and cuddle up and it feels great. Peace.

From the news

Boy and girl, six and seven, try to elope to sunny Africa

By Tony Paterson, 6 January, The Independent

"Fed up with the near-Arctic temperatures at home, a seven-year-old German girl and her six-year-old boyfriend hatched a plan to "elope" to Africa and get married in the sun. But their dreams were thwarted after officials stopped them boarding a train to the airport, police revealed yesterday.

The two children, identified as Mika and Anna-Lena, packed bathing costumes, a lilo, sunglasses and food and set off on New Year's Day from their home in the town of Langenhagen near Hanover. Anna Lena's five-year-old sister was invited along as a witness at the wedding. The three took a tram to Hanover station, where they had planned to board a train to the city's airport. But railway officials intervened. "The couple were very much in love and had planned to get married in Africa where it is warm," a Hanover police spokesman said yesterday.

Police said the three had hatched their plan to elope on New Year's Eve as their families were celebrating together. Mika had won over the girls with his account of a holiday in "warm" Italy. Temperatures in Germany have been as low as -10C since Christmas.

Two policewomen persuaded the couple they could realise their plans "a bit later" and they enjoyed a tour of Hanover police station before being taken home by their parents."

Unmotivated

I'm so absolutely unmotivated to write my paper for Friday. First, the topic is as boring as it can be. Second, it's supposed to be 10 pages but I don't even know how I'll fill 3... and you know I'm a bit of a graphomaniac, so there is a problem here. Third, the weather outside is totally depressing. (Now, you might wonder how the weather comes to all this, but in my mind it has a strong connection to my urge to write or work.) It's grey and dark outside and since it wasn't that cold this morning, a sheet of rain froze on the trees and the streets. No sunshine, no anything. Fourth, I'm ill. My throat has been hurting for a while but now it's much worse. No wonder, I went skiing to the Kékes yesterday, which - by the way - was really nice. The piste was short but the quality of the snow was very good and there were very few peope, so the conditions were ideal for Kaszi to learn to ski. I was amazed by how fast he was able to learn the basics; I've never seen anyone learn these things so fast.

I already did all the things I could to procrastinate. I wrote facebook messages, I called the office of Népszabadság to let them know that they shouldn't send their newspaper here, I called the electronic services to let them know how much electricity was used last month, I did the washing up and I hung the clean clothes in the wardrobe. Now even writing a post is off the list. Maybe soon I could start cooking something for dinner :)

I have 3 more subjects to go, which means 2 papers and 2 exams. I figured that I shouldn't go to the last possible exam date in Economics, just in case I would fail. I'll go to the one before the last and then I can still go back a week later to retake the exam. It's going to be my first ever real oral exam during my university career. At UC I gave plenty of presentations, wrote dozens of papers and wrote twice as many exams; but no orals...

Ah, I'm so tired of winter. Gimme sunshine!

Exam period

Media Player set to random, drinking the third cup of flavored green tea (called Little Buddha), thinking that some of my friends are now dancing and that Viasat 3 is playing CSI now, but no, no, I need to study. So far, out of the 8 subjects I have this semester I'm done with 3 and if everything goes well, this number is going to increase to 5 tomorrow. Economic Law and Law of Social Care. Is there anyone out there who thinks it's interesting to learn what the conditions of getting all kinds of subsidies are? Please take over for me. How frustrating. Seriously.

Photos from New Year's Eve

The core. (The sober side of our little group.)

Salsa 1. How nice that all of us love to dance salsa.

Salsa 2. I think this time I was the man. We were doing the move "Visegrád".

That was a happy new year kiss.

Awwww.

The same guys I've been to the Cinetrip party with. (Not exactly that sober anymore.)

With another really talented salsera.

Anything strange about the beard of the guy behind me? That's the tail of one of our cat girls :)

2008

These days I can't sleep too long. It bothers me a bit. I shouldn't wake up but I do wake up around half past 7 most of the time. Yesterday, we fell asleep around 3 a.m. I was up by 8.15 and decided to get up at 8.45 because it only frustrates me to lie there in bed. I started thinking about last year and how it all went. I didn't even think of a lot of things until I got to read all my posts from 2008.

So, what happened in 2008?

I went skiing with my friends and it was amazing! One week of snow and sunshine with people you like - nothing can top that. I had several interviews with Brown University for a Ph.D. program and eventually, I didn't get admitted. I hoped I would, but I should have known that I should have had way more precise plans. I had to face the fact that I had no idea of what I would do once I graduated. I partied a lot with BarCo. I was drunk and dancing and promiscuous (as long as you can be promiscuous if you don't have someone...). I had one-night stands and I loved that I could do it. In a way, I wanted to show myself that I'm able to do this too. Just get into bed with someone and forget about it the next day. It wasn't too satisfying on a mental level but I proved my point and that was satisfying. I danced salsa. I went to the Winkel van Sinkel every Sunday and danced the whole night. Once I even took Sanne, ah, it was great fun! Once I even took my parents :) By the way, I have no idea where I got my coordination from because it's quite sure that it's not from my mother. By the end of the semester I got a VIP card from Enrique. By the end of the semester I also managed to keep my weight more or less stable and I was satisfied. 10 kg minus, I bought a miniskirt and was proud of my legs again. I had exams and I graduated with a summa cum laude. Before my last exam the Dean asked me to be the Valedictorian and so I wasn't completely "done" before my graduation because I still had to write the speech. I liked the final version. I spent time on the Quad. I even had dinner with my friends on the Quad. Sunshine, rain, summer term feeling. With the exception that I had no more classes. I helped out with Rosemary's and Christel's classes. I spent time with Sjoerd, we had dinners with Frerk and Co behind W. The combination of the rain and the bonfire was fantastic! Then I gave away my furniture, packed my stuff and left for home.

I arrived home and it was new and exciting! It was warm, people had a horrible taste in clothes (they still do, but by now I don't realize it that much), I moved into my flat. On the first Friday I went out to dance salsa and that was the beginning of a summer of salsa parties. It was wonderful. I slowly got used to the Cuban style too. I didn't do much otherwise. My friends either had exams or worked or I'm not too sure what they did. I went to the Balaton Sound with Dávid and to the Sziget with David, there was an EVIME summer camp, and more or less regularly I had someone visiting or just crashing at my place. I started looking for a job and it turned out that it wasn't too easy to find one. I quickly realized that the job at the university is bullshit and not finding anything nice somehow put me down a bit. I spent my days submitting applications, cooking nice food and dancing salsa. I met Kaszi at a party and after the initial period of "please leave me alone..." and him always commenting on the wall that I built up around me, I didn't anymore ask him to leave me alone and the wall slowly fell. Since then I've spent a lot of time with him and his friends who are also salsa lovers and great people. The idyl started to disappear a bit when I started to work for Save Max. It was the type of work that I would have never imagined myself to do and maybe that was exactly why I wanted to try it out. It turned out I was quite good at it. But it also turned out that there was no way I could spend time on the things I liked to do: dancing, being with Kaszi, working for the EVIME. After work I felt dead as a stick. So, after some time it became clear that I had to quit. Too bad, I really liked the people. The last week of the year I had three fights with Kaszi and I hope this is not how we'll continue.

All in all, a dynamic year, eh?

Let's see what this one brings. :)