Winter is still here. Just like last year, I bought daffodils when I got the feeling that spring should be coming soon. The daffodils were lovely, fresh, bright yellow, enjoyed the light on my windowsill and then quickly died. Little ephemeral creatures.
There's still snow on the ground and I remember that day when I was going for my first (and last to date) driving lesson, the pavement was covered in fresh snow and it made that nice cracking sound under my shoes. I loved it. I loved the prospect of slippery roads a bit less but, as you know, I survived.
It's the end of winter though. The spring collections have arrived to the stores and the sales are slowly fading out. Irma still managed to buy an amazing long dress from Stradivarius for a ridiculous sum of money. She must look gorgeous in it and I can't wait to see her wearing it. I bought a long sleeved and a short sleeved top (also for a ridiculous sum), which - to my biggest surprise - Kaszi turned out to like. That's quite a change because our tastes pull us in completely different directions and now I managed to find a point where we meet. The Dutch have a nice saying - over smaak valt niet te twisten - the point of which is that you should not argue about tastes. We still do it all the time and none of us is willing to change the way we dress. I like comfortable clothes, he likes a certain style, and that's not going to change...
At AC, in Wales, winter was unimaginable without one thing: porridge. The first time I saw that sticky, yucky thing, I thought that people who ate that were insane. Then I tried it, fell in love with it and had it for breakfast every single day. That is, every day I had breakfast. They only served porridge in the morning and only during the winter and I remember I even signed a petition for having porridge the whole year. Porridge became one of the yummiest things for me, even though the only topping we could use was sugar and butter.
Last week, I stayed over at Irma's and when she made porridge in the morning, I got that warm, fuzzy feeling I used to get when eating porridge in AC. Since then, I got a big bag of white oat-flakes and made porridge three times at home. Guys, you should try it. One cup of oat-flakes, one cup of milk, one cup of water and it's done. You can use honey or sugar to sweeten it and it's great with fruits. If you used to like semolina when you were a kid, you'll like this too. It's warm, healthy and tastes much better than the way it looks.
Sunday, 22 February 2009
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
Hurray!
Yesterday, I passed my first driving exam!
I was slightly nervous... I was at the practising area at 10 to go through all the possible tasks once and already made a mistake with the first compulsory one. Great start, I thought. (In Hungary, you take two exams, one which we call the "routine", which basically looks at whether you have enough knowledge of the mechanics of the car and whether you can do tasks like parking, Y turn, reversing, accelerating etc.; and one which you take in traffic, on the roads.) My teacher had two students taking the exam that day and so I had to wait till the other guy takes his exam (and poor fella' failed).
Then it was my turn. The examiner - I was told - was a very precise man, so I used the proper names for everything during the theory part and that was all well. Then it was time to go. I did the first 4 compulsory tasks pretty easily. Then came the one that I picked blindly: reverse parking. And truly, people are always scared of the Y turn or the task on the slope, but for me, this was the only one that I didn't want to pick. I started the parking, slowly, checking if everything went right, when the examiner said: "Miss, you know you are allowed to correct the angle?". I was nervous enough not to even think that I could complete the task on the radius I was moving on (and I'm sure I would have been able to do it and my teacher thinks so too), so I started to correct the angle and that's where things went wrong. I overcorrected the angle and it took just a bit too long to realize that. Break. The left mirror of the car ended up about a millimeter from the first buoy. I turned around and said to the examiner: "I guess it would be pointless to try to correct it now", referring to me having failed the exam. And he said that so far he hasn't said anything and that as far as he could see it, the car had not touched the buoy, although he was not sure whether he could squeeze a piece of paper through that gap, but if I can finish the task without touching the buoy, I should do that. I finished the task, parked the car, left the parking slot and waited for the verdict.
Tension, tension, he filled out all kinds of papers and didn't say a word for what seemed like hours. Then he said "Congratulations". All my teacher could say was that "You certainly need a little bit of luck in life sometimes." God, you do. If I break a millisecond later, I would have had to retake the exam. When driving alone on the roads, one millisecond will be way more important than now, but no worries, that's still some time from now.
So, today I was driving in traffic and I was happy that people weren't too impatient with me. Hungarians are notoriously impatient on the roads, but I guess not driving in rush hour made a difference. It was snowing and the roads were wet, but hey, at least if I learn to drive in these conditions, it's only going to be easier when summer will be approaching.
So, hurray for me passing my exam and hurray for this being my 200th post on this blog!
I was slightly nervous... I was at the practising area at 10 to go through all the possible tasks once and already made a mistake with the first compulsory one. Great start, I thought. (In Hungary, you take two exams, one which we call the "routine", which basically looks at whether you have enough knowledge of the mechanics of the car and whether you can do tasks like parking, Y turn, reversing, accelerating etc.; and one which you take in traffic, on the roads.) My teacher had two students taking the exam that day and so I had to wait till the other guy takes his exam (and poor fella' failed).
Then it was my turn. The examiner - I was told - was a very precise man, so I used the proper names for everything during the theory part and that was all well. Then it was time to go. I did the first 4 compulsory tasks pretty easily. Then came the one that I picked blindly: reverse parking. And truly, people are always scared of the Y turn or the task on the slope, but for me, this was the only one that I didn't want to pick. I started the parking, slowly, checking if everything went right, when the examiner said: "Miss, you know you are allowed to correct the angle?". I was nervous enough not to even think that I could complete the task on the radius I was moving on (and I'm sure I would have been able to do it and my teacher thinks so too), so I started to correct the angle and that's where things went wrong. I overcorrected the angle and it took just a bit too long to realize that. Break. The left mirror of the car ended up about a millimeter from the first buoy. I turned around and said to the examiner: "I guess it would be pointless to try to correct it now", referring to me having failed the exam. And he said that so far he hasn't said anything and that as far as he could see it, the car had not touched the buoy, although he was not sure whether he could squeeze a piece of paper through that gap, but if I can finish the task without touching the buoy, I should do that. I finished the task, parked the car, left the parking slot and waited for the verdict.
Tension, tension, he filled out all kinds of papers and didn't say a word for what seemed like hours. Then he said "Congratulations". All my teacher could say was that "You certainly need a little bit of luck in life sometimes." God, you do. If I break a millisecond later, I would have had to retake the exam. When driving alone on the roads, one millisecond will be way more important than now, but no worries, that's still some time from now.
So, today I was driving in traffic and I was happy that people weren't too impatient with me. Hungarians are notoriously impatient on the roads, but I guess not driving in rush hour made a difference. It was snowing and the roads were wet, but hey, at least if I learn to drive in these conditions, it's only going to be easier when summer will be approaching.
So, hurray for me passing my exam and hurray for this being my 200th post on this blog!
Saturday, 14 February 2009
Weekend chill-out
Lovely day. Last night Kaszi, some friends and I went out to a new salsa place, so we slept in a bit. I woke up to him stroking my back. (Hmm, I like waking up like this.) I made us tea, we had breakfast, he left and I spent some time on pampering myself. Long shower, cutting my hair, cutting my nails, scrubbing my face, putting on Kaszi's sweatpants and sweatshirt and I made myself comfortable on the couch, reading my lot of the scholarship applications received by my national committee.
I've always known that I wanted to contribute to my national committee's work once I was back. It took some time to come home but now that I'm finally here, it's only natural that I started to put some work into the organization. I finished and sent out the first newsletter yesterday evening and I already received some really nice feedback. Today, I decided to get started with the applications. So, lounge music in the background and 20 files on my lap. I was wondering how I would feel about selecting the new generation of UWC students. I somehow had this idea that it would be quite easy. I started reading some files just to get a gist of the quality of the applications and was totally blown away by them. I tried to think about the things I wrote 6 years ago and I couldn't recall all of it but I still had the idea that these people have better files than I used to. We have a very precise scoring system (about which I am obviously not allowed to say anything), so it takes some time to pay attention and evaluate the applications, but it's so intriguing to get to know these people through their files that I don't even realize how fast time goes by. In any case, the selection is not going to be as easy as I hoped it would be. But it's much more interesting!
For the evening I "reserved" Irma for myself. It seems that my new year non-resolution about seeing friends more often is working out. I see Irma quite often since she plunged into the salsa scene, I once saw Szekér outside the EVIME meetings and I'm going to meet up with Peti Varga next week. Not too bad. And spending time with Irma is going to be just the perfect highlight of this day!
I've always known that I wanted to contribute to my national committee's work once I was back. It took some time to come home but now that I'm finally here, it's only natural that I started to put some work into the organization. I finished and sent out the first newsletter yesterday evening and I already received some really nice feedback. Today, I decided to get started with the applications. So, lounge music in the background and 20 files on my lap. I was wondering how I would feel about selecting the new generation of UWC students. I somehow had this idea that it would be quite easy. I started reading some files just to get a gist of the quality of the applications and was totally blown away by them. I tried to think about the things I wrote 6 years ago and I couldn't recall all of it but I still had the idea that these people have better files than I used to. We have a very precise scoring system (about which I am obviously not allowed to say anything), so it takes some time to pay attention and evaluate the applications, but it's so intriguing to get to know these people through their files that I don't even realize how fast time goes by. In any case, the selection is not going to be as easy as I hoped it would be. But it's much more interesting!
For the evening I "reserved" Irma for myself. It seems that my new year non-resolution about seeing friends more often is working out. I see Irma quite often since she plunged into the salsa scene, I once saw Szekér outside the EVIME meetings and I'm going to meet up with Peti Varga next week. Not too bad. And spending time with Irma is going to be just the perfect highlight of this day!
Friday, 6 February 2009
That's me
So, (to help all the non-Hungarian speakers,) my 5-year-old admirer's last question was why it hurts that not everybody likes me. And the answer is that it does not hurt at all. It would be a nightmare if everybody liked me. It's only a limited number of people who can appreciate the kind of person I am. And that's fine. I don't like everyone either. I like a group of people and I trust very few people, if any at all.
There comes the question: what kind of person am I? I could start listing adjectives that I think appropriately describe me. Or I could start listing things others have said about me, such as "social nerd", "hippi", "arrogant bitch", "control freak" etc. Or... I could dig up a personality test I filled out a while ago. One of the advantages of majoring in Psychology is to be able to do fun things during class. We would read an article about a guy who fell in love with a polar bear, watch episodes of 7 (14, 21, 28, 35, 42...) Up, watch babies move their heads into the right direction when a given sound is played or fill out a personality test.
The Big 5 is at the moment the king of personality tests. I filled out the MMPI too and insane but true, I turned out to have normal results in all aspects of the MMPI. The MMPI is great and the Big 5 funky. The Big 5 compares you to others on 5 dimensions: openness to experience, conscienciousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism (or OCEAN). And here we go, this is what I'm like in terms of the Big 5.
1. Extraversion
Definitely high. 88/100. Pronounced engagement with the external world. I scored high on all extraversion facets except friendliness. That one came out to be 49. Assertiveness: 90, gragariousness:91, excitement-seeking: 81, cheerfulness: 80, activity level: 73. I wouldn't say this is at all surprising. I'm hardly ever friendly with anyone I don't find in some way inspiring, and for the rest, writing a blog already should say something about being an extravert.
2. Agreeableness
For anyone who is not sure about the meaning of agreeableness, being agreeable means that you value getting on with others. Agreeable people are better liked than other people. Disagreeable people can place self-interest above getting along with others. They are good at making tough or absolute objective decisions. They are skeptics and suspicious. They are the typical scientist. I am on the absolute low side of agreeableness, i.e. I don't give a sh*t about what others think. I do what I want to do, I wear what I feel comfortable wearing and I think what I think. To be honest, it's very liberating to be disagreeable.
3. Conscientiousness
Conscienciousness is the way in which we control, regulate and direct our impulses. My score on conscienciousness was average. My self-efficacy and achievement striving were very high (93 and 95 respectively), so there we go, this is where my summa cum laude is coming from. The thing I scored asolutely low on was orderliness (7). Yep, I do leave everything around and I don't mind leaving the dirty dishes in the sink for half a day.
4. Neuroticism
Neuroticism used to describe a state of mental distress, emotional suffering, but in the framework of the Big 5 it refers to a tendency to experience negative emotions. According to the test, my neuroticism score was average. My level of self-consciousness was low, meaning that I'm not nervous in social situations, not easily ashamed or embarrased and I'm not sensitive to what others think of me. Immoderation: high. I have cravings and I have to satisfy them. So true. Not too practical though. Vulnerability: low. Confident when under stress. Very practical.
5. Openness to experience
High. "They tend to think and act in individualistic and nonconforming ways." Here we go. And very high on emotionality.
There comes the question: what kind of person am I? I could start listing adjectives that I think appropriately describe me. Or I could start listing things others have said about me, such as "social nerd", "hippi", "arrogant bitch", "control freak" etc. Or... I could dig up a personality test I filled out a while ago. One of the advantages of majoring in Psychology is to be able to do fun things during class. We would read an article about a guy who fell in love with a polar bear, watch episodes of 7 (14, 21, 28, 35, 42...) Up, watch babies move their heads into the right direction when a given sound is played or fill out a personality test.
The Big 5 is at the moment the king of personality tests. I filled out the MMPI too and insane but true, I turned out to have normal results in all aspects of the MMPI. The MMPI is great and the Big 5 funky. The Big 5 compares you to others on 5 dimensions: openness to experience, conscienciousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism (or OCEAN). And here we go, this is what I'm like in terms of the Big 5.
1. Extraversion
Definitely high. 88/100. Pronounced engagement with the external world. I scored high on all extraversion facets except friendliness. That one came out to be 49. Assertiveness: 90, gragariousness:91, excitement-seeking: 81, cheerfulness: 80, activity level: 73. I wouldn't say this is at all surprising. I'm hardly ever friendly with anyone I don't find in some way inspiring, and for the rest, writing a blog already should say something about being an extravert.
2. Agreeableness
For anyone who is not sure about the meaning of agreeableness, being agreeable means that you value getting on with others. Agreeable people are better liked than other people. Disagreeable people can place self-interest above getting along with others. They are good at making tough or absolute objective decisions. They are skeptics and suspicious. They are the typical scientist. I am on the absolute low side of agreeableness, i.e. I don't give a sh*t about what others think. I do what I want to do, I wear what I feel comfortable wearing and I think what I think. To be honest, it's very liberating to be disagreeable.
3. Conscientiousness
Conscienciousness is the way in which we control, regulate and direct our impulses. My score on conscienciousness was average. My self-efficacy and achievement striving were very high (93 and 95 respectively), so there we go, this is where my summa cum laude is coming from. The thing I scored asolutely low on was orderliness (7). Yep, I do leave everything around and I don't mind leaving the dirty dishes in the sink for half a day.
4. Neuroticism
Neuroticism used to describe a state of mental distress, emotional suffering, but in the framework of the Big 5 it refers to a tendency to experience negative emotions. According to the test, my neuroticism score was average. My level of self-consciousness was low, meaning that I'm not nervous in social situations, not easily ashamed or embarrased and I'm not sensitive to what others think of me. Immoderation: high. I have cravings and I have to satisfy them. So true. Not too practical though. Vulnerability: low. Confident when under stress. Very practical.
5. Openness to experience
High. "They tend to think and act in individualistic and nonconforming ways." Here we go. And very high on emotionality.
Monday, 2 February 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
