alexisdonatien

Italy probably, Tuscany. Or if the Grue's at the gates let me, the USA, New York

So, i passed one exam. Wich is good. But i didn't pass several others. While i was expecting that, i had expected to pass 2 or 3, not just one. This means that i gotta do 4 exams and one big assignment end of august.

There is little or no question that this will be very hard. It also is my last try. I am very close to giving up on law school. The only thing that has in fact kept me going this year were some minor successes, and being told by various professors that i had everything in me that i needed. Actually, that is not true. There is one more thing that has kept me going. And that is fear.

If i quit lawschool, i'm a highly educated 26-year old without a real diploma. Sure i got my high school diploma, but that is where it ends. You only get a diploma at the end here. The only rational thing to do would be to find a better part-time job than i have now and try and study something new. I tought about communication, political science, history... But anything will do. I'm no longer aiming for the stars, i'm trying to still make something out of it.

Only, my folks are against it. They feel i should simply "get a job". I have been working and paying it all for 3 years. Now they want me to get a job and effectively declare the past 6 years of my life to be a waste. Why do i care? Because i live at home and would hate to spend my days only at my rented place. Because i owe them money. Not a fortune, but several months worth of full time job pay. Because somewhere, i know they are right and i should not have chosen the hardest university or should have at least transferred to an easier one when it became apparant how hard and demanding it was.

God, look at me whine :p

Fact is, i got one chance. I think i will do what i believe in and stand up. Go to the mattrasses. Engage in the fight, with the creed by wich i live. Aut Caesar Aut Nihil. "Either Caesar or nothing" was the creed of Cesare Borgia, the ruthless yet brilliant italian warlord and politician who came very close to conquering all of Italy and lost it all because of bad luck. He made a name in history as the king that wasn't and as the man Machiavelli wrote his most famous book about: Il Principe, the Prince.

And i will have to start to accept the possiblity of nihil.

So it seems i will be moving soon. My week-place-of-stay agreed to let me out of the contract early with a small fee, namely one month of rent. I will soon be living it up in a big appartment. Well, bigger than the one room i had. I'm going to share it with two friends. This is a very odd change, the first time i will have roommates. I'm going to blog more about the experience of living in that appartment as soon as i had it, but the first month they will probably be at home or in their old place, as they have finals. The real living together will only really start in october probably.

Also, i had a fight with a few people of the fansub team i'm an editor for. During a very busy time they wanted me to do the editing of the second ep of the anime we are translating. I made time for it and did it nicely within deadline. I am a fan of the KISS-principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) so i had corrected mistakes and replaced some words. I had not rewritten stuff just to rewrite it and tried to stay true to the original translation. But i left two mistakes in, that were found by the second editor, as is naturally the whole point of having two editors.

But apparantly, punctuation mistakes and personal preferences were considered very important (!? should be ?! apparantly) I also made the very silly mistake of not knowing the specific preferences of the guy in charge.

So next to my 20+ changes, he changed a ton of other things. Sometimes replacing "Ichi and Zero said that..." by "They said that..." and other things that i simply could not have known.

Fine, he can do that. No problem.

But then they started giving me trouble about it. I don't take condescending tones or ridicule very well. So i quit.

The sad thing is, i liked these guys. They were my friends. I guess they still are actually. But now i'm angry and a bit annoyed. My effort and time deserves at least appreciation, it's not as if what i did was useless. It's tough being a team player with people that can't lead.

I stole this from my friend and former irc-love-interest Taisetsuna. We even got married for a while, but then she decided i was not her prince charming. (yes that is a utena reference!)

Oddly enough i haven't done what i decided about IRC and still things turned out more ok. My life has become busier lately, yeah even more than before, and now i find myself rarely having time for hour-long irc sessions. When i do have time for them, it's usually on those days that are just about doing as little as possible. Other days i'm just there for an hour or 2. Sadly i do miss some people that way.

But my life has gotten busier. Last week i was in Berlin (germany) for a seminar! I didn't learn anything but meeting people from all over the globe was fascinating. I was there because of my function in the national student organisation i'm in. The year is almost over, but they asked me to consider a second term. On top of that, the local organisation wants me to be come the political secretary, basically the man in charge of ideology and philosophical debate. It is too fun! I swear! Another organisation has asked me to become a member of their board. They don't pay me for this and yet I plan to do it. Having a full time occupation that doesn't pay a cent is one of the smartest things a person without money can do right? Right...?

On top of that, my company needs a bit more attention lately because of the rise in customers. Wich is good. Only my associate needs to learn that he can't depend on me all the time. He needs to be both more involved and confident. I do have good hope. He is elitist, greedy and arrogant in a funny way. My interest is the same as his, and he will follow his own interest, wich will benefit me. (dance puppets! dance!)

And even more on top of that, finals. Not yet, they only happen the last three weeks of june, but preparation is starting to become essential.

Oh and i am looking at moving to a nicer appartment. Only issue will be getting out of this one in time...

So one time on irc, it just wasn't fun anymore. I quit. Yet, while i did not miss the annoying whining of idiots and the abuse of others, nor the scary fake otaku culture that 4chan-people represent, i did miss the people. And i kept missing them. And a wonderous idea came to me. Maybe irc is about the people that are on it.

I found myself a channel with a group of people that i liked. They were wacky and anime-loving, yet also not dumb and often debates erupted that could be about politics, economics, morality... or the color of that girls underpants in that fanservice screenshot. Take the boring out of intellectuals and replace it with absurd humor, and you have these people. I got irc-settled there, with a solid group of friends, and even a few promotions in the channel access list. (wich is more a burden than anything else, but it is a form of power. i like power)

And then i got annoyed with it again. Only this time, i didn't leave. I tried to bare with it. I've gotten too attached to it to just walk away.

The answer? I don't know. I don't WANT to get tired of irc again. I just... don't feel that "woohoo"-thingy anymore.

Maybe minimising my time on irc will help. so it remains fresh, cool and awesome.

Maybe.

Hahahaha! I really like it when a meme i fill out honestly comes out naughty ;).

Over the years i have realised i get fascinated easily. It's not hard for me to find something that grasps my attention and holds it for a while. I blame my rich and extensive imagination for that. It has it's good sides and it's bad sides, but i do know that i would not be able to miss it.

And so i often find myself reading the entire buffer of a newly found blog or webcomic, browsing flickr accounts, reading about food, watching at food photography, planning trips to museums to see the art-style i adore at that moment, hunting down information about newly found an adored bands...

The result of it is that i never have to be bored. If i poke around the internet enough, i will find stuff that i am fascinated with. Like the pseudo-erotic memoires of Casanova you can read at project Gutenberg, or the entire history of the Roman empire. (the Roman empire fascination has been going on for a few years, i should not see it as a fad) The other, less fun, result of that is that i have to be carefull with money. Spending 20 bucks on something that you adore is great, but when you generally find 10 new things a month that you love, is not. So i often find myself going: don't buy this, at least not this week... In order to make sure i don't buy a book for the same amount of money as my weekly food bill.

And then, as time goes by, the fascination fades. Often, like with most webcomics and blogs, there remains a basic interest an amusement, but the irrational "omg this is teh best ting evar!" emotion is gone. I like that phase, i can still enjoy the thing i loved before, without realising i am being irrationally attracted to it. The nice thing is that it also leaves a layer of knowledge, because i tend to hunt down facts relentlessly in a gluttony of brain-candy once i find something worthy of my short attetion. But one of the things i dislike the most, is when i then take an initiative, and then eventually can't continue it. I had a webcomic, and it failed because i'm not that good of an artist, don't have much time, and screwed up the story i tried to tell. I had a blog where i posted my drawings, but i haven't drawn in over a month. I had an urge to write short stories, but only wrote one. (oh! i'm gonna post it here next week!) I had a blog about anime, but quit writing it.

Ah passion. I know it, and i have learned that i'm not all that good in handling it. Even tough i could resist it, i don't. Because i don't want to. Because i love how it makes me feel and think. I want to live as conciously as possible. But without my brain-crack, i would go insane eventually.

Currently, my fascination is food blogs.

Like every friday i took the train home today. Because of an "incident" i had to wait 2 hours in the station for a train and then had to spend 2 and a half hour on one, wich was crowded with people.

In the end, it wasn't that bad, at least not when it became clear that i was in fact going to get home.

Fascinating life i lead huh!

Yesterday was my birthday. I turned 26! That's only 4 years away from 30... I do get the internal urge to go settle with a girl. Even men have a biological clock, they're just not supposed to admit it. Or i'm a big exception and i don't think that's the case. (at least not in THIS matter)

Yesterday i also was sick. Fever, stomachache, headache,... it felt like the beginning of stomach-flu so it had me worried, but fortunatly this morning i felt a lot better. All i still have is some stomachache but nothing meds don't fix.
It does suck to be sick on your birthday, but fortunatly it started on monday, right before i was supposed to take the train. As i mentioned before, i live in a different city during the week and am only home during the weekend. As i didn't feel wel, i decided to stay home monday. Otherwise i would have been sick and miserable alone in my one room-place. Now i was sick an miserable, but saw people, was near a burning stove, and was brought meds, water and easy digestible stuff and got lots of attention. I don't know if that helps you heal, but it definatly helps prevent the general feeling of depression when you are ill. I get that during being sick and it's one of the main reasons why i really should never be alone when ill.

Fortunatly i feel better now. Next weekend i'm going to a rented house for 2 days with my studnet organisation. I had already payed and really would have hated to miss it (and to lose the money). I just will have to make sure to lay off the booze a bit.

As for my birthday: thx to all the people who sent me a message!