Going home for the summer in 2 hours!  Which means I got 5 weeks of Sex, Drugs and Rock'n'Roll in front of me!  Well, two out of those three anyways. 

Gosh, it's been a long time since going home was this exciting to me.

Note to self:  do not forget to write your report paper...

Such as:  how, in the name of basic human intelligence, can you forget your baby somewhere?

No, really, how can you?  A baby is, after all, not something you can easily forget, I'd dare say...

Apparently I have collected a load of bad karma lately.  Not only was I not able to put my fail-safe masterplan to work this morning, since a slight complication arose I had not reckoned with (damn), and it thus turned out that it wasn't quite as fail-safe as I thought  it would be. 
This alone would have been depressing enough, but no!  In this town, you always have to watch out for more.  It turned out that after my lessons the bus didn't come.  Because of some demonstration.  I have nothing against demonstrations.  As long as they don't. obstruct. public. transportation. networks.  So I had to walk home.  Uphill.  Like, REALLY uphill.  In about 30°C midday heat.  While already sporting a nice sunburn.  Also, I forgot to pack something to drink this morning.  I am not amused, not to mention that I am not feeling well at all (ugh, too much sun, brain got cooked).  I think I'll just write off tomorrows Kanji test and go to sleep. That reminds me, today's Mahjong horoscope thingy said something about a strange bed???  Like, what?  Do I get to go to the hospital?  Jail?  Does strange bed mean a bed that belongs to somebody else, or that the bed itself is strange?  WTF?

I seriously need a lie down...

Why is it that the people you really, really want to run into right now remain conspicuously inconspicuous,while at the exact same second you don't want to run into them, they pop out of nowhere like a jack in the box?

*sigh*

Note to self:  do not run to the supermarket across the street to buy bread and cheese while dressed in your lazy day bum wear.  You never know who you might meet along the way.

Tomorrow is the long awaited day:  I get to have break from Criminal Youths and Co. and instead get to see my first, last and bestest ever gaming buddy again: ロクシさん.  There can be no better one.  Anyways, there are 4 blissful days of gaming, watching anime, delicious cooking, refilling my supply of yumyums, laughing until I'm crying, keeping Maki away from my food and poking Ocean ahead of me, not to mention being able to go to the Japan Day in Dusseldorf on Saturday.  My first cosplay, yay!  A part of me actually thinks that I am too old for this and that there is no reason to get excited about it, but that part needs to shut up right now. 
...
...
E-X-C-I-T-E-M-E-N-T!!!!
...
*System error - brain must shut down immediately*

To be honest, I am not sure whether I should lose all faith in humankind or just go and have good laugh:

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/bt/the-sage/fanfic-theatre/5040-masterpiece-fanfic-theatre-episode-2

Maybe I'll just go and do both.

Today I got to go to a very impressive guest lecture held at my university.  The lecturer was none other than -drum roll please- Franz Müntefering, current SPD party leader.  He held a speech about the role of the state in times of financial crisis (=now).  The main argument was, that the state, instead of twiddling it's thumbs, should take an active role as a regulating and stabilizing instrument to prevent further harm.   Not only was it very well reasoned, but it also gave the impression that, with some luck, we can pull out of it without too much damage.  The speech also went a bit beyond the current situation, claiming, that some sort of regulation is always needed.  It might be true that the market regulates itself, but that doesn't mean it regulates itself in a way a democratic state can accept.
The example that was cited was that of a full-time employee earning less than what he'd get if he were unemployed.  Of course, the employer can achieve higher margins this way, but you really don't need to be über-intelligent to know that wage dumping isn't the right thing to do.     
Of course, there was the need for a bit of reading between the lines and it also wasn't completely free of "Vote for us" rhetoric either.  But on the whole it was the most interesting, realistic and worthwhile economics/politics lecture I had so far (and probably will ever have). 

Unfortunately it doesn't make reading through Japanese politics party histories and constitutions more interesting than it already is (=not at all). 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!!  Please, no, God, don't do this to me, not on top of everything else!  What have I ever done to you, why are you doing this to me?  Help, somebody!  My roommate is being visited by her boyfriend, very probably for the WHOLE WEEK!  Nooo~o!  Have mercy with me!  That guy is horrible!  I want to go to the kitchen to fix dinner, guess who's in there preparing a lovey-dovey meal for his girlfriend?  I want to go to the toilet because nature is calling, guess who's already sitting on it?  I want to go to the bathroom for hygienic necessities, guess who's blocking it?  AND GUESS WHO HAS THE ROOM RIGHT NEXT TO ME!  So, not only do I run into them, lovey-doveying all over the place, I also have to listen to their smoochy-poochy nonsense talk 24 hours a day!  Not to mention the horrifying thought of maybe having to listen to them...well, you know. Why me?  The worst thing is:  It's been only four days since his last four-day-visit! *Sob*  If he was good-looking I could live with all that, but NO!  He's the most boring, pancake-face I've ever seen in my life...

Maybe I should go camping in the forest for a week.

Well, for this week, it's really hard to make a decision as to what annoyed me the most.  But I think Monday in its utter, terrifying I-knew-I-should-have-stayed-in-bed annoyance makes the top of the list.  It started with me not waking up on time, being late for one of my classes and finding out it's comletely overrun, with not a single seat left for me to sit on.  So I thought it would be a good idea to just go back home and do my laundry, only to find water bubbling out of a gully in front of the washing machine.  Not cool.  Then I was almost late for my Korean class, because I very nearly overslept for the second time in one day.  

It didn't get much better for the rest of the week, but Monday was definitely the most annoying thing that happened.

No matter how old, gay or colorblind a male person on this planet may be, he should never ever wear pink shorts with a flowery print-  Not even if it matches their girlfriends toenails and bag.

It's amazing how big the chasm between the things one wants to do and the things one should do can be.  For example (strictly hypothetical of course), there could be a person who should be doing stuff like studying for his or her respective university courses, for example Economics and Japanese, or finally filling out the tax return forms.  Doing so would be sensible and make life much easier in the long run, especially when exam time comes up.  BUT, and that's the interesting thing, physically and mentally engaging in those activities would make the person involved very unhappy, because they are tedious and b-o-r-i-n-g and not what said person would want to do at all.  So what the person is actually doing has nothing do to with what would be sensible, for example they go for a walk, experiment with a 3D animation program, play Final Fantasy, post new entries in their journal, bake a bread...Of course, in the long run this can make life very unpleasant, especially when exams, deadlines, etc suddenly loom out of the foggy distance, so far known as the future, but now miraculously transformed into the more menacing Present.  There seems to be no solution to stop this kind of behavior, except maybe brutal force.  Of course, life could be so simple if you could just transform the things you should be into things you want to be doing, but I don't even want to know what kind of tremendous mental effort this strategy would involve...

I'm just glad, that I myself am not a victim of this kind of behavior.

No kidding.

Why is it, that in the field of economics, it is not possible to get a simple explanation on how to calculate things?  All I effing ask for is one god**** easy-to-understand example on how to f*****g calculate that load of BS I'm supposed to be calculating.  But no, all I f*****g get are absolutely cryptic formulas, which only serve to confuse me more.  I have a theory why they do that. When they are writing these books, they think: "Hey, let's make it as cryptic as we can and let's not give one clear example and let's make is as boring as possible, so that no one will ever discover the clear-and-simle explanation hidden between the mind-numbingly boring and useless blahblah.  And then we can go and laugh ourselves shitty/jack off/get on with bringing the world to economic collapse because now no one can stop us and everyone will think we are super-smart even though in reality we are just geeky little attention seeking asshole nerds."

I know that all this might be a little harsh, and I am perfectly aware that I am a mathematical numskull and that bitching about all this won't help me get my homework done.  But guess what:  I DON'T GIVE A FUCK!!! 

NO, I DON'T like cooking.  But I like eating, and unlike some other people here on planet earth, there is no way I'm going to starve myself on raw vegetables, if I don't have to.  And NO, I don't regard it as a lot of work, to cook every evening.  Cooking is something I neither particularly enjoy nor particularly dislike.  And I swear to whichever deity feels responsible, if my roommate asks me whether I like cooking or just like to eat good stuff ONE MORE TIME, I'll...answer the question just like the last 10 times she asked me the exact same question.

*sigh* 

And YES, I should be doing my microeconomics homework. 

Definitely hide from it.  Simply because I find it much easier to pursue whatever I'm doing, without having someone look over my shoulder.  Makes life so much more enjoyable to me. 

but I scored an really good grade on the Kanji exam and thus surpassed all expectations I actually had.  Happy me.

I just spend about an hour creating and animating a nucleus and it actually turned out pretty good. 

And then I failed at saving it.

There are so many things I should be doing:
Trying to get to grips with Microeconomics.
Catching up with Marketing.
Deciphering korean squiggles.
Going on the never ending quest of learning Kanji.
Wrestling japanese grammar into submission.
Beating vitally important vocabulary like 脱走 (to escape from prison) and 捜査 (criminal investigation) into my head.  I'm just KNOW it'll be instant social death for me, if I don't know these words when I finally go to Japan.

But what I'm doing INSTEAD is...procrastinating, muahaha.  So much more enjoyable.

Anyways, to all my imaginary readers, here's a recipe you should definitely try out.  It's pretty cheap, easy to cook and combines three of my favorite ingredients:  tuna, noodles, chili.  It's perfect in its simple glory.
You need:  1 can of tuna;  approximately 200gr spaghetti (or any other noodle variety of your choice); 1 red chili, 60gr butter, a generous squirt of lemon juice and, if you want, something green, like chervil or parsley.
What you have to do:  Cook the spaghetti.  Cut  up the chili any old way you want.  Remove the little pips if you want.  Free the spaghetti of their cooking water (after they are done) and chuck the tuna on top of it.  Melt the butter in a pot (preferably the one you used to cook the noodles with, as this saves you a bit of work when doing-the-dishes time arrives. Unless you are one of the lucky people who own a dish washer, in which case it absolutely doesn't matter which pot you use.  But I'm digressing.) Where was I?  Oh yeah, melt the butter, throw in the chili and the squirt of lemon juice, then cook it all for about a minute with little heat.  Now put the spaghetti with the tuna back in the pot, mix it all up really well and sprinkle something green on top of it all.  Now enjoy.

So, I have finally gotten through that horrible exam.  On the whole, it could have been a lot worse.  But let's just wait and see how I feel about that, once I have the results.  After the exam, we were led back into the classroom by 先生, so as to fill us in with this week's Kanji (oh, yeah).  Then we went on to reading comprehension, a class which notoriously and obnoxiously tries to attain new levels of dullness, never meant be explored by poor little monkeys.  Needless to say, I have developed the habit of Not Paying Attention out of sheer self-preservation.  That might be the reason for my bad performance in this class, but then who knows?  

Anyways, it's amazing that in this town even such a simple act as taking a shower is turned into a adrenalin burst inducing experience.  There is almost no way to get a normal not-too-hot-and-not-too-cold water temperature.  To get that, you have to turn the handle into the EXACT position, which appears to change position each time you take a shower.  If you get it 1mm to far left or right from that spot, you are either made to appreciate the fact that you live well outside the arctic circle or you boiled alive by water apparently pumped straight out of hell.  Simultaneously, while trying to that exact spot curtain.  Ironically, whenever  you want to wash your dishes and you actually want scalding hot water, what you mostly get is luke-warm.  Maybe I should start washing my dishes in the shower and myself in the kitchen sink.

...rethink your studying habits when you
a) get up at six thirty in the morning, eat your slushy cereal and japanese Kanji keep cropping up in your brain and demand that you should know how they are read and you actually KNOW the answer
and
b) when you start piling up every other thing you should be doing in order to get about a zillion of those damn things into your head.  Because you have an exam in three days.

A couple of days ago, while I was listening to the energetic sounds of the band SADS, interrupted by the sounds of the even more energetic local criminal youths, who are currently engaged in their springtime "let's-see-who's-dumb-enough- to-****-me" mating rituals, I was gripped by a sudden and overwhelming appetite for steak.  The source of this appetite was actually one of my roommates, who prepared a bowl of tzatziki for a barbecue, to which she was invited, while I was not.  During the next two days or so I hoped this sudden urge for meat would subside again, because meat is expensive and my current monthly income is exactly 0,- Euro (yeah, I know, sad).  It didn't.  Instead it festered like an open wound (yeah, I know, disgusting analogy).  And so, today on my weekly shopping day I gave in and bought a surprisingly cheap (1,02 Euro) steak at a real butcher's shop.  And this evening I reveled in the wonderfully delicious taste of steak with tzatziki.  I even went so far as to scrape out the pan with a piece of bread, so as not to waste any of the glorious fat. 

I knew I should have bought two.