Bloodbath

rI have most of my private crap on the office server. There's space, if I do my stuff after the regular work time, no-one cares about the bit of electricity I use up and it's all nicely nested in one place. including my not-very-ordinate archive of photographs which can be handily used for publication purposes (after a phone call when someone requests something and I navigate... my filenames are logic and that puzzles people). So I wanted to use a draft of one of my school papers and my folder (containing a terabyte of things, the file I needed included) was not. I said something unquotable, made a few phonecalls (it's Saturday, normal people are on family trips to shopping malls, remember it) and was told that (1) the admin removed my file to one of the computers. I checked and it was there. I opened it and the one folder just was not. So, (2) I called the admin, wtf. He claimed that he moved everything at a time so there cannot be anything missing. (3) I called the boss, how come and whether she knows. She said that well, there's a copy of everything made and archived every day so it should be found, that I shouldn't panic and if there's something missing, well, the new graphics guy has this habit of cleaning up. I said thank you, have my folder full of old and unfinished and chaotic crap found, please and if the graphics guy deleted it, kill him for me. He has no right to be messing up my files. The boss was a bit pissed off, because I was shouting and that there's not gonna be any killing unless by herself.
We'll see.

Shopping

My shopping list, if they remain preserved for the posterity, will be to a great puzzlement of future household theorists. The famous one saying Water jug, wine glasses, big reel of scotch, one cat... is still in one of my heaps of paper. The today's one reads Nuts (not like hazelnuts.. but bolts and nuts), knitting needles size 5 (bought yarn instead, should have at least two pairs of fives somewhere), St. John's wort, grape juice and yeast. Let me know if you make something of it. How my household runs or something:-)
The yarn is cool. Blend of pale yellow, sky blue and caramel. Ideal for some minimalistic cut. Decided to knit again. And sew: mom decided to get a new sewing machine in place of the ages-old badly working thing (mom says that the old one is absolutely perfect all the thirty years she has had it. Apart from irregular stitches, tearing the fabric and making oil spots it is, sure. I just refused to have my lovely fabrics destroyed. you never clean mineral oil off silk taffetta, I'm telling you) so I can save the money for travelling. When I said Oh, cool, I'll make a a few things, she just gave a disgusted look that it's useless because it's much cheaper to buy things and that all I can do is just wasting material because whatever I have made was just awful and badly done and that's all I can do. Sometimes I wonder whether she really thinks that I'm an idiot. At least she shows this opinion happily.

Kitchen adventures and a sucky week

This week sucked.
On Wendesday I was totally wasted. After Father left, I just lay down and slept. I felt totally tired and useless and even more useless. I woke at eight, then made some pasta (thinking Gee, I feel hungry, that meant that I'm ok). Well, the reason was that I had some almost composted zucchini in the fridge and didn't want them to rot. The other next to compost thing was mangos so i made a jar of nice mango marmalade and wasn't brave enough to taste it. I'll give it to some unsuspecting victim, probably Petr, who is a kitchen maniac himself, and I'm angry with him because he always sends me years old hoaxes with comments like Oh, that's awful.... He'll surely appreciate that. He appreciates everything homemade because he believes that homemade things are always better than industrial products. (Yes, his homemade cakes offer original choice of basic cooking mistakes. That's what you never get from the bakery, flaws:-))
Thursday sucked too. First of all, the cancelled Swedish lesson. I like my Swedish lessons. I'm the stupidest there but anyway. I feel like learning something useful which cannot be said about the 20th century art seminar which is incomprehensible to normal human beings most of the time. (reminds me that I haven't started my semestral paper yet and deadline is the 12th....) I missed the seminar. Thursday was the deadline for my internship application so I was doing the bureaucracy. Bureaucracy sucks, especially when I come to the office, there's five people, four are chatting and the fifth is (a) making coffee, (b) chatting on the phone with someone else (c) reading internet. I wouldn't mind it if they had more than eight office hours a week and were able to provide functioning services... well, bureaucrats. Shoot them all.
After some time I managed to get the pile of papers ready, mailed it.. and went home because I was deadly tired again.. and felt the strange sort of headache and emptiness. I was afraid that the depression is back so I left a notice at the department's mailing list that I'm looking for a decent shrink and went home. On the way (I felt like falling on the sidewalk and never getting up again) I recalled that St. John's wort is used as an antidepressive too. So on the way I dropped in the nearest pharmacy and got a pack. Hitherto (Saturday noon) it seems to be working. Maybe it's just a suggestion but a working one. Depressions suck, too.
Yes, Thursday means a dance class, too. I love my dance classes. I have the biggest ass of them all, I'm twice that heavy as the teacher (well, and 20centimeters taller, which could excuse me a bit). No entrechats today. Just assemblés - basically, you jump from one feet and land on two, I have too weak legs to jump on one so it looks always awkward in my rendition.... I should really go on diet, as soon as I finish the lunch:-)

Reserve beaujolais

I´m tired. Yesterday I had an awful headache or what it was so I slept all the afternoon and today I feel like the same. Maybe it´s the allergy or the allergy medication. However, father came (finally, after two or three months) to fix the curtain railings (or what's the name of the thing) and i was just too tired to fix the curtains myself. For some reasons, I have two different systems in two rooms, one is idiotic and cheap from Ikea and the other was expensive like hell from an asshole company who pretended that the price they told me was for two pieces and it was for one only. But I must have to admit that the expensive stuff from Inku is much better, more elegant and easier to manage. The curtains are attached with velcro, no screws or something. Well, I'll get some more velcro and glue the rough part to the Ikea frame, I'm not hanging on the ceiling with tiny screws to fix the cloth. Idiots, real live idiots, those who invented it.

Easter

Easter sucks. This country is not religious and hardly anyone bears in mind that all the Easter thing is not just a day off and some folkloristic crap... so it just sucks. The main square was filled by what the Council calls easter market. In fact it's sausages and souvenirs as anytime and some decorated eggs. I love the Easter eggs. (I don't paint them anymore, but a few years ago I did a whole series in abstract style.) Those lovely ones, however, one doesn't get on the council market but in those little shops where they sell the traditional stuff. For half price of the kitsch, but one has to know.

On my own

When I started to live on my own (to quote my mom who I like to use as a measure of ultimate stupidity and rudeness from time to time: "It's my appartment. I bought it for you, after all you are in all the papers and things, but it's my appartment."), I got a guestbook. One of the reasons was that after all, I was going to grow old and senile so when I'd be eighty something, I'd be happily browsing it, remembering the days of my youth. Or, rather, saying, Who the hell was this Francesco/Pekka/Marlene. I already managed to get a few comments and removed a few. Not that I was a supporter of censure but there's a certain sort of drunk blabber I don't plan to keep for posterity. Neither for myself.
On Friday my Swedish friend came. She and her son were planning to stay for three days only so I didn't plan any appointments.. well, the things just appear themselves, like urgent need to write a paper on idunnowhat, but I just put them aside and now I'm even more behind. However, they came and we spent three days just walking around and having fun. I hardly ever just wander around in the main interesting places, they're too packed to be comfortable so I'm - as every Prague inhabitant - used to go via all sorts of back alleys, passages and thru the buildings. So I had quite a fun to see the tourist routes again. I confess that probably I'd have more fun if someone finally manged to tie a big piece of concrete to every piece of those who came here because of cheap beer and cheap prostitutes, the streets would be less crowded and sort of calmer. The Italian school trips could find some other destination, too, thank you.
Yrja wanted to get a copy of Kafka's Metamorphosis in Swedish so that she could make her sons read it. I told her that it was quite naive to expect such thing here... maybe if they had it as a stuffing to bookshelves in Ikea (guess where my Swedish books come from) but after all, we can go and see what the big bookstores offer. So we did, they had the desired book in Italian (should you expect that Prague is cosmopolitan, let be warned that there's a shelf or two of books in Italian and no-one seems to admit that there is some sort of culture in Sweden, books included. My private guess is that half of the people don't have much idea where it is), I just wanted to peek into the textbook department (when the naivity was in the air, I decided to try my luck and check whether a nice foolproof book of Swedish grammar hadn't materialized in the shelves. it had not) where Yrja discovered a Czech-Swedish dictionary and decided to buy it - out of sheer curiosity, she doesn't speak Czech and I finally got a map of Scandinavia. I stuck it on the inside of the toilet door so that I could meditate on something more nutritious than old paint but my flatmate later moved it up to the height of a standing person. I have to explain her the point of the thing sometimes.

Thursdays

I woke up. Tähti used my absence to occupy the whole of my pillow and didn't want to give in a single milimeter. Several times during the night I woke up because the thing on which my poor hear rested, gave an angry miaow and moved.
I'm all swollen. Yes, spring is romantic, kittens, flowers, sun shining, pollen floating in the air and poor me with sore eyes. I sort of managed to get to my Swedish lesson passably late but still, I wasn't in a state to do something. Not that I was too able to do something in the Swedish lessons in a more decent time, though.
And now it's the time for my 20th century seminar, poor me. I don't like the 20th century. or at least most ot it, esp. this seminar.

In motion

I traveled a bit. In fact, I wanted to write about my dance class and how I was doing entrechats and looked like someone dying a cruel death, but it's a bit over and maybe I'll write something after my tomorrow's dance class (dancing is fun), if I'll feel like it on Friday morning.
So, on Saturday I left for Bratislava. The basic reason was that the Bratislava art historians were going to a school trip to Budapest, to see the Sigismundus exhibition and I wanted to see it too.
When I arrived to Bratislava, I was in the usual state of shock. I've lived there so I wasn't that surprised that the train station was dirty and awful, that the passage to the tram station smelled of piss, I wasn't surprised that the tram lines are changed again... it was all of that together that surprised me. I just wonder, how can the city be still so awful? And I have to say that I lived in Bratislava and I like it in a certain way. But the Slovaks should concentrate on the small things liek cleaning the streets, instead of building skyscrapers, I would say.
I stayed at friend's place for two days. Janka, this friend of mine, has tree kids who started to love me almost immediately because I made pancakes to them. I had some vague idea that she might have children, but she never mentioned her family life too much. Well, the reason was that her two husbands died and well, this is why there's no special reason to explain every now and then the family matters. Seems to me that she is lonely in quite a specific way... We haven't seen each other for some time, in fact since I've moved from Italy. So she started inquiring, how's life in Italy, how was the school and whatever, soon ending up with the crucial things:
"So, how many Italians did you shag." I wanted to answer something vague, hoping that she might find another theme. However, she did not.
"Uhm.. what's that matter about Italians? I like blondies, why should I bother about Italians..."
"But htere are sooo many sooo sexy guys down there. So, how many of them did you shag?"
"None in fact. I don't find them sexy at all."
"But they say that Italians are soo good at it.... Why you didn't give it a try?"*
Here I had to start to lie because she wouldn't give in until I admitted that I'm having lots and lots of sex life:
"Well.... I dated an exchange student so I rather spent my time with him..."
"Still, you should have shagged some Italians. Where was that guy from?"
"Uhm... Finland?"
"Never heard about Finns. Are they good in bed?"
"I wasn't doing a survey on sexual life, I was studying there. What about making a cup of tea?"
I simply had to do something. And, well, there were some Finnish exchange students, I even happened to know some... but, for your information, I didn't shag any of them. Don't tell Janka, though:-)
However, Janka kept the theme alive all the three days I was there. She's single, always screaming that all guys are pigs and still, she thinks about them all the time. Or at least about the specific passtime.
On Monday I was just hanging around. Maybe there was something going on and I missed it... but I simply liked wandering around a town where I spent quite a lot of time. I lived far from the centre so I spent lots of time either outside or in the local cafes... I strolled around, seeing what changed. Oddly enough, I met a friend who now studies in Poland and came to Bratislava to visit. She was there for two weeks to do a few things and meantime worked as a shop assistant in Lea Fekete's boutique... what a nice calm job, three people come in two hours. So we gossiped a bit, she invited me to Poznan, I invited her to Prague and that was it.
Budapest trip... As all the trips of Art history department in Bratislava, there was quite a big deal of chaos. The university bus had some technical problems so we were waiting outside in rain. Of course that there was nothing like a sorry. However, we got to Budapest somehow. Seen from the bus, it seemed damn dreary to me, all those monumental art nouveau houses with facades black from dirt... in Prague the art nouveau stuff is already painted pink and green, although I'm not much of a Prague fan (and neither of candy colored houses), as you'll notice later and many times during my dronings.
* On the sexual abilities of Italians: those more experienced than I clain that there's good PR, not the thing. Comments welcome.

(to be continued)
(continued)

Okay, back to Budapest. It was raining there, I saw the exhibition and maybe I'll give a review on it, I'm waiting for some response from readers, if there are any, then I'll decide whether to add more everyday trash or more art history.
However, the exhibition was cool. The Gothic one, I mean, we were taken to one on Spanish painting too and it sucked. No offense meant, but I just don't like Spanish baroque.
People were supposed to go to see the art nouveau beauty of Budapest. I and Rudi decided to leave it for a sunnier day, he knows Budapest and I don't care. One of the professors claimed that a Slovak art historian has to know what's in Budapest, so I gladly used the lame excuse that I'm not a Slovak art historian so for me Budapest can be wiped off the Earth's surface. And we went to have a lunch. On our way to some restaurant which took around tem minutes, we saw an exciting parking lot (no art nouveau, though), the ING building which looked as if Daniel Libeskind had a poetic day (dunno who designed it. I'll look it up sometime, I promise), several boring streets, a calico cat who wanted to cuddle (Whenever I go somewhere, I just miss my Tähti... and I love cats in general...) and a place which was, as it appeared on a closer look, a Finnish cultural center. I just told Rudi hey, look Marimekko curtains... and when we came closer, there was the explanatory tag on the door which was, finally, in some comprehensible language. If Hungarian can be taken as a language. However, I just wonder whether there are some normal people who use the Marimekko fabrics in their homes. I see it only in the Finnish cuultural centres and similar institutions - those use the poppy patterns that might be used instead of the Finnish flag, weren't the flag itself a damn good piece of design - and architects' offices.
Whatever. We got to Brastislava, it was raining there, and the following morning I was only too happy to go home. Spent three hours sleeping on the train, read the remaining time, rushed home to grab my books because I had a presentation on Bridget Riley... and I eagerly expect a time when I'll be able to do nothing for a few days. I expect it around the year 2056, though. Poor me.

Thursday

I hate Thursdays. My lectures start at 0820. Swedish, for that matter. I'm hardly able to speak, not speaking about thinking. Then it goes on with a seminar on 20th century art theory or something like that; I don't understand it and sometimes I consider giving up. I overslept so first I missed my Swedish and then discovered that the seminar people went somewhere outside to watch architecture in its natural habitat. I went to have a coffee instead. Coffee is good instead of everything. The seminar being cancelled, this was next to a wasted day... at least I managed to drop to the bank and pay the water bill which was slowly growing into the mess on my table. Bills should be banned. And still no dividends. They're due sometime in April and I need an improvement of my financial status. Now I'm broke, should you want to know.
I had a lunch with a friend. We had one of those lovely café discussions ranging from Hugues de St. Victor to Chinese philosophy (well, he studies something about religions and he calls it lack of philosophy; I'm not going to argue about that) and in connection with this, he said something like Oh you know much more that I do, after all you speak Chinese. I just gasped. No, of course I don't, I said after I composed myself. He was trying to persuade me that I do speak Chinese and that it's nice that I'm shy to boast about my knowledge. I tried to explain it, that yes, some ten years ago I really wanted to do Oriental studies but never started.. but he didn't seem to believe. Seems that to the list of my nonexistent character traits modesty was added. As I say, Thursdays suck.

Hallelujah.

I was thinking about starting a blog in English for quite a time. I have one in my native dialect (Czech... whatever it might be) and I have many friends from all sorts of places who might want to know what's going on and English is a lingua franca, like it or not. But I was always lazy, busy or both and I didn't manage.
So, today our Medieval Art seminar was cancelled, the reason being that there was no-one with a theme to present or to say something and the professor told us to go home. Which gave me two hours extra time and I used this time to go and buy some grub and sit at the computer (basically doing nothing). And decided that this was the right time to do it.
So, welcome.