If you must eat a banana in public, refrain from making eye contact.

Because fuck you

As of about two months ago, I am no longer jobless. I have joined the ranks of those socially accepted individuals that work. That can say "I have a job, I work at so and so doing this and that." and people will not think you weird or stupid or dumb or inept or awkward or disturbing, because you have a job, you fit.

My job is okay. It's not something I want to spend the rest of my life on (far from it) but it's paying the bills and I get to watch whatever I want while working. (Because unfortunately, the work is so easy it's hardly challenging.)

Anyway. What with the new job, I now cycle to the train station every day, park my bike there, and take the train to my final destination: work. When I started I immediately went and bought an expensive lock for my bike, because the train station is a hot spot for bicycle thieves. Sneaky bastards. I've already experienced the horror of arriving at the bike park and finding my bike missing, and it wasn't pretty. Thankfully my bike wasn't stolen, it had just been impounded because apparently it was obstructing traffic. Insert eyeroll. So it may have been standing over the line to the bicycle path a teensy weensy bit, but certainly nothing to warrant such drastic actions.

I'll have you know, I was furious at first. But since I had to wait a couple of days to pick it up, by the time I did my anger had cooled significantly and I wasn't even upset that I had to pay 15 euros to get back my own bike, I was just so relieved it hadn't been stolen.

Since then I've been paying closer attention to where I park my bike. I've found a particular spot I like where it's basically impossible to get in the way of traffic, and since I arrive at such ungodly hours in the morning there's pretty much always a spot.

However, since so many bicycles seem to sqeeze in after I've left, I often return in the evening to find my bike surrounded my so many other bikes that it's ridiculously hard to get it out. In such moments I usually feel an indecent amount of rage at the other bikes. My rational self often tries to tell me that all these people needed space for their bicycles too, and they were probably in a hurry, and also had jobs to get to, and they certainly didn't intentionally set their bikes in such a position as to piss me off. The enraged side will have none of this, though, so I often find myself ruthlessly freeing my bike from it's imprisonment, yet the moment I'm on my way home the rage dissipates.

Not so last Monday, as I returned to my bike to find this:

Note that the green bike is mine, and the black lock is not. Needless to say I was in a state. There was no way I was leaving my bike there or standing around waiting godknowshowlong for the owner of the black lock to show up. So I did the only option available: I picked up the entire neighboring bike like it was nothing (just kidding, it was heavy as fuck) and dumped it unceremoniously on the bicycles to the left. All those bicycles fell over as I just plopped the offending bike on top of them, but I wasn't feeling an ounce of remorse, because fuck you.

I then proceeded to casually unlock my own bike and discretely departed the scene.

It really was an interesting image

Today at the auction house it was crowded. There were a lot of people that needed attention in the form of display cases being opened, or, since it was their first time there, have the whole auction process explained to them. It did certainly not come in handy that I had read an enthralling book the day before, and in the way that I get when finishing a book I was really into, I was stuck inside my head, rather than in the present. Does anyone else have that problem I wonder? I sometimes find that when I emerge from the book-world I have been happily inhabiting in my head, reality pales in comparison. It has the power to make me feel really quite gloomy, and detached from.. well, pretty much everything. So this is why I was frequently spacing out while Chinese visitors were meticulously inspecting porcelain next to me.

Overall it was fine though, I even managed to maintain a straight face as an elderly man escorted me to an erotic 18th century painting and, after a simple question, started narrating me on the merits of the paint used and the importance of color. And that really was quite awkward.

Sniff

2013 didn't start too well with me. I was in the thralls of one of the worst colds I've ever experienced. You know how sometimes when you have a cold you lose your sense of smell and your ability to taste because your nose is just so full of slime it's decided to shut down entirely? Well I remember that lasting for maybe a day or two, so when I lost all nose-related-functions a couple days before newyears I figured it would be gone by then.

As you may have guessed, no such luck. The number of days not tasting or smelling anything eventually amounted to six. I was really starting to get worried by then. Googling for people with similar occurrences and finding all sorts of horror stories (shouldn't have done that really).  I was ready to start believing something was wrong with me when I blew my nose one afternoon and suddenly tasted some of the tea I was drinking! What a relief to find that, under that layer or snot, my nose was still fine.

Those days of not tasting and smelling anything did grace me with a renewed respect for people who actually do suffer from conditions that impair their sense of taste and smell. Cause seriously people, it sucks. I even started eating sandwiches with marmite cause at least it was healthy and it's not like I tasted anything. Somehow the world seemed dull. No breath of fresh air when headed outdoors. No smells of rain or a freshly mowed lawn. Add to that the fact that everyone around you is enjoying chocolates and pastries and whatnot, while you're all like "uhh yeah the texture of this apple turnover is fantastic..!" it gets old real fast.

However, it did get me thinking. Some pros and cons:

Good stuff:

• No desire to eat fattening foods or candy anymore because... where's the point if you cant taste any of it. So it's easier to stay healthy as well as skinny.
• You can eat the healthiest foods even if they taste awful! Maybe you'll even live longer! Go cranberry juice n stuff! (though I have to admit this point kind of belongs with the previous one)
• You will no longer be bothered by other people's not so pleasant body odor. Someone farted? You had no idea!
• You could do work in places it stinks. Like the sewer. not sure this is a good thing though.
• You could remove your nail polish without choking on the fumes of the nail polish remover.
• No matter how bad his cooking skills are, it would always be good enough for you.

Not so good stuff:

• You will never enjoy the taste of good food again. This is serious stuff. (really, think about it for a minute!)
• You will never enjoy the taste of good food again. (because it's so serious it deserves two bullet points.)
• If the house were on fire you might not find out soon enough because you wouldn't notice the smoke till you saw it.
• If you accidentally left the gas on in the kitchen you wouldn't notice either.
• You wouldn't be able to work in a perfume shop, and your dreams of becoming a wine taster have also gone out the window.
• You wouldn't notice if you forgot to put on deodorant!

Overall I think the food and smell thing already weighs more heavily than any other argument I could come up with, so needless to say I'm immensely relieved that it has come back. I do find myself tentatively sniffing everything with hopes of catching a whiff of.. whatever, cause my sense of smell is slowest to come back. Yet I now no longer harbor any doubts that it will.

In other news, happy new year.

This morning at 7:15 the city was dark and covered in fog. The streets were quiet, what with it being a Saturday. I cycled past the water and thought to myself; in the movies these are the times joggers and unsuspecting cyclists such as myself spot dead bodies in the water.

I peered a little closer but I couldn't make out any.

Dreams

This morning I had to get up at 6:30. Apparently I was really aware of the fact I would get little sleep, since weird dreams ensued.

I dreamed I was right where I was, in bed, only in my dream the alarm went off, so I got up to get ready for work. I was sitting behind my PC for a bit, as I do every morning, when I looked at the clock and realized it was just 2 AM. So in my dream I reasoned I must have dreamed the alarm went off. In stead of going back to bed, however, I went across the hall to Marlene who was apparently awake, and she was about to head out to some exam she had 6 AM. Don't ask me why she wanted to be there three hours early, but my dream-self offered to cycle with her there since I was awake anyway. Okay so now if I wasn't already, I'm positive this was a dream cause I would certainly never ever give up my warm bed for ANYTHING in the middle of the night. Anyway I went with her, dropped her off and arrived back home around 3:30. It was awful. I was thinking, I have to get up in 3 hours! I will have had no sleep! But at this point I woke up to discover it was 4 AM and I was still in bed. And despite the fact that I really did have to get up early, which I hate, all was right with the world.

Ode to Amazon.de

Hey Blog,

I hadn't mentioned this yet, but about a week ago my earphones broke. Total loss pretty much. It was kind of a freak accident. I was walking out the door to head to work, when the wire that was hanging down from my ears to the player got caught on the door handle. So in comic-book-style my head got snapped back when the door started to swing closed. In this moment one of my earphones flew out of my ear and somehow managed to land exactly between the wall and the door as the door fell shut with a bang. (and it's a heavy door) I even had to pick up a piece of earphone off the floor, and I could see the wires sticking out.

Needless to say, I was in a pretty shitty mood after that. And I'm not that great at morning to begin with. Sixty euros down the drain.

When I got home and told Rakoo about what happened, he remembered I bought them from Amazon.de with his help like two years ago, so he wrote them an e-mail asking if there was any sort of refund possible. Now I must admit I did not have very high hopes, because seriously it was like two years ago and how would they know I didn't just stomp on them just so they would give me free new ones? To my utter surprise they sent us back an e-mail with instructions to sent in my 'product' so that they may return my money. And guess what, they did!

To make a long story short, I lost my old earphones yes, but with a full refund I now ordered new (better!) ones for only a few euros more! I ordered the new ones from Amazon.de again, of course, because obviously they rock.

Thank you Amazon :)