prison or no prison?

a friend of mine was due in court for a speeding offence he committed about 3 months ago. his case was supposed to appear at 2.30pm, so when i hadn't got any news by 5, i got a bit worried. i sent an SMS to his girlfriend, who was there with him, to ask how things had gone, but i eventually got an answer from him. it said: 3 months in prison :(

i couldn't believe it. ok, he'd sped by quite a bit, but they'd taken away his license, there was going to be a fine, and he'd already sold his car just to avoid doing it again. then again, maybe that was why it had taken so long. i started imagining him in jail, and thought about what would happen with his jobs, etc. it was a pretty scary thought. just to be sure, i sent a reply asking if he was joking, and just as it was sent, i got another SMS from him saying it was a joke, that he'd only got a fine and 2 months without a license. it was the least important sentence of the whole day, apparently - she really appreciated not being told he had no idea he was speeding, as everyone else had said. however, the judge had made a mistake when sentencing him and had actually said he'd end up in jail. he had to go check with her as she left, and was very much relieved to find out it had just been a slip of the tongue.

summer time

with the cold weather and all, thought i'd post a more summery picture. when i was visiting my father down south, we went on a short cruise on the canal. we passed 4 locks, and this was one of them. it was quite fun.

event birthday

so last night we celebrated the fact that the event i regularly organise has been going for 2 years. and what a great night! not only did lots of people come, but some of my friends organised a little surprise for me, too: there was cake, flowers, present... wow! it was unexpected and thus even better. although it was the event's birthday and not mine, i got a SuperM. t-shirt, that i was immediately asked to wear. it was very cool. and for once, i was basically the last one to leave (as opposed to generally being one of the first!). great, great night!

AD

i've just spent a good hour on the phone with Japan. well, skyping would be a better description. i finally got hold of AD and we started chatting, until we realised we were both geared up not only for talking but also for videocalls. and it was great! we hadn't seen each other in over a year, and seeing someone's face as well as hearing their voice is always cool (provided you didn't just wake up, etc). he made me laugh so much. i'm in such a good mood now, it feels like a completely different day (as in, i feel like this morning was another day, not that it was bad or anything).

it's cold!

temperatures have really dropped in a week! last week, i was wearing summer clothes and now it feels like mid-november. the wind hasn't helped. but here i am, barely mid-september, wearing a winter coat and a big woolen scarf, trousers and thick socks. it's not winter yet. bring back the sunshine!

the funeral

saturday was, despite the cold and the wind, a beautifully sunny day, rather perfect for a funeral. it would have been a whole different ballgame if it'd rained.

the service was beautiful. it was simple yet moving, and then we walked out with the urn, laid it in the hole that had been dug next to my mother's, laid our flowers and wept some more. we then walked over to a nearby cafe, where we were holding a kind of wake, if you could call it that. some of our family finally made it there all the way from the other end of Denmark, their first plane having been cancelled. it was very nice of them to come, especially considering they didn't actually know my grandmother. but they'd wanted to be there for us, and we really appreciated it.

once we were done with that, we made our way to my grandmother's flat, where we were to decide who took what. the will divided her things in three: one third to my father, one third to my aunt, and one third to her deceased husband's children. this is where things started to go wrong: said children had not spoken to each other in over 25 years, so when it came to them taking their father's things, emotions started running high and they started arguing. as far as we were concerned, they could argue it out all they wanted...just not in front of us. but there they were, in their late 60s, arguing like children. my cousin lost it and told them to take it outside, reminding them this was a special and very sad day for us all, to which the woman (whom none of us had ever met before and who hadn't come to the funeral) replied: 'i didn't start it!' - children.

us young ones left the 'adults'. we certainly weren't going to sit around while a situation we hadn't created and didn't care for, unfolded. we went outside and sat on a bench, waiting for the relatives to leave. when they had, our parents relayed their apologies, and we made it to the restaurant nearly an hour late. it had been booked for more than 8 - my great-aunt had been counted in the original booking, and the empty seat reminded me of her death just a few days earlier... it was the end of a long day, and by 9.30, we were all completely knackered so we separated with the promise of another long day on sunday...

the cousins

the good thing about my grandmother's funeral, is that we got to meet up with the cousins, who live stateside (Florida and LA), and that we thus don't see very often - the last time was in fact also connected to my grandmother: it was her 90th birthday.

we all got in at different times, but finally managed to meet up in the evening for drinks and dinner. it was so nice to see them again! it's easy to forget, when you don't see people often, but i had missed them and once again, we all decided that we should make more of an effort to see each other more often. if only we could just snap of fingers and be instantly transported to another place! but my cousin L. should be moving to London in Feb, so hopefully, we'll get to meet up once in a while. i really hope so...

LHC - it's on!

we're on the news in a lots of countries today, as the largest particle accelerator in the world (all of 27kms long, 100m under my very feet) was turned on this morning.

a lot of people have been talking about it, fearing a black hole (some physicists in Hawaii but also in Europe have been trying to stop the project), while the people who work there have been making fun of the whole event: first with a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM&feature=related), then with a big 'end of the world' party last night- which i didn't actually go to cos i had other things planned, but it was apparently lots of fun.

so this evening we are still alive, as the CERN scientists planned. apparently, it'll take at least a month before they start doing serious stuff (the next party, then!), and probably another couple of years before they find out more about the big bang (the point of the whole experiment).

for more information, check out this links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67q_2V6xOxE&feature=related. there are more where it came from...

RIP 2

my great-aunt died this morning. she'd been in a coma for a few days and didn't want to wake up, so lucky for her that she didn't despite the doctors best efforts. it's a terrible loss for me - as i've already said, although i didn't see her that often, she was a really important person in my life. i'm so glad we managed to meet back in August.

i'll miss her so much... and the worst is that she's given her body to science and specified she didn't want any kind of ceremony to take place; so nothing will, which saddens me immensely. i can't believe i'll never see her again, talk to her about absolutely anything, laugh at her anecdotes about the exciting life she had when she was younger. and the smell of her flat. her cheerfulness. she was so lovely...

my new boss

i was talking with my new boss, the other day, and the conversation took an interesting turn. he'd finally received the CV of a friend of mine who also wanted to switch schools. once we'd discussed her nationality (she grew up in Australia), he asked me whether he should assign her to one or another set of classes. i didn't know, especially as i had no idea what criteria he used to assign people here or there. apparently, experience was a criteria, cos while he didn't actually answer my question, he mentioned she'd only been teaching for a year, and that seemed to be a problem. i told him that she might not have the longest experience, but she certainly made up for it in terms of how good she was. 'better than you?' he asked. i said that was neither here nor there and that you couldn't possibly compare. then he asked me when she could start, to which i answered that it would perhaps be easier if he discussed this with her directly, as i really had no idea. ok, but, so, to conclude, would i, as head of English, hire her? yes, i replied. 'fine'.

aside from the whole conversation being weird (i've only just started working there, and he's asking me who he should hire?), i thought the last sentence was strange. i am not, and have never been, head of English. i wonder if he either a) mixed it up with the new position i was supposed to have at my old school or b) whether he's seriously considering me for the position when January comes along... then again, it could also just be a slip of the tongue!

men in my life

i've chosen this title because i want to talk about four occurences that have nothing to do with each other but that all involve men that i see/hear from on a completely irregular basis and that i can't be bothered to put into separate posts.

1) i went to a friend's birthday celebration last week and among the guests were her best friend and his boyfriend, a lovely gay couple. i've had gay friends for years, but i've never been attracted to a gay guy before. it was the second time i was meeting the boyfriend, and he might be very gay, but he's also very lovely and apparently thinks i'm the life of the party or something, because he spent most of his time talking to me. i didn't have much to say, once we'd talked about the usual stuff, but that didn't seem to stop him. and so i just couldn't stop thinking that if he wasn't gay...

2) my ex from when i lived in NZ has an uncanny habit of sending me emails at times that seem incredibly random but usually relate to something important going on in my life. i first heard from him 7 years after our break-up, exactly a month after my mother's death. then about 3 years later, when i moved into my own appartment, then the day before my birthday this year, and 2 days ago, in the midst of my currently somewhat chaotic but exciting life, especially then. very weird. i'm sure there's a perfectly normal and logical explanation for this, but i can't find it, so i'm going with the guardian angel theory - that he's mine. he doesn't actually do anything to save me from anything (not that i need saving - then again...), but i like the idea.

3) my best friend's boyfriend is weird. when we drove down south 2 weeks ago, we listened to tapes in my car because my car's so old that it doesn't have a CD player, let alone an MP3 player. and he (like many others) found that very strange. even stranger when i told him i had a total of 7 other tape decks at home. all in working order. so when i saw my friend this afternoon, she had something for me, from him: a bag full of old tapes, most of which had obviously been recorded off the radio or something. obviously just trying to get rid of old junk. but what the hell, it's free music, i'll take it.

4) sometimes, when i walk home from the bus stop, i cross paths with an old man who must be in his 80s. we always bump into each other at the same place, on a very narrow pavement. i've been brought up to respect the elderly, so i always make to walk nearer the road, in case he falls or something. but he's obviously been brought up as a gentleman, because he invariably makes a big show of walking around me, stepping out onto the road so i can safely walk on the pavement. it's so sweet. silly, and sometimes quite dangerous, but sweet.

wishing to die

i’ve just spoken with my great-aunt and things are not going so well. things are going with her just as they went with my grandmother, which is scary. i mean, she went in for a hand operation and now can’t eat or drink and has sight and hearing problems. what the hell is going on?

i called her up to cheer her up a bit, but she apparently didn’t need that: she was basically telling me about her plan to die. how she wanted the hospital workers to give her something to die right there and then. she said she’d bought books - a while back - about the best way to end your life peacefully when you thought it was your time. pills seemed to be the choice she’d made, and she was basically saying she wanted to go home so she could let herself die. and what could i say? i told her i loved her and didn’t want her to die, to which she replied it was very nice of me to say so, but really, she just wanted to die and couldn’t see the point: she was not a participant anymore, just a watcher, and that just wasn’t as much fun. she was being very cheerful about it all, like she was telling me about holiday plans. it broke my heart and i couldn’t help crying, while trying to keep up my end of the conversation.

i understand, really i do. she’s 92, is the oldest person she knows, she’s seen the three men of her life die earlier than any of them should have and most of her family lives far away. but she’s always been so important to me - selfishly, and completely unrealistically, i’d like her to live many more years so that she can meet at least one man in my life, see that someone is taking care of me, and i’d like that man to know her. it’s bad enough my mother won’t get to meet that person, she was the other person i wanted to share this with.

first day in the new job

i've been teaching for 7 years, yet i was quite nervous when i showed up for my first new lesson yesterday. mostly, i was nervous because the teacher i was replacing had given me very few indications as to where the students were in their course, giving me only book names. not very useful, on top of making me look disorganised. in the end, i'd prepared various activities to find out who my students were, what they needed, what they wanted, and what level they really were, and as it turned out, that was just perfect. it went really well and they all seemed very happy.

the following lesson was a private, and we also managed to make the 90 minutes go by without needing a book. i'd prepared review activities for him, but in the end, he talked so much about other stuff that we barely got to use any of them. so all in all, it was a very good day.

how did i guess...?

the first operation apparently wasn't successful, so my great-aunt has to undergo another surgery today. i really hope they haven't messed up again. this is really pissing me off.