Indulgence

Someone at the office today brought leftover Halloween candies and left the giant bowl in the kitchen area. I have been abstaining from candies recently in my bid to lose some weight and lead a healthier lifestyle, but here I sit sucking on a lollipop! It's not my fault that a giant bowl full of an assortment of candies was essentially shoved in my face. Who can say no to that?

The wrappers for 2 Lifesaver gummies, a bunch of skittles, 3 starbursts and 3 chocolate-dipped pretzels are staring at me from the trashcan, filling me with guilt as if the extra calories had not already accomplished that task. The sugar rush has definitely woken me up though, unlike the cup of coffee I had before.

I have discovered that when I'm visiting the gym regularly, I'm very particular about what I eat. But when I've not been to the gym in a while, I let an increasing amount of junk food sneak into my diet. A lot of this has to be psychological. After all, when I put a lot into a workout, I'm not going to let it all go to waste by gorging on a family-size pack of Cheetos!

I've not been to the gym in a couple of weeks owing to my GRE exam preparations and I think my gluttony today is reminder of how easy it is to fall back into the old lifestyle. I've to start going to the gym again, but perhaps not until after some over-indulgence meal over Thanksgiving weekend! haha

Superstitious twitch

I felt my forefinger twitch today. I am not sure if it had anything to do with me being at a job which has me typing and clicking away for most of the day, but it had me curious. So I picked the brains of google and came up with all sorts of ailments that could be related to muscle spasms. The internet must drive hypochondriacs crazy!

My mom would probably have an explanation for it though. Not a medical one, but one more superstitious in nature. Us Nepalis (and people from a lot of other countries too, I'm sure) seem to have explanations ready for any such seemingly innocuous anomalies in our bodies. Fluttering of the left eye versus the right eye could bring you good or bad luck. Those little white marks that would appear on my fingernail foretold possible new additions to my wardrobe in the immediate future.

Ok, I ran out of examples but I'm sure there are plenty more. I wonder what the origins of such superstitions are. And how it spread when it appears to have no practical value.

There's another one I remember that always seemed to happen after family get-togethers. It's not health related, but definitely a superstition. Apparently, it is bad luck to have guests leave for three separate residences at the same time. This has something to do with 3 being an evil number, I suppose. Must be true, if even Shakespeare in Macbeth thinks so!

I don't know how I came to grow out of all the superstitions that surrounded me as a child. Although, I'm sure there are a few that are so ingrained in me, that I don't even think of them as superstitions anymore!

Hello again!

So here I am, over 2 years since my last post, and over 6 since my first. I actually had to count again to make sure it was actually 6! It's hard to believe that teenage kid 6 years ago thought about starting a blog and actually did a decent job keeping it up on a regular basis, before the adult me stepped in and decided I didn't have the time to keep a blog! But thinking about the time I just spent watching another episode of House, I could easily have taken my fingers to the keys (a not-as-poetic way of saying pen to paper) and written another post.

I don't have a topic in mind today. Well I do have random thoughts, random observations I made during the day, but not sure any of those couldn't be described in little more than a couple of sentences. Hardly post-worthy. Of course I could try and be more creative with it, but if I wanted to put that much effort into it, might as well write an article for a newspaper. I feel like my style for this blog has always been impulsive, free-flowing and informal. It's nice to be able to write anything you want, any way you want. This is the way I enjoy writing, and in any case, who but me reads this blog.. right? right??

I want a dog. A nice big german shepard. But I wish dogs didn't poop. I can't imagine myself having to follow a dog around everyday with a doggy bag waiting anxiously for it to take a dump. I've never had a dog, but I think that part of the job description for dog ownership kinda sucks. Although everyone who's had a dog says its worth it, and it must be!

I saw a completely white jet without any livery yesterday. I thought it was kinda odd.

See? What did I say about random observations that don't warrant more than a couple of sentences! Maybe I'll dedicate a future post to just random observations I make. Things just slightly out of the ordinary, but not interesting enough to otherwise be written about. That could be interesting! The blog has been revived, and I hope to have stuff to write about on a regular basis.

For now though, my body's crying to get back to the boring, but necessary, activity of sleep. So I bid adieu, people of the interwebs!

This and that

So I tell my professor that I need to take my exams early since semester at my college begins at the end of August. Final exams here are held in September/October! He says he can do that for exchange students but I need some sort of proof that I'm in fact an exchange student and indeed need to return before August.

I head out to the international department and get a letter explaining my circumstances in German. This morning before handing the letter to my professor I decide to take a look. And it is addressed to the wrong professor! I read on and see that even my name has been spelled incorrectly. And to top it off, the name of my college is inaccurate. I decide to hand it in anyway, and although my professor remarked on the errors, decided it was adequate for the purpose. I was awfully thankful!

Getting things done isn't easy. It took me a few days simply to get the person I was supposed to talk to. Everyone has strict office hours. The staff might be at their offices all day but will only see you from like 9 to 12 for example. It's true for government offices too. You cannot just drop by during working hours. You actually need to check what hours and on what days you can visit the office and work your schedule around it. Sometimes the hours appear very arbitrary, but that's how things are. Should I receive a package in the mail, there are only two 15-minute slots each day during which I can pick them up. And the time-slots aren't consistent throughout the week either.

Also, some professors are so busy you have to talk to their assistants and setup an appointment. I was once told the next available appointment for one of my professors was over two weeks away! To be fair, the upcoming week was "excursion week" for the mechanical engineering department. The professor does have office hours for each course he teaches but these are very busy. I've been lucky to only be in small classes where the professors stay back after class to take individual questions. Otherwise student tutors are your best bet.

I had a rough idea of what I was going to write about on this post today but it ended up being about something totally different! Oh well...

... Yep

I can't believe how lazy I've been about posting. Knowing how much time I have squandered religiously following late night talk shows (especially now that Conan’s on), I cannot pretend I was too occupied to update my blog either. No surprise here though, indolence can be counted among my defining characteristics. That and bursts of inspiration that keep me going for days without sleep. So I guess at the moment I am in an uninspired lull.

The lull can’t last very long though, as I am now entering the final phase of my time here in Germany. My final exam dates have been finalized and my flights have been booked. The thought that I have less than two months remaining stirs up a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. There is so much more I still want to do and see. I cannot go back yet! I have classes until the very last week of July and my exams are interspersed throughout the month. Not enough weekends to visit all the places I still want to go.

I can hear fireworks outside! I have no clue what it’s for. I didn’t see any celebrations today, and people don’t seem to be out and about as they would be when there’s a “fest” of some sort. Anyway, I can hardly see anything from my room. I do see others in the building next to ours bent over their desks working calmly though. Yes, if you leave your shades up in the evening and your lights on, there’s absolutely no privacy. But most are careful enough to have their shades down in the evening. Going by the stereotype of Germans and their privacy, the ones with the shades up are probably the exchange students!

There’s just so much I haven’t written about since my last post and I don’t have the urge to write it all down now. I have a class early tomorrow and I need to go to bed. I can sleep through alarms when I don’t get enough hours of sleep. That’s the reason I have setup both the alarm clock and my cellphone’s alarms. On important occasions I have a third alarm on my portable audio system thingy!

Anyway, I will hopefully post again tomorrow. Goodnight!