Pi Day Ponderings in Self-Isolation

I write this with a strange mixture of feelings and reckonings. Since my last post, and watching the ever more graver state of the news broadcasts, I am thankful that we squeaked under the wire for leaving and returning from our flyaway holiday just in time before the travel advisories and restrictions are starting to come effect for international travel. I’m also feeling utterly hapless with the fact that just because I did international travel, and then soon after started showing symptoms of sinus congestion and sore throat, that I’m relegated to self-isolate for a long while as a precaution. I have indeed been sick, most likely with some form the common cold. I dutifully reported my symptoms, after several attempts to contact the government health line, and I am still waiting for a response about any future action I may need to take. I’m certain that it is just the same old gross, phlegmy/snotty mess of a cold bug that I get almost every year during late February and early March, when the temperatures begin to wildly fluctuate as spring thaw approaches. I’m quite certain that it’s not Covid-19 (no shortness of breath or fever); just other stuff that coincides with all the remaining other Corona virus symptoms. However, given that I’m in a slightly weakened state, and my immune system is now compromised trying to manage this current bunch of junk, I don’t need to go wandering around and being pounced on by the Corona virus as well. If I do put myself in a place of sharing this wretched cold to a person in my circle of friends and work, who may be already even more immune-suppressed than I am, I further increase their chances for the actual acquisition of the Covid-19 thing while they are battling the same cold.

Sure, this virus can be potential fatal, for a select, vulnerable, cross-section of the population; just like the flu always was, is, and most likely continue to be. Last season, influenza killed more people worldwide than Covid-19 currently has now, a disease which is now on the decline according to some reports. However, for the flu, no one went crazy then and cleared out all the shelves in grocery shops. The thing that bothers me most about it is the absurd amount of hype, the fearmongering, and irrational panicking, because it is so novel as a disease; not as well-established historically as the flu is. The same way that terrorist attacks are over-reported when there are a relatively small number of casualties compared to the other types of tragic mortalities happening in the world that are set in a less dramatic framework. I'm grateful that this nation isn't yet so inundated with active cases compared to some others. We may not be much better as a population here in Canada in avoiding a full-blown epidemic, but we at least have a government that is more willing to put aside partisan issues to face this thing, who are more willing to listen to medical science, and are willing to work on the problem more rationally. We at least had a bill passed to secure the first stages of getting universal Pharmacare in place before this before parliament recessed in response to this outbreak. As far as this government's response, I'm at least thankful that we can perhaps respond better to all this because we don't have an Antichrist to science, like the Americans have who is leading their political shit show. I'm proud to say that Canadian researchers have been amongst the first to get successful steps for vaccine development for this thing. I’m not getting fearful or panicky, but I’m not going to be so stupid as to slough off prudence either. Given what I got to deal with, prudence demands that I have to self-isolate for a while as a precaution. I’m over the hump of it now, and I have been getting increasingly better. As much as I feel that that I’m getting touched in the head with some boredom, and feel that this is ultimately may be a squandering of my accumulated sick time, I’ll play the game right, and at least have a clearer conscience for doing so. Decongestants, drinking hot fluids, and some extra sleep have helped the most.

With all the extra time off, the mind tends to wander to far away strange places, in lieu of not allowing my physical self to veer far from home. My self-isolation phases into Pi (π) Day. I slapped down some random thoughts and observations to entertain myself mathematically whilst I’m here alone, doing my part to flatten the curve. In honour of this day, and since I’m stuck inside and have SFA else to do, I decided to apply pi (π) in a practical manner with respect to this latest pandemic.

·      They say now that generally the minimal safe zone for oneself out in public, to avoid contracting this new pestilence, is about a two-metre radius. With π in the equation, that means that there is a personal space circle around you that is about 12.6 m² of circular area around you that is your buffer zone. I have an easier, less abstract, and more convenient and discreet method of measuring to use for keeping people at their distance away from me. It is called a dog on a leash. The full extension of my dog’s leash is two metres long. I’m safer from everyone, as they are them from me, if they are beyond the range of the dog’s nose while I’m walking her.

·        The hoarding behaviour people are resorting to is ridiculous and getting out of hand. Over-supplying for yourself means under-supplying for everyone else of critical needs. You don’t have to be a Game Theory mathematician to figure this out. The real notable idiocy happening now being the hoarding of toilet paper. If you are guilty of doing this, here’s an equation (simplified)¹ with a practical use of π that might help you smarten up a bit:  N (1 – (πR₁^{2 /}πR₀²))/ [Δt] = S. With N being the number of squares in fresh new roll of toilet paper (usually listed on the package, you shouldn’t have to count), R₀ being the initial measured radius before usage, R₁ being the final radius measurement of your TP roll and Δt being the increment of time (let’s just call it a day) between initial and final radius measurement of the roll. That’s it! You’ve just computed your actual toilet paper consumption in squares of toilet paper per day in your household (S). Calculating S/N(14) equals the number of rolls of toilet paper you’ll likely be using for a 14 day quarantine period (Q). Subtract Q from all the surplus rolls of toilet you have bought and have in extra stock: E for excess. Divide that difference by Q: (E-Q)/Q =A. Assuming that you are within the realm of average as everyone else in terms of bathroom usage, that final quotient (A) then is roughly the number of people you’ve basically deprived of toilet paper, screwing them over and pissing them off with your irrational panic-driven stupidity for the 14 day quarantine period. The higher the number, the higher the likelihood that you are indeed a stupid prick with absolutely no sense of practical rationing, nor any concern for your fellow citizens. If you’ve hoarded toilet paper during this time, congratulations! Through π, you now have been assigned an ascending ranking numerical value of how much of an asshole (A) you are by creating more chaos and crisis by doing so. It somehow comforts me to know that there are quantifiable numbers with which to calibrate and apply to people on specific degrees of stupidity they exhibit instead of just using a fuzzy vague judgement or a glib opinion. Please note that if you are using more than one roll of toilet paper per day for yourself, you probably got a more serious problem going on than risking contracting Covid-19. If your number is negative, you do indeed have a shortage problem, and I’d then suggest that you definitely lay off the spicy food for the next while!

·       I can’t help but to notice that the shape and form of the Corona virus itself is a testament to the geometrical intricacies of π. If there were vertices attached to the outer protruding crown ends of the viral body, it would very much take the shape of a geodesic sphere, a structure intensively governed by the ratios of π.  If it weren’t so potentially deadly I’d find it rather beautiful in its unique sort of symmetry.

·      The number π is also used for studying population dynamics in various ways, used in weird and wild esoteric equations which I don’t have all day to study or explain here. It’s a constant in the bell shaped curve in statistics. No doubt it is now being used intensively to track the spread, and to factor in environmental conditions that prevent it from spreading. I would be interested in knowing if it could be useful in predicting any correlation between the likelihood of increased disease presence in a sample population where there are overt instances of hoarding behaviour in a particular sector. I would like to think that there would be a divine justice in store for those who are overly competitive and less cooperative.

I have a few more days to go before I can head back to work, and I’m sure I’ll be having to review and follow newer procedures for hygiene and prevention once I return. Pi might be less relevant in adjusting to the long lapse. I’m having less stress about this stuff with just living day to day, one moment at a time. It helps to avoid the news too; if it ever becomes worse, I’m sure it will find me somehow. As for now, I extend a wish for everyone else to stay well as we go through this course of enduring both of what is the dreamt up hype and what the actual consequential havoc is of this matter together, with hopes that this all transpires as smoothly and peaceful as possible; hoping it passes us all by sooner than later, with minimal troubles, grief, and suffering to my friends and family at risk of being directly and indirectly afflicted and affected. I’m confident that we’ll get through this ok. If I wasn’t my last entry wouldn’t have so much mentioned about toilet paper rolls.

If being penned up inside alone with nothing to do but clean my place, ration my foodstuffs to avoid shopping, binge watch TV, read, play music, catch up on TED talks, tile together jigsaw puzzles, and play with equations involving transcendental numbers for entertainment's sake and writing about it all is the worst it gets for me through this phase of clearing myself of pathogens, I'll consider myself lucky and be thankful for it, and use the time to work on myself for a change.

1 When determining the usable circular area cross-section area of a roll of toilet paper, you have to account for the interior hollow circle of the subtracted from the area of the usable part of the roll, radius dimension for that designated “r”. Thus, πR₀² – πr² is the true cross-section of material area of the initial whole roll, and πR₁² - πr² for the final measurement of the day. Conveniently, in the division, - πr² cancels out for simplicity. The equation is then converted to represent for proportional relation of a unit roll of toilet paper. I recommend measuring in centimetres, decimalized metric is easier to calculate and more precise. A square of toilet paper is roughly 10 cm x 10 cm if you want to test yourself with volume formulas. You’re on your own if you want to figure out your consumption per use by cm². I can’t say that I’m that bloody curious as to know that myself.

BuJo Initiate

It’s the Ex week again, and like for the past few years now, I’ve taken it as holiday time. It has also been the habit to use the time to do practical economical household craft projects each year during this time, as sort of an advanced preparation for making winter a bit cozier. This time around is no exception. Last year, it was some carpentry to reclaim storage space; other years, it has been canning preserves. This year, I’ve minimized and simplified things even more for a multi-day project.

Over the past couple years or so, one positive habit I have been cultivating for myself is carrying

One template format I'm exploring . . .

around a pocketbook and pen. Sure, a note taking app on the phone is quite handy, but when in a pressured dash or impulse to record, capture, and recover something more instantly and accurately while it is on the tip of my brain, the pen and notebook beats the cellphone. I have been finding my old-fashioned pocketbook to be as indispensable to me as carrying my keys, wallet, and my cellphone. It has helped save me a lot of time, money, and energy, especially in spots when the phone had little to no battery power left.

I like technical innovation a lot, but honestly, only up to a certain point. We think we are doing well for ourselves by organizing our lives with apps on our phones and computers, but this is illusory on some levels. It is ultimately making us comply to a complex system that suits tech companies in finding new ways to control us with ones and zeros, and for them to glean more of our money and personal data from us. In this sense, apps can tend to cheapen the quality of your life, or they at least make the data of it more valuable to everyone except yourself. There is a point where we lose sight of being able to create a very personalized, customized, and more organic system that allows us to stage things better for our own organizational needs, our unique learning modalities, our own personal goals; one that accommodates for recording through our more private and practical eccentricities. Those ones are not for sharing, the non-bloggables: thoughts and ideas best left on a page of paper, with the privacy assured.

One of the things I regret about my formal education, from childhood on through to my early university years, in the days before academic computer use, and before the internet was available, is that I never had any teacher at any time of my life who put any effort at all on teaching me how to do the very essential and elemental thing for excelling in true higher learning. That is, really teaching me on how to organize myself with the practical skill of efficient written planning/journaling, and effective note taking. It seems absurd, but it’s true. Sure, I of course learned literacy, but only mastering merely the taking in and absorbing of information part of it. I always had substandard teachers and mentors for helping me exploit my strongest learning modalities to transpose, and express, what was going on in my head in the way I sensed it, and frame it in the best organized and condensed manner on to a page that was most memorable and comprehensive to me. My willingness to write, or “show my work”, as was always demanded of me, just wasn’t there, and from that I think I suffered greatly in such a way that I was always reticent, reluctant, reserved, made to feel embarrassed, about expressing any form of creativity at all through the written word or graphics for the longest time. I was no dullard, there was lots of thinking going on; but I was always embarrassed with my poor organizational ability of trying to sort it out on paper. Capturing thoughts through note taking was like trying to catch wriggling live fish with soapy hands. I improved a lot over the years, but my journey to get better at it has been a very independent and solitary one, and I missed the most critical of years of when what I know now would have served me better at an earlier time. I’m trying to actively compensate for that even today.

This all brings me now to making a concerted effort at learning something that encompasses serving me as a means of approaching efficient minimalism, enhancing my productivity, and being a creative pastime. Currently, I’m immersing myself in the craft of bullet journaling (or BuJo* for short)¹. Like most of my hobbies and pastimes, it is nerdy thing that is a nice blend of aesthetics that pleases the senses, and orderly precision that gets mathematical, scientific, and data oriented. What I gain from doing it is a clearer snapshot of how my mind works while figuring out goal-oriented objectives. One thing I’m noticing is that there is a great and drastic schism in the quality in my handwriting between the floodlight mind (cursive, observing and fervent collecting a vast array of thoughts instantaneously) and my spotlight mind (block printed, mindfully focusing and methodically organizing them on paper, without the pressure of time and other stressful distractions). Comparing the two is seeing my brain operating and functioning in two different levels, or existing on two entirely different worlds, for each process. I wonder if there is name for the weird psychological anomaly to describe this huge difference between each modality. Examples provided.

My manic, brain-on-fire,
"conspitated looking" as one
of my friends once called it,

cursive writing vs.

My relaxed and focused self

block printing

My goal with this pastime is to get a journal formatted and formulated with templates for the

One template I designed that I may 

use for seasonal tasks. I couldn't

 find anything like this in a stationary 

store. Custom made is the way to go!

remainder of this year and the entire coming new year. What will I do with it all? Well, to automate some plans without the actual need for technical automation; to make cybernetic changes and adjustments without the cyberspace. I’m not trying to think like a machine, but I am trying to enhance my own recording and processing of stuff in much the same way that computers do: more effort to taking a small codified, point/mark, or bit of info to record and ramming it through a formatted program or function to filter out a result. Pixilating points (or customized bullets) to track data is a simple and effective way to record progress. The gist of this being investing in time to structure a perfect (for me) format now so that I can waste very little time and material for recording stuff later. Minimal effort through simple coding that can lead to big results. There is stuff to enter that is not as simple as purely numerical, or a yes/no, true/false, 0/1,

kinds of data. Some stuff, of course, is trackable and traceable only on a spectrum, or layers of spectra, or else needs a full out verbal explanation. The modular nature of this system allows for this too. I’m most interested see what kind of artistic infographics I’ll be able to create and incorporate as well. I want to see if I can progress from being crude to making the great leap ahead of being . . . slightly less crude with my graphical talents. Most of the detailed subjects that I will be recording, and tracking, are too personal to post here. However, I will disclose the broader general reasons for this new objective:

• Shifting from Day to Night Mode – Someday, I hope not too soon yet, I will be transitioning to doing night shifts. It will be a major upheaval for my body and mind to adapt to, with phases of insomnia assured to come; my working memory being the worse off casualty due to that. Hence, I’ll have to get into the habit of writing things down more often to not lose track of things. Also, having lists of things to work through eliminates the burdensome and torturous task of having to make decisions in such a state (or suffering consequences of making bad decisions in that way, read further below).
  
• Total Schedule Reorganization - There then must be a major reorganization of my schedule for my daily activity, have a productive rhythm to my day; to conserve my energy, and my social life and relationships outside of work. 
  
• Monitoring Health – Another offshoot of switching to nights is needing to actively check myself over for signs of physical deterioration due to the odd hours and unnatural rhythm of wakefulness. Knowing and marking the ideal time to exercise, and what and when to eat during this (mal)adjustment period is critical also, since “breakfast” kind of doesn’t work (doesn’t feel right) as a meal option in mid-afternoon. Alcohol consumption periods are things to be mindfully reckoning with too. What gets measured gets mastered.
  
• Impulse Grounding – One of the things I have noticed after long bouts of insomnia is the poor ability to make sound decisions. The likelihood of acting on impulse rather than think things through rises significantly. For example, this is especially bad when I want to commit to a minimalist lifestyle, but then act on a reckless spending spree for impractical things after too little sleep. BuJo is a way to do a brain dump and check your thoughts outside yourself, with some frame of order, to analyze and weigh pros and cons. At the very least, the very act of doing this is a much cheaper alternative of using one’s time rather than falling into an impulsive habit of mindless consumption of whatever it is that one could possibly become addicted to.
  
• Cheap Hobby – It only needs: a writing instrument of your preference, and a good quality dot

  

  My entire Bullet Journaling kit.

  (or grid) paged journal for the basics. For refined line forming for edging and bordering and such, a cheap geometry set from a dollar store works. Additional lettering stencils and templates can be found cheap in an arts and craft shop, or even in a dollar store. Just engage the imagination, and that’s it. A minimalist’s dream come true! Very portable, and it doesn’t need a battery for power (except maybe just a good source of caffeine). It’s a big step upward from an adult colouring book anyway, and far more practical to use as well.
  
• Veering Away from Toxic Social/News Media – Simply substituting a bad use of time for a better, more constructive, one. I will have a genuinely more enriching time working on a means to sort my own life’s issues, and creating my own viable solutions for approaching problems and goals than thinking and believing, that during these turbulent politically charged times of the election season, that any government or other social institution, is going to be genuinely interested in doing that for me. It’s my time to opt out of indiscriminately spending too much time and attention on negative news and social media during these times of waiting for our nation’s federal election coming this October, and the bloody ridiculous circus of the still 454 remaining days of campaigning until the American election. Working on my own betterment through my journals will be a nice retreat away from all this.

The most satisfying and enriching thing about using BuJo as an analogue system of note taking and calligraphy²: purposely taking a plain word and page space and embellishing it such as to make it so strikingly elegant and distinctly vivid enough that it becomes impossible to ignore. Imagine then how much more powerful it would look when it is applied to a whole written thought or idea. Goals are made to appear to have an esteemed meaning, as truly worthy goals should. It somehow makes your own ideas and listed tasks and duties appear more alive/animated. Even the duller things on a to do list can then look like they could be integral parts of some overall grand adventure.

A potential syllabus list

with flipped open pages

to record book titles

journaling is the chance and choice to be liberally creative and expressive with stylish lettering and artwork in one’s journal, thus further stimulating and empowering one to use the entire brain; not just the analytical and logical left hemisphere. I really believe there is some weight to this as a benefit, adding artful flourishes through doodles, and calligraphy.

I’m coming closer to understanding why monks in the medieval era were charged with the tasks of illuminating pages, making copies of calligraphic manuscripts, and other such scrivenery. Apart from being just merely literate, to do such a job well very much requires and demands a deeply focused, disciplined, and meditative mind. It can be very relaxing. However, I’m certainly not a monk. The best advice I could give as a novice for starting a page template is just to dive right into it. It is 100% guaranteed that it will be imperfect at the start, making lots of mistakes in your initial formatting, lettering, and page section alignment. So, once that is all done, set it aside for a long while, have a drink or two, then come back and review it, and then be totally relentless, ruthless, and absolutely merciless with editing it, and redo it until you get the right design and style that really satisfies you. You are allowed be your own harshest critic since you are going to be the only one interacting with this material; you have no one to please but yourself by taking such a measure.

The first mess . . .

. . . then the final product. Custom made and adapted for a coding 

matrix system unique and personal to me, and again, 

it can't be found in any regular stationers shop.

I have nothing more to include with this entry, except for this last thought from a quote by the author of my guidebook:

“Each Bullet Journal becomes another volume in the story of your life. Does it represent the life you want to live? If not, then leverage the lessons you've learned to change the narrative in the next volume.”
― Ryder Carroll, The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future

*- I like Bujo because sounds more to me like some unique, Zen-based, Japanese term for some sort of work ethic discipline, like kaizen.

1. The initial resource I used was The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll. I solidified the reason why I decided to undertake this; after that though, I’ve been finding a multitude of ideas for personalization on Pinterest.

2. I’m not ashamed to say, as a guy, that I love the artform of calligraphy. Before you scoff and think by default that it’s a sissy craft to do, consider this: the most instrumental class that Steve Jobs said he ever took (before he dropped out of college) which he said had been the most influential one for the inception of the Mac computer wasn’t a software programming class, wasn’t a computer science or engineering class; it was a calligraphy class. In a roundabout way, the practice of it forced him to see things differently through the elegance of design, and natural forms and ease of interface that made one want to engage with using a computer. Proper design is powerful stuff!

August Civic Holiday/Vacation 2018 (Lagom, Hygge, and Kalsarikännit)

As usual, as glorious as it can be, this summer in Saskatoon is passing too quickly. This one seems to be flickering past me even more rapidly than others. It may be because I have been overall happier. The inclusion of endearing forces in my life are doing me good. The absence of some other tyrannical, narcissistic forces, and whiney nagging people has allowed me to climb still further out of a hole of negativity. I’m enjoying the reprieve from that thus far. I feel strong enough to be a supportive friend again, and to be there for those who matter. 

It’s the beginning of another stretch of holidays for me, and yet I honestly haven’t been that eager to formulate some grandiose, concrete plan for a getaway for it; perhaps because it’s the first time after the longest time that I finally feel like there is nothing I really need to escape from. The most off-kilter thing I done throughout this time around was daring to play a clandestine poker game in a meat locker with a bunch of Russian gangsters*. My brain has been switched on to entertaining myself with puzzles and games again, on top of digesting some literature. It’s a personal barometer that indicates good things for me. It’s a peaceful retreat for this time, even when the annual ruckus of the Ex appears once again in the neighbourhood. My internal clock is already shifting itself now, by default, to waking up even earlier, and trying to nap a few hours during the heat of the day to compensate for the rest I won’t be getting at night. Yet, despite all that, I can retreat into my own head now more easily with a greater sense of clarity and contentment, without any great interference; and to seek such a thing from someplace else right now seems like a needless and futile squandering of energies. With temperatures rising as high as 40 degrees near week’s end, I’m even more disinclined to be too active. By then, the thought of playing games in an actual meat locker might really be appealing. Even more desirable would be an upgrade to a walk-in beer cooler.

I did give myself a few moments to wonder about and reassess my own personal reasons as to why I would travel. I did so because I was probed with such questions by my sweetheart about what I’d like to do for my upcoming birthday. The thrill of travel isn’t planting my ass on the sand of some beach, nor is it even visiting museums or festivals, though they’d be interesting enough I’m sure. Neither does much for me in exploring or understanding the vibe of the place, which I think is the whole jest of traveling to begin with. With this gaming mentality going on for me now, I realize that the thrill of travel for me is just to get a whole new perspective on other lifestyles and challenging myself to interact with them successfully. That’s like a game in and of itself. It includes the challenge of using and interacting with another language and finding avenues to do so for sake of just getting around and taking care of your basal needs of eating, lodging, and moving from spot to spot. It’s strange for me to see people who have traveled far more than I have, and yet who are totally scared shitless at the thought of daring to depart from their all-English-speaking tour group from their isolated resort. They say that they like to tour around; and at the same time are totally xenophobic. As introverted as I am I still like taking the more immersive and anthropological approach to traveling and touring by vagabonding.

This gaming/puzzling phase I’m in has made me both reflect and fantasize about the scenes I liked and would like to retreat to. I got nostalgic thinking about watching the citizens playing spirited games of dominoes in the outdoors taverns when I was doing life in Valencia many years ago. In past summers at some lake with family, when we were not cooling off in the water, or fishing, or eating, or listening to stories and gossip around a campfire at night, we were spending time playing Kaiser**, Meadow Lake Rummy**, or other card games in the campsite or cabin. I thought about how content I’d be and how cool it would be just chill out in a café nearby a souk in Istanbul playing backgammon with some locals, or perhaps learning mah-jong in a park in Shanghai or Hong Kong. I think about this because apart from the need to buy and consume, use math and logic, and listening to music; entertaining oneself with gaming is another thing that can transcend language, or at least be another avenue to learn about language and culture by this other amusing and informal vehicle.

Speaking of language and culture, that has been the subject of my non-fiction reading during this time off. It once again is a study into the Nordic/Scandinavian lifestyle, and being a nerd for linguistics. I should diversify into studying other cultural viewpoints, but once again, I can’t help but to be attracted to the subject of Scandinavia, as it always intrigues, interests, and impresses me. It is partly because despite with me not being immersed in such a culture, I yet somehow already live by, learned through my upbringing, or have adopted similar such equivalent ideas and ethics***; I just now have discovered new words for some of these memes by some strange synchronicity, which aren’t conveniently packaged into the English vocabulary for me to describe my own personal modus operandi. It’s the whole Law of Jante (Wikipedia source) thing they got going on over there - that I can deeply appreciate, which is sort of a Scandinavian societal modality that serves to curb things like vanity, greed, undo pride, pretentiousness, and a false sense of entitlement. The book I’ve been reading is called Lagom: the Swedish Art of Balanced Living, by Linnea Dunne. A guide for balanced living seems to be an appropriate thing to read while spending some holiday time alone. I touched on the subject of Lagom in a past entry, but I didn’t do it any justice in trying to elaborate on it.

The best new concept words I learned from this book that I can appreciate are:

·         Köpstopp – (pronounced sort of like “short stop”, switching the “rt” with "p") It’s the discipline of applying a spending cap for a given amount of time: a voluntary moratorium on shopping for anything beyond essentials for living. I experimented with this at the beginning of the year, I just didn’t have this concise name for this behaviour. A way to tame mindless consumption.

·         Panta – a recycling fee for your cans and bottles. The Swedish form of what would be the equivalent of a Sarcan refund here. A monetary incentive is always a good thing to encourage a cleaner environment.

·         Plastbanta – The banning of toxin plastic products in your household, and opting for wood/bamboo, stainless steel. I was already shifting towards this trend; again, I just didn’t have a concise name for it before.

·         Lördagsgodis- Not everything falls under the self-regulatory restrictiveness of the Laws of Jante, or the discipline of Lagom in Sweden. There are memes for unfettered indulgence, like this one meaning “Saturday goodies/candies” basically meaning going whole hog on sweets and snacks, but just for once a week. It coincides and accords with my cheat days whenever I have the hair-brain schemes of dieting, and whenever I entreat myself to something weird and exotic to experiment with in my kitchen, as the rhythm for that typically falls on Saturday.

·         Fredagsmys – Another once a week institution. This time meaning roughly “Friday coziness”, relaxing and retreating in your own home with nothing but your snacks at the ready and other creature comforts, and no other obligations to do anything else but veg out. Being that they neighbour as countries, I imagine there may be some correlation with the Finnish meme of kalsarikännit at this time of the week (read on further).   

·         Pyttipanna- A general cooking method of creatively making the most out of the leftovers in your fridge and pantry. Something I do all the time as a personal principle, because being wasteful disgusts me.

·         Loppis – A word meaning to tour flea markets, yard sales, and other places for gently used goods. Loppisrunda means making an entire day’s event of it. Another movement towards frugality, and waste-reduction, repurposing, and giving second hand items a new home and life.

The other Nordic memes I’d like to look into more, study, and explore are the concepts of hygge (Danish) – something akin to “coziness” but I’m led to believe and understand that it is something more divine and intricate than that, and the Finnish institution of kalsarikännit – I apologize that the translation is not too succinct: it roughly means “underwear drunk” but it actually essentially means succumbing to the urge to get intoxicated at home alone in your underwear after a bad day, with no intention of going out and socializing. That’s perhaps the perfect one to test out on a smoky, smouldering, 40 degree August afternoon, like what’s coming ahead.

*- Not for reals; in the Xbox game Prominence Poker. It’s the fact that I’m playing video games to begin with, instead of immersing myself in some other strange little project: that’s what is off-kilter for me, but it beats frying in the merciless heat for now.

** - Two very regional games unique to the area where I was raised here in Saskatchewan. 

*** - Perhaps it’s all mysteriously inherited and instinctual, seeing now that 25% of genome is Scandinavian after a DNA test. Nature versus nurture arguments will be for some other time.

Restless Browsing

This is not good. It's only 11 days into winter and I'm already climbing the walls. The good news is that I managed to cram and jam my skis in this new car despite it's smaller interior space. The bad news was that after doing that, and cruising to the ski trails, I found out that they were still lacking enough snow depth to be groomed properly. I went home disappointed, forcing myself to do responsible adult stuff when I returned there.

As much as I abhor giving patronage to any shop on Remembrance Day, I cracked - after being penned up inside, constraining myself to focusing on household tasks for the entire day, seeing that I couldn't go skiing. By the time evening came, I needed to flee from here.

The problem is that there's nowhere to really retreat to at night when lots of businesses and restaurants are closed, even when a statutory holiday falls on a Saturday. My appetite was sated and I was full and had no need to eat anywhere, but I found out that Indigo was open, and my restless mind was hungry; so I stepped into there. I just purged my place of a huge whack load of books, but I couldn't resist seeing what I would alternatively collect for my shelves. Touring the bookstores and libraries isn't just a quest for good material to read; it's an effort to discover the kind of book I'd like to write. This entry is a visual collection and reflection of what my literary tastes and other entertainment modality was shifting to as I browsed the store.

The book best suited for me

on this kind of evening.

A cookbook that I should be

learning from

The kind of cookbook I should

be writing - Sample 1

Another sample of the kind of 

cookbook I should be writing.
There is more profanity in this
one book than what I think I
used in my entire lifetime.
It gets the point across though.

Three books I'd want for a prolonged

trip to my desired European destinations.

The Joy of Less appeals to my philosophy of minimalism.

Another alternate form of porn
of stuff I'd lust for, besides for
whatever's in the Best Buy flyers.

The poetry I might be able

to appreciate.

A comical journaling

exercise book  in a format

that I wish I dreamt up of first.

The magazine I should be reading

A preformatted checklist that I

should have. However, the items on it

aren't 'weird' enough for my place.

There were also games I noticed that I'd be interested in collecting too . . . from old school to ancient school.

Ultimately though,  I ended up shaking off the urge to do any mindless consumption, realizing that what I probably most needed to do was retreat into re-reading and reviewing my own journal notes: ones loaded full of half-cocked plans, semi-mapped ideas, hair-brained schemes, and other lists that I wouldn't share here and the beginning of solutions to other challenges I may have ahead.

5Q5A: Winterlude

Again, this is mostly for the benefit of my non-Canadian audience. 

I’m not trying to react too negatively about it, but It’s back, and being that I should be better prepared for its coming is neither here nor there. Of course, I’m talking about winter: and no matter how well prepared I am for the physical and logistical rigours of the season, like any savvy Canadian should be, ultimately, I am never prepared for it psychologically, despite having lived here all my life. Things like the extra darkness, the featureless snowscape, the extra work shoveling and blowing away accumulations, the treacherous driving from idiots who aren’t adapting to slick road conditions, and the augmented stretches of isolation and being penned indoors are already getting to me, and we are only four days into the season since the snow came. Knowing that there is 32 times that of a duration yet to endure until spring isn’t making me any more cheerful. I don’t feel anymore thankful or blessed in knowing that Halloween was snow free, and it could have come much sooner by one or two weeks, which is not uncommon in these parts to expect. It’s just here, and I have no will to deal with it. It’s going to be hard to find pleasure in this one. The title above is more of a note of sarcasm than anything.   

Q1. How is this going to be an even more challenging winter?

A1. What’s even more foreboding about it is that now that I’m a member of the Condo board, I’ve been bestowed some responsibility of assuring snow removal around the building on days like these; dealing with the gray areas of how responsibly the owners and the people contracted to remove it for us are going to interact. To do one home is enough, to be responsible an entire building complex is another thing. Plus, along with dealing with some residents and board members, some of whom are bickering with each other, and being caught between their petty conflicts, doesn’t make me enthused to pursue this endeavor. It makes me a little regretful that I’ve yupped myself into this.
As usual, the missing of like-minded intimate female companionship is at its worst when enduring this phase of the year*.

Q2. What do you tolerate best about winter?

A2. Strangely enough, the cold really doesn’t bother me much physically. Genetically, I suppose I just turned out to be a very warm-blooded person. It’s just an element that one dresses right for. I don’t give it a second thought or complaint about those instances, like this morning, where I’ll march out in -30 C wind chill to help relieve the dog. The whining and complaining everyone else does about it, and its resulting negativity, is more what gets to me when it’s overplayed. I get grumbly when I have to remove snow, or be forced to travel by foot or vehicle over ice, but cold temperature itself isn’t the bothersome factor to me directly, just what results in its influence in other things beyond me. I get pissed off at the failures and foibles of some mechanical and technical things like cars, cell phones, and other devices that aren’t as resilient as I am when the temperature plummets, but not with the cold itself. Personally, I find brisk, cold air cleansing and purifying. I’m one of those weirdos who favours an extremely cold day over an extremely hot one. I can dress better for a really cold day; I can’t undress further for an extremely hot one. If I ever find it too cold for my personal liking, it’s just a good excuse to have a hot bath, or use the sauna, or enjoy some tea or soup.

Q3. What are your personal betterment projects going to be for the season?

A3. I’ve sorted things out to the following.

1.       Language project – Learning (some) Russian. What more appropriate language is there to learn in the harshest and most bitter of seasons such as this? I’ll expound more on the reasons why and my progress in future entry.

2.       Cooking – Becoming a better saucier. To take ordinary cuts of meat and vegetables and elevate them to another level of amazing with a simple formulation of a sauce seems to be worthwhile doing. I’m reckoning on learning about 20 – 30 different sauces, dips, and glazes during the season.

3.       Studying – I have a big, stupid hoop to jump through with some required courses. It’s actually a form of hell and punishment to me, and a reminder of collective ineptitudes which, unfairly, other parties aren’t being held accountable for. But, I’m challenging myself in creating some weird and wild mnemonic systems to help me remember this stuff, which I can hopefully transfer and apply to other things more meaningful and valuable to me.

4.       Writing better  – I’m considering workshops for it.

5.       Continued involvement with my Union

Q4. What fitness and leisure are you going to try to pursue more of?

A4. Things like:

1.      X Country Skiing – If there is an ideal weekend for it. I might travel up to Elk Point to experience the trails there. Otherwise, I’ll try to keep regenerating my lung tissues with the circuits here locally. Running on icy streets and sidewalks is too much of a risk given that I need non-sprained ankles and unbroken legs for work.

2.      More sauna time – and with that, to pass the time better while sweating out toxicity in there without boredom, it seems fitting to read . . .

3.      More Scandinavian crime fiction – I built up a rather large extensive syllabus of books by Nordic writers. After reading a few, I totally get why people have commented that I think more like a Northern European than a Canadian.

4.      Shooting Nazis – Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, a video game, has been released. I really don’t want to offend my German friends after saying this. Please remember that I’m shooting at Nazis, not the good Germans. The first-person shooter gameplay for this series is awesome, and I’m sure I’ll need some form of quasi-destructive cathartic release of anger towards something representing oppressive evil sometime throughout this season. I wish I knew more people who like to play board games and cards; I would welcome that too. As for now, the dog is lousy at dealing cards, and doesn’t really have a grasp on how to play chess or backgammon.

5.      Designing and building furniture – mostly shelving and table options (solutions).

6.      Cocktail Bar Development – gradually accumulating the essential ingredients for a fuller and varied personal mixology lab experience. If I can’t have quantity, I at least want quality on the minimal level.

Q5. Let’s end with being positive, what are the better or favourite sensations of winter that you enjoy?

A5. Sensations, as in what appeals to the five senses, could be summarized thusly:

1.      Sounds – or rather the absence of it when the first snow comes. Walking outside in the darkness on the morning of the first snowfall of winter, where the light snow absorbs all acoustical aberrations. On the opposite side is listening to blizzard blowing outside whilst being with a warm beside warm, crackling from the fireplace. It’s the winter equivalent of listening to thunderstorm for me, which I also find pacifying. The only time I really appreciate classical music is during winter. Ella snoring by my feet after a long cold walk, either her effort to warm up, or to warm me up.

2.      Textures – the mass of a super heavy quilt draped over me. This is only appreciated on the super cold days of course.

3.      Smells – Birch firewood burning, conifer trees (the only non-dormant plants during the season; a good whiff of pine sap is intoxicating), fresh bread baking and soup cooking, any incense that masks months’ worth of smells of kitchen grease, other malodorous stenches and other volatile organic compounds (from not just my suite, but others’) that get trapped inside because you can’t really open the goddamned windows for fresh air for the risk of freezing the pipes.

4.      Sights – Hoarfrost, like everything outside gets encrusted with diamonds after a good freezing fog. Christmas lights, or any extra light that brightens the evenings before and after solstice.

5.      Tastes – For some weird reason, I tolerate red wine better during winter than at all other times of the year. As forms of alcohol go, ordinarily red wine seems like it is to me like what Kryptonite is to Superman. Anything fat and sugary is more pleasurable on an exponential degree during winter. If the only feast I had for Christmas was Butter Tarts, I’d be happy with that. I drink more coffee and tea during winter as well, perhaps to trick my brain into making the cycle of daylight longer than it really is.

*- I’m not going to be prideful, or be feeling ashamed, or hiding anymore about the fact that at times I get terrible spells of feeling weaker and vulnerable about being very lonely. Winter here is the worst for experiencing that, but some how I endure.

The Last Cruise of Itaru Maru

Saturday, Thanksgiving Weekend

It’s one of the last few lovely sunny days left of this year before drearier or winter-like weather slams the door shut on this autumn. I was awake since 3:00 AM for some crazy reason, so I phased my paperwork and other chores of the day in much earlier, so I now have the liberty of the rest of this Saturday to chill and maybe nap before catching a ride for a road trip to be with family for Thanksgiving later. One of the things done today was to have Ella accompany me for a car ride to my other errand stops, as it helps to pacify her before I trick her into having a bath. Ella, loving car rides as she does, fancies this car almost as much as I do, so I couldn’t let her miss out on having the possibly the last cruise in Itaru with me. I’ll elaborate on that in a moment. I try not to be either sentimental about cars I have had, or covetous about the ones I’d like to have, but I realize that today was special in that it probably is one of the last drives, if not the last drive with my current vehicle. This is the only car that I’ve had enter my life that I’ve truly appreciated.

If there is one thing I am thankful for during this Thanksgiving season is that I can officially put an end to the hell of shopping for another vehicle. I sure as hell don’t want to be bothered with it when winter comes. As much as this one has delighted me, my needs are changing, and rather than having to contend with another round of maintenance for this one, I decided to front up for an investment into another one. Another has been found, and I’m acquiring it this weekend. The hell of car shopping, and my spiel of kicking tires yielded to me three choices: a nice little VW Golf (but with lots of kilometres racked up on it), a sweet gently used older Volvo S60 (one of the reliable ones made in the factory in Gothenburg, Sweden; not one of those inferior ones assembled in a Ford plant in America), and the one I ultimately purchased (keeping this private). It beat the other two out because of the lower mileage and price, and cheaper future maintenance costs. I got practical instead of lustful, but now not disappointed with going that route. I’ll just say that I got lucky.

I don’t often admit that I’ve given my car a proper name, but it has been christened Itaru. I don’t see why there should be any weirdness or shame in admitting that. Before we drove cars, we named the horses we rode, and ships we sailed have been somehow given more animacy through christened names for millennia. Hence, where is the wrong in giving one’s own personal vehicle a name? We go so far as accepting that the model is a distinct name (like Tiguan, Mustang, or Renegade), with the exception I suppose of the blander series numbers of some European makes (like BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo*), and in that case, they sound like names for Star Wars droids. Why not go further in naming the vehicle as a distinct individual apart from its other cloned brethren manufactured models?

The practical side to giving my car a name is that it’s a convenient mnemonic device (though a cryptic one) to help me remember things like my plate number and some other VIN info and spec details. It’s a proper Japanese name assigned to a Japanese make of car. It’s a complicated story of how and why I chose the full name, Itaru Maru, for my current car; only that I noticed that many Japanese sea vessels** are christened with “<some Japanese name> Maru”, and Itaru was conveniently an authentic Japanese name that suited my other mnemonic purposes, and sounded quite lyrical along with Maru. As silly as this all might sound, in that name are 16 other mnemonically tagged pieces of information about the vehicle that I can have instant access to should there ever be an accident or incident to report for my car. Out of curiosity, I researched why many ships hailing from Japan have Maru in their name, and it still isn’t clear to me why that is so. The Japanese word Maru itself means “circular” or “round”, and another meaning of the word is for “excrement”. When referring to my car, the round pieces of shit that the word Maru may directly be describing is probably the state of my tires. With crappy malfunctioning tires, my car might as well be a drydocked boat. Just when I was ready to put it up for sale, it came to be my typical luck with tires (bike or car) that one should be irreparably flattened before that could happen. Thankfully, I found a good deal on a suitable replacement. As much as one tire has given me grief lately though, I still love the car itself, it makes me a little sad to have to part with it.

This next car I believe will be named Kikuchiyo; I’ll probably drop the Maru this time. Because again, it’s another Japanese make and model, and the name accords well with some of the specs I want to tag and process mnemonically. If you have seen the classic Akira Kurosawa movie The Seven Samurai, you may remember that Kikuchiyo (played by Toshiro Mifune) was the wild, undisciplined, impulsive and rambunctious bugger of this septet. Those qualities (I hope) won’t be seen in this next vehicle.

UPDATE: Tuesday evening, the day after Thanksgiving

Itaru Maru was sold tonight, to a guy who works as a mechanic specializing in Volvos, oddly enough. We had a great chat, and reached a deal that was mutually convenient and satisfactory for us. I am grateful that Itaru will be well cared for in the hands of somebody who will appreciate him as I did.

*- If I had bought the Volvo, I was going to name him Ingvar: the combined characteristics of the car being Swedish, and the owner being notably frugal and thrifty, like Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA. The Volvo I could have been driving away would actually have been newer than the Volvo that Kamprad, as multi-billionaire, drives for himself ( the cheap old bastard . . .). If the VW was purchased, Heinrich was going to be its name . . . long story there.

**- Including fictional spaceships, like the Kobayashi Maru, mentioned in Star Trek.

The German Project/Das Deutsche Sprachproject: 55 Days/Tage, 63% Fluency/Fließend

Es sieht immer noch aus wie mein verrücktes altes Gehirn kann mehr neue Wörter ziemlich gut auf Deutsch lernen. Ich habe fast täglich für zwei Monaten die Sprachübungen arbeiten. Ein Teil meiner Grammatik ist manchmal falsch, aber ich (langsam) weiter zu verbessern. Ich benutze auch ein Sprachübersetzer Programm für mich zu testen. Ich kann Sätze jetzt mit weniger Anstrengung komposieren. Wann ich deutsch dazu spreche, versteht mich das Programm gut, also ist mein Akzent zumindest verständlich. Ich kann es besser schreiben, ich lese es gut genug und ich habe die Bedeutung von unbekannten Worten durch ein bisschen besser intuition zu erraten, aber ich mache immer noch schlecht beim Lernen durch das Zuhören. Das ist immer noch ein eine ständige Schwierigkeit für mich mit Deutsch und anderen Sprachen. Vielleicht sind meine Erwartungen jetzt zu groβ, aber ich versuche es noch.

Translation (or at least what I tried to say): It seems that my crazy old brain can still learn some more new words in German fairly well. I’ve been working on the language exercises almost daily for two months. Some of my grammar is sometimes incorrect, but I am continuing to (slowly) improve. I also use a speech translation program to test myself. I can now compose sentences with less effort. When I speak German to it, it understands me well, thus my accent is at least comprehensible. I can write it better, I read it well enough, and I’ve been correctly guessing the meaning of unknown words through a bit better intuition, but I’m still doing poorly at learning through listening. It is still the constant difficulty for me with German and other languages. Perhaps my expectations are too great now (at this age), but I’m still trying.

I sort of did a review of some progress notes on earlier attempts and reasoning for learning German in an entry some while ago (Deutschhackung). Some of that commentary still applies here. This is the third of my language projects (after Swedish and Ukrainian). This re-immersion into German has stepped me up into a more intermediate level. In all honesty though, despite the fluency rating my program gave me (which I think is over-generous), I feel that I’d be dead in the water if I had to engage in a more technical or colloquial conversation in German with someone. My “know enough to avoid getting jailed or shot” principle applies equally to learning this as it did with learning Spanish many years ago.

It’s a really shame that more Anglophones don’t learn more about this language, as they are closely related, and there are some really cool tricks about German, mostly to do with its flexibility for compounding words, more so than English has. Unfortunately, the taste for learning and acquiring it generally has been soured somewhat for most North Americans and non-Teutonic Europeans alike in the past, for the fact that Germans were our adversaries in two of the bloodiest conflicts in modern history. People, out of some defiant reaction toward a perceived enemy’s propaganda of being a “master race”, won’t readily pick up an interest in learning that other language or culture, especially when one’s own national or cultural pride takes over, from the fact that one’s side proper was victorious over such opposing forces, not just once, but twice*. It thus made the language, and the culture around it, maligned for a long while, even perhaps subconsciously if not overtly. Sadly, there were several decades of this friction going on between us and the Germanic states in the early and mid 20^th century, and even though over 100 years has passed since the beginning of it in World War I, with a worsening of it by fascism throughout the second World War to follow, the result was that, either through our own ethno-centric pride after those war years, or through lingering stale resentments. Thus, German’s popularity as an alternate language to learn waned and became a lesser desired form of protocol language. Sadly, I feel that German was uncooled for us in that sense. This ignorance became a meme that continued to stick around long afterward, even being passed on into the generations who didn’t or don’t even have such grudges about the past. More sadly, it’s also commonly perceived that the only other reputed keeners for any such renewed interest in learning German here in North America, outside of those who already have familial ties with the culture, are mostly amongst those who allegedly belong to or associate with Neo-Nazis, the Skinheads, or those who have similar such sociopathic racist tendencies. That’s not exactly good PR for the language either. That’s my theory for its weakened popularity anyway. If I could make up a nice concise German word that adequately sums up this meme, it would be probably be Bedrohungkulturvermeidung**: a defiance against, or willful shunning of, something representing a cultural force that is, or once was, thought of as corruptively evil or potentially destructive to your own. It’s an ignorant concept meme that I suppose I’m actively trying to shatter.

Now that I’ve been more immersed, here are a few things of note that I like/love about the German language, or at least keep me curious and interested enough about it to make me keep learning it:

1.       Easy to spell – No, honestly! Some other people look at the longer words and get intimidated, but it’s really quite logical. If I do misspell it, it is due to me being a shitty typist (and unable to find the umlaut characters in the Alt-key sets). There are no silent letters in German that I can find, unless they are adopted foreign words. There are some signature diphthongs, but at least those are restricted to only one sound each. The only confusing part in writing it for me is when to use “v” and “w” when guessing the spelling of some words, as those sound the same to me, and when to use “s” or “ss” or the “ß” in the spelling. Otherwise, it’s all pretty straight forward.

2.       Prefixes and suffixes – The prepositional prefixes (ab-, an-, auf-, aus-, .  .  . -, über-, un-, unter-, ver-, vor-, zu-) , and the suffixes (like -heit, -keit, -ung) can be affixed to an infinitive verb to make a lot of options with a lot more flexibility than what English has.

3.       Easier pattern recognition for me for translating cognates – For example, the German words with “cht” in them generally equate to the same word with “ght” in it in English (sicht = sight, licht = light, Nacht = night, Macht = might (power), acht = eight) … und so wieder (etc.).

4.       Lots of similar and common words in German with not only English, but other languages – Dutch, what little I studied of it, looks like a very vowel splattered marriage between English and German. If I choose to learn more of it, it would be easier knowing English and some improved German. Swedish has lots of words that are related to German, which makes it a little more retainable.

5.       It’s multinational – Germany, Switzerland, Austria speak it, as well as pocket German ethnic communities like in the Czech Republic, the Alsace region in France, plus in Northern Italy, Southern Denmark, Western Poland, and whichever other countries share borders with the German-speaking nations. It’s more likely that the German language extends into these other bordering nations rather than the other way around.

The things that aren’t so nice about German:

1.       The dreadful grammatical gender issue – not just masculine and feminine to know, but neuter as well. As an Anglophone, my revulsion for such a complicated system, which includes having to match all case articles and adjectival forms accordingly, seems to be deeply ingrained.

2.       The numbers – the way the order gets switched for the tens and ones after the teen numbers. This doesn’t help a mind like mine, which is already tainted with a bit of innumeracy.

3.       The guttural ‘ch’ sound – Not such a pleasant thing to hear, but at least it’s not as heavily used in German as it is in other languages like Dutch or Arabic. My reluctance to learn either one of those other two is greatly based on the frequency that this horrid sound is made in general parlance when I hear these languages being spoken. It’s somewhat of a hostile sounding phoneme. I’d hate sounding like I’m going to spit or hock up phlegm all over someone while I talk. The word ‘Küche’ (kitchen) is a particularly awful word for me to hear. If someone said ‘Gehen Sie in die Küche.’ (Go in the kitchen!), just the sound of that final word in that sentence would make me feel like I was getting punished instead of going to this room that ordinarily makes me happy. To be a fair critic, I give equal weight in comparing annoying sounds between German and English, I’ll readily admit that the most unpleasant sound to come from the English language (as many foreign learners of it would probably agree) is the silly ‘th’ diphthong. In fact, I hate the word ‘diphthong’ itself for the fact that it has ‘th’ compressed in it.  A lisping sound that is considered generally ear-grating and annoying in most other languages is all too common in spoken English***. Linguistically, in general I find that these are the two most unsexy sounds that any language can have.

4.       Genitive Case confusion – A Germanic language like Swedish is similar to English when changing to a case form that indicates possession, the advantage being that neither language has grammatical gender.  German itself is inherently so much more complicated because of that issue of grammatical gender.

5.       Accusative and Dative Case definite and indefinite articles – this is a nightmare for me to keep straight in my mind between all the stupid genders. Added to that are prepositional article contractions to account for too (am, im, zum, vom, zur, beim, etc.). This is not at all easy for an English thinking mind.

6.       Which “This” to use – I cannot for the life of me keep it straight in my head about which form of the demonstrative adjective ‘this’ to use in German (dies, diese, dieses, diesen, diesem, dieser) for the right case. I cheat a little and generally play at safe all the time by simply using das (that) or ‘das hier’ (the English equivalent to ‘that there’ or ‘this here’).

The some of the more useful to adopt and interesting German words, in my mind, are as follows:

1.       Schadenfreude – (harm joy) that twisted sense of pleasure you get when you find out that someone you absolutely despise becomes stricken with some sort of misfortune. It has been adopted into the Oxford English dictionary, and I don’t think we use it enough when we witness things that pertain to it.

2.       Ohrwurm – (ear worm) that song that enters your head and then just won’t stop playing itself over and over again through your mind.

3.       Words ending in -ig, -ling, -us – those endings denote that a word is masculine, less shuffling around to do in my mental junk drawer.

4.       Words ending in -ung, -ie, -ik, -heit, -keit, -schaft, -ion, -ur – those endings automatically indicate that the nouns are feminine. Again, a detail that helps me do less mental hunting and pecking.

5.       Words ending in -um, -ment, -chen, -el – those ending indicate that the noun is neuter. Again, a helpful mnemonic.

6.       Weltschmerz – (world pain) A feeling of melancholy about being sick and tired of dealing with too many problems. Another German word readily adopted into the OED.

7.       Reichen – a verb (infinitive form here) roughly meaning ‘to be sufficent’ or ‘to be enough’. Handy to know if you are in a situation like when you’re with some hard-drinking German buddies who are trying to order round number five of Jägermeister shots each chased with one litre steins of beer, and you’re half-wrecked already and haven’t yet finished your third. It’s easy enough then to say half-pissed “Nein danke, das reicht!” (No thanks, that’s enough!). I’d probably be drunk enough by then to pronounce those awful “ch” sounds correctly.

8.       Hintergedanken – (behind thoughts) I actually learned this word from one of the lectures of Alan Watts. It’s used to describe a thought in the back of your mind that you are instinctually trying to act on. It’s sort of like working on an ulterior motive that you are not really conscious or aware of.

9.       Fernweh – (wanderlust) Given that I’m typing this entry on what is yet another staycation, I’m getting too intimately familiar with the meaning of this word. It is the complete opposite of homesickness (Heimweh in German). That is, it’s a desperate intensified and unsatisfied desire to be anywhere else: for the sake exploration of someplace novel and unfamiliar; to be anywhere else than where you currently are at.

10.   Bierficker – Here comes the nasty word number 10, the spot reserved for profanity, vulgarity, and potty-mouth vocabulary. I learned this one many years ago (and not because it was directed at me though). It’s a compound word used as an insult directed at a guy’s masculine endowment: the combination of ‘beer’, and a word that means the same as the English one with the ‘i’ substituted for the ‘u’. It’s meant to suggest that some guy’s Schwanz ist so klein dass er in den Hals einer Bierflasche passen kann. Again, this sentence is semi-Anglified since I can’t use the genitive case very well, even to describe genitals. However, the gist of this word implies that indecent acts with a beer bottle could be performed, because one’s genital unit is so miniscule that it could fit into the neck of one. Leave it to the beer-drinking, applied science/technical engineering minds of the Germans to dream up this kind of trash talk.

I found the time to complete this language program five days early. Partly because I was a bit more ambitious because I’ve been finding more comfort and ease with this language from, and partly because I had nothing much else planned during my week of holidays. I filled the void with some more lessons.

 The next two-month language learning session I have lined up is French, which is appropriate: because the program begins on July 1^st, on the 150^th birthday of this great nation, and thus it would be very fitting to learn more in my country’s other official language. I was hoping that I’d get some direct immersion in it from a trip to Montreal, but that’s going to have to wait.  

*- It should be made clear that there are no real winners of a war. Lives are still lost, industries, infrastructures are razed, the environment gets destroyed, and debts amass all for the sake of destruction on both sides. Resources get taken away from education, reducing social poverty, enhanced development, and responsible sustainability. Victories have an expense just as losses do. The one thing I’ll say for the resilience of the Germans, despite being defeated twice, they came together again as a leader in technical and economic development on the world stage, far better in ways perhaps than we have as North Americans, who were the so-called victors of both conflicts. Another reason they should be respected.

**- A compound word I constructed from what I think roughly translates to “threat-to-culture avoidance”. It’s probably incorrect. I don’t know if such a word actually exists in German, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it, or some variant of this word really did.

*** - I had a living example to bring this fact to light to me during my brief time as an English teacher in a foreign country. I was tutoring English to other teachers in the faculty of the school where I was working at after class hours. This one teacher, though interested in learning some English, had great difficulty in pronouncing the ‘th’ sounds, and judging by her reaction, she also found this diphthong a repugnant nerve-grating thing to hear. To make matters worse, she was a math teacher, so I assumed she would be interested in learning the proper way to say the numbers. Big mistake! The ordinal numbers after 2, and the way fractions are expressed make learning numbers in English a nightmare for someone without ability or liking for pronouncing the ‘th’ sound. Teaching her ordinal numbers (4^th, 5^th, 6^th etc.) and fractions was almost like the scene in the Monty Python film, The Life of Brian, where the Judean masses were taunting the lisping Biggus Dickus with the recitation of ‘S’ laden names. I realize now that I could have been exceptionally torturous to her, and could have made her recite the ordinal fraction 3333/33,000 (three thousand three hundred and thirty-three thirty-three thousandths)