For me, the most suffering memories I have from my childhood are always related with waiting. As a child I hated the eternal waiting for the Christmas day to finally get presents. The scariest moments of my childhood was when I waited for the school’s grades to reach my mom, and one of the worst: I sadly remember myself desperately waiting in my dad’s truck for him to come out of an office on a hot summer day.
I am sure that nobody likes waiting, never.
When you wait for a good thing to happen, for example waiting for someone you love at the airport is incredibly hard. For me, times runs slower than physics can explain. When I stand at the arrival gates waiting for my mom, sister, brother, every second feels like I am trying to reach a snail, but I can’t, because I am moving slower…every second.
When I wait for a bad thing to happen, for example when I first applied to get the Austrian citizenship two years ago, I had so much time to thing of all possibilities: what am I going to hear, what should I do if the answer is positive, what should I do if the answer is negative, and so on, back and forth. Time stretches and all you can do is think of possibilities, and when the possibilities are immense, time runs as if it would be no end.
At the moment I am waiting, I have been doing so for some weeks. I am trying to decode an answer but I simply can’t…there is no way out, the only thing I can do is...to wait.
jueves, 25 de noviembre de 2010
jueves, 11 de noviembre de 2010
The most egocentric blog-entry ever
Exactly one year ago I started this blog-project; it was actually planned as a way of communicating my adventures in Nicaragua, but now, this blog is actually my therapy.
Some of my work at the office implies data analysis. Yesterday, I analysed all my blog-entries (content analysis, without a list of pre-defined categories, the categories arose in the course of the analysis), then I did some basic statistics. Here some of the results:
The total number of blog-entries analysed was 46 (N=46).
- Food was the most common theme in all blogs, appearing in 27 of them (58%).
- In 40% of my entries I talked about drinks (for a series of reasons, I did not calculate the percentage of blog entries I wrote while drinking an alcoholic beverage). The most common drinks mentioned are: Prosecco, Chardonnay, Gin-tonic and chocolate milk.
- I was surprised when I calculated the percentages for the entries specifically mentioning girls, it was only 15%, and my age was mentioned only in 9% of the entries. Sincerely, I thought it would be way much higher.
This was a qualitative study, and when analysing the blog’s “mood”, I tried to be as objective as possible, but since I am the author of the texts and also of this analysis, I consider the level of interpretation was very low. Here the results:
- 48% of the entries can be considered as funny, and they are distributed all year long, however:
Frustration (10%) and Loneliness (9%) are present in entries written between
Oct ‘09 and March ‘10 (While in Nicaragua)
- Melancholy is present in 19% of the entries, and here the interesting data: 89% of the melancholic blog-entries were written in summer (between May and September)…a hell of a summer…
- Happiness (11%) comes only in the months of May and June. An interesting thing, since May and June were actually “melancholic” months. My interpretation: In order to cope with melancholy, I wrote about happiness.
- Music came in 20% of the entries. Childhood or children-related themes made up 17% of the analysed texts. Family and friends were counted in every fourth entry.
Summary: I love food and enjoy drinking. Nicaragua was a frustrating period of my life (But I remember it as a very nice experience). This summer was sad and my family, my friends, music and childhood are things I highly value.
P.S. The pic is me with a videocamera taped on my head :-)
Some of my work at the office implies data analysis. Yesterday, I analysed all my blog-entries (content analysis, without a list of pre-defined categories, the categories arose in the course of the analysis), then I did some basic statistics. Here some of the results:
The total number of blog-entries analysed was 46 (N=46).
- Food was the most common theme in all blogs, appearing in 27 of them (58%).
- In 40% of my entries I talked about drinks (for a series of reasons, I did not calculate the percentage of blog entries I wrote while drinking an alcoholic beverage). The most common drinks mentioned are: Prosecco, Chardonnay, Gin-tonic and chocolate milk.
- I was surprised when I calculated the percentages for the entries specifically mentioning girls, it was only 15%, and my age was mentioned only in 9% of the entries. Sincerely, I thought it would be way much higher.
This was a qualitative study, and when analysing the blog’s “mood”, I tried to be as objective as possible, but since I am the author of the texts and also of this analysis, I consider the level of interpretation was very low. Here the results:
- 48% of the entries can be considered as funny, and they are distributed all year long, however:
Frustration (10%) and Loneliness (9%) are present in entries written between
Oct ‘09 and March ‘10 (While in Nicaragua)
- Melancholy is present in 19% of the entries, and here the interesting data: 89% of the melancholic blog-entries were written in summer (between May and September)…a hell of a summer…
- Happiness (11%) comes only in the months of May and June. An interesting thing, since May and June were actually “melancholic” months. My interpretation: In order to cope with melancholy, I wrote about happiness.
- Music came in 20% of the entries. Childhood or children-related themes made up 17% of the analysed texts. Family and friends were counted in every fourth entry.
Summary: I love food and enjoy drinking. Nicaragua was a frustrating period of my life (But I remember it as a very nice experience). This summer was sad and my family, my friends, music and childhood are things I highly value.
P.S. The pic is me with a videocamera taped on my head :-)
sábado, 6 de noviembre de 2010
To hell with „tea for two“, we say „dinner for eleven”!
Sarah and I had an idea in summer: To open our own kitchen club. We talked about this project in a small café-grill in Vienna. I can’t remember the name of the place, but I remember what we ate: Portuguese sardines, grilled sausage, fried mozzarella and grilled Spanish chilli-peppers. I also remember that Sarah had a hangover, hence the sardines.
The idea of “the food conspiracy” (that is the name of our food club) was to cook every 3 months, switching between Vienna and Innsbruck. After many phone calls, we fixed the date and a 7-course menu.
This is how it went:
We opened a Facebook group and published the menu, and then we invited people to join the group and to make a reservation.
The night of our first event, eleven people came to my apartment: 7 guests and 4 friends of us. Most of the people did not know each other; there was a guest I did not know at all and another whom I have only seen twice before.
The guests were welcomed with a glass of prosecco at 19:00. When all eleven guests arrived, they sat at the table, and we started to serve. One hours d’oeuvre, two soups, salad, a hot tapa, main dish, second tapa (an improvised one!) and dessert. We also offered coffee and a very good plum schnapps.
This experiment was great. The people communicated well among themes (we were afraid that this could be difficult since they did not know each other), they were all happy with their meals. Sarah and I received applauses twice ;-)
The food conspiracy gave me a happiness feeling I never experienced before. Working hard to communicate through food (eyes, nose and mouth), receiving feedback, and after the two hours of serving food and washing dishes, Sarah and I sat with them, chatted and, with almost all of them, went to see a great concert: Red Sparrows.
The idea of “the food conspiracy” (that is the name of our food club) was to cook every 3 months, switching between Vienna and Innsbruck. After many phone calls, we fixed the date and a 7-course menu.
This is how it went:
We opened a Facebook group and published the menu, and then we invited people to join the group and to make a reservation.
The night of our first event, eleven people came to my apartment: 7 guests and 4 friends of us. Most of the people did not know each other; there was a guest I did not know at all and another whom I have only seen twice before.
The guests were welcomed with a glass of prosecco at 19:00. When all eleven guests arrived, they sat at the table, and we started to serve. One hours d’oeuvre, two soups, salad, a hot tapa, main dish, second tapa (an improvised one!) and dessert. We also offered coffee and a very good plum schnapps.
This experiment was great. The people communicated well among themes (we were afraid that this could be difficult since they did not know each other), they were all happy with their meals. Sarah and I received applauses twice ;-)
The food conspiracy gave me a happiness feeling I never experienced before. Working hard to communicate through food (eyes, nose and mouth), receiving feedback, and after the two hours of serving food and washing dishes, Sarah and I sat with them, chatted and, with almost all of them, went to see a great concert: Red Sparrows.
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