oh well, creeping along.

Back from two adventures, the Kazakh/Kyrgyz trip being the far more bigger one. WRC rally in Finland was my second time, so no surprises there.

Lessons learned:
1., I am fat and out of shape.
2., I love to travel.
3., Issyk Kul lake is one of the most beautiful spots in the world
4., Advanced hiking gear is worth every cent
5., Bakshish rules the world

No surprises there too.

Everything was great, now I am back and lonely. While being in a relationship. Which I don’t have the guts to end cause I don’t know what’s next. Facebook tells me about the successful life of others and their happiness, which really feels a bit like a kick in the nuts. “Others” being my past. Soon it will be three fucking years. Fucking hell.

summer.

My life progresses at a fast pace, still also it feels like nothing. ever. happens. The past months I saw myself climbing along the Great Wall, strolling through Beijing, getting absolutely hammered in Seoul, feeling uneasy in Bucharest, seeing cool bands during St. Petersburg’s white nights.

Next week I’ll be hiking from Kazakhstan to Kyrgyzstan, from Almaty to the Issyk Kul Lake.

I have turned 30.

I don’t like my current relationship.

I like being alone.

I miss my girl. I miss being able to think about the past without feeling hurt. Without feeling like an amputee.

Sometimes its like someone took a knife baby
Edgy and dull and cut a six-inch valley
Through the middle of my soul

Great post.

the gentle art of getting older.

I left my Facebook profile alone for a while. Spent a weekend in Zurich, went to a lot of clubs, danced like a madman. I really enjoy dancing. A bit of a strange thought for me. A girl called me party-boy. Oh well.

Coming back a friend request awaited me, a girl from way back, we were in the same class in grammar school. Married, two kids. I accepted. Soon after I got two more requests, more people from that time. Again, a girl, a pretty one, I always thought she had a crush on me, back in the days. Married, one kid.

Fucking hell. I am getting thirty in July. I feel like 25, I live like 25, I don’t even know what happened between 25 and now. 5 years of my life have simply vanished. Pretty much the period of my serious working life. Somewhere my life took a bad turn, it really did. Of course, it could be simple peer pressure, all of them getting married and starting families. But seriously, I want that too.

I always thought I could never have a relationship with a mother. Having the kid of someone else around isn’t a joyful perspective for me. But still, right now I am seriously interested in a single mother. Russian, smart, open minded, pretty, tight body. I just don’t know if I can stomach that kid of hers. I want my own kids, my own blood. I am old fashioned, conservative, reactionary in that regard.

The shitty thing about being a single family guy is that you can’t run around searching for a wife. You have to play the game, invest quite some time (a year min) to be sure. Again and again. And slowly, ever so slowly, this makes me nervous. I don’t want to be a dad with 40 (if ever).

a fire inside.

Deleted some files of her I found on my PC. For a while we shared this machine, living together. Found some old photos, showing us young, together. 2003, 2004. She had cats, twice, always a couple. Both times they got sick and died. I remember putting on plastic gloves and pulling the stiff body of one them from behind the TV where it had lay itself down to die.

Photos of me in her flat, having a cat cradled in my arm. Us in Croatia, Krakow. A list of hers, describing the years, one note per month. Describing our life.

I deleted that folder.

Still I can’t get over it. The sense of loss is as big as it ever was. Like looking at pictures of dead people. Our life wasn’t perfect, still, I miss it. I felt safe. For a long time I had resisted being part of her family, taking part in their activities. After 3, 4 years I felt safe and comfortable.

Betrayal.

It’s mourning now.
I mourn.
And go numb.

stuck.

I have a few profiles out there – linkedin, xing and facebook (that orkut page doesn’t count). While linkedin and xing are purely professional, facebook is more. This irks me. I’ve spent some time there, added things to my profile like music, books, tastes, etc. This is all nice and dandy, but the networking aspect makes me uncomfortable.

I not only take action, but am informed about the actions of the people in my friends list. And this is getting way too personal as you can browse from profile to profile through those lists. People I haven’t seen for years and where never close to begin with now ’share’ information about their life with me, unknowingly. Of course, if you post it on the net, it is public, but how many people REALLY realize what this means? And as long as I have to actively search for and find this stuff it is somehow ok. But being alerted about this stuff? Push instead of pull? I don’t even WANT to know about their personal life.

And now, the neurotic kicker: I cannot remove anybody. What an awkward situation, not having thought about adding a ‘friend’ and now being forced to live with her more closely than you want, again. It really fucks me up. At the same moment I cannot stay away from facebook as I initiated contact with a girl through it – and it hasn’t gone to the next step yet.

Sunday will clear that up, but until then I’ll check my social inbox and see things I don’t want to see and be reminded why separation might get REALLY hard in the future.

yipikaye, motherfucker.

The slightest thing can shake me, one moment I am on my way to a new mental state, the next second a message reaches me. A fucking facebook friend’s request, hm?, requesting me? I stop and stare, too much thinking, too much stupid images flashing through my mind. I accept, of course, of fucking course. Shall I write a message? Something like a question, something polite, a polite question maybe? No, fuck that. She has no picture yet, it takes me seconds to locate the perfect one, Barcelona, long time ago, perfect perfect perfect. It is resized, cropped, ready, what a gesture, grand, irresistible. Don’t send it, just don’t. It stays.

I browse away, browse back, read her profile, notice people addressing a couple, of course, whatever, my fucking mind, fantasy, insane stupidity. Nobody noticed it, just me, still I feel ashamed. Of myself. Angry about my weakness, my naivety, cluelessness.

On Sunday, a new try, a new game. I am just tired of it. I really liked the ‘Hopeless Emptiness’ bit in Revolutionary Road. I really did.

oldness.

This is a glimpse into the future:

Over 1.3 million views so far. Nearly killed 4chan (http://www.4chan.org, explanation at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan).

Even the guardian.co.uk wrote about her, or the meme based on her videos: How Boxxy brought the web to its knees.

It really isn’t the collective consciousness. It is the collective unconsciousness. Browsing 4chan, just /b/, means tapping into the unfiltered thoughts of a large group of people. Unfiltered, new thoughts forming in the brain, no code of ethics, law, shame applied. It is a twisted, fascinating, scary and revolting place. You stumble over images you’ll never get out of your head. Not organized like the gore sites of yore like ogrish, just random, with no sense, meaning, purpose. Still, it is very hard to avert the gaze.

I really have no idea where this will lead to. It is already happening outside or unseen by the current reality. I read Neuromancer around 1992 being 13. I dreamed of the cyberspace, of plugging your mind into a virtual reality. Neuromancer already offered glimpses into the clustered mindfuck that awaits humanity.

Boxxy is a messenger, a sign of things to come.
I’ll go and read a book now.

this working life.

Stumbling upon shining gems of humanity within the vast jungles of the Internet brings me lots of joy. I usually am a bit behind the times, relying on luck and sites, rather than people sending me stuff.

My latest joy is an office lip-dub of a song by Harvey Danger called Flagpole Sitta. It was done by a group of young, talented and through the bank good-looking employees of Connected Ventures (http://connectedventures.com), one of these creative, modern pools of talent that churns out nice and shiny things for the web. Of course I couldn’t resist and started looking behind the curtain, cause how can something cool exist? The company is part of a media conglomerate owned by IAC (http://www.iac.com), which is big and wealthy enough to have a Frank Gehry designed headquarter in New York. Looking at their brands it feels as if they run a good chunk of the Internet. As the video is hosted on Vimeo, also in the possession of IAC, the cynic in me wonders how much pr&marketing money went into this, but fuck it, let’s enjoy the video:

Watching that video and some of the response videos made all over the world taught me the following things about businesses in the creative sector:

1. Hot women all around
2. Nice offices prevail
3. Still no contender for Apple
4. My office environment sucks – see points 1-3

And Jesus Christ, look at that office from ASDTV (that is Axel Springer Digital TV):

Even Germans get stylish. Fortunately, the song sucks.

Shanghai, CN.

Back from China, what an exhausting trip this has been. The travel and the destination were the incentive, but being out of the sunlight for nearly four days has its impact. That’s what having a workshop and having residence in the same hotel net you.

So I’ve seen Shanghai at night, out of taxis, out of panoramic windows in luxurious bars and on foot. Traffic is a bit on the crazy side, but I guess switching from a bicycle-centric to car-centric mobility is never smooth.

Shanghai feels like a giant construction site, nothing seems finished or for the ages. Skyscrapers dominate the center and give every other metropolis a run for its money. The lights are colorful, bright as hell and dominating. They could seem obnoxious, yet turning them off at 10pm is a great move by the authorities. The dragon actually goes to sleep.

Shopping is most rewarding in small shops, filled to the brim with crap and copies of crap. I bought more shit than on any other trip, but the experience of haggling is just mind-numbingly fun. Getting an highly illegal laser-pointer for 120 instead of 280 RMB (13 instead of 30 EUR) just feels good. Fred Perry polo shirt for 60 RMB (6.5 EUR)? Sure. I even bought a small copy of one of the terracotta warriors (the kneeling version). I found haggling with women much more enjoyable than with men – women smile and laugh, whereas men tend to get aggressive the longer the auction takes.

The food was really surprising, surprisingly bland that is. Most of the stuff didn’t have real taste, the kind of “Asian” taste you get to know in Europe at least. Having broken bits of bone in small pieces of meat didn’t add to the experience (fucking ribs?). Rice wasn’t served, as the restaurants were expensive and above the unwashed masses (take that oh great leader). The beer, Tsingtao, isn’t bad, but nothing to come back to.

Canto-Pop is utter crap, yet fascinating to watch as the videos look like popular Chinese movies, stylish, epic, over the top. And kitschy, oh so very kitschy.

Shanghai feels, if it weren’t for the people, like any other modern mega city. Big, everything hidden behind steel and glass facades, in motion and somehow unreal, unfinished.

Am I looking forward going there again? Sure, it still is exotic.
Would I rather go to Bejing? In a heartbeat.

quagmire.

Killing some time before I fly off to Shanghai, via Beijing.

Spent an evening with a girl that is in love with me. We talked, topic after topic got more personal. What drives me. Which lead to the topic of how I understand relationships, commitment. She has a guy, so I don’t give a fuck. I was honest. Let it all out, it’s been two fucking years now and still, in moments like that, it hurts like a bitch.

Today I visited my parents, after lunch I watched some skiing with my dad. Then my mom started a nice topic, she had heard about K. That I was really pissed off. From her dad. See, her parents never broke off contact to mine.

And again it rushed into me, fucking anger, fucking hate. On my way home I screamed in my car.

Whenever I come up something swallows me back in.
So fucking sick of it.