Thoughts at 3AM after insufficient dancing

Life is ending. At least part of it. Friends are moving away to other states, other countries. I'm moving away. There will be no more classes with the same professors, no more South College, no more late hours at the W.E.B DuBois.
As we all know, the water will flow on and the river we're leaving will never be the same again. New batches of students will take our place and live out their own stories in 4 years filling the same dorms, cafeterias, fields and clubs that we used to inhabit with their own sets of human emotions and thoughts.
I will never come back to the Amherst I knew (partially because I don't even know what it is that I knew about it to begin with).

I'm a coward, I avoid facing such change by burying my head into work or drinking with friends or riding my bicycle. I think, however, that the time has come even for me to accept that something is ending here today as I write. Something may have already ended and I with my sluggish mind am just now realizing what had happened.

Fortunately for me, life is really like a phoenix: out of the ashes and ruins of the old the new is constantly born. This rebirth happens all the time but it is at certain points in my narrative that I notice it and fill myself with hope for the new beginning. I wish the hope were always fulfilled, it usually isn't. The new is marginally different from the old, there being nothing but the old to utilize in its generation. I'm not upset by this, the injection of hope is all I care about, it's what keeps me going.

Winter-cycling

I was planning on "killing" this blog when I left Konstanz.
I was planning on publishing one final post where I would have made sense of what had happened to me over the year I spent in the Old World; what from Germany I missed now that I was back in the US; what maybe not so much.
I was planning on including some beautiful pictures from Bodensee in this last post.

This, however, didn't happen. I'm not entirely sure why. I'm also not giving This means, dear readers, you are still stuck with my rants and/or musings and/or mediocre puns until I run out of topics to write about.

A hot topic lately have been our weather conditions. Western Massachusetts has namely been hit with a streak of days with an average temperature of -10 degrees Celsius and a couple of snowfalls.
I have been riding . While I have not been alone in this, I have heard quite a few surprised remarks from friends and coworkers about the feasibility of what I was doing. I thought a short report of how it is in fact to be cycling around the valley in the winter was in order.
Here it is, I put it in my favorite format of questions and answers.

Isn't it cold?
While it isn't exactly beach weather outside, the frosts have not yet been drastic enough that sufficient protection and exercise can't counteract them. As always, extremities are at risk. Especially this is true for hands, since their function is only to hold on to the handlebars in the wind. Wind becomes a very serious foe anytime temperatures go near or below zero. The only way to counteract it is to wear resistant gear (especially gloves) and keep moving, perhaps exerting more effort than usual in order to keep the blood flowing in one's body and legs. This also has a nice side effect of decreasing the time you are outside.
I even find it more useful in the winter to "stand up" on the bike, placing some of my weight on the arms and thus getting some blood there as well.
It is also key to have some sort of cover for one's mouth so that one inhales warmer air.

What about snow?
The following is a very subjective observation/speculation, I have not yet quantified it. It seems to me that riding in a light rain and also light snow is somehow considerably easier than on dry pavement. Perhaps it's the reduced friction, perhaps its just my imagination (it's been known not to have much traction with reality at times).

My roadster generally can't handle snow deeper than 15-20 cm, depending on its consistency. However, I remember only two occasions when the snow was deep enough to force me to dismount. I have also, knock on wood, yet to have

I find it useful when going on roads that have not been cleaned yet to shamelessly occupy one of the ruts left by cars where the snow (if present) is much shallower.
I did have to move over a bit to make space for passing cars, but I do not recommend doing so unless you think the snow on the side of the road permits it. In my opinion it is much safer for both me and the cars if I don't slip and fall even if I occupy more of the road in order to avoid that and cars have to sometimes wait a little to pass me. Ultimately, if the snow is deep enough that you cannot ride on the roadside, cars really shouldn't be driving much faster than you anyway.

One important thing to be wary of in snow are breaks. The same precautions as when riding in heavy rain should be sufficient: (i) don't speed up beyond the speed at which you can adequately react to a slip by braking and (ii) apply the breaks occasionally so as to clear the layer of snow/water/salt/gunk that may have accumulated between the pads and the wheels.

Does winter affect interactions with pedestrians at all?

I haven't noticed any major difference in the bipeds so far. They may be less likely to notice a cyclist because they're paying even more attention to the 50cm in front of them than usual, but I can't say I've noticed that.

How does the bike hold up against the conditions?

If you have an insanely expensive bike that must be in spotless condition at all times, definitely do not take it out on the street in the winter. However, if you are an average every-day kind of lass/fellow, as long as you are willing to take the two-wheeler inside once now and then and give it a thorough going over with a rag and lube (for the gears and chain), you should be alright.

I have had an interesting experience with fenders this winter. I've had both plastic and metal ones on the bikes I've owned so far and can confirm the general consensus that metal ones are far superior. So with the first snow I got myself some fenders. Unfortunately, the very first time I rode with them I was going to Northampton via the Bike Trail. Naturally, the path was not cleaned and hence covered in a decent layer of snow. Unfortunately, it happened to be of the wet sticky kind. It instantly clogged my fenders and started freezing. At the end of the journey I had to exert almost double the effort it would have taken to maintain my speed at anything more than a crawl. This is not to mention that I had to punch the wheels a couple of times before I parked the thing or else I would not have been able to ride it back.

After such a bad experience, I decided to demount the fenders and brave the elements as is. Due to lack of equipment I was only able to follow through on this plan with the front wheel. But of course, once I took that fender off, the snow outside promptly turned into cold rain and mush, so I was back to spraying myself with cold dirty water every time I got on the bike. It is now January and I have yet to see the same kind of fender-stalling snow I witnessed that one time I rode to NoHo... This past weekend I remounted the front fender and my feet have thanked me for that ever since.

The moral of my story is: get fenders and stick with them! The winters here are clearly not snowy enough to pose clogging as a problem. They are wet enough, however, that plugging the showers that are your wheels will be noticeable.

Coco's Friseur

Seeing as the summer semester in Konstanz had its kick off yesterday, I thought it fitting to get back into the blogosphere with less geeky posts than this.

A week ago I went to get a haircut. Being a student means one a) has limited finances and b) doesn't worry about one's looks the same way as some of the more respectable classes in society do (that is not to say one doesn't worry about one's looks at all, it's just that on average one's worries can be satisfied without the help of a high-class haircut). Considering these two things I went to the cheapest barber in town, Coco's Friseur. In case some of my readers are actually from the area, here is a GoogleMaps link showing its location.

In this establishment one can get quite a presentable haircut for only 5 euros, if one asks for a "dry" one. Since a "wet" haircut is essentially just getting your hair washed before getting it cut, I don't see the point in spending more money on it instead of washing one's hair at home right before hitting up the barbers.

The downside to Coco's being so cheap is that it is insanely popular. Out of the two times that I have been there, the wait always exceeded an hour.
This was one of the two times, so I did not at all regret bringing my a notebook with me along with a tome of Oscar Wilde.

I did, however, have time to make some observations in the place during those almost two hours that I spent there.

Observation 1:
It is amazing what ladies from the older generation want done with their hair. Almost every one of them wanted her hair redyed, recurled, rewashed and God knows what else. Almost every one of them had a head covered in rollers or tin foil at some point during her stay. I suspect (though I have no conclusive proof, I wish someone would do a study), they were the ultimate cause of the long wait times.

Observation 2:
The behavior of the older gentlemen complimented that of the ladies in a strangely gallant way. Their hair situation seemed to be the opposite of the ladies: most of their heads possessed only a fraction of that which originally covered them completely I am sure (or else there was a whole generation of bald young men, but I have never encountered any supporting evidence for this). And yet these fellows braved hours of stupefying wait while the ladies beautified themselves endlessly only to sit themselves in a barber's chair and ask for their sole remaining lock of hair to be shortened by one centimeter.

At the time I found the whole picture slightly annoying. The next day I thought it touching.

Observation 3 (unrelated):
I never really noticed until last Tuesday how strange a conversation between a barber and their client appears to an on-looker. Somehow one forgets that normally one converses with a barber through the mirror in front of one's chair. To someone looking from the side (as I was doing for a good portion of the day), the picture is reminiscent of a Duo Interp skit, where both of the participants cannot make direct eye contact and so are staring and making faces at the space in front of them, pretending that their partner right there too. Seeing barbers and their clients perform this was a bit unusual to me, for some reason.

These are a Few of my Favorite Things

My left hand felt strange the whole day. There was a feeling of something missing from it, a feeling of lightness that even bordered with corporeal insubstantiality.
A friend had borrowed my watch in order to keep track of time during her exams (for some reason most German lecture halls do not have clocks and since the presence of phones, iPods, etc. is prohibited, a good old-fashioned watch becomes a necessity). Turns out, I was missing said watch and it's weight on my hand.
I thought this strange, because I never expected to grow that attached to a simple watch. This got me thinking about what other regular presences or activities I needed for comfort.

I haven't really give this much thought before because for a very long time (to be honest I don't even remember anymore when (if) it actually ended) I was on a campaign to deny habits in general. I claimed that they, in a more formalized form, led to the generation of rituals and traditions. These in turn often became the everyday embodiment of religions, with people fervently holding on to their particular rituals or traditions as if they possessed a meaning on their own and were not instead a set of often arbitrary or anachronistic actions/ideas that were assigned an equally often arbitrary or anachronistic meaning. I never seemed to comprehend why people voluntarily refused to reassign these meanings or change sets of actions, thus depriving themselves of the power that was responsible for creating the traditions in the first place. I wanted to have nothing to do with all such "nonsense" and so tried to live my life without acquiring anything that might be considered a habit. To be honest, I am far from certain that I was successful in this, but instead got very good at ignoring whatever habits I did have.
I suspect this all might have been a result some sort of teenage rebellion that I simply forgot to revise in the following years. I cannot, of course, say for sure, but seem like the most plausible explanation for such a vehemently extreme position.

Well, whatever it was, it appears to be over. I will now proceed to list all of the things (some of them living) that can be, I think, considered as habits. I will admit that my definition of habits in this post is somewhat loose and for a couple of things listed the word attachment would most likely be more appropriate.

Getting up early/Breakfast:
To me a day is lost, if I got out of bed after noon and doubly so if I missed breakfast. It is, of course, necessary to note that I am in college and for me an average early day starts at nine or ten in the morning, but all of that is relative. It is in any case important to grab something to eat or drink even if it is cup of tea. Breakfast (or an equivalent) is the only official meal I sometimes have in a day (snacks don't count, mind you).

Physical Exercise:
This did not really start until I got into exercising regularly in the first place. Until I joined the UMass fencing team, I was perfectly happy limiting my movements to an occasional bike ride (it is true that one of them was 25 miles long, but that was an exception). This need is opposed by the following one.

Slothing time:
There are a couple of days every month, when I'd rather not see anyone and am perfectly happy doing useless things like staring at walls blankly or roaming around my house or the outdoors without a plan. Once upon a time I thought this was a weird necessity, but the more people I talk to nowadays, the more I discover that the necessity is fairly common to humans. There, now it is official: I have a common ground (and a potential topic of conversation) with most of my species. Now I feel a part of something big, bigger than me or any of its individual members: the set of people, who like to waste their time doing absolutely nothing productive or useful.

People:
I have heard there are people capable of surviving on an uninhabitable island without human contact for years but still remain happy and sane. I even think I know one such person. I also know that it is not me.
I require regular interaction with fellow humans, even if it is just a meaningless grunt or an awkward joke. I like watching people happen, sometimes I like to take part in the happening as well, occasionally contributing an (in)appropriately ridiculous grimace here or an often crass comment there. I genuinely find the whole mess of human interactions (for I firmly believe it is a mess where we all have only a very approximate notion of what exactly is going on at a given moment) quite entertaining and captivating. Without it my life would be immensely much more boring. If there were no people around me, I would also have nowhere to channel a certain kind of indescribable energy and desire to socialize. I would like to thank people, especially the ones close to me (conventionally called friends, I believe) for sticking around and making life truly bearable.

Family and Cats:
A quite special subclass of the aforementioned "people" group is my family. I fairly certain that among the people I know I am one of the closest connections with my parents and sisters (over 7 years together in an 18 m² room of a two room Moscow apartment one gets to know the people one shares these things very well). My family are the only people I have consistently spoken to regularly for more than 5 years.
In my case it is also impossible to mention the family without saying a word or two about cats. For as long as I remember my family has always had at least one of these beasts (most of the time more than one).  Thus for me they have become an inseparable part of the family gestalt.

Fazit
In conclusion I would like to say that to me writing these things down had a somewhat cathartic effect. For some reason it felt nice writing down some unoriginal yearnings and attachments. Perhaps it was because I defined them on paper for the first time.

Yuka goes Hiking

The path ran between two rocky shoulders of the hill overlooking the plantation, through sparse bushes and low trees. The stranger was keeping up a decent pace, but so was Yuka. In fact, she was mostly running off ahead and occasionally coming back to check up on his progress.
The moon was full and the path could be clearly seen, as well as the stars

After a while the path started bearing more and more to the north, away from the hilltop. The stranger seemed to notice that and stopped for a moment hesitating. He then almost immediately turned off the path and started trudging through the undergrowth straight towards the hilltop. Yuka followed, even though she had to zigzag quite a bit to avoid bushes and rocks that the stranger simply stepped over.  

After a somewhat arduous fifteen minutes in the thickets, the dog and the human reached  another path, that forked in three directions. One led west, to a couple of taller peaks, one south down to the coast and the last one directly to the hilltop overlooking the plantation. The stranger deliberated for a second, then took the latter path.

The top of the hill was completely bare and consisted of some big rocks and boulders piled loosely together. The stranger quickly strode up to the highest point and sat down. Yuka attempted to do the same, but encountered an impassable obstacle on the way. There was a crevice in the rocks deeper than her height and wider than her step. She couldn't cross it.  A search for alternative routes proved hopeless too: there were none, so she thought. The stranger seemed to disagree on this point and tried to guide Yuka to a surface a bit further down that seamlessly led to his position. That surface, however, was a slightly narrow ledge with a dead branch cutting through its middle. To Yuka, who was afraid of heights, this was impassable.

After several unsuccessful attempts to coax the dog into joining him, the stranger got down from the summit and headed back in the direction of the forked path. Yuka, overjoyed to be on familiar turf again, sped to the path intersection and immediately turned left, hoping that the stranger would follow her down into the valley. This was not his plan, however, as she discovered when he continued on straight ahead in the direction of the taller hills. She retraced her steps and tagged along.

This path dipped into the saddle between the hills and then wound methodically up the side of one of the taller ones. Even though it got steep sometimes, there were no big obstacles or stretches of loose rocks, so it was easy going for both and they reached  the top in an effortless twenty minutes.
Once there they saw a seemingly forsaken house that nonetheless had a respectably threatening "private property" sign in front of it and was flanked on the western side by some trees. The hilltop itself was bare save for some tall bushes and other undergrowth, staples of the region's flora.

The stranger again stopped and started looking around at the landscape and up at the sky. He looked like he was enjoying it. The view was indeed in a way extraordinary. To the east lay a flat strip of coastline, teeming with yellow, orange, and white lights from the nearby cities and towns. As one's gaze turned to the west, however, one beheld a sudden decrease in lighting where the coastal valley ended the hills began. The hills themselves marched in seemingly endless rows of grey and black humps from the north to the south with occasional valleys or towers radiating light here and there.

The stranger started in the direction of the hills, stopped (as if contemplating whether or not to go further), and finally turned to the direction whence they came. Yuka followed.

They soon reached the intersection of the paths again. Once more the dog turned left intending to finally leave all elevations behind and once more the human continued on straight, heading for the rocky hilltop that she could not scale earlier that night. This time was no different: the same crevice, the same directions from the human, the same result.

This time, however, the stranger seemed determined to cross over the top. After several unsuccessful attempts to lure the dog up to the rocks, he came down himself and sat down on the ground. Yuka ran away down the hill, hoping again that the stranger might join her, then returned and approached . Then he moved in closer, slowly extending one arm towards the dog. She ducked down, but stayed put. The stranger picked her up, she started shivering. Holding the dog, he sprang over several boulders then set her down on a rock. She instantly found a path down from there and sped to a lower spot on the hillside, then turned to check if he was following. He was still at the top, looking around. one could see the compound, a whitish rectangle at the foot of the hill.

The stranger seemed to be enjoying the view of the hills to the north and the plantation directly below. Yuka, however, was not. For one thing, being a young and active dog, she wanted to run off somewhere. Then there were also the height and the big rocks: she liked neither and wanted to be away from them as soon as possible.

She waited, impatiently. Finally, he started the descent. The hillside was steeper than any of the previous ones and the path was full of loose pebbles. Yuka kept speeding down home, but the stranger was making miserable progress down the slope, slowly trying to find a solid foothold, slipping constantly and even falling from time to time. When he finally caught up with Yuka at the foot of the hill he was covered in dust and had a little blood on the left palm.

They were on one of the orange fields and a dirt road led them directly to the home compound. The main gate was closed, it being past midnight at the time. The stranger tried the back door, but it was locked too. He then proceeded to climb over the low wall and head into the house. Yuka waited a little bit and then ran over to a familiar hole  in the wall on the other side of the compound and thus ended the night.

Two mornings later  the strangers got into the van with the Owner and left. A little over an hour later the Owner returned with the van, but without the strangers.

Yuka

I think my holiday travels this year were an exceptional experience. As such, I found it hard to summarize and describe in any kinds of usual blog entries. Instead, I decided to write a short piece that, I think, captures one aspect of the journey in a fictional form (though based on real events). This is in many ways an experiment for me, as I have only really written a story once before in my life (an unfinished one, at that!). This story is a very clear combination of fact and fiction and I especially feel strange about describing Gustave and me in the third person as well as the way we act. Hence constructive criticism is appreciated. So much for the introduction, here goes...

Yuka loved running. Especially after things thrown by humans. Especially after the yellow rubber ball that was covered in pimples and squealed if squeezed. She loved the thrill of chasing down that ball (or a twig or a stone or a cone, anything, really), snatching it up from the ground or out of the air and then triumphantly trotting back to the human with the catch in her mouth. She loved the sound of the wind in her ears and the pebbles under her feet as she ran down her prey in the yard of the orange plantation she lived in.

The plantation consisted of several orange-tree fields tucked in between two rocky hills and a walled compound consisting of a house, yard and a pool. Apart from Yuka, this compound was inhabited by her Owner, his wife and their two children, though one never knows if Yuka thought of them that way. There was also a cat, but it was fairly boring: it either wailed to be let in the house and fed or was gone God knows where. It was just a little smaller than Yuka and she liked to chase after it occasionally or wrestle with it.

Other humans were constantly in the compound, coming and going. Yuka tried to make all of them throw her something at least once. She would follow them around with whatever object she wanted to chase (usually it was the yellow ball), set it on the ground as soon as they would stop or sit down. Sometimes she even nudged it in their direction with her nose with a facial expression, that showed utter longing and anticipation. If it so happened that one of the humans gave into her pleas and picked up the object to throw it, Yuka would focus on the human's hand while trying simultaneously to predict in which direction the object will be thrown. As soon as the object left the human's hand, the dog would take off after it as if upon its successful retrieval depended the fate of the free (and maybe even the not so free) world.

Yuka's obsession with retrieving things was so strong that she could follow humans around for a very long time no matter where they were going, because she never abandoned the hope that someone might throw her something.

When two new strangers arrived at the compound late one night in the Owner's van, Yuka was asleep. The next morning, however, she submitted them to the same treatment as all the inhabitants of the compound, permanent and temporary. She noticed right away, that these strangers were unusually tall, taller than most of the other humans she saw in the compound. One had long black hair, walked around barefoot and seldom spoke. The other had reddish hair and wore glasses.

Both strangers, to Yuka's delight, seemed to enjoy playing with her from the start. Even though their enthusiasm waned slightly after she had retrieved various objects several dozen times in a row, they still were considerably more eager to oblige her with a throw or two than the local humans, those being a bit jaded in this respect.

Of the two, the stranger with the long hair tended to spend more time with Yuka. He would pick up her yellow ball, get a few huge steps head start, and then hurl it as far as he could, which tended to be limited by the bushes and the walls of the compound. Yuka for her part would race to where the ball fell and bring it back to the stranger, then the procedure would repeat. During one of these throwing and retrieval sessions, he tried to pet her. She dropped on her stomach and squirmed a bit. She did not like being touched. It reminded her of her previous owners, the ones she had before she was taken in by the Owner of the Plantation.

As for the red-haired stranger, Yuka saw him walk out through the main gate one moonlight night and, as was usual for her, followed him. He started walking up one of the hills around the plantation, stopped for a second to exchange some phrases with the other stranger and the Owner, then continued walking down the path that led westwards from the farm. Yuka followed.

To be continued...

Happy New Year!!

This entry is really not intended to inform the reader about my journeys, unless they are interested in time travel. I thought it would, however, make sense to mark the transition into the new year with some sort of entry dedicated to the subject.

I would also like to continue the preface by saying that the reader will find no new year's resolutions in here. First of all, I'm not sure I base my approach to life on resolutions. Secondly, I find it silly to either wait with the implementation some resolutions till the new year arrives or else frantically come up with resolutions the week before New Years in order to have them. In short, there will be no resolutions in this post.

Instead I will try to sum up year 2011 in a couple of words and then share some thoughts about the year to come.

2011
Winter:
This past winter featured the usual combination of homework, snow, colds and fencing. I did have my car on campus for the first time, however, and that was a series of new adventures: getting stuck in the snow, driving friends around to practices and parties. And this winter, for the first time in years, I actually played in the snow, went sliding down hills etc. That was cool.

Spring:
Apart from the usual studying, spring can be characterized as the time I got addicted to a computer game, World of Tanks, namely. This rarely happens to me, but when it does, I become a lost cause. I am really glad going abroad took me away from The Game, I don't think I would have had the willpower to end the addiction myself.

Summer:
The World of Tanks addiction continues, but now luckily it is curbed by two jobs, reading and friends. My jobs were actually interesting: at OIT I helped give presentations to freshmen, at the UMass linguistics department I got to model child language acquisition with python (the work is far from done, but here is what progress has been made so far).

Friends really made this summer bearable, I would want to thank all of them for sticking around Amherst and initiating great nights of movies, breaking into pools and ponds, not to mention the regular parties and jumping off of cliffs/rope swinging (during the day). Unless I stay in UMass for grad school (highly unlikely), I think this might be the last summer I get this kind of combination of cool work and fun.

I also liked this summer also because it was bittersweet. I was saying good-bye to friends for a year and some of them were having their own issues and the combination somehow motivated me to go out and do more things than I would have done otherwise.

Fall:
If I were to talk about this fall, I suspect I would be repeating much of what has already been written in this blog, so I will limit myself to a couple of general statements. I have definitely improved my German, even if just a bit. I have reconnected with some old friends and made some new ones. I've survived without cats for perhaps the longest stretch of time, if one counts the preceding summer as well.


On this note I say farewell to 2011 with all of its work, troubles and joys. Off we go into 2012...


2012
I generally don't pay much attention to the future, with the exception of some fairly obscure career plan that I have lurking somewhere in my head. That being said, I realized as I was writing this entry, that the year 2012 seems to be a promising one, though with a hint of finality to it.

For one thing, I will still be in Germany for over half of the year, perhaps not only Germany. Then, for better or for worse, my stay abroad will end. After that I will seamlessly transition into the graduate school application craze and all the beauties associated with choosing my further path in life. In the middle of this craze the year (and, according to some, the world!) will end.

This brings me to an issue, much discussed in the media in an eschatological light, of  2012 being the last year in this century when the number of the day, month, and year can be the same. Some say this is why the world will end on the 12th of December of that year (some say it won't), but I am sad about this year for another reason. I will simply miss the days when all the numbers in the date are the same.

I never believed in any nonsense about making wishes on those days or any of that. I just liked to write down the date in my notebook and think: "How nice, all the numbers are the same!"  That's it, a small detail that would make a potentially hopelessly boring day a bit more bearable. 2012 is the last year in this century when I can have this luxury. As I am not very likely to make it to the 2100s in a condition suitable for appreciating number patterns, for all intents and purposes 2012 is in fact the last year in my life that can bring the joy of identical date numbers. There is something final about that and this is what makes the 2011-to-2012 transition a somewhat sad one.