TALE CATCHER

I am currently back in Prague for a month-long visit before I return to Durham for two more months. I arrived on the 16th and managed to fall ill almost immediately, but luckily got well enough to actually look decent and function on Christmas Eve. This short post is about the 24th and 26th when I saw my brother’s family. :) 

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Here are a few things I want to clarify from the perspective of a girl with short hair.

1. I am not “bald” – I have hair, only it’s short and it’s understandable that from the point of view of girls with long hair who yelp at the thought of having an even 5cm haircut.

2. Getting short hair doesn’t mean I am getting past a break-up or wanted to begin a new chapter in my life. It just means I have short hair, no deeper analysis needed.

3. Short hair doesn’t mean I have little/no hair that I’m trying to hide – I have thick hair that can be best tamed when kept short. Which brings me to the fact that,-

4. I do need a hair dryer! As a person with wavy hair, I need to break the roundness of my face with straight hair that can only be achieved with a hair dryer. And lastly:

5. To have short hair, you need confidence. I do not feel less feminine because I have short hair. Yes, there are times when I would prefer to have long hair to hide my face into and look more fragile, but that’s not me; I am ambitious, active and motivated to make a mark in this world. Long story short, having not less, but SHORTER hair to take care of, I do not have to spend so much time in front of the mirror and instead, I have more time to get things done! Also, it looks good when I wear my favorite cat-ear bowler hat.

I had a very hectic summer. I spent a month in Seoul, South Korea and 10 days in Israel on a Taglit Birthright trip. There are a few things that I have learned during the past two months of travelling and staying in Prague.

1) I value freedom: to explore the city by my own, not being pressurized into being in groups and limited by rules (no drinking, having to stay out until 0:30 etc). I guess I can consider myself both an intro and extrovert.

2) Friendships created during a specific trip will seem strong, but most will end the moment you leave the country/airport. So many initial honeymoon phases of friendships can take a full turn by the course of the trip.

3) Speaking of relationships - if you got 10 days to talk to someone and you don’t do so within the first half, it’s very likely you won’t. Friendship chemistry cannot be pushed. No hard feelings though!

4) It is important to not succumb to pressures like “what happens in X, stays in X”. Are we animals so we have to have flings with others? Or embarrass ourselves by getting crazy drunk even though you know you can’t handle drinks well? No - I learned that I prefer being the “boring” one than making mistakes.

I dropped by at school yesterday to get my Index signed by professors, since I haven’t done in the last semesters. Due to the strong-headed “I do not sign Indices unless it’s my consultation hours”, I ended up waiting around at school for 4 hours. Even though I saw the specific teacher just sitting at his desk, not occupied. 

What got me even more was when I went to the IT lab to print off my 52-page thesis. I set up the printing to be 4 pages per side, so altogether about 12 pages. After adding 20Kc to my printing card account, I beeped it to one of the three printers. First it didn’t seem to respond, so I logged off and went to another printer, beeped my card, and the first printer blurted out one double-sided page. The printer I was then using had a box with “error in identification of task” appeared on its screen, my account balance 0,-. 

You can imagine my confusion and slight annoyance. I went to the IT guy, told him my problem and he just stared at me like as if I told him that printers fly. “Wait, do you want me to believe you added money onto your account, the printer just ate it all up without printing what you needed?” Uh-huh. He rolled his eyes and then said, “I don’t believe you. Do you honestly think you can come up with this bullsh*t and get money for it?” I told him I have a girl who witnessed my inserting money into the credit machine. He looked and said, “Well, okay, but go sue the credit machine company, this isn’t my job.” 

Well, what is your job then? Just sitting around in the IT room, not helping anyone, rolling your eyes, being superior to students who just want to print something and go? I honestly wanted to tell him to get a different job and tell him that he’s being ridiculous for thinking that I’d want to make a 20-crown profit. 

I was after a exam-filled week and with the weather so nice, I thought it’d be a pity to stay home. I was invited to a Sunday picnic for former and future participants of a certain organization’s annual trip to Israel in which I will be also participating this coming August. 

“Go Anna, at least you’ll meet some new people and get some fresh air. You’re always sitting home studying, go have some fun!” my mother said. So early that Sunday afternoon I headed out to that picnic with a lock-lock full of carrot sticks and a stack of notes for a coming linguistics exam.  

Very well, I arrive at the edge of the Stromovka park and call one of the organizers for precise location. Turns out, the group is on the other side of the park... SO I take the tram to Hradčanská, ask for directions about five times and walk down this beautiful street, studying the buildings and then realizing... Do I really want to meet new people? Be with people? Wouldn’t I prefer being alone, or ignoring the group and just sit by myself somewhere and just think or study? But then I realized another thing: I was hungry and they got food. So I reached the park gate and joined the big loud group. 

I enjoyed myself! Though at first I felt a bit awkward for having to barge into conversations, eventually I found my few people and then, my voice. Like when somebody came around and asked for a cigarette. “Sorry, ain’t got any, but I can roll you one,” Julia said. The half-drunk woman nodded and said, “Without a filter, please” and slightly absent-mindedly I said “Hashtag no filter” and it caused a round of laughter. That felt good.

For the third year, a 1st of May student parade took place - and it was the ideal chance to sell the new issue of the Spring MP! During the... well, I was there from 10 till 7, so during the 9 hours there were quite a few strange encounters and memorable experiences. Here are top 3.

1) This Arab father with a 7-year-old son. I offered the kid a biscuit and afterwards he took the liberty every few minutes to return and grab another one. The father just kept on smiling. He could’ve at least bought the magazine, the cookies aren’t for free.

2) A short and stout man came to our stall and said, ”I’m from Serbia.” We smiled at him. Obviously he thought he deserves a piece of sausage. Just before he grabbed one, I told him that he has to buy a magazine first. He smiled and took and ate one anyway. Then he smiled, repeated “I’m from Serbia” and took one of the copies, slowly leaving. I stopped him and showed the “30Kc” poster on the table. He then gesticulated “No no no!”, threw the magazine onto the table and left angrily.

3) This guy is a stalker - I remember him also grabbing a biscuit from our table back in October. Tall, glasses, blond and an ever-irritated face with a crooked mouth. So he came, began asking me and my friend questions and for some reason believed that we wouldn’t notice his hand slyly taking a biscuit and then popping the treat into his mouth... When my friend stopped talking, he half-shouted: “But what is the magazine ABOUT” and his hand went hunting again. 

Apart from these slightly annoying situations, eventual spring rain and being half-deaf afterwards because of being located right next to the stage, the event was good. Was especially pleased by the number of friends who came by and spent time with me at the stall, even bringing food when I didn’t have the mind to go and get something. 

My brother is an economist. Everything he does almost is well-calculated; the time and energy put into a certain task or activity, divided by the value of the possible outcome. He has this idea that he spends his working hours at the office working, but after the clock strikes five, that’s it for work and it’s family time. No work-related meetings, calls and e-mails, it’s not his work hours anymore, it can wait until tomorrow/Monday. At that point, family is his main priority.

An article I read the other day was about how people my age don’t know fun anymore; they work part-time jobs or do internships, everything for the sake of filling up lines in their CV and they miss experiences that come with youth: mistakes to learn from or family moments, lost while working furiously at their computer. 

There is also a philosophy that my brother has, the source of which I’m not sure: the thought is, “Choose your battles”. Basically, decide what areas are important for your energy - five at most, otherwise it’s a never-ending war. In his case, there are five battle fields: family, work, relationship with his wife, running/exercise and his friends. 

I’m sick at the moment and since I can’t really work on the computer for a long time or watch television without getting tired and sleeping then for a few hours straight, I get to think. I was thinking about my battles. What are they?

1) School (finishing my BA this June and getting accepted for the MA course)

2) Family (spending time with my mother, creating a tidy environment at home for her once she returns home; looking after my brother’s family when they’re here; visiting my grandmother every week or so or at least call her every other day)

3) Boyfriend (be a support to him, a best friend and girlfriend in one)

4) My magazine (last issue in May, gotta finish the beast off before the exam period!)

5) Friends (keeping at least virtual contact with them, but seeing them in person at least once per two months)

I was working for a certain organization for the past half year - and just now I realized how draining it is. I have my five battles, but the organization is another one, hence creating almost a war-like environment, as the other battlefields are in danger. So I quit. And man, that feels good! Quitting. Like I did for a literary magazine in the past, I realized that if a certain project/person isn’t giving me anything anymore, I should leave it behind. And so I did and it’s a relief.

There are make or break moments mainly in relationships. But how about in our normal, everyday life? 

Like with academic workers. My mother always says, “Why do these people make it so obvious that they hate their job and make everyone’s day miserable by the way they behave?” Precisely. And during the last three years at university, I learned that academic workers should be treated in a manner that involves subservience, passiveness and also sympathy for their surely tragic lives. At least that’s the way it goes in this country.

I won’t lie, I was quite negatively struck by how some academic workers treated me. Like how they’re so full of self-importance and if you actually need something, you can feel lasers of hatred being shot at you through their Medusa-like eyes that hide the soul that is desperately yearning for a cigarette or coffee. Being a rather sensitive person, a snug or eye-roll can make my day worse by 85%. 

But today, I had a request document to give in. The request office was open until 15:00 and it was 15:13 or so when I arrived with a friend. “Okay, I’ll come another day” I thought to myself and just when we were turning to leave for our seminar, a guy came out of the office. My ears shot up like an attentive rabbit’s and I decided to give it a try: I won’t be carrying around the document for the next week, right?! 

So I put my submissive face on and knocked on the doors and entered with an equally as submissive voice, filled with infinite regret and sympathy, as I said to the white-haired older man behind the desk: 

“I’m sorry, Sir, I know you are closed for almost 15 minutes now, but I hope you will forgive me if I give you this document - I’d hate to have it crumpled by next week, I have a long journey here from home, you see, Sir...” The man looked up and through his glasses at the tip of his nose said:

“It’s Wednesday.”

In my mind, I thought: Shit shit shit, an critical essay about my daring to enter the office is coming... I began preparing an apologetic essay in my mind when he said:

“It’s Wednesday. So we’re open till four, so please, do give me your request. What is it for?” Honestly, my whole being just lit up! He showed interest in my last name, asked about its origins, asked more about east Slovakia, complimented my earrings and then I was off. 

My friend was waiting outside, her face demanding to know what happened inside the office. I told her all and laughed in the way like I just met my favorite celebrity (Elijah Wood, if you’re interested), repeating the word “incredible!” over and over again as I found it at this point almost unbelievable that an academic person could be nice. 

A dear friend came over from abroad this weekend. We haven’t seen each other since we were 13 or so, hence for about 9 years. Our reunion was very short, but intensive; with meetings with my Prague friends, eating at my favorite places and, of course, visiting main tourist attractions in the city. 

Since we spoke in English (logically), many believed us both to be non-Natives. While this can be seen as a compliment in my case, the less favorable realization was that the cashiers, exchange offices, post treated us differently. I was especially surprised that they made absolutely no zero to speak English or explain the prices: everything in Czech. I mean, how can a non-Czech speaker understand that zaslání expres balíčku stojí devětset a bude to tam do týdne? Just why are they doing this? And when it turned out that I speak fluently their language, they weren’t even embarrassed or anything; they just continued their expres balíček stojí devětset speech. Zero interest, zero shame.

But there were also numerous cases of absolute kindness; in restaurants, cafés, museums, where they said “Take your time, explain to your friend what we have to offer” and smiled. That was pretty sweet. Perhaps my favorite moment was when after a day of walking, we separated for an hour and a half and arranged to meet at the museum hall at a certain time. I arrived, exhausted, and sat on the stairs. The guard told me to go away, I explained the situation and he said, “Please, there are seats downstairs, what does your friend look like? I’ll let her know where you are.” Turned out, his help wasn’t even needed as M. found me pretty fast and we sat on the chairs for a good 20 minute period, exhausted yet content. The guard smiled at us from above the staircase and told us to enjoy ourselves.

Opened the MP stall today for about 90 minutes. With 14 (last ones left from the 75!) copies on the table, I gave myself the goal of selling half. My table was most almost invisible through the pre-14:10 (start of afternoon seminars) crowd, but still a few intrigued looks were thrown my way. Before the hall emptied out a little, I got out some notes and started working.

There are four types of people I noticed during those 90 minutes.

The first type are people who stare into their phones and ignore the world (with or without headphones) while their legs carry them to their destination. 

The second type are people who walk by the stall, but slow down. This makes me look up from my work and look at them. I see them frown a little, but once our eyes meet, they quicken their steps. These people make me wonder if I smile creepily like this, though my intentions are good:

The third type are people who are courageous enough to come and ask about the product. Once they find out, you can see the rapid loss of enthusiasm in their faces and they mumble something like “English is very important... Many documents available at the university library are in English...” and slip away, very slowly, without a good-bye. It’s just an obvious sign that they don’t wanna spend 30Kč on the mag, but their backing-off just makes me think:

The fourth type are people who face me and ask “What is this?” or, even better, immediately say, “I’m so glad I caught you, can I have one copy please?” These people recover my faith in the project as a whole, that they either give it a chance or just make me realize that even though I don’t know them, they know the MP and even follow it on Fb and think well of it all. When they take out their wallets or say the beautiful words “One, please”, I’m like:

By the end of the 1.5 hours, altogether 7 copies were sold. I was happy. ^_^

The first week of term is over and what are my thoughts about and conclusions made during it? 

1) That it will be a busy semester, but that is only a good thing. Of school itself I have little, so more time for writing my BA thesis (at this point 25/45 done), an organization I work for, publishing two more issues of the MP and maybe some travelling, at least for 1-day trips outside the capital would be nice.

2) That when there are seemingly too much stuff going on, instead of breaking down or screaming in distress, it is better to just tackle the projects/tasks one by one. By Sunday I have to complete not only a brainstorm of ideas for my MA dissertation (yup, barely half-way through my BA dissertation and am already supposed to think about the even longer paper, written in over a year's time) and finish and send off the first completed chapters of my BA thesis paper. With good time management, that should all be doable.

3) That about some things one cannot do anything much - either he can try to change it or he can just wave his hand. Examples? I can try talk a friend out of a relationship with a boy who is a leech, but no matter how valid my arguments, she will still stand by him. I can do as much as I can in terms of work and good deeds, but still there will be criticism - from those who feel inadequate, unsatisfied, jealous and the like. 

After the emotionally excruciating wait, I finally received my first Kawaii Box! Since the first of my 3-month subscription didn't arrive (January 2015 KB - with adorable Hello Kitty no-lenses glasses that I seriously wanted ㅠㅠ), I was a lil bit depressed that the February wouldn't arrive either. But hey, it did! (^_^)/ Here's a summary/review of what was in it. Warning: the cuteness level is too high at points!

First off, a thank-you card by the KB team. "Stay Cozy" - I sure will. :3 I didn't remember much of this box's opening videos on Youtube, so you can imagine how excited I was, untouched by expectations! :) Let's go.

I guess that most KB subscribers are expected to be into collages and decorations. Well, I do like pretty things to decorate frames and notebooks (both electronic and paper) with, so I was pretty happy with this set of stickers (a rocking horse, rainbows, chickens and bears, a baby trolley, how can you not make a motherhood association?). Jokingly, I thought I will give the baby trolley sticker to my first pregnant girlfriend - though I'm not sure if that'd be a success, to be honest. But for now, the stickers are adorable!

This pretty purple/mintish green "Happy little fish" thing is a notebook with colorful papers inside. The cover is probably the best (the bow!) and generally it looks too precious to use. I might as well frame it! :D

A longer piece of ribbon that can be used both for collages and even as a hair accessory. Imagine a bow with this design! No? Okay, collage only then. The best thing is I have ice-cream earrings to go along with this! I'll think of a way to wear both. ;)

After a weekend of S&M (Syntax and Morphology, not what you think, calm down), I turned up at school for my 9am oral exam. This was quite surprising, since I had 2 dreams the previous night: in the first I arrived on time and thought "I don't wanna" and left and in the second I arrived too late and was too embarrassed to enter, so I left. 

The teacher told me to sit down and said, "Over the weekend I chose the following three questions for you: personal pronouns, past tense and copular verbs". I smiled and got to work, though my first thought was that I'm totally f*cked. What can I say about personal pronouns for 10 minutes? Or copular verbs? Sh*t, what's so interesting about them, what is there to discuss?  Then I thought of something and 20 minutes later the examination began.

I nailed past tense. Next were copular verbs. That was alright too. I accidentally changed "personal" to "possessive" pronouns, but that luckily turned out well too. She decided to stop torturing me with the non-sense theory after around 30 minutes and said the words of mercy:

Who am I to kid? I'm tired, exhausted, fatigued - emotionally especially, because this week was full of surprises.

Monday. Waiting all day for the American literature exam, arrived on the spot about 15 minutes early and the teacher already took the first person in. 

Let me tell you something: the majority of my reading list was poetry, because the teacher is a poet himself and I heard that he's literally a fanatic, asking about nothing else than poetry. Not that I minded! I enjoyed readings the works of Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich... So imagine my surprise when he looked at my reading list and looked past the long list of poems and said "Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography and Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire. Is that alright?" 

NO, NO!, my mind screamed, but I smiled and asked if he's sure that he doesn't want me to do some poetry question instead. "No, Franklin and Williams please." Sh*t, f*ck! What am I supposed to do?, I smiled and turned to the empty piece of paper. 

He threw out the girl before me, so I had less time to prepare - or in other words, to try and remember something about The Autobiography or the name of Blanche's sister. When he told me to sit on the couch, I honestly wanted to ask for more time, but decided to not provoke him and instead sat down and blurted everything I knew first about Franklin and then T. Williams. Turned out, it didn't matter that I wasn't saying too much detail, it actually helped cover the fact that I haven't read Franklin's work for years and that I only saw the marvelous black-and-white film adaptation of Williams' play. I was praying the entire time that he won't ask about some specific scene or chapter from either work... He didn't and I was both relieved and disappointed when he gave me a 2. "The Tennessee was excellent, but the Franklin, go read it again" Okay. I was out in 10 minutes.

I thought it'd be much worse. But it turned out great - I passed both exams I had this week. The first was a linguistics test and the next day from the killing time of 8am I was waiting outside the classroom for my comprehensive exam from British Literature. 

The exam went well; the questions I was given were quite easy and it was quite a pleasant conversation. The most rewarding feeling was him saying "Okay, that's enough" and watching him open his yellow-paged index and writing "1" (A). As a reward also for discussing my BA thesis in relevance to the question I had about Wordsworth and Coleridge, he lent me a biography on PB Shelley that has like 500 pages and is quite heavy. My mum prohibited carrying heavy things in the purse she lent me, so I had to carry the thing all day in my arms, I hope it'll be of some use once this whole exam period is over and I'll have time to return back to my BA thesis that at this point has 15/40 pages done.