Instead of focusing on the audit, I started to work on my telepathic forces

I first heard about whisper interpreters about 6-7 years ago. It was 2003 or 2004, and two Spanish friends of mine told us about it, well actually, they told Hannes and he told me.

Since Sunday I am in Baku, Azerbaijan. It is very nice here; I love communist architecture and Muslim food and tea culture, and Azerbaijan has both: It was part of the USSR and its inhabitants are Muslims.

Even though I have not been for more than one day in many Muslim cities, but being in Baku feels good, and it is a women-friendly Muslim city: There are no hundreds of men bothering, or intimidating women. I remember how hard was it for me and my brother to cope with the dozens of men bothering my sister in Aswan, or all men at the bazaar in Istanbul making pseudo-jokes about women, or the most sad incident: some weeks ago at Tahir square in Cairo, women were demonstrating against the social tolerance of sexual offences on women, when a group of assholes went deliberately to the square to molest and touch the women demonstrating.

Soviets prohibited religion during 71 years and the result is a very tolerant city with a Muslim majority, but Christians, Catholics and some Jews live also here. Women wear skirts on the streets and no one grab their intimate parts, and women don’t receiving public physical punishment for provoking bad thoughts on men.

The other Soviets legacy in Azerbaijan is Russian. I am in Baku because I am joining my Georgian colleague in a 4-day quality audit. The audit is in Russian, so we had to hire a whisper interpreter.

On the audit’s first day, I felt important: The director, some of his co-workers, the Georgian auditor and I were in the room. We were only waiting for the interpreter. He arrived 10 minutes late, sat next to me and immediately began to translate.

Elmar, my interpreter is from Azerbaijan. Azeris are Eurasians, and many Asian men are (for our western culture) very touchy! They hug other men and even held hands as a sign of friendship.

Have you ever wish you could have the power of telepathy?

Elmar was sitting behind me translating and every time he came closer, he suddenly put his hand on my chair’s back, then right besides my leg. It was uncomfortable! But this was not the only thing: Elmar had bad breath! Do you know how it is to be whispered by a man with bad breath? I hope you don’t…

After some time, we were offered black tea and caramels. Instead of focusing on the audit, I started to work on my telepathic forces “Please drink the tea and have a caramel, please drink tea and have a caramel, please!!!” They were the worst 10 minutes this year, a living hell... Elmar finally reacted to my message, he took a sip of tea and had a caramel and with this, his bad breath disappeared.

Then I started with my telepathy again: “Please move away from me, please don’t touch my hand with yours, please!!!” But that did not work…

The substantial changes

My life in Tbilisi is nice:  I wake up, take a shower, take the subway, reach the office, start working, drink a cup of tea, continue working, have lunch outside, go back to the office, fight the desire of taking a nap and continue working.  At around 7 or 8, I take the subway back home, buy peaches or strawberries or cherries, do some facebooking, read news online, eat the fruit I bought earlier and go late to bed.

This has been my life in the last 2 and a half weeks, however, there have been some substantial changes. During the first days in Tbilisi:

   - I had nice meals not only at noon, but also at night, now I barely have dinner.

   - I had 2-3 glasses of wine at night, now I get drunk very fast! Last Friday it took me
     only one bottle beer to party alone all night and on Saturday I went wild from a Gin &
     Tonic and a Martini Rosso.

I am not sure if my body is asking me for these eating and drinking issues (I don’t want to write “drinking problems”), because it need a break.

This is the story:
The day I arrived at Tbilisi, I was waiting for my luggage in the airport when I saw a huge electronic scale. I took my jacket and shoes off and hoped for the best.

Well, of course “the best” did not happen. Actually, what appeared on the scale after I stepped on it was a number I considered impossible for me to reach…Eighty bloody kilos.

What I like now is that I am eating lots of good & fresh vegetables and that I am having 4 wine glasses per week…instead of per day.

I hope my body likes this, and it gives me back what I want the most: the weight I had in 2007.

P.S. Attached you can see some pics, one of the street where the office is, two from my flat and one of me with a green polo shirt.

The newly renovated Marjanishvili-street, where the office I work is  

 My bed and the hall that leads to the exit, bathroom and kitchen

My bedroom from th eopposite perspective

Me in the corridor, wearing a olive-green polo shirt

If you are expecting a funny blog, you will be dissapointed!

When I was studying political sciences in Innsbruck, I had to combine my field of study with a second one. I chose media studies, there I learned about Monsieur Jacques Lacan.

Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Amongst many things, he developed the theory of the Mirror-stage. As I have it in mind, it states that around the age of 2, children begin to perceive themselves as a single person (before that, they think they are an “extension” of their mothers). Also at this stage, children begin to perceive their fathers (or father figures) as something new, as a stranger who does not belong to his/her “mother-child universe”.

Lacan talks about things like mother, home and paradise and differentiates them from other things as father, the unknown and earth/society. He also talks about doors, things that allow us to switch from the safe indoor to the dangerous outdoor.

In a lesson, I used Lacan for a presentation about “The last tango in Paris”, but right now, I am not in Paris, but in Tbilisi, and here there are beautiful balconies everywhere.

I personally have no idea how architects see balconies. Maybe for Lacan they could have been a way to experience the wild outside and stay safe at the same time. Contrary to doors, which leave you outside on your own and unprotected.

Friends of mine built in 2008 the biggest balcony I ever saw. It was a wooden structure that allowed people to get closer to the dangerous Inn River (people in Innsbruck call it wilder Bach – wild creek).

I will stay with my interpretation à la Lacan. A balcony may be a safe place which gives you enough freedom to hear cars passing by, feel the wind and get wet if it rains, but in Tbilisi, balconies are more than that. They are aesthetic and give character to all houses, the old, the modern, the poor and the rich. Here some pics.

      

 

my fingers smell like the most delicious strawberries

It all happened so fast: I had loads of documents to finish, many e-mails to send, a film festival to organise, three bands to attend (and hear), luggage to prepare, a brunch to cook for my friends and finally, to take the plane to Tbilisi. That all happened within 8 days. I arrived 36 hours ago to Georgia.


While in Innsbruck, I heard only good things about Georgian food, and even though I have been here for less than two days, I can already say that all my friends were not exaggerating when they told me Georgian cuisine was the best in the Caucasus. What they forgot to tell me was the wonderful agricultural products you can get on the streets.

Today I bought fruits and vegetables from a “store” in a garage. AMongts many things, I also bought strawberries….the best I have had in my life.

For me, it was always a mystery why strawberry-flavoured lollipops and chewing gum tasted so different from fresh strawberries; and then I tried wild strawberries from the Mountains around. Only then I tasted what food scientists were trying to imitate. They wanted to synthetically replicate the flavour of wild strawberries.

The artificial flavour is similar to the one from wild strawberries, with the difference that the natural ones are more intense and fresher and have an incredible texture that no analog candy can ever recreate - even though their flavour’s molecules are identic to the natural’s.

Wild strawberries are very small and very intense in flavour, but for me, they lack something: Juice. The strawberries I just had were perfect. They tasted very similar to the wild ones, but had the size of a common strawberry; they smelled like heaven and were so juicy that my fingers still smell like strawberries.

I also bought tomatoes, cilantro, cucumber and eggplants…I can’t wait to make a tomato-cucumber salad with lemon juice and cilantro topped with fried eggplant cubes…

I will be in Tbilisi for six more week and I can’t wait to discover more street markets, visit the thermal spas, swimm in the black sea...and eat more, much more.

The ones I got, are the straberries in the left front side of the picture. The ones behind (middle and right part) are sour cherries, normal cherries and white cherries

My fingers smell like these strawberries right now :-)

Every time I wear my old blue socks, I think of mid-September 1996

Last week, I was looking for clean socks, then I found my old blue socks...and story begins: it all started many, many years ago.

In mid-September 1996, I  paid my aunt Maluli and my uncle Miguel a visit to say goodbye, baceause I was about to leave to Austria. After chatting and saying goodbye, my aunt handed me 20 USD, she told me it was not much, but they could be useful.

A day (or two) after that I was in El Paso, Texas (My first flight to Innsbruck started here) and went shopping. I wanted to be prepared for the Alpine weather. I bought shoes, sunglasses and my first pair of non-white socks. You may not know it, but when you are a teenager and you get your first pair on coloured socks, you feel like you are on your way of becoming a responsible and productive member of society. With my aunt's money, I bought three pairs of socks: Blue, gray and bordeaux

Fifteen years later, I still wear my blue socks; the other two pairs got lost, because as everybody knows,  getting lost is the favourite activity of socks. Nobody knows why, it just happens, and we all accept it, because there is nothing we can do about it.

Last week, my aunt past away. She was the closest family member who died while I was in Austria. I talked to my father and to my grandpa. It is hard for him. I cannot imagine how empty can one feel after loosing your own daughter, your own son.

I haven't had a chance to talk to neither my cousins, nor my uncle, but when I see them, I will tell them that every time I wear my old blue socks, I think of mid-September 1996.

it is my dopamine system which has just been activated.

Early this year, Diana I. Tamir and Jason P. Mitchell, two psychologists from the University of Santa Barbara, California, published a paper in which they state that humans really enjoy telling about themselves. According to their paper, we devote almost half of our time informing others about our own experiences. They also quote other studies which even link “self-disclosure” to a triggering of the dopamine system. It is the system in the human body that gets activated when people eats chocolate, gets sunlight or use dope.

Tamir and Mitchell conducted an experiment with people and came to the conclusion that adults would be prepared to resign to a percentage of their salary (between 10 and 20%!!!), if they could talk more about themselves at work!

If you are a facebook friend of mine, you may notice that I frequently write quotes from the sitcom „Seinfeld“ on my wall. If you are note a facebook-friend of mine, now you know it: I am a Seinfeld fan.

I re-discovered Seinfeld some months ago and it has developed into my second best leisure activity (number one is preparing a Gin&Tonic before watching Seinfeld).

Some minutes ago, I was watching a Seinfeld episode in which Seinfeld is sitting in his car scratching the right side of his nose, when suddenly, his girlfriend sees him from the left side, and because of the perspective, she thinks he is picking his nose. Later in the episode, she broke up with him because of that.

As I saw that, I started to recall if I have experienced something similar (I love finding links between the sitcom and my life). I couldn’t think of something, so I continued watching.

Today is so nice and warm outside, that as soon as I came back home from the office, I changed my working clothes for a t-shirt and shorts. I had dinner in bed and I was so full, that I unbuttoned my shorts – an activity that proves that my body is changing (this started when I turned 30).

Well, my stomach was full, the atmosphere in my room was relaxing and watching the sitcom was so entertaining, that without thinking about it, my right hand started to move by itself. It suddenly landed right below my belly button, above the bladder. Then it happened: My flatmate entered my room without knocking and the first thing she sees is Oscar lying on the bed, watching something on internet with his right hand moving inside his shorts.

It all happened so fast that I could only say “Veronika, it is not what it looks like”.

She said “I am sorry” and left the room immediately.

Even though it was very embarrassing, I am writing down this story, I will publish it in the coming minutes on my blog. I already feel happy, I assume it is my dopamine system which has just been activated.

To my little friend

Normally, I get good along with my ex-girlfriends, but there is this one which is actually crazy. She was the first girlfriend I had in Innsbruck, that was back in 1997. I was younger than she was (18 vs. 23) and I was literally doing everything for her. She once prohibited me to see three of my best friends...and I did! I stoped seeing them, could you believe how dumb I was? Not that I stopped doing stupid things, but at least the stupid things I do now are funny, and stop seeing your best friends because your girlfriend asks you to do so is everything but funny.

Last summer I got a call from her, she was in Innsbruck and she wanted to meet me (She is also from Chihuahua and has been living in Chihuahua since we split in 1999). I did not want to be an idiot and accepted her invitation.

We met at a terrace, I had a salad and a slice of pizza. We were talking about this and that when she asked out of the blue “Which is the most beautiful thing you remember from our relationship”. Without hesitating, I automatically answered: “The knife we bought at the 10 Schilling shop” (a bargain store, now called “90 Cent shop”). First, she thought I was kidding and laughed, then she repeated the question and I told her “Alejandra, the only good thing of our relationship was the knife we bought at the 10 Schilling shop, I still use it until now”. She started crying...

I love this knife, it is small, and it never lost its sharpness, never in almost 15 years. My sister told me once she has a favourite knife ans when she cooks without it, she gets nervous. When I heard that I was relieved to hear I was not the only person on the planet sweating when chopping garlic cloves with a knife I am not used to.

On Wednesday, April the 17^th 2012 at around 17:50 my beloved blue knife passed away...

It was the best knife I ever had, and the only good that happened to me in a tormenting and long lasting relationship (20 months).

Little blue knife, I will keep you in my heart, and will remember you every time I chop garlic cloves and onions.

Oscar

 I will never forget you, you were the best...