My new smooth-ageing strategy

For me, Sundays are nice days until 16:59, right after that, they are slowly surrounded by a strange nostalgic feeling which reminds us that it is almost over: We will be in the office soon and five long days will have to pass until we can celebrate the next weekend.

Today, it is Sunday, and it has been a sad day from the very beginning. What I usually do when I am depressed is to write a blog.

On Friday I went to the doctor to finally have a health check up! The results were not bad:

• Blood pressure: OK
• Lungs: OK
• Kidneys: OK
• Eyes: OK
• Liver: ...surprisingly OK!
• Cholesterol: 309, should be 300
• Body mass index: half a kilo away from overweight

On my way from the doctor's practice to my office, I brainstormed to create a strategy in order to make my ageing smoother. I already use anti-ageing body lotion, but this is not enough. I think I have to do more pilates and consume less cheese and milk-chocolate (the main reason for my slightly high cholesterol). This plan has only three points, so it is sureyly not hard to accomplish.

I was thinking about this new smooth-ageing strategy on my bike, when the wind on my face was moving a moustache-hair and this little guy was scratching my nose. The feeling was very annoying! Then, I remember that the last two nights I woke up suddenly thinking that a spider was walking around my nose. Back then, I desperately scratched and rubbed my nose until the feeling was gone. I really thought it was a spider, but on the bike I knew it was my moustache.

Later in the office, I wanted to put an end to this annoying feeling. So I took my scissors and a pocket mirror and then I saw them...

...there was indeed a rebel moustache-hair growing in the wrong direction (towards my nostrils), but, there was a second hair. It was the longest nose hair I ever saw on someone younger than 80. I cut it immediately and added on e more thing to my smooth-ageing strategy:

1. Continue using anti-ageing body lotion
2. Do more sport
3. Eat less dairy products and chocolate
4. Buy a nose-hair trimmer

Mein Halbes Leben OR "my life's to do list"

About three years ago, my good friend Maria recommended me to watch an Austrian documentary called „Mein halbes Leben“ something I, as a non-native speaker in neither English nor German, would translate as „Half of my life“. The film is about a guy in his mid-30's suffering of a late quarter life crisis...or an early mid-life crisis.

When I was in Georgia, I started to feel like the guy in the movie...

Sometimes, I have the feeling my life goes so slow, that I don't have to hurry, and that gives me the security to take things easy. But that cosy secure feeling disappears each time I take a look at my life. it is horrible, years have passed and I have done little.

Just imagine, on my last medical check-up, I was diagnosed with lightly high cholesterol. Maria, who is also a very good dietitian, told me my HDL (the good cholesterol) was high, but there was not much to worry about, however, on that day I promised to myself to have a medical check once a year...that was four years ago, and it was also the last time I went to the doctor.

Being depressed for being passive with life - and in combination of having a hangover on Saturday - gave me the strength and courage to erase things from my life's to do list. In the past 72 hours, I have been achieving incredible things:

- Appointment with the dentist: Checked! (wanting to do so since May)
- Built the kitsch-frame with deer-horns I wanted so much: Checked! (wanting to do so since 2011)
- Three loads of laundry: Checked! (wanting to do so since 2 weeks)
- Opening a savings account: Checked! (already happened in December, but was pending since 2005)
- Doing pilates at home: Checked! (wanting to do so since 3 weeks)
- Call Electrolux and ask why the refrigerator drops water: Checked! (wanting to do so since summer 2009)

Maybe those things listed above don't see like much to you, but doing that last weekend was a giant step.

I should not claim victory, there are still things do: 

- Make the appointment for the medical check (4 years delay), 

- Call the carpenter and ask him once more about my bed (5 months delay), 

- Hang the mirror lying on my bedroom (10 months delay), 

- Finish my Ph.D. (10 months delay)...

- If I continue, I will start crying...

Mariela, the transformers, my father, Bauhaus and the Georgian vines

Mariela isa  good friend of mine. She has a very interesting way of seeing things, but I will tell you about architecture. Many years ago, she told me that everything that she designs - she is an Architect - fulfils at least two tasks: It is not only aesthetic, but it is also functional (or the othe rway around). My nerd childhood memories remind me of the transformers’ theme (more than meets the eye).

Friends of mine related to the collective columbosnext designed and constructed last summer a wardrobe for me. When my father saw it via webcam, he was fascinated by its blend of design and practical use (My father is also an architect). Then he said something that reminded me of Marielas’s theory “All architectural designs must have a functional use, otherwise they are not worth” and I think the guys from Bauhaus or Le Courvoisier have a similar philosophy, but really don’t know because I am neither an architect nor and art/urban historian, but I remember my father telling me of the Bauhaus influence on his faculty in the Instituto Politécnico Nacional.

I think it was in 2005 when Mariela did a course on low-impact architecture - or something like that - and this is exactly the link to what I want to show you: how Georgians re-engineer nature to produce a functional organic-synthetic symbiosis. These natural shades provide fresh air, fruits in autumn and look great.

Society could easily consider this night as a ladies night...but there are no ladies

It is Saturday night and I am sitting in my room listening to sad music and writing these lines. Saturday is the favourite day of many people I know because one can wake up late and stay up as long as one can.

In Hollywood teenager movies, pyjama parties (the mother of all teenager parties) are always held on Saturdays. There, girls sit on their bed all night, watch cheesy romantic movies, eat chocolate and hear to love songs and drink white wine.

Today I woke up late, had breakfast, cleaned my apartment, did Pilates, took a shower and went out to the restaurant area of Tbilisi. As a starter, I had thin cheese-slices filled with homemade yogurt and mint; then I had a trout with green and red bell peppers served with pomegranate sauce and lemon.

Then I headed to a wine bar had two glasses and a bowl of rosemary olives, then, I went home...at 8 p.m.

I think I easily cover all areas to qualify for a ladies night:

• I am wearing my pyjama,
• I have been sitting on my bed for the last five hours,
• I watched a romantic movie (Clerks II),
• I ate a whole package of chocolate-covered wafers,
• I am hearing sad songs,
• I am drinking red wine (shortly ago, I could not open a white wine bottle, and this is slowly developing into a serious masculinity problem),
• By the way, is it legitimate to feel less masculine for not being able to unscrew a bottle with a Swiss knife? Is having a masculinity problem related to hormones?
• Is it stupid and chauvinist to ask?

Since this night has all of the elements above, I think society could easily consider this night a ladies night, only without the ladies…

…shit, this is not a ladies night; it’s Bridget Jones' opening scene.

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.