Cogs can think.

Being multilingual is both a blessing and a curse. Especially right now, when I’m continually speaking and writing three different languages at the same time.

I’m on a short vacation in Germany visiting friends, so I’m speaking German with all the people around me. I phone home a few times a day, and send emails in Dutch to friends, so I still use my mad Dutch skillz. And obviously, I’m still ravaging through the depths of teh internets every day, using my superb comprehension of the routinely disorganised English language. Still wondering why on god’s sweet earth those pesky Americans decided to McDonaldise the Queen’s English.

Anyway, you can see how difficult it’s going to be to keep those three languages separate from one another. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve unknowingly reverted back to English while trying to construct a beautifully grammatically incorrect German sentence. Or the downpour of Dutch words intertwined in German-English geschichtes.

My thoughts are all messed up too. When I’m thinking of my Dutch friends, or I’m telling a story about them to my friends here in Germany, I see them wearing lederhosen while holding 1ltr beer glasses - and moustaches. Lots of moustaches. Even on women. Sorry Renate, I’m never getting that imagery out of my head.

I’ve seen you wearing lederhosen, while having a moustache. BEAT THAT, BART.

It’s around midnight. It’s pitch dark outside, the wind blowing through the large trees surrounding your apartment. It’s not warm, not cold, it’s both. It’s been a long day, spent at a theme park, and you’re dead tired. You close the curtains, start the shower. You prepare a towel, and make sure all the other shower accessories are in place.

Then, the magic ingredient. You turn off all the lights in your apartment, including the one in the bathroom. When it’s pitch dark in your home, and you can’t see 3 cm in front of you - then you slip into the shower.

And you enjoy it. For 30 minutes. In total darkness.

You turn off the shower, and slowly dry yourself with the prepared towel. And then, and only then, do you turn on the lights. They blind you. Your brain will be out of sync, and you immediately start to panic - I have to go to work, to university, I have to go and do something! And then you realise.

You’re not getting out of bed, you’re preparing to go into bed.

And then you’ll know you’ve beaten the system.

Sleep well.

I was forced to blatantly lie, yesterday evening.

Yesterday was my last day at work before what I now refer to as ‘pre-vacation’. I have 3 weeks off work starting next Sunday, but in the coming week I only have to work on Wednesday, Friday evening, and Saturday. In other words, barely - hence, pre-vacation. Yes, my mind always works like that, and no, it’s not contagious.

Anyway, my best friends and I decided to go out for dinner at the restaurant where on one of us works. The thing is though - this friend of mine, Martin, has a really, really cute colleague. I remember when he tried to get me active on Hyves (the Dutch variant of MySpace), something which I absolutely loathe. He showed me his Hyves page, and right there, in his friends list, was this really, really pretty lady. Blonde hair, round face, rosy cheeks, the whole nine yards. Who’s THAT? I said in a forced casual manner. He explained she was one of his colleagues at work - mind you, a little young though. Like, 17. Well below my mental comfort zone, but my mental comfort zones have been known to bend (what, you mean 1 hour of sleep doesn’t make you completely sober and fit for driving?).

Oh, he did get me active on Hyves. It took a little more pushing from Renaatje, but I’m a perfect little young person now.

The whole thing with that girl kind of started to lead a life of its own, becoming one of our catchphrases, one of our topics of conversation, but never in a real, three dimensional way. I had never seen her, never met her, never talked to her, so she was just the flat, 2D image on her Hyves page. Mind you, a very good-looking and cute image, but just an image nonetheless. I had no notion of who she was, didn’t have any judgements to pass. From what Martin could tell me, I did realise she was a perfectly fine lady, intelligent, interesting.

We’ve eaten at Martin’s restaurant before, but she was never at work when we were there. Until, as you may have guessed right about now, yesterday evening. Yes, Martin told me, she’s going to be at work Saturday. I was kind of excited (in a perfectly normal social and psychological way) because I would finally have the opportunity to add depth to the 2D image. I only have to meet someone once, and bang, I can make a snap judgement. And these judgements have never failed me. I’m always right. It’s a gift that I cherish. And one YOU should fear.

My friends and I were seated - completely coincidentally - in The Girl’s area of work. She’d be taking our orders. I was presented with the perfect opportunity to seize her up, and when I did, I was all like, nice. She had what I call presence. I don’t really know how to explain the concept of presence, but some people just have it. When they enter a room, people look. And they don’t have to be hot or whatever - they just turn heads.

And boy did she have presence. By the bucketloads. You could paint the restaurant three times with it.

Marco wanted to know if I found her to be everything that I thought she would be. And now I need to tell you a little bit about Marco. You see, contrary to normal people, Marco doesn’t descend from Adam and Eve. Consequently, Marco doesn’t carry the original sin, nor does he carry the burden of having a sense of shame - much to the dismay of people like me.

So, from experience, I know that having a conversation with Marco about women that are within shouting distance is kind of like running into a minefield with a blindfold on. It will end with me making a total ass out of myself. Marco will make a total ass out of himself too, but he doesn’t have a sense of shame, so he doesn’t give a crap. If I were to tell the truth about the whole The Girl thing, I’d be in serious trouble.

So I lied. Meh, she’s not really what I thought she would be, I said, casually.

He took the bait, but still, I can’t stop and think… If I hadn’t lied, would this have been a better story?

Bestest best friend Renate and her boyfriend Bart spent the evening at my place, watching some films, some TV, you know. At the end of the evening, I dropped them off at Alkmaar North station.

Good, I say to the happy couple, next time, we’ll meet up at your place.

Before the words even left my mouth, I hear a sound of a suddenly braking car inside my head. Bart starts running, and hides behind a wall. Renate starts laughing.

I look at her, I try to correct myself. I mean his place… HIS place, damnit…

Sometimes, my mind is WAY ahead of things.

Do you really care about what I have to say, Rube? Georgia asks.

Sure, Rube replies, I make my face look like this and the concerned words come out.

And that’s how I feel about my university.

Rewind back to last February. My friends and I are doing our jolly jobs of working for university, when we realise we forgot to sign up for a course called Formulating - in fact, the course had already begun 1.5 weeks ago - one of the prerequisite courses for the Master in Journalism. That was of course our very own stupid fault, let there be no mistake about that.

Anyway we quickly emailed the responsible professor, and decided to hop by our study counsellor, to honestly explain everything, and we expected to be able to join in, even though we were slightly late - professors generally don’t make a huge fuss about such a thing.

Boy, were we wrong.

The professor did not allow us to join. Our counsellor told us she felt very sorry for us, but that she couldn’t do anything about it. No one can force a professor to admit students into his or her classes, so going to a higher level in the organisational hierarchy would be fruitless. We came up with countless possible solutions, looking for any leniency, any flexibility, any help. We didn’t get any. It was hopeless.

We were forced to do an entire year extra, solely to follow one course.

We were dumbstruck. It was another cock-up in a long line of cock-ups - a line I could fill three blogs with for 5 years on end. It also so happened this would become the final wave that would break the dyke - we lost our motivation, our spirit. The cause? Our study is a very broad one, so inevitably, there’s a lot of ‘noise’ subjects that are mandatory but simply aren’t very interesting. We fought our way through them because we knew there’d be light at the end of the tunnel: our Master in Journalism. We were looking forward to it, and we worked hard to pass even the most boring of courses (I passed Statistics with a 7.5/10!), because we knew that once we had bitten through the sour apple (as we Dutch say), we’d be rewarded with what we al wanted to do: Journalism.

Automotive journalism for Marco, television for Levi, sports for Martin, and technology and computing for yours truly.

And that dream was more or less smashed. Like I said, it was our fault - but the punishment is disproportionate to the offence committed. The ever-present cynical part of me keeps saying: this ensures another year of College money for the VU University. That’s 4 times €1565,-. You do the math.

I’ve been struggling ever since with what to do about this. I thought about abandoning my chosen path and focussing solely on translation, which I thoroughly enjoy doing. Were I to do that, I could simply ignore everything having to do with the Master in Journalism, and start a translation-related Master somewhere in February next season, using the first part of the season to follow any prerequisite courses.

You may wonder why I’m so bogged down by having to complete another year - a lot of students fail to complete their study in the assigned four years, so what’s all the fuss about? Well, you have to realise I already threw away two years by studying Psychology, so it feels as if this will be the third extra year. I realise this is idiotic (my current study and Psychology are two separate entities) but hey, have fun convincing my feelings. AS IF THEY EVER LISTEN TO WHAT I HAVE TO SAY.

After months of thinking, I made a decision. I’m going to do the extra year, and also use that year for two other purposes: I won’t be burdening my summer with passing any possibly failed courses, instead doing them next year. In addition, I will fill my time with subjects of my choosing, mostly related to translation, and maybe throw in some Psychology subjects too.

This will still inevitably mean I have a lot of extra time on my hands, which I will put into thinking about starting ‘for myself’ when I’m done with university. Yes, I want to become a freelance writer and translator, allowing me to fill in my own time. I loved translating, most notably writing professional subtitles for Dutch TV, which fascinated me beyond imagination. Translating is like programming in many ways; it’s never done, always full of bugs, and everyone has their own ideas on how to achieve perfection.

But right now, I’ve had it with the VU University. I’ll be picking up Alice/Deesie coming Sunday, The Netherlands has a serious chance at grabbing the title, I kissed and made up with a friend of mine, my parents are healthy, I have the best friends one could ever wish for, and I’m feeling more confident about myself, the universe and everything else than ever before. I don’t want to worry about university any more.

You know what the irony is of all this? If we had kept our mouths shut, and just slipped into class after those 1.5 weeks, no one would have given a damn or even noticed. The fact we decided to be good boys screwed us over.

I also don’t have a lot of interest in being a good person or a bad person, Georgia said, From what I can tell, either way, you’re screwed.

Monday evening I was in Amsterdam, with bestest best friend Renate and her boyfriend, Bart. After quite the successful meetup a few weeks ago (LESBIANS! LESBIANS! LESBIANS! IRL!) we figured a follow-up would be in order.

I learned one thing. No matter how much apple juice you pour over a throw-away barbecue, it won’t quell the fire. It might seem that way, but the smoking and burning trash can in the Oosterpark kind of disagreed with that one. Bart and I wanted to do the sensible thing (don’t say a word, and RUN), but Renate had to be all goodie two shoes and sensible about the whole thing and fill a plastic bag with water from the pond to save the trash can.

In other words, we wouldn’t appear in the papers as VANDALS SET FIRE TO TRASH CAN. I never felt so disappointed in my entire life.

There were more important matters to attend to that night, though. I had brought The Holy Items along - the two Dead Like Me seasons on DVD. The Gospel has to be spread in these days of darkness, and as a founding member of The Church Of Dead Like Me, I had to do St. Georgia’s bidding and find new members for our Church. The good thing about this Church is that it doesn’t really involve anything. Just that you have seen the series at least 3 times, and can memorise at least 10 quotes, and use them in appropriate (or inappropriate if you have no social life) contexts in your every day life.

It wasn’t long before I got the two lovebirds hooked on Dead Like Me. It was hard to contain my excitement about having initiated two new members, as evidenced by my frantic rocking back and forth in the Ikea chair I was sitting in. I felt all warm and fuzzy inside, knowing St. Georgia would be pleased.

Sadly, we didn’t get to see the lesbians this time. I guess 2D pixelated ones from t3h intertubes will have to do for now.

I want to save something for posterity.

Tumble weed made out of ass hair in the Grand Canyon.

Really, don’t ask.

Ok, so I have this 22″ widescreen flat panel superdeluxe 1680x1050 display. For someone growing up with MS-DOS and 800x600 SVGA, that’s a lot of screen real estate.

So why do people insist on maximising Firefox when they sit behind my computer? It kind of makes me think of that thing that I have where when I touch one cheek, I have this uncontrollable urge to touch the other one too.

The difference is that I have a perfectly reasonable explanation for my behaviour and I’m sure I’ll find it one of these days.

For a long time now, I’ve been wondering how it’s possible that some people can be extremely excited and happy about the tiniest of things, the tiniest of achievements, gestures, or presents, while others need so much more in order to be happy. How is it possible that some people seem to take on life’s most fcuked up moments effectively, while others seem to cringe at even the slightest of missteps?

There’s a multitude of reasons, of course, but one of them, I think, is what I now call the Theory of Infinite (Un)happiness (I came up with that all by myself, nice eh?). See the below diagram:

There’s a scale that goes from infinite unhappiness, to infinite happiness. Somewhere in between sits your Lifetime; your most difficult and unhappy moments define the border on the unhappiness side, while your best and happiest moments define your border on the happiness side. You spend most of your life somewhere in the middle, but whenever something, for instance, really sad happens to you, it depends on your border on the unhappiness side as to how well you’ll be able to cope with it.

If it falls within the border, you’ll most likely be able to cope with it fairly well. It will affect you, no doubt, but you’ll get over it. If it falls outside of the border, it will be more difficult to deal with - and the further outside the border it falls, the harder it will be to deal with. Of course, this works cumulatively; a lot of unhappy events falling within your border of unhappiness can add up to drive you outside of the border. After the events outside of your border are over, and you’ve dealt with them accordingly, even if it took a lot of time and effort, your border moves up a few notches, and your Lifetime will become broader.

In other words, your personal definitions of “infinite unhappiness” and “infinite happiness” coincide with the border of your Lifetime area. Happiness, therefore, is relative.

An inevitable consequence of the Theory of Infinite (Un)happiness is that not everyone will have a Lifetime of equal width or position. I believe that this is something that can cause major problems in relationships - platonic and romantic. Let me explain.

Even though no one thinks in terms of Lifetimes and infinite whatevers, most people realise subconsciously that their Lifetime might not be as broad or narrow as that of another. Personally, I’ve had my share of really unhappy and sad moments in my lifetime - I have two mentally ill brothers that have wrecked havoc on my parents and I since before I can even remember, and I’ve been through things of which the mere thought can still bring me to my knees - even now, now that my parents and I rarely have contact with my brothers, their names make me cringe, and certain songs that I have connected to them can severely break my day. I won’t detail it all, because it’s really none of your business and I don’t want to sound like a nancy, but it’s been pretty rough.

Add to the above the fact that my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago, and all the crap that followed from that, and you cans see that my border on the unhappiness side is closer to the infinite unhappiness side than that of others who’ve had less troublesome lives.

Now, let me assure you, I’ve not had a bad or unhappy youth - quite the opposite. I have an infinite amount of great and very happy moments in my youth, I had every thing I could have ever wished for (well, except for ‘normal’ brothers, that is), and I’ve been blessed with the best parents one can ever wish for.

But I digress. So, for someone of just 23 years old, I have a fairly broad Lifetime area on the Happiness Scale - but I realise that a lot of other people have even broader Lifetimes, because they have been through a lot more shit than I have. In other words, I, and with me many others, realise that something that might make me very unhappy, something that makes me depressed and miserable, can seem like a relatively minor and unimportant incident to someone whose Unhappiness border is a lot further down west - and I act accordingly.

Trivially put, I won’t loudly whine about my phone being stolen to someone who just had their entire house robbed empty, including their cars and wallets.

However, this doesn’t go for everybody. There are quite a few people on this world that do not realise that happiness and unhappiness are very relative terms. That in and of itself is not a problem - it only becomes a problem as soon as these people come into regular contact with someone with a much different Lifetime area than their own.

A person who does not understand the relativity of happiness, and who has a very narrow Lifetime area quite far towards the Infinite Happiness side of the scale, might complain loudly about things that seem utterly and wholly irrelevant and insignificant to someone with a Lifetime area closer towards the Unhappiness side of things. If someone continually complained to me about healthy sibling rivalry, saying it made them very unhappy and depressed, I fully sympathise with that someone, because I realise that’s all he knows - he’s never seen sibling rivalry go beyond what is considered healthy. To him, it’s a major problem, and I’ll treat it as such, and discuss it as such.

But what if I didn’t realise the relativity of happiness? The guy or girl could piss me off, could annoy me with his constant whining about something I would consider insignificant - you can imagine how that wouldn’t really strengthen my relationship with that person. In fact, if it goes on long enough, it might damage it. I’d be pissed off because he whines about what I consider to be nothing, and he would be pissed off because I belittled a problem that is very much really affecting him and making him unhappy.

This theory can explain a lot more than mere troublesome personal interactions. Ever wondered why people who live in third world countries often appear to be very happy and cheerful, even though they barely have a thing to eat and have to worry about whatever the hell they have to do to live through another day? Exactly - the state of being required to make them happy is a state of being that would put us rich and fat westerners three light years outside of our unhappiness borders.

Take the Theory of Infinite (Un)happiness into account whenever you deal with people, and trust me, it will make your life a lot easier. As soon as you actively realise that happiness and unhappiness are relative terms, you will make yourself a lot happier.

Would the following qualify as a religious experience?

Right, so there we all were. Marco, Martin, Robbert, Gemma, Robin, Thei, Levi, and I. Onno and Annemarie had left a few minutes earlier. We just had a barbecue on a roof terrace in the middle of Amsterdam - the weather is 20+, lots of sun, really nice. The table had mostly been cleared, except for a large bucket of potato salad, which was just screaming at me THROW ME INTO SOMEONE’S FACE.

Naturally, I felt obliged.

So, what do I get from you guys if I smack a spoonful of this stuff into Levi’s face? I ask. Marco takes out his wallet, and pulls out a twenty Euro note. I act quickly. Let’s split the profits, I say to Levi, and the spoonful of potato salad comes hurling towards his face.

Marco hands me the twenty Euro note, Levi hands me ten, and I hand Levi the twenty Euro note. Easy profit, or what? I tuck the ten Euro note away in my empty wallet.

Fast forward a few hours later, about 00:30. I’m in my car, about to turn onto the A10, when I notice I need to go to the petrol station to fill her up. A petrol symbol appears on my satnav, so I take the exit, and I put 15 Euros’ worth of petrol in my car (about 10 litre). I think to myself, that should be enough for the week, I’ve got no plans whatsoever.

I’m in the little shop, grabbing a bag of liquorice, when I flip open my wallet, and feel the rug being pulled from underneath me. The little slot that carries my bank card is empty. I realise, god fcuking damnit shit ass bitch ho, I left my bank card in another pair of jeans, because I needed to quickly pay for something while at work yesterday, and didn’t want to carry my entire wallet through the shop. My bank card was still at home, 60km away. That’s what you get for failing to check for your important stuff before leaving, just for one time. You know, IT’S NOT A COMPULSION WHEN IT’S NECESSARY.

And that’s when I realised I had the ten Euro note. Thank you potato salad.

But that still wasn’t enough. The guy behind the counter doesn’t really know what to do about it, and nor do I. That usual gutty type of panic comes crawling through my intestines right about now. Then I noticed someone else who wanted to pay for his petrol. I let him pay first, since I was still busy trying to find the reset button ON REALITY.

I had no alternative. Sir, may I ask you for a small favour? The guy, middle-eastern, I think, smiles - he noticed my fumbling around and had already realised what was going on. He took five Euros out of his wallet, and gave them to me. Thank you so very much sir, you’re a hero. Thank you ever so much. My hero leaves the shop.

So, it’s either god, or potato salad is sentient. Your call.