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| Once upon a time there was Finland. Finland really wanted to be friends with everybody. Germany and Russia fought, but Finland didn't want to take sides. Finland wanted to be friends with both of them regardless of their issues. Try as it may had to avoid being pulled into conflict, Russia just didn't want Finland as a friend. So it asked Finland to do something Finland couldn't possibly do without breaking it's neutrality. Rather than take sides, Finland refused, and Russia attacked Finland. It wasn't easy, but Finland stood it's ground. Germany didn't lift a finger to help Finland. This hurt Finland a lot, seeing as Finland took a great risk standing up to a much stronger Russia, just for the sake of it's friendship with Germany.
But, the worst was over. Or so it seemed, because just as peaceful coexistence between the three involved sides seemed possible, Russia decided to make outrageous demands from Finland yet again, putting Finland in a rather unpleasant situation. In a sense, Finland's neutrality was violated by Russia long before it was attacked. The very act of asking Finland to do something that would jeopardize it's relationship with Germany was an act of aggression, be it disguised in a diplomatic doublespeak.
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So, after some guessing as to what's it is that I have exactly conquered, my answer is simple - nothing yet! I have yet to catch the hearts and minds of our youth with my charm, wit and briliant reporting. But a small step towards that end is me managing to captivate a five-member panel of judges enough to be accepted as a reporter. The nay-sayers can just jump here and get their universe rocked :D. I didn't know that judges will be looking at the tape, and maybe it's better that way - who knows how I would act. On the other hand instinct and adrenaline did kind of take ower - so maybe it would have been just fine. Either way, who says 13 is an unlucky number? And to make it a double victory, well, I'll just have to find a way to capitalize on my newfound fame with that special person that steals my thoughts..
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| when you can't shake your own insecurities and hurt for just long enough to give a damn about other people, the chances of hurting someone increse exponentially*. I like talking. I don't have too much people who I can talk about anything with, and who would listen. I am also very self-concious about my talking - comes from being told to shut up, to be quiet, and that I'm boring way too many times in my early childhood - and I experience someone not wanting to talk to me rather dramatically. you have to realise that it has been used against me as a means of making me unpopular and distancing me from people when I was in school and kindergarden.
I try to be relatively level-headed, and I would think that my friends are aware of it, but this is my weakness - if I'm going to crack over anything it's going to be over you telling me to be quiet or that I'm boring - especially if you do so in an unpleasant way. so if you haven't figured it out yet, now you have it in black and white. like I said, I don't usually turn psycho on a drop of a hat, but it's definitely one of my buttons - press it when I have a bad day, or when it has been pressed too often, and - well, bad things can happen - me shutting down into myself as well as me going into full-scale offencive are the most commmon scenarios.
today, a mix of the two occured. My friend that happens to be a girl arrived for class, and naturally I saved her a seat. but she said that I talk to much, and that she wont sit with me. now, first of all, that is ABSOLUTELY, UNDENIABLY 100% NOT TRUE. at occasion I have talked on class, but I usually pay attention, and keep the talking to a minimum. and she cathegorically refused to sit near me. and that was that. I turned away, sat with someone else, and put my bag in a upright position like a wall between us (this was done half-jockingly since a coleauge did this to her totally unprowoked once - we make fun of that often).
the one time she tried to talk to me I just replied - I talk to much, so I won't talk to you anymore. and then she replied - then I won't talk to you either, not today, not tomorow, not anyday - and we'll just see who's more stubborn. the last thing I said to her was - you really think you can out-pig-head me, you stupid woman? (actually I didn't use stupid woman, I said female head, which is a slightly less derogatory term in serbian).
Now this happened before and it usually ended in five minutes or so. but this time, well, it didn't. I was so caught up in my pride being hurt that I didn't care that there was only one other person she talks to in the entire classroom, and that person was away for half the lecture. I turned my back to her during breaks, and I'm guessing she felt pretty alienated. by the end of the last class I calmed down, and thought I'd catch her on the bus stop and talk it ower. a number of people stoped me to say hi on my way to the bus stop so I missed her. she seemed to leave in quite a hurry, and I can't remember her being silent for the whole day like that. I had no problem since I know a lot of the 'next generation' and I just found other people to talk to.
I was planning on getting her something for her birthday tomorow, but now I think I'll be persona non-grata... and if I had any doubts about weather I hurt her or not, me getting an angry chat from a mutual friend removed it. what an ugly mess...
* - this is a very popular term, allthough missunderstood by many. as a person who has a relative grasp on math I'd like to take the time to explain this to you. this will be by no means interesting or witty. you see, an exponential function (e^x, where x is a variable) is one of the functions whose value reaches infinity the fastest - among elementary funcions offcourse. sure - 9999999999^x reaches infinity much faster, but that's not really a commonly used function - hence there's no name for it :D. So when someone says - increases exponentially - translate it into increases by very much, or in very big steps.
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| As of November 21st, a ten-year
civil war that has been raging in Nepal between one of the last remaining
absolute monarchies and maoist (marxist-leninist) rebels has been ended.
A long-awaited cease-fire put an end to a bloodbath which cost the
lives of some twelve thousand fighters and civilians and the
dislocation of over 150.000 civilians.
The issues that caused the war - the absolute power of the monarch - is
far from resolved, the real negotiations have yet to start. It's expected
that King Gyanendra
will agree to some form of power-sharing, but honestly, I don't expect
anything great in the future of the Nepalese. I really don't envy them
- stuck between a monarch, which, by definition, owns all the land the
lives of all of his subjects - and a group which strives give the very
same absolute power to a select few. Absolute monarchy or Totalitarian
Oligarchy - some choice! War is always sencless, but this one is among
the more futile ones...
At least the fighting has stopped... | | |
| I have this friend that happens to be a girl. She's a classmate. I know her from the first year. And she's a good friend and I LOVE talking to her. She listens, understand and doesn't judge. She's one of the few girls I can talk about games, anime, my internet life and such things without feeling like a geek, and politics and life without feeling like I'm boring her to death. And in both cases, I'm talking WITH her not AT her, she isn't just nodding her head, and praying that I finnish :D. We have this nice combo where we're alike in a lot of aspects (same specialisation - telecomunications; same bad habbits - being late, not studying enough, not studying in time (allthough I'm working on that, and have had good results so far)), we have a lot in common, we both like to talk, we both can and want to listen, and we understand each other.
Quite frankly, I would have a hard time this year if it wasn't for her. We're the two most regular students out of all who repeated the year and chose telecommunications, and all the rest are just casual acquantances. There have been days when she wasn't arround that were really bad. For example: this one time not a single person would sit in the same row as me, let alone beside me - I sat in the third row, and once the first and seccond rows were filled up, people just went on to the fourht and fifth. Tamra was the only one who sat in my row, but she changed her mind, got up and went on to the next one after thirty seconds. I felt down right awful.
This friend of mine is fairly good looking and attractive. Her hair, make-up and clothes are always good, and on more than a couple of occasions she outshined all the rest of the girls - which is not that hard to do, since there are 10 girls in a class of 50 students. Now in my neck of the woods, there's a stereotype for that kind of girl. Usually when a girl invests that much into her apperance, the term 'fancy' is applied to them. It is believed that such girls are really shallow, uneducated, and/or stupid. The sterotype isn't without it's reasons, though. There really is an alarming number of such girls. A casual stroll downtown at more or less any time of day (but especially at night, and especially on weekends) would reveal a lot of girls who don't look old enough to have been alive in the eighties, dressed rather provocatively, out and about, drinking, dating guys twice their size (and probably age) etc. A lot of rather desperate looking girls dressed and acting more or less in the same manner, but at least older, also fall into the cathegory. So you have either high-school girls who don't know jack about jack, and these college dropouts, or even worse girls with less than 12 years of education, whose whole perception of life is dating; mobile phones, cars and other status simbols; music and parties; drinking; and natturally - looking good, that is, looking fancy. A rather shallow and meaningless existance, the byproduct of which is usually an underused and underdeveloped brain.
But the oversimplification of cathegorizing every girl that takes care of her looks as a 'fancy girl' is very wrong. My friend is a good example. The first impression people may get from her is that she's one of those girls. All the signs are there: she looks and dresses good - which must mean that that's the only thing that interests her, she failed a year - which must mean that she's dumb as an ox, she doesn't talk to the others that much - which must mean that she's stuck up. But the reallity is - it's not a sin to look good, in fact, I would consider it a crime for her to let herself go, when she has so much naturall beauty; she is a reasonably inteligent person, she's just lazy - as am I; she wants to have friends, she keeps telling me how not having a girlfriend (a friend that happens to be a girl) is tough on her, but she's simply not the type to make the first move, especially when she thinks she's going to be rejected. And since she thinks that all the other girls see her as a 'fancy girl' she doesn't even try. Now this in itself is really bad, for her. But, it get's worse - for me.
Since I spend a lot of time with her, I'm begining to feel that certain labels are being applied to me. You know, guilt by association.
I know that in my generation certain people had a problem with that. For example, there's this one girl, and when I talked about how I have a hard time making friends and how I felt bad when I didn't have my glasses, she just said: "I dont worry about you - you have .... (insert my friends name here)". What is that supposed to mean? If that was the first such comment I wouldn't be to concerned, but it wasn't. She didn't talk at all with my friend while we were in the same year, and while I tried to be on good terms with more or less everyone, eventually a inner circle of friends formed. These are the people I consider my real friends, and it's only nattural that I spend more time with them. And as the year progressed, I wasn't as present at school - I was either studying or goofing arround - and I lost touch with some of my coleauges. Now that girl might think something like this: "She's a fancy girl, and I'm not, I'm hideous, that's why he spends so much time with her, and ignores me" - and that's the vibe I'm getting from her. And I can't help that - I mean, I always say hi, I always stop and talk to her, whenever it is in my power - I help her out with schoolwork (I'm going over today to explain something for a test she has next week) and that's it - but I don't like talking too much with her, since she isn't really that interesting - quite frankly I don't think she's a person I could discuss music, politics or any serious subject with. And what am I supposed to do? And this isn't the only female student I've gotten that vibe from. But that's their problem. I don't do things which make people feel like they are worth nothing, and I don't go arround causing or exploiting other people's insecurities. But I wont stop talking with my friend, and find some really bad looking girl just to be politically correct. I know why I'm friends with her, and if other people can't be bothered to put their stereotypes and insecurities to sleep for just long enough to find out, then it's THEIR problem.
However, the tables have switched slightly. Failing a year, I got stuck with the next generation. Now they don't seem like such a bad lot, in fact from what litle I saw, I think that they're brighter, more hard working than my generation and those with good grades are not such elitist snobs. But, now I'm forced to make new friends and even worse, I like some of the girls, and my friend migh be draging me down a bit. She commented how she feels that the other girls don't like her, and how she got 'looks' from them. Maybe it's all in her head, but ever since she said it, I can't shake the feeling that maybe she's right. So what if the other girls think that, since I spend so much time with her, I want a girlfriend or a friend like her? Actually I want friends and a g/f like her, but not like they think, it would be nice to have more people to talk with the way I do with her. But they don't see that. All they can see is how she looks. I'm worried that they might think that either I'm not interested or worse - that I'm pethetic: that I like her but am afraid to say and that I taggalong like a leech sucking life because I don't have one of my own. The only possible benefit from that line of thinking is the underdog effect. If they think that I'm shallow and uninterested in them, showing interest, like saying hi for instance, may have a greater effect than if I was perceived as normal. The magic smile might be a result of this. But that would imply that for some reason she dedicated a moment's thought to me, and that doesn't seem to likely...
The guys are even worse. They keep asking stuff like "what's her name", "where does she go out to" and such. There's this one guy from Zrenjanin I know from before - I met him by accident, and sold him some books for the first year, and since he seemed (and proved to be) a descent guy, we hanged out and talked. I think I should spend more time with him... Anyways, the others were making fun of him, saying that he only talks to me so that I would introduce him to my friend. I had to explain on several occasions that I really do know him for a year now. The last time I said something in the lines of: "Yeah right, like a guy like him would need any help with a girl"... I'm proud of that reply - it was an ad-lib, and it managged to shut them up for good, and my friend came out looking cool. It was a really diplomatic answer, I still don't know where I pulled that one out of :D. But the insinuations are really bad. Firstly, implying that the only reason a person could posibly have to talk to me is hurtfull - I'm a person too, I have good traits, and certainly deserve to be talked to on my own marrit, not just becase I know a good looking girl. Also, it shows how clumsy they can be. It seemed perfectly normal to them to make friends with me, in order to meet her, which is stupid. There's 30 of us in class on a regular bassis, they see her every day, she has very litle friends aside from me, why the hell don't they just go and introduce themselves? That's how we became friends - I saw her at a bus stop once, asked if she went to school with me, and introduced my self. If I could do it, so could they. (only problem is I can't seem to do it with the new girls :()
In the end I'm not going to end a friendship just because of what other people might think - that would be really stupid and it's not what friends do. I just wish that things were easier, and that I didn't feel the need to analyze things in such detail...
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