Tuesday, December 12, 2006

dilemma

There is a friend that will spend Christmas alone far away from the family and other friends, and there is a boyfriend who wants to spend Christmas only with me but "if I feel strongly about it I can invite the friend to spend few days with us around Christmas". Inviting the friend means hurting the boyfriend. Not inviting the friend means lonely holidays for him and feeling of guilt for me for a very long time. How to make a right choice?

Saturday, December 2, 2006

Adelaide

I will repeat that at every possible occasion: this is the best hostel in the city. The dorm rooms are not amazing, but the hostel is clean, breakfast is included in the price, you can get here a free coffee and tea whole day long, you meet many exciting people usually being on their world trip, it has a big living room with comfortable couches, books and games and a nice dinning room with a TV.

Social live usually concentrates in the dinning room, where people share their world adventures having some classic movie in the background (e.g. yesterday evening we watched Thelma and Louise, and just now Cocktail). It is a Saturday night in a great city and many people choose to spend their evening here. And I feel pity that I will have to live soon, as we arranged a beer drinking evening for ex-Dresdeners living in SF somewhere out in the city. (Do not get me wrong: Of course I am happy to go out too.)

The hostel also has a wireless internet, which facilitated my flat search and also posting of these blog messages. So if you are ever in SF and for some strange reason do not want to stay with me: go to Adelaide!

Why do I write a blog

It took me some time to think over what I actually think and feel about writing a blog. I know that many people (and amongst them also me) laugh at the idea of having a blog. The apparent paradox is that people often write in their blogs very personal things and do not mind that total strangers can see, read and comment on them, but equally often they would not let their real-life closest friends know that they have a blog (and/or share with them those personal things).

However, I also realized that there are many positive aspects of writing a blog, as writing it makes us reflect on the things that just happened in our lives and analyze them. And by default a self-analysis is a good thing. (And might save us a huge bill from a psychologist/psychoanalyst in the future).

As you know I decided to write a blog as means of updating people who are important to me on the things happening in the SF-chapter of my life. But this initial assumption that the idea behind my blog is to update friends on the proceedings of my life was actually the major hindrance for me to write something for the last two weeks. First, the audience is too wide and diverse (and too undefined), and during my short journalist’s career I learnt that if you want to write well and meaningfully, you have to know to whom you are writing. Second, if all the posts will serve only the purpose of updating others, it will be simply boring, both to you and me.

So I decided to skip the original idea and just start writing to muses and myself, about everything and nothing, and definitely very personal (at least from time to time) as I am not ashamed of anything that I do, think or feel. That means that it might happen that one day you will read here something about yourself that you might not like, or something about me that you would rather not know. In the light of that I would especially like to ask A. and B. to let me know if there are such events from our past that you would not like to have on a public display.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

I love airports

Yesterday I arrived in SF opening a new chapter of my life. Passing through immigration went more smoothly than expected and, as a result, I was out of the gate earlier than planned. Sebastian was not there yet, so I had some time to look around and see what is happening around me. I noticed that there were pretty a lot of people waiting at the arrival's gate with flowers. I was wondering for whom they were waiting and soon the mystery was uncovered: these were the families of immigrants (one from Russia and one from somewhere in Latin America) awaiting their family members to join them in the US. It was very touching to see old Russian grandma kissing her children and grandchildren with tears in her eyes, and them taking photos and filming that as it would be the most important moment in their lives... And I couldn't help but wonder if that would not be Russian but let's say American grandma arriving, if there still would be 30 or so people waiting for her at the airport?

The little differences

I am here only since two days and I already noticed several differences between how things are done here and how they are done back in the old world.
First, at the airport I had some trouble using a public phone. I have no idea what I did wrong but instead of reaching Sebastian on his mobile, I got connected with the operator. But in the end he connected me with Sebastian and I even got my money back, so everything went fine.
Second, food prices are outrages. I had to pay 4,99 U$ for a 100 gram pack of regular cheese and 6,99 U$ for 100 grams of President's Camembert...
Third, everything is low fat or no fat. It is hardly possible to find a yoghurt or milk that would have more than 0,01% fat... Also most chocolates are sugar-free. How can they be the fattest nation in the world with all those dietetic products?
Fourth, the shops are open long hours and also on weekends - yes! yes! yes!
Fifth, there is some kind of system for buying shoes and clothes, which is not perfectly clear to me. It seems that you can not simply take what you like and go to any cashier you like, but that you have to stick to one shop assistant to both help you find what you like and also to charge you the money.
Sixth, it is really annoying that they display prices without tax and in the end you never really know how much you will pay.
Seventh, they have great selection of shoes, bags, clothes and jewelry. Shoes are truly great and not so expensive (as compared to other things), but nice clothes are really expensive. With my unique talent I managed to spot a nice skirt for 850 U$ and an equally nice blouse for 2500 U$.
Eighth, I really enjoy discovering all those tiny little differences...