Sunday, January 25, 2009

Happy New Year

新年快乐!

Happy Chinese New Year! Welcome to the year of the Ox.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

the [new] smell of gas

over the last few months, vienna seems to have changed the perfume added to it's domestic gas. so it isn't anymore good old sweet [yes, literally] gas smell, but much rather some new rotten flavour smelling like old petroleum lamps. you know what i'm talking about? i hate this new aroma!

and as if that wasn't enough, since a few weeks my toaster has gotten into the habit of emitting the very same smell when it's on. don't ask me where it comes from, but every time i toast bread it smells like there is a gas leak somewhere in my kitchen! hideous!

i want my old gas smell back! now every time i cook and stir, bending over the pot and taking in a deep breath, my lungs are filled with this olfactory insult. ew!

Thursday, January 22, 2009

end of the wintersemester 08/09

time flies.
we've already stumbled quite far into the new year; i realise i've again painfully neglected my dear blog. sorry.

lately, i've been ill. an evil influenza is making it's rounds through europe, and seems to have gotten me, as well. now i'm already better, and almost my age again, but a few days ago i was still 200 years old, with my whole body aching and all that jazz. well, now it is better.

it is thursday evening, and soon there will only be one week left to this semester. that naturally also means there's a lot of exams in the immediate future... 3 chinese exams among them. this saturday, there's the first and biggest chinese exam: the written one. therefore 我很忙,学习汉语。

otherwise, i have new bookshelves since shortly before i became ill. nice wooden ikea ivar shelves. to them, i also moved my tv and hifi system, finally being able to kick out that old tv-bench-thingy those used to stand on, for years now.
it is good to see more of my books nicely put in the new shelves, even though it makes the flat a tad more student like. but yeah, maybe that is even a good thing.

ah, it is the end of the semester. that also means, planning begins for the next semester [which starts with the beginning of march]. apart from continuing being totally and utterly busy with my languages [modern tibetan, classical tibetan, hindi, sanskrit, chinese] there's a few other things i'll probably do.
a professor told us today about two interesting things that'll happen, actually not at our institute but on the sinology, where i need to do some things for my minor subject anyway, which is a) a guest professor holding a lecture about older tibetan history and b) another guest professor holding a lecture about recent socio-political developments between tibet and china in the 20th century. both topics obviously fascinate me a lot.
besides that, there is a wealth of interesting things at our institute. and i'll probably dabble into buddhist logic [pramana] again with another sanskrit text reading, even though i vowed to stay far far away from that topic. well, my teacher said it'd be quite acessible, at least language-wise. so maybe i have more luck this time; and will survive without a brain tumour.

for christmas, my sister gave me piano scores of dustin o'halloran [three of his very beautiful, often melancholic songs where featured on the marie antoinette soundtrack], of which i am currently practicing the second. first, i played opus17 which i now follow with opus23. you should take a look at this very beautiful and fitting video for the song: opus23 [clickyclickyclicky].

hmm, i had other things i wanted to write about, but i forgot those now. ah yes, go and check out: shunya's notes if you don't already. i read it regularly since some time, and it is truly one of the blogs that gives me the most inspiration for thought. another jewel in blog-form is the philosophic and poetic tang dynasty times.

that's it for now. frederik out.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

2009, the first good and the first bad

my first positive emotion of 2009:
the joy of seeing and hearing the beautiful fireworks all around me and all over the city, sending the old year off and away with much blast and noise and welcoming the new with symphonies of colour and light.

my first negative emotion of 2009:
the feeling of my feet, especially my toes, freezing off as i stood and watched the fireworks. sadly, that made me walk home sooner than i wanted, not even half an hour after midnight, while the night was still alight all around me.

how about you, care to share your first good and bad of 2009 with me?