Anthony’s and Steve’s skills are worth a look. They are doing martial art tricks.
PS: Me, I’m doing stretching. No tricks. I’m sad about my physical ability’s disappearance. I can do my stretches, kicks, the whole training, in tight jeans. Because I can’t move better anyway.
I suppose, you’ve got to pay a price for everything.
I like to read my old diaries when I have a little spare-time. Why? To keep the honorable ideas and thoughts of my past alive.
Stupid as that may sound… I’ll try to explain:
I had a great sense of justice and a desire for greatness when I was 16.
I like to pride myself with thinking that I have the same things now… but I think that the yearning for these things was stronger a few yeas ago.
I kept diaries (though I called them notebooks) through my teens, and from time to time I now look through them to recall these feelings of greatness and collective responsibility.
Because now I have far more abilities to make a change for the better. And I will.
The feelings of honor, global responsibility, making a change etc. were stronger then because now my mind is focused on getting my kids through life, cooking, washing, caring for them. Which is a good thing to do.
But I want to teach my kids a certain sense of greatness, too, not only the how-to-struggle-through-everyday-life-thingy. And this is why I recall these „old“ feelings, which are still there, inside myself, but buried underneath more mondane things (paying bills, feeding kids…).
I wouldn’t want my 16 year old me looking at my 23 year old me, thinking „Oh, what a bore, content with these simple little things, plotting what to cook and who to visit.“
I want the 16 year old me looking at my 23 year old me, saying: „I want to be like you. You have the power that I yet lack, and you are doing the things I can only dream of.“
Did I ever tell you that I’m going ot really live all my dreams? Here’s my new one.
My new project is starting my taekwondo school in summer 2010. It will take more than a year to get started with everything: getting insurance, getting a room and so on.. oh, and decorating the room with evil fighting-ninjas/hworang posters… I’m going to enjoy this 
Today I googled for pictures for my decoration. My sense of priorities tends to surprise even me. I have a house full of unpacked boxes, a thesis to write, two kids to take care of – and what am I doing?
PS: Did I ever mention to you, that the comparision of ninjas and hworang is very inadequate?
PPS: I tried to find some homepages catching the philosophy of taekwondo (which, in my opinion, depends more on the teacher than being a general philosophy, at least concerning the way it is taught in Europe). I stumbled across this ingenious sentence (German): „Die traditionelle, kontaktlose Form des Taekwon-Do ist besonders geeignet den eigenen Körper lange gesund zu erhalten.“
Habe beschossen, dass mein Arbeitszimmer (Erdgeschoß, Blick auf die Kirche, vor einer Busstation und einem recht oft benutzen Gehsteig) einstweilen keine Gardinen bekommt. Protestant work ethic at its best.
Ich glaube, dieses Haus wird niemals fertig eingerichtet sein…. Das Chaos wird immer mehr statt weniger.
Das stylishe, aufgeräumte Haus ist wahrscheinlich ein Projekt für meine Pension.
Frag nach der Kuriositäten Abteilung in meiner Bibliothek.
Aufklärungsbücher aus den 1962-ern, französische MAo-Tse-Tung Aussprüche, Kirchenprotokolle über den ersten Prozess gegen eine lesbische Nonne usw. Es ist für jeden was dabei.
WAAAAAAAAAH!
Nur die therapeutische Wirkung des weblog-Schreibens hält mich daovn ab, Amok zu laufen.
A. wollte seine alten wissenschaftlichen Bücher aus seinem Elternhaus für unsere Bibliothek haben. Seine Mutter beauftragt einen Umzugsdienst, der diese zu uns bringen soll. So weit, so gut.
Resultat: 3 Zimmer sind vollgestellt mit Kartons voller Ramsch. Nicht A’s wissenschaftliche Bücher. Alte Bettwäsche, „nur ein bischen“ reparaturbedürftige Sachen (leere Feuerzeuge, zerbrochene Gipsabdrücke von A’s jugendlichen Zähnen, ein Wecker, der nur die Weckzeit 03:00 akzeptiert usw.) Bücher wie „Meditation zu Hause selbst erlernen“ und „Schnäppchen in Österreich 1992″, tonnenweise Staub, Kindersachen, die beiden Kindern nicht mehr passen und nicht zu vergessen ein Burschenschaftsbierkrug mit „Freiheit, Ehre, Vaterland“…. ARGH!
Ich fand Betreuung für beide Kinder, konnte also arbeiten. (09:00-12:30)
Dazwischen ereignete sich folgendes:
09:30, 1. Unterbrechung: Das Baby will eine halbe Stunde lang gestillt werden
10:15: Leute vom Umzugsdient kommen, A. muss ganz dringend für diese Getränke kaufen –> ich mit Baby und Umzugsleuten, dafür ohne Diss.
10:45: erneuter Arbeitsbeginn. Internet funktioniert nicht mehr. Reparieraction, schließlich Anschluss an LAN-Kabel, weil wireless rettungslos verloren ist.
12:15: Universitätsserver verabschiedet sich. (!)
Vier Unterbrechungen von je 10-40 Minuten innerhalb von 3 1/2 Stunden. Statistische Auswertung: Das Schicksal ist gegen diese Arbeit.
Seltsamerweise bin ich trotz allem sehr viel weitergekommen. *boast*
Today my grandmother called. She needs batteries for her watch in the kitchen. She needs them now.
It is always the same thing. She needs everything now. Like it was when she could do things herself.
And after all that she did for me, well, how can I tell her (already crying because this not working watch is more than she can cope with) that I am not doing that now, but later on when C. is back from kindergarten and my office-hours are over. I can’t. This is the simple truth. I can’t tell her that my thesis which makes our income has priority over her stupid watch.
Because I can’t. It would break my heart to tell her who already cries and who dedicated so much of her life to help me that she has to wait for 4 hours to get her needs met.
So: I’m going to leave the house, go get the stupid watch, get batteries for the watch, bring back the working watch and when I return to my office my office hours are over.
I really don’t know what to do about it. Because it happens every second day.
And no one will ever see that I failed with my thesis because I brought up two kids and took care of someone old. No one will care. Because, well, that’s what women do.
Sometimes I’d like to talk to someone else also taking care of old people. But everyone else taking care of old people is, well, 50 plus herself. And they don’t have any plans with their life (or at least so they say. I think it is a downright lie. But they say it, just to feel better. And make me feel worse because I’d have other plans. )…
PS: I returned at 11:30. I have the baby in my office now, and I could try to accomplish some scientific work… no, too late. The baby already woke up.
It’s always the same thing. I always end up doing everything else and not accomplishing my thesis-work because no one takes it seriously because, hey, I have a flexible time-schedule. You know what? I think fixed hours outside the house would be better for my time-management. Also for our health care (Now C. has health-care, but baby-A. doesn’t. And A. doesn’t). I’m seriously thinking about quitting with this stupid, underpaid flexible-time thing and go get some 40hours/week job which at least provides health-care for all (and a little more money).
I got this from McC’s and added one question.
Of all your favorite foods, which one would you find the most difficult to give up for the rest of your life?
Kärntner Nudeln (Carinthian noodles). A dish consisting of pasta, Topfen (some kind of cheese unknown to most of my readers… resembles ricotta) and fresh mint.
Which month of the year do you think best describes your personality? August. This warm sun, the crop in the field and a hundred things to do. This smell of being home.
If you could be a contestant on any game show, past or present, which show would you pick?
I don’t watch game shows, but Takeshi’s castle (which I haven’t ever seen) sound like fun to me.
If you had 500 000 dollars/Euro what would you invest in (note: not „spend“, invest): I’d invest half the money in real estate, just to have some security and constant income. With the other half I’d try to finance my two pet-projects.
I’d try to found my union for young academics. You know, get a nice office, be able to pay two secretaries and three lawyers with this team try to fight this unjustice of unpaid „work experience“ (just one example amongst these things that really-really suck).
And I’d try to do something alike to momsrising.org in Austria. A pressure group promoting rights of mothers. Because equal payment is still much of an issue for Austrian moms. And work-life-balance is just a word.
(I’d use the same team on both projects, and we’d accomplish a lot of things for sure.
