As tightly packed as weekends get

This weekend has been... interesting. In more ways than one.

Let me start with Friday evening. I had a meet-up with 8 of my Introduction to Informatics students. I went a bit early so I could have a quick lunch before the others arrived. And I met D. on the way and she joined me for a quick cup of tea.

The meetup itself was also quite enjoyable - as most students already knew each other and so could talk pretty freely and on quite a wide range of topics, ranging from schoolwork to economic theory behind money. However the conversation was intermittently interrupted by a drunk russian man sitting right behind me, who kept knocking on my shoulder and just plain yelling behind us. And this was in TsinkPlekkPang, which is usually a very calm establishment where people do not come to get drunk. Anyways, towards the end of the meeting, the security firm sent two guards over, who in turn called the police and handed the guy over to them.

I then headed for home. M. had sent me an SMS asking when I would get back, to which I had replied soon. But that was half an hour before I actually headed back from the center, and she wasn't picking up her cell so I was kind of worried she would arrive back before I would. Thankfully, that was not quite the case.

Close call though. She arrived just as I had searched all my pockets and concluded that I did not have keys to my front door. Thankfully, my flatmate Mi. was still there and came down to let us in. Since none of us had had a full meal during the day, I cooked up Rice and heated up the Dahl I had from my birthday party two days prior. Mi. left soon and left the two of us alone.

We actually got to sleep pretty early. 1-ish, I think. I had to get up pretty early though, since I needed to go to work to fetch my lost keys before going on a bus to Tallinn to meet an ex-classmate of mine for a cup of coffee.

Everything went smoothly and I even managed to grab the latest issue of "Tarkade klubi" (with my story in it) along with a quick banana pancake before meeting my friend. We then talked for nearly 3 hours, mainly about the different ways that people can match each-other.

In the psychopathology course, the lecturer noticed that a person can be analyzed based on their intellectual, social, emotional and physical age - all of which may be markedly different. And the same four axes seemed to be a good fit to describe the different ways people can match eachother, although, of course, they need to adjusted somewhat:

Intellectual - you can have interesting conversations. Verbal and conscious understanding of others also seems to fit here best.
Social - you hang in the same social circles, have a common cultural background, have about the same status etc.
Emotional - the intuitive, unconscious understanding of the other. Things that you know, yet find impossible to verbalize.
Physical - the "animal magnetism", or pure physical attraction to the other person.

Ideally, you would of course want all four. But this is often impossible. However, I argued that for different people, different aspects have different priorities. The said friend, for instance, places fairly high emphasis on the intellectual side, and yet also yearns for the emotional closeness, which the intellectual side often makes hard to find. Can't say I don't understand her - as I am, or at least used to be quite similar..

The thought came out of the fact that she basically met her soulmate, but not in Estonia but far off in the USA. To which I replied that yes, the culture does play a role, but the deeper level connections are a lot more important most of the time... and that M. (who is by far the closest thing to a soulmate I have yet to meet) also has a very different background from me.

At around 2 a'clock we said our goodbyes as I was picked up by my Limping Wolf friends. We headed for our annual feast of medieval foods. Mostly meat, of course, so there was not all that much for me, but I did not go starving either.

Preparing the fish was quite interesting. A. asked me to help out. She handed me stuff and I had to pour it out on a frying pan. Here is the list of ingredients:
2 x 0.5 l beers
0.125 l bottle of wine vinegar
10 tbls parcelly
A few other spices...

Well, for 4 kg of fish it is okay, but still.. I asked for confirmation thrice on the wine vinegar... Still, thats medieval cooking for you.

Also, another confirmation to how small Estonia is. There was a doctor in the company.. who I had seen at medieval reenactment events before. However, when I mentioned homeopathy and she sighed and asked me not to discuss it any further as she works with two GP-s who really like prescribing the stuff, I realized I had actually seen her as a patient as well - as she works in the same center as my GP (who, yes, is a huge fan of homeopathy... which I am not too happy about, tbh). But yes, I remember the visit and I remember her from the events but these were so separate domains for me it took me a pretty direct hint to connect the dots. She did not remember me as a patient, though. Which is mildly strange since my dreads make me pretty memorable for most people.

In any case, the event was quite fun. I don't really do reenactment any more, but I like the people at the club and so I still hang out every now and then. And I'm not the only person there who does that.

I got to my moms place at around 1 and headed straight to bed and fell to sleep immediately. The short night I had had before made it pretty easy. I woke at around 10 and helped my mom with her accounting application, and also caught the first episode of "Rakett 69" on TV (that had two of my friends there).

I then headed to K.O. for what I hoped would be a very enjoyable 3 hours. Roughly, it was - as I had agreed to meet another friend of mine as well in the evening. But by that time, the conversation had gotten so interesting that I left my laptop as a hostage and promised to come back later in the evening, to hang out, watch a movie and talk some more.

And that is what I did, eventually, but before I walked over to another ex-classmate of mine to check out her new flat... which was nice. They were still moving, but the apartment was already very nice, even without all the extra stuff. At some point, her boyfriend also showed up.. whom I saw for the second time, despite them having been together for well over a year by now.

They introduced me to a game called "Plants and Zombies". Seriously, this thing is addictive.. I spent over an hour playing it, I think... not good.

They then gave me a lift back to K.O. - who had invited two of her friends over. Initially the plan was to watch the movie with them, but as they had to leave early for work the next day, they opted out, so by 1 a.m. it was just the two of us. So we watched the movie.. which was meant as a deep and serious philosophical movie, but ended up as a comedy for the two of us. And then stayed up until 5-ish, just talking about stuff. Which was very nice. Again, the soulmate topic was somewhat central, but it was nice to have a semioticists take on the matter.

Waking up the next morning at 9.30 to go catch a bus back to Tartu was not that nice, however. Neverthelss, I had no choice as I had to go give an exam to my ItoI students. Ah well, I can sleep on thursday, once I have more-or-less finished with my academic duties...