Despite it actually being Tuesday. Mainly because yesterday, it felt like a Sunday.
Anyways, it was a good Monday. I woke up fairly early, to catch a bus to Tallinn. Got some work done on the bus (on an e-learning manual I was asked to help with).
While sitting in a bus in Tallin, an ex classmate of mine rode by me on her bike and waved. I waved back. That was a nice coincidence.
In Tallinn, I had a doctor's appointment, because I thought I had an ear infection. The doctor confirmed my suspicions, but said it was an ear canal problem (as opposed to inner ear) and should clear up on its own. When I told her about feeling tired all the time, she said it was normal, with the heat and the time differential and the coffee I have been drinking.
After getting to my mom's, I had to run a few errands - first go and buy a gift for my first cousin and then to return some books for my mom. That took about 2 hours, after which I got back just in time to catch a ride to that said first cousin's birthday.
The birthday was, like most of our family gatherings, somewhat ackward. Since no-one really had anything to talk about with the others, people just complained, either about their own lives or about the food (which was, in their defense, a bit undercooked in some cases). My cousin made occasional snyde remarks on these topics, but it seems that sarcasm is something that is beyond most of my relatives. I enjoyed it though - and a healthy dose of it does come in handy in situations like these.
I gave him the book "Games people play" - probably one of the most sensible practical psychology books out there.. at least a fun read, if nothing else. I bought one copy for myself too.
About the preceeding week.. or rather, preceeding two weeks... I would like to quote Metallica:
"Careful what you wish, you may regret it;
Careful what you wish, you just might get it".
If anything, I have only come to realize just how screwed up I really am.
But, well, at least now I know what I should be dealing with :)
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Smiley face
I have done next to nothing since the last blog posting. Watched the first season of "How I met your mother", one episode of Firefly, quite a few movies and.. yes, that is pretty much it.
Well, actually, a bit more, to be honest.
Firstly, one night, I walk out of my apartment and see that the intersection next to my house is guarded by soldiers with machine guns who seem to be carrying out an operation. The guy with the machine gun does not seem to take notice of civilians though.. so I simply walk past him - a very strange experience, to say the very least.
Met David, a friend of D. who is currently here for a month learning Estonian. Nice guy, plays guitar quite well. Also, had a chat with D. and borrowed her a couple of books.
Most importantly, however, met L. - a very cute and interesting girl. Mainly been hanging out with her and one of her friends (who is also a friend of D.) for the past 3 days. Just hanging out, watching movies, playing guitar hero and so on. And it has been a lot of fun. Unbelievably so, actually.
Well, actually, a bit more, to be honest.
Firstly, one night, I walk out of my apartment and see that the intersection next to my house is guarded by soldiers with machine guns who seem to be carrying out an operation. The guy with the machine gun does not seem to take notice of civilians though.. so I simply walk past him - a very strange experience, to say the very least.
Met David, a friend of D. who is currently here for a month learning Estonian. Nice guy, plays guitar quite well. Also, had a chat with D. and borrowed her a couple of books.
Most importantly, however, met L. - a very cute and interesting girl. Mainly been hanging out with her and one of her friends (who is also a friend of D.) for the past 3 days. Just hanging out, watching movies, playing guitar hero and so on. And it has been a lot of fun. Unbelievably so, actually.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Life is.. life
At least things are finally unambiguous with M. Only wish it would have happened a bit sooner so I had better circumstances under which to deal with it. Like Australia.
Not that what I currently have is bad or anything. Submitted the camera-ready version today and looked over the code I wrote in Denmark with Dan. Then got home to cook Seitan and watch three episodes of "How I met your mother". Then met up with Riinu and watched a movie with her. Then went for a swim with A. at roughly half to one at night. That was also fun, considering we hadn't talked for over half a year.
All in all, not too bad of a day. Still feel a bit shabby, though. But that will pass. What happened is actually for the better. It will just take some time to set in.
Not that what I currently have is bad or anything. Submitted the camera-ready version today and looked over the code I wrote in Denmark with Dan. Then got home to cook Seitan and watch three episodes of "How I met your mother". Then met up with Riinu and watched a movie with her. Then went for a swim with A. at roughly half to one at night. That was also fun, considering we hadn't talked for over half a year.
All in all, not too bad of a day. Still feel a bit shabby, though. But that will pass. What happened is actually for the better. It will just take some time to set in.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Nobody listens to Folk music
Well, except in Estonia, apparently, where Folk festivals are hugely popular. The biggest one is in Viljandi, held for 4 days. This year it had a theme "It's going to be a dance".
So, I got quite a bit of dancing in. Still a bit tired from it, even after two days... although, there may well be some residual tiredness left from my Australia trip.
Anyways, some things that I remember:
I got to dance waltz again after about 12 years of pause.. as a part of one of Latvian folk dances.
Saw a girl that was 1 cm taller than me during the Zetod concert. I stood right behind her and could measure.. I bet the people behind the two of us were quite pissed, though :P
Between two concerts, I (by accident) sat next to a very nice girl who seemed to be drawing something - looking towards the dance field where nothing seemed to stay still for long enough to actually be drawn. We exchanged a few words and then had a few dances. She was very cute :=)
Crazy Russian group Otava Yo who had a very energetic stage presence and music to go along with it. Sadly, the concert had no room for dancing because it was packed so full of people.
Everywhere the concerts were being videotaped - by girls - and fairly cute ones at that. Camera girl is the new weather girl?
Old friends and acquitances you meet, of course. Especially memorable was the scene of Annika and Richard arriving with their dinner and sharing some of it with me, at the last concert of the day. That was very sweet of them :)
So, I got quite a bit of dancing in. Still a bit tired from it, even after two days... although, there may well be some residual tiredness left from my Australia trip.
Anyways, some things that I remember:
I got to dance waltz again after about 12 years of pause.. as a part of one of Latvian folk dances.
Saw a girl that was 1 cm taller than me during the Zetod concert. I stood right behind her and could measure.. I bet the people behind the two of us were quite pissed, though :P
Between two concerts, I (by accident) sat next to a very nice girl who seemed to be drawing something - looking towards the dance field where nothing seemed to stay still for long enough to actually be drawn. We exchanged a few words and then had a few dances. She was very cute :=)
Crazy Russian group Otava Yo who had a very energetic stage presence and music to go along with it. Sadly, the concert had no room for dancing because it was packed so full of people.
Everywhere the concerts were being videotaped - by girls - and fairly cute ones at that. Camera girl is the new weather girl?
Old friends and acquitances you meet, of course. Especially memorable was the scene of Annika and Richard arriving with their dinner and sharing some of it with me, at the last concert of the day. That was very sweet of them :)
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Games people play - and what to do about them
Ever met someone who stubbornly refuses to admit to whatever he is doing? Annoying, isn't it. Also works magic, most of the time, because as long as you do not understand what it is you are doing wrong, you cannot be expected to change it.
Thomas Schelling, one of the people we can blame for not having a nuclear war just yet, had some pretty good insights into the topic, though. Looked at the proper level of abstraction, of course. I will also be relying on some insights from Eric Berne. Both were geniuses. They clearly had to be.
Essentially, what the person is doing is self-handicapping. Something that can indeed work wonders in a game of war, or business negotiations and of course, in intrapersonal communications. Essentially, it forces the other party to play a restricted game, which is probably not in his favor.
So, of course, the only real solution is to change the game to be more even again. This is fairly easy, if you have something that you can use to credibly punish the person for his transgressions - you just start doing that and pretty soon he will realize that it is not in his best interest to act in that way... and stop.
This, of course, assuming a repeated game. Otherwise, the best you can do is make a threat of punishment and hope he believes it.
However, it is often very hard to make a credible threat. Much of Schelling's "Strategy of conflict" deals with just that fact - and describes how it is often required to severely handicap yourself in order to make the threat credible.
An example due to Schelling himself - if you want to buy a car and are willing to go no higher than 50 000 but the dealer's last bid is 70 000 (but you know 50 000 would still give him profit), you can try signing a legally binding contract with a friend stating that if you buy that car for more than 50 000, you have to also pay your friend the same amount. This, in effect, takes away any possibility of you paying over 50 000 dollars - in a completely demonstrable and provable way that is evident to the car dealer. He will feel cheated, but might still sell you the car.
Not that drastic measures are needed everywhere, though. The point to take home is that credible threats can be notoriously hard to muster and can be very weird and contrived in some cases.
Now, suppose however that the only threat that you can really make is the one you cannot commit to in an at all believable way... or that if carrying out that threat will essentially leave you in so terribly bad state the other party will never believe you are willing to carry it out. Think nuclear war here.. or suicide... or telling a person you love you will never talk with her again. Essentially, something so bad that you just cannot make its consequences any worse for yourself even if you wanted to.
Although Schelling considered cases in which carrying out a threat makes you worse off than you are and showed that there are definitely cases when such threats work, the key point is you have to be able to commit to that. In cases where you can't...
Well, then, you're fucked.
Thankfully, humans are not completely rational beings. This is where Berne and his idea of people constantly playing games with each other comes to play. Namely, most people just play to win and it is often enough to just take away that joy of victory for them to stop. Which sounds a big no for empty threats because you will be called on it and it will amount to one big win to the other party. One that will keep him coming back.
You can of course try to make a threat and stick to it.. but hell, if it literally or figuratively kills you.. face it, you will be called on it and then have to die:P
Now, as stated initially, calling the other person on his game directly will not help - since he is playing that he does not acknowledge it is a game, saying he is playing it (which I believe Berne to advocate) does not take away his victory because he does not have to admit to you being right.
Albert Ellis (the creator of Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy) was the person to figure things out, though. And the solution is supposedly surprisingly simple - just replace the verbal acknowledgment with a physical one - as purely behavioral cues often work better than rational ones. Theoretically, the other person is robbed of his victory without having anything to really argue against. Especially if you have set the rules beforehand saying that the "physical acknowledgment" is o.k. in certain well-specified circumstances. And it doesn't even have to be much - a weak slap to the face with a folded paper works miracles on both puppies and humans, at least according to Ellis.
Works especially well in cases where the penultimate threat is "I will never speak to you again" - because then you can just set the terms in a way that "this is how I will act when you do the things I have specified." The person can always choose not to interact with you any more, if he wants to - so this doubles nicely as a commitment to "never talking", as it will now be the other party who would have to worry about carrying it out, taking the burden right off your shoulders :)
It helps to have friends who study psychology. It also helps to study enough yourself to be able to understand that their seemingly ludicrous suggestions actually have a fair chance of working.
And Schelling is just a good general read ;)
Thomas Schelling, one of the people we can blame for not having a nuclear war just yet, had some pretty good insights into the topic, though. Looked at the proper level of abstraction, of course. I will also be relying on some insights from Eric Berne. Both were geniuses. They clearly had to be.
Essentially, what the person is doing is self-handicapping. Something that can indeed work wonders in a game of war, or business negotiations and of course, in intrapersonal communications. Essentially, it forces the other party to play a restricted game, which is probably not in his favor.
So, of course, the only real solution is to change the game to be more even again. This is fairly easy, if you have something that you can use to credibly punish the person for his transgressions - you just start doing that and pretty soon he will realize that it is not in his best interest to act in that way... and stop.
This, of course, assuming a repeated game. Otherwise, the best you can do is make a threat of punishment and hope he believes it.
However, it is often very hard to make a credible threat. Much of Schelling's "Strategy of conflict" deals with just that fact - and describes how it is often required to severely handicap yourself in order to make the threat credible.
An example due to Schelling himself - if you want to buy a car and are willing to go no higher than 50 000 but the dealer's last bid is 70 000 (but you know 50 000 would still give him profit), you can try signing a legally binding contract with a friend stating that if you buy that car for more than 50 000, you have to also pay your friend the same amount. This, in effect, takes away any possibility of you paying over 50 000 dollars - in a completely demonstrable and provable way that is evident to the car dealer. He will feel cheated, but might still sell you the car.
Not that drastic measures are needed everywhere, though. The point to take home is that credible threats can be notoriously hard to muster and can be very weird and contrived in some cases.
Now, suppose however that the only threat that you can really make is the one you cannot commit to in an at all believable way... or that if carrying out that threat will essentially leave you in so terribly bad state the other party will never believe you are willing to carry it out. Think nuclear war here.. or suicide... or telling a person you love you will never talk with her again. Essentially, something so bad that you just cannot make its consequences any worse for yourself even if you wanted to.
Although Schelling considered cases in which carrying out a threat makes you worse off than you are and showed that there are definitely cases when such threats work, the key point is you have to be able to commit to that. In cases where you can't...
Well, then, you're fucked.
Thankfully, humans are not completely rational beings. This is where Berne and his idea of people constantly playing games with each other comes to play. Namely, most people just play to win and it is often enough to just take away that joy of victory for them to stop. Which sounds a big no for empty threats because you will be called on it and it will amount to one big win to the other party. One that will keep him coming back.
You can of course try to make a threat and stick to it.. but hell, if it literally or figuratively kills you.. face it, you will be called on it and then have to die:P
Now, as stated initially, calling the other person on his game directly will not help - since he is playing that he does not acknowledge it is a game, saying he is playing it (which I believe Berne to advocate) does not take away his victory because he does not have to admit to you being right.
Albert Ellis (the creator of Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy) was the person to figure things out, though. And the solution is supposedly surprisingly simple - just replace the verbal acknowledgment with a physical one - as purely behavioral cues often work better than rational ones. Theoretically, the other person is robbed of his victory without having anything to really argue against. Especially if you have set the rules beforehand saying that the "physical acknowledgment" is o.k. in certain well-specified circumstances. And it doesn't even have to be much - a weak slap to the face with a folded paper works miracles on both puppies and humans, at least according to Ellis.
Works especially well in cases where the penultimate threat is "I will never speak to you again" - because then you can just set the terms in a way that "this is how I will act when you do the things I have specified." The person can always choose not to interact with you any more, if he wants to - so this doubles nicely as a commitment to "never talking", as it will now be the other party who would have to worry about carrying it out, taking the burden right off your shoulders :)
It helps to have friends who study psychology. It also helps to study enough yourself to be able to understand that their seemingly ludicrous suggestions actually have a fair chance of working.
And Schelling is just a good general read ;)
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
I am one of those, melodramatic fools, neurotic to the bone, no doubt about it
Green Day is the thing that is most strongly tied with Australia for me. Maybe it is because they play them in the radio here quite often. Or maybe something even more. But "Basket case" is the appropriate song with which to end this series of posts.
This post is going to be about the things I left out in the previous posts. Personal revelations and realizations that have come to me during these two weeks and the like.
Firstly, some of you have probably noticed that since "New York City Boy", all the posts have been titled with song lyrics. Songs I used to like at one time or another. Depressing songs, mostly. Followed up with a fairly upbeat blog post. In some sense, this is my way of dealing with some of my past demons. Or current ones, in some other cases. I will not deny that a few nights here it got somewhat bad again. Lonelyness, hopelessness, despair and everything that comes with the three.
I would, of course like to blame it all on M. and say I still have very strong feelings for her. Nearly a year now. At least once a day, usually a bit more often. Pretty bad, huh?
However, I know that is not really the case. I do have a lot of history with her, and I do have feelings for her, but in most cases, it is not me missing her so much as me just needing someone to be close to -- mentally more than physically - and things that remind me of her (a lot of these lying around) also reminding me of that fact. Automatic thinking. Should put an end to that.
Moving on.
Most of us act in a way so as to earn the most respect from the people we ourselves respect the most. The "inner circle" of friends, or family. Most of us will also try to deny that and say they act by some higher moral code or by their inner sense of self or.. whatever. But that amounts to pretty much the same thing in most cases - as such people usually still interact with people who also act by the same principles. Chicken and egg problem and I will not get into the argument which comes first - principles to act by or friends who respect that you act by these. All I am saying is that in the end, most people end up acting so as to be liked and respected by their closest friends.
Now comes an interesting question though: what do you do if you have no inner circle of friends nor any strong and strict moral belief system to tell you what is right and wrong? Or if you are part of two circles whose views on many things are quite conflicting?
Enter me.
I really have noone to reliably set my good-bad compass for. So I interpolate from the few friends I respect the most.
I wish.
Anyways, all of us have achievements. For some, it is stuff like completing a PhD in 2.5 years. For others, it is having consumed 20 beers one night and still walked home. People who respect the first rarely respect the second.. and vice versa. Indeed, one thing I found here was that amongst backpackers, noone gives a damn if you had a PhD or how quickly you finished it. Conversation slides over it without anyone even noticing.
Playing your own game vs letting the other guy beat you at his. My main "problem" is I usually go along with other peoples games as I am not too interested in winning.. but losing also sucks bad.
Proper reaction to "I once drank 20 beers" is not "wow, cool" but "Do you think of your liver? Do you want to die of hepatitis before you hit 30?". One does make more enemies that way though. Not much less friends though, because do I really want friends who boast about their drinking habits?
Well, except I have done that a few times too (with 9 shots of tequila.. which was fun).. just to show some people I too have tried alcohol so am not as "uncool" as I may first seem.
Trouble is, though, I could spend years trying to catch up to people who spent their youth playing sports, drinking with friends and dating girls. Its pretty absurd to assume it would take me much less time to get good at these things than it did them. I have other strengths though. My ability to think.. or work hard.. or hold a steady job.
Which is another important point. Many "cool" people are on social welfare, students or are working one odd job after another. This type of lifestyle allows for much cooler stuff to happen to you than keeping a regular job.. but I think the latter is equally hard if not moreso - it takes resources, which others can easily locate to other stuff. Should we really idolize people who make one stupid decision after another?
Because, lets face it, stupid decisions always lead to better stories and always seem to "teach" us more. Usually they teach us to try a similar thing again though, because if things worked out once, theyll probably work out the second time too - you just have to change the details enough to make it hard to understand that the same thing is being done again.. and again.. and again.
And it is not actually about what you really did, but how you tell it. Coming back from the first rafting trip, there was this very cute Swiss girl on the raft. On the first bus back, we got talking a little and I mentioned I had studied french for 8 years.. she smiled nicely but then the conversation moved on. In the second bus, she was sitting next to a danish guy from the other raft and I overheared their conversation. He got a pretty similar positive effect with her by mentioning he knew just three words of french. One has to capitalize on what one has.
Biggest losers are usually also the biggest loudmouths - they have little, but they know how to use that little pretty damn well. After all, it is just a matter of forcing the other person to play by your rules - I did these things and these things define a person as cool. Done well enough, this premise is accepted without critique and the person indeed becomes cool in the eyes of the other person. But in reality, it is just good salesmanship.
Everyone reading this - think about how often has it happenned that you feel inferior to someone you have been talking to for a few minutes to a few hours. This is how it is done, by the way.
Over the course of the past two weeks, I have done a bunch of stupid things, stories of which I could live on for the rest of my life, if I really wanted to. And it has been tremendously fun. And not nearly as stupid as I first thought some of these things would have been. Furthermore, I now realize how cool some of the other stuff has been that I have done before in my life...
With my experiences over the past half a year, I now also have enough context to understand other peoples stories about drinking, partying and travelling... and give them due respect rather than over-idealizing them.
Should come in handy.
Another thing I have had a brush with is authenticity and masks. It is very easy to keep another person at a safe distance. Hold up a polite but fairly empty conversation, either about mundane or abstract matters.
However - it is hard to actually be authentic. To look a person in the eye and say that this topic is not interesting to you, but that you would instead like to know about something deep and profound within or about him. You know, go one step further.
Normally, the "one step further" thing just happens with people with whom it "feels right". But if a person is just very shy and likes holding up the polite barrier just for self-defence, he may well never get a chance to have an authentic covnersation. For these cases, a touch of brutal but caring honesty may come in handy. Or, well, there are of course less brutal ways of doing it, as any therapist worth their salt will tell you.
Might make for a bit more meaningful relationships.
So to sum up:
a) Direction is important in life. Be wary of how it is formed.
b) Most of my pain is due to automatic thoughts that tie M. directly with loneliness. Watch for it and make it stop.
c) Learn how to sell what you have well and to scrutinize what the others are actually selling.
d) Authenticity might be a good idea. As with everything, practice makes perfect.
Now to go and put all of that into practice.
This post is going to be about the things I left out in the previous posts. Personal revelations and realizations that have come to me during these two weeks and the like.
Firstly, some of you have probably noticed that since "New York City Boy", all the posts have been titled with song lyrics. Songs I used to like at one time or another. Depressing songs, mostly. Followed up with a fairly upbeat blog post. In some sense, this is my way of dealing with some of my past demons. Or current ones, in some other cases. I will not deny that a few nights here it got somewhat bad again. Lonelyness, hopelessness, despair and everything that comes with the three.
I would, of course like to blame it all on M. and say I still have very strong feelings for her. Nearly a year now. At least once a day, usually a bit more often. Pretty bad, huh?
However, I know that is not really the case. I do have a lot of history with her, and I do have feelings for her, but in most cases, it is not me missing her so much as me just needing someone to be close to -- mentally more than physically - and things that remind me of her (a lot of these lying around) also reminding me of that fact. Automatic thinking. Should put an end to that.
Moving on.
Most of us act in a way so as to earn the most respect from the people we ourselves respect the most. The "inner circle" of friends, or family. Most of us will also try to deny that and say they act by some higher moral code or by their inner sense of self or.. whatever. But that amounts to pretty much the same thing in most cases - as such people usually still interact with people who also act by the same principles. Chicken and egg problem and I will not get into the argument which comes first - principles to act by or friends who respect that you act by these. All I am saying is that in the end, most people end up acting so as to be liked and respected by their closest friends.
Now comes an interesting question though: what do you do if you have no inner circle of friends nor any strong and strict moral belief system to tell you what is right and wrong? Or if you are part of two circles whose views on many things are quite conflicting?
Enter me.
I really have noone to reliably set my good-bad compass for. So I interpolate from the few friends I respect the most.
I wish.
Anyways, all of us have achievements. For some, it is stuff like completing a PhD in 2.5 years. For others, it is having consumed 20 beers one night and still walked home. People who respect the first rarely respect the second.. and vice versa. Indeed, one thing I found here was that amongst backpackers, noone gives a damn if you had a PhD or how quickly you finished it. Conversation slides over it without anyone even noticing.
Playing your own game vs letting the other guy beat you at his. My main "problem" is I usually go along with other peoples games as I am not too interested in winning.. but losing also sucks bad.
Proper reaction to "I once drank 20 beers" is not "wow, cool" but "Do you think of your liver? Do you want to die of hepatitis before you hit 30?". One does make more enemies that way though. Not much less friends though, because do I really want friends who boast about their drinking habits?
Well, except I have done that a few times too (with 9 shots of tequila.. which was fun).. just to show some people I too have tried alcohol so am not as "uncool" as I may first seem.
Trouble is, though, I could spend years trying to catch up to people who spent their youth playing sports, drinking with friends and dating girls. Its pretty absurd to assume it would take me much less time to get good at these things than it did them. I have other strengths though. My ability to think.. or work hard.. or hold a steady job.
Which is another important point. Many "cool" people are on social welfare, students or are working one odd job after another. This type of lifestyle allows for much cooler stuff to happen to you than keeping a regular job.. but I think the latter is equally hard if not moreso - it takes resources, which others can easily locate to other stuff. Should we really idolize people who make one stupid decision after another?
Because, lets face it, stupid decisions always lead to better stories and always seem to "teach" us more. Usually they teach us to try a similar thing again though, because if things worked out once, theyll probably work out the second time too - you just have to change the details enough to make it hard to understand that the same thing is being done again.. and again.. and again.
And it is not actually about what you really did, but how you tell it. Coming back from the first rafting trip, there was this very cute Swiss girl on the raft. On the first bus back, we got talking a little and I mentioned I had studied french for 8 years.. she smiled nicely but then the conversation moved on. In the second bus, she was sitting next to a danish guy from the other raft and I overheared their conversation. He got a pretty similar positive effect with her by mentioning he knew just three words of french. One has to capitalize on what one has.
Biggest losers are usually also the biggest loudmouths - they have little, but they know how to use that little pretty damn well. After all, it is just a matter of forcing the other person to play by your rules - I did these things and these things define a person as cool. Done well enough, this premise is accepted without critique and the person indeed becomes cool in the eyes of the other person. But in reality, it is just good salesmanship.
Everyone reading this - think about how often has it happenned that you feel inferior to someone you have been talking to for a few minutes to a few hours. This is how it is done, by the way.
Over the course of the past two weeks, I have done a bunch of stupid things, stories of which I could live on for the rest of my life, if I really wanted to. And it has been tremendously fun. And not nearly as stupid as I first thought some of these things would have been. Furthermore, I now realize how cool some of the other stuff has been that I have done before in my life...
With my experiences over the past half a year, I now also have enough context to understand other peoples stories about drinking, partying and travelling... and give them due respect rather than over-idealizing them.
Should come in handy.
Another thing I have had a brush with is authenticity and masks. It is very easy to keep another person at a safe distance. Hold up a polite but fairly empty conversation, either about mundane or abstract matters.
However - it is hard to actually be authentic. To look a person in the eye and say that this topic is not interesting to you, but that you would instead like to know about something deep and profound within or about him. You know, go one step further.
Normally, the "one step further" thing just happens with people with whom it "feels right". But if a person is just very shy and likes holding up the polite barrier just for self-defence, he may well never get a chance to have an authentic covnersation. For these cases, a touch of brutal but caring honesty may come in handy. Or, well, there are of course less brutal ways of doing it, as any therapist worth their salt will tell you.
Might make for a bit more meaningful relationships.
So to sum up:
a) Direction is important in life. Be wary of how it is formed.
b) Most of my pain is due to automatic thoughts that tie M. directly with loneliness. Watch for it and make it stop.
c) Learn how to sell what you have well and to scrutinize what the others are actually selling.
d) Authenticity might be a good idea. As with everything, practice makes perfect.
Now to go and put all of that into practice.
Fully loaded, we've got snacks and supplies
I woke up at around 6.30. At this point it was light outside so I could take a closer look at the booth I was sleeping in and the ones next to it. They were all for boat tours on the river, main attraction being, of course, crocodiles.
The first boats were set to leave at 9.30 so I figured I could probably sleep for about an hour more without anyone coming to disturb me. Nevertheless, I knew that ferry had started running at 6 already so I thought I would try hitchiking again.
No luck for 2 and a half hours.. not that many cars passing by at that time of day. I had started reading a book on the side and was making good progress with that though. Nevertheless, I figured it was good time for a break so I walked up to one of the booths and asked about the tour. 20 bucks for 1 hour and 15 minutes of tour... Seemed reasonable, especially considering they were also serving coffe to the clients - which I quite badly needed at that point.
The tour was well worth the money. I got to see 4 crocodiles in the wild.. including a big fat 4 meter dominant male ("Fat Albert") and about a year-old baby croc hiding in the plants on the riverbank.
Now for some interesting facts about crocodiles. Males keep growing all their lieves. The largest male found in Australia was 8.5 m long (i.e. about the length of my appartment). Females usually grow to 3.5 m and then stop. Other than growth, it is pretty hard to tell males and females apart (besides literally taking a finger to their privates). The scales on the back are like tree trunks in the sense that if you cut one off, you can count the growth rings to get the age of the croc.. along with info about which years were good to him and which were not.Crocodiles are cannibals. Dominant males sometimes let young males set up their territories within theirs because they can then be counted to be there on the bad years where they then constitute a good meal. Chances of a newly hatched croc making it to maturity are about 1 in 50 - most just get eaten, either by sharks, eagles or other crocs. During colder months, crocs eat just once a week or even less often. They live to be about 80 and mature at around 25 - quite like humans. They have very good senses of sight, smell, hearing and vibration sensitivity (to detect ripples in the water) and use all four to hunt. They are also quite intelligent, remmembering patterns (i.e. stopping to let a ferry past). They are also very lazy (so standing back a few meters from the water will usually keep you safe - not because the croc could not get you but because it would be too much of a hassle for him to do so). And yes, only salties (salt-water crocodiles) are dangerous in Australia. Fresh-water ones feed on fish only.
Once I got back from the tour, I raised up my thumb again. After about half an hour, I finally get picked up by a small van. I ask whether they are going to Cape Tribulation. "Yeah, sure", the guy getting out of the car answers. The van was packed pretty full of stuff already, but my bass and backpack still fit in, and thankfully, so do I (but just barely).
I pretty soon realize I have hit the jackpot, when it turns out that
a) they also plan to go hiking in the Daintree park (just like I was)
b) they need to go back to Cairns the next day (just like I do)
c) they even have a spare tent, a spare sleeping bag and even a spare pillow
So more about the gang. I was sharing the backseat with a Taiwanese girl called Amy. Driving was a german girl called Franzisca and the guy who helped with my stuff was a scot named Lewis. Lewis and Franzisca seemed to have just gotten together as a couple, using every opportunity to make out. Amy was also a hitchiker, although a bit more organized than me - she had used a hitchiking website called Gumtree to get picked up instead of just standing on the side of the road like me. All three had been in Australia for months already.
So we first went to the camping grounds to set up a tent and have lunch. They offered to share their food with me and take me back to Cairns the next day, provided I pay them for gas. It was quite a good proposition so of course I took it. This meant handing them the last paper notes of australian dollars I had in my wallet - good, as I now did not need to worry about exchanging them back in estonia.
After lunch we did indeed go for a walk.. two actually, first on a very beautiful beach at Cape Tribulation itself and second a jungle track a bit south of it. The jungle track was a large boardwalk, so uncomparable to the up-close-and-scars-still-visible-personal experience of the previous day. Nevertheless, it was very beautiful. What more, we actually got to see a Cassowary.
Now, for those that do not know, a Southern Cassowary is a human-sized black bird with a bright blue head that is related to Ostriches and Emus. Meeting one in the nature may mean serious injury or even death if the particular specimen happends to be in a bad mood.
The guy we saw had a chick with him. You know, a smaller, more monochrome version of himself.
Of course, all of us tried to be very careful around him. Trouble was, though, he was pretty much right on the path, so we could not really go past him. He was clearly aware of all of us, but he was much less scared of us than we were of him. So it created quite an interesting situation...
That got resolved about half an hour later when we just gathered our courage and walked past him at about a meters distance. I was in front of the row of people... and it was pretty scary. (although, to be fair, by that time, 4 people had walked by him already one-at-a-time, but he was a bit further away in these cases).
I call the bird a guy, by the way, because we were later told that males usually care for the chicks once they are hatched. Equal division of labor :)
After that encounter, it was getting dark already so we headed back to the camping ground, had dinner and then went to bed. I shared a tent with Amy, but got to sleep before she had even entered.
And woke up at 7.30, the other side of the tent packed up just like it was when I went to sleep. Turned out she had woken up at 6 already. There was to be a crocodile feeding at 8.30. When heading towards that, we saw Lewis waking up too.
Croc feeding was fun. The guy told pretty much the same things about crocodiles I had heared the day before, though. But watching the croc follow the feeder with his eyes and ocasionally reposition itself.. reminded me of the beginning clip from Dr. Doolittle 2 - there may well be truth to that, actually.
We went to the hiking trail that was right behind the camp site.. and then drove to another one a bit southwards. Then headed back to the ferry and started driving south, making a stop in Port Douglas to stock up on supplies and look at the sights, briefly.
We then drove to Barron Gorge.. or well, would have if it would not have been a 20 km uphill drive. The car was quite heavy and was guzzling fuel at a bit too fast of a rate.. so Lewis and Franzisca decided to turn back at a lookout point that was about 5 km drive from the base.
However, as it was still fairly early (3 a clock), I was pretty intent on going up to see the Barron falls - so I asked them to drop me off at the base so I could hitchike up. We said our goodbyes, grabbed my stuff and started hitchiking.
About 20 cars later I got picked up by a woman in her thirties. On the way up, she showed me where a good spot would be to hitchike back, and also how to get there best on foot. She then dropped me off at the center of the small town just up the mountain and also pointed me to the direction of the falls.
The falls were 3 km away. I had a 25 kg backpack and another 5 kg of bass guitar with me. So instead of heading straight for the falls, I took a small detour towards a youth hostel. I asked the receptionist if I could leave my bags there for 1-2 hours. He was somewhat sceptical, but agreed once I explained I will definitely be back as I have a plane early next morning. When I said "Back in a few hours", he corrected me though, saying "1-2, that is a couple. A few is a few more than that".
I was now free of my burden for two hours, so I started towards the falls. 40 minutes later I arrived, only to experience what was truly one of the most beautiful sights I have seen in my life (yes, quite comparable to the road up to Port Douglas I mentioned about a week ago.. or the cliffs I saw at the first rafting trip. I do have pictures to prove it). I then also headed to the other nearby lookout point that supposedly had a good view of Cairns itself.. which it did..
By now I was running out of the 2 hours I had been granted.. so I raised my walking pace a bit and raised my thumb up whenever I heared a car passing by. Halfway I was indeed picked up and got a ride back to town in a pickup truck. Went by the hostel to collect my stuff and then followed the directions to get to the hichiking place I had been shown before.
It was quite nice, next to a long stretch of straight road, with a very wide roadside where a car could easily pull over. Two problems though. Firstly, it was a long stretch of straight road so cars were going quite fast. More worryingly, though, it was pitch-black dark again, I was still dressed in black-and-gray and there was no streetlight.
Ok, so there I was, at 7 a clock in the evening, with the whole night ahead of me and only 35 km to cover.
Well, except that the traffic was quite light, the cars did not see me before passing by (as they were going too fast) and oh, right, I could not go forward either because the downhill road did not even have enough room for a person to walk there safely without being run over, much less enough for a car to pull over. So I was, in effect, stuck, and in a pretty bad situation.
Thanfully, one driver did eventually notice me (after about 40 minutes of waiting), and managed to stop just right before the downhill trail so he still did have room to pull over. Driver turned out to be a youth worker, currently working with a problematic autistic kid who used to be pretty violent but seemed to be doing ok after three years of care. The driver was nice enough to drop me off at a good hitchiking location before heading into the opposite direction himself.
So, set out looking for the next car to pick me up. Decided to start counting cars again. I got to 2 - as the second car already pulled over, driver giving me a friendly greeting and introducing himself as Mick. He said he has a small errand to run before going to Cairns. I said I had all the time in the world.
So, he drove to a small town at the waterfront just outside Cairns - just to go check when a restaurant he had once visited would be open. He said he had been there once and really liked the food, but had not found them on the internet or on white pages once he got home.
That was a short detour and we were pretty soon at the airport. He dropped me off at the domestic, we exchanged contact info and then parted ways. I went into the terminal, sat down, made a cup of coffee and then...
...got kicked out, as the domestic terminal was closing for the night. I was directed to the international one next door, though. At about 4 a clock I got back to the domestic terminal and got on the 5.45 flight to Sydney, thus concluding my vacation in Australia
All in all, it was by far the best vacation I have yet to have. I got to swim underwater as well as to climb a mountain, meet interesting new people but also enjoy solitude, challenge myself but also do things easy and familiar to me. In short, it had everything I want in a vacation.
Well, nearly :)
The first boats were set to leave at 9.30 so I figured I could probably sleep for about an hour more without anyone coming to disturb me. Nevertheless, I knew that ferry had started running at 6 already so I thought I would try hitchiking again.
No luck for 2 and a half hours.. not that many cars passing by at that time of day. I had started reading a book on the side and was making good progress with that though. Nevertheless, I figured it was good time for a break so I walked up to one of the booths and asked about the tour. 20 bucks for 1 hour and 15 minutes of tour... Seemed reasonable, especially considering they were also serving coffe to the clients - which I quite badly needed at that point.
The tour was well worth the money. I got to see 4 crocodiles in the wild.. including a big fat 4 meter dominant male ("Fat Albert") and about a year-old baby croc hiding in the plants on the riverbank.
Now for some interesting facts about crocodiles. Males keep growing all their lieves. The largest male found in Australia was 8.5 m long (i.e. about the length of my appartment). Females usually grow to 3.5 m and then stop. Other than growth, it is pretty hard to tell males and females apart (besides literally taking a finger to their privates). The scales on the back are like tree trunks in the sense that if you cut one off, you can count the growth rings to get the age of the croc.. along with info about which years were good to him and which were not.Crocodiles are cannibals. Dominant males sometimes let young males set up their territories within theirs because they can then be counted to be there on the bad years where they then constitute a good meal. Chances of a newly hatched croc making it to maturity are about 1 in 50 - most just get eaten, either by sharks, eagles or other crocs. During colder months, crocs eat just once a week or even less often. They live to be about 80 and mature at around 25 - quite like humans. They have very good senses of sight, smell, hearing and vibration sensitivity (to detect ripples in the water) and use all four to hunt. They are also quite intelligent, remmembering patterns (i.e. stopping to let a ferry past). They are also very lazy (so standing back a few meters from the water will usually keep you safe - not because the croc could not get you but because it would be too much of a hassle for him to do so). And yes, only salties (salt-water crocodiles) are dangerous in Australia. Fresh-water ones feed on fish only.
Once I got back from the tour, I raised up my thumb again. After about half an hour, I finally get picked up by a small van. I ask whether they are going to Cape Tribulation. "Yeah, sure", the guy getting out of the car answers. The van was packed pretty full of stuff already, but my bass and backpack still fit in, and thankfully, so do I (but just barely).
I pretty soon realize I have hit the jackpot, when it turns out that
a) they also plan to go hiking in the Daintree park (just like I was)
b) they need to go back to Cairns the next day (just like I do)
c) they even have a spare tent, a spare sleeping bag and even a spare pillow
So more about the gang. I was sharing the backseat with a Taiwanese girl called Amy. Driving was a german girl called Franzisca and the guy who helped with my stuff was a scot named Lewis. Lewis and Franzisca seemed to have just gotten together as a couple, using every opportunity to make out. Amy was also a hitchiker, although a bit more organized than me - she had used a hitchiking website called Gumtree to get picked up instead of just standing on the side of the road like me. All three had been in Australia for months already.
So we first went to the camping grounds to set up a tent and have lunch. They offered to share their food with me and take me back to Cairns the next day, provided I pay them for gas. It was quite a good proposition so of course I took it. This meant handing them the last paper notes of australian dollars I had in my wallet - good, as I now did not need to worry about exchanging them back in estonia.
After lunch we did indeed go for a walk.. two actually, first on a very beautiful beach at Cape Tribulation itself and second a jungle track a bit south of it. The jungle track was a large boardwalk, so uncomparable to the up-close-and-scars-still-visible-personal experience of the previous day. Nevertheless, it was very beautiful. What more, we actually got to see a Cassowary.
Now, for those that do not know, a Southern Cassowary is a human-sized black bird with a bright blue head that is related to Ostriches and Emus. Meeting one in the nature may mean serious injury or even death if the particular specimen happends to be in a bad mood.
The guy we saw had a chick with him. You know, a smaller, more monochrome version of himself.
Of course, all of us tried to be very careful around him. Trouble was, though, he was pretty much right on the path, so we could not really go past him. He was clearly aware of all of us, but he was much less scared of us than we were of him. So it created quite an interesting situation...
That got resolved about half an hour later when we just gathered our courage and walked past him at about a meters distance. I was in front of the row of people... and it was pretty scary. (although, to be fair, by that time, 4 people had walked by him already one-at-a-time, but he was a bit further away in these cases).
I call the bird a guy, by the way, because we were later told that males usually care for the chicks once they are hatched. Equal division of labor :)
After that encounter, it was getting dark already so we headed back to the camping ground, had dinner and then went to bed. I shared a tent with Amy, but got to sleep before she had even entered.
And woke up at 7.30, the other side of the tent packed up just like it was when I went to sleep. Turned out she had woken up at 6 already. There was to be a crocodile feeding at 8.30. When heading towards that, we saw Lewis waking up too.
Croc feeding was fun. The guy told pretty much the same things about crocodiles I had heared the day before, though. But watching the croc follow the feeder with his eyes and ocasionally reposition itself.. reminded me of the beginning clip from Dr. Doolittle 2 - there may well be truth to that, actually.
We went to the hiking trail that was right behind the camp site.. and then drove to another one a bit southwards. Then headed back to the ferry and started driving south, making a stop in Port Douglas to stock up on supplies and look at the sights, briefly.
We then drove to Barron Gorge.. or well, would have if it would not have been a 20 km uphill drive. The car was quite heavy and was guzzling fuel at a bit too fast of a rate.. so Lewis and Franzisca decided to turn back at a lookout point that was about 5 km drive from the base.
However, as it was still fairly early (3 a clock), I was pretty intent on going up to see the Barron falls - so I asked them to drop me off at the base so I could hitchike up. We said our goodbyes, grabbed my stuff and started hitchiking.
About 20 cars later I got picked up by a woman in her thirties. On the way up, she showed me where a good spot would be to hitchike back, and also how to get there best on foot. She then dropped me off at the center of the small town just up the mountain and also pointed me to the direction of the falls.
The falls were 3 km away. I had a 25 kg backpack and another 5 kg of bass guitar with me. So instead of heading straight for the falls, I took a small detour towards a youth hostel. I asked the receptionist if I could leave my bags there for 1-2 hours. He was somewhat sceptical, but agreed once I explained I will definitely be back as I have a plane early next morning. When I said "Back in a few hours", he corrected me though, saying "1-2, that is a couple. A few is a few more than that".
I was now free of my burden for two hours, so I started towards the falls. 40 minutes later I arrived, only to experience what was truly one of the most beautiful sights I have seen in my life (yes, quite comparable to the road up to Port Douglas I mentioned about a week ago.. or the cliffs I saw at the first rafting trip. I do have pictures to prove it). I then also headed to the other nearby lookout point that supposedly had a good view of Cairns itself.. which it did..
By now I was running out of the 2 hours I had been granted.. so I raised my walking pace a bit and raised my thumb up whenever I heared a car passing by. Halfway I was indeed picked up and got a ride back to town in a pickup truck. Went by the hostel to collect my stuff and then followed the directions to get to the hichiking place I had been shown before.
It was quite nice, next to a long stretch of straight road, with a very wide roadside where a car could easily pull over. Two problems though. Firstly, it was a long stretch of straight road so cars were going quite fast. More worryingly, though, it was pitch-black dark again, I was still dressed in black-and-gray and there was no streetlight.
Ok, so there I was, at 7 a clock in the evening, with the whole night ahead of me and only 35 km to cover.
Well, except that the traffic was quite light, the cars did not see me before passing by (as they were going too fast) and oh, right, I could not go forward either because the downhill road did not even have enough room for a person to walk there safely without being run over, much less enough for a car to pull over. So I was, in effect, stuck, and in a pretty bad situation.
Thanfully, one driver did eventually notice me (after about 40 minutes of waiting), and managed to stop just right before the downhill trail so he still did have room to pull over. Driver turned out to be a youth worker, currently working with a problematic autistic kid who used to be pretty violent but seemed to be doing ok after three years of care. The driver was nice enough to drop me off at a good hitchiking location before heading into the opposite direction himself.
So, set out looking for the next car to pick me up. Decided to start counting cars again. I got to 2 - as the second car already pulled over, driver giving me a friendly greeting and introducing himself as Mick. He said he has a small errand to run before going to Cairns. I said I had all the time in the world.
So, he drove to a small town at the waterfront just outside Cairns - just to go check when a restaurant he had once visited would be open. He said he had been there once and really liked the food, but had not found them on the internet or on white pages once he got home.
That was a short detour and we were pretty soon at the airport. He dropped me off at the domestic, we exchanged contact info and then parted ways. I went into the terminal, sat down, made a cup of coffee and then...
...got kicked out, as the domestic terminal was closing for the night. I was directed to the international one next door, though. At about 4 a clock I got back to the domestic terminal and got on the 5.45 flight to Sydney, thus concluding my vacation in Australia
All in all, it was by far the best vacation I have yet to have. I got to swim underwater as well as to climb a mountain, meet interesting new people but also enjoy solitude, challenge myself but also do things easy and familiar to me. In short, it had everything I want in a vacation.
Well, nearly :)
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