Post Office

Dear Diary,

in the last couple of days, I read Post Office by the famous Charles Bukowski. It was entertaining but not as great as I would have thought. There was a lot of cursing and fatalistic behavior/thinking in there. The main character, Henry Chinaski, is stuck in a job (with the Post Office) and a series of relationships (and ultimately life) that are extremely repetitive and unfulfilling. It’s just a description of the life Henry leads without any great insights or changes of events.

I mean, there are a bunch of events that might be life-changing. But they are not presented as such. It all feels very nihilistic. Which I am not generally opposed to. I just expected a bit “more” in one way or the other from an author with such a reputation.

Anyways. It was a short book and I did enjoy it. I might give his highest-rated book, Ham on Rye, a go eventually to give him another chance. Overall, this book made me understand the song Bukowski by Modest Mouse a bit better. Great song with interesting lyrics:

Lyrics:

Woke up this morning and it seemed to me,
that every night turns out to be
A little more like Bukowski.
And yeah, I know he’s a pretty good read.
But God who’d wanna be?
God who’d wanna be such an asshole?
God who’d wanna be?
God who’d wanna be such an asshole?

Well we sat on the edge of the river,
the crowd screamed, “Sacrifice the liver!”
If God takes life, he’s an Indian giver.
So tell me now why, you’ll tell me never.
Who would wanna be?
Who would wanna be such a control freak?
Well who would wanna be?
Who would wanna be such a control freak?

Well see what you wanna see. You should see it all.
Well take what you want from me. You deserve it all.
Nine times out of ten our hearts just get dissolved.
Well I want a better place or just a better way to fall.

But one time out of ten, everything is perfect for us all.
Well I want a better place or just a better way to fall.
Here we go!

If God controls the land and disease,
keeps a watchful eye on me,
If he’s really so damn mighty,
my problem is I can’t see,
well who would wanna be?
Who would wanna be such a control freak?
Well who would wanna be?
Who would wanna be such a control freak?

Evil home stereo, what good songs do you know?
Evil me, oh yeah I know, what good curves can you throw?

Well all that icing and all that cake,
I can’t make it to your wedding, but I’m sure I’ll be at your wake.
You were talk, talk, talk, talkin’ in circles that day,
when you get to the point make sure that I’m still awake, OK?

Went to bed and didn’t see
why every day turns out to be
a little bit more like Bukowski.
And yeah, I know he’s a pretty good read.
But God who’d wanna be?
God who’d wanna be such an asshole?

Spotlight

Dear Diary,

today, after yoga, I sat down to watch Spotlight. It has been on my list for a while and I didn’t manage to go and see it in the cinema. Here’s the trailer:

The movie follows a team of Boston Globe reporters as they uncover the sexual abuse that took place in the church. And, maybe more importantly, that people high(er) up in the hierarchy (like the Kardinal) knew about it and covered it up.

It’s a terrible topic, of course. But the movie was extremely well done. The cast was great, the acting was good, and the implications were massive. The movie is basically about the cases in Boston and the reporters start with one priest that they knew did something like that. Then, step by step, they uncover the names of about 90 priests – in Boston alone! The movie ends with the story being published but then, before the credits, it says something like “major cases of child abuse by priests have been uncovered in the following places” and then there’s just screen after screen of a very, very long list. You can see the full list here – and it’d be silly to assume that those are even close to all the cases. It’s absolutely terrifying and hard to wrap your head around.

If you get a chance: go see this movie!

Also, if you have a couple of minutes, watch Tim Minchin’s response to the topic:

The weather is warming up!

Dear Diary,

this weekend, the weather was great. It was sunny on Friday. We had our usual after work drink and then went to a colleague’s place; his wife cooked Turkish food for us and it was delicious. Then we went to see Birth of Joy live at the Vera. They were fantastic!

On Saturday, I worked for about two hours in the morning and then we went climbing from 4:30 to about 8:00. It was a long and good session. I was able to climb a 6a but mainly did easier ones (5b/5b+) on the long and slightly overhanging wall to get my endurance up and focus on my technique.

It was nice and sunny all day and just being in the direct sunlight and feeling the warmth on my skin really improved my mood a lot. I am really looking forward to the summer and spending more time outside again.

Then we ordered Thai food and hang out at home for a while. Later, we went to a friend’s/colleague’s birthday party. But I was pretty exhausted and didn’t stay too long. Today, on Sunday, we had a competition match in Haren. The place was cold as fuck. Well, about 8 degrees. We played with a one-dot ball because the usual two-dots didn’t bounce at all. And even the one-dot hardly bounced: the walls were strange and everything felt very weird. It took forever to get warm and I had a 90 minute break between my two matches. I played okay in the first match (I lost 2:3 but that was fine – it was a fun match) and really sucked in the second.

Meh. Tomorrow, there’s a tournament at our club. I signed up for the highest level and going to battle it out with the highest ranked players. I can probably beat around 30% of them so it depend a lot on the order in which I have to play. But the ranking doesn’t really matter anyways – I just want to play on a regular court with a regular ball without freezing my ass off.

Plantronics Backbeat Pro

Dear Diary,

as I mentioned before, I got myself a new set of headphones recently. However, I wasn’t really happy with them. They got quite warm and were not very comfortable to wear for longer periods. Therefore, I ended up ordering the same ones that BB also has. They are listed fro $220 on the official website. On amazon.de, you can get them for about 150€ but they don’t deliver to the Netherlands. I ended up ordering them from amazon.co.uk for a converted 144€ – a good deal.

I have been using them for about a week now and they are absolutely amazing. The sound is fantastic, they are very light and completely isolate the sound around you. Also very comfortable to wear for many hours.

The only downside is that I can’t connect them with my phone. That’s my phone’s fault, though: All modern bluetooth headphones use aptX to transmit data but for some strange reason, the OnePlus One doesn’t support aptX. That’s a bit of a bummer. But I use them mainly at work so I pair them with my laptop. If I really want to use them on my phone, I can always just plug them in with the cable instead of using bluetooth.

A very social week

Dear Diary,

this week was pretty great. I got a lot of work done in the hours that I worked. But I didn’t work that much. Well, I guess I just worked normal hours (about 7-8 a day). The rest of my time was spent with friends and it was very nice.

It was BB’s birthday on Wednesday. NB and I got him a board game because we thought that’d be fun. We went of a classic: the Settlers of Catan. On Wednesday, we got up before BB and made breakfast. NB even got a little cake. :D We had a relaxed start to the day. In the evening, we went to have all you can eat sushi. We sat there for about three hours and had decent food and really good conversations. (I’ll talk about this in a separate post.)

Later that night, a friend arrived from Berlin. He’s in Groningen every year for the Eurosonic. Which happened again this week. It was good to see him again and we hang out for a while that night but I didn’t want to make it too late. On Thursday, I had another good day at work with a very effective meeting about the new project and I am starting to get really excited about it. The RA will collect pilot data from five people next week to make sure the whole procedure works. We’ll have another meeting next week Wednesday to discuss whether anything needs to be adjusted and then the real data collection will start the week after. Exciting!

On Thursday, I went to play squash in the evening to move a bit. On Friday, BB and I went to the second lecture in the advanced stats course. It was good for me but BB was a bit bored. He knows quite a bit about linear mixed-effects modeling and has a lot of experience with it. I don’t so it was good. That night, we hang out with friends at our place for a while, playing Settlers of Catan and we ordered food. Later that night we met other friends in the city center to see a couple of live bands. The goal was to see a friend and colleague who was playing at 1 am. We ended up at his gig being nicely drunk and in a great mood. His show as fucking fantastic. Really cool electronic music that is build up from different layers. The crowd was in a great mood and we all had a great time.

From there, we went to an “after show party”. Half of us didn’t have tickets but we got smuggled in which worked out brilliantly. We had a good time there, drinking a bit more and listening to more bands. NB and I went home around 5:30.

The next day, our guest from Berlin left and we just had an awesomely lazy day. We played video games, Settlers, and watched a movie. I spent about 15 minutes answering work-related e-mails that day but that was it. Super relaxed.

Today, we kind of did the same. I got up around 10:00 and we had a late breakfast around 13:00. I did about two hours of work to prepare for a meeting tomorrow morning and help out my supervisor with a little issue. NB and I went to get groceries. It was cold out (there was quite a bit of snow in the last two days) but the sun was shining very aggressively. Our living room heated up to 28C. o_O I sat in the sun reading a book for about two hours. I went to play squash for about 90 minutes and then the evening was spent playing Settlers again.

So, yeah, it was a fantastic week! Looking forward to the next one!

Sudden winter

Dear Diary,

this week was surprisingly wintery. There was quite a bit of snow and ice in Groningen. Relatively speaking, of course. The city wasn’t really prepared for it and there hasn’t been a snow-and-ice situation this extreme since 1980 (or so I’ve been told). The university building was either closed entirely or closed earlier this week which was a bit annoying and I ended up just staying home after they threw us out on Tuesday.

Today, I spent the day working from my parent’s kitchen because I was waiting for my car to be fixed. Now I am back in Groningen and the weather forecast says it’s going to be back to above-freezing temperatures and rain. Yay! (?)

Next week will be the annual Eurosonic festival in Groningen. It’s a shame that the weather will probably be pretty bad. I’ll have two guests from Berlin again but will have to see how much I’ll be able to see myself this year. Anyways, I am going to spend the weekend hanging out and working on the first draft of my conference paper and am looking forward to a bunch of things I want to get done next week. Many exciting projects to work on at the moment.

Short trip to London (incl. shorter trip to Canterbury)

Dear Diary,

last week, BB and I went to London to visit our friend GP. Another reason I didn’t mind crossing the Channel is that my brother is currently living/studying in Canterbury.

BB and I worked most of the day on Thursday and left Groningen at around 5:30. We dropped NB in Oldenburg and then made it to the airport. The bus from Stansted to Liverpool St Station took about two hours because of construction sites and traffic. GP picked us up at the station and we walked to his place. It was almost 2am by the time we settled in.

GP had to work the next day and we went to the office with him. It was interesting to see where he works and we just kind of all worked for a couple of hours. Eventually, BB and I left to check out the city a little bit. But by the time we got home to drop our stuff, it was raining and we didn’t really feel like doing much anyways. So we just hang out to play Call of Duty on GP’s new PlayStation 4. :D

Because it was Friday, people in the office started drinking at around 5. BB and I went back there around that time. GP still had a bit of work to finish so we played some table tennis in one of the rooms that they had there. We played with a beer in hand and then developed a version of the game were the main goal was to hit the other player’s beer can which was placed in front of them on the table. It was a lot of fun, haha.

Eventually, we moved out to get some food on the way to a bar. The burritos we got were ridiculously spicy. At the bar, we met two friends of GP’s. We had tickets to see Chad Valley who played in a backroom of the bar. It was a relatively small gig. There were some technical difficulties so the support band couldn’t play but Chad Valley was great.

The concert venue turned into a club afterwards. We moved in and out of the club to either get fresh air and talk or dance. We met some nice people from New Zealand and had an amazing night.

The next day, we took the train to GP’s parents’ place in Kent. We went for a walk after we arrived which was really nice since we were all still a bit down and leftover-intoxicated. My brother joined us there in the evening and we had a very relaxed night with good food and silly games.

The next day, we all slept way too long and then drove down to Canterbury. My brother showed us around a bit and we just walked the city for a while. It’s a cute little town with a nice “character”. In the end, we extended the trip a bit and went to the seaside for some fish and chips and a quick stroll along the sea. Then we took my brother home so I got a quick impression of where he lives which was nice.

We took the car back to the parents’ place in Kent and then took the train to London. We spent the rest of the night playing video games and doing nothing.

On Monday, GP went to work and BB and I slept way too long – again. Apparently, we really needed to catch up on sleep. Then we spent most of the day working. We played video games for another hour before GP came home and then we went to the bouldering gym The Arch. I haven’t really climbed since we went to Fontainebleau a couple of weeks ago but still really enjoyed myself. It was extremely busy when we arrived but the crowd thinned out during the last third of our stay.

After bouldering, we went to an Italian restaurant and got sour dough pizza. Which was amazing. It was pretty late by the time we got home. On our last day, GP had to work again during the day. BB and I worked a bit as well during the morning and then we took a 2-and-a-half hour walk along the Thames which was very nice. Then we picked up GP to get a late lunch together. We said good bye and walked to Liverpool St Station to catch the bus to the airport. We were about an hour early decided to already get on the bus. Which was good because the traffic was insane and we spent more than two hours on the bus. We got the airport in time (even had time to grab a pint before boarding) but it’d have been a lot more hectic if we had decided to grab a beer in London rather than at the station.

We landed in Bremen at 21:06 and we home at 23:09.

It was a great trip. It was good to see GP again. It was interesting to see his work environment and I really enjoyed catching up with him in person again. It was also nice to see my brother again and see where and how he lives. Looking forward to spending some more time with him around Christmas.

Elbriot 2015

Dear Diary,

on Saturday, I was at the Elbriot Festival in Hamburg. I went together with my brother, our father, our uncle, a buddy of his, and the son of our father’s new girlfriend. It was a one-day metal festival with the following line-up:

• 12:00 h Vitja
• 12:50 h Eskimo Callboy
• 13:40 h Black Stone Cherry
• 14:35 h Blues Pills
• 15:35 h Callejon
• 16:45 h Kvelertak
• 17:55 h Enter Shikari
• 19:05 h Opeth
• 20:20 h Kreator
• 21:50 h In Flames

We missed the first two bands. I have never heard of Vitja before but didn’t mind missing Eskimo Callboy. We caught about half of BSC’s show which was pretty awesome. Blues Pills were surprisingly soul-y and are probably worth looking into. It was also the only band with a female singer.

Callejon and Kvelertak played some solid, in-your-face metal that was pretty awesome. I didn’t really enjoy Enter Shikari too much. They reminded me a bit of the early Linkin Park stuff but a lot of their music had really strange build-ups and sudden moments of silence that were kind of unpredictable (to me) and destroyed the “flow” (for me).

Then there was Opeth. Opeth is the only band that I actually listen to occasionally. It’s good “work music”. I was hoping they’d play Eternal Rains Will Come and they actually opened with it which was pretty awesome. Overall, I liked the music but it there was basically no stage presence and it was bit “boring”. Kreator was pretty cool because there were a lot of fans in the crowd that knew all the lyrics.

The headliner was In Flames. I first saw them over 10 years ago when they were still a bit smaller (they opened for Slipknot who opened for Metallica back then) and haven’t seen them since. They played some of their older stuff (Only for the Weak, Bulletride, etc.) and it was pretty great.

Not usually my type of music but definitely a fun day!

Back in Groningen again

Dear Diary,

I got back to Groningen at around 10 pm last night. I spent a couple of days in Hamburg, hanging out with my friend JM. We went to see a movie called Pride at an open air “cinema” in a park on Thursday night:

The movie was entertaining and quite enjoyable. However, there’s something about it that I didn’t quite like that I can’t really put my finger on. It was based on real events but the historical background wasn’t explained very well and the whole thing was made out to look quite easy and straightforward. There were too many “struggles” going on at the same time and none of them was worked out/through well enough to leave me satisfied: the gays/lesbians were persecuted and ridiculed; the pits were closed and the miners were striking and fearing for their jobs/livelihoods; there was an unlikely match between the flamboyant gays from the city and the conservative miners from the backcountry.

Anyways, interesting historical episode and an entertaining movie. I am just not entirely sure what struggle it was about exactly.

On Friday night we went to the bouldering spot flashh which was pretty awesome:

The hall is huge and there were many, many boulder problems. Unfortunately, the guys I went with don’t climb regularly and were tired quite quickly so that we left a bit earlier than I’d have wanted to. I’ll definitely be packing my climbing shoes the next time I go to Hamburg. ;)

On Saturday morning, I met with the rest of the metal crew and we went to the Elbriot festival.

On Sunday, we went back to Bremen. I visited my grandfather in the hospital and then stopped at my grandmother’s to catch up with her. Both of them are not doing too well at the moment so I was happy to be in the area so I could stop by and see them. We all hope to get more information about my grandfather’s condition as soon as possible to know what exactly is going on and what can be done about it. He has lost a lot of weight but seems to be in good spirits and a lot more talkative than I have ever seen him.

After the visits, I went to a friend’s party. He married the day before and had a huge party the night before. On Sunday, he had invited everyone to stop by for food and drinks during the day and I went to see him and another old friend. It was great to see them both. Their parents were also their and it was good to talk to them as well. It’s interesting: I have seen these people very sporadically in the last 15 or so years but there’s still a rather strong feeling of familiarity. Lovely people, all of them, and they have a great sense of humor, too.

Then I picked up someone at the train station that also needed to Groningen and we drove back together. He was also an interesting guy; he was from England but has lived in Spain and France and will start studying European Languages in Groningen in two weeks.

I had a very relaxed and awesome time. I met a lot of nice people (old and new) and had a couple of very interesting conversations. My live is amazingly awesome at the moment.

Personalized music suggestions: Spotify’s Discover Weekly

Dear Diary,

I heard about Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” playlists some time a week or two ago. You can find more information on Spotify’s website. The idea is quite simply that on a weekly basis, Spotify compiles a two-hour playlist for you. Based on the music you listen to, it looks at what people that listen to similar music listen to and introduces you to new music.

I’ve been listening to my playlist for this week for about an hour now and have been enjoying it quite a bit. Certainly a nice feature and a good way to discover new music. Great idea, Spotify! (Although hardly revolutionary – but well done.)