Nostalgic?

It's been a year since I tried to get back in touch with that Danish philosopher guy. Not that I ever really found out what he did in his mundane life. Something to do with the university there, I believe. I'll probably never find out now. It's been more than 3,5 years since the last time I heard from him. I feel I didn't really appreciate being able to correspond with him when I could. Although looking through old emails it doesn't look like that. Still feel like I'd value the opportunity so much more now. Not that I think about it all that often... after all, he's now definitely only part of the past. I can only hope he's alive and doing okay. He was into a lot of dark and dangerous things. From making explosives (which he's written a book about) to evoking demons. Yes, a dark character if I've ever known one. For some reason I feel so sad and empty when I think about him and how I'll never hear from him again now. Even though our acquaintance was so brief and so much time ago. I usually don't have regrets about losing touch with people... usually it's just part of the constant change called life. Funny to think there's someone I've never really managed to get over. Or, well, not so funny really. What is funny is that I just realised he has the same first name as my father... well, the Danish version of it, but basically the same.

Tartu jne

Täna sai siis seal ära käidud ühikaolusid vaatamas. Esmamulje jäi üpris korralik, teisi elanikke kahjuks ei kohanud, aga kõige jubedamad loodetavasti ei ole. Pärast põgusat tutvumist tulevase elukohaga sain Mardiga kokku ja arutasime sünnipäevaküsimust. Tegelikult ma ei kavatsenud see aasta üldse teha midagi, aga see ühissünnipäeva mõte oli liiga hea, et teostamata jätta. Õigemini teostamine küll tuleb alles, loodetavasti järgmine nädal. Muide, kui keegi, keda ma tunnen ja keda pole kutsutud, loeb seda siin praegu ja leiab, et minust on suur ülekohus teda kutsumata jätta, siis andke endast märku, mul on suht segadus sellega praegu...

Täna öösel peaks isa tulema Inglismaalt jälle mingiks ajaks. Vähemalt tuleb see viimane ülikoolieelne nädal siis huvitav, mingi muutus keskkonnas jälle. Eeldusel, et pinge liiga lakke ei tõuse... või no, see oleks ka huvitav, aga ilmselt meeldivam pigem kaugemalt distantsilt. Huvitav, millega ta viimasel ajal tegelenud on. Njah... kuidagi liiga kummaline on kujutleda, et ta on pereliige. Või õigemini, mõistet "pere" on üldse mõnevõrra kummaline rakendada enda lähisugulaste osas. Mingit ühendatud tervikut on siin liiga raske tajuda. Üldse kuuluvust mingisse suguvõssa vms. Emapoolsed on kõik kaugel ja neid ei teagi, isapoolseid on vähe ja seegi harv suhtlemine, mis aset leiab, toimub enamasti meiepoolsel algatusel. Ehk siis veri pole just palju paksem kui vesi.

Aga sugupuud tahaks ikkagi uurida. Õieti kavatsesin seda see suvi teha... aga nii palju siis tollest mõttest. Loodetavasti jõuab selleni ikkagi millalgi. Kuigi ilmselt pole mõtet loota mingite müstiliste sinivereliinide avastamist sajanditepikkuse saladuskatte alt. :-P Vahest olekski parem saada tunda oma tühisust, mis sugupuusse puutub. Loobuda oma ego pretensioonidest ja sulanduda veelgi rohkem sellesse kõigesse, millega ma viimasel ajal nii palju ühesust tundnud olen, et piirid vahepeal kaduvat tunduvad. Olla üksinda mittemiski ja samas üks kõigega... jah, kuivõrd erinevaid, lausa vastandlikke tundeid võib see tekitada. Kuigi tegelikult oleme me kõik ka üksinda miski. Aga... vahel on vaja endast loobuda, et ennast leida?

Hugs

I read once that to function normally a person needs at least 4 hugs a day. I have no idea how scientifically valid this is, but makes you think, doesn't it. How many of us can be sure to get as much as one a day? Although I imagine that one long warm hug would outweigh a bunch of quick casual ones, so it's not all that much about the number of them.

We exchanged a few sentences about that today with Jari and Laura, and I decided to see what there is on the net about hugs. I found this page: http://eqi.org/hugs.htm Go on and read if you're interested. :)

Oh yes, and this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r7DYUlDuoM

Back to the present

Well, as you can probably guess, the ILO feels like too much in the past by now to continue writing about it. At least for the moment I feel more like writing about the present.

I've been playing one of my childhood games again for the past couple of days. It's about imagining as if I've just entered this world and this body, which was previously occupied by another consciousness. I know more or less all the facts this consciousness knew while in this body, but everything about the world is a new and strange experience. I guess that's what the game is about, trying to experience the world as if for the first time, to live my life at least for a while as if I wasn't bound by various emotional and other attachments, to see everything with fresh eyes, (re)discover all those things I don't notice (any longer) because they seem like just this common part of my environment. I remember at some point I thought a lot about different people's lives and how they had all these potential opportunities I would make use of if I could take their place for a while. It seems like it's often easier to see such things from the side. Maybe, if properly played, such a game could be a pretty nice/fun/interesting way of getting to see things like that for a bit.

"Feeling one with the universe" is a very, very overused phrase. But it's still possible to get the experience it describes in a way that does not feel overused the least bit. "Universe" is a funny word, "one" + "turn/change". Sounds a bit like Heraclitus and a bit like... that experience. Yeah. Go out on a starry night, look up and ponder the word "universe". You should get something there.

What I just absolutely must mention is that today was Gerly's solo concert at the town hall. Quite stunning. What a way to go from here. It's sad we've pretty much lost touch... I think that despite being the "ideal bookkeeper type" most of the time, she has this aspect to her that is one of the most deeply emotional and genuinely spiritual people I've ever met. Strange how some people who've been part of your life for most of your life... they just go on to study and live in another place entirely, and you'll probably never be close again. Well, "closeness" with people in my immediate surroundings has usually been shall we say "relative closeness". But with Gerly and Gerda there's always been something, one way or another. Gerda's birthday was today (or, well, actually yesterday by now... August 9). Gerly was the one who got to shine. I'm sure they'll both get their moment in the spotlight, though. They're both worth that and most other things they might wish for. Earned it in terms of hard work (on a level beyond humanly comprehensible), definitely. Oh yes, reminds me of my thoughts on the different factors that are important in doing things. But best to not get there now, and instead get some sleep :-)

Back from the ILO #2

Day 3, August 2

We had a tour in St Petersburg, which was great, although I remain mystified why we had these 20-minute "stops for taking photos" which were obviously too long for just taking the photos and too short for doing anything else. I mean, if there's a statue with a guy on a horse, and then there's nothing else except for souvenir stalls... Hey, hmm... now I wonder what the intent of the tour guide was there... :-P

Anyway, after that very weird tour we had lunch, which was... their attempt to introduce us to the modern version of the Soviet Union cuisine? Yep, I cannot help but mention that the food was remarkably better at last year's ILO in Estonia (although when I think about it, we also had weird not-entirely-edible "traditional" Estonian food during the tour then).

After the lunch we had a couple of hours of free time, which I, along with one half of the Estonians, used for visiting bookstores (the other half of the Estonians went to look for chocolate, also not too bad an idea :-P). I ended up getting a Japanese-Russian dictionary and Japanese grammar textbook. Only later did it dawn on me that I know no Russian grammar terms whatsoever, and will more likely be using the Japanese phrases to figure out Russian grammar terminology in some distant future...

Once again, I don't really remember what we did in the evening, although I am sure it included playing psychologist and possibly going out for a walk with Melissa (my teammate), Cornelis (from Holland) and two Moscow people (yes, shame on me, I don't remember their names). I am certain that happened either on the night of day 3 or day 2, but for some reason I can't remember which it was... or actually, now that I try to remember, I actually think it was day 2, but either way that was really nice, interesting discussions about philosophy, religion etc. Or, well, it was more like I and Cornelis were discussing philosophy and religion, and the Moscow girl... um... Kira was talking about how she hated discussions about philosophy and religion. :-P Btw, I must mention that after having watched Death Note it was interesting to see a Russian girl having her name be Kira. Kira Kiranova, even. I wonder what that implies. :-P

Anyway, coming back to the olympiad, it is now time to proceed to...

Day 4, August 3

...which started with the team contest. What is up with this year's linguistics problems being so much harder than last year's ones in all levels of the olympiad? We... how should I put this... completely totally absolutely failed to solve the team contest problem. It was about a Hawaiian genealogy tree and the words they use for different relatives etc. And, of course, I did have this "feeling" of what the more important words were supposed to mean, but of course I didn't go with the feeling. Oh well, as it turned out, only 4 teams managed to actually solve the whole thing in the end, so at least we weren't an especially unsuccessful minority. Not that being glad about others not doing well would be a good thing or anything. But (hopefully) more about that when I get to the closing ceremony.

In the afternoon, we had the longest, most fun and otherwise best psychologist game of the whole event. A really international one, too. Maybe this will start a chain reaction of the game spreading across the world or something. :-P Then we had dinner, and after that I went to my and Melissa's room and slept for a couple of hours (I guess my body was not too happy about my motto of "let's not waste precious time on sleeping here").

At night, there was this disco, where, at least as far as I know, there were a whole two people dancing. Yes, our team leaders definitely appeared to feel quite at home there. :-P I was there for about 5 minutes along with Joshua (from the US), Kira and most of the rest of the Estonians. Afterwards we went for a walk again with Cornelis, Kira and that Moscow guy whose name I don't remember, then we came back and had Liza (also from Moscow) join us, and then we went to the beach and talked about life and beauty and things like that.


I think I'll stop here once again and hopefully some time soon I'll write about the last two days.

Back from the ILO #1

Oh my, I guess it would only make sense if I wrote about the trip and the olympiad and just this last week in general... with so many impressions and experiences, don't know where to start. I suppose the beginning is always a good option?

So then...

The day before, July 30

Took the bus to Tallinn, where Indrek came to meet me etc. I needed to spend the night in Tallinn, as we had to start moving really early next morning. Everything worked out really well somehow. We had a pretty good time together, talking about different things and just... I don't know... I guess meeting up with Indrek was just what I needed to get in the right mood for the olympiad. I actually managed to get some sleep that night before came...

Day 1, July 31

...and I had to get up at 4.30 am to get on the bus to Saint-Petersburg in time. Some "lovely" cold, wind and rain on the way there, too. (I actually believe that was the only time I encountered these three phenomena during this trip.) Six hours on the bus went amazingly fast. Then we reached St-Petersburg, which looked like it hadn't changed at all since the Soviet Union days... or, well, actually pretty much all of Russia looks like that from what I was able to see. From there, we had to take this... um... minibus-taxi thing, we were on it for a bit more than an hour, and now that hour did not go fast for sure. I was starting to consider the best direction for regurgitation, when our stop finally came and we reached the hotel.

Now the hotel actually looked like something from the 21-st century... well, to some degree anyway. To not get into pointless details, the opening ceremony was at 5 pm, followed by some drinks and sandwiches, and then right after that by dinner. There were 3 new countries participating this year, Sweden, Spain and the US. I gathered up the courage to go and start talking to some of the American participants, and from there began at least for me a week of intensive and interesting international communication. The Americans also ended up being the main foreigners I interacted with, if not in terms of intensity, then at least stability - that is, we did something together every day, and I actually ended up feeling relatively comfortable around them, while with the members of other teams, contact was more sporadic. Anyway...

Day 2, August 1

The day of the individual contest. I did everything I knew to be helpful in terms of making thinking more active etc. I'm not sure if it failed to work, or if it did work and the results would've been worse if it hadn't. I basically failed to solve two of the five problems, and even though I managed to do the remaining three almost perfectly, so did almost everyone else... But problems #3 and #4 did turn out to have been... shall we say problematic... for most others as well. So I felt a bit less like an idiot after hearing about how everyone else felt the same. :-P

In the evening, they had games, which definitely served to bring people closer... very much so and very literally so. Some were pretty challenging, others just fun. In the end, everybody got a piece of watermelon, and I met the only non-American I'll be likely to at least try to keep in touch with. Have I ever mentioned how Holland's soil seems to be fertile when it comes to interesting people? :-P So then of course, after the officially arranged things we went on to play games etc with people. I don't really remember what exactly we did that night. I'm sure we played lots of "psychologist", which is pretty much the only game I can be bothered to play these days. Most of the Americans probably played card games. It is very difficult for me to imagine how it's possible for people to play cards for hours every day and not get sick of it. Of course, those are probably just my own feelings of aversion speaking here...


Well, I actually just got back home a couple of hours ago and just thought I'd write everything down while it's still fresh, but it's getting long and I'm getting tired and I'll continue this later (at least I hope I will!)