OK ma lihtsalt pean naerma

Just siis, kui ma olen oma netiühenduse puudulikkuses nii kindel, et seda avalikult oma blogis mainin, tulen ma koju ja avastan, et see täitsa töötab. Muidugi pole mingit garantiid, et ta seda ka viie minuti pärast teeb, aga... noh... elu nagu Salamancas ikka. Ootamatu ja irooniline :D

.,.

I should be used to things not working out quite as I expect them to by now. But... you know... I really didn't expect to start missing Estonia for the warmth. Mind you, it is way warmer during the day in Salamanca than it would ever be in Tartu at this time of the year. But not so much during the night. And apparently the heating systems around here are something that aren't really there to be used. Maybe they're waiting for the daytime temperatures to reach the same level in order for that...

My net connection is about as changeable as the temperatures around here, so that's why I've not written much again recently. At least the faculty computer room actually works like its Tartu equivalent so I get the basics done.

Interesting

I'm going to guess that Gerly is the only person out of the readers of this blog who will understand the following, but what can I say, it seems that the 5 rhythms lingo is singularly appropriate for this one:

I think my problem is that I've been trying to jump from silence to staccato, rather than allow for the flow to happen in between. Not everything has to happen here and now, it's more important to keep moving, keep doing something, even if that something doesn't bear fruit immediately.

Back in the Internet-world

First of all: I now know two interesting people in the area. One is the girl who makes me think of Dani. The other is a guy who makes me think of Taliesin.

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I know someone who is on the road to success according to what most people would say. Who is talented, who has a certain social position that establishes him firmly in the upper-middle class. And who is deeply unhappy.

I also know someone who is free. Who travels around, who has probably seen and heard so much more than the average person. Who is probably in many ways the opposite of the first person. Only he, too, is unhappy.

Of course, you could say, these are extremes, and extremes aren't really all that good. But oh I could give you a very much longer list of unhappy people who fall in the middle of the spectrum.

They say the only true kind of happiness comes from within. It does look like it's not really coming from anywhere else.

The old and the new, country version

It's interesting to be here in Spain, to see just how similar and how different the two countries are. How a legacy of history can have both its positives and its negatives. There's something that fascinates me about it, the idea of roots, heritage. I don't think Estonia really has it, not in the way it exists here. Mind you, of course Estonia has a history and all that goes with it, and maybe I'm just less aware of it because I've grown up knowing it, living in it... But there have been so many changes over the last century, and the focus now is on the progress, on the new. We want to get ahead, to change things, to do well. I think here, the focus is more on the past, there is more of the old to hold on to, so they do.

Like for example in the university, you really have to take notes in lectures because it's not all there in PowerPoint presentations. Or even if there are such things, you have to buy a printed version of them on paper. You can't just go get it all through the Internet like in Tartu. In general all the notifications go up on the walls in paper form, some stuff on the university's website maybe (but not the stuff that matters generally). It's modern here, and I think the faculty itself is relatively new, but even so... one girl I spoke with said that things work here the way they did in her university maybe 50 years ago. While I wouldn't quite go so far when comparing it with the Estonian system, I would say there's something older, more traditional about it here.

They say this region is quite traditional within Spain as well. All the shops are closed on Sundays, and you have to search for the all-in-one-place type of food stores that are all you see in Estonia. Here it's meat shops and fruit shops and bakeries and canned food shops etc etc etc all separately. (Though the "normal" variety of stores does exist when you know where to look for it. :-))

I suppose I don't really know the country well enough yet to be truly able to compare. But I do feel there are both similarities and differences. And these make me both very happy to be here to experience this kind of a place and appreciate more the way some things are in Estonia.

Just a quick little note

To say that my Internet connection hasn't been functioning for a few days and I don't know when it will again... so that's why I've not been active in the WWW world recently. Though I suppose that's actually a good thing as it motivates me to be more active in the real world around me for a change :)