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!)

Same old moaning from here today

I'm so confused. I feel so detached from everyone. Well, with one exception. Which, I suppose, gives me some hope... And one can't say I'm not trying here. Offline, anyway. It seems like the more social I am offline, the less social I am online. These days I can't even seem to have a decent MSN conversation with people, let alone anything like emails, forums, chat rooms... I just can't hold the attention, it doesn't feel real any more at all. Online communication can only have my attention if it's relevant to "real life". Which imposes pretty big limitations on the kind of people I get to interact with.

Maybe I'll feel better when I get to the international linguistics olympiad... which I'll be off to tomorrow, btw. Yep, 5-6 days of (hopefully) getting to meet a bunch of interesting young people from all over... um, Eastern Europe mainly, though with some exceptions like Holland, Spain and a couple of others. It's unlikely that the international philosophy olympiad "miracle meetings" will repeat, but at least there'll be new people, action, excitement. I'm not sure if I actually want to get very emotionally attached to anyone I might meet there, last time that happened, it didn't end too well... or, now that I think about it, such things not ending well is the usual state of affairs... but I think I'm actually starting to understand the concept of "I'd rather feel pain than nothing at all" on this level.

I guess it's like, I know I've got personal issues with this, but - as that one person I do feel things about goes to show - it's not that I'm incapable of experiencing connectedness. Maybe it's just that for developing that, there needs to be some sort of harmony, similarity, resonance that goes beyond the everyday surface. If not to the core, then at least deep enough to feel personal. It's hard to form strong emotional attachments with people who are so obviously "walking a different path". I don't want to be lonely, I'm rather sick and tired of it really. But I can't give up who I am in the hope that maybe, just maybe, that would somehow improve the situation a little.

I suppose I've managed to start annoying anyone who actually reads what I write here. What can I say... it's an important issue for me. These days, it feels like the single most important issue a lot of the time really. So I think about it relatively much. And therefore write about it.

Anyway, I guess this will be the last time I write here before the olympiad. So hopefully I'll be back with something new and interesting to say after that.

Bye-bye, Briana

And there, you could say, ends an era. We visited her at the place she's staying in Pärnu with Gerda and Gerly today. Played Triology, looked at the photos she'd taken in Nepal and India, had some photos taken of us together, and just chatted a bit. It's kind of weird to think that this time it's really the last time things will be like this. Even if she returns and we meet again, I'll be living a whole different life myself. Funny how I'm ending this phase of life among other things by parting again with this person I first met when the phase started. Yeah. Bye-bye, gymnasium, too. Weird, so incomprehensibly weird, when I try to grasp it. Although at the same time almost simply natural.

***

it is dark
and his footsteps
are stained with blood.

far away is his silhouette,
cringing and shivering.

night has set
but his path
takes him further still

through the desert
to mountains,
exhausted young wanderer.

desolate land is illumined
around him tonight.

only pain can ignite
the incipient healer's heart.

Be like the Sun

Of course the cards were right. I looked up some old things, and... oh, I've known it all along in theory, but it's so hard to put it into practice. To be so giving, so courageous, so strong, so self-sufficient... when you're so vulnerable, when the ground under your feet can give way only too easily. I seem so foolish, looking back, I've let my weakness consume me, even though I always knew what's right. Maybe it was how things needed to be... no, I'm sure it's exactly how things needed to be for me. I just could've been so much better for others around me. Nothing we ever do is completely selfless... but how did I not see that caring less about my own happiness and satisfaction would bring more of it to me as well? Because that's the truth, sometimes you can have things only when you give them up. I guess Kierkegaard still has much to say to me, his words are not only about acceptance and surrender, but courage in humility, the seeming paradox can mean so many things and appear in so many ways. Sometimes you need to be simply human. To live the light in your heart, remembering you are no better than any other, and yet are important enough to make a difference. Because everything about your existence, even that very existence itself makes a difference. "If you cannot be a tree, be a bush; if you cannot be a bush, be grass; and be beautiful grass..." I hope, I really hope that at least for now I will remember this. And appreciate the gift I'd previously failed to truly value and understand.

Muljeid päevast

Täna sai käidud koos Jariga vene ooperimuusika galakontserdil. Peab mainima, et Toomas Kuter valmistas õhtujuhina mulle mõningase pettumuse, ma mäletasin teda justkui kuidagi huvitavamana. Samas kuna too üks kord, kui ma teda taolises rollis varem näinud on, laulsin ma ise ka, mõtlesin ma ilmselt rohkem enda kui tema esinemisest. Üldmulje oli igatahes nauditav. Ma polegi mõnda aega mingil sellisel kergelt pidulikumat sorti üritusel käinud, seega oli juba õhustik ise omaette kogemus. Eriti koos kaaslasega, kes ise sellesse nii hästi sobivat tundus. Naljakas, kuidas mõni inimene võib näha välja nagu kodus peaaegu igas keskkonnas.

Pärast kontserti läksime vihma ja tuule käes Café Akbanasse, kus Kristiina ja Lilian töötavad, muidugi sulgemise ajaks. Natuke sai suheldud ikkagi, üksteist saadetud, ja loodetavasti on praeguseks kõik kenasti kodus. Ülehomme läheme meie + Airi ja Laura avastama Mandariini restorani. Või no, õigemini olen mina küll ilmselt ainuke avastaja sellest seltskonnast. Aga tundub, et suhtlemisvaeguse all see suvi tõesti kannatama ei pea. Kui see kõik oleks ainult kuidagi varem juhtuda võinud... Muidugi ei anna kahetsus möödalastud võimaluste pärast midagi peale kasutu frustratsiooni. Vähemalt ma üritan olevikus neist maksimaalselt haarata.

Huvitav, kui palju teised inimesed sellele mõtlevad, et "kui ainult", kuidas kõike teisiti teeks, kui aega tagasi keerata saaks. Ma olen üritanud võimalikult palju olevikuhetkele keskenduda, aga vahepeal tulevad mingid sellised mõtted. Vahel tulevad meelde mingid täiesti tobedad asjad, kuidas ma mingis olukorras (enda arust) valesti/ebasobivalt käitusin kuid või aastaid tagasi, kui jube mulje teistel inimestel ikka minust seetõttu olema peaks vms. Mitte et teisi inimesi nii väga huvitaks midagi peale nende enda elu tegelikult. Üldjoontes olen ma oma elu osas jõudnud vist sellise suhtumiseni, et "kui ma poleks läbinud punkte A, B ja C, poleks ma nüüd punktis D ega suunduks edasi punkti E". Aga mind ümbritsevad inimesed, kas ma ei oleks saanud nende jaoks rohkem midagi positiivset olla? Rohkem sõbralik, kannatlik, mõistev, abivalmis, sisemiselt tugev, isetu, paindlik, hooliv? Jah, nende omaduste täiel määral evimine on nagu omaette Püha Graal, millest ma kahtlemata praegugi väga kaugel olen. Ma olen ju tegelikult alati üritanud mingeid selliseid ideaale järgida, enamasti küll mitte eriti edukalt, aga vahest just nii edukalt, kui vastavates olukordades võimalik oli. Aga... kui siiski... oleks võinud paremini...?

Muidugi ei anna selline mõtlemine absoluutselt midagi juurde. Olgem ausad, teataval määral tuleb see ilmselt sellest, et ka praegu olevikus tunnen ma, et ma võiksin igasugu olukordades palju paremini olla ja käituda, kui see mul õnnestub. Muidugi eks ma ürita edasi. Mida muud ma selle jaoks ikka teha saan?