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Monday July 11, 05
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06:47 AM - one year later.
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and I am back in England. Tolerated the fatherland for exactly two years, and then came back... well not exactly to Camden but the UK nonetheless. And my next job is in Cambridge. Well, almost Camden, then.
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Saturday July 24, 04
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07:44 AM - the orchids are still threre,
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... but the annoying couply couple have moved away, to be replaced by an even more bourgeouis one. They are no fun to watch, unless one finds drying laundry on the balcony a turn-on.
This means, still int he same flat, same town, same job. Went to Japan in February. Other highlights: How about 'my job is killing me, or at the very least, turning me into a career-obsessed moron'. I love working, but in this place, its all very demoralising. With smalltown excitement not made for me and the job not exactly the exciting opportunity I thought it to be, I am contemplating a move back to London more than ever.
Sadly, haven't seen Mozza since November '02. Why does he not do Germany? And getting tickets for Meltdown shows... well, if one's on-call committment always take precedence over leisure pursuits, however, exciting, I never stood a chance. Maybe in my next life.
I have jsut come home from my duties and lie in bed reading the Q special edition of the Smiths. not as bad as I thought it would be.
Greetings to everyone in Mozzaland.
V.
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Saturday October 18, 03
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09:28 AM - Still there
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I am still alive, but with little time. Even though I am lonely sometimes, I am never bored. First of all, i work for 12-14 hours a day. Through so many on-calls, I managed a decent payrise. Then I went travelling. Went to NYC for a week. With my mom. Split up with boyfriend. Well, he wasn't that great in the end, we'd just grown apart, and me being in Germany and him in England added to the distance.
So, i am planning to go on the holiday I've been planning to do all year by myself. Now, that will be a change. Apart from the odd weekend, I haven't had any holidays for two years, and -gasp- I've never been travelling by myself apart from an English course in England ages ago. but, finding a companion for a fortnight in Cambodia and a cookery course in Bangkok proved to be rather difficult. The payrise meant I can stay in nice hotels, at least. I am still very excited, though! Well, perhaps i'll hook up with someone nice some time during the trip. Or find some amazing shopping or the biggest hotel pool.
I have started to go off Mozza slightly, and listen to Turin Brakes and my old favourites Hefner, the latter one cheering me up endlessly through my breakup.
As for meeting men, its rather hopeless here. Its a smalltown life, what do you want? When I went into town today, it was clogged with coupley couples and three-wheeler prams. I got so desperate, I went into work and caught up with all the bloody paperwork. Then, i wanted to see Kill Bill, because I don't get to see enough blood already. I got to do more surgery by meself, which is an achievement, since I only started earlier this year and spent half a year in out-patients without doing any surgery at all. So, things look pretty good but the bloody state government is finding new sneaky ways how to make us work much harder for less cash - their latest is a reduction of all social benefits, and payment of wages with a fortnights delay - the way the state manages to piss off all its workers, I guess, as a formerly very socially respponsibly thinking person, I'll aspire to a nice private clinic some day.
Take care, y'all, and if you ever need your tonsils and other parts oy your mouth and throat out, pass me a word
Vinnie
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Saturday August 09, 03
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10:26 AM - Some things never change
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Hey, is it really two months since I last wrote in here? Well, as I look in much more often, may I say some things never change. But can someone tell me what happened to the still ill website? I used to look in there quite a bit for my dose of voyeurism... now all I have is couplewatch opposite, and let me just say they are not doing anything interesting.
I have bought and enjoyed the Thrills album. Having bought it on amazon, it took a bloody long time to arrive, but it was worth the wait. Especially 'One Horse Towne' - its something like my new anthem. I have changed my life a bit, too, split up with my boyfriend and have almost become a bona fide doctor of philosophy but are waiting for some more paperwork to come through.
Work is mad, as usual, but enjoyable, and the long nights on call are finally starting to pay off, financially.
Not many more news, really. I ahve also joined two dating websites to see whats available, but the buggers make you pay, of course (nobody is gonna be the matching fairy out of altruism, especially in cyberland) but its fun to look at profiles and see if I 'match'. usually, I don't, either because I am catholic, or describe myself as 'large' or because I don't take drugs in excess. I am an adventurous mind packed into a bland working girl, so there we go.
Love to you all,
V.
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Sunday June 01, 03
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01:03 AM - smalltown life is killing me
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More news from the big pink block of flats I look at when supposed to be working: I have furnished my study with cheap furniture, and a big white orchid thats partly obscuring the view of the bourgeois idylle opposite: I still haven't figured out who lives where exactly, which makes the constellations more interesting, especially on the second floor: first, there's three rather ugly guys. nothing nice to look at, so my binoculars stay firmly in the kitchen. Then, some GenX couple. I know we don't say that anymore, but there's no better way to categorise them. Old folk with receding hair going on 25. That women's roots need doing, and her face is in need of some dermabrasion. The guy always wears funky t-shirts. He's got sideburns, too, and a reddish bald patch at the back of his head. I am not sure if they're those people who like to shower to the full view of their neighbours. The women is pulling on some plant on their balcony, while the man is slurping the last coffee at 11am. I think she's trying gardening, but looking at the plants, doesn't succeed.
In teh early morning, you get woken up - no, not by traffic or loud music, but to the annoying noise of one of those plastic toy cars rolling over the trottoir and a mum shouting at her brat: 'YOU BEHAVE OR WE GO HOME AT ONCE!!!' I wonder why people have kids if they cannot cope with them - there's already enough of us. Want to keep the family line and the tradition, I guess. On a Saturday morning, the main shopping drag, a twee long row of half-timbered houses, is full of prams or those three-wheeled strollers. For once, my boyfriend, flown in from the big city of London,was right. He took a sniff and said: Too small. Too stuffy. Too bourgeois. Last weekend, my friend came to visit. I am studying to get my PhD viva'ed, so I packed the books a way for a day and we went sightseeing: After hobbling over the stones of the old city, we retreated to a succession of cafes and talked for hours. There is not much more to do.
I come from a tiny village, but life is even more suffocating here. I love my job (its not just A JOB, my boss would exclaim, its dedication!) but when I come home after twelve hours of work, I want fun! And exactly that is somehow lacking in this jolly place.
Except for once: We returned from the old town one evening, one of the first warm evenings: people were sitting outside their tiny houses, with a candle and a bottle of beer. The only pretty moment.
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Sunday April 13, 03
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06:14 AM - Back in Mozzaland
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Dear friends,
*special hugs to NorthernBird, ScottyK & Smiths*
I am back! After many a tiring shift in hospital the men came lasf Friday and brought my IKEA stuff and antique wardrobe while another man from German Telekom hooked my DSL line up. I have put about 100 cables together and hooked myself up on the net again, and it feels good!
in the meantime, not much happened. What shall happen in life if you work long hours? Maybe you help healing some people, but not much went on ont he personal front. I settled into the new town. Marburg isn't really a happening place but picturesque - at least my mum liked it. There are a lot of families with little kiddies around, and lots of shops where you can buy useless things - very bourgeouis.
There are loads of well-off people, which unfortunately pushes the bloody rents up. I found a little place in some nondescript little house whose owners made a big effort and put lovely wooden floors in and did the whole place up, so it all looks a bit like some Japanese noodle canteen - all blonde wood and sparse interior and a few crystals for good feng shui. I spent half a salary on a HUGE antique oak wardrobe I can hide in. From the study window I can oversee an apartment blocks balconies which is always quite interesting especially if its inhabitants, another of these bourgouis couples, decide to go for it and have a naked shower - which is probably the ultimate kinkiness to them. Right now, they show a great display of bourgeoisness and have Kaffee and Kuchen with the inlaws.
I went tot he fleamarket yesterday with some nosy old neighbour of mine and bought a great little sugar jar from a Bavarian manufacture with a handpainted 50's pattern. i don't eat sugar but I kept it on the desk because its so nice to look at.
Now I am amazed about being online again - I guess I'll sign off to go to ebay for a bit - how I missed that! And then keep pondering whether to go wath 'The Pianist' since I go to the cinema every week as there's nothing else to do and I don't know many people yet and I work all the time and I need some serious R&R.
More updates of my bring life to follow, hope this finds you all well.
V.
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Sunday March 16, 03
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12:42 AM - the glossies
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Thanks, ScottyK, for your comment. Of course, a glossy mag cannot be beaten. Worse so, the German magazines are really crap. They're like they want to pretend to live up to the standards of their anglo-american equivalents but they've got too many articles about 'the inner self' and 'feeling' in them - in other words, they tend to be more feminist and worthy and who wants that on a lazy evening, whereas the English ones are more brash and, well, glossy. They've also got much better fashion and beauty in them.
Who wants some pretentious wannabe literary contest in some women's glossy if you've got real literature?
So, I am still thoroughly enjoying 'the corrections' apart from a slow bit in the middle. The fathers hobby was probably chosen to illustrate his anally-retentive character, or to give him one thing that let him stand out from a couple millions other mid-westerners? I bought the book because its author looked rather good and faintly reminded me of Jay McInerney who sadly seems to have disappeared completely. I am currently after the new one by Siri Hustvedt but in Britain its only out in hardback, and in Germany, well... everything gets brutally dubbed, and its gonna be some time until a translation.
As for me, I'mm probably gonna write abestseller about ear wax and the complaints of my patients and I am sure its gonna be a bestseller.
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Sunday February 23, 03
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01:49 AM - It feels weird, but
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I keep losing touch with everything I used to love. Since moving to Germany, I've hardly had any crazy, careless fun: no binge-drinking, no overspending, no laughs with freinds. I should be very happy, for I have turned my old childhood fetish of looking into people's ears and noses into a profession, live in a beautiful flat in an outstandingly beautiful town that may come straight out of the Grimm brothers fairytales. Life isn't boring, either: For the first ten hours of the day, I try to get accustomed to diseases not yet fully known to me, and more importantly, their treatment, and study and write scientific manuscripts at night.
But where is the fun?
Then, later on, I find that German television is unbearable and that the German chick magazines are all very boring, hardly any kinky sex stories like in Cosmo, but talk about felling and the 'inner self' instead. Yawn. So I have gone back to ready real books and have just got into 'The Corrections' and the Collected works of Dorothy Parker.
Some fun comes by way of visiting London for the weekend. On Fridays, we finish at 2.30 but its considered bad manner to leave that early - well, doctors are supposed to work very hard for the money they make! So I do all my letters and then sneak out at 3.30, catch a train and arrive at the airport far too early, where they tell me that they cannot put me on an earlier flight because my ticket is a supersaver. So I sit in McDonalds for a bit and try the super-dreadful fake Chinese food ( small squashy pieces of unidentifiable vegetable baked in the same batter as the apple pies I guess) the Mc Donalds Corporation are trying to poison the German population with, probably because they're one of the few nations in Europe who strongly oppose a war with Iraq to the highest level. I finally arrive and get a lukewarm greeting from my boyfriend. Saturday morning I catch up with freinds from Oxford, then go into town. Increased frequency of sneezing and all-over throat soreness mean I am getting sick at about the most inconvenient time. Still manage a photographic exhibition, a couple of shops (you have no idea how dull shopping in Germany is!!!) and some glasses of juice. I buy jeans (you have no idea how bloody expensive bog-standard Levi's are in Germany), lots of Japanese food, four books (by Paul Auster, Linda Grant and some writer who hitchhiked around Japan and now has written a novel about the use of self-help books - his name eludes me and I cannot be bothered to go into the bedroom and look it up) and a fragranced room candle that cost me 27£ - totally overpriced I kow but I want it and for the first time in about four years, I can afford it. Then see a very cryptic, almost silent, Palestinian film. The trailer was the most interesting pat of it, because they managed to get all the good bits into 2 minutes. Today is my last day - I will have spend less than 48 hours in the UK and dread doing this for the next few years until I have complete specialist training.
Take care, everyone. I should have my work internet access and email fixed by the end of next week and hope to look in more frequently.
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Sunday February 09, 03
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08:44 AM - Still there
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Hey,
LOL from cold Germany! I made it over here, I started my new job and I am still alive! First thing I encountered was the famed German bureaucracy, but the folks at work decided to give me an easy start and send me to a department that's just moderately busy, so I ended up spending all week on peoples ears, measuring their functions in all possible ways. I feel fine in my new flat and keep looking for a permanent home.
Just feel sorry I cannot keep up with all proceedings on the Mozza website, a I am not working from home anymore, but once I have found a place to live, I'll get high-speed cable and be back here. I work twelve hours a day but its great, lovely town, nice colleagues, and it feels good to be financially secure.
More to follow. Wonder ho everyone is?
V.
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Saturday January 25, 03
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04:54 AM - Bundle of joy
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Never could I envisage submitting a thesis to be such a sobering experience. After going through the excitement of printing, getting my photos done, assembling and binding, anxious something might go wrong at the last minute, I finally passed the large bundle containing the two books through a window in the graduate studies office where some sour woman took my two copies, uncaringly stuffed them in envelopes and received the accompanying mount of paperwork. More tax office than doctor of philosophy. At least I am a free agent again, even though there won't be a celebration until after the examination. Off to help people and to make proper money now. Ironically, this will leave me with something less perfect than a broadband internet line, but expect me to resurface in a couple of weeks once I've sorted my new place out.
And guess what, however sorry I feel i am leaving England for good (well at least until the next time!)
In the meantime, much luck to you all!
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