A week of contusion...confusion...or was it both?

My dear sweet parietal lobes and I have had a rough week, sort of. As it seems, if you're not very good at skating and you're going at a considerable speed on the ice, and for a brief period you sort of drift and just enjoy the gliding and forget to concentrate on leaning forward, chances are that your head will have a very nasty confrontation with the ice. This might result in a few moments of pure synesthesia (it was nice to see the sounds around me in bright red and yellow spirals of color that were intertwined with a very black background, all this with my eyes closed), then 15 minutes of blackout, followed by a huge bump on the head and 85 euro for a 3 minute doctor consultation and a week of only being able to sleep, take pills and eat.

I was lucky enough that the three friends I was with, really took care of me. Two of them, with whom I also live, took turns to wake me from 2 to 2 hours the night after the contusion, so I wouldn't slip into a coma. Therefore I really owe them one, or two, or a couple of big favors :).

Now, for those of you who are better at the skating part than I am, remember: a helmet cannot hurt, but not having one can hurt a lot.

This week made me realize, again, how fascinating the human brain is and how cool it is to study it's inner-workings right at the point of damage, for lack of a better word. Reassured that my word processing abilities are not damaged, I am waiting to test my math skills as well, and I will test them starting tomorrow. With or without contusions, assignments still have deadlines, and these may be postponed, but not indefinitely.

While "enjoying" my recovery time, I stumbled across a very interesting parallel between creating music and managing a business or a country (thanks to a musical friend of mine), a different sort of synesthesia, as I like to abuse the term.




There is constant talk about interdisciplinary contexts and sharing information and data bases between and across fields, departments etc. and it's all, as it always is, linked to the mechanism that we are.

Vienna and Coldplay then cold Bucharest and being Homeless

After two wonderful days in beautiful Vienna and after admiring both the old and the new there, pictures are provided below, I have returned to Bucharest to find myself literally homeless. I guess there's a balance in everything, at least my life, so far, really wants to show me that.

With two weeks before my TOEFL and three weeks before my GMAT exams, with a lot of stuff scattered in different friends' places, no bed I can truly call my own and a lot of other things I have to solve this month, the homelessness situation is just what I need right now to complete the circle :).

But enough about my problems, nobody (except one or two truly kind persons) seems to care about them, so why should I, right?!

So, back to Vienna. Well, as my life has a balance, this city has one also. It combines the old part with palaces, museums, churches and gardens with the new part, a very futuristic an extremely organized business center with a 252 meter tower just watching over the city. I ate in that tower (Donauturm) with a bunch of friends. We went round and round in the restaurant situated at 165 m over sea level and we admired the beautiful pieces of Vienna, connected by the night lights. The view is spectacular and it is only barely equaled by the mango mousse they serve there.

The concert was amazing. Coldplay, especially the incredibly talented Chris Martin, truly rocks.


Thank you Radu for stalking us with the camera all over Vienna, we wouldn't have these pictures if it weren't fot you :)!

Science Issues can be Rapped

Savour the moment!

Everlasting moments...as oxymoronic as it may sound, there are such things. These moments stay itched in your brain a life time. They're like small videos that you remember whenever you do something related to that particular moment. For instance last night was high school moments night.

In a room full of people my age, very nice and smart people indeed, with two hookahs and two bottles of red wine, we strolled down memory lane. People remembered they used to wear black instead of pink, their obsessions for 2Pac, the fact that we all knew the lyrics for Linkin Park's "In the end" may have struck a cord, we remembered cartoons and shows that we used to watch on Italian or other TV channels (this was a little before high school) - Sailor Moon, Captain Planet, Power Rangers etc. etc. etc..

In the wee hours of the night, smoke was everywhere, the bottles were empty and the room was full of Marilyn Manson, Limp Bizkit, P.O.D., Stained, System of a Down...ahhh, sweet moments from high school that allow you to have sweet moments in college. It's like a chain of memories that trigger more fun memories. After all, what we have in our heads makes us create the next and next and next everlasting memories...circumstances might help too ;).

Stray

Sometimes you just sit and think (or stand and think). Your mind isn't linked in the present-surrounding reality, it just jumps from image to image while your body is prey for the aging seconds. Even with your eyes closed, you start the mind wandering through brain files with different extensions (.doc, .jpeg, .mpeg, .avi, .dmg or .exe etc.): the first poem you wrote, your baby pictures that your mom kept so dearly, your first view of clouds from the plane, the first time you made love, the first book that really changed you... a lot of stuff...

Suddenly, your thoughts aren't that coherent, extensions start to mix and you suddenly find yourself getting out of a pink trunk, in a room full of mirrors, where ducks indeed have an echoing quack and pink pigs in Armani suites follow the yellow brick road that leads to the cat's hole...
you're the hole, you're the duck, you're the trunk, you're just a dot, you can't be seen from the moon, you're not immortal, you have no idea where you're headed, you really don't know what's next, you're lost, if only there were a map for existing, you would get it out right now, instead of wasting precious time on rethinking things that periodically come into your mind and never get solved...Stop wasting your life on stray thoughts...just stop, have a look around, maybe you'll come into your senses, stop looking at people in the subway, just look at their shoes, no, not their shoes, look at the prints, that's it, stay with the prints, hmm, Kylie is really hot, although she's too small, so is Christina and Jennifer and Selma so is my patience with you, stop wandering just start planning your final thesis, you can start now, right here, you have a pen and a note book, take them, out...slowly, that's funny, if someone were in my head right now...wait a minute, are you reading what I'm thinking???



Wait, they don't love you like I love you
Wait, they don't love you like I love you
Ma-a-a-a-ps, wait!
They don't love you like I love you...

New beat :D

It's a beautiful, semi-humid Saturday afternoon and I'm strolling through YouTube. After a few minutes of Jim Carrey I found myself listening to the Arctic Monkeys, awesome band if I do say so myself.



Somehow they remind me of Quentin Tarantino's films :), but if I listen a little bit longer they actually remind me of the White Stripes...these Brits, gotta love them, mainly because of the accent, but that's just my case.

Here's another Arctic Monkeys business :):