Baby yet? No? How bout now? No? And now?

At this moment, I have at least 3 friends who are pregnant (I feel like I am forgetting someone) and 5 with new born babies (four in the last week!).
Luuk's sisters occasionally drop comments into the conversation about how fun it would be to be an aunt.
My sisters say things like "I'd like to go back to Holland some time soon...a baby would be a good excuse..."
Gram's hinted at it yesterday and then pretended to take it back. But she didn't really take it back. She wants great-grand-babies. When we are ready, of course. But now would be nice. The clock is ticking you know...
Our mom's try a more sensible approach and just give us good sound advice about this house we want to buy...make sure it has enough rooms for, well, just in case (wink wink).

Sigh.

Oh the pressure. :p

Goode-bye Michael.

It's strange when famous people die. Our extended reality has been altered. It's not like they hold a particularly important place in our daily life. But when they are gone, we miss them. Something somehow changed. We don't like it. Famous people aren't supposed to die. They are supposed to live forever or at least as long as ourselves to continue to grace our newspaper headlines and tv shows with reports about legal cases and scandals and canceled shows and speculations about private life...

Ah, Mr. Jackson. You will be missed. Today I will play some of your albums that have been gathering dust on the shelf. I will only remember those good times, long ago. And will talk about you with my friends for days as if we always cared.

Here's to you and a life incomparable. Cheers!

addiction anyone?

for some reason I keep checking the usual websites every few hours, as if something might have changed since the last check.
maybe if I would quit checking and would starting writing emails, I might actually have some responses.
not much I can do about the news... the world only turns at the same speed it always has...
the probability of more than one new house appearing on the sale list every week is pretty slim as well, let alone a new on each day...or hour...or half hour...
and well, facebook and blog only change when something interesting happens to people I know, and seriously, how many more of my friends can announce pregnancies or engagements at this point?
I suppose all this checking might explain why my paper is developing at a similar rate to the rest of the internet world. though, I can proudly say I have finally finished it. I will read it once more before handing it in on Monday. never know... what I think is brilliant today, I might find silly tomorrow.

speaking of tomorrow, I am going to an open-house route in Gouda to check out about 10 different potential future homes. though, really, just two of them looked really good. but you never can tell from the pictures alone.

so yeah, that was my day.
toodles.

Ridiculous dissatisfaction.

So, I got a 7.5 on my last exam, which translates to an 8, which here is a very good grade. I was quite happy with this grade until I took a closer look at the list and realized that several people got a 9, several more got a 9.5 , and several even got a 10 (which is supposed to be impossible to get in Holland unless you are particularly brilliant)... Now I do not know how I should feel. If that many people could get perfect and near perfect grades, I must have seriously misunderstood something that they all somehow got. But I tried to accept it and be happy with a grade that in itself is a good grade. Until last night when I found out that a girl in my program who from the beginning has seriously annoyed me but I have been trying to see in a different light and like her anyway cause that's what Jesus would do, got a 9.5, which translates to a 10...
Oh the envy! The annoyance! The petty frustration! I studied so hard for that exam! I thought I really had a good grasp on the topic! She didn't study as much or as long. She didn't try as hard. How can she have two, count two!, full points more than I?
My 8 now feels like a failure.
What the hell?
This is ridiculous.
Seriously, Amanda. Get over yourself.

relief

Had my first participant yesterday, ran the pilot successfully without supervision. Ha! Take that Eprime! No computer program is too messed up for me...or well, my supervisor (assissted with some uneducated guesses on my part). Two more this week

Yesterday I went to a "mindfulness" workshop. It was a bit different from what I expected. Still not sure what to think of it. Apparently what I had in mind was "awareness", being aware of how you interact with the environment you are in... whereas "mindfulness" is more centered in the body and experiencing every moment, bringing yourself to the 'here and now' by focusing on your physical reactions.... There where moments where was afraid our workshop was gonna turn in to a new age meditation session but it managed to stay just on the right side of that thin line.

Anywho, those of you who have never heard of this probably don't care too much. The only reason I mention it is cause I am supposed to help set up a workshop for safety mindfulness and I am not really sure how safey would fit with this version of mindfulness. Maybe they stole each other's term and what I will be doing is completely different. I hope.

Now, to finish that paper from hell.

Feeling better. A bit.

Ok. It's a new week. The experiment is still not ready to go, had to cancel some participants. Ah well. We'll finish in September.
That paper is still probably ok, so I am just gonna finish it. At some point. In between experiment stuff. Has to be done by Friday though. And I have to hand it in with a picture of myself. Will need to go get some pictures taken. Kinda annoying...
We got some sunshine this weekend, made me a bit happier.
Enjoyed some Jazz aan de Gracht (on the city canal/water systems). Good good. Found a new jazz club we might visit more often.
Watched 'Rachel Getting Married', liked it, alot. Cried a bit, destressed.
Played games yesterday, beat Luuk twice. :)
Then watched some 'Scrubs' and 'Simpsons' before crawling into bed.
A good way to round off the weekend.

I feel like complaining...

This experiment is taking forever to get started. We have our first participants signed up for Monday and I am starting to fear that we won't be ready. Actually, that's not true, I already had to cancel two participant meetings. Egh.
So much for being done in August.

My thesis/experiment supervisor seems to think that everything involved in the experiment is a teaching opportunity and instead of just telling me how things work she starts asking me rhetorical questions to get me to think about it and figure it out on my own. But my thought processes seem different from hers so I never understand her questions so I sit there trying to figure it out on the spot in front of her feeling very stupid and slow. She does this for a living, knows every detail about how language and the programs and bilingualism and testing... I've been dropped smack into the middle of it all with nothing. And when we are done, I will likely never use any of this stuff again. I don't need to learn this stuff, I just need to know enough to do the freaking experiment and write a paper and graduate! Quit teaching me damnit!

And this paper on that topic I know nothing about, I had a brilliant topic, finally, and was making some headway. Got a general email this morning to all students from our prof with more specific requirements, might mean that the topic I have now isn't quite what she is looking for. Crap.

There is a pile of un-ironed shirts waiting for me downstairs. I tackled half of it earlier this week and ran out of hangers; bought more, so now I can get back to it... They've been sitting there for days, untouched. Makes the house look messy.

How is it that the dirty laundry basket is never empty? It's like Elijah's oil and flour. A miracle. I wash, hang up, fold, put away, turn around to find more to wash, hang up, fold, put away, oh and of course occasionally iron. Where does it all come from? There are just two of us in this house!!!

Oh, speaking of houses, one good thing that happened this week is that we might have found the house. Maybe. I'll get back to you on that.

Ah. But now it's Friday. I can make it through this day and then I can come home, crack open a beer and for a couple of hours forget about it all and just relax. Tomorrow I will tackle laundry. And Monday will be back soon enough to overwhelm me again with life.

some people believe the craziest shit.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8089351.stm

What happened to "this master's is easy, I barely feel like I'm studying"?

So, I am done with exams. Forever. Unless I study again some day. But forever for now.
You'd think I'd be relieved. But apparently I am still stressed. Maybe that's got something to do with the unfinished experiment for one class, with it's corresponding unfinished paper, both due next week; the yet-to-be-started research proposal for another class on a topic that I have very little understanding about; the experiment for my thesis project that is still in the setup-up stage and we have two weeks (if I want to stay on schedule) to get started and find another 29 participants (yay for friends who want to help!) and finish collecting data, then the results and thesis and review which I am starting to think won't be happening till sometime this fall; and then of course the internship that will be starting midsummer. Pff. So much for done. I think I prefer exams. At least I feel more in control and capable. For half of this stuff I feel so incredibly incompetent that the only thing that keeps me going is that I simply have to get through this so I will no matter how bad I am at it. I thought a masters was supposed to prepare me for the real world. This one has mainly succeeded in revealing further to me just how unprepared I am. Or maybe it's the real world that I'll be good at, it's just this academic/research stuff that I'm not so hot at.
Oh, and on top of this all, we are looking for houses. To buy. Leiden or Gouda, for those of you who are interested. Something close to the station. With a backyard, in the sun. And enough space to stay there for a few years (read: babies). It's perfectly normal to find this a bit of a scary process, right?

Bet-dieting. I guess money is the best incentive afterall...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8063440.stm

Here's a scientific topic for ya. Bear with me, it's actually interesting...

So, I am reading all these articles for one of my classes (Economic Behavior) and some interesting ideas come up once in a while. In particular, one that caught my eye was on the norm of self-seeking. Basically, the concept is this: We have become more self-seeking over time because at some point someone told us that we, as rational economic beings, are always and only looking for ways to maximize our utility, to get the most out of every exchange for ourselves with no thought to the other person other than what is necessary to keep them exchanging with us. This is not a foreign concept to psychology - any long discussions on whether or not true altruism exists will attest to that. But at the same time, psychologists are very aware that people do strange things that don't seem to make rational sense, also in economic behavior. There are countless experiments and studies on the anomolies and "errors" of people's economic behavior. In fact, we are very often not rational, not self-seeking, and do not always maximise our utility. More specifically to this particular article, we, at least some of us, care about fairness. Now, there are different kinds of economic beings: those who care about fairness (prosocials), those who only care about their own outcomes (proselfs). You can actually measure who is which with a test that focuses on attitudes toward social issues. Anyway, some studies seem to indicate that the difference between these two sorts my partly have been enhanced by this self-seeking norm; in fact, we have all been influenced by this norm. Basically, we have been told for so long that we are only and always self-seeking that we believe it; we can easily think of many examples supporting this idea; we are suspicious even, of anyone's seemingly selfless behavior. As such, we are surprisingly (or not surprisingly?) not very willing to admit to being un-self-seeking. People are more likely to give to a charity if they can get something back, even if it is something small like a pen or a t-shirt. The theory is that this isn't because we are so willing to give large amounts of money for pens or t-shirts, it's because we can justify it later: "Yeah, I gave some money to the AIDS foundation, but I just wanted a t-shirt..."; "I walked with the breast-cancer walk cause it seemed fun and I needed to get out...". People who become involved in organizations working for some cause are generally better accepted by the people within the organization and without, if they have been affected by whatever it is they are working for or if they have some sort of personal investment; obviously you couldn't possibly care the cause for single mothers if you yourself are not a single mother or child of a single mother, right?
A major role in all this is played by our expectations of the behavior of others. We believe that everyone, including ourselves though perhaps to a lesser extent, are self-seeking; so we act as if they are all self-seeking. We justify our own un-self-seeking behavior, and we mistrust the apparent un-self-seeking behavior of others. Further, in any sort of exchange situation, we act as if they other is trying to get the most out of it at our cost so we must as well, perhaps in a way protecting ourselves. In experiments where one person is the allocator and the other is the recipient, the allocator divides a sum of money and gives part of it to the recipient, and the recipient accepts (in which case he gets only what he was offered and the allocator keeps the rest) or rejects the offer (in which case no one gets anything). Now, usually the allocator will give 50% or close to it; this could be fairness or it could be fear of rejection if the offer is too low. But in a version of this game where the recipient only has limited power, so if he rejects they both get a lesser percentage each, something strange happens. The less power the recipient has, the less money the allocator offers. But, when the recipient has zero power, the allocator suddenly switches and gives 50% again. Why is that? Some theories say that the powerlessness of the recipient invokes social attitudes, like when taking care of a baby or a helpless old lady. I personally think it has more to do with the other person being completely unable to act in a self-seeking manner and not the allocator is free to also no longer act in a self-seeking manner. Or maybe something combining the two ideas. Interestingly, those who have been highly trained in the economic theories that assume self-seeking nature often act in a more self-seeking manner. Studies comparing economics students to students from various other study subjects shower a large difference in the amount of money offered as allocators. Is this because they suddenly become more selfish? Or does it maybe have something more to do with their expectations of the behaviors and attitudes of others?

This is not to say that people are always and only really self-less under our charade of self-seekingness. There is too much evidence supporting self-seeking behavior. But it is nice to know that we are capable of being self-less, probably more so than we give ourselves credit for.

This isn't Nam.

I hate it when dreams stay with me after I get out of bed. I was dreaming that I was in the army in the middle of some war. We were caught by the enemy and put into some sort of retaining pit. We were beaten and someone tried to drown me but somehow I managed to find a way to breath under water if I took very tiny breaths through my nose. Then suddenly we were escaping, and I was no longer the only woman, another appeared out of nowhere beside me. We were running away from the male enemy soldiers for obvious reasons. We managed to get guns and started shooting at them, they shot at us, we ran but were caught again. This time it was by one of our own guys who must have been working for the enemies as well; he handed us over to a general on a train and told him that we were traitors and should be put to death. The general took us, and we were so weak from being beaten that we couldn't get up, they just dumped us on an open bed car. But at some point the general disconnected our car and left us; he was doing us a favor and giving us a chance to escape. So we ran, this time ending up in corn field. Some teenage boys saw us and started to chase us. They were French. We followed another boy into his farm yard, but suddenly found ourselves in water again, with tall reeds surrounding us, and a dog was barking at us from the yard where the water ended. We ran into the house and were followed by the French boys. A man resembling Johnny Depp sat on a rocking chair and watched from above his tipped glasses. He told us to defend ourselves and so we started beating the boys up for trying to hurt us. We were hitting them with parts of the guns that we somehow had in our hands again and they tried to fight back but we knew too many fighting moves and one by one we beat them down. Then I started to whip them with a stick on their butts and they all mumbled and cried that they were sorry. Then I woke up, in a rage, no one there, just birds chirping on the other side of the window. It took a while to shake off that lasting impression.

Wow do I have some fucked up dreams.

The pursuit of happiness.

I've often thought, and remembered again yesterday during a conversation with a friend, that one thing people rely too much on which leads to their unhappiness is the very pursuit of happiness. I think happiness cannot be a goal in itself. It an elusive goal, found best when not looked for. Have you ever been in a really dark room and tried to focus on the few things in the room that have a tiny bit more light on them? For some reason, when you look straight at it, it disappears, but when you focus on something else and look at it out of the corner of your eye, it's much clearer. I think alot of people are depressed because they find that they are not happy. Know what I mean? One of the best therapeutic approaches to depression is to give the patient an activity that he/she must do; by giving them an activity, their focus is brought down to the task before them instead of their misery and unhappiness; eventually they often can enjoy the activity and in the end there is some satisfaction to be derived from the completed task. Or, take a marriage, for example. If the whole purpose of marrying someone is for that person to make you happy, or you both to make each other happy, you will inevitably be disappointed at some point and possibly become very unhappy with each other. But if your purpose in the marriage is something beyond mere happiness, then perhaps happiness can grow out of the meeting of that purpose. If your purpose as a couple is to help each other grow and to become better persons, then encouraging each other and watching each other develop will bring some joy in itself. If at some point you find yourself unhappy it is a sign that something is not going right. But to focus on that happiness, or lack thereof, would be pointless; instead you have to figure out why it is that you are unhappy, what it is that is going wrong and fix that. Happiness will inevitably follow when the couple works together toward the same goal.
I'm doing a course on decision making; one thing that I read recently was that people constantly over- and under-estimate how they will feel about certain outcomes. We are terrible at predicting our emotions. In particular, we often think that our response to those things that we are dying to have or to those things we absolutely dread will be much greater than they are in the end. We are affected by so much more than just that one thing in any given situation and when we predict our emotional response we tend to forget that it will not be the only thing we are responding too. In our pursuit of happiness I am convinced we do the same thing. We focus on those things that we think will bring us great happiness, but when we actually get it, we are disappointed because it wasn't everything we thought it was...or rather, we had overestimated its capacity to bring us happiness. Instead, if we were to put our energies into other things, perhaps more noble activities like work or helping others or whatever it is that we feel called to do, we might find much more happiness in the mere process and outcome than we could have hoped for.

Oh, the ships are burning...there'll be no turning... back for you an me!

I had a conversation the other day that is still bothering me because I didn't feel I defended my case as well as I could have had I been first given three days to replay it all in my head and make up all the right answers in retrospect.
Egh.
Well, anyway, we somehow got on the topic of marriage and I mentioned that Luuk and I decided before we married that divorce would never be an option/solution. The response was that we were setting ourselves up for disappointment because what if something happened and we did end up divorced?, we would feel it was a personal failure. I said yes, I guess I would see it as a personal failure, and then proceeded to try to defend what I had just said with a bunch of unconvincing arguments that I have much improved in my head over the past few days.
But what struck me was that "personal failure" bit. Is that so bad? I would imagine, at this point in my inexperienced life, that if we ever divorced it would be because one or both of us hadn't done everything we could to not only stick together but to love each other (and I never met a couple who divorced still loving each other). Are we so averse to responsibility that we would hope not to feel like a failure or like it was our fault should something go wrong? (And we say "should something go wrong" as if it were some outside force that we had nothing to do with...). That we could ever take seperate ways and not feel any guilt or responsibility seems impossible to me; and if it is possible, then I suppose I should no longer be surprised at the state of relationships these days.
When Luuk and I said "no divorce", it wasn't without the recognition that things don't always go as you expect/hope, or that it won't always be easy (though I must say so far it's been a breeze...maybe it helps that he's out of the country...ha..ha... just kidding...sniff, oh, I crack myself up...). But "no divorce" is part of "commitment", "loyalty", "faithfulness". (In Dutch there is one word that seems to encompass them all: trouw). If we are both commited to each other, commited to sticking together, to helping the other grow, to encouraging and supporting each other, etc., and if we are loyal and faithful to each other above career, friends, and blonde bimbos and handsome colleagues, then it seems to make sense that divorce will not follow. But making the actual decision to never consider divorce does two things: it forces/enables (depending on how you look at it, I guess) us to look for other ways to solve things if we ever get to the point of not being able to stand each other, and it gives us more space for trust (or reduces fear/distrust), I think, given that we both know the other will not be thinking divorce or looking for a way out but will, like me, be looking for a better solution.
So, basically, I think that removing that option, or burning that good ole cliché ship, creates the space where a relationship can thrive in complete trust. And if something goes wrong, then it really is our own fault and we better take the responsibility for it or we'll never be able to patch things up. Doesn't that make sense?

What is this world coming to when "world peace" isn't enough?

Ok, regardless of my usual disdain for this competition, and regardless of what I actually think on the subject of gay marriage, I'm annoyed with this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8009359.stm . Do they seriously want Miss America to be an airheaded bimbo who doesn't have an opinion of her own but takes on only those opinions regarded as okay or cool by the organization? Pff. To be appalled that she would say what she did...ridiculous. Freedom of speech and equality for all, my ass!

Also, yesterday I read an article in one of the free newspapers on the train (Metro) about how all of a sudden more Americans are "coming out of the closet" about being atheists. As if they were scared to before. It's some sort of reaction to Bush and the ultra-conservatism that was rampant in the past 8yrs. Since when have Americans been afraid to admit to not believing in any god? Did I miss something?
Sometimes the way other countries see the US just boggles my mind. Where do they get these crazy ideas?

Strange

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8007895.stm

A quote. Any thoughts?

We only regard those unions as real examples of love and real marriages in which a fixed and unalterable decision has been taken. If men or women contemplate an escape, they do not collect all their powers for the task. In none of the serious and important tasks of life do we arrange such a "getaway." We cannot love and be limited.

-- Alfred Adler

One of my favorite memories.

I must have been around 6 yrs old, maybe older, I'm not sure. We were on furlough/homeleave, staying in Canada for a couple months after traveling from Yucatan to Michigan to Alberta in the van. We were staying on my uncle's farm in the honeybarn. It had a kitchen and a bathroom and shower, so with a little bit of work it was easily turned into the coolest house we ever lived in. We could even rollerblade and bike indoors, though we got in trouble if we tried to go through the kitchen.
We had packed as light as we could for a six-month van trip through the continent. The kids were allowed to bring a few toys along. I had a cabbage patch doll with brown hair made of yarn. Carmela had the bald one.
My parents liked to listen to Paul Harvey on the radio every day over breakfast, or lunch, or one of the meals anyway. This particular day my cabbage patch doll was cranky. I had put her in a doll crib while eating but she kept fussing through the whole meal. When I was finished, I picked her up and patted her back and bounced her, but she just kept crying.
"Amanda, please be quiet, we are trying to listen to the radio."
But daddy, it's not me, its the baby.
Bounce bounce, sniffle, sniffle, waaaaa!
"Amanda...."
Shhh baby, daddy is trying to listen to the radio.
Sniffle, sniffle....waaaaaa!
"Amanda, how many times do I have to ask you?"
Baby, shhh!
Waaaaa!
"Amanda! Shut up!"
I almost dropped the baby in shock. Daddy had told me to shut up. That was a bad word. If we knew anything, it was not to say bad words to each other and "shut up" was one of the worst cause mom said it was rude, there were nicer ways to ask someone to be quiet. And daddy had said it and he never said any bad words except for shit but that was ok cause mom said he grew up in Canada on a farm, though we couldn't use it...
I ran out of the barn, into the farmyard, and hid behind one of the silo's. I cried and felt sorry for myself. It wasn't my fault, I was just playing with my doll. That's what babies do, they cry! Daddy had been so mean!
It felt like I had been there for a long time, though it was probably only a matter of minutes or however long it took my dad to find me. He appeared around the side of the silo and sat next to me. I looked away and sniffled, wanting to be angry but mostly I was just hurt. Then he said "I am sorry. Will you forgive me?" That was the first time I distinctly remember him apologizing, and to me. I don't remember what I said, but I am pretty sure I forgave him on the spot.

Who says the west is free?

"Singapore is a fine city;" I was told often. "A fine for smoking, a fine for chewing gum, a fine for this, a fine for that..." A typical complaint by a Singaporean who had apparently never been to a country lacking in clean streets and fresh air. They do not realize that those very constraints on their freedom provide the space to live more freely.

In Singapore I was free to walk through the streets without staring at the ground to avoid pieces of gum scattered literally everywhere that had melted in the sun and would create a nasty mess if stepped in; to walk out my front door without having to step over a gigantic pile of dog-poo that some asshole had not even thought about picking up. I could walk around at night, alone, without constantly looking around me and making sure I had my cellphone and house keys ready for just-in-case. I could get in the train without being assaulted with the smell of some passenger's onion-and-mayo french-fries or the occasional teenager who likes to see if he can get away with smoking in the back of the tram.

Singaporeans take for granted the freedom they have to go about their day without being bothered by these and other albeit small but very annoying factors because there are not only rules imposed on them, but people follow them (most of the time) even if simply to avoid a hefty fine.

Yes, a fine city indeed.

Neighbors

From our apartment, I can see two pigeon coops. One is across the street on the rooftop of another place identical but mirror image to ours. Once in a while a boy in a man's body stands on the rooftop calling to his birds, cooing and whooping to wake the world. The other is behind us, two houses down where occasionally I spot a chubby guy with a big smile standing quietly, watching and petting his little friends.
In our neighborhood there are alot of fat pigeons. They have full feet, no missing parts. Clean feathers. Fluffy faces. Sometimes, when they've enjoyed their roost for a while and are ready to set to flight, they lift off, then drop a foot or two, then fly off fluttering and weaving about under the strain of carrying their heavy chests through the air before plopping down again to rest and poop on someone else's railing.