Six Day Diet Recap

Here's the diet:
Day One: cheated by not starting the diet till dinner instead of at breakfast.
Day Two: no cheating except for adding corn to the plain rice, and I had to heat up the leftovers by deliciously frying them because I have no microwave, that's no my fault...
Day Three: chicken day isn't hard to beat; I did use mustard on the chicken which I think is okay because mustard doesn't contain any fat or sugar or anything else besides mustard seed; I did however bake the breasts instead of boiling them, cause I learned from How to be a Man that only weirdos boil meat. After a couple bottles of wine I decided I should eat my chicken with BBQ sauce...
Day Four: the chicken wasn't fully cooked, so that was sort of gross. I had to heat it up somehow for dinner (still don't have a microwave), so I fried it in soy sauce and viniger. If I'd added sugar it would have been Sticky Chicken from Moody's Diner, which is delicious, but it was okay without the sugar too.
Day Five: this is the end, my friends. I ate apples all day, and would have kept going, but I came to Vilnius, and I'm not gonna eat apples all weekend when I'm with my family.

Result: lost a little weight. Don't know how much cause I don't have a scale, but on Friday I was pissed at myself all day for forgetting to wear a belt on the day I'm going to Vilnius, only to discover upon lifting up my sweater that I was wearing a belt, but on the normal hole it is now too big! Another result is a stomach virus from the uncooked chicken, possibly. 40 hours after eating it I vomited violently for hours through the night. You ever seen bile? That's some messed up bodily fluid, let me tell you...

UPDATE!
Sms from Lokys: thanks a lot for the stomach virus you ass. Tonight the whole night through my date I felt nauseous and I wanted to shit my pants. This phone doesn't have shit? What the shit! Anyway back to the matter at hand thatnks alot. Next tuime you decide to eat raw chicken feel free to stay in jjahseea. P.S. I'm not actually mad at you so don't get the wrong idea, but shit man, what the shit!?

Paranoia

Yesterday I left work an hour early to make it home before the electrician came over, cause you gotta keep your eye on those guys, you know. Turns out he'll have to come back today while I'm not there, since he conveniently forgot a plug replacement. After he left I went to Akropolis, and when I got back the receptionist at my building gave me a finger nail clippers and said "The electrician left these, he said he took them from your room by accident." Yeah, sure buddy. Nice ploy. Tryin to gain my trust, so you can come back today and bamboozle me?! Well, jokes on you, cause I hid all my dirty magazines and took all my change with me to work!

New Diet

Some of my summer clothes are a little tight (and my special lady has started rubbing my belly and asking when I'm due), so I decided to give this new stupid diet a try my colleague told me about--lose 7 kilos in 6 days: 2 days of only rice, 2 days of only boiled chicken breasts, and 2 days of only apples. The foods may be seasoned and eaten ad nauseum, just without anything else for the whole 6 days. After one rice meal, I got just one question: can the rice be pork fried? Or shrimp fried? Does that count as rice? I knew it would be murderously bland, so I added corn, thinking what's the big deal, corn can't hurt...well, it doesn't help much either.

Party Crashin'

This weekend was Erasmus Days, a day and night in Palanga. I wasn't involved, because my institution hasn't accepted any students yet, we've only sent them. So, I wasn't invited, but it was Lokys and Liepa's birthday, and I had presents for them from Turkey, so how could I not go anyway?

Saturday morning I went tot he bus station, micro to Palanga, then a bus to Šventąją, after a 45 minute wait. Luckily during that 45 minutes there was some dance performances by first traditional groups, then by the future sluts of lithuania, 12-14 year old girls shakin their TNA and air humping in skimpy costumes on stage. p.s. that's the first time i ever used the term TNA.

Then I finally got out there and went to registration to meet Liepa, but decided to skip registering when I didn't see anybody I knew (plus the yellow T-shirts were...not appealing). So we went to wake up Lokys and Dan Fowler who was visiting them from France on his way back to the states. Liepa got her Salve Chalva or whatever it's called, and Lokys got his Turkish playing cards and peanuts...and to celebrate we all had a shot of Austrian moonshine.

After lunch got beers and taught a bunch of Erasmus students to play Kings, which was a huge success. For the first minute nobody was even listening to me, but lokys bringing a 10 gallon iron kettle to the table got their attention, and everybody got into the game enthusiastically, and we played all the way to the second to last card before somebody got the last king. Photos to come if I ever get a flickher site going.

Bussed it to Palanga and 400 buzzed foreigners are instructed to form ranks, six to a row. That took about a half hour, at which point we decided to march on the other side of the street, so we had to form ranks over again (nobody thought to do about faces and march across in formation). We marched with a band and cop car leading the way to Wild Nights Club where we drank cheese and ate wine, or the other way around I guess, then Fowler and I waited so long in line at the open bar we just had to walk about with eight liters of beer, then some weak dinner and playing setback for the first time in over a year and a half for me. Then the best (worst) part, Lokys and Liepa get me on stage (with no effort, really) to all sing Krambambolis, and get cut off after the second verse, I can only hope my respectable colleague had left by then. I even considered dedicating the sone to her, till I got on stage and realized I am retarded!!!

Got to wake up Fowler and carry Liepa out around one. You know in the movies when soldiers carry a comrade over one shoulder for like all the way from Vietnam to Sri Lanka? Well, those guys are in better shape than I, apparently. None of had been able to locate the key, but I had left one of the windows unlocked, so we went through the window. Liepa went straight to bed, and Fowler and I talked about God knows what, alls I know is I got a photo of him trying to get rid of the hiccups upsidedown I something about salad tossing...

Then Lokys comes in right after Fowler fell asleep and I'm like "Oh, so you did have the key!" He's like, "No, it was in the door. What, you went through the fucking window?!" And he had the lucky lady with him I'd left him with at the club, so we took a drink and headed to the beach to ditch a lame party after five minutes. Then I went to sleep at 6 to let them put the moves on each other or whatever...the morning at 9 was awesome, just kidding.

Good Party!

A Leisurely Walk Home Friday

Friday was such nice weather I decided to walk home, about five miles. After a couple the sun was beating down on my shoulders and I thought "why don't I get a nice frosty one?" So I grabbed one and continued my commute, and right past Trys Mylimos I see a group of tourists approaching. One middle aged man points to me and says "There's another thing I'll never get used to about Europe: Public Drinking!"

First Cash Bribe Attempt

Last year I had a student offer me "anything" , to get a better grade, but the other day I got my first cash bribe attempt. When I told her she'd failed, she was like, "Oh come on! What do you want from me?!"
"I want to you to Learn something."
"Oh, I learned it good enough, what do you really want? Money? How much?"
"I don't want your money or anything else besides you learning something!"
"How much?"
"Shakespeare, Swift..."
"NO! How much money?!"
"Get the hell outta here."

Balls

Today in class we held a mock auction, and one of the girls brought a koosh ball. Remember those things? They were awesome!

After writing this post I realized it's really boring, you probably should skip it

Coincidence?

Yesterday at the shop I seen a guy get shortchanged, a 10 for a 20, and then during dinner I unintentionally watched that Seinfeld where George get's shortchanged a 10 for a 20. So I'm sitting there thinking, "Wow, that's a big coincidence." And then Elaine and Rava have that conversation about whether or not there are big and small coincidences.

How can you not love sausages?

Yesterday was the worst day of my life, just like every other day I have to get up at 5 a.m. That is until I made dinner: pork sausages with spicy merlot tomato sauce on spaghetti with some grated Tilžės cheese, and chocolate ice cream for dessert. My plan originally was to crash immediately after that, but I felt so good that instead I cleaned my whole place and started working on a DVD for my grandparents. Thank you, sausage.

[this blog] is the best? oh yeah!

this blog is the #1 blog in klaipeda! yeah baby!

Turkey In Depth

I've been prompted by endless readers (one) to explain a bit more about my trip to Turkey. My primary reason for going was to attend Eracon 2006, a conference for all Erasmus Coordinators. In case anybody doesn't know, Erasmus is the student exchange program in Europe--if you do a semester or year abroad, it's probably through Erasmus. The conference was about changes in the program's third cycle, 2007-2013. Things like much longer staff exchanges (six weeks instead of one week) and increased funding for research exchange periods are things we need to start planning for now.

Another topic was the experiances of various institutions, on topics like Ideas for motivation and recognition in order to increase participation in teacher exchange, Before and after being an Erasmus student, West-East Mobility: Problems and Possible Solutions. The point was to learn how other institutions have solved the problems we're facing. As a reletively inexperianced international office, my colleague and I try to model our methods on those of more experianced/successful international offices where possible.

The last reason, less important for many participants, still important for us is networking. There were two sessions of the GO-Exchange Educational Fair, where each participating institutions set up a table with material on their institution, and either my colleague or I went around to each asking if they do pedagogy or health, and if they do can we organize student or staff exchanges, or some other kind of cooperation.

So that was the first half of my trip to Turkey. The second half was guest lecturing at Anadolu University: Amazing. The university has 1,100,000 students and an international airport with 22 aircraft. Personally interesting/convenient is that they have school and preschool facilities. Much of this was meeting people, since I wrote an agreement with these folks at Sweden conference, but it's always better to develop more personal relationship before sending them your students. I did lecture some American literature, though: A Perfect Day for Bananafish, by J. D. Salinger. It was interesting as always, and as always the students had ideas I hadn't heard before. The only problem was that we didn't have copies of the story for everybody, so we had to make copies. I'd sent the story by email a week earlier, but it wasn't clear that everyone needed a copy. That took an hour, since there were over a hundred students, it was my first lecutre given by microphone. And because the students were seniors, they'll be graduated before they could do an Erasmus exchange with us. All I could really talk about with them was literature, but they're not fans of English or American literature...so I was mostely looking over my shoulder wishing they would get back with the copies. Plus this wasn't even supposed to be a literature lecture, but rather an English traslation class, so the students had no patience for this (whenever several guest lecures are schedules for one week there are mix ups). And my colleague was no help! :p

As far as Turkey goes, I could spend a few years there. The mountains are gorgeous, as well as the rest of nature (pictures to come when I start a photo website). There's supposed to be a site for all the pictures of all the participants, but it's not up yet. The people are more friendly, generous, and helpful than any other nationality I've met. The coordinators of the university program drove us there from the conference (4 hours) and to the airport in Istambul afterwards (5 hours) instead of putting us on a bus or train. We got out of the car to take pictures of a wedding, and they invited us inside to meet the bride. My colleague asked some guy for a light, and after lighting my colleague's cigarette the stranger gave him his lighter. Another thing I learned in Sweden is that women's right aren't visibly different there that anywhere else in Europe. You see women disagreeing loudly with their husbands, and the husbands listening, which is something I didn't expect. Lots and lots of people, at least in Lithuania and the States, have gross misconceptions about Turkish people. They're extraordinarily nice!

Dos and Don'ts of a Trip to Turkey

1. Do make sure to check inside each suit jacket when packing to make sure the suit pants are in there on the same hanger.
2. Don't put a bottle of crazy glue in one of your shirt pockets you pack.
3. Do check on the exchange rate before leaving, so you don't accidentally take a thousand dollars out of the first ATM.
4. Don't forget your bathing suit, they're kinda expensive here, I think, but I never buy bathing suits, so I guess I wouldn't know...100 lits, is that expensive?
5. Do BYOB! The best drink they have here is "raki," which is a distinct flashback to somebody drinking NyQuil in the highschool bathroom.
6. Don't drink the water.
7. Do, when you get bored of the Turkish music after fifteen minutes, order a johnny walker and sip it with a beer chaser, that'll liven things up again.
8. Don't be afraid to dance like a Turkish man...it's surprisingly similar to the way my old man dances, and I've only seen that once.
9. Do check out the "surprise" on the final night, it'll be a belly dancer.
10. Don't leave your plane tickets and all your litai in the desk at the first hotel.
11. Do kiss the coordinator who gets them back for you.
12. Don't be surprised to spend half your time eating and gaining 18 kilos in 7 days (that's an estimate).
13. Do try the baklava, and bring your mother in law back a kilogram.
14. Don't forget to make cocktails for the road, since it's an 18 hour vagabondage home.
    

Murphy's Law

35€ for a tıe, food on it at the first meal. luckily, in a block to that murphey bastard, i got a name tag to hang on my neck that covers it!

Mulholland Drive

Has anybody seen this movie and checked Lynch's10CluestoUnlocktheThriller? My only disappointment was that none of the clues explain a way to get back the two hours of my life I wasted. I wanted to quit with ten minutes left, that's how bad it was, better to waste an hour and fifty minutes than two hours, I always says. My special lady insisted we see how it ends, maybe something will make sense out of this tragic dump, but no, the last ten minutes just made it worse and worse, and then boom, no conclusion, it's just over. I thought the days of "And then she woke up and it was all a dream" were over.

On IMDb I tried to find out the is the meaning of this, and a helpful user explained that "The actual truth is what you determine it to be." Well then, I determine this movie to be a piece of shit.

A Tip

When you're burning a dvd with your laptop, don't put it into you laptop sack and go to work; it aborts the burning.

The five litas DVD bin at your local car wash

This weekend I picked up copies of Human Nature and The Clan of the Cave Bear for five lits each. I couldn't believe finding the second one, Mr. Dyer showed us that in local history, and I thought of it recently, but I figured I'd be the most out of the way movie in the future of this planet. It wasn't even great, but I got it so my special lady would know what it means when I punch my fist into my palm and twist...

Strikes and Gutters

The weekend was a roller coaster of good times and bad and Lokio and Liepa's Piletybės Party and Gedo Birthday. The gutters include:

• Marčius jumping on the table and kicking the candle with all his might, resulting in hot wax on my and special lady's jeans, and her face, which I didn't realize in the dark, very lucky for Marčius
• Somebody stealing from my room
• Bronius committing an act so atrocious I won't mention it
  

The strikes include:

• Being the last family member awake at the Party, at something like one a.m., even though it wasn't my party; the party went on for hours after that
• A very funny bit by Aidas after he came into the sauna and accused a foreign girl of looking at him and particular parts of him like a piece of meat
• Aidas, Lokys and me pounding a bottle of Bobelinė, then singing every Lugan song we could remember
• Before leaving for Trakai, where Gedas had rented a cripsona on the Isle of Santarini, he helped me fill out my income tax return and my belly with goat meat, which ought to get me back a pleasant little sum, 1/3 of my university tuition from last year (next year it should be at least four times bigger, holy shit that'll be a party!)
• Hilarious moments of Lokys and Marčius going into the water after frisbees and soccer balls, respectively, competing with Gandžius, the dog named ganja
• Gedas laughed out loud for a long time at the gift we gave him, a hilarious t-shirt we made at Kodak
• A fun sauna with Vantos, something like a broom made of twigs with their leaves still on dipped in hot or cold water and used to beat people in the sauna...it's like a massage
• That was followed by running out of the sauna house, down the dock and jumping into freezing cold water...that's the best!
• Singing lots of Lugan songs again, some of which only Lokys and Liepa and I knew
• Donkus competing with Gandžius for who could fetch quicker; Donkus won somehow, shame on you Gandžiau
• Me making a 3 liter white russian
• Finally learning how to play Tūkstantis (A Thousand), which is a card game similar to Five
• Hundred and Set Back; the endless rules to this game reek of being modified liberally by drunks players
• Yummy Šašlikai (Shish kebobs without the vegetables)
• Alias, a board game like Password, at which my special lady and I did exceedingly well
• For the bus ride home I bought a bag of chips and won a free bag of chips
• Last night I had an awesome dream about some kind of battle, me shooting people in the forest, there were at least thirty of them and they were shooting at me too but they didn't him me, I downed at least a third of them, maybe more, and then I was out of bullets, but so were they, but I still had two steak knives and they didn't, so I ran out to take them all on!
• Liepa and I had this ridiculous conversation, but you had to be there
  

An interesting batch from Statcounter

This week's results are more varried than usual, here's some of the searches:

vebra flower (canada)
they got these big chewy pretzels
sirvydas vebra
a hole bunch of pictures of best friends
the best tattoos
tattoos on vagina
lokys liepa (2 times)
liepa vebra
meet hottie simona (Peru)
there was one from spain a couple weeks ago: lokys stupid

my siblings and i seem to be a popular search topic...