the numerable things i drank yesterday

two cups of coffee before leaving home, another at the 10am break, another at the 11:30 break, two more at 2pm when i ducked into work for a while (master's classes). so that's six cups of coffee: i was wired.

the last class (3:30-6:30) was canceled cause the room they put us in wasn't big enough, so everybody goes for a drink. three beers for me. then another on my way back to town after changing clothes and eating a left over chicken breast with delicious kc masterpiece bbq sauce (thanks lisa!). a beer with sabastian at onyx. then three at his place while we played quarters and saw plikusas on tv. then one on the way to memelis, one at memelis, and one on the kalnapislis boat. so that makes...11 beers. that doesn't seem like it justifies how bad i feel, but rest assured: i feel quite bad!

p.s. i had a plan worked out in case anybody noticed me coming in to work 20 minutes late. i was gonna make up a story off the top of my head about how i was buying milk and this crazy woman in front of me took forever cause she got into an argument with her husband and then her cild joined in.....the point is the story goes on forever until my superiors tire of it and have more important things to do. i know it would work too, cause the only woman who might say anything to me is one who doesn't even have time to listen to me when i'm being serious.

Mr. Fancy Pants

Toga Party was perfectly cromulent, but nothing particularly special. It was pretty much totally average. Fun but nothing worth writing about.

The next day I was getting dressed for the journy back to KL, and I had to wear the suit I wore to a conference on the way to Vilnius, cause obviously I can't pack it, or it will be so wrinckled I'll have to kill myself, cause dry cleaning is expensive, plus my dry cleaner closed, and I never want to find another one. Liepa saw me and said "Hey...I didn't know your name was Mr. Fancy Pants!"

Good Conversation

After a couple beers I walked into a pay toilet without paying, and then I tried to walk out too, but the lady started yelling at me in some language.

Me: What? (In Lithuanian)
Her: Wait, you speak Lithuanian?
Me: Sure!
Her: I thought you didn't understand Lithuanian cause you walked in without paying, despite all the signs.
Me: No, I uderstood the signs.
Her: Or I thought maybe you were in a big rush, or something.
Me: No, no rush. I was just, like, "whatever."
Her: Oh, well, if it was just, like, "whatever," okay then.

After a couple more beers on the bus going to Vilnius a Russian man at the bus station offered to sell me a trinket. Here's the converstation we had in Russian:

Me: How muchc does it cost?
Russian: Fifty Lits.
Me: How about five lits.
Russian: No, I said fifty!
Me: I understand. Five.
Russian: What?!
Me: Five: you want it or not?
Russian: How about you want me to fucks you up???

Then I walked away.

You've gotta sign this!

This is the most important petition ever! You'd have to be completely inhuman or a masochist plus totally, totally sober not to sign it.

Have a heart, sign up to get a hot hottie back in the main stream.

I'm Famous! (In my dreams...)

Last Friday I was mentioned in a local newspaper (in real life). Last night I dreamt that I was filling out some forms and I entered my qualification as "fame."

The Diminutive

A colleague just asked me what the diminutive form of my name is. I told her, and told her I've been wondering why everybody uses diminutives around here. At exactly that moment another colleague came in a called her by her diminutive, we burst out laughing, and the new colleague explained why: when we come to ask you for something and see you're wicked busy, we try to make it seem like we love you a lot so that you'll do us the favor right away; we don't love you anymore as soon as we walk out the door, of course, but we really want this favor.

My Dream

Man, I had these weird dreams again...it sucks that i've become too lazy to write them in my dream log, cause i'd remember so much more details that way...anyway, i remember me and peanut go to chris archer's house, and peanut had a knife iwth the tip broken off like the one i read about in this sherlock holmes adventure before going to sleep, and he was planning on killing grant, chris' brother, for something grant had done to christ, and i was just like whatever, i don't care, and then we got there and grant was very apologetic and shit, and chris seemed like he didn't want peanut to kill him.

and what was the other part? damn it, i remembered it over breakfast, and now i don't even remeber that...it was about..oh yeah! mike notorangelo broke up with liz white, whom he's been dating for like seven years (in real life), they might even be married now, i don't know. anyway, i dated her before that(in real life), and now mike dumped her for kristen golub, whom i never dated, but on whom i've always had a crush(in real life). and i was giving her advise. apparently, mike had dumped liz for never standing up to him, for always pretending she was happy with whatever he did even if it really bothered her. i'd noticed kristen doing the same thing, and i secretely advised her to cut it out, cause i knew mike would never confront her about it till it was too late.

A Non-Eventful Week-End

This weekend was typical and not exciting with the following exceptions: I made pizza on saturday. It was with chicken and jalapenos, and to make it extra spicy, since I still have some blue cheese from lisa to temper the spiciness, I mixed choriso in with the sauce, which is like hot pepper paste, that comes in very small packages. I mixed in maybe a tablespoon, and this thing was suicidal. Oh, and I through in some hot pepper powder for good measure. I ate it (I'll finish it for dinner) but with plenty of water and/or beer.

Then I made Banana Bread. I make it whenever I have blackened bananas, blackened from sitting around for too long. It was okay but a little dry. So, today was Cake Day at KLK, cause I don't have a girlfriend, and what am I gonna do, eat it by myself? Saidas shocked me when he asked how soon I'd be in town saturday, how long I was going to eat cake for, and I was like "Eat cake?! WTF dude! I said I'm making cake, not eating cake!" Dry as it was, I impressed my colleagues heartily, because, as they said, "Dry? Who cares if it's dry! You're a man...and you cook food!"

Sunday I actually did something interesting, I went to this Lithuanian film festical thing, which was just playing at the regular theater. Here's how it works: wake up sunday feeling like craptacularity; go to the theater to see what's playing when (instead of checking a paper); buy a book (dr. jeckel and mr. hyde, by robert luis stevenson) to help bide your time (2 hours) with a beer (carlsburg); go to the movie (AXX).

It was 12 short movies, 9 or 10 of which were perfectly cromulent, and about three of which were fucking fantastic, two highlarious and one sad/touching. I highly recommend it.

Here's the worst part: only one out of my 34 students has seen it! WTF is their problem (besides being rather limited in their English skills)???

Students are such goofs

One papers about looting during Hurricane Katrina started off with:

"In days of yore..."

Let's get un-retarded

Why is Islam the only violent religion in the 21st century? I can understand crusades and other religious initiatives in a time as superstitious as the Dark Ages, but come now, haven't we progressed beyond that? Don't you think that if the Pope declared a holy war even the most devout Catholics would say "wtf old man? go suck a shaved one!"

I don't think it's because Christians are less religious or lesser zealots (Jews certainly aren't, and I think their response would be the same), it's just that they've become peaceful religions somehow. How?

It's because Muslims are the only ones threatened at this time? The holocaust wasn't that long ago, and I never read about any Hebrew suicide bombers.

The oven disaster

The other night when I was feverish i thought it would be wise to make meatloaf and fries and pickle soup. It was sort of wise, cause in my delerium I made some changes that turned out to be delicious, even in my non-delirious state (the left overs).

Anyway, the disasterous part is that I bought this new oil that was vegetable oil mixed with sunflower oil. When I put the potato slices in it quickly boiled over, and i took the pot off the stove. I took the metal dealie that holds the pots and pans over the fire off, and there's like a pool of oil all over the whole stove. What do I do? it's too much to wipe up with anything less than fifty square meters of wash cloths, so i decide to tip the oven over and pour it into a bowl. As i begin to do this, I very luckily remeber that the meatloaf is in the over, so I save that, no problem. As i tip it more the cover falls down on me and the oven door falls open, the oil goes half into the bowl and half on the floor, and the tops of the gas dispensers fall on the floor, and i happen to try to pick up with my fingers the one that had been under the boiling potato oil, so it was still very hot. ouch.

also, the oven door becamse dislocated, and that took a while to fix. anyway, why was this damn seseme sead oil so bubbly?

that’s awesome when babies smoke

i saw this baby light up on a bus the other day, and when his mommy took away the ciggy, and said "how many times do i have to tell you, no smoking on the bus!" he started bawling like a fucking baby, and then i remembered: he is a fucking baby!

It's like switching places, or something

So here's I, Cedric (last year's frenchman), and Sabastian (this year's frenchman) on some kind of scale:

Cedric used to eat more than I, now I eat more than Sabastian;
Cedric used to drink more than I, now I drink more than Sabastian;
Cedric used to go out more than I (just a little), now I go out more than Sabastian (quite a lot);
Cedric used to be thinner than I, now I am thinner than Sabastian;
Cedric used to have more CDs than I, now I eat more CDs than Sabastian;
Cedric used to be less dissappointed in the dorms than I, now I am less dissappointed than Sabastian;
Cedric used to less technologically advanced than I, now I am less technologically advanced than Sabastian;

Anyway, enough of this. I've got a bit of a fever, so this post is probably nonsensicle, so why don't I stop now?

New Frenchman

The new French intern arrived yesterday. Sabastian, like the crab from the Little Mermaid. We haven't really gotten to know each other yet, but he seems like a stand up fellow. I'll show him around the bars tonight.

I know, I'll go for a walk

Last night I ate a big ass cheese burger and freedom fries; it was alot of food. I felt too full, so I thought, I'll go for a walk. I walked to the new mall, BIG, and thought I might buy some tea and walk home. When I got almost there I saw Saido apartment building, so without thinking I called him up for a beer. After a couple beers with him at BIG, I didn't feel any better than after the burger. However, the beers did, as always, make laundry much more enjoyable.

First Pop Quiz

I know new first years heard about me from the second years, cause they knew I speak Lithuanian (which I staunchly denied). I guess they didn't take seriously the part about what a hard ass I am, because 93.4 of them failed the first pop quiz. The average was a 28.636. It was on the second day of class. They'd read the first chapter of English Grammar for Dummies for homework. They'd been given as much time as they wanted for questions and discussion in the following class. When they had no more questions I said "Nothing else? Really? You understand everything? No more questions? Well, okay then, take out a clean piece of paper."

The thing is I was much stricter with grades second semester last year, and I noticed students putting alot more effort into learning. So I figure I won't skip first semester this year, I won't even skip the first week. If anything, I'll skip going to the bathroom and just pee out the window; how's that for dedication?

Bullshit?

Me and a couple buddies went to Palanga for an afternoon over the weekend.

At the beach Andrius went swimming with this 18 year old girl he'd started talking to about a half hour ago. Apparently, they started having sex in the water, and went to finish up in a cafe toilet. If it's bullshit, it's very consistent, cause such stories make up 90% of what comes out of his mouth.

Half of it's gotta be true, cause he showed me the videos on his cellphone:)

Making a First Impression

One of my new students asked about behavior in class on the first day.

Me: What do you mean?
He: I mean, what do you allow us to do in class?
Me screaming: I ALLOWS NOTHING!!! (Slamming my fist on my desk)

And I busted out laughing, because of the big lebowski, which they didn't realize, but they all busted out laughing anyway, because i'm such an ass.

Shock after Shock

I came back to Klaipeda last night and went out to celebrate Saido birthday. I was shocked at how terrible the music was at one of my favortie places. Maybe it was just an off night. Or maybe I was spoiled by my last couple weeks in vilnius, where they're still playing the same music they were playing four years ago, so I got, like, nostalgic or something.

Then Buddy's lover (Buddy is my age) and I started talking, and I asked her where she's studying, and says "I'm in 12th grade." Ever the diplomat, I immediately dive into asking questions about highschool in Klaipeda, as if her answer didn't shock the pants off me. Until she went to the bathroom, and I slammed my hand down on the table and said to Buddy "WHAT?! SHE'S IN HIGHSCHOOL?! WHAT?!" On top of that, she's also engaged to be married to somebody else.

Also Saidas is "dating" someone who may or may not be ugly. His theory is, "I was really drunk and don't remember her face, but as long as I'm that drunk again next time I meet her, there's no problem!"

Not too shocking, but a funny line of my sister's the other night. I told her to leave behind everything she'd stashed in her purse at a bar, cause we were going to a club where they check purses. Vilma, a cutie I just got reaquainted with from four years ago, told her she can buy all that stuff at the store for chump change. Liepa said: "I don't want to buy it, I just want to have it!"

Departures and Arrivals

Sirvydas slept through his first flight, and had to buy another for the first leg (to london). It left the next day at the same time, so this time Gedas and I stayed up watching SNL and Robin Williams Live on Broadway until 3:30 a.m. to make sure Sirvydas woke up.

That same day Lokys and Liepa arrived. Very casual vacation time with them, cause they don't really know anybody, so we don't have to make any plans, we just stick together (unless I have a date).

Highlights were a Bites concert at Artistai, cocktails on the Old Defensive Wall, several games of Kings at Seth with the Peg and these Brits who sat down with us, me having to expend a regretable amount of energy keeping an eye on Liepa and some sum bag at Prospecto on Gedemino Prospect, and playing Frazzle last night wasn't bad either.

Toight is my going away party, which isn't planned or anything beyond: go out and party, then come home and party. I always have trouble with long guest lists, because I want to make sure I don't have to end up choosing one girl at the expense of another. And since I'm sure all girls want to jump my bones like it's their job...

You're gonna call me gay, but you'll be way off

Sirvydas and I went to dinner (a very spicy pizza "rodeo" at pizza jazz) and a movie for his last night in vilnius, cause he his flight is at 6 a.m., so no partying. The movie was supposed to be Star Wars episode 3, but it wasn't playing anymore. The only movies playing at the appropriate time were romantic comedies.

After bashing the shit out of such action movies as War of the Worlds and Sahara, I must admit that A Lot like Love, with Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet, was a perfectly cromulent movie. I enjoyed it. By the end I felt like Fred Savage in The Princess Bride: "They've gotta get married, they just have to! It wouldn't be fair if they didn't!!!"

For Christ's sake, was I ever so retarded?

Last night my youngest brother, Sirvydas, came back from Kaimas with this girl. They've got wine and stuff, looks like a romantic evening. They put on a cd, and they both start singing. I don't know if they were drunk already or something, but they only drank the one bottle of wine and they were both singing loud, especially the girl, and especially Sirvydas. This is the only person I know who sings worse than I do.

I'm tone deaf. I sing anyway for fun, and to make fun of my own terrible singing. I sometimes will even do it in a romantic setting, but just to get a laugh, 20 seconds are more than enough. They just kept singing and singing and singing. She was normal. He wasn't. I...I just couldn't believe it...I have to embrace the conclusion that he's very lucky they already knew each other, because if that wouldn't be first date suicide...I must be playing by the wrong rules...

I had to go upstairs before I was tired just cause I couldn't take it anymore, even though we were three rooms apart!

Buy Buy Buy!

Yesterday I bought my mother (me) a DVD player. 319 lits, plus 30 to have its region restrictions lifted (after a 10 lit "pedagogue discount" i managed). i had to drive back to the fuckin store cause the cords weren't included. WTF?

and today i bought me a new cell phone! YEAH! i'm happy, cause it's nokia. now lokys or liepa gets to use my crappy siemens piece of, i mean, perfectly cromulent phone. it's got a camera, which is neat, but it's low quality, the higher quality phone looked somehow childish, which made me afraid i would forget it's mine and leave it somewhere. the phone is actually the same one they gave my mother to use at work, which means i'm as prestigious as she is :D

The train to Vilnius

I was traveling alone and had a cold, so I didn't take any booze, just planned on sleeping. I sat with three young ladies and an even younger boy. One had quite a rack (one of the girls), but they were too young for me to talk to, 17 probably. Next stop two guys join us, and offer us cider, so the party's on. One of the girls drinks cider, and I do, and she talks a bit. It turns out the girls are incoming freshmen to Klaipeda University, so I'll see them around next year. It turns out the talkative girl is a singer and they don't like group sex (one of the cider boys asked). The girls got off the train and we burned one and went to sleep.

This fatty old bitch comes in and asks if she can sit down, and I move my legs so she can, and even after sitting down she's muttering about how this isn't a sleeping car, and as a, um, steward (word choice?) walks by she yells to him to make our friend sit up. What a bitch, huh? No wait: another steward asks me to help him with a big bag, and I do, and when we've put it up this other even bigger bitch starts complaining that we've done a terrible job and she would have done better herself. I thought of this a moment too late, dammit, but I should have hauled it back to the floor and said "let's see you do a better job then, Bitch, please."

Long Nida Weekend

Well, this was fun, but not really especially eventful, let's see:

Thursday Sirvydas, Gedas, Juste, and Dorota, from Poland, took the train to Klaipeda, went out for Kebabs and Clubs, and went to bed. Gedas came into mine and Sirvydo room after about five minutes, cause he still felt like talking about something or other, and the three of us chatted till about six in the morning. The only thing I remember is explaining of egoism/individuality is a good thing.

Friday Sirvydas rented a bike and he, Gedas, and I trekked out to Nida, 56km/35 miles. That was fun, even though the weather was overcast and drizzled a couple times for a little while. Then out to dinner (Turkey fingers for me, yum) and then off to the light house to drink and tell dirty jokes. Funnier than any of them was when Juste accidentally said "perlupsiu" instead of "pertauksiu." She meant to say "excuse me, i'm going to interupt you," but said instead "excuse me, i'm going to whip the shit out of you."

Saturday Sirvydas and I woke up early and went to the nude beach. We played Naked Frisbie and jumped into the water and came back, cause it was cold and windy. Breakfast and a nap, the best nap ever, incidentally, and then...dinner, I guess (the best Saltibarsciai and Potato Pancakes with Meat and Mushroom sauce ever), and then more of the same as last night, with Aurimas, Laura, and Egle, except with Sirvydas and me leading the conversation for a great chunk of time, because Laura is a camp counceller here, and she was curious about Neringa, and once we got started, forget about it.

Sunday off to the dunes and the home of Thomas Mann, where we remenisced for an hour about the Simpsons. Then off to dinner again (chicken salad) and then back home for some wine. There was a concert/party going on but we were beat. The highlight of that was when Juste asked Aurimas if his twin siblings are the same age.

Monday Sirvydas had a cold, so he gave his rented bike to Aurimas to bring back, so he and Gedas and I rode home, this time in amazing, perfect weather. In the end we went to seperate ports, Gedas and I both claim that the other caused the misunderstanding, the result being that Aurimas didn't have time to ride the bike to my place, so we both had to ride to the station. So they all leave on the train, and I'm stuck with two bikes. I tried riding one and holding the other, no go. So I left one with a cop at his post, which made me nervous, but I had little choice; there was no place around with cameras. So with my two trips home with the bikes I ended up riding about 70+ km yesterday/45 miles.

at work.....

...for no reason. they got this funny way of counting vacation days in lithuania: they include weekends. so by coming into work for a couple hours friday and monday i save four vacation days.

My First Date with a Mommy

Well, there's not really many highlights here, except for my suggestion we back to her place:

Mommy: And what about my child?!?!
Aras: So? I'll be Uncle Aras!

She wasn't very amused.

Mommy: I don't bring "Uncles" home in front of my daughter.

Well, I thought it was funny.

And then there was another incident in something that's becoming an epidemic. There's this odd habit Lithuanian girls have to never (usually not) go home the first night, and they always say the same thing, the exact same words: "next time." This happens about half the time, which is often enough that I suspect them of being part of a secret society that lays down rules for how to trick men into thinking they're virtuous or something. I probably get this especially often since I'm such a great guy, and they don't want me to think they're nonvirtuous, cause they want to marry me. What are they thinking? If they wait till the second date that's like the same as waiting till after marriage?

I'm in favor of this practice on priciple, since I'd never consider marriage with a, uh, floozy, but its practicle application is no fun.

Only in Vilnius...

Once again, an accidental meeting. Last night at Bix Sirvydas and I bumped into our nephew, Mindaugas Vebra, and our step cousin, Evaldas Bucka. We played Circle of Death and Asshole with some dark beers.

Also, this song is very funny!

What could be more appropriate for his 18th birthday?

Last night Sirvydas and I went to town in Vilnius. We met Gedas and Juste, and after a beer at Seth we went up to Gedimino Pilis (Castle) with some cocktails. That was fun. Then we went to meet Aidas and Kristina and these two brits, Alex and Smoggy, at Aido place. After a few drinks we took off. The brits had been in Lithuania for a week without seeing any naked Lithuanians, so Kristina suggested we go to a nudy bar.

None of us had been to one (one currently open in Vilnius) but Aidas knew of one for some reason...and somehow it was only 20 lits to get in. The ones you get flyers about on the street are all 80.

We went in and got a table kinda far from stage. The dancers walked all around, though, doing lap dances. Kristina, clever as always, suggested we start yelling in English. Aidas starts yelling "We Love Lithuania!" and I joined in. This one comes over and gives me a lap dance, and I slipped her ten lits, but only after a good long time ;)

Then I was out of money, but Aidas reminded me that I had 1000 Byelorussian Rubels on me, about 30 cents US. Note: in the US people use dollars, but in Europe the smallest denominations are usually 10-notes (ten litas = about 3.50USD), so this grand I have in my pocket is almost worthless.

But I agreed to use it on one, which is funny enough that Aidas and Kristina start shouting for a dancer to come over (I think they might be my Guardian Angels, or maybe just Kristina is and Aidas is my Guardian Devil, but they've teamed up for some reason). I'm waving the bill around folded up and sure enough one comes over, and dances even longer than the first one, and I make sure to slip the bill in the back where she won't see it until she goes to the locker room or whatever.

Aidas: Let's get your brother a dance!
Me: He's got no money left, and neither do I now!
Aidas: it doesn't matter!
Me: Oh yeah, right!

There's no set cost here, getting a lap dance is like sittine next to the stage, you just give 'em money as long as you want to. So Aidas, Kristina and I start yelling for one to come over and pointing at Sirvydas and within a minute the boy, whose 18th birthday was last week, was getting his first lap dance. It was quite a sight: he was the most attentive I've ever seen him in my life, no blinking!

A Good One

Londone i ta pati bara vis megdavo uzeiti vienas lietuvis ir du estai po darbo alaus pasiurbti.

Taip ir murksodavo trijule vos ne kiekviena vakara su alaus kausu.

Po kurio laiko lietuvis isvyko gimtinen. Estai, like vieni, atejo i ta pati bara liudesio del draugo isvykimo aplaistyti.

Staiga vienas ju sako kitam:

-Klausyk, o ar tu zinojai, kad pas ta lietuvi shiknoje dvi skyles?

-Ne! Kaip taip, negali buti!? - pradejo stebetis antrasis.

-Taip taip, tikrai! Zinok, kiekviena karta, kai mes visi trys ateidavom i sita bara, barmenas mus vis pasveikindavo tardamas "And here comes the Lithuanian with two assholes!"

Complaining always works, and WOW sucked

Another complaint I made last week:

I went to one of my favorite clubs, Memelis, and there's tables on the dance floor (there's a real lack of competence in the management here). I went to the bar and asked G. (cute but a little mean looking) why it's so empty:

G.: It's early yet.
Me: You think so? Where are they going to dance?
G.: There's still room for dancing.
Me: Where?
G.: There!
(The room she's talking about is so small between tables it's really just a walkway)
Me: Nobody understand that area's for dancing, and nobody will, G.
G.: I know...I've already complained.
Me: Pass on my complaint too please, would you G.?
G.: (Smiles and nods)

Last night I went back to check and the tables are gone! Unfortunately, I think everybody else who went last week figured Memelis is beat for the summer, so it was still only half full last night, mostely tourists.

And War of the Worlds, the film, sucked. Besides not making any sense (e.g. the martians came here to bury the tripods a million years ago, and are only coming to use them now? why didn't they take over the planet then?), the film also skipped the entire moral of the story, which was the reason Wells wrote the book, which you can get by reading the last chapter of War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells

Complaints

I have food poisoning. My next and back hurt. I have a head ache and a stomach ache. I'm tired. I feel week. It hurts when I cough. My eyes are sore. There's no toilet paper. Everybody is slow. I don't know the numbers. I haven't had coffee in two weeks. I'm hungry but I can't eat. I'm tired of the same tea all the time. My bed is uncomfortable. The water in my toilet has been running for two weeks. The dishes are dirty. I don't have room for all my shoes/shirts/sweaters. I hate ironing. My Brita filter is expired. I'm sun burned. I'm out of eggs. I'm thirsty. The lights in my office are too bright. I'm out of staples. My scotch tape doesn't have a dispenser. My headphones are broken, they're all taped up.

Sahara--Great Movie!

I especially loved how realistic it was, like the scene where they're handcuffed to a truck bed and then all of a sudden they're not, and how they always figure everything out right away, like where in the building the bombs are, or where in the desert penelope cruz is.

So it was modesty, and then a weird, weird night

Went back to the nude beach with much finer weather. There were more people, including some young couples, many swimming. This one girl was cute, except I had to do a double take to decide weather she was naked or just topless...yuck.

However, they were still all stationed in the bushes. I was the only person out smack in the middle of the beach.

Then (clothed) I went for a few beers with Saidas, and I ate Lasagna at Onyx, which was good, except I think they used ketchup for tomato sauce...yuck. We watched Lithuania lose to Liverpool again.

I went to bed, and I had no water by my bedside, but, genius that I am, I though "fuck it," even though I was dehydrated from the beach and beer. While I was getting ready for bed I was thinking about traveling through Neringa with a woman, hurrying because there was a storm following us. So I dreamt that we, a bunch of people, were biking to Nida and there was a storm following us. We all got under the shelter of some restaurant without getting wet, except for Saidas who was drenched. He came up to me and said Dude, I need to take a piss. Then I woke up and realized I needed to take a piss, but I didn't want to get out of bed because it was freezing cold! I was shivering like an epileptic or something. It was so cold after I took a piss and filled up my water bottle I put on another blanket. Back to the dream: now we were all Cepelinai lying side by side in an oven, and then I woke up again and it was hot! I threw off the extra blanket. Back to the oven for an hour, and I woke up again and had to turn the fuckin fan on it was so hot. Back to sleep, and an new dream begins: some kind of bad guys catch me and my buddy and they think we know something we don't. They're grilling us, and I know they're probably going to kill us, so I'm being super suave and friendly and helpful to try to get on their good side. Then I woke up again, and it was back to the Cepelinai dream. And every time it was hard to fall back asleep because I'm a little sunburned everywhere.

Looking for some privacy? Go to the Nude beach!

Yesterday afternoon I finally dared to hike out to the nude beach. I say hike because it's a hike! Immediately when you get to Smiltyne, across the Curonian Lagoon, the women's beach is to the right, general beach to the left. The general beach goes on for a few miles. Then there's the men's beach. And only after that is the coed nude beach.

There was almost nobody there. And the few people that were there were hiding behind bushes. I'm not sure if it was because of modesty or the cold; the wind was blowing so hard and the sun was behind clouds, mostely, so much that even I planted myself behind some bushes, ate some salad and hunter's sausage, read some Solzhenitsyn, took a nap wearing my sweatshirt but no pants, and took off at 5:30. The weather looks better today, though, hopefully I can get a little color on my cheeks.

Thigs I am/am not afraid of

Things I AM afraid of:

Guys with brain surgery scars pounding vodka (grow some hair you fuckin hooligan)

Bees

Stairs/ladders (only coming down when it's steep)


Things I AM NOT afraid of:

Guys who swear too much and/or don't button up their shirts

Children

Gin

Being the only guy on the dancefloor

SMS from Rastenis

"I have just bought a new car... I will be getting busy with the mechanics this weekend."

I would do anything for love, but I won't do that...and I won't be on grenade duty

Last night me and Saidas went down to Global, cause everyplace else is closed or beat on Thursdays over the summertime. I barely had energy for this, but I went cause Saidas hadn't been there for over a year.

I'm ready to bounce after an hour, but Saidas is drunk, and he doesn't want to leave just the two of us. There's these two girls dancing near us, and he tells me "nueik is pabazarink, sakyk 'what's up' ir viskas joms pochui bus!" He wanted me to pretend I'm a tourist. I don't do that, though; that's like taking advantage, or something, and anyway, if I can't pick up a girl on my own merit, I don't deserve to, and even if I did, who wants some bitch that's only interested in rich tourists? And I didn't have the strength to go though it in lugan, like I said I was tired.

So Saidas starts talking to one, and they start dancing, and the other one comes back to the dance floor, so now it's the four of us, and Saidas is trying to talk to the Cute one, leaving me the Less Cute one. She not bad, but not my style, sort of Goth but not on purpose. What I was supposed to do was jump on grenade duty, but I didn't. I would like to think that I could someday for a better cause, but this wasn't it.

It's the summer of Love!

Tuesday I go to the bank. Lovely teller. I flirt profusely (remember the waitresses in Vilnius, Rachel?).

Wednesday I have to go back, and I know I'll deal with the same teller, because I arranged it thusly. I came with a grand master plan prepared to get her phone number (I actually did plan things out, involving props, and ran it by a cute colleague who approved very enthusiastically).

She wrote down her number, all smiles, asked why, and I told her because she's beautiful and smiles so much. And then:

Aras: So, when are you free?
R.: You know what? I'm already busy this weekend. Why don't I give you my friend's number?
Aras: Um...what?
R.: She works here too. She saw us talking yesterday and mentioned that she'd love to meet you!
Aras: WHAT?!
R.: Sure! You've got a gorgeous smile yourself, you know.
Aras: Looks like things are going my way...
R.: She'll be excited to hear from you...

So I walked out of the bank with two phone numbers (oh, and i'll hear about my credit card application soon, too). And then, as if my day couldn't get any better, I found bread at Maxima made of 14% bacon! It wasn't as good as I'd hoped; I hope the same doesn't go for the tellers!

The year's first real bike ride

Yesterday i went on a a bike ride to Juodkrantis (Black Coast), on Neringa (Curonian Spit). I didn't know exactly how far it would be. It turned out to be 40km from the ferry and back, plus about 8km from my place to the ferry and back: 48km (30 miles). I took almost five hours. At least two hours were spend waiting for the ferries and eating some tuna noodle salad i brought with me, and reading some esseys, leaving me at a pace of 16+ km/h (10+ mph). i know that's not very fast. i used to ride more faster in boston, but this was my first time this route, so i was enjoying the scenery and being observant for the sake of caution. i was hoping to do this run often this summer, then the thing with I. happened, busy, then the Sea Festival; hopefully now I'll get going a few times a week.

There's nothing great in Juodkrantis. What I really wanna do this summer is bike to Nida (58km one way) and camp for a couple days and come back. Sirvydai, Loky, Gedai, Homo, Robi, Saidai, Jurgi, Tadai, Marijonai, Karoli, Aidai, Merginos (abejoju!) or anybody else inetersted let me know! I got a fat tent, and I've only used it twice, both times indoors!

Klaipeda Sea Festival

Friday afternoon Aidas Peg and Kristina Stick showed up to party for the Festival. On the way to meet them and on the way back was a stop over at Malunininkai. It's a bar that has special prices for take out with are less than shop prices: 3.20/liter of Baltijos, which is usually about double that at bars and a little less than double that in shops. Unfortunately the barmaid didn't close one of my bottles properly and now i have to wash my backpack and everything that was in it :(

We walked around and saw plenty of boats and drunks, but I'm afraid the events aspect of this festival didn't make a great impression on me. There were tons all over, and we saw alot of them, but they were much less impressive than the Durham Fair.

What we actually did for fun is what we would have done everyweekend. Friday, after a concert featuring some kind of music, we went to Honolulu. I was already a bit too tired to dance much, so no biggie there.

Saturday walked around the docks, where we saw a ton of graffiti, including "Rastenis gives the best free BJs!" Back to my place for Spaghetti and Meatballs and to change clothes for clubbing. First off to drink a bunch of dark HBH Beer at a tent, which tired out Aidas and Kristina, so I suggested stopping at a shope to make Redbull Vodkas. And we're off!

At the shop after walking Egle to her car, Saidas takes off for Honolulu again by himself, so now it's just the three of us. We get the cocktails and blah blah blah...

We hit this new spanish club, La Clalplolca or something, which is neat. I try dancing, it is good music to dance to, but only if you've got someone to dance with or get picked up within a few songs. I didn't (yet)! So I went back to the bar. This bartender was Good, with a capital G. I ordered a vodka with ice and lemon, and in about point two seconds he convinced me to get a double.

I lost Aidas and Kristina, who turned out to be resting an a tied off dark room. So I tried Memelis, which has better music to dance to if you're a loner! They're closed, so I hit Prieplauka, a bit seedy, but okay as a last resort or a change of pace. Within five mintues a girl falls into my lap, literally. I'm stading next to the bar with my vodka on the rocks (they were out of lemons!) and she stumbles right into me, and I help her onto a bar stool.

Aras: "Labas!"

She takes my cigarette, takes a puff, puts it out in the ash tray, and say: "Let's dance?" So we're dancing, somewhat sloppily, and blah blah blah, and we go upstairs to sit down with her cousins. Two of these heafty guys start givin me lip about how they'll find me and make me pay if I hurt they're little cousin (who turned out to be three years older than I). I almost left because of that, but I'm not in charge, so...

Aidas and Kristina show up, see this girln on my lap, and start cheering me on. I go back downstairs to dance with her, and I know they're watching me, so I glance up: very reminicent of American Pie, they're right behind her waving thumbs up in the air to me with devilish looks on their faces.

Her friends were leaving, and I (and A. and K.) was like "oh crap," but then I saw Jovita's cousin writing down her address for Jovita, and I (and A. and K.) was like "oh baby!" However, what Jovita had in mind was simply more dancing. But Prieplauka was closing, so we had to go to the only place left open, Kalifornia...

I'd never been there because of it's terrible reputation, plus Saidas got his nose broken there, plus Tadas stepped out of a cab into a pool of blood there. But, I'm not in charge, so...

VERY SHADY, I'll never go there again. Kids walk around in packs dropping roofies and picking fights. While I'm dancing with Jovita two kids come up, one tries to get between us (but he's not used to people not being intimidated of him, so it didn't really work) while the other offers to buy her a drink (with a roofie; he didn't say that, but...)

So we get the fuck out of that place.

Sunday morning (3p.m.) Kristina makes scrambled eggs. Quite a catch, that girl--the only person I know who makes eggs better than I do, plus she doesn't put sugar in her coffee, and she's acing med school. Lucky Aidas! And then we go to Pas Juozapa (Hash B Hash) for Cepelinai and Beer and Dirty Sanchez type jokes. And then to the Final Concert and Fireworks, for which all three of us were so tired I'm really glad it ended at 11 instead of 12.

So all in all the weekend was a blast more because of the company than because of the Sea Fesival. You're all invited to come make it enjoyable again or for the first time next year!

An AWESOME Dream

last night in my dream it was the matrix. i could dodge bullets. it was a ridiculously amazing dream. just to show off, i let jon norton, who is a soldier, shoot bullets at me, and i dodged them. i saw them all coming in bullet time, super slow, and dodged them easily, but not so easily that it didn't feel dangerous and filled me with adrenalin. it was like sky diving.

norton was all pissed off, especially after it turned out mat soule could dodge bullets too.

cleaning out the sms outbox

here's a couple smses i wrote the week sarunas was here:

1. koon's on a nippon to get

2. write about the ass hold gedas

That's the best when The Onion directly corrosponds to my job, since I read it every day at work anyway...

I can't wait to give this to students. Next year the British and American Course isn't being held, but it will be in 06/07, and I'll probably be the one teaching it. One of the authors I cover is Herman Melville. This is going on the exam as extra credit: identification of all the symbol rip offs!

MAN WHO LOST LEG TO WHALE DECIDES TO LET IT GO

NEW BEDFORD, MA—Sources close to 58-year-old Samuel Rahal, a commercial fishing-boat captain who lost his right leg in a great-white-whale attack last March, announced Monday that he has put the incident behind him and is getting on with his life. "The first to guess the score of next Tuesday's Red Sox game gets this golden coin!" Rahal told his crew as he nailed a Sacagawea dollar to the cabin of his trawler. "Now, let's get this boat full of haddock so we can call it an early day." Rahal said he plans to replace his custom-made whalebone prosthesis with an OrthoPro with flex-foot and hydraulic knee.

Chocolate Truffles

Yesterday I made chocolate truffles, because in How To Be a Man, Burmingham and Flinthart said something like "the effect they have on a normal woman is unbelievable."

Yup!

One: face lights up like Christmas morning and she just got everything she wanted.

Two: she's licking cocoa off my lips.

Two and a half: passionate kissing.

Three: we put the plate aside.

This is more or less the recipe I used; I didn't use salt or vanilla beans, and to chill I just left it till it hit room temperature. Since that didn't quite thicken it enough, I added powdered sugar till I could get gobs of it. Serve cold. I'm gonna leave the leftovers in the freezer for up to a month. Well, hopefully another opportunity to serve them comes up before then.

One Hell of a Weekend

Friday night Saidas and I pregamed at my place, then Robis joined us and we pregamed in a park, finally making it to Honolulu by 2. I didn't even get a drink at Honolulu for two hours, just dancing.

This girl comes up to me and says "do you speak English?" I'm not gonna lie to her, so I say "sure, why not?"

Then she says, and this is the fifth girl in a month to say this, "are you Italian?" I've gotten so bored of this compliment (apparently Lithuanian women think Italians are the hottest men in the world) I decide to play along, "Yup, I'm Italian!"

Now she says of Saidas, "why isn't your buddy dancing?" I look over and he's wearing a pink sweater, so I say, "because he's gay, why do you think he's wearing a pink sweater?!" She doesn't believe me, so I add "go try to kiss him and see what happens: he won't let you." "I have a husband and child!" "So? He won't let you anyway!" She went over and asked him, without trying to kiss him, dammit, and he revealed that I don't only speak English.

Saidas took off because he had to work in the morning, so Robis and I are left dancing with V. (the married one) and I. (the one I believe isn't married). Luckily we move around so that I'm dancing with I. She's not only unmarried (I think...marriage is a don't ask don't tell thing, right?) but also more goodlooking. Then we go sit around upstairs, where I continue to dance on and off I., who's drinking tequila with V. 5am closing, maybe 6, it must have been 6, cause I didn't get home till like eight. The girls didn't wanna come back to my place, where I had champagne, but they didn't wanna go home either, so we sat around the park making out till V.'s husband called at 7 to say "Where-TF are you, Wife?!"

LOL!

things i'm a fan of

manakins with nipples but no arms

when kids riding bikes spit up and forward and the spit kids them square in the eyes they yell "blet, nachui!"

the jalapeno and blue cheese combo

non-vulgar jokes

vulgar jokes too, but they're all the jokes i know, so with a repectable crowd i'm stuck

a crowd gathered to watch an old woman sitting next to a pond with a monkey

lithuanian fold songs remixed into rock n roll

when you've been running through a down pour in a raincoat with a broken zipper and you take cover under in an entry way to a building, and a drunk guy comes in out of the rain and says "i didn't make it"

cocktail waitresses

regular waitresses

which science fiction character are you?

oh crap! i'm anakin skywalker! that's amazing!

"Struggling for self-assurance over hidden angst, you are highly adept and full of surprises."

http://www.tk421.net/character/

The past few days

One friend who shall remain nameless got so drunk he smashed a couple mugs on purpose, played with his penis standing next to a table at a bar, spun around while pissing in the middle of the street, got kicked out of Pub'as for sleeping, got into a fist fight with one of his best friends, and then lost his cell phone. I'm planning an intervention. Can you have a one man intervention? I'm the only person I know whom he trusts and listens to.

Then off to Broadway (again) for some dancing. Gedas and I left because it was already 4:30 a.m. We didn't wanna be home too late. But we spent so much time discussing initiative and civic responsibility I didn't get home till 6. Crapola.

Two evenings later is Saruno going away party. I'll skip to the outrageous part. We're off to Broadway (yet again) with Marijonas and Dovidas and two young ladies. I'm dancing with the cuter one, Inga, with whom Marijonas was possibly involved, but I didn't really care, because he's a player. This other girl starts caressing my back, and I turn my head enough to see this drunk Turkish girl grinning at me. I thought, "um, that's a sure thing, but Inga's cuter, hmmm..." I decided not to switch horses midway across the river.

So I continue dancing with Inga, and this Turkish girl is absolutely all over me! She's sticking her hands up my shirt and down the back of my pants, for Christ's sake, around my waist. Inga notices, I think, and I roll my eyes to indicate that I think it's as weird as she does.

After the song ended we scurried off the dance floor.

Later that evening Sarunas ordered chicken soup at Amatininkai, but he had to leave before it came. I ate it for him, and it was one of the best soups of my life, second only to Zuppa Tuscana and my mommy's cream of asparugus (sp?).

Sarunas care about nothing!

After something like a dinner party at Zaneta's place, Sarunas and I decided to go to Brodvejus for old times sake. We went up to the ssecond floor in the quiter area and wrote smses to everyone we know using my phone, cause his was out of credit. here's the sms:

"YO we're at Broadway, it's cool I guess!"

The sms didn't manage to bring in any pals. So we started calling people. Most of them hung up quick or rejected the call, because it was already 1:30 in the morning.

Here's a call that wen't differently:

Sarunas: hey call tony pappa

Aras: okay it's ringing, here you go

S: no you talk to him!

A: i don't want to talk to him, you're the one who wanted to call him!

Tony: Hello? Hello? Hello?

S: (click)

S: hey let's get fucked up and go dancing!

This is fun, cause as you all know, if you know Sarunas, he doesn't dance much. So we go dancing (with our beers, those near Sarunas had to watche their step for his beer puddles). And we keep getting more beers.

I come back with a round and he's gone, so I go and find him in the bront area by the bar. He and a local are trying to talk to this black guy from NY. Sarunas is talking about baseball, the local is talking about how he likes "black boys." so they keep interupting each other and the local (Ass, from hereon) is getting pissed. later we're sitting in the same area with a couple russian girls and a local whom Sarunas met somehow. Ass comes up and starts talking shit to the girls for no apparent reason. His buddy comes up and rips Saruno necklace off (I snatched it from him). Sarunas tells Ass to fuck off, and Ass replies "Was someone talking to you, huh? Did you hear someone talking to you?"

I say, "Who do you think was talking to you?" He comes over and starts talking shit, and i put up my hands palms forward and start screaming "WE'RE NOT INTERESTED!" I screamed it about ten times, at which point security came over and grabbed him and threw him out. He kept his eyes on me on the way, and I could tell he was gonna wait for us, with his friends.

The guy we were sitting with had a knife, and I wanted to ask him to join us, but we'd just met the guy ten minutes ago. I probably should have anyway, but whatever.

We go to the front door at closing (20 minutes later) and there they are, so i call a cab to come right up to the door so we can jump in. so we have to wait five minutes, which is fine by the security guards. it's not fine for Sarunas, though. by some unknown motivation he goes out to face these guys. i realize what happened and am out a second later to get him back. he's already being pushed around like a rag doll, and i grab the back of his shirt and pull him back towards the door. Now Ass comes at me, and I don't have enough time to get back inside, so I put up my dukes, boxer's ready stance that I learned in boxing class at BU.

But no, he doesn't throw a 1 or a 2 or even a 4. He doesn't throw a punch at all. He...tried to kick me in the butt! WTF?! He dried to come around the side of me and actually kick me in the butt, which he did, but id didn't hurt, cause it was at the to of his range of motion, so it was just what is called potential energy (Thanks MR. Roberts). But he did manage to get all of his weight on one leg with the other up in the air, not a good idea when you're shitfaced: all I had to do was move out of his way and he fell flat on his face. "Nice performance!" I applauded, "Very nice indeed!" Lucky his friends didn't get involved

And then I went back inside, security let us out the back door. We rushed in the opposte direction and got into the first cab we found.

Sarunas has a scratch on his stomach and I've got one on my forehead (you wouldn't even notice it). Ass is worse off for sure, by his own efforts.

What's lacking in this culture that makes men love to pick fights with strangers so much? Ít's not just that Sarunas was interupting him; Ass came to town looking for a fight.

Recipe Ideas?

This week I'm in love with bbq sauce, Hellman's mayonnaise, lettuce, tomatos, and onions. alright, so it's not an exceptional week, but it is a delicious one.

two days ago: cheese burger (the ground meat i use here is 70% beef, 30% bacon, which was on sale for 2$USD per kilogram (2.2lb)!)

last night: grilled chicken sandwich.

any suggestions for what to do next? i still have a chicken breast i have to use today or it'll totally expire!

Pretty much all the email addresses are taken

I've got about ten email address, and I remember the passwords for almost all of them...I just tend to forget the ones I only use for things that will probably get me a lot of spam. It's too bad hotmail doesn't do the thing where they ask you a personal question and give you an new password, cause i'd really like to get back "jackrubythejewel@hotmail."

anyway, apparently, there're a ton of hot chicks in vilnius, all from region 65 (i didn't know the regions were numbered), all will sexy nonlithuanian names like "tammy1255." to contact them, i have to sign up on amature match dot com. i'm thinking, what the hell (i'm actually thinking of dale;) ), let's see how far i get with this before i have to give up a credit card number...but i don't want to give them an email address i actually use, but it has to be real, incase tammy1255 emails me. so i go to make up a new one.

everything is taken, the most ridicuous things are taken! anything close to foothills, cypress, millers pond are gone...i thought johnson lane would be over the top...i tried those first, cause somebody told me once that if you're ever in porn your pseudonym should be your middle name and the name of your street...viligaila foothills...but i didn't wanna use viligaila...then i started going through the history of tv...that didn't work...i finally came up with this:

"fattyarbucklejunior"

I guess my colleagues do speak a little English...

An English instructor came in just now and asked me how to translate "kintantis skiemuo," which literally mieans "changing syllible," but actually means something like "an accent that switches from syllible to syllible." i suggested she translate it as "fucked up pronounciation," at which point my other colleague, who doesn't speak English at all, burst out laughing and said "Jo jo, tik parasyk 'Fuck You' ir pamatysi kas bus!"

Guess who got "Promoted"

Today was Instructors' Attestation Day. Last month I had to add up the points I scored over the past year for doing stuff as an English Instructor (not directly related to projects), such as teaching modules, translating, editing, making presentation in seminars, attending conferences, guest lecturing, writing articles... I needed to rake up 40 points to be "promoted" to my current position, Assistant Lecturer. I raked up 154.

My department, and then the faculty, then adjusts the point score, based on how much they agree with me on my performance. They left it at 154, so basically that means I can keep my job.

I signed a five-year contract, which was explained to me by the director herself to mean nothing, actually: it's a legal basis for keeping me on staff. They can still fire me, and I can still quit.

In two years (one if I lay down on the railroad tracks) I can apply to be a Lecturer. To do this I need to get 70 more points in the next two years combined. Since my very first year at a real job I scored 154, I bet I make 500 by that time...anybody wanna bet?

Here's the sad part of the point system: it's too easy. They've only got so much money, and they have to pay me to work more than the 55 hours a week for which I'm salaried (20 hours over the summer); when the money runs out, they offer me points for doing things like editing and translating. My response is, "I've got four times the points I need already! My regular, excessive activities more than make me eligible for promotions." Several of the point scores are on a subjective scale, like 1-5 per module I taught. I gave myself all fives, but even if they'd dropped them all to ones I'd still be far, far in excess of 40.

3/4 weekends in vilnius so far in june!

athought actually, there wasn't much to do this time, holiday weekend means so many people left for the countryside that the city was beat, and lotsa places even closed early.

i went out to the countryside one afternoon (6-10 pm) too. we got there and i was sitting shotgun, and when we pulled in a large dog practically jumped through my window, getting dirty paw prints all over the interior of the car, and Juste yells "Arai, nu negalima!" ("Aras, you can't do that!")

And I'm all, "Arai?! Prie ko cia bliet Aras?!" ("Aras?! The fuck does this have to do with Aras?!") As if it's my fault because I had the window opened!

Turns out the dog's name is Aras, too, and she was scolding him, not me.

Also confusing, one of the people that lives there is a four year old girl, Guste. At one point she invited (ordered) me to come pick strawberries with her, and then help her get around on this tricycle with a long handle on the back for grown up assistance. At one point she asked me my name, and when I told her she stared at me blankly as if I was completely retarded, and after a moment squeeled indignantly "that's his name (pointing at the dog)!" she believed me in the end though.

p.s. we ate something that was surprisingly decent: grilled porkchops wrapped in lettuce. we had to do this, because we had no forks or knives or even plates. i thought it would be kinda shitty, but it turned out to be perfectly cromulent. in case you wanna try it, it was chinese lettuce (i'm not sure if that's what it's called state side). and they were grilled over wood embers, not coal.

gleakdom

i just gleaked for the first time in my life, all over my keyboard.

in case anybody's not familiar with that term, it's when your tongue is pressed to the roof of your mouth and saliva squirts out of some pocket in the bottom of your mought. matt giroski used to be able to do it on purpose in middle school.

how much i would suck without a thesaurus

i had to translate "atsiskaitymo formos"

using my LT-EN dictionary i came up with "forms of reckoning!" and i was like wait...this is Klaipeda College...not...a...John Wayne movie.

luckily using dictionary.com's thesaurus i came up with "forms of assessment." better, don't you think?

laptop decision

i'm going to try to save money and buy a lap top within the next year, mostely so i have something to do at home, e.g. keep working, watch dvds, play alpha centauri/civ. in the end, i'm sure this would actually save me money; aside from making more money on work, i'd also save money on beer. all year cedric and i, with no tv and no laptops, whenever we were bored:

dude, let's do something.
what?
i don't know. nothing i guess.
we can get beer.
ok.

Vilnius...2/3 weekends already this month

Another conference in Vilnius Friday afforded me another weekend of good old vilnius adventure...

Thursday: Bite concert at Artistai (formerly Baras Amerika). i'd never heard this group before, and every time i asked what they're called i understood "Pide," and i was like "what?! pide?! like piderastai?!?!"

also i bumped into jurga, a girl i used to date a few years ago, which was fun; she's all smiles and quite a looker.

Friday: finally, a couple of beers with Evita, a former colleague of darius razgiukas, whom i haven't seen since last summer. then one with tadas vysniauskas, the the two of us took off to my place for a splif an pork chop sandwiches. then off to meet aidas the peg (got lost walking about two miles to meet him in the old city!). and then...some kind of debauchery...oh yeah, a concert at Zalvyksle, the group that does the new version of "suk suk ratelis," which is alot of fun. saw jurga there again.

i'd snagged the last free table when we got in (without paying the cover somehow). a couple people asked if they could join us, and i said yes, of course. aidas and i are chatting in English, and the girl is paying attention, and all of a sudden i turn to her and say in lugan "did you order yet?" shocked. shocked. "what, you're lithuanian?!" we made friends and had the same conversation we have everyday with people surprised to meet lithuanian americans returning to live in their homeland.

i think they might have been a couple, but i wasn't sure. she, vita, and i repeatedly made and held eye contact and just sat there smiling at each other whenever aidas and the other guy, audrius, were deep in conversation. gedas and juste joined us, and when the concert was over we went to aido for pre-game shots. they mentioned my, um, bizarre taste in music, my x-mas 2004 album, and vita said she'd love to hear it. i jumped on that: "oh yeah? gimme your phone number and i'll let you know when i bring it to town! 8...?" she laughs and looks at audrius (this glance, in my opinion, confirms that they're romantically involved) but then give up the digits :)

saturday i went to eat and drink with andrius and his family again, and play cards. this time they taught me to play trinka, a very cool simple quick game, ten cent ante, at which i won 14.90 LTL. then aidas calls me and let's me know diana juskyte is in town: exciting.

i leave andius' dad my mnumber, cause andrius ios going to ireland for a year to work, and his dad's a good time. he immediatly, surreptitiously, calls me. not having seens him, and not recognizing his phone number of course, i just answer. "hello? who is this? gedai? oh what's up, i'll be in town in 25 minutes. no, not in 15, 25. no, i can't, dude. what's your problem, i said 25?" i could hear everyone laughing, but i thought they were laughing at just my end of the conversation, not both! total burn, but i certainly had a good laugh at myself when i realized what had happened. ;)

i meet diana at the post office and when went to aido for a little pregame. then to a skamp concert, where we were joined by audrius from kaunas. blah blah blah, off to aido again...i think...then to cozy, where we were all a little...less than energetic. diana and i had a conversation with the waitress that somehow resulted in us getting unexpected food. my was clams, i think; yummy.

anything else worth mentioning i'm not willing to mention here,) so sayonara, suckers!

My dream last night

let me set the cause, first: last night i met saidas for a couple beers, and he'd just finished his exam to graduate from gym teacher training school. he was very anxious to find out that he passed, and said he'd be satisfied with a 5 (D-), but that a 7 (C+) would be fantasic.

so i dreamt that i was in his class too. i held the exam and got a 6. i was confused, very much, wondering how i of all people could score so low. i went back to the class where everyone was waiting, and i said, to myself as much as to the rest of the class, "i got a six..."

the guy with the diplomas said "well, that's all you need, here you go!" and he hands me a diploma. i open it so see what's written, and i see two condoms rubberbanded inside. i look as saidas who says "yeah, to celebrate graduation!"

Oh, it's the best!

I love when this happens, it's amazing!!!

I wake up and have a nice breakfast: yoghurt, banana, one fried egg, and a piece of bread with nutella. a glass of juice and two cups of coffee. mmmmmm.........

then onto a shower, gettin clean, gettin ready for work, yeah!

i go brush my teeth and then a little mouth wash to be extra clean mouthed, and a little seeps down my throat, and it's so disgusting i barf into the sink!

Weary?

I'm translating some stuff at work beyond what I'm responsible for, so long days. I've been at it for ten hours already and I've got a couple more to go before I'll go home. I translated the word "kuribiskumas" thusly: creativeness. Word let it slide but I'm thinking, "that doesn't sound quite right...hmmm..." In the end I needed a thesaurus to remind me of the word I was looking for: creativity!

bikes

there's a lot of people out riding bikes now that it's gorgeous out. it's sort of refreshing to see people doing something in public besides drinking, bleeding, and begging.

also, i saw someone throw a perfectly good bicycle out a third story window saturday afternoon. i didn't go check it out, but it looked to be in very good condition. probably some kid's drunk dad venting.

Angelika

I danced with Angelika's doppelganger (sp?) wednesday night. Brunette, cute face, light skin, tight white tshirt, tight light jeans, all smiles out drunk dancing on a Wednesday night.

What I call my computer sometimes

I was on windows messenger, and because i'm wicked bored, I decided to check out the background images the conversations can have. The default ones were a little lame, so I clicked "more images." a list appeared, but it was just a list of the default one! so i yelled:

"what?! there is no more you fuckin bitch face!"

it's a love-hate relationship. the love part is hindered cause we're always at work together, so, no porno. unless it's funny porn, but that counts more like humor than porn. if you're interested in humourous porn, email gedas. if you're interested in gay porn, email rastenis, or just ask for him at the docks.

Canadians are such communists--even compared to the Franch!

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/10/international/americas/10canada.html?

These bastards...I don't understand how anybody can be so stupid! It really makes me lose respect for mankind. They complain that doctors will leave the public system--it's cause the public system sucks for doctors; they think doctors should be slaves to the common good. They say there's already a shortage of doctors--it's cause doctors aren't stupid; they know that Canadians will make slaves of them!

I used to say there's nothing in Canada except maple syrup and bison. Now they got a third thing in Canada: communists.

I love these mistakes

This isn't as good as "man, aras, i'm so boring," but...

"To begin with, Jerome David Salinger is one of the most favorite writers not only in the USA, but also in the entire world. He wrote many intersting stories and one of them admired me totally."

The longest day of my life

Today is the longest day of my life. And since I had mentioned in conversation a former lover, I can't get that song out of my head: "Mr. Lovah Lovah"

ALso, I gotta say, since my gym membership expired my life is much easier, but I'm also more bored and fat. Maybe I should go back.

Estate Taxes in Connecticut

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/nyregion/08budget.html?

This is the problem with governments:

"I think a number of states think they're through with it, but when they have to find money, who knows?"

Goverments only find (take) money; they don't make money. This makes them parasites.

Two things I that are fun to do

Go to the grocery store, select nothing but a bottle of champagne and a pack of condoms. Pick out the cutest cashier. Watch her look of amusement at the innocent mirth on your face. You really need to pick a cute one for this to work, cause otherwise they'll just have bitterness on their faces or else it means they're fed up with their job and nothing can amuse them.

And you'll keep being reminded of the fun you had over and over for as long as the champagne sits undrunk in your fridge and the condoms move from pants pocket to pants pocket without being used.

What the hell was the second one? I had this blog entry zip through my mind while I was putting my socks on this morning...I'll add it if I remember it later.

satyrday at 3:24

i came home arrtgtwer somethintgs in vilnius, includuintg IT-LT soccare game, wbich we lost miseerable, they had infinity times more points than we (1-0).

and then we...well, before that we drank some beers at Tekniske Park and at the Old Defensive Wall...but after that we...oh wait also before that we snuck into a concert. the first to guys ran by through this back door, but the security sady beat me to the door. so i had to go out and try again in five minutes and i sprinted past her the seconnd time.

so then we walked around and gedas and juste got pissseed at each other and then we went to tstudpid chile kaimas, which is gay waddd, but henm we went to SMC and there was some kind of party there, but everybody was outside, so it waws fun/.

on the way home tha taxi driver was a women. and she was wearing a skirt. she's gotta fuck for money, don't you think? a female taxi driver wearing a short skirt? i think so. she was a little bitchy though' gedas asked her to change the music, and hse just turned it off and wouldn't ruirn it back on for five minutes.

sjell you later...

I can't believe it...not again! Not another secret admirer!

So I had another secret admirer. I figured it out; thanks to my plagiarism busting, i've become quite the detective. she told me her name was aksana, so i looked through the list of students until i found one, then i looked up her file with photo. later she sent me some photos of herself, classy, but that confirmed that she was a student, and i had to tell her so sorry, that's against the rules.

the funniest thing is that before, for the first ten messeges when it was like "i like you but i don't dare approach you" and stuff like that i was like, "ok, who's fuckin with me?" i simply couldn't believe that secret admirers could exist: my feeling is that the best thing i have to offer a girl is my self, my ego, who i am--hiding it is the stupidest move i can make!

am i crazy? also, how did she get my phone number? man, i feel so bad...

Disappointing Answers

At a town hall meeting for all american citizens last weekend I asked about self defense, and told my story from last ~october when i randomly got popped in the jaw in the middle of the night walking home with cedric. this one guy at the meeting repremanded me for not talking to the police, assuring me that it's not as hopeless as it seems.

so after the throat slitting incident i decided to talk to the police, and i went to ask my director how to go about that. she's always been the only one who could explain things to me in a way that made them understandable, and therefore acceptable.

her answer: "don't go to the police. the worst thing that can happen is they'll find the guys, who'll then come after you in even greater numbers."

is this the state of klaipeda? out of the general population of citizens, the greatest power is held by the hoodlums?

here's my answer: fuck the bullshit, i'm looking for work elsewhere. i'm willing to risk my job by making a stand on academic policy, but i didn't come to klaipeda to risk my life by being the only person here to make a stand on this type of shit.

Someone slit my throat this weekend (don't worry about it)

Friday night, about 2:45.

Cedric and I left Honolulu after his going away party. We walked fifty meters down the street to call a cab, so they wouldn't assume we're two drunk foreigners. Cedric sat down on the steps as I called the cab. As I hung up I sat down and almost had Cedric's phone in my pocket when someone grabs me around the throat with one arm and puts up a knife to my throat with the other arm.

"Give me the cell phone or you're gonna get it!"

There was another one in front of me now. I put the cell phone into my pocket, pushed his knife hand away with one arm, pulled his headlock arm away with my other arm, and jumped away. He threw a beer bottle at my head but I dodged it (or he missed). Then, having me outnumbered from an elevated position, they ran away.

The laceration on my throat was very superficial, two inches long, and barely deep enough to bleed. It's still visible three days later through three days of beard; i didn't want to aggrevate it by shaving.

My Electronic Mail

It was over the quota, but I didn't know, and I had to go on the net version to erase all the saved emails. It's set to save them for as long as possible so that 1) I have back ups of recent emails and 2) I can access them from anywhere.

It's all good now.

Thanks to those of you who let me know.

Sincerely,

Et cetera

Just Checking!

I checked this part of a sentence on google to see if a sudent had plagiarized it:

"When I was traveling around the world i had many adventures but one i'll never forget."

this is what google gave me:

"... him to eat again. When I was traveling around the world, I had to have my breast pump with me cause it was painful! I thought I ..."

weird incident

last night gedas and i went on a bar crawl. at the second place, rotusele, we met a danish magician and his best friend, a danish woman. they had just gotten to lithuania yesterday. we made a friendly bet about the eurovision music contest. denmark made the finals, and lithuania lost miserably, so we owed them a beer. we took them to artistai (formerly Baras Amerika). beer. then she wanted to try something lithuanian so i ordered four krupnikai. eh. liepa's is probably tastier.

then she and i danced. we started grinding. then she asked me how old i was and when i said 24, she said sorry, but she was "too old and ugly" for me. isn't that weird? man, i must've been wearing some serious drunk goggles for a girl to turn me down based on her own appearance! plus, i didn't think she was more than 29, so that's not so old...then she was making out with the magician. they were drunk though, sop i couldn't tell if it was something new for them. when gedas and i left she said sorry again....weird!

unbelievable fuckin french

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/international/europe/18constitution.html?

these are the parts that bother me: "But we can't lower taxes because we have expensive social services to maintain"; European Union ought to force other states to bring their labor practices and welfare systems up to Western European standards rather than drag the rest of Europe down.

first, if we don't have to "maintain" those "social services," then nobody has to; it's merely a choice. if social services are important to you, you choose france. if not, you choose eastern europe.

that's what's the matter with the second part. the french say "we're better but everybody's funning away. let's make everyplace equally great, then our people won't be able to escape from our wonderful policies."

May Palanga Weekend

Cedric and I went to Palanga this weekend. The place we stayed was cool; the owner, Nina, only spoke Russian and German, so I had to whip out my foreign language skills to communicate. At first I was pleased with myself, but then I realized I was probably forming bad habits. I said things like "I want a room for two (in Russian) for two nights please (In German)."

The first night we went bowling, from which I'm still sore. We played three games. Cedric beat me every time. Later we bought Yatzy, though, and after bragging about how he's never lost Cedric lost miserably to me.

We were too drunk by then to find anything good to do at night, but we had a good time wandering around.

Saturday we went to the beach after bloody maries for breakfast. I kept my coat on, but my face at least is visible more tan. Cedric went swimming. He just couldn't leave lithuania after nine months never having swam in the Baltic. We drank a few beers on the beach.

Lunch at the pizza place with a fire place, not chili pizza, where rastenis and neringa and i ate last october. we thought it might be a good idea to get a bottle of wine with lunch. after i went to the bathroom they told me they were out of that vintage and asked if this other would be acceptable. as if i know anything about wine i said "what year is it? 2004? oh, ok then."

yummy pizza. by the end of the meal cedric was resting his forehead on the table. he said he was going to take a piss in the woods (we were sitting at an out door table), but what he actually wanted to do was taste his lunch again. i thought he was gone, it took him so long, but finally he came back and made me go look at it, he thought the color was so nice.

off to the amber museum! we walked on a nice path through the woods not far from the sea. cedric said he needed to take a shit, and i pointed to an 18 inch high cement trach can and said "there's a toilet right there, buddy."

he pulled down his pants and shit in the trash can. there was nobody around for about 50 meters, but there were a few people who saw him, i think. a few minutes later, when he turned into the woods saying "i've got to clean my ass" is the third time in my life i've spit beer out from laughter.

the amber museum was closed. cedric took a nap. after an hour i couldn't rouse him, so i went to buy some beer. after another thirty minutes i still couldn't, so i put a lit cigarette into his mouth. i think he "sleep-smoked" till it fell out of his mouth, and then he jumped out of bed to keep from catching on fire. he explained that the reason he was so resistant to my rousing was that he believed it was morning!

that night we went to Wild Nights. very soon we broke a glass, and the waiter insisted i pay 15 lits for it! i said "that's very funny, but stop fucking with me now." but he wasn't joking, so i picked up my coat and said "fuck you then, we're outta here." the bouncer stopped us and said we weren't going anywhere without paying. i explained that "mugs are intended to be cheered with, and if i'm given one that's so shoddy it breaks due to a normal salute, that's not my problem. we paid ten lits each to come in, but we'd rather forfeit that and leave than continue to support such an unconscionable business." he spoke to the waiter, who then said to me "i'm sorry, i was wrong, it wasn't your fault, it was mine. we'll replace the beer and the mug. i hope you'll reconsider and stay."

we stayed for a couple more beers. p.s. the waiter was so gay!

sunday morning was hard for me. i think you could say that i "merely trudged along" for the first few hours of the day till we had lunch. the trudging along included the amber museum, every new section of which i greeted with "oh no! it's not over yet?!"

lunch was an intersting place. the waitstaff wore Svyturys shirts, and the had Svyturys staff, but they didn't sell Svyturys, or any alcohol. but they said we could buy some at the store and drink it with our lunches. we just pulled wome out of our back packs though.

then we went to eat some smoked fish. then i think we went home.

Helping the homeless help themselves

yesterday cedric and i were sitting in delano pizza bistro, and this beggar comes over to our table, like eight years old, and asks us for some money to buy food. my first instinct was just to say "no," and shoo him away, but i felt bad because he was so young, just a hungry hungry child. so i decided to help him, but not by giving him alms. i thought, instead of giving him a fish, i'll teach him to be a fisherman. so i gave this eight year old boy all the direction he'll need for the rest of his life. i told him the secret of making money: "get a job!"

Do it yourself

I've been on the trail of that damn bilateral agreement from Belgium for three weeks. I've begun suspecting that somethine went wrong and nobody wants to tell me. So I called up the head of their office and charmed her silly and set everything straight. Whatever the fuck the problem was, at least we're moving forward again, for Christsakes.

The Temperature of My Shower

This morning I didn't take a shower at home because I rode my bike to the gym before work. I was out of coffee, incidentally, and my wheels needed air. i stopped and got some though. so then i rode to the gym and did some situps. my membership had expired, but hey were working on that. i went to take a shower. no hot water. then i remembered: no hot water in down town klaipeda all week, for some reason that has to do with accursed kaunas. there was nothing to do but shower anyway; i stank. here goes nothing. the water wasn't luke warm. it wasn't tepid. i'm not even sure it was water; it might have been slush. it was so cold i couldn't even wash myself for a minute because i was shivering so violently.

p.s. my discount is no longer valid at the gym. it will be if i join with a second person, though. he doesn't even have to be a friend. anybody know anybody in klaipeda who needs a gym?

Well, that makes it worth it

I had this computer problem (I let somebody else try to help me with viruses), and all my emails were erased. It was a terrible loss, all my correspondence; luckily I had recently emailed myself a copy of my address book, so I had that at least safely on the internet. It was also a problem for my correspondence students; the past three weeks of works they’d sent me were gone. I hadn’t corrected them yet. I couldn’t tell the until the final test, because they are from all over Lithuania. I told them I’d simply drop the last three works from the average, I wouldn’t require them to resend them; many of my students are very unfamiliar with computers and didn’t have back ups. I told them they could resend them if they needed to bring up their averages, or if they just wanted my feedback. It is my responsibility, after all. There were only two of the second type. Here is an extract from one of the essays; the topic is “ideals”:

“Some of my friends, teachers, and colleagues are examples for me. Of course not for all 100 percent but they have lineament which I like and I try to follow them. I like one of my teachers from Klaipeda College because of his management of talks with students. He managed to present all themes in a very interesting way. When I see the name of an author of a piece of literature I can tell everything about what it is because it was interesting to listen and I remembered almost everything. I forgot only some pieces. So I would like that all teachers managed to be interesting not for me but for all students. If one day I would be a teacher I would like to be as my teacher in college.”

I am the only male literature teacher.

See if you can figure out these riddles

There's a dick in your ear! A midget is standing on your shoulder with his penis in your ear! Why?

I'm a pancake! I'm a big tough pancake smothered in gooseberry jam, and i'm gonna beat the shit outta you! How do you like that, huh, you fuckin eggman, you fuckin Egg McMuffin?

...what?

"It was summer holidays. I was irresolute there I spend my summer holidays I have flew in the camp I wanted in the very much."


"A fink bear it will be kosmos"

My Preference for Plagiarism

It's better when students plagiarize from the internet; google's so much better at finding their sources on web pages than my eyes are on the pages of books. I find 'em anyway, it just takes about two minutes instead of two seconds. And if I can't, if they used a book or person I don't have access to, there's an even simpler way. It goes like this:

"Please have a seat and tell me what you wrote about in this essay you handed in yesterday. You can't tell me? You have no idea? Well, that's too bad. Here's a red zero."

My Contribution to Mankind

And by Mankind, i don't mean the wrestler, aka Mick Foley. He was aka something else, but i can't remember what. I mean humanity.

This is Huge, cause nobody seems to know this. Not even the experts: Dunkin Donuts. you know how they dump out their coffee every twenty minutes to make sure it's always fresh? Well, here's a secret: they're wasting coffee!

This morning I noticed that I left my brand new coffee maker on yesterday at work. There was coffee left, and I was tired enough to try drinking it. I poured in some milk that had been sitting out for 8 days. You know what it perfectly was? Cromulent.

My conclusion? My contribution to Mankind? This piece of life saving info: you don't have to throw out old coffee; it'd been over 14 hours, and it was still freshish!

Belgium Part V

Saturday we had a free day. I was flying out of Brussels on Sunday, and I have a Lithuanian Canadian friend, Emi, going to school there now, so I left Kortrijk a day early and when to visit her. After looking at pictures for a couple hours we went out to bars.

We met a couple of her friends, Americans, and we were dancing at a bar. Here began my more vivid impression of Belgians: pigs! This is probably more the tourists than the locals, but the men were offensively aggressive. On several occasion, involving several different men, I had to pretend to be one of Emi’s friend’s brother to get guys to leave her alone. And even then it wasn’t easy.

We moved on, and on, and on, and ended up having a beer at the grand market, which is in fact, probably the grandes thing I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s basically a huge town square surrounded on all sides by castles. We were able to have a beer there because drinking in public is legal in Belgium. In fact, beer comes in vending machines next to Coca Cola and Sprite.

The next day I walked around by myself taking pictures of architecture and two statues: Maniken Pis, and Zhaniken Pis (Peeing Boy and Peeing Girl). The Boy is the most popular tourist attraction in Brussels. He gets dressed up in all sorts of costumes, and there’s a cut out where you can stick your face into an image of him for photos. When I found him, he was surrounded by about forty people taking pictures. The Girl, however, is not well known at all, and most locals don’t even know about her. I asked all over the place. Most people thought I was a stupid tourist; some people had heard of it but didn’t know where it was. Only a couple people could give me vague directions. I found it, though. As you can see from the picture, it’s so seldom visited that they keep it locked up behind bars. And the Pee is turned off.

The best nap of my life

Friday was a coleague's birthday, so guess what, I had start drinking at 1pm, whop dee doo. I met Cedric at Maxima, and we drank some beer and bought ingrediants for meatloaf, including one pound of ground beer and one pound of ground beef/bacon mixture (yeah, we have beef/bacon in Lithuania).

We had to stop on the 30 minute walk home to rest for a while. I was really tired. We got back, but the meatloaf in the oven, and I went to lie down. I expected to lie in bed miserably for tweenty minutes and get up again.

My alarm clock went off. Cedric opened the door and said "come on, let's go eat!" I thought that's weird, we don't usually have breakfast together. I go to the kitchen and he's preping fries.

"You wanna eat french fires for breakfast?!"

"No, it's dinner. It's friday night, man!"

"What the fuck are you talking about?!?!"

"Yeah man, it's fucking friday night!"

"What the fuck, are you sure? It can't be!"

I had to go back to my room and check the date/time on my cell phone before I would believe it. I slept to well that my hour nap felt like a 24 hour nap. It was awesome.

Cuss Words

Cedric had been traveling around with some friends from France, and they made it back to Klaipeda. After spending a few hours with me they asked Cedric if I was a big Big Lebowski fan. How did they know? "Cause he constantly uses the word 'fuck,' especially the phrase 'the fuck?'"

Cowboy: "Do you have to use so many cuss words?"
The Dude: "The fuck you talkin about?"

I think I might have gotten into this habit so easily because most of my coworkers (and any that are old enough to care) don't speak English. I have two middle aged female coworkers sitting in my office with me, yet it is not the least bit offensive to anyone if I quitely say to my computer "what the fuck? fuck you, you mother fucking cock sucking piece of shit."

Belgium Part D

Friday I met with a representative from the General Nursing Faculty. I wanted to set up an exhacge with them also. The first thing he told me was “All of our courses are held in Flemish. Mastery of Flemish is essential.” Well, that was the end of that idea. We did work out something else very useful, though. All of the former EU institutions offer midwifery as a marjor in medical schools, not just part of another program. We don’t have midwifery at all now, since the birth rate in Lithuania has dropped so much. But we’d like to, and this guy offered to help us out a lot. “Don’t bother inventing the wheel from scratch,” he said, more or less, “We’ve done it and we’ll gladly teach you how to read our blueprints.”

So that’s quite useful. Something else about my meeting with him was even more useful, though. When I went back my main coordinator asked me how it went, and he was genuinely surprised when I told him they have no classes in English. Their buildings are adjacent, and they’re both high up in the administration. I have tons of problems communicating with the various departments of KLK, sometimes it feels hopeless, but seeing the same problems in a big, successful institution made me feel like maybe we’re not so bad, after all.

Belgium Part Three

Tuesday they had nothing planned for us, so I went to Lille, France, by train to see the place. I went with another professor from Kaunas Technical University, who is apparently famous. All my students know who she is, she writes text books. We use her text books here at KLK for our social work students in the Health Faculty. We were guided around by a student who lives there and is attending Kathos as an Erasmus exchange student, same as my two social work students. It was nice; I’ll try to get some doubles of photos to include.

Wednesday was my lecture. A Perfect Day for Bananafish, from Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger, summarized and analyzed for a group of fifty psychology students. It went very well, there was laughter, and almost tears (only mine!), and the students were plenty talkative. Actually, their professor apologized later that they were so quiet, but with Lithuanian students it’s like pulling teeth. We had a lot of spare time in the end, though, because they were so much quicker at analyzing the thing with me than my students here are. That makes sense, since they’re psychology students. After I read a passage to a class, my most common questions are “Is that normal? Why would somebody do/say/feel that? What does that mean?” But my students are future teachers, not psychologists, so it takes them longer to come up with good analyses.

Thursday I took a train thirty km to another campus, the Teacher Training campus. This was my big opportunity: make a deal to exchange some pedagogy students. We don’t have any of that going on yet, and we need to catch up to the Health Faculty, from which I’ve already sent students, but which has had these bi-lateral agreements for three years (unfulfilled; I’m the first employee they’ve had to succeed in this capacity).

Within five minutes it was clear to me that we were going to make a deal. I had just found out that there’d been a proposal for exactly what I wanted last year, and that it had not been approved. This guy was friendly and eager, though, and I found out later that he had no idea why the proposal had been rejected; I thought it must have been from their side, but he said they had no reason not to work with us. We wrote an agreement to exchange two students for a semester next year and two teachers for a week each, and also he invited us to attend an conference there in November called “CRIPSIE"—CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN EUROPE. The agreement still has to go through both of our superiors, but I accomplished my main objective: mission accomplished.

Atlas Shrugged

Such a good book. Teaching literature for eight months has given me an appreciation of literature. Isn't that convenient? It's a weird new standard. It's as if my standards have gone down, because I now appreciate much more than I used to, but it's actually just because I was always interested in narrative rather than the art of its conveyance.

So it turns out she's 14.....oops

For some time I've had a secret admirer. I had no idea who she was, but I'm generous with business cards and hanging up flyers for English lessons, so I figured that's not so strange. Here's our last sms conversation (translated):

SA: hey babe, maybe :-pd-:?

AV: what does :-pd-: mean? and how old are you?

SA: i'm 14, and that means let's go make out

AV: i think you might have the wrong phone number

SA: don't fuck with me, you wrote back normally last week

SA: the police council has issued you a fine for three things: 1, sleeping alone; 2, sleeping not naked; 3, not sleeping with me! the fine: 500 kisses (with interest) when do you wanna pay up? =))):

AV: when you're no longer a minor!

SA: don't fuck with me, you're fifteen yourself, i see you every day

AV: let's get this straight: i'm not who you think i am, i'm a 24 year old college professor. sorry about the mix up.

SA: don't fuck with me!

i actually feel really bad about it. it's true that i was replying normally, for weeks, but that's cause i though she was older. i never questioned her identity, assuming that she's a secret admirer, but because of that she believed she was communicating with some 15 year old boy. now the poor girl must feel rejected, supposedly by him, and isn't getting the sex she deserves.

Belgium Part Deux

Afterwards, each week exchange students from one country do a presentation about their homeland. This week was France, only one students showed up to do it. She had a PowerPoint presentation, which I thought was quite good, definitely better than my PowerPoint presentation about KLK. Later, though, I heard people saying it sucked, very unprofessional, and I got a little worried about what they would think of mine. It was the first PowerPoint of my life. The schedule of my presentation to social work students wasn’t set yet, though, so I figured I would have plenty of time to spruce it up.

We went to lunch, which was very good, especially the soup. One guy at our table, Jean-Paul, is a professor of philosophy, and he happens to teach a philosophy of social work class. He said he was meeting the students I was looking for that afternoon, and would I like to do my presentations then? Well, I couldn’t very well say “No, I’m not ready, I flew here unprepared.” So I just said “Okay, that'd be fantastic.”

I had about an hour. I went to the library and fixed it up a bit, which was not easy because they had these stupid French keyboards with all the letters mixed up. It slowed me down, plus their right-clicks didn’t do anything, plus everything was in Flemish, which was a problem since, as I said, it was my first PowerPoint projects. I wasn’t familiar enough with the commands to recognize them by their placement in the menus.

It went off totally well. The visual bit was a little basic, but what I said was good, and the students had lots of questions, which means they’re interested: mission accomplished. Saying something good wasn’t easy either, since I don’t really know anything about our social work program, it’s not even part of the Faculty of Pedagogy where I work. I seem to be pretty good at coming up with appropriate answers off the top of my head, or bull shitting my way through them if I actually have no idea.

Belgium Part I

I arrived in Brussels at 8 thirty and made my way via Kortrijk via two trains. I asked people where am I and where do I go many times, with the result that my journey was wrong-turn-free and peaceful with just a minimum of anxiety (if that wasn't there I would think I was dead).

By ten o'clock I was at Focus Hotel, which nobody could tell me how to find, but I figured it out. It was within a kilometer of the train station. It was a very night Bed and Breakfast, in which every room was designed by a different artist; my room was designed by a dancer. Neato. And the breakfast included liverwurst, which I ate every day. In the end I started making sandwiches of liverwurst and this spreadable white cheese--oh baby.

Monday the owner drove me a professor from KTU (who is famous, all my students know who she is (author of social work text books), though I didn't till then) to Kathos Hogeschool (~College). How do you like that last sentence? I'm an English teacher.

They had a really neat thing going on: Kathos International Classroom. All the foreign exchange students, their own prospective exchange students, and their students who have been on exchanges get together in a big auditorium and listen to a lecture on Some Global Topic. That's an hour and a half. Ours was about global finance: World Bank, IMF, and so on. Then we were separated into groups: seven of the poorest countries, and the eighth group was the World Bank. My group was East Timor. The World Bank had 1000 units of money to distribute as gifts, and 1000 as loans, and we had to try to get some. We had a half hour to prepare, so we went to the library to find out stuff about East Timor. Guess who was elected our group's speaker. My speech went something like this:

East Timor is a land rich with resources, opportunities, and manpower, all of which are wasting away. We have petroleum, which is not being refined. We have natural gasses too, also untapped. We have gold, un-mined. And meanwhile, we have a population, half of which is unemployed. Let us put two and two together!

Besides this, 85% of our trade is imports. What little money we do have in East Timor is on its way out.

Lend us 150 so that we may build a petroleum refinery. This will put our resources and our people to work, and the profits from this will both pay back the loan and expand our industry into other potential exports, natural gasses and gold. This way we may balance our imports and exports.

Also, we ask for 15 as a gift, so that we may endow upon our people the skills and competences that will allow them to begin the construction and manning of the refinery, to make them feel like human beings again, and give them the will to be part of society and part of the world.

I’ll find out the result of the contest soon.

Fuckin French Bastards

So those French Bastards have to have they're own wierd keyboard set up, just to mess with foreigners, just to make sure we never forget what bigots they are. I show up in Belgium, which is forced to use the bloody french hardware, even the Flemish side, full of good faith. I thought, "lemme give the cocky French Homos a chance, let bygones be bygones."

And what do I find? I go to the library to spruce up my power point presentation. I get some things done, but what should've taken me fifteen minutes took an hour. Why? Those Penis-Eating Frogs wanted to get even with us for being better than them at everything. So they switched the A and the Q. They switched the M and the semi-colon. They switched the W and the Z, for the love of God! And the Numbers? Forget about it. Anybody who got an email or IMed with me last week knows...

And here I am back in Klaipeda, ready to forgive and forget. Guess what happens now. After a week of struggling with the bloody things, I got used to them! Now I'm mixing all the shit up in reverse! Dq;n it!

Besides that, my Belgium Trip was a huge success, which I'll write about tomorrow.

What I said when my glasses fell off

They fell off and as the hit the floor I screamed "Oi Oi Oi!" I didn't do it on purpose, but it sounded exactly, but exactly like you'd hear it after someone had started of with "Ozzy Ozzy Ozzy!"

Random Grafitti by the Docks

Rastenis' ass is so fat it don't fit,

On his head a pile of shit!

So stupid he can never comprehend,

But for every guy he bend (over)!

He chokes himself on cocks,

Right here at the docks!

-----------------------

Rasteni, fuck you up the goat ass!

Rasteni, you're the gayest bitch i know!

Rasteni, you pass out at every club!

Rasteni, you're a fat ugly fuck!

You my boy, Blue!