Saturday night i went to see Borat... a very recommendable movie btw. My friend and i went there for the prime time show, but as it turned out it was sold out already. But we gladly took the chance to go and see it in the late evening (10 pm). When we got the tickets, S. has seen a friend of hers, M., standing there too, and we went there to chat him up. Them actually, because he was with a friend, W., from Birmingham. Since they wanted to see Borat as well we asked them if they wanted to go to the late night show with us. M. was quite eager to do so, but W. kept complaining and complaining... whyever. At least he thought i was English, which was quite cool. Well. He also never smiled (apart from one situation), never got to the point but always tried to get all attention to him.
So, we thought about what to do to kill some time... S. and I decided to go to McDonalds and get some milkshake (we are just girls that need something sweet every now and again ;)) and M. didnt mind too much, whereas W. started to complain again how much he hates fast food places, fast food in general etc etc etc. gosh.
as we arrived at Mac and got our milkshakes the guys decided to head back to get the movie tickets and we went upstairs to drink and chat. Since W. was bothering me all the time before (he can talk quite a lot, usually just to show off how cool he is... moron) S. and I were gossipping quite a bit about how bad W. was and about... uh... other things. *grins roguishly* when the guys came back. Guess what W. had in his hands? A big pack of Dunkin Donuts. But fast food is shit, eh? The most annoying thing was his "listen listen listen listen" for aaages until we were not really interested anymore and then he really started to complain. And usually he even then never got to the point or just said something as interesting as "i had noodles and salad"... i mean... whoa. that surely is extremely important.
So well, after Mac he wanted to go to the casino. Us girls tried to convince him of it being a pretty bad idea but he was so keen on going there... well. S. and I went on a walk around the buildings, talking again. Then they got out (we were waiting first and they didnt see us at all, which was quite funny :D) and W. went on complaining to me about how bad it was and that they lost money and all that.
Back to the movies he noticed that our seats were not together. "boo". and he insisted on sitting together for some reason, whereas S. and I were glead about having the rest from him, and the film was quite awesome, as said before.
Oh, by the way, if you dont know english too well, then dont friggin go and watch the original version of a film if you need everything translated! Morons!
Outside again he was standing at a table, arms folded, looking dead serious... but as i greeted him with "Hey there, happy one" he smiled! yes! a real, genuine smile! one would have been able to believe that! and asked me about my favourite parts of the film (most funny parts) that no one else laughed about for example. We agreed that we loved the hinting on the Koran-thing, but then he kept nagging me for more scenes. Which i couldnt tell, just had the overall impression... There he was, sulking. but when i asked him, he couldnt name me any scenes either...
Back to the train (took ages to get there, thanks to W.) the cultural difference between English speaking countries (Americans are the same, really). M., S. and I were chatting in German for a moment, but it was really of no interest for W., so it wouldnt have changed anything if we talked in english. but it was a bit quicker for the other two to do it in German (I dont mind either, really) so well. In the train W. started to diss M. quite badly because he was talking in german.
Something along the lines "I am your guest, so you dont f*cking talk in German while i am there! That is just rude!" blablablablabla.. and he kept going on, getting louder and louder, while i started to build up some explosion material too... tried to have a go at him (because if we were visiting his country he would require US to speak english there because we were guests and had to fit in etc.) which he countered with "Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?" blabla (i asked him back).
If we werent in a train i would have started to show him his limits properly, but i didnt want to go down to his level on the train. In a quieter location, yes. On the train, no. But the other passengers were amused... Understandably.
Gosh, was he arrogant. I am sure he easily gets violent too....
Monday, November 06, 2006
Settling a score.
Disclaimer: to avoid revealing too much specific information on certain persons, i will call them A, B, C etc...
As some of you might remember, i'm doing martial arts. and as some others might recall i switched my teachers a little while ago. Now, in my opinion things only work out when you combine them, otherwise you are highly biased regarding the main aspect of the whole thing. While my former main teacher, A, minimises things as much as he can and tries to limit the teachings to a single form. This bit also sucks a little, because you dont get to choose "your" form. even if it doesnt matter too much in the end, everyone has his or her preferred form, and I quite like being able to choose. On the upside though when doing tui shou we learned to do it free-form. without any certain boundaries. which pleases me a lot.
so the new teacher, B, is trying to focus on teaching you a few more forms, so you can pick in the end, even if he does it in a certain order.
So, even if he is quite arrogant regarding his abilities (in my opinion you can be proud of having won some competitions, although he, if i recall correctly, never actually has won any, just got some good placements) you can learn quite a lot from him.
What pisses me off even more are those he calls "assistants". With one exception (the only problem with him is his posture, but at least he knows his flaws) they all think their abilities are so friggin great that they sort of forget they suck.
why they suck?
well, lets have a look at C for instance. She really thinks her MA abilities rock. But for example a big no-no is to have a hollow-back. noooow guess what she has, extremely...?
And she keeps talking about energetic aspects of that MA, but hell, no. Not her. She talks too much about things. And when she is supposed to _TEACH_ all she does is care about herself and mind her own business (like just practicing her own forms for the whole lesson). Even if you have a competition going on, you can still learn on your own, in your free time. Dont need to leave people, who pay for lessons, by themselves.
Not criticising to leave some by themselves and taking care of others, sometimes you cant do it differently. But she wasnt even doing that, instead she took out her mp3 player, turned it on an practiced. When D came in she was doing the same with him, but altogether still didnt care about the students (D is an assistant now too). Oh, added to her arrogance she claims to be overly spiritual. C'mon girl. get some sense.
So, lets head on to D. He did some Karate, and he usually does some fancy acrobatics these days... his posture is overly correct, he thinks he is using the whole energy bit as well (i mean, hello? i have been doing this for quite a few years now, and the whole chi bit is not too constant still... sometimes things work quite easily, but some days it takes loads of concentration to get at least a little bit usable. then it is not more than the last 5 minutes i can train properly. but he "use" Fajin throughout the forms, even when he just arrived to the lessons (late as usual). And his spirituality combined with an alternative lifestyle etc... horrendous. He is rather handsome, and i fell for him for a bit, but quite frankly he's just getting on my nerves these days. What should i do? Probably im going to ignore him and just get better.
Same regarding E. overly spiritual. He is one of those you expect to go to india for a while to find "God". Or gob, for that matter. He cant decide what sort of spiritual healing course he should do now. And he stinks. I mean, really. he does. As if he never has heard anything of deodorants. And educationally speaking he is a loser. As are F. and G. The only exception is H, but unfortunately i dont see him very often.
I highly respect A and H, even if, eventually, it felt as if A tried to slow me down quite a bit, i respect B, but the others i do not respect in the slightest.
Oh, there is someone else i like quite a bit in the course, but he is just an "ordinary" student. no assistant or anything. So it doesnt count.
Maybe i should switch again. Find another teacher. Someone who gets my true respect, meaning that it doesnt vanish after few months. *pissed off*
Oh and another reason for being pissed off is that B only strongly supports C - G, not so much H... for whatever reason.
(D has been doing this MA for little more than half a year now, and he knows 3 or 4 forms already. eh?)
As some of you might remember, i'm doing martial arts. and as some others might recall i switched my teachers a little while ago. Now, in my opinion things only work out when you combine them, otherwise you are highly biased regarding the main aspect of the whole thing. While my former main teacher, A, minimises things as much as he can and tries to limit the teachings to a single form. This bit also sucks a little, because you dont get to choose "your" form. even if it doesnt matter too much in the end, everyone has his or her preferred form, and I quite like being able to choose. On the upside though when doing tui shou we learned to do it free-form. without any certain boundaries. which pleases me a lot.
so the new teacher, B, is trying to focus on teaching you a few more forms, so you can pick in the end, even if he does it in a certain order.
So, even if he is quite arrogant regarding his abilities (in my opinion you can be proud of having won some competitions, although he, if i recall correctly, never actually has won any, just got some good placements) you can learn quite a lot from him.
What pisses me off even more are those he calls "assistants". With one exception (the only problem with him is his posture, but at least he knows his flaws) they all think their abilities are so friggin great that they sort of forget they suck.
why they suck?
well, lets have a look at C for instance. She really thinks her MA abilities rock. But for example a big no-no is to have a hollow-back. noooow guess what she has, extremely...?
And she keeps talking about energetic aspects of that MA, but hell, no. Not her. She talks too much about things. And when she is supposed to _TEACH_ all she does is care about herself and mind her own business (like just practicing her own forms for the whole lesson). Even if you have a competition going on, you can still learn on your own, in your free time. Dont need to leave people, who pay for lessons, by themselves.
Not criticising to leave some by themselves and taking care of others, sometimes you cant do it differently. But she wasnt even doing that, instead she took out her mp3 player, turned it on an practiced. When D came in she was doing the same with him, but altogether still didnt care about the students (D is an assistant now too). Oh, added to her arrogance she claims to be overly spiritual. C'mon girl. get some sense.
So, lets head on to D. He did some Karate, and he usually does some fancy acrobatics these days... his posture is overly correct, he thinks he is using the whole energy bit as well (i mean, hello? i have been doing this for quite a few years now, and the whole chi bit is not too constant still... sometimes things work quite easily, but some days it takes loads of concentration to get at least a little bit usable. then it is not more than the last 5 minutes i can train properly. but he "use" Fajin throughout the forms, even when he just arrived to the lessons (late as usual). And his spirituality combined with an alternative lifestyle etc... horrendous. He is rather handsome, and i fell for him for a bit, but quite frankly he's just getting on my nerves these days. What should i do? Probably im going to ignore him and just get better.
Same regarding E. overly spiritual. He is one of those you expect to go to india for a while to find "God". Or gob, for that matter. He cant decide what sort of spiritual healing course he should do now. And he stinks. I mean, really. he does. As if he never has heard anything of deodorants. And educationally speaking he is a loser. As are F. and G. The only exception is H, but unfortunately i dont see him very often.
I highly respect A and H, even if, eventually, it felt as if A tried to slow me down quite a bit, i respect B, but the others i do not respect in the slightest.
Oh, there is someone else i like quite a bit in the course, but he is just an "ordinary" student. no assistant or anything. So it doesnt count.
Maybe i should switch again. Find another teacher. Someone who gets my true respect, meaning that it doesnt vanish after few months. *pissed off*
Oh and another reason for being pissed off is that B only strongly supports C - G, not so much H... for whatever reason.
(D has been doing this MA for little more than half a year now, and he knows 3 or 4 forms already. eh?)
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Eskobar Gig@Magnet, Berlin - 1.11.2006
So i went to the eskobar gig last night, in Berlin :) I arrived about 50 minutes too early, but that actually was quite cool, because so i could take a picture of this wonderful thing: 
AND sit down next to the monitor box on the stage. Yes, that's right, there was no fence, nothing. i could even climb on the stage if i wanted to. But i didnt - couldnt be arsed to do so. So within the remaining time until the gig was supposed to start i basically just sent text messages, played games and whatnot, just to kill time. Didnt bring any money with me (should have, because i should have got a CD by Cabezas when i could) so there was nothing else to do.
Then the first support band stormed the stage - Nice Boy Music - four guys from Hamburg playing some sort of BritPop, relaxed Rock, all that
't was a bit difficult initially, because, you know, the audience in berlin is a little bit difficult. Too much music around here, people aren't easily impressed, they just stand around, barely smile... I was dancing a bit, but since i took the photos i couldnt do that too much.
The bass player decided to smoke on the stage (as did some of the guitarists that night too), but about 5 minutes later he needed a new string for his bass. serves him right - but the smoke itself looked quite nice in the red light.
Nice Boy Music played for about an hour - in the first moment i was fearing that my ears were going to fall off (the short "test"tunes on the guitar hurt a lot) but it turned out to be alright, as long as they didnt cane the drums. Because then it was pure pain. But that only happened twice during the whole evening, so who am I to complain? :)
So yeah, Nice Boy Music, a band from Hamburg, worth checking out: Myspace-Page with some audio examples. Although they sound much better live. :)
Oh, if you wonder why my pictures are so red'ish: i didnt use the flashlight, because i dont like doing that. But there were three girls who kept spamming with flash light photography, it was soooooooooooooooooooo annoying. And that girl was always smiling so overly cute when she took a picture, as if she wanted to get one of the music, regardless which one.
However.
Next on stage (after about 15 minutes break) was Cabezas.
Patricio Cabezas is a spanish guy who came to Sweden when he was around 10 years old, and well, add Spanish fire to the fact that Swedish people must have some weird hormons in their cereals, making them awesome musicians, and you got Cabezas. Together with Daniel Gidlund, who he formed the band with, he managed to create some really nice layers of music, with only two instruments: voice (twice) and guitar (twice). In the aftermath i am sorry that i didnt take some money with me, since i should have bought the CD.
You can find some of his tracks on MySpace again, although they are not as minimalistic as the stage show: Clicky for the page. Still very pretty, i think. Both of them have really nice voices, and high skills regarding their skill to play the instruments. And the arrangements... they are gems.
So, yeah, it was an amazing gig, even if extremely short - they played for about 30 Minutes, just 6 or 7 songs, including a cover (i think it was Blue Suede Shoes. but then again it was some sort of a ballad. so please, dear readers, correct me if i'm mistaken).
And then... 15 minutes later the masters of disaster. Eskobar themselves coming on stage, right in front of me :) but, oh what a surprise, Cabezas playing the bass with Eskobar? i really didnt expect that. Cabezas and the lead singer of eskobar were all quite a bit shorter than i imagined they would be, but i guess size isn't everything. Daniel has such a crystal clear voice that always makes you dream away.. they started off with "Big Sleeper", which already prepared the assumption that they mixed old and new songs... and indeed, they played 20 songs, from all albums they have released so far.
Although the show was not as soft as one would have expected from the album, you really could consider that as rock. However, i can only say that i enjoyed it, post up some more pictures and some videolinks... (i recorded fours songs).
And the videos:
Eskobar - Whatever this town
Eskobar - Persona Gone Missing
Eskobar - Real Life
Eskobar - Love Strikes
AND sit down next to the monitor box on the stage. Yes, that's right, there was no fence, nothing. i could even climb on the stage if i wanted to. But i didnt - couldnt be arsed to do so. So within the remaining time until the gig was supposed to start i basically just sent text messages, played games and whatnot, just to kill time. Didnt bring any money with me (should have, because i should have got a CD by Cabezas when i could) so there was nothing else to do.
Then the first support band stormed the stage - Nice Boy Music - four guys from Hamburg playing some sort of BritPop, relaxed Rock, all that
't was a bit difficult initially, because, you know, the audience in berlin is a little bit difficult. Too much music around here, people aren't easily impressed, they just stand around, barely smile... I was dancing a bit, but since i took the photos i couldnt do that too much.
The bass player decided to smoke on the stage (as did some of the guitarists that night too), but about 5 minutes later he needed a new string for his bass. serves him right - but the smoke itself looked quite nice in the red light.
Nice Boy Music played for about an hour - in the first moment i was fearing that my ears were going to fall off (the short "test"tunes on the guitar hurt a lot) but it turned out to be alright, as long as they didnt cane the drums. Because then it was pure pain. But that only happened twice during the whole evening, so who am I to complain? :)
So yeah, Nice Boy Music, a band from Hamburg, worth checking out: Myspace-Page with some audio examples. Although they sound much better live. :)
Oh, if you wonder why my pictures are so red'ish: i didnt use the flashlight, because i dont like doing that. But there were three girls who kept spamming with flash light photography, it was soooooooooooooooooooo annoying. And that girl was always smiling so overly cute when she took a picture, as if she wanted to get one of the music, regardless which one.
However.
Next on stage (after about 15 minutes break) was Cabezas.
Patricio Cabezas is a spanish guy who came to Sweden when he was around 10 years old, and well, add Spanish fire to the fact that Swedish people must have some weird hormons in their cereals, making them awesome musicians, and you got Cabezas. Together with Daniel Gidlund, who he formed the band with, he managed to create some really nice layers of music, with only two instruments: voice (twice) and guitar (twice). In the aftermath i am sorry that i didnt take some money with me, since i should have bought the CD.
You can find some of his tracks on MySpace again, although they are not as minimalistic as the stage show: Clicky for the page. Still very pretty, i think. Both of them have really nice voices, and high skills regarding their skill to play the instruments. And the arrangements... they are gems.
So, yeah, it was an amazing gig, even if extremely short - they played for about 30 Minutes, just 6 or 7 songs, including a cover (i think it was Blue Suede Shoes. but then again it was some sort of a ballad. so please, dear readers, correct me if i'm mistaken).
And then... 15 minutes later the masters of disaster. Eskobar themselves coming on stage, right in front of me :) but, oh what a surprise, Cabezas playing the bass with Eskobar? i really didnt expect that. Cabezas and the lead singer of eskobar were all quite a bit shorter than i imagined they would be, but i guess size isn't everything. Daniel has such a crystal clear voice that always makes you dream away.. they started off with "Big Sleeper", which already prepared the assumption that they mixed old and new songs... and indeed, they played 20 songs, from all albums they have released so far.
Although the show was not as soft as one would have expected from the album, you really could consider that as rock. However, i can only say that i enjoyed it, post up some more pictures and some videolinks... (i recorded fours songs).
And the videos:
Eskobar - Whatever this town
Eskobar - Persona Gone Missing
Eskobar - Real Life
Eskobar - Love Strikes
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