With that in mind, turns out a good challenge is not necessarily going forward, striving to attain higher ground. Sometimes it is challenging to simply hold your ground, fighting your laziness, going against your natural tendency of forgetting things. So, without further ado, I’ll try to do an exam task, just like I used to in the good old days. Corrections are welcome.

~~~

Task:

You see the following announcement on a website that sells books and film videos:

Submit a review of one of our books or film videos that you have enjoyed recently, and get 10% off your next purchase!
Tell our website users what it’s about and what type of person it would most appeal to.

Write your review for the website users (Around 220-260 words).

(not even sure anymore if the review title counts towards the word limit; do I even need a title?)

Fight Club [1999]

A title that needs no presentation. For the recent moviegoer’s sake, a kick-start: an unnamed narator (Edward Norton), dissatisfied with his excrutiatingly boring life, simply snaps. He creates the fictional alter-ego of Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) to represent his “true self”, and embarks on a project to restore manliness to its real glory.

Fight Club is the prelude to a brilliant idea of Mr. Durden. A series of underground boxing clubs, men-only. Clubs where they rediscover their identity through barehanded fighting, in an escape from dreary lives. Tyler simply fulfills the role of an Alpha Male – setting tasks, denouncing modern advertising, crafting in secret the downfall of civilisation. For Fight Club soon evolves, leaving the basement – in the open it becomes Project Mayhem, an intricate ploy to crash the banking history of America and (down the road) return people to a natural lifestyle. All done with real warriors, weeded out with the Club. An army ready to follow its leader without question.

One could watch this simply for the face entertainment value; there’s action, and plenty of it. One might also keep an eye open for small ideology and philosophy gems, for instance the belief and explanation that no-one is special. There is romance too, though on a rather twisted, carnal level; Helena Bonham Carter does a convincing role in portraying Marla Singer, the derailed, off-the-matrix woman our narattor falls in love with. Of course, given the sex and a couple intense action episodes, a more matura audience is targeted.

Although I personally found the ending a bit bland, the movie delivers.

~~~

Just a few technical details:

• took me roughly 30 minutes to write the initial draft ; just like it did back then, in 2006 ; not sure if I should be happy or sad about it ..
• took 10 more minutes of cutting and rewording, for I went close to 300 in the first version ; even now it’s a bit over the limit, with 266
• I’m quite sure the tone and chosen phrasing are not even close to what a real review should be like ; really wondering how much this would get in an actual exam

Well, that’s quite it. A checklist for what should actually be included in a review can be found here, though I’m at a loss whether or not anyone could fit everything listed there in 250 words.

Fire at will.

But first of all let me re-introduce myself. I’m Alex. I’m 23 years old, I’m Romanian (born, raised, living there). I keep a blog in my native tongue, easy to find if you visit the domain root. Not sure why anyone would do that, though. This (second) blog was born out of a curiosity, the challenge to see if I could actually write in English as easily and fluently as I wanted. Not having published at least 10 posts in a long time does tell something about my desire to use this language, huh.

The really stupid side of having a secondary blog is deciding what to write on it. Most of the important stuff goes to the main one, seeing that there are native readers who connect with me much better than a foreigner can. To translate every piece I write is something that I find to be both boring and pointless. To only write here quickies or stupid ideas is something that I don’t fancy either. ‘Nuff details.

~~

To be honest, living in this day and age is probably the best option for me. Historically speaking, Eastern-European countries were rather poor (materially) and rather fringe culturally. However, the last 20 years, following the fall of the Iron Curtain, we have seen some improvment in our lives. Not much, of course, but quite visible.

One of the most prominent thing here in Romania is the cheapness of the internet connection; for only $9 per month, the local behemoth RDS offers unlimited traffic at blinding speeds (about 50 mb/s). Of course, the service is not reliable in some parts of the country and the support is fucking frustrating – though, still, $9 is affordable for almost anyone not living off unemployment pay. One of the reasons piracy is rampant around here, and TBH I love the status quo. I can’t begin to even describe the vast amount of movies, music and others content that gets passed around here; one only needs look on a few private trackers and get an idea of the phenomenon’s magnitude.

Also with the proliferation of cheap domain names and hosting plans, literally anyone with a capable Visa card can start running his own website. I joined the bandwagon in 2007 via a free service (Blogspot), but moved on in 2009. To have my own domain and hosting to tinker with is an opportunity I wouldn’t have dreamed about a mere 5 years ago. This way I learned about alot of the building blocks of today’s internet – DNS, servers, apache, linux security, php, mysql, CMS options and so much more. Actually on my Romanian blog I’ve tinkered a bit with the theme, removing features and adding some logic to make it looks cleaner – had I wanted to learn PHP without a specific goal in mind I would’ve never done it.

~~

tl; dr

Am glad to be online. I hope to stick around longer this time via this blog. Until then .. goodbye.

In many years I never bothered to find out her real name, so for the time being I shall call her Lily, just like the nickname she chose. Quite a crazy lady, or rather said a daring one, unafraid to mess with thoughts and words most people never question.

Her third post caught my attention. Aside from the small grammar and spelling errors, she’s looking at a quite interesting feature of humans: their ability to play roles unconsciously. Or, in her words,

For instance, if a boy comes with his father because he broke his arm , what strikes me is the way the father acts. It’s exactly like the roles had changed and the boy has to be a grown up while the father is living again the fears of his childhood. So when you examine them for the first time, the father can’t make himself undertood and he is speaking nonsense and when he comes back with the X-ray you can easily understand that he had been drinking to be able to face the new situation.

I’ve seen this situation countless times. People go through life and desperately dig holes in which to hide; they find this and that cozy place where to sit and linger, thinking life can be frozen forever in a nice portrait of smiling faces.

And then life happens, and all your buried fears surface. My mother never quite learned to talk and be social, and to this day making her call someone on the phone is something to avoid. I’ve seen school colleagues avoiding classes, teachers avoiding topics, friends avoiding their own stories.

And it always amazes me, this cozy image of self that we grow accustomed to. Even our flaws we regard as tolerable, and we carefully construct our social circles to avoid any interaction that doesn’t validate our image.

The query that arises from all these facts is whether there is a proper way of dealing with stressful situations?

There isn’t, in my humble opinion. No one-size-fits-all template, at least. It’s our flaws, not our successed that make us unique. Each one of us is going through life limping along, dragging some buried fear and bad memories. Some fear failure, some fear losing control; some are scared of deception, and the list goes on forever.

And in the end what makes me smile is that all the fuss is in vain. What one gains in a way loses in another. He who spends his time honing his skills and developing a carreer forgets about personal life, finds himself a wreck at 40. She who thinks that it’s fine having a baby at 25 then envies other women at 40. People afraid to lose control never learn to fly – or swim, for that matter. People afraid to be judged soon find their own company boring. People afraid to lose loved ones smother them until their love is driven away. People afraid of decisions soon find themselves on a short leash, driven by someone else. Do they all react to this similarly? Doesn’t look so.

Then again, I’m not a psychologist. So I think I’ll just wait for the next article …

~~

side-notes:

1. I wish she wrote in Romanian.

2. I well know this post is sketchy and probably looks half-baked. It’s precisely like that because initially it was meant simply as a comment. Of course, like a true internet virgin Lily turned off comments, so .. I end up writing articles. Way to go, lady.

The ancient sound of war. Going BOOM, loud in your ears, pounding in your heart. Often times I find myself at a rock concert disconnecting from the music, only to listen to the distant echo of their rhythm. One-two, one-two, and through and through ..

Guitars are overrated. I can bet guitars stay up all night discussing philosophy, there’s no doubt about it. They’re cute and they can make one fly. See Gary Moore‘s track .. makes you fly over unknown places. You feel like the player is losing it, and then he comes back giving you more of the sweet sound. Or maybe For the love of God. This. This will leave your soul in shambles, trembling, shivering, asking for more.

And yet ..

Sometimes it’s all muffled. Somewhere in the background, while the loud drum echoes in your brain. You wouldn’t need guitars in this track. More than 9 minutes could pass and no one could care less is the fucking guitar noise is present. It’s just a disturbance to the majestic road of the drum.

Try to listen to Back in Black without guitars. Tune them out. Ignore that stupid voice which sounds like the singer being run over by a truck. Filter our the loud hissing, let only the rhythm play. Simple. Powerful. Just like with Unforgiven. This time the guitar is tame. Cool, calm. Gets the message through. And yet, it’d be nothing without the distant pounding from the bass drum. The track is literally filled with a creamy bass line, both from the drums and bass guitar.

That’s why one loves the rock. That’s why one hates house. War and rebellion versus mindless unnatural and weak sounds. A keyboard cannot and will not ever replace the real deal.

And that’s why I salute you.

Frankly, I’m a child of the internet. As a little kid I used to spend some time with the neighbors, some time alone, and as I grew older I became more accustomed to books rather than people. And when the books bored me out of my wits, enters Internet. Now I’m bored of this too,  somehow, yet I never quit, I stay connected to my rss reader and twitter thingie and everything going on.

I mean, interactions are overrated a little bit. They’re nice and cozy and make you feel good, but it’s more of a comfort thing, it goes in the background, it’s something you run on rather than something flamboyant which gets all the attention, and if you miss the attention of other you’re still going to survive.

I’ve always felt that pervasive and solitary need to know, to find out stuff, to discover; of course, this is counter-balanced with the urge to sit idle and wash away the action, to step away from what seems to be a point of attraction. But there’s a little corner in my world, and from that corner I keep a watching eye over stuff and people. If I was a character in a game, I’d be a cross-breed between a nature mage and a melee tank fighter.

… Today I spoke on messenger with two ghostly people, I think almost 2 months have passed since my last conversation with them. I feel sorta dissapointed that after a 3-month pause, we touch base asking “what happened with you in this time?” – and the answer comes back sheepish, “Nothing much” ..

I mean, it’s as little as 3 years ago that I was in high-school and I would spend endless hours talking with people. I don’t know what we used to talk about, mostly gibberish nonsense of course, but the point is .. being an adult sucks; you lose spontaneity, lose your honest wondering over the world, lose your virginity over important matters, lose your carelessness. You ask yourself and then you shrug it away coldly, you can’t really pinpoint what happened, you feel the grind of daily life but you keep lying to yourself that “you’re a good person” – I know this sounds lame and commonplace,  yet it must be said bluntly: adults suck donkey cock.

I feel like there are only two brief options ahead of anyone: either dedicate yourself to the world, study, travel, discover stuff – or dedicate yourself to a family or a community, provide support for them and so on.

My background as a kid is, perhaps, not the happiest possible; yet those problems seem now, by comparison, a little bit easier, a little bit nicer, a little more amendable. And as I grow older, I seem to recall happier times and start placing more weight on relationships and connections that I considered expendable as little as 2 years ago. It seems now, by virtue of time invested, that it’s better to keep a watchful eye over those with whom you’re crossed paths. It feels like the road is getting thicker and rougher, and in troubled times it’s better to hold another hand, even if it’s not a very warm one.

Relations and relationships grow on us, grow like hair almost. Trimming is essential any now and then, cutting the dead ends and the overused portions, and to some extent spending time apart has this effect. Sometimes parasites grow on your relation, other people or other situations that cling to you, and then you need to wash your metaphorical hair, shake things a bit, quarrel and break dishes and then start feeling fresh again.

I’m feeling a little melancholic right now, even though I can hardly say I have material to dream about. I’m a big fan of letting your hair grow naturally, and I apply this to ev’ry aspect of my life. Hence I’m a guy very hard to digest, my internal life pours outside, and I hardly care to polish or enlighten my self image. If you’ve seen the french movie Vagabond, then you know what my feminine couterpart would be. Not that scruffy, though, but as lazy as possible.

I’m not into reflectors, high heels or high life, never was, never could care. I understand how it works, of course, but it seems rather tragic to me and a little bit ironic too – men and women working their asses off, never having a good contact with themselves, nice and working machines, bestowed with money that they are cursed to spend on useless and trivial stuff. Fastidious dinners and luxury boats, $5,000 watches and $200,000 sport cars .. it’s a glittery yet sad world, and I don’t want to get there.

Relationships don’t really grow on me, I spend my time in my cave and I seldom leave. Sometimes people seem to click with me for a couple of years, come by and stand watching with me; then we say goodbye and never look back. It’s a dream of anyone, learning to fly and getting off the moist ground, feeling the cold breeze and touching the sky. I need to let go and I do let them go, it is nice enough that I get some visits every now and then,  that I get accounts of the journey; it’s almost tempting.

Actually, all I wanted to say at the beginning of this post was something about feelings. I’m not a really good talker when it comes to it, 8-9 paragraphs of digression stand witness. But then again, I suppose everything I actually wanted to say is plain clear simply from the subtext.

Because I’m in my cave even on the internet, and I don’t feel like going out in sun anytime soon.

So .. been out in the sun yesterday. Feelin baked. Then again, my solar sign IS cancer .. I’ll be just fine after 2-3 more exposures. Come to think about it, I never managed to get sunburnt.

I’ve updated the About me page. Never knew what to write in those, just like with a CV. It’s like selling myself, only with a hint of aggressive superiority over the readers. Look, I’m listening to good music; no really, you see, I have a good academic pedigree and obviously a very cool job. And in my spare time I do intelectual stuff, barbecue with friends is actually stupid.

Bah. I’m too hippy even to rant about elitist scum.

Nonetheless, I’m at crossroads. Upcoming in about a month, all exams will be done for. Then, the choice of what’s next. Which has always been painful ..

Can’t say I was busy doing anything remarkable or interesting. Not even at least important, like working for my diploma presentation.

Of course, I keep writing in Romanian. Some would say that I actually write quite alot. Sure, there’s the question of usefulness, but I try to keep it down low. I am quite aware that in the end all that matters is myself; I’m not writing for an audience, I’m not writing to influence anyone else, hell, I’m not even interested in seeing visitors. Sometimes it feels like I’m pushing everyone away. Not healthy ..

Anyway, an end of a cycle is coming really soon. Three years of “superior education”, a license exam and that’s all. Not heading for a master’s degree, not now, not interested, couldn’t care less. I’m not sure if in the end I just tagged along in the system or I cheated it, for there’s no official line to compare against. They say you are not supposed to cheat, yet they close their eyes during the exams. They say you shouldn’t be copying someone else’s work, and then they don’t even do a search on Wikipedia. Or Google.

It’s a fucked-up system, and in the end we all lose. Right now, I have no standard measure of myself. All I know is that I can’t properly code without researching a thousand terms and functions before. Pretty low, pretty unimportant, and honestly I’m disappointed both with myself and the world. Shit just doesn’t work this way.

But enough about school, I will most probably draw a final line after all exams and write a huge article on my other blog. I think this is one of the thing we actually miss in Romania: the exercise of feedback. Knowing who you are, what your position is, and expressing your views over things that happened. If 20 students took up the task of sitting down for half an hour and reflecting honestly about their 3 years in faculty, maybe there would be some ground to start the change. Right now, the machine is running on empty premises.

I’m not interested that much in the debate raging over the greenhouse effect; however, I can’t help but observe the obvious, climatic changes unseen before, cold and heavy rains in May, summer temperatures in Octomber, almost complete lack of snow during Christmas .. this shit is not right. Definitely not right. The world IS in turmoil, as much as my little inner pacifist would like to deny. Maybe one day we’ll stop sending our waste to India and China, maybe one day we’ll step up and solve the problems with our own force. And maybe that day is coming really soon.

Y’know, actually I should not talk about the world so much. It doesn’t care about me. It doesn’t need my opinions. It doesn’t stop if I stop caring. All I need to do is be true to an ideal, or at least to an honest target. Maybe I should not attempt to be a great man before I’m a good man.

And before I’m a good man, I need to be a man. Start working. Start assuming responsibilities. This kind o’ stuff.

It is not the first time I complain about myself and my deliberate carelessness regarding my level of english – no, Sir! I’ve been a mediocre, a truly mediocre student during my secondary school – I just tagged along, pretending to know how stuff really worked. Then I got into high-school and things turned sharply for me: I almost failed the first semester and barely passed the second one. It was the long summer between the 9th and 10th grade when I actually reached for a real grammar book and started learning. You see, grammar is not that hard when you start analyzing it – it has a template, some rules, some concepts and then you just apply this to every instance (e.g. every sentence) of language you encounter. Of course, I must admit I was still a mediocre student at best, but now I had some ground to work on. It’s weird, come to think about it, all I remember from that year is what I learned in the math class, something about limits. There’s no content left from chemistry, no content whatsoever from physics, I have no friggin idea what was the history or geography class about. The english class was about writing essays, solving grammar and linguistic puzzles, and .. that’s it. Not much in there either. The 11th grade was all about the CAE preparation, we took ourselves really seriously, and in the end we all passed. Lots of writing, too, lots of fill-in-the-blanks, lots of reading and proofreading. If there’s any need to prove hard work is required to do anything useful, this would be it. No matter what genius you think you are, unless you have under your belt some hundred hours of practice, you’re staring into the void. By comparisson, the last grade was easy and carefree – we had better stuff to worry about, or at least they did, my colleagues; I started learning long past any sensible deadline, and still passed with (sort of) good grades.

Digression ends here. Back to the topic, I was about to say that a language learned can never be forgotten; just like swimming. What one does forget, however, is the mass of vocabulary, the finesse of word-order, the actual content that makes speaking a language pleasurable. You can still greet people, order meals and participate in some basic human interaction, but .. that’s it. One day, the lady running the British Library came to our class to give a talk on the benefits of diving into a foreign culture via available materials. It was clear from the very beginning that she did know the language she was speaking, however it also became clearer and clearer that she hadn’t used that language in a long long time; as she was speaking, emotions crossed her face, her eyes lightened with pleasure each time a new sentence structure came in her mind, she was almost chewing words as she remembered them. Still, it was painful to watch.

This is exactly my situation now. I have learned a language for nearly 4 years, only to find myself after a similar amount of time that I have forgotten large portions of it. And you know what? This sucks.

.. so, I talk alot in english IRL. Sometimes I write in english. Sometimes I write indiscernible stuff, some words partially in a language, other words in another, and so on.

Other than that, it’s a test. I’ve had more english in the years of high-school than I’ll ever have at any other point in time, and I miss that. I miss the tingling of the fingertips, I miss the set phrases that made me LOL hard, I definitely miss Mrs. Sarah Thompson (ok, that shouldn’t go public), I still think I can write 1000 words without losing control.

Ever tried that? Start easy, a 300-word essay on .. mirrors. Two paragraphs, usually, fairly okay, very accomplisheable. Add an introduction and an ending. Ok, how about a 600-word essay? This time it’s harder, and it’s more than you’d have to write for a CAE exam. You have to think ahead, outline a couple of ideas, add supporting text, quote your resources, add some link-words, and then round everything. If you aim for the 1000-word mark, it gets rough. Ever caught yourself repeating words and/or ideas? Yeah, that’s the spirit.

It’s gonna be hard and it’s bound to fail at some point. This is me playing with words – or words playing with me, rather. I don’t start off with any expectations, maybe with one hope.

Right now, I write just like any high-school average dude. You can tell that by any numeric method (average word length and complexity) or by any content-analysis (word precision, clarity of ideas exposed, the number of times when the sentence doesn’t sound just right). I just hope one day I’ll look back on this blog and be able to point at a moment when I began writing better, more complex, more interesting ideas. A long road ahead, you can tell.

For now, that’s all .. folks?