The Death Lichen of Doom

Again I'm too lazy and too uninspired (my muse hasn't shagged me for a while, I guess) to come up with anything new, so I'm posting some old ramblings again. It's again from some 3 years ago. Have fun.


The Tree-dwelling Death Creature From Hell

Geographers are usually very friendly people, outgoing and kind. But sometimes, when they get bored, they will do crazy things to you. Normally, students of geography in the first semester are the target of these actions of craziness. Stupid enough, I am one of those students, so frequently I get to do things I wouldn’t even imagine doing in my dreams.

Just recently, our tutors came up with the idea of going out to a park in Basle and count lichen on the trees. Now this would be crazy enough all right, but considering that it was already late and dark and raining and cold outside, this was downright insane. Of course this made it all the more attractive to the geographers. Since it was impossible to talk our way out of this, we set out, in small groups, huddled closely together, towards the black horizon.

Now if we knew what expected us in this park we would never, not in a million years, have dared to set foot in this gruesome place. The trees were soaking wet, dripping icy rain drops all over the place and the seemingly liquid ground sucked up all our walking noises. It was cold, even though we had our arms wrapped around each other. It was dark, not even the moonlight seemed to be able to penetrate these cursed rain clouds of doom.

Slowly we forced our way deeper into the darkness of the woods. When we arrived at our designated area we found our tree, which looked as though it was about to crash down on us at any moment. It didn’t, in the end, but I swear it dropped those rain drops on me on purpose. We had just started examining the stem for lichen when suddenly one of my female colleagues, who was standing right next to my ear started screaming like a complete lunatic. After I had recovered from my heart attack and made sure that I was not deaf I went over to check what the heck the matter was. As it were, the matter was a spider at least the size of a pea sitting right in front of my colleagues face on the stem. Naturally, this caused her to rouse all the evil creatures that dwelled in this wood and which would now come crushing down on us to see if we were food.

In the end we managed to get out of the park alive, and we had even found some lichen. We will bring those to our tutors. I will also bring along the spider to see if my colleagues screaming is as scary for the tutors as it was for me. And then I will kill them.

The Dangers of the Mosh Pit or How to Become a Real Heavy

Since I am too busy to annoy anyone with the horrid smearing I call original writing, I'll just post something I have written years ago for an English lesson at University. Andrew might recognise it :). Here goes:

We all remember Kurt Cobain. Kurt Who? Kurt Cobain, who was the legendary singer of the legendary grunge band NIRVANA, and who decided to end his life his way: the jam-a-syringe-the-size-of-Arkansas-containing-
heaps-of-cocaine-into-the-arm-way. Naturally, this made his arm explode, so he shot himself. The cool thing about it is that it made him and his former band legends.

A few years later, therefore, NIRVANA was the first music band in the “Rock” sector that I heard of. I liked them. And they were hip at the time. Everyone wanted to grow a Marlboro-man-beard (we were 13 years old then) and we had hair-dos that certainly did look great, if we had only managed to see who we were constantly bumping into.

Today my hair is sort of short again and I am older yet not wiser. I still go to Heavy Metal and Punk Rock Concerts. Recently the Gods of Heavy Metal visited Switzerland – Iron Maiden came to destroy Zurich’s Hallenstadion. Of course we had to be there. In my best (read: worst and dirtiest) shirt and trousers I got out of the tram and was welcomed by someone I had never seen in my entire life falling into my arms. He smelled of beer. Home Sweet Home! Fortunately my friends had beer too so even if the stadium collapsed – which probably it would – we’d be having fun. Once in the building we cheered the clouds of smoke floating above a layer of intense reek of beer and farts. I could live here.

After the supporting band had banged their heads so many times they did not know which way they were going, and therefore fell off the stage, there was the mandatory silence before the storm. Except for the burping, grunting and farting that is. When darkness fell we knew that doom was approaching, or the electrics had failed. It proved to be the former. Iron Maiden was on stage and virtually blew us away.

Bruce Dickinson’s voice was far from terrestrial. Immediately when the music started there was an elbow flying towards my face. With the instinct of the genuine drunk heavy I did nothing and it hit me whack! just above the eye. With the instinct of the genuine drowsy knocked-out I checked for blood and when there was none I continued trying to get stomped to death. But the dangers of the mosh pit (that’s the area in front of the stage where all the crazies are) are manifold. For instance you risk singing so loud that you will have to go collecting your entrails on stage after the gig. Then there’s the danger of flying things, shoes, toys, bottles, heads etc. I got hit once by my own shoe, which I had lost two minutes earlier. The greatest danger, apart from getting stomped into a smear is, of course, getting squeezed to the size of a, say, mosquito.

But this is all worth it. He who went through the mosh pit will forever dwell in the Halls of the Great Heavy Metal Fans. That’s where I would be now. If I found my entrails.

Hungover

When I woke up this morning I swore never to drink again. Horrible hangover. Wait. Hold on. I didn't even drink yesterday! In fact, I was extremely prudent and worked all night on my seminar paper! Hmm. Is it possible to develop the same symptoms as hangovers when working very hard and focused? This is weird.
My head is spinning and feels extremely heavy. There can only be one reason for this: I'm becoming too intelligent. There's only so much room for brains in my head! I mean, where does all the knowledge I'm amassing and have been amassing for year? Some people seem to be able to handle that quite well. Like Homer Simpson. He forgot how to drive a car so he could learn to swim (or something like that, I forget the exact circumstances). I can't seem to be doing this. At least I still know how to drive. And swim. Do I have to learn to live with hangovers? And how do I tell 'intelligence hangovers' apart from real hangovers? All these questions.

Cool?

It´s almost unbearable, I feel so cool right now. You should see me. I’m sitting in the train from Berlin back to Switzerland. Unfortunately you can, in effect, not see me. Unless you were in the same train, in the immediate vicinity of seat 68 in coach 273 in the City Night Line from Berlin to Zurich on March 13 of the Year of the Pig* #. A few minutes ago I was wearing my newish jacket which makes me look like I’m actually intelligent and alternative but while I was writing the footnotes above I got a bit too hot and had to take it off (You should really read the footnotes, they’re usually the only thing worthy of reading in my ramblings as they contain bits of wisdom that would be in violation of the rest of my nonsensical text.). I’m drinking beers and was listening to Farin Urlaub a few minutes ago, now it’s Greenday. I’m wearing my AwesomeCap which makes the wearer (i.e. me) extremely cool and popular. The beer makes my breath smell manly in the “Yes, that’s damn right wife, I was out for a few beers with my friends. Now make me breakfast” manly way. I am also writing manly text messages to my friend because I am suffering from privation symptoms caused by lack of internet for one whole week. Are you getting the picture? Surely everyone who laid eyes on me must have fallen in deep love with me. If I had commanded them to jump into a Bottomless Pit they would certainly have followed suit. I’m happy the train driver didn’t meet me or there would very likely have been an accident where everybody except me would have died. Oh, maybe I should note that I haven’t shaved for several days so I’m sporting the “I haven’t shaved for several days look” very successfully.

As I said in the beginning, it’s almost unbearable, I’m so cool. I hope I have brought you this feeling a little closer. My girlfriend fell asleep, it was too exciting sitting next to me, I assume. I don’t want to bring this sad fate upon you so I suggest you undertake a few other endeavours to bridge the horrible time frame between two of my articles. For example, you could count how many times the word “I” occurred in this piece of art. If you have not yet found out about or believed the incredible power and force of this word when referring to me I suggest you go ahead and count and add a prayer for every mentioning.

---

* The Chinese calendar is in the prosperous year of the Pig. Saying “March 13 of the Year of the Pig” is therefore, in fact, absolutely and miserably wrong as there is no such thing as March 13 in the Chinese Calendar. Or at least it’s not on the March 13 that we know as March 13. It’s a complicated matter and that’s why I couldn’t be bothered to look anything about it up. There, you’ve learnt something today. Maybe.

# Just for the record I would like to state that this keyboard and I are not friends. I’m writing on my girlfriend’s laptop which has the German version of keyboard software. Contrary to popular ignorance of the subject the Swiss and the German keyboard software and button layouts are quite extraordinarily different from each other. So I can’t for the world write a normal sentence without a typo. Be damned, keyboard!

Berlin Fear

I’m in Berlin, holidaying. My girlfriend is with me. She is from Berlin, has lived there for over two decades (she will hate reading ‘two decades’, it makes her feel older), so there is nothing for me to fear. Yet when we were having a stroll around her neighbourhood, she showing things of importance to me or to her or to someone else and I listening to these things of importance and silently agreeing that most of them were, in fact, of importance and making a mental note of them while walking on, forgetting to take pictures as I usually do when I see things and people of an everyday nature, although they always make the best shots, I immediately got this uneasy gut feeling when she twisted her sprained ankle a bit and stopped with an expression of terror on her face and squeezing my hand tightly so it hurt. I was suddenly aware of my immediate surroundings, like the tiger that I am, really. I scanned my front, my back, for any signs of danger and only after a fleeting moment realised that there was no danger and that my girlfriend had merely experienced a short glimpse of the exquisite pain one relates to say, motherhood. In her foot.

Later I tried to analyse what had caused my strange reaction to a thing so trivial – to enhance my simile I am tempted to say ‘a thing as trivial as childbirth’ yet I will refrain from it as I value my life and never planned on dying at the hands of my dearest one. It is weird, really. I am myself no stranger to big cities. I have been a visitor to most European capitals on multiple occasions, have seen the Big Apple and the City of Angels. I was an inhabitant of one of India’s largest metropolises. And I have been to Berlin several times and know that it is not a dangerous place at all, if you manage to avoid the areas where Kebab sticks are used as daggers (Was that racist just now? I am always trying to trace the fine line between racism and sarcasm, poke me with something, for example a Kebab stick, if I crossed the line). So why do I react so utterly different to an unexpected incident compared to how I would act back home (I come from a small country in the middle of Europe where the largest city counts around half a million people. There is no crime and no vices and we all sleep on butterflies’ wings at night and dream of dwarves and elves. That is to say, we are not used to bad things happening, and if they do, once in a while, we read about it in the papers, shake our innocent heads and think about what this country has come to. Then we forget the event quickly and return to our idle paradise, reassured in the conviction that it was a foreign element for sure that caused the upheaval. No self-respecting citizen of this small, ridiculously rich country would stir things up so badly.*)? I am guessing it has to do with assumptions. Country Boy goes to the Big City. He knows that everybody in the Big City is evil. Everybody wants your money, your clothes, your life, your soul. Everybody is the Big City. So Country Boy is ready to strike out at any sudden and/or unexpected movements. It’s his (of course this is relevant for female members of the Country People community too. I simply couldn’t be bothered writing ‘Country Boy-slash-Girl’ every few words. Call me a sexist.) life that’s at stake here! Of course, if Country Boy is of average or slightly above intelligence he will find out after a few hours that not everybody wants to see him dead and mutilated. Especially not in Berlin. Just imagine the economic downfall of a city that is already notorious for its enormous debts if suddenly no Country People would come to visit the Big City anymore. They would have to start being even unfriendlier than they are! Berliners aren’t exactly known for their politeness, you might know. Or rather, they don’t say anything unless it’s vital for survival. “Thank you” and “hello” do not fall into this category. “How about getting a light for your bike, dork?” seems to be, however. Apparently, survival includes not hurting your mobility device, aka car. But that is another story, involving bicycles and cars. And bike lights. But I'm too lazy to tell it.

*For the Americans: It’s Switzerland, not Sweden. Sweden is in Scandinavia, up north. Near Norway and Finland. In between, in fact. You know, where there are moose and Vodka and Volvos.

Some information

Hi. This blog used to be hosted over at ancientprotectors.com entries posted by Zbegra is simply a rehost of the blog.

-Zbegra

Some facts about Hyderabad

The University Student in me forbids that I should write this all down without mentioning that most of it was taken out of lonely planet's India guide. I refrain from giving detailed bibliographical information. There, I have sinned.

Hyderabad and its sister-city Secunderabad claim a population of 5.5 million inhabitants (this is 2/3 of the population of Switzerland in one city). It used to be called City of Pearls because of its big role in the pearl trade. Hyderabad is the 'birthplace' of the famous Kohinoor Diamondwhich is a main piece of the British Queen's Crown Jewels. These great days have long passed and Hyderabad has lost some of it's glory. It is the capital of the Indian state Andra Pradesh and is located in the Western Part of the state. Andra Pradesh's people are 95% Hindus while Hyderabad is almost 50% Muslim.

The reason for there being so many Muslims is Hyderabad's role in the history of the religion. In 1687 it was captured by the Mughal (a Muslim) Emperor Aurangzeb (yes, I'll stop in a second and come to the interesting parts). Many of the temples and religious shrines were erected during this rule.

When the English colonised India they established Golconda Fort in the early 19th century. The Fort is one of contemporary Hyderabad's major tourist attractions (pix will follow when I made them).

One of the major business branches in Hyderabad is IT. Lots of local and international enterprises have agencies in Hyderabad which is why Hyderabad has also come to be called Cyberabad. There is even a compound dedicated solely to this Industry: HITEC City (Hyderabad information Technology Engineering Consulting), lieing on the outskirts of Hyderabad. HITEC City as well as the other IT businesses have brought a lot of wealth to the city and the state, yet 55% of Andra Pradesh's inhabitants remain illiterate, i.e. they're neither able to read nor to write.

This is a very short summary of the theoretical facts about this city. I'm sure I will add one or two comments when I arrive there and during my stay, as my perception of Hyderabad is bound to be different than the one of some guide book author. I'll attach some pictures here, they were taken by a trainee from Austria earlier this year and I allow myself to post them here. Dada.