Getting up to snuff

Life is good. I really do enjoy my job these days. It feels more like "work" and less like a "job", if you know what I mean.

I've been reading a new book (I know, shocking): Barbara Sher - I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was. I'm still reading it, working my way through chapter 3 which features a lot of exercises such as "What does meaningful work mean to you", "Describe the job from heaven / hell", and "Who says" to figure out where the voices in your head come from and who is saying what.

So at the moment I spend a lot of time with my beloved mindmaps. Mindjet published an app with all the basic features included for free, so that one plus dropbox currently make up my most important tools for combining thoughts, train rides, and laptop. I am still a huge fan of old-fashioned paper notebooks & pen, but I have already noticed a significant decrease in height of piles of scribbled notes about Lord knows how many different topics on my desk. :o) Mindmaps just work well for my thought process - think it, write it, read it, structure it, learn from it.

In the past two weeks, I treated myself to two consumerist purchases. One was a necklace in surfer-style with gecko. Absolutely love it! The other is a hazelnut-colored nightstand. Originally, I had thought about building my own as I wasn't able to find anything goodlooking, affordable, that fit the measurements of the space we have available. Then I did find a 30€ solution and must say I quite like it:

My greens are doing fine as well. One onion is climbing the heavens, the other is unhappy with something I can't seem to figure out.

The red peppers are continuing to grow though the larger ones have definitely slowed their growth and focus more on leave production.

In this past week, I added an avocado seed and tomatos! The avocado will probably take forever to develop roots and produce that astonishingly vital green stick of a plant that will just keep growing, no matter how many times you'll cut off the leafy top, only to come back with at least twice the amount of stems.

For the tomato seeds (bought at the store for 0,15€), I built a new greenhouse - this time using a cheese box and a sauce container. We'll see how that'll work.

So, things keep plugging along merrily :o)

Oh brave new world that has such tech in it!

Crazy thing, this mobile internet... For the past couple of days, I have found myself staring at my phone a lot. Dennis has been staring at his phone a lot as well. We feel like modern teenagers. I even downloaded Angry Birds - which (I learned in Thailand) is a very hip game to be playing.

I have, however, also found great stuff. Most importantly, being able to send and receive emails on the go is something I have grown to LOVE. Then, there is the TED Air app that finally lets me watch the all-importand and awe-inspiring TEDtalks again. Just for this feature, getting the new cell contract was absolutely worth it. In case you have never heard of TED, go check it out. Right now.




Welcome back! Did you anything but love the stuff that is on that site?! I have drawn so much inspiration and gotten so many WOW effects from on there, that it partly made me who I am today. If you haven't noticed, I'm a huge fan. Seriously, go take a look. It's FREE, in case you are scared that this is a scam. Just pure amazing content.

Besides TED, I have found a number of games that I haven't played in years: like MAHJONG (wicked!) and mastermind. Now I really need to find a good gameboy emulator - and monkey island *grin*

Apart from gaming (which hopefully fades again after the first round of excitement) I can now use MindManager on the go - creating mind maps as the thoughts come pouring in.

One of the first apps that I looked up was a QR code scanner (the small, black and white square codes that show up ever more frequently on ads etc.), and with it, I got mysteriously taken to the franchising website for School of Rock, a concept to teach kids to rock on stage and in life through music. Fun stuff, I can tell ya.

So much more to explore. Had I known what I was missing, I would have made this experience (read: this epic transformation :o)) one of my goals :o)

Good times.

P.S.: Written on my phone. Edited on my laptop.

Mobile Madness

I have an announcement to make: This is my first ever blogpost written entirely on my PHONE! i am starting to enter the mobile age *^_^*

But I can tell you, this has been a pain! I am still learning how to use the touchpad - and it is not exactly agreeing with me. For some reason, the text field is larger than the screen - and for some reason, the focus is on the center all the time instead of following the typing. Highly annoying.

Also, it doesn't like to let me mark text to correct spelling. So you'll just have to live with that "i" somewhere near the top.

Ok, I'm exhausted. That's it for now!

Garden Update

Just a quick garden update:

Although it's -12°C outside (a temperature I can't recall ever having occured in these regions during my (short :o)) life-time), both the peppers and the onions are doing fantastically great! I'm starting to think that my thumb has finally found some of that green that it was lacking so obviously :o)

I also bought tomato seeds! So once this frost outside has moved on, I'll give the mini-greenhouse another try!

Freu :o)

Fun times ahead - sportive planning of the future :o)

Hah! I made a wonderful discovery today! A sports-related discovery :o)

On Friday, I received the confirmation for cancelling my gym membership. Which gives me time, space, and freed-up money to go look for an alternative. And glancing over to my goals list, those alternatives could very well involve dancing Salsa and doing Kung Fu. Or in short, dancing and martial arts :o) Both are activities that I extremely enjoy, yet rarely do while I'm in the country. And these goals were brought on-board to end this insane absence of something that gives me so much energy this year.

Turns out, we have an absolute gem in Bochum: Die Körperwerkstatt, or body garage, a place were gym equipment meets martial arts passion and dancing expertise! They have an extremely comprehensive martial arts program (Kung Fu, Tae Kwan Do, Capoeira, Muay Thai / Thaiboxing, Mixed Martial Arts, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and even rarities like Krav Maga and Vale Tudo (I have no idea what that is...)]. Additionally they have Tai Chi and personal defense, which might be a nice addition - but I am soooo excited about the sort of energy that I could draw from studying that kind of variety of fighting!!! I didn't even realize that Capoeira was a fighting style, I always thought of it as more of a dance.

Speaking of dancing, in their dance segments they offer everything from Jazz dance, Modern, Ballet, Street Dance, Hip Hop, "Latin Moves", something called Body & Soul, and Zoomba. Plus classes on Tap Dance and Flamenco. How crazy is that?! Crazy beautiful!!

And the BESTESTEST thing of all is that ALL the classes are evening courses! There is one single class that starts at 5 p.m. (which I won't be able to make due to the commute), but all the other classes (both dance & fights) take place between 6 and 9 pm, Monday through Friday, with afternoon classes on weekends.

Soooo excited :o)

I still have to check exact costs for all of this, but they offer a student discount and charge for what you'll actually use, so I will make this work!

One of the reasons why I sort of stopped going to my previous studio was that it was somewhat out of town. So when I got to Bochum after work, I would have to take an additional train to a different part of town, and then after training would have to commute all the way across town again to go home.

Körperwerkstatt sits RIGHT next to the train station. Taking the exit where I always take my tram, I can almost spit to them from there! (well ok, that's slightly optimistic, but it's in plain sight). So no more last minute decisions about which tram to take - training tram or home tram... :o)

Boy am I excited!!! :o)

Do I HAVE to garden TONIGHT?!

I really didn't feel like it. Should I? I can always wait another day.

That's what I've been thinking for more or less a week regarding re-planting the red pepper seedlings on my window sill.

The only reason that I actually went to the basement, grabbed all the stuff, cleared a kitchen surface, and got myself some gravedigger fingernails is that I wasn't sure whether those poor tiny creatures would still be alive by tommorrow.

And I must say, I'm glad I did it - roughly 20 minutes of work, all in all, and now I look what I've got:

The three strong ones with leaves are now roomies - hope they'll make it!

When something is starting to look like a tiny forest, I can't just dump them in the garbage and call it quits...! Large puppy-eye-syndrom, I'm afraid.

And this one's just heading for the sky - upside down :o)

Two letters, two more goals?

Sunday. Poetry in one word.

Outside, the weather was grey and freezing cold all day long, so I had absolutely no bad feelings for staying indoors the entire day. And it looks like the next couple of days are going to bring some ice-cold breezes with them...

So apart from sleeping through the day, eating, doing laundry, eating, and sleeping, I didn't do all that much goal-reviewing. Well, there are two more days left in the month, so what's the rush, right?

I did, however, finish two letters to accomplish two more goals: I now have officially cancelled my gym membership. Maybe tomorrow I can tell you a bit about the alternative that I've been checking out :o)

And letter number two is the response to the DRV's letter to get my retirement account cleared for good. This should remain interesting for a while.

That's it, what a great Sunday :o)

So what have you guys been up to today?