Done and Dusted

Just handed in that whole extra project work I did. Feels good! After receiving 198 emails concerning the damn thing in the last few days, I won't reply to any request anymore.

So tomorrow I start on the really important stuff... for my exam in 13 days time. Oh boy, I'm screwed! But well that worry is for tomorrow... I should be able to go to sleep now after I just slept 4 hours or something last night and I forced myself to stay awake all day to finish off that stupid task. I know the whole sleeping thing is totally my fault... but it's a vicious circle, really.

oh, and I'm not happy about the choice of beverages that is available for the celebration we will have after doing the presentation of the above mentioned project. The only alcoholic beverage that is available is beer! So typical coming from a bloke. The other options were incredibly non-alcoholic - juice, fizzy drinks, bio fizzy drinks. Whatever happened to sparkling wine? I mean we are celebrating something!

and it's Bring Your Own Snacks ... whoaaaa? I plan on eating my way throw the evening without a contribution. So I said, I couldn't specify what I would bring at this time, but it might be CAKE! Now if I do... and that is IF ... all I will do is pop to the local ALDI for something cheap ...

no Prosecco... pfffff!

Another Old Soul

not just does he have an old man inside of him dieing to come out, no he also can't deal with hangovers... we might be soulmates...



apart from the hiking that is...

And it is just lately that I'm so hungover after 2 glasses of wine... there are 2 options to explain this a) I actually got ill in England like my housemate and my body can't deal with alcohol as well as before or b) I most probably always was like I am now, but I just didn't care... while at the moment I can't deal with it. Gone are the good old days I had a Gin or two every second night. Well, we all go through phases... maybe this is one of mine.

Remember Remember The 19th of November

Knowing about my financial predicament my boys are so nice to come and visit me here in Berlin for a friendly. They are sooo sweet!

We knew a Germany game was coming up, but it could have been in Munich ... which would have meant buying train tickets. but no, they are so lovely to come to Berlin ... brilliant!

2 years and 4 months after THE/OUR World Cup final ... they finally make it to Berlin! Oh, I'll be very emotional.

Maybe even Gary will be fit by then...

I thought about flying to London later this year for 3 or 4 days for a game and to do some shopping... but to be honest I kinda doubt I'll have the money for it. And then there is always the thing that I would rather want to go to Manchester for a United game and a visit to Lovely Leeds... which could maybe be combined by doing job interviews... one can dream, right?

Anyway, this is brilliant! In my home town!

L.O.V.E.

Well, There Will Be No Oscars This Year ... For Me

Even if the writers let the show go ahead, for me it's dead.

Why you ask? As I'm known to have given one of the best Oscar parties ever ... including a 5h-Pride&Prejudice-Marathon the night before and lobster served just in time for the red carpet arrivals, this might surprise you! But then most probably it won't considering the "end" of that Oscar party. And "end" means actually pretty much the beginning of the award ceremony which started with Clive Owen losing the best supporting actor award to Morgan Freeman... which was completely stupid. I like Morgan Freeman ... but just judging by their portrayal of those specific characters and not taking in account that it was time Morgan got an Oscar, Clive so should have won it! So the rest of the ceremony was just really annoying to watch... specially as it was in the middle of the night here in Europe.

So what has caused the offence this year? James McAvoy didn't get nominated for Atonement. There I was not minding that Keira didn't get the nod and totally convinced I had read somewhere that James did, but NO.

At least Atonement was given a best movie nomination, but as it won the Golden Globe I highly doubt it will be awarded again.

hmmmph! and if you look at the nominees ... I'm sorry but what about those "western" movies? What is that all about? Admittedly I haven't seen them yet, but the trailers are not very convincing.

so, excuse me while I'm sulking a bit more ...

okay done. Who cares, for me James won it already, just as Clive did those few years back.

Speaking of my new obsession, I found this hilarious interview yesterday...

He is charming, indeed!

Do you know what that was?

That was a scottish vacuum of charme.

(...) like two positives cancelling each other out and there'd be a huge implosion of the time continuum.

You remember that astrology line that went right through Glasgow in my last post ... hmmm, I LOVE the accent, maybe I should move there. I mean I loved Scotland when we went there last year, but we didn't really meet too many people with a heavy accent. As long as they speak like James I understand them and it's HOT. If they speak like Sir though... I don't have a chance.

If astro.com Says So

My flatmate, the Miaudonna, got very excited yesterday when she realized that astro.com thinks that she will find her true love in Las Vegas ... and when I checked ...well, Vegas it is for me too. Weird!

Now, I wanted to go to Vegas this summer to celebrate my graduation, but I had to accept that no-one would travel with me and that let's face it, it will be winter until I graduate, so I settled for an 8-day ca-raaazy spring trip to Cornwall instead and I'm looking forward to it very much.

I've been trying to think about what is more eccentric, coz that is key to me. Now that Celine is gone from Vegas it seems a lot less eccentric ... though if you do Vegas right it can be bloody eccentric, but then a lot of obesed Americans are doing the same.
Our Cornwall trip will be definitly quite eccentric, as I will want to stop at all the pre-historic healing stones to search healing for my crippled arm ... Men-an-Tol, I'm coming! There is so much to do from tin mines to cyder farms ... and it is Britain, which we LOVE! Of course it loses eccentricity because of all the other german tourists who are looking for Rosamunde Pilcher...

However, the miaudonna and me are definitly going to Vegas to find our big love there one day, when we can afford it. A big part in those financial plans plays the idea to win 5000 Euros by calling in on the german I'm a Celeb season and voting for our favourite Barbara (who we would like to adopt as our crazy aunt!).

So anyway, I was interested to see what I would find concerning my future in the North and well, I couldn't believe it:


See that red line going directly through Leeds and Manchester? Well, it is my Mars Line and it says, that being in this region channels my entire power into my profession, social success and prestige. My strong will leads me to fulfill long-term goals. Women move into a men's world and apparently physical work is important (nah, maybe not). But here we go... these places are good for a new start into professional life and help to bring along an important career step.
Also in the region I'll find my intents and wishes and I'll discover secret sexual preferences (not again!). It will be a quite painful experience if I try to use sex as a means to get power and influence (ooops!).

The brown line means I'll get a step closer to my true calling. (Glasgow?)

Interesting ... I guess the stars do see the start of my career there, so who am I to argue with them and who indeed is Shakespeare -

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.

hmmm... so however, I'll go to the North and if the stars are right all will be well and even if not, I can make it well all by myself according to good old Will ;o)

the blue line is quite brilliant too ... east from that line I will present myself completely different to how I am usually. I might even get a new haircut (hehe!) and decide on a flamboyant lifestyle. I'm magically drawn to the eccentric and I might start to study astrology here (ehm...).

astro.com is quite amusing ... and so right sometimes. Today they've told me that I've got myself into too many projects and I'm doing a lot more for certain projects than I should. Stupid Mr. Birdsong! Spammed me all day with stupid emails... and the project is already one team member down.

I've decided to give you a small insight into my weekend entertainment... the Oscar round table was quite amusing, even if Kiki crashed three times while I attempted to watch it on the original website. Fortunately it is available on youtube now. I found my usually admired George Clooney a bit tiresome though. He was talking ALL the time, but then he and James had quite a few funny moments and they ended up having this Clive Owen running gag ... brilliant. So here is one clip of the whole bonanza in which they talk about the Paparazzi and living close to Britney ... "Just ignore it.(...)We do what Clive Owen does, he's a solid guy."

And if you feel like it, watch this.

I'll end this post with very good news. After dieing on me at least 5 times this weekend, I researched what might be wrong with Kiki and found it is something that happens to a lot of Laptops and I found those crazy computerkids who regularly open their laptops and clean the fan (ventilator) because all the dust stops it from working.
I will NOT open poor Kiki! But I did blow some air into the fan area ... nothing happened. But then a day later out of nowhere and after having been on strike for 4 weeks, the fan decided to go back to work. At first I was scared by the noise and thought "that's it, Kiki explodes any minute now", but then I realized that it was a familiar and good sound. So things are good now, Kiki hasn't crashed once till the fan strike ended...

Gary Scored!

My favourite rightback and the captain of the best club in the whole wide world played for 45 minutes in a reserves game against Everton and after being down 0:2 he even scored. The game ended in a draw. Inspiring!

Fingers crossed he will make a proper Premiership appearance soon!

On a different note his best friend Becks has said that they are so good friends that he'd trust Gaz alone in a room with Posh ... naked.

Meanwhile Mr. B himself is cuddling up to Gordon "Prime Minister" Brown at Downing Street and his football academy ... all in the name of the 2018 World Cup Bid. Maybe I was a bit overhasty in 2006 by saying that having the World Cup in my home country will be a once in a lifetime experience...

Mugshot

I had to get a picture taken for my passport and identity card yesterday. Under the new laws it is strictly forbidden to look good or actually anything like yourself in the pic that you will have to show airport officials for the next 10 years.

I know, no-one looks good in those pics and I think the result could have been worse, but in a way it is insulting! The lighting is sooo bad on purpose, that your skin looks absolutely horrific.

I was assured by the miaudonna that these pics are simply bad whoever takes them, but maybe I should have gone somewhere else than I did.

I wanted to go to a proper studio to get them taken, but then shortly before I left the house my Mom called and so I ended up being very late for a meeting with friends to stalk my german celebrity boyfriend on screen at the almost local cinema. I originally wanted to take the pics at a studio close to the cinema but then I was so late that I decided to just get the pictures done in the first shop I saw.

So before I got on the underground I popped into this local shop (Porst) and I should have been warned by the "atmosphere". It wasn't even a studio. It was basically a place for people to drop off their films or cds to get their pics developed. Although they try to make naive people believe they can take pictures by having 6 horribly assorted portrait pics of spotty teenagers and little kids on their wall. They couldn't trick me though, the facilities clearly showed they hadn't taken proper pictures for years (no space, no backgrounds)... and that the guy was photoshopping stuff on a computer was just pretending of the worst kind, I can do that.

So yeah, I could have gone to a better place ... he took 2 pics while I was sitting on a chair in a tiny open corridore kinda thing with white walls. Meanwhile the shop door was open and everyone could see me getting my picture taken. I then asked him whether I could look at the pics before he printed them and when he looked at me suspiciously, I thought I'd play a bit dumb to make him comply "I mean is that possible? Digitally?" ... he nodded and let me choose. Actually we agreed... the first one was really bad and the second slightly less bad.

I paid 7,95 Euro, which is a good deal and now I am in the proud possession of a passport picture that overwhelmingly reminds me of Lindsay Lohan's and Mischa Barton's mugshots. Bad light... very bad light ... I might not look as if I've partied all night, but I definitly look like I've just committed a "Driving Under the Influence"-offence...

Well, it could have been worse though.

Now there's hoping that the council won't send me back to take a new picture coz my "pretty" mugshot is not correct. My eyes are free, but my hair covers my forehead a bit and I was told by a friend that she had to put all her hair out of her face for the pic. Great, if I have to do that, I will look like Britney when she got stretchered off to the hospital ... no, no, no!!!
So fingers crossed!

Man of My Dreams

I had one of my very few celebrity dreams last night and I still remember bits and pieces.

And who was the "dreamy" celebrity? Who could it be? ... Yeah - It was GARY BARLOW!

It was all a bit surreal really. I think we were backstage during the New Year's Show or I was somehow in the audience close to the stage ... no, I think it was in a corridor backstage. Most probably the place changed during the dream ... you know when it does that, that is soooo weird! One moment you are in your Mum's kitchen, then you turn around and behind you is your uni campus. Freaky! Anyway, back to Gary Barlow!

to cut to the core of the story:
I did kiss him ... on the cheek! His wife was there ...

okay, it really wasn't in anyway erotic or anything!

I walked down a corridore or something, I saw his wife Dawn and she smiled at me ... I don't know ... now it is getting a bit grey in my memory. And then Gary came through a door and he looked fit ... you know, just how we like him, wearing those nice trousers and a tight white shirt. He was about to go on stage or something, but I thought I had to grab the opportunity and thank him for the great time we had at the Take That concert or just in general for Take That. And he was so nice and grinned at me!

I just really wanted to give him a hug! But before I did, I looked at Dawn and she grinned and nodded and I thought, damn this poor women this must happen to her quite often. And then I gave Gaz a hug and a kiss on the cheek... and it was a proper hug too. And what can I say that body of his felt as tight as it looks on TV ... okay, it was just a dream, but hey!

And then he pulled me with him towards a staircase that led up to the stage and Dawn was gone ... and I woke up!

Weird! But cool!

I think it might have been triggered by me repeatedly watching Rule the World on youtube and giggling and rewatching this bit from The Big Fat Quiz of The Year...



Because I do think the last bit where Gary goes like "Taaaaake That" and tries to High Five the others is him quoting Star Stories (when he goes looking for the other 3, finds them in that rubbish thingy and they decide to reform TT and then do exactly what he does here) and THAT is just brilliant!

Proof...



God, I love these 4 men so much in a way! They bring bliss to me life!

Dramatic Pause

In the face of real-life Brit Brit's latest breakdown the factory has been brightened with the continuous replay of this lovely tune ...



God, I admire the genius of this guy! And it seems 2.757.324 people agree ... okay, less than that, because I alone viewed it like 20 times already... and I guess once you have, you will come back... again... and again.

And there is more...



Brilliant! And for the William Shatner fans among you ... hihi!

I hope these clips made you as happy as they made me! I recommend watching them repeatedly, they have an effect like they were cyberspace happy-pills!

All Will Be Well

I loved the girls' New Years party very much! And wearing costumes was really fantastic ... in fact I think:

Only a costume party is a good party!

Therefore all future parties should be costume parties! Even though people constantly asked me why I was eating and where Amy hid her drugs! See guys, I'm not really Amy...

I know Brit Brit was having doubts about the party, but I would have only swapped it for one other place ...




I kinda lost the first day of the New Year ... well not entirely as I discovered a great place for Chicken Tikka just around the corner... yum yum! No Tariq's though!

I'm also still trying to get rid of Amy's tattoos. These transfer thingies that I still had from my 90ies teen magazines are proving to be quite hard to remove.

Looking back at 2007, I can't believe that it started in a Nightclub in Lovely Leeds and with 2 months of travelling around the North ... it seems so far away already! And you know this is the point why everything is so brilliant in Leeds! I was basically taking half a year off and though I attended uni and handed in some assignments, it was not serious. It was all fun. I know that going to Leeds was always a way of delaying my graduation because I really didn't wanna think about that, so I decided to follow my dream of studying in England, moved North, turned my life into a soap-opera, met a bunch of great new people, realized I should have studied marketing, went shopping beyond reason, had a lot of take-out, survived on the cheapest white wine from the coop, went clubbing with all the booze girls, enjoyed day trips and spend abysmal amounts of money on going to Manchester to watch my football at OT.

It was BRILLIANT! Because let's face it, it wasn't real life! There was no work and no pressure, just freedom to be lazy and do whatever I wanted to do for 6 months as long as it was within my budget ... it was like being a poor people's version of a trust-fund heiress.

And then I returned to Berlin and it was no wonder reality spit into my face. It meant for me coming back to things that do count and actually working hard at uni to finally graduate. I love Berlin to bits but last year in a way it sucked by association ... "study hard". It's not as if I don't like studying (I do, I love learning new things) but preparing those exams has been so frustrating. And so the year ended like looking down into a dark tunnel named December...

The funny thing is with it being the New Year and all, the dark feeling of December is gone from my head. It's funny how it is all in our heads, isn't it? I feel freed to a certain extent ... okay you might wanna speak to me in 4 weeks again when I'm going into the final days of revising for the next exam and then we'll see.

So this year ... well, I hope I will graduate. I hope I can be more relaxed about the exams and my dissertation. I hope I will find something to write my dissertation about. I know what I wanna do, but I still need an institution I can do it at. And then well, that is the big surprise right?

I have an idea what I wanna do, but I'm not sure I'm qualified enough (yeah I always think I'm not good enough, which is down to my Mum never actually telling me that I did something well) ... I'm scared that there are so many people out there who have the same qualifications as me and we all will apply for a handful of jobs. Being realistic it is quite scary, because I want a real job and not a part time one. Well okay, I'm actually more looking for a trainee place first. And then of course I always wanted to return to the North, but there are so many things to consider when you move abroad ... the list is endless and I would have to find a job there first which is anything but easy. On the other hand things have a way of just happening and it's no use worrying about that too much now, because I have to finish uni first, and then again I think, no, it's good to be prepared or things will go wrong.
I don't know it's a vicious circle of thoughts.

I hope everything will fall into place in the end. But at the moment I'm feeling that ...

All will be well.