What I've Learned Today

It's not oopsie daisy!

It's oops-a-daisy!

An exclamation made when encouraging a child to get up after a fall or when lifting a child into the air.

Actually there are a million ways to spell it and I wasn't far off... though I should spell it whoopsie daisy or whoops-a-daisy to get the correct meaning... in the context in which I use it:

An exclamation made after a stumble or other mistake. It is usually said by the perpetrator of the error and the saying out loud is a public acknowledgement.

Reading this made me realise although I have watched Notting Hill a million times, I've never watched it in English... I would have remembered Hugh Grant saying it and Julia Roberts remark:

"No one has said 'whoops-a-daisies' for fifty years and even then it was only little girls with blonde ringlets."

I remember the quote in German though... I wish I had watched the movie in English back in the day, mind you, I could have been using this phrase for years...

Also... the first known printed record of any form of the term is in Clough Robinson's The dialect of Leeds and its neighbourhood (1862). Awww, Leeds... it all comes full circle in the end, doesn't it? Brilliant!

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.

I'm Like a Yorkshire Cat

Just to wrap up the story ... the exam went well, now I just need the tutor to agree. There are just 3 more exams and my dissertation to go.

In the last days of studying I spent the few hours of day that actually offered sunlight on my windowsill and yes I studied, but part of me felt like one of those cats who sit in windows and stare at the people outside... and what can I say we have quite a busy street. Plus I noticed something I hadn't before ... the people across from us have turned their balcony into a buddhist garden ...

Now, had I seen this 2 years ago, I wouldn't have noticed. I'd just have thought they are drying facecloths or something ... but hell, they aren't and I love them for it, cos everytime I look overthere now it reminds me of how I travelled to every corner of Yorkshire last year - which makes me grin like a Cheshire Cat ... though hihi, make me a Yorkshire Cat.

Their balcony is my Harewood House!

Just outside Leeds is the brilliant Harewood House with its fantastic gardens ... and inside that garden (that so deserves its own post) they have a buddhist garden hidden somewhere.

I thought it was quite eccentric at the time ... but now I think it is a lot less eccentric than having a buddhist garden on your apartment's balcony in the middle of Berlin.

those flags were very pretty ...

I just found out that they are Tibetan Prayer Flags ... and they are said to bring happiness, long life and prosperity to the flag planter and those in the vicinity, well, I think that includes me, I mean they are basically just outside my window ... brilliant!