18-year-olds and pictures of penises

As you know, I have gone “back to school” and am now, as a first year psychology student, surrounded by 18-year-olds.

I suddenly realised something the other day. I was sitting in between two laptop users at a lecture about the T-statistic for independent groups, who were both (riveting though this subject of course was) clicking back and forth between Facebook and MSN on the free campus wireless connection. I observed this out of the corner of my eye, and suddenly it dawned on me:

The young adults of today, born around 1990, have always had internet.

That means that they have always had all the information they could ever need at their fingertips. (Or at least all the information they could ever think they need, the astounding repository called “books”, where there is better and more background information than on Wikipedia about anything except maybe Hannah Montana has been forgotten not only by modern youth but also by 90% of the rest of the population including journalists.)

A whole generation that does not remember not having Internet.

Remember being a little girl and finding that one picture of a penis in that medical book and staring at it in wonder, going back to it whenever your mother wasn’t home, wondering what it would look like if it weren’t dissected up the middle with arrows pointing out the “urinary tract” and “testes”. Marveling at the way it hung there, a boneless appendage, wondering how it would feel to have one, wondering… well, you know. It was the only picture at your disposal and that one picture was what you had to make do with for years and years and years.  (Until you were all grown and found a nice young man who would turn out to be amazingly willing to teach you all about it in sessions that focused on practice, not theory.)

Or remember when you were a young boy and that one older friend brought playing cards with naked ladies on them to school and you had to pretend to like him just to be able to sneak a 2-second-peek. But oh, what a peek.

The young adults of today don’t remember that at all. They remember being slightly curious, using Google, saying “eeuw” at the first few dozen of 5 million pictures and then getting bored and going back to their Nintendo.

I’m not sure why, but something about that makes me feel very sorry for them. All that mystery and magic, they’ll never know.

On the other hand, they know everything about Hannah Montana. So that’s okay then.

Crush

Seeing as I’m not able to get myself a real man I’ve decided to go back to a system that worked really well for me in my teens: I shall have a crush on an American celebrity.

During said teenage years I had a huge crush on Keanu Reeves who isn’t, in fact, American at all, but Canadian. For my 29-year-old crush I have decided to stick with the Canadian theme and have chosen a charismatic actor various Josh Whedon projects such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, a guy with a sense of humour and acting skills and a love for science fiction (ie my perfect man) (except maybe for the acting skills. Cooking skills and DIY skills would have been better, but you can’t have everything…) who is also single which means that, even though he lives at the other side of the world, has a life that is unreachable for me in every way and has various gorgeous, rich women lusting after him several times a day, he does not have a girlfriend and therefore there is hope.

The man I have decided on is the star of Castle (which is no where near as good as Firefly, of course, but still quite entertaining): Nathan Fillion. Here’s a picture so you, too, can appreciate his scrumptiousness:

Yummy, yummy, yummy. (Don’t you get any ideas now, though, he’s mine!)

The “people’s names at parties”-thing

So, I was at a party and the host introduced me to three people: a cute (but slightly too slick) guy, his very stylish girlfriend and a friendly looking boy with brown curls. We did the “Hi, I’m … (insert own name)”-thing and shook hands, and talked about how nice the party was until the host wandered away to greet fresh newcomers and I wandered away to get myself a drink.

Having received my white wine from the voluntary bartender of the evening I wandered back to cute-yet-slick guy, stylish girlfriend and curly brown haired guy, because they had seemed nice and there were no other acquaintances that needed greeting, and we did the “So how do you know … (insert name of host)?”-thing  and chatted about my sister, my connection to the host being that my sister is his girlfriend. At some point in the conversation the curly brown haired boy did the “I’m sorry I don’t remember your name”-thing and I did the “That’s okay I have to admit, goodness how embarrassing, that I don’t remember yours either”-thing.

This (for me, at least) is all part of the standard  ”people’s names at parties” -thing. When you are introduced to randoms at a reasonably large party you don’t really pay attention to their names because there is a very high chance that you will never speak to them again, ever. Then, when you end up in a situation where it seems that you are going to actually get to know the other person to a certain extent, you do the “How embarrassing I forgot your name”-thing and this time, you do pay attention. Standard, simple, no problem.

Unfortunately for me, at this point the “people’s names at parties” -thing went horribly wrong. Cute-yet-slick guy had remembered my name.

“But you don’t remember mine, huh?” he said

“Oh dear oh Gosh no I don’t right now I’m sorry let me think, it was, uhm…” I said

“John.”

“Yes! That was it, of course! Sorry John, won’t forget again, hahahaha.”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to pretend you recognise the name. You just completely forgot. That’s okay, it happens.”

“Nononono, I’ll admit it was gone for a little while there, but I definitely remember now. John, yes, that was it.”

“It’s funny the way people do that, the way politeness works, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I know. But I’m not just being polite, nonono, promise. There was a definite little memory spark at the name John. My brain went “John, that was it.” Really, it did, it did.”

At this point, I noticed something was off about the people around me. Stylish girlfriend was rolling her eyes, John was looking rather pleased with himself and, most tellingly, curly brown haired boy was trying not to laugh. In my head, a penny started dropping…

“Your name isn’t really John, is it?”

“Nope. It’s Adrian.”

Doing what I wanted to do just then would have meant my kind host and future brother-in-law would have had to clean up not only the standard broken glasses, gift-wrapping and red-wine stains but also a dead body in fetal position so I decided to do him a favour and keep standing up and smiling, all be it with a very red face.

The thing is, I really thought I recognized the name John. I truly believed it. My psychology book tells me this is called cognitive-dissonance; two attitudes were competing in my brain: 1-I couldn’t remember Adrian’s name 2-forgetting someone’s name is impolite and anti-social and I view myself as neither of those things. Thus, when Adrian told me his name was John, my brain convinced me that it recognized that name, thereby proving that I wasn’t impolite and anti-social at all. It’s the same mental process that causes smokers to rationalize the fact that they smoke (I know it’s bad for me, but I have a lot of stress in my life right now. Or rather: I know it’s bad for me, so I must have a lot of stress in my life right now) and nazi guards to work at concentration camps (I’m causing these people horrible suffering even though I consider myself a kind person, but they deserve it. Or rather: I’m causing these people horrible suffering even though I consider myself a kind person, so they must deserve it).

See, I told you I’d be spewing first-year psychology at you before long, didn’t I?

Anyway, Adrian and his stylish girlfriend and curly brown haired boy were very nice about it and didn’t run after me with pitch forks and burning stakes to punish me for being impolite and anti-social at all, although I didn’t dare ask for the names of the stylish girlfriend and curly brown haired boy after that, because, you never know, they might have had little fold-up pitchforks hidden under their clothes or something.

I even did a passingly good job of getting back at Adrian by pointedly calling him John for the rest of the evening, in an attempt at “if your joke had really affected me I would be pretending it never happened yet here I am revisiting it again and again thereby showing you that it didn’t affect me at all” reverse-psychology. Or would that be reverse-reverse-psychology? I’m not sure. Whatever it was, Adrian started looked a little embarrassed by the 6th time I called him John which I will count as points for me.

I think I will ask my sister’s boyfriend for Adrian’s email address, so I can send him a link to this blog post, I think he’ll appreciate it. I think I will start the email with “Hey, John! Aren’t you glad we don’t live in World War II?!”

Strangers’ photo albums

I have a lot to do. I have to study for two different exams, write the method section of a research paper on differences in aggression between men and women (which, worryingly, do not seem to significantly exist), do some translating work, clean the house, buy food, cook food, apply for jobs… the list goes on and on into, as far as I can gauge, near-infinity. So what do I do? Do I grit my teeth and get on with it? Nah. I look at strangers’ photo albums on Facebook.

Facebook has the curious feature that if one of your “friends” (you know, one of those people you met at some point in your life whose name you probably wouldn’t even remember nowadays if it weren’t for the fact that their personal lives get broadcast onto your computer screen twice a day)  is tagged in a picture and you take a look at it, this also means you can look at all the other pictures in the album, made by someone you don’t know of people and places you don’t know, except for that one guy in that one photo whom you met at a party in Berlin and asked for his email address because, well, because you want as many Facebook friends as possible (go on admit it).

Anyway, in this way I ended up in Australia, in an album entitled Steven’s surprise “S” party, the theme of the party being, I quickly surmised with my intimate knowledge of Anglo-Saxon party culture, to dress up as something beginning with S, this theme having been chosen, no doubt, because the name Steven starts with S, or maybe because the word surprise starts with s, or maybe even, you never know, both.

My “friend”, an ex-colleague, was dressed up in a suit. Through earlier pictures I happen to know that this guy went to a dress up party not some weeks ago where the theme was “twins”, and he had found another guy and they had both dressed up in: (suspense) a suit. Apart from the conclusion that this guy goes for lazy yet practical costumes, another conclusion would also be that a. I need to spend more time off Facebook, b. I spend exactly the right amount of time on Facebook, I just don’t have enough Facebook friends to stalk or c. I spend the same amount of time on Facebook as anybody else and have a higher than average amount of friends (due to much practice of getting people’s email addresses at parties), but I am the only person who will actually admit to being quite so pathetic.

Anyway, back to the party. I had been looking at these pictures longer than the average 3 clicks somebody else’s album usually gets from me while I’m going “damn this person has a cooler life than I do and lots of cool friends I think I shall go and eat some chocolate” or (far more rarely) “damn this person is boring, look at how annoyed those people look at having their pictures taken by somebody they barely know who insists on being their friend on Facebook”. But in this album I found myself clicking through all, I feel rather bad admitting this, one hundred and sixty-six pictures. The reason the pictures of Steven’s surprise S party mesmerised me so is because I found myself trying to guess what all the happy looking Australian 20-somethings were dressed as, starting with S. Apart from the suit, there were 3 spidermans (well 2 spidermans and a spiderwoman), a number of sexy schoolgirls, a snow white and a sexy (Mrs.) Santa. Also a security guard, a Scotsman, a few Spaniards and something that looked like she was trying to be Swiss. Then, let’s see, a Sheriff, a football player… Wait, that didn’t start with S. Ooooh, a soccer player. This was fun! Okay, okay, then there was a girl who was wearing an old fashioned tweed duck hunting outfit. Uhm… Oh! Sherlock Holmes!  A guy in a rather nice traditional Indian outfit… Sitar player without the sitar? Sri Lankan? And a guy who had a red bandana tied around his forehead like Rambo who was probably some other eighties action hero that I was quite happy not to recognise.

But the biggest mystery of the set was definitely a rather nice-looking fella in a box; he was wearing a cardboard box which has been lovingly covered in white paper with holes for the head and arms. He looked a bit like a robot (Syborg? Nah, even Australians can spell.) but that didn’t seem to have been the intention, as the box had LUX written on it in big, intentional letters. It must have been some kind of Australian joke…

Oh my God, I just got it! He was a box of soap! Hahahahahaha.

Strangers’ photo albums on Facebook. Hours of fun.

How to get people to not sit next to you on trains

So I’m studying in Utrecht. Finding a place to live in Utrecht that does not cost the Earth or feature a queue of 5 smelly students standing in line to use the shower which is located in the kitchen every morning (yes that shower example comes from real life. Not, thankfully, my own.) is just about completely impossible and for this reason I am still living in Tilburg, which is actually a rather nice town in the south of The Netherlands; not that the fact that it is rather nice contributes positively to my life at all as I only ever see it for ten minutes every day on my walk from and to the station.

When I am not studying, admiring the road between my house and the station or babysitting my nephews in return for food, I’m sitting in a train.

There are not many things in life that I truly excel at, but I would like to think that when it comes to sitting in trains, I am a master. I have now taken the time to write down the three steps of this fine art, so that you, dear reader, may also achieve this supreme level of deftness.

Step 1, before boarding.

Even before the train arrives, position yourself away from the lingerers, loiterers and general scum who feel they have the right to get on the same train as you. The best location will probably be a minute’s walk or so away from the stairs leading up to the platform. Be very wary of inside seating areas, it will look as if you are waiting in a sparsely populated area, but when the train comes suddenly some doors that you had not noticed behind you will open and out will pour the scum ready to claim the train by the dozens. Worse: people who wait in inside waiting areas tend to be fat grannies, stupid foreigners with luggage and mothers with prams who each feel they have the right to take up more space. Avoid!

You should also avoid areas where there are altogether too few people waiting except for some very pleasant-looking middle-aged gentlemen in suits: this is where the first class wagons will stop. You want to be as far away from first class as possible as all the other suckers who were waiting for second class when a first class wagon stopped in front of their noses will have to defer to the second class wagons before and after the first class one which means those will be fuller. Avoid.

Step 2, boarding.

Don’t try to get into the train first. You are going to win this with wits, not brute force. Wait patiently at the back of the row and tut-tut at the scum (usually little old ladies) who are standing so close to the doors that the people disembarking can’t file out properly. Repress urge to say “For F#@*’s sake, the train is not going to leave without you.” loudly. You need to remain anonymous, just an insignificant face in the crowd, for your plan to work.

When your group files in, follow them, and pay attention to where most of them are going: this is where you will not go. Enter your wagon of choice. If there is an empty two seater, grab it, but there probably won’t be. Look around at the eyes of your potential seat neighbours – do not sit next to the people with a vacant, tired yet accepting look in their eye, these are the people who are in for the long haul. You want the active, vibrant people – these are the ones who will get off at the next town to do a bit of shopping leaving you with a blissfully empty two-seater.

Step 3, after boarding.

Once you have seated yourself in the emptiest wagon, in an empty two-seater (which you might have had to wait one station for), it is your goal to keep the seat next to you empty. To go about achieving this, you must look no-one in the eye (it will be taken as an invitation to sit down) but more importantly, all importantly, the whole crux to the art of getting people to not sit next to you, is the positioning of your bag. Your bag will have to be next to you, on the seat, making it a requirement for anybody wanting to sit next to you to ask if you could take it away, by uttering the hated words “May I sit here?” Most people will not bother if there are other seats without bags on them that can also be sat on. Now here comes the bit that makes the trick an artform…. the moment that the empty-seats-without-bags density in the wagon falls below 20%, carefully, surreptitiously, remove your bag. It is a repeatedly proven fact that people entering a wagon where there is less than 20% empty-seats-without-bags density will look at the seat-with-bag and the person, ie owner of the bag, next to it with loathing (“How dare you take up a seat with your bag in a wagon with less than 20% density!”) and will make a point of sitting not on one of the bagless seats but right next to you, evil bag owner person. It is imperative that you counter this outcome with the pre-emptive strike of removing the bag, making sure nobody sees you doing so or they will view it as an invitation, and look as friendly and inviting as possible while still not making eye-contact. The scum will designate you as a non-threat and will sit somewhere where they have to pointedly ask someone to remove their bag.

After all this you will probably have almost arrived at your destination. But in those last 5 minutes of blissful not-having-someone-sit-next-to-you-ness, you should take a moment to thank me.

3 Dutch men (see how they run…)

Damn, I promised to tell you about my recent adventures with Dutch men, didn’t I? Well, here goes:

So I decided to go back to internet dating, seeing as how my exploits in this field are soooo successful (Internet dating in London, result: 0 boyfriends. Internetdating in Frankfurt, result: 0 boyfriends.) But hope is always the last thing to die, as the Germans say, so in I logged and off I went.

Guy #1 was me, or more correctly, my brain, transferred into a short man with broad shoulders (which made up for the shortness) and the kind of baldness that some women probably find unattractive but which nicely complemented his friendly face. We both agreed about absolutely everything (cats, books, solutions to major world problems) with the exception of liking movies directed by Quentin Tarantino (I’ve never enjoyed seeing blood squirting from places where limbs should be and witty banter about sex with corpses does not make me change my mind) but both failed to create any kind of sexual tension between us.

A week later he wrote exactly the email I was planning to write, suggesting friendship and fun but please God not another date. I sent him a fairly neutral reply a few days later and we haven’t contacted each other since. Sigh.

Guy #2 was much more handsome and charming than his picture and emails suggested and the second I cottoned on to the fact that  he was not the strange, unattractive but interesting enough for one date (just) man I was expecting, I got myself into a right state.  I giggle when I’m nervous: I giggled a lot that night. A lot. He was a few years older than me and told me calmly, charmingly that he wrote his own songs, accompanying himself on the piano, as well as doing drama in his spare time and cooking vegetarian food. I was charmed head over feet and giggled some more.

And you know what? He liked me too! A few days after the date (which we ended with a respectable peck on the cheek at my front door) I got an email from him, with an MP3 attachment: he’d written me a song to ask me on a second date.

I hope you were concentrating when you read that last bit. The guy wrote me a song.

Of course, that made me go right off him, didn’t it? Too bloody easy, wasn’t it? The second date I concluded that my giggling had been due to my nerves rather than the wittiness of his remarks and that he was a bit too arty-farty for me.

He sent me an email the following day telling me he liked me. I sent a fairly neutral reply a few days later and haven’t contacted him since. Sigh.

Guy #3 was a cute guy, a little younger than me, a little bit scruffy in a nice way, whose job was so original and fun that I can’t mention it here because nasty people reading this blog (not YOU, obviously) would be able to google him and find his full name and address and do what nasty blog-readers do when they know a random person’s full name and address… Like, uhm, send him a postcard. Okay so maybe I could tell you what he does. But, you know, privacy, blah blah blah. Let’s pretend he was a tuba repairman. For fun tubas.

We spent the first half hour of the date having an interesting and fun conversation about our respective watches, (which was tons better than the standard “so what do you do” fare) and then he took me to repair two tubas, which involved cycling criss-cross through Utrecht at night and going to strangers’ homes and was obviously one of the most original first dates I’ve ever had. (The finger sucking episode, which my regular readers will remember, was a second date, and more of a non-date at that.) We talked and talked and did the thing where you are outside in the cold and trying to say goodbye but you just keep talking until you find you have been standing there 30 minutes and your bum is freezing but you just don’t want to say goodbye. (Yes, you may say “Aaaaaah” and smile.) But, finally, we pecked each other on the cheeks three times in Dutch fashion and I went on my way, thinking goodie goodie goodie, my future boyfriend is a tuba repairman, and trying not to swoon off my bicycle.

I sent him an email the next day telling him I liked him. I got a fairly neutral reply a few days later and haven’t heard from him since.

I could sigh. I could sigh bloody squared to the power of 58 and then some. But I think I’ll just stop internet dating for a while.

Well, a little while, anyway.

Dutch men

Finally the long awaited moment is here: I will after long last disclose what I’ve been getting up to the past weeks, back in my home country, with Dutch men.

Well, not all of them. I’d never be able to remember their names you know. Well, except for the ones called Maarten. Most of ‘em are called Maarten. Anyway, I digress.

So after arriving back home from Peru and unpacking and saying hi to people and organising stuff like insurance and reacquainting myself with Dutch cuisine (ie chips with mayonnaise and bread with chocolate sprinkles, yummm!) and weddings in Geneva I was left with about 5 days of nothingness before my Freshers’ week at uni was set to start.

I went to about 2 job agencies who mumbled something about the recession and then I quite happily spent my time at home talking to my sister, surfing the net, watching movies and reading books. But there was an emptiness inside me… I was a void, I was missing something… Was it the loving warmth of a life partner who could experience these moments with me?  The sweet feeling of sharing my being with another? A warm touch on my shoulder telling me that there was a person who would always be there for me, no matter what? Nahhhhhh! It was internet dating!

Internet dating is fun, happening, a great way to fight boredom, and without a doubt the most useless way of finding a life partner that you could possibly imagine. You find your life partner at a friend’s birthday party. (It’s true.) No, internet dating is there so you can search through pictures of men and experience the joy of picking and choosing based on looks, favourite foods, favourite tv shows, length width weight hair colour eye colour and grammatical ability, receiving emails from men telling you they want you and making you feel good about yourself, and laughing at spelling mistakes. Then, when that gets boring, you meet up with them and rejoice in the fun of telling and retelling the details of the date to all your friends the day after.

And although I am rejoicing in the fun right now, dear friends, I’m afraid you are going to have to wait , because right now I have to go eat bread with chocolate sprinkles.

I gave me a break

After 3 whole weeks of living the life of a regular student, I gave myself a much needed 4 day holiday. I spent it watching movies (for very, very good but also slightly uncomfortable science fiction, I recommend District 9, for a happy and sweet romantic comedy, go watch I love you, man, and for some reasonably intelligent action you should rent Watchmen. Whatever you do, don’t watch Because I said so, unless you want to do extensive research into the physical effects of cringing at bad jokes and good actors embarrassing themselves.) eating chocolate, crackers with cheese and potato crisps and generally having a wonderful time. I needed it, you know, I was stressed.

I also spent about 3 seconds trying to work out how my recent adventures with men would best translate to a blog post, but decided that finishing my bag of chocolate raisins deserved more attention. So you’re going to have to wait another week, aren’t you? Bwaaaahahahahahahahaaaaa! (Evil laugh, slightly better now that I’ve seen Watchmen.)

Boo

Studying is hard. It’s like, like, what is that word? Oh yes, it’s just like work.

I’m really, really hoping that the clever professors are playing with us psychologically and giving us so much to do in the first weeks that we get conditioned to spending our whole weekend trying to get our heads round things like Popper’s philosophy of science and learning all the neurotransmitters and brain regions off by heart and the basics of statistics which we sort of remember having learned in a time far past but have completely forgotten and preparing a research assignment about aggression where we have to ask our friends and family, among others, if they ever “just feel like hitting somebody”.  They are, after all, psychology professors, so it would make sense. (The fact that they are giving us lots of work in the first weeks, not the just feeling like hitting somebody.)

I really hope things will calm down in a little while so I can get round to things like writing in my blog about men. (Yes, there have been occurences of me meeting men. Not going to give you any more than that right now, you’ll just have to suffer, hahahaha (evil laugh)) My amygdala and central cortex agree, so does the serotonin. Say, did you ever just feel like hitting somebody?

Studying in 2009

Although my lectures are punctuated by people talking about how drunk they got last night behind me, people trying to remember what was up with East and West Berlin in the ancient ’80s that the lecturer is referencing to my left (“I didn’t enroll in psychology to learn history,” they moan), and people texting loudly to my right (quite a feat, seeing as texting is a silent medium, but many 18-year-olds manage it anyway, as I have found out), I am still very glad that I waited 10 years to go to university. Studying in 2009 is awesome, because technology nowadays is awesome.

You can log into any one of the computers strewn across campus, or bring your laptop along and log in on the wireless network, or log in at home (awesome) and see your personal schedule, the latest announcements about your classes, your homework and much more at the click of a button. (And it’s fast, and easy, in case people are now calling out that they could do this as long ago as 2003…). You can register for classes, communicate with students and teachers and hand in your assignments digitally 30 seconds before the deadline without having to cycle to the university in the middle of the night and staking out the professor’s pigeon hole. Awesome.

Library books can be ordered online and if you are going into the library to work you can see on screens before you go in which areas are crowded and which have free work stations. Awesome. There’s a GP on campus (so you can go between lectures) where you can register and make appointments online, without having to call an overworked assistant who finally picked up the phone on your 5th attempt to get through. Awesome.

Lectures are given with powerpoint presentations that are available online a few hours later, so you don’t have to worry about missing anything. Awesome. In fact, the lectures even used to be available on video online, although they’ve stopped doing that now – apparently, in the end, a university is a place that students should actually come to. So they can tell each other about how drunk they got last night… Which is, provided you are 18 years old, awesome.