Emo emo emo – Of the current events

I worked all of Saturday (11:20 to 22:30) for this project who were having some fieldwork done in Uganda. If they’re on schedule they started up yesterday. I worked over-time two days straight to get everything done, in my own sparetime, including writing a manual about everything I could think of so that a non-techie could understand and perform her duties. Writing a manual is pretty hard work and I wasn’t proud at the end result, but I got positive feedback, so I hope they stick to the step-by-step instructions. I even packed down the equipment so that it was ready for transportation.
And did I get an invitation? No.

Apparently I’m too expensive to send out in the bush.
I am certain there are those who think I am too expensive to even be here as much as I am. Most people seem to think that, up until the moment I save them from a critical situation they brought themselves into. "Sure, I’ll just save all of my six years’ worth of work on this laptop and nowhere else. What can possibly go wrong?" I get to see the terror of losing data in their eyes about once a week. For them it’s a breathtaking experience that may change their lives. Or their employment status. For me it’s routine. I feel like a Steve Irwin of information technology with everything it brings with it.

Sweating in the jungle with nothing good to eat and the work days stretching from dawn to midnight seem more appealing to me than staying here fixing up hardware and troubleshooting DVD players. A friend of mine got a free trip to Uganda through this place. I’m not sure if he got any pay for it, but it’s not the money you remember a year after anyway. I had two weeks in Sudan back in 2005, and I went through the pictures that I took just a couple of weeks ago. I still want to take part.

I took a day off yesterday, since I really needed it. Having worked all of Saturday and then going out partying rendered me completely useless on Sunday. I went to my mum’s (she was in Berlin) and made myself some taco while compiling drivers and utilities for my laptop, and listening to Ricky Gervais Show episodes from the early days in Xfm Radio. I have 3.2 Gigabyte worth of Ricky, Stephen and Karl Pilkington talking absolute bollicks, and soon I’ve been through all of it. Good riddance. So I took Monday off to do what I wanted to, but waking up at 2 p.m. I realized I’d be better off doing something I should have done a long time ago.
I went to IKEA.

Now, I really hate IKEA. If I had worked in IKEA, I wouldn’t.
Instead I would have gone to the liquor store and bought myself a bottle of whisky. Then I’d go to the first gangster I could find and buy myself a gun. Then I would get on home and combine the two. Because I wouldn’t want to go on as a living dead. But that’s just how I feel about it.
The second most disturbing thing is that you can’t turn anywhere without seeing IKEA in big, yellow letters on a blue background. It’s like we’re back in the 19th century again, under Swedish rule. Except that this time it works. You get on the IKEA bus that takes you away from reality, and into the IKEA world with all the IKEA customers talking about IKEA stuff sitting around you. In the IKEA world consciousness is discouraged and hysteria encouraged! You see, in IKEA you are not a sentient being, you are not more valuable than the IKEA merchandice you purchase, and you’re welcome to stay as long as you like. Put your children in IKEA day care. Have dinner at IKEA. Make love in the IKEA bed testing chambers. Name your first born IKEA.
..I’m not going to rant about it, since I’ve been on the subject before. I have been there three times already, and my general opinion isn’t improving. I then heard about the tragic shooting at Virginia Tech in the US. A man shot 32 human beings before turning the gun at himself. They say all of his furniture was bought from IKEA.

I should have taken another day off, just to get it out of my system. But I’ve got you guys. You, my readers, are just like the lonely drunks you meet at the end of a particularly bad Saturday night out. They are way too drunk to talk, and you can’t really understand what they’re saying, but you know they insist. No, wait, that’s me. You’re either the annoyed bartender or a backstreet preacher, preying on lost souls with an open mind and a bag of pretzels. Pretzels, please.

No, but seriously. The last four-five weeks I’ve been rubbish.
I might as well just lay down and disappear. I have plenty of good reasons to get up in the morning, compelling reasons that may change at least my world, IF I could just bring myself to actually work with those reasons. Instead of stalling. Very emo, I know, but it just about sums things up. The worst thing is that I know exactly how to deal with it and I still avoid doing anything about it. Aristotle said something about that in the Nichomachean Ethics, something like: «The worst case is when a man knows his task, and intends to do it, and still avoids doing it.»
I’m a worst case scenario, now? Brilliant.

I lied awake last night until 3 a.m. in the morning, just to write four sentences down on paper. They were indeed brilliant words, like a glass of water when your throat is sore from thirst, but I have no idea where to use them. I would be desecrating my muse, however, if I were to squander them away. I only write bad when I decide to write. Like now. I know some of it thematically coincides with the mission statement of my fourth book, of which real work has not yet begun. I just need to get through the one I am writing now. It is huge, and I can only see it growing at the moment, unless I make two versions.

I lost my train of thought. Oh, well. Here’s another.
The kekepower server has been down for quite a while since my cousin had a severe disk crash. Most of the stuff I’ve been working on with regards to my gallery, and some pictures I’ve uploaded, are lost forever and ever until the end of time. I don’t mind, though.

With stuff like that on the web there’s no reason to complain. I’ll be out for a cigarette.