Author: Paul

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“Into The Wild” OMG

What a strong movie and story – its impossible to forget. The film is perfect.

I think I understand Alexander.
A few years back I trekked and hitchhiked in Iceland feeling really like a homeless bum, I felt how some people looked at me, after 200km of walking, but it took me only two weeks of that to really be done with “freedom” and just want to get back home to the family.

Its a funny thing though to be really dependent only on oneself, but simultaneously also on the kindness of strangers.

On several occasions I lost my way in the rainy Icelandic landscape and on one day ended up walking up a wrong mountain. As I was scrambling to find the way down some unknown gorge a heavy and cold rain set in, so as I finally managed to come down having broken one of my walking poles I put up a tent and spent 3 days in some huge valley, full of water, rivers and mist until the rain was gone. I lied on my back in satisfaction, looking at the grey tent heavy with moisture, now and them wobbling under the wind and letting drops fall down, my spriritus heater on slow burn warming up the air inside real comfortably. I wrapped myself in all the clothes I had, put the sleeping bag over and mostly slept, rested and did nothing until ultimately the sky dried up and I decided it was a time to go. It took me another day to walk to the ring road, and a bus next day early morning brought me back to Rejkjavik.

I’ve had enough of adventures for that time.

And this guy did it for .. 2 years. He must have had a lot to let go.

“Happiness only real when shared”
How true.
If only he could have crossed that river…
..or had a map..

What a sad thing, really.

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“Another Earth” – they said its science fiction🤣

I wonder sometimes what kind of people write plot summaries and classify movies into genres. Are they, as a principle, on some misguided quest to mislead the reader in the most aggravating way possible? Is this what they are after? Why are they doing it?!

As I was writing about IO, another equally badly-billed movie crossed my mind. I watched that one a long time ago. Its name was “Another Earth”, and it was billed as a science fiction (🤣🤣🤣 this fact never fails to make me smile) and its summary on imdb is: “On the night of the discovery of a duplicate Earth in the Solar system, an ambitious young student and an accomplished composer cross paths in a tragic accident.”.

The person who wrote the summary probably saw the “duplicate earth” photoshopped on the sky and thought oh it just must be kinda science fiction stuff, what else right..

Anyways.. The another earth in “Another Earth” serves exactly the same purpose as the Io in the “IO”, and is almost equally present (that is, almost not at all).

Another similarity for me, btw, is the equally strong performance of the lead actress.

..

And since I am writing about it, I need to mention this little story.

Guess what movie is this?

“A genetically inferior man assumes the identity of a superior one in order to pursue his lifelong dream of space travel.”

So.. so what? Its hard to write a less motivating line than that, its my honest opinion. I watched this film anyways and I’m still in awe.

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I watched an IMBD score 4.8 movie (“IO”)

Thats funny. Now and then I use to click on the random flick on Netflix, and mostly I just stop after a few minutes in a state of an all-encompassing boredom. “Man ive seen this.. like hundreds of times .. “.. But I do this nevertheless, and sometimes I stumble upon something with a soul.

I read the IMDB reviews this time. Hmm..

Thanks to the 7/10 review I still went ahead 🙂

Its an unbalanced movie: stellar acting that really kept me hooked throughout, but less than perfect attention to detail of the world. I enjoyed the movie nevertheless. It would have been a 10 if it would try to be a bit more realistic.

Margaret Qualley was amazing. I really liked her – and her partner’s (Anthony Mackie) performance.

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I was listening to this weird nutrition podcast

I was complaining about my bad eating habits (like everythings meh) to an old acquaintance of mine. At some point he grew tired and sent me a link to some weird Russian’s guy podcast about nutrition. That guy’s style was pretty unpleasant so I discarded that back then.

But its time has come!

This week I was visiting our R&D in the south of Germany, and having 1.5h of driving and my noise-cancelling Sony headset by me, I put that thing on. Urgghh..

A short summary for my own amusement:

  • If your shit sticks to sink wall it means too much residual fat
    (Looking for a stock pic to illustrate)

    This thing really struck me as an amazing insight.
  • The best thing to eat before bed is fried egg whites
  • The worst thing of all is sugar.. and bananas.. and grapes
  • Fats are good, all sorts of, also animal fats
  • Drinking is not that important. Either or, or after, or during – noone cares

    But sugar is definitely bad.

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Ah, finally a one good mocumentary / “Cunk on Earth”

Since the glorious days of “Drop Dead Gorgeous” [and “Kath & Kim”, Australian one] Ive been a huge fan of a good mockumentary. How many a good laugh I’ve had watching “The Office” [US one], ah the good old days, the cheerful rock tune layered on winterly Scranton and the dull office life makes it so comfortingly warm in its routine.

As our eldest was born, it was winter. I took a long parental “leave” under completely unrealistic, in hindsight, expectations that this would really look more like a vacation and not more like some sophisticated form of torture.

My days back then looked like that:

02:00AM fall finally in uneasy sleep
03:00-06:00 wake up a number of times as luck may have it – with a very heavy head
07:00 stumble out of bed, disoriented, nauseous, drink a cup of tea
08:00 bring the Child over to the childcare lady, remains of my energy spent to dress up and to walk 800m
08:30-12:00 binge The Office on my laptop in the kitchen, and drink tea, eat minced meat straight out of packaging
12:30 pick up the Child from the childcare
12:30-12:00AM endure a seemingly never-ending struggle with a tantrum-throwing toddler rarely interrupted by short periods of easily disturbed sleep
12:00AM-2AM The Office!!

This all improved after a year or so, and the tantrums are long gone – but my love for Dunder Mifflin Scranton team is there to stay forever!

Anyways, imagine my amazement and disbelief as I stumbled upon the in-the-good-sense weirdo lady in the “Cunk on Earth” on Netflix a couple of days ago.. Jesus Christ she IS good.. Pitch-perfect delivery. Funny wordplay.. “My mate Paul” OMG.

And of course this gem of mockumentary humor:

Getting up close indeed.. 😀

NB: Pump up the Jam ahahah
I was rolling on the floor first three times this thing appeared out of the blue, but then it kind of stopped being hysterically funny.
A very smart decision to keep it all to 5 episodes 😉

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Holy crap times a-flying

Okay… so sometime early 2021 I promised myself I will continue writing about my Iceland trip back in 2016. Well, its February 2023 and I am just about to continue where I left off back then!

What happened in the meantime..

  • Corona craze

    We kind of survived that mostly fine. I remember the second year the doc said there was some blood in my urine, so I went to the urologist. That happened to be a (fairly attractive) woman. As I complained about a my corona blues, she paused, looked at me and said “Its kind of common now” and dismissed me straight away. I asked for a testosterone test, though, which was according to her then just fine.

    We didn’t vaccinate and endured some minor social pressure. The older ladies at the swimming pool reception looked at me and sighed very disapprovingly as I showed them test results and not the (socially approved) vaccination passport. And obviously I still cannot enter US for that very reason. But well.. Writing from early 2023, all that vaccination efforts seem to be.. superfluous? Everyone I know, whether vaccinated or not, got corona and it was more or less pretty similar to what I’ve got as an non-vaccinated.

    Because about Christmas 2021 a friend come from US though and stayed with us for a few days. He brought a lot of good presents with him, but more importantly for todays blog post also the latest Corona strain. So due to that the New Year Eve 2022 and most of January were pretty bad. All four of us were positive and paid a visit to our doc the moment they opened. With a weird buzzing in my head, lack of energy and a peculiar feeling of emptiness I felt pretty shitty most of the month.

    2 weeks in quarantine closed up with my boys – was kind of tough. We tried to do something useful – ramped up English lessons, Paul started to play piano, our neighbors brought groceries so all in all it was manageable.

    Neither of us got the long covid. But drive for sport I regained – partly – only a good part of the year later.

  • War in Ukraine (on-going)

    I remembered complaining to the pretty urologist back then about the alleged impact of Corona on my delicate psyche – and on my testosterone; well, had I just known …
  • We are moving to the mountains and lakes (yay!)

    No point to wait if the world is rolling to its end, I thought some day.
  • …And WordPress updated to some really counter-intuitive thing

    wtf they did that