sonjart#1: My New Portable Garden

Louise Morning has never been, despite her name, a morning person. How awful the necessity to crawl out of bed when the sun is still sound asleep! No cheerful alarm tone could change Louise's grumpy mood every morning the freedom of lying in is taken away from her. She tried everything. But on a rainy day in September, probably the 17th but I'm not quite sure, it was somehow different. Three strange and unusual happenings occured. #1: Louise felt a strong, piercing pain in her head. (I should  probably mention that Louise had never been ill her whole life - admirable, isn't it?) #2: The wooden board at the top of her bead was scratched all over. #3: Her pillow was nowhere to be found. Scary. Not sure if she might be still asleep, Louise slapped her own face. The hurt proved she was fully awake. Slowly and thoughtful, she entered the bathroom. At first, she looked inside the mirrow, two seconds later she screamed, four seconds later she blacked out. But to look on the bright side: Louise found her pillow. It was skewered by some branches coming out of her head. And, next to that, she found a good reason to stay at home that day.

Don't worry, Louise recovered her senses a few minutes later. Immediately afterwards she cried, laughed and acted like a deer, all at the same time. When she heard someone knocking on her door, she decided impulsively to stay quiet. Deep inside she knew she couldn't stay in her apartment forever, but she successfully ignored that at that moment. The knocking didn't stop. She knew it could only be Alice, her best friend since probably ever, with whom she had a kind of childish argument the night before.

"Louise, don't be stupid! Open that door, we have to get over that. We're grown up now, don't you remember?" Louise remembered. After many pointless fights they both agreed to grow up and stop acting like children. This didn't quite work out, so they both decided to restart their friendship everyday by forgetting whatever had happened the day before. Louise gave in.

"Alice sweetheart, it's just not about that. Something weird happened. I've changed.. Something is growing inside of me, you know? You can even see it from outside. Something huge, something complex and branchy.... ". Louise couldn't pull herself together anymore. She bursted into laughter.

"Louise, stop kidding me and open that door! I'm serious!", Alice answered angrily.

Louise did like she was told. She longed to see the expression of surprise on Alice's face. It was outstanding. Louise, clever as always, was prepared and took out her camera to make a picture of it - with this picture she won a prize a few years later, but that's not important now.

"What... How... You..... Whaaaaaaaat? Louise.. WHY ARE THERE BRANCHES COMING OUT OF YOUR HEAD?!?" was Alice's reaction. Both couldn't explain it and both couldn't calm down. It was only a few hours later, after trying desperately to find any reason, that Alice made a sound of exhaustion and surrender, followed by the suggestion to just let it be the way it was and go outside to drink some coffee. Louise first gave her a look of reluctance but then she realized the idea wasn't that bad. "Ok. Let's make this strange day even weirder."

It was like a movie scene. Walking through the streets, Louise caused chaos. Children bursted into tears, cars stopped on the streets and innocent citizen ran into street lamps. But suddenly Alice screamed enthuastically: "Louise! You produce fruits!" And she was right - her "horns" were decorated with little grapes. "Amazing", Louise thought, "I start to enjoy all of that."

And she really did enjoy it from that moment on. One week later, everything was back to normal. Louise and the people around her got used to her special feature and were delighted by the free grapes. In addition to that, birds settled down at the branches and felt very comfortable. Kind of a happy end.

"Alice, I realized something..", Louise mentioned one evening, "isn't it quite often the case that what might be a burden for you helps the people next to you? I mean, of course I love my portable garden but it can be highly exhausting sometimes. But now I see it in a different light - I can make other people happy with free grapes and I can even give birds a home!  How amazing is that! We often complain about things happening in our lifes we just don't understand or see a reason for because we're too blind to see the effect on others."

Alice nodded speechless, amazed by the insight of her friend. "Oh Alice. This would be a perfect ending for a story, wouldn't it?", Louise continued. Again, Alice nodded but felt exactly as strange as when she found out that the electron orbits the nucleus in the same way as the planets orbit our sun.

"Tell me something about your Art Project, pleeeease!" - "Ok, whatever."

While I'm trying to confrontate myself as much as possible with English to get prepared for the exam, I realize one thing: I can not force myself to love this language again.

But,of course there is a solution. One idea came into my mind: combining two things I love doing with English: Drawing and writing short stories. About one and a half years ago I even dreamt of becoming an author. I applied for the course "Sprachkünste" at the University of Art in Vienna, but I wasn't one of the lucky fifteen out of about 500(!) appliers. I'm actually glad about that - I don't like Vienna that much and, probably even more important, walking that path would have led me nowhere. ;)

I just somehow feel like I lost my creativity during the last year in Graz. Maybe the reason was the absence of time. I remember spending much time on drawing, writing English poems, analyzing song lyrics and so forth as a pupil of the HTL (during boring lessons - so maybe it's the lack of boredom :P )

So my plan for the future is to not let any exam or other pressure take away my passion of expressing myself through language in a playful way. I hardly doubt any professor would want me to lose this passion - ignoring it and letting it sleep was my own fault, of course. But it's time to wake it up again.

That's what I call my little "Art Project". I come up with short stories, poems or just crazy nonsense, draw a quick sketch that introduces the topic and publish both here at the blog. Many ideas in my head, nothing yet falling into place. I hope this will work :D

All in all a wonderful activity I look forward to do. The last few days I spent on reading a 700 pages book about American history (and believe me when I say I'm far from finishing it  :D ). Don't get me wrong, it is interesting. But.. time consuming :D

So, nothing more to say.

I wish you.. actually I don't exactly know what I could wish you cause I don't know what time it is when you read this. So it might be stupid to wish you a good night, even though I'm really tired and ready for bed. You know what - I wish you a wonderful moment, right now, and please, do me one favour: smile :)

Yours,

a girl in the middle of nowhere in Upper Austria.

Book Recommendation

I planned to do an "Intensive English Study Week" - unfortunately I got ill and slept A LOT! I still feel tired, dizzy and shivery but overall my health is better now. Or maybe it just seems so because, unlike yesterday, I managed to get out of my pyjama and put in my contact lenses. :D

 

As a positive result of lying around bored I finished one of the four English books I bought, called "The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared".

 

 

 

It's hard to give a short summary about this book, because it is NOTHING like you expect from the title. Allan Karlsson - Swede, centenarian and explosive expert - decides to leave everything (which is acutally not much) behind on his hundreth birthday. A story including murderes, thiefes and an elephant begins.

 

Next to that, Allan's past gets slowly revealed. Without taking much notice, Allan played an important role in almost any noticeable event of the 20th century. He, without any interest in politics and religions at all, saved the life of Franco and changed sides in the Spanish Civil War, met Harry Truman as well as Stalin, Churchill, Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il and Mao Tse-tun, who sponsored him 15 years of holiday in Bali because Allan had saved the life of his wife.

 

I don't want to give away too much because I think this book is a must-read. The story is hilarious and every person has its own detailed and special characteristics.. Throughout the whole book, Allan Karlsson often reminded me of Forrest Gump - kind of naive in talking and behaving, without any clue what's really going on but shaping history with his careless actions.

 

I can only recommend you to read it, but for me it's time now to rest a little bit to get well again :)

BYE!

 

 

 

 

 

Study Plan

I didn't pass English at the KGP, so it's about time now to think about how to improve my English until September. A friend of mine told me to write a study plan I must force myself to stick to, otherwise I might get lost somewhere. I can only agree with him, because "just starting to learn English" doesn't work out that well, as I experienced. The problem is, I don't feel like having a real goal to reach because there are no vocabulary lists I will be tested on and no special grammar parts I just could learn by heart. But I have many ideas how to improve my knowledge in all areas of language learning.

So, let's get started- here is my plan.

 

• Vocabulary.
  When it comes to writing and expressing myself verbally, I often search for the right words but I just can't find them. As a result, I use the same boring words over and over again. Getting to know a various range of words and synonyms will be a great benefit.
  - vocabulary.com: Finally an entertaining way to learn new words. The program even creates lists of words I failed at, so all I have to do is doing the so called "challange" to extend my treasury of words. In addition to that, I will create some lists of random words I come across while reading, writing and so on. Thanks to the Internet it's so easy to get my vocabulary collection organzied.
  - reading: This will not only extend my treasury of words but also give me a better feeling for English grammar. I plan to read "The Chronicles Of Narnia", which is something I always delayed doing because of so many other important and time-consuming things in my life (like studying ;) ).

• Grammar.
  To figure out my main mistakes I will go through all the stuff I wrote last year. I think the tenses are something I should revise carefully as I still struggle with them alot.
  - englishpage.com: Doing these exercises hopefully gives me a better understanding of the grammer rules.
  - Major No-Nos: Probably a good idea to go through this list again (and again and again..)
  - Innovations Books: Studying the grammar parts and doing the related exercises should be helpful. ;)

• Writing.Frankly, dear readers, writing is my weakest point. Even though I wonder if anyone might read this during the summer break and I'm not sure who I'm talking to if not just to myself, the sentence is still correct - my writing skills happened to be "under all pig" the last semester. :P Excuse me for drifting away. What are my plans to improve my writing skills? Well, I think that's obvious.
  - writing. Using this blog is the best way to keep focused because there is a chance somebody will actually read my outpourings. I hope this will help me to stay motivated and focused. I don't have time the whole summer but I intend to record my progress in all areas.

• Culture Stuff.I think I won't change the topics I've chosen, but I'm not sure yet. Over all, I want to inform myself about American History in general.
  - watching documentaries and relevant movies: Hehe, something I enjoy doing.
  - reading books: I don't know yet which books and where to find them, but I'll figure that out.

 

• Speaking.
  - finding someone I can talk English to.
  - trying to think only in English.
  - talking to myself in English. 

Well, it's a wonderful feeling to have a plan. Right now I'm really motivated to improve my English since it's something I'm doing more or less voluntarely at the moment. ;)

 

LET'S DO THIS! YEY!

 

Where have all the Honey Bees gone?

The dying of the honey bees is highly discussed at the moment, I think everyone has heard of it. I did some research about this occurence and guess what - I'll give you a short summary. ;)

 

 

Like we all know (hopefully), bees are essential to the pollination of flowers and trees. Thanks to the honey bee, we can enjoy apples, pears, nuts, onion, carrots, plumbs and even cotton. But all around the world bee keepers voice concerns about the vansishing of the bees. In some cases, bee keepers open their hives just to realize that up to 80% of the bees are dead.  While there were 4,5 million bees in the United States in 1945, there are now about 2 million. But why? What is going on?

 

A reason for thís mysterious "Colony Colapse Disorder (CCD)" could be parasites. Furthermore, bees often get transported  across the country what has also been considered as a possible reason, but one should know that this was going on for about 40 years now without affecting the bees and leading to such a "bee holocaust". Also the climate change was mentioned in one documentary I watched, but in my opinion this is a little bit far-fetched, but of course I'm no scientist.

 

According to biologist Marla Spivak, all this is happening because of changes in farming practices after World War II. Pesticides came into usage and as a result every batch of pollen a bee collects has at least six traces of pesticides in it, including neonicotinoids. While parasites die because of this pesticides, they affect the brains of the bees so they can not find their way back home. Scientists did some research and found 25 different pesticides in one bee. Nobody really knows what the combination of these toxins might cause.

 

As I was writing about GMO foods at my Food Magazine Article, this came not as a big suprise. Whenever I read something about genetic engineering, I imagine humanity as little children playing in the sand without realizing what they do.  We do not know the long term results of interfering with nature, but we just try it - just as little children.

 

The dying of the bees is one result I guess we'll soon experience firsthand. What can we do to avoid this? Planting as much flowers (without pesticides!) as possible in the garden, on the balcony, etc.. and maybe getting bee hives.

 

 

 

I wish you guys a flowery summer!

 

 

Culture Presentations

The presentations are done now and I think we're all relieved the project is completed. All in all I was really impressed about how much effort everyone put into researching and preparing for the presentation - great job all of you!!

A list of the presentations I watched:

USA:
- Southern Hospitality - The Southern Way of Life (Julia Rauch)
- Monty Roberts: An Extraordinary Communicator
- America as a nation of narcissm (Maria Dorner)
- Does Race Still Matter in the US? (Lisa Ziermann)
- Ellen DeGeneres - a modern woman and her influence on America (Johanna Schreilechner)
- Two Heroines of American Aiation: Amelia Earhart and Bessie Coleman (Orsolya Csizmár)
- Hurricane Preparedness (Claudia Schwaiger)
- Harlem, New York City (Louis Nguyen)
- Scientology: A Religion Made in America
- Racial Segregation as depicted in 2 Movies (Tiana Jerkovic)
- How the Columbian Exchange changed the world (Alexandra Haunold)
- The Amish country (Anita Mužek)
- TV shows depicting social issues (Christine Hartinger)

IRELAND:
- Witchcraft in Ireland (Sabrina Krassnig)
- Homophobic Bullying in Irish schools (Shirin Mahrouzadeh)

In all this stress and nervosity I acutally forgot to watch a third Irish presentation - I'm ashamed ;) But fortunately only the American ones will be tested at KGP, so I hope it's not that bad ;)


TOPICS I WANT TO BE TESTED ON AND WHY:

1. Southern Hospitality: The Southern Way of Life by Julia Rauch
I really enjoyed watching this presentation because I think Julia did a good job on giving a short overview about the pecularities of the South. It's something I want to figure out more about, that's why I chose this topic.

2. America as a Nation of Narcissm by Maria Dorner
Maria presented what everyone might feel in some way - American's self-image and national proud goes too far. I was really impressed by this presentation.

3. Religion made in America: Scientology by Harald Pasch
I heard a lot about Scientology but I hadn't known that much details, therefore I found this presentation greatly insightful, especially because I always wanted to find out more about it.

4. Racial Segregation as depicted in 2 Movies  by Tiana Jerkovic
I've already seen the movie "The Help" and even blogged about it, so this topic is kind of a must-have. I'm looking forward to watching the second movie "The Secret Life of Bees" since I was really moved by the short clip Tiana showed us on Thursday.

5. How the Columbian Exchange changed the world by Alexandra Haunold
It was fascinating to realize what foods wouldn't be popular in Europe without the Columbian Exchange. I felt like Alexandra could have talked about this topic for hours since it has a huge impact on world's history. She did a great job at giving a short summary and I really want to learn more about this topic, so this is the fifth presentation I chose for KPG.


To anyone of you who actually read this article - I wish you much motivation for studying and good luck for your final exam! :)

Why I love calligraphy.

Actually, I've always loved the act of writing. It doesn't really matter what I am writing, I just enjoy using different pens, feathery, papers and so on. But being a lefty led to some problems in the past - I always smeared up what I have written, therefore I nowadays hold my pens in a strange way to avoid this, but I've seen many left-handers doing this ;)

However, my passion about calligraphy and writing in general developed at the first year in HTL. Our teacher gave us pictures of different people with the task to design the letter "g" in a way that represents the facial features of the persons. I really loved doing that, but never had I imagined what this simple task might bring forth. I couldn't stop writing the letter "g" everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE. All the sheets we got at the different lessons and even the desk pad we had to use was full of letters. I must have been considered psychopathic by my classmates and teachers, but fortunately in a school for graphic design the pupils are expected to have their weird characteristics and peculiarities. :D 

As a result, whenever I'm sitting around bored and pen and paper are within reach, I start to scribble - not just letters, of course. But whenever I'm chatting with somebody on the phone, i unconsciously start to write some words used in the conversation in a calligraphic way. One big advantage of that - after the phone call I know exactly what we were talking about. ;)

Writing words in different ways helps me to calm down. I just need to let my creativity out now and then, especially since I'm studying something completely different, namely languages. I can not really explain why it makes me happy, it just does. At some point I even dreamt of opening a calligraphy studio, but soon I realized it's impossible to earn your daily bread that way. That's art - wonderful to create, wonderful to look at but at some point useless ;)

I planned to write a few lines about the history of the alphabet and calligraphy, but I even got bored myself so I think I'll release you from that. Instead I'll show you some wonderful artworks and handwriting:

Have a nice weekend, see you :)