Category: Stuff that doesn’t fit

Stuff that doesn’t fit in any category, or leftover posts from the big category revolution of 2009.

Meeting [en]

Cali and I just came nose-to-nose with the fox cub.

Opposite the entrance of my building, there is a big bush. Behind the big bush, there is storage building of some kind. Under the storage building, hidden by the big bush, is a hole.

Coming back from our (not so early) morning walk, just aroud the corner, I suddenly saw Cali just a metre away of a very defensive brown little thing. Something between a very small dog (for the way it bounced back towards the bush) and a young cat (for the size, the arched back and the hissing – actually, it was closer to clicking).

I sent Cali away and stayed to have a better look at the little creature. Well, I guess you’ve seen pictures of fox cubs – but in real they are even much cuter. Small beady eyes, a not-yet-bushy tail with a white tip, and the overall fluff which makes baby animals so irresistible.

After staring at me for a few minutes from under the bush, it retreated into the hole. And from the noise I heard then, I guess it was not alone in there. Was it just mummy fox, or siblings too?

Funny [en]

If you have a cat (even if you don’t), you’ll probably appreciate this Mapping of a Cat’s Brain. Bagha fits the portrait perfectly.

I first saw this brain map in India. There is a similar one for the dog – but unfortunately I was unable to find it online. Side-by-side, they’re hilarious, trust me!

Culture Shock and Virus [en]

When I started writing about my indian experience (it was a question of survival at the time) I jotted down a lot of notes about my culture shock. A compilation of all the little cultural differences that I noticed during my first weeks. Taken separately, these little things seem what they are – little. Together, they add up to create a big nasty shaking feeling: the so-called culture shock.

I was using Internet Cafés at that time (there were lots of them!), and at one point all my diskettes stopped working. That was after xoom.com had deleted the first version of my site, and Mythun‘s hard drive with all my backup data on it crashed.

Now that I’ve finally laid a hand on the culture shock notes I had managed to type up, my beloved anti-virus program started flashing and blinking and beeping (well no, it didn’t do that, since I don’t have a soundcard) – in short, telling me the file is infected. I cleaned it, and you can look forward to some more reading in a couple of days. Thank you, Inoculate PE!

Maybe that explains one or two things… hmm. Well, while you wait or run your anti-viruses, I’m going back to my greek philosophers.

India [en]

Oh, and if you enjoyed my logbook (well, even if you didn’t!), be sure to check out Eric Jain’s account of his travels there. He didn’t stay quite as long as I did, but he traveled much more – there are pictures and a map of his journey to keep you on track.

Groan [en]

Last night I installed IE6. I thought I was installing it alongside IE5.5 – I wanted both the browsers on my system. After reboot, I realized IE6 had been installed over IE5.5, so I uninstalled it.

Now, in Outlook Express, I get emails with blank senders (some of them, not all), and my mailing list sorting rules aren’t working anymore.

And of course my news server has been down for days so I can’t leave piles of messages on usenet to see if anybody else has the same problems…

Exciting [en]

Send 1000 journals out around the world. Let those who find one fill in a page or two, and pass it on. A website keeps track of where the journals have been sighted, offering scanned glimpses of their treasures if you are lucky.

It’s like a message in a bottle, only better.

[Picked up on MeFi.]

Class Dinner [en]

Yesterday evening, mexican dinner with my old class. It’s always astonishing to see how much people can change and nevertheless stay the same in ten years’ time.

All of a sudden, everybody has switched from student-life to working-life – well, almost everyone ; )

Two of us are still studying, and a third will join us next year.

Our class used to be exactly half-boys, half-girls. The boys would stick together and so would the girls. When the class was seated around a single table, there would be a dividing line between the sexes. Don’t ask me why.
Last night, we all mixed up; it was a pleasant change. I talked more with some of the boys of my class than I had ever done during the three years we saw each other every day.

Maybe the “boys” have grown up a bit in ten years. I, certainly, have.

Spring-Cleaning [en]

Spring-cleaning is a very satisfying activity. I haven’t quite finished moving in yet (understand: everything isn’t organized as I would like it, and there are still a couple of boxes to unpack) but my flat definately looks better. I mean, it’s presentable enough for me to receive.

And there’s nothing like a spring-cleaned flat to make me feel up to attacking my university work. Ricoeur, Changeux, Agrippa, Quine and Barnes and Ducrot, here I come!

Spring Luck [en]

For the second day in a row, the field at the end of my usual Cali-walk has given me a four-leaved clover.

Yesterday, I stooped down into a patch of clover. In less than a minute, I had found one. I had in mind that childhood summer afternoon when I had put into press a good score of these little green lucky charms. Today I looked into the clover again – and believe it or not, in no time a very pretty one had sprung up to meet me. Nice and regular, with heart-shaped leaves.

Now, don’t read too much into this. I’m really not superstitious. It’s just that it’s spring and sunny and that finding four-leaved clovers reminds me that I’m a lucky person. There aren’t that many of them around – at least compared to the lowly three-leaved ones.

In some way or other, things usually seem to turn out right for me. Never mind if it is only because of my confidence that they will, or because I make them so. Well, of course they don’t always. I’ve had my share of bad times too, and there are certainly more ahead. But it’s nice to feel focused on this aspect of my life – a pleasant change from a month or so back.