Questionnaire #2

This questionnaire is from Daniel's blog . Thank you for letting me copy it. :)



Hows your heart been lately?
It's dampened by the winter atmosphere around me. But by and large, I feel fine.

Why aren't you in bed?
Because it's 7 PM. :P

Did you do laundry today?
I never do laundry - mum does. :$

Are there always other fish in the sea?
I have no idea. :/

Do you have cable internet or dial up?
Cable.

What can you do with your tongue?
I can stick it out, curl it up and I still try to bring my Spanish "R" to perfection. :D

Did you ever see the movie Pearl Harbor?
Mum has it on DVD, so yes, I saw it a few times.

What size bed do you have?
It's 1.60 meters wide and 2 meters long. :)

Do you like Harold & Kumar?
I don't even know who they are. :P

Can you say all 50 states in alphabetical order?
The 50 states of the US? I'm not sure... It may take some time and I would need to make a list.

Do you have atleast 2 windows in your bedroom?
Yes, I have one big window and a smaller one. :)

Do you subscribe to any magazines?
Well, I subscribe to the German ZEIT paper, a quarterly history magazine and a quarterly students magazine. :)

Last time you babysat?
I never babysat before. :P

Do you ever buy the same shirt in different colours?
Yes, I like a varicolored closet. :)

Do you plan your outfits out the day before?
Yepp, I select clothes for the next day before I go to bed.

Favourite Pro Sports team?
What is "Pro" sports? I am not interested in sports, sorry. :P

How many hours of sleep did you get last night?
About eight hours, but usually I only get about 7 hours during the week. :/

Last time you rode a bicycle?
Yesterday evening when I cycled to the baker to get some bread rolls.

What do you have planned for today?
Since the day is almost over, I'm going to watch a movie later in the evening and read a book. :)

What did you argue about last?
Whether my mum's should pick me up at the gym on Thursday or not. I lost. :(

How long does it take to get to work?
It takes almost two hours every day to get to school (back and forth). It's time-wasting, isn't it? :/

What is the last thing you bought?
A new bicycle! :D

How many piercings do you have?
None, and I don't like piercings at all !

Can you touch your toes?
Uhm... yes!? I am 17, not 70. :P

What's your star sign?
Cancer.

Last place you went out to dinner at?
A Greek restaurant in the city with my dad and his wife.

Ever made out on a rooftop?
Hahaha. No. :/

What was the highlight of your week?
The week just started and there was no highlight yet... but last week I got a new bicycle, which I am very glad about. :)

Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?
...and who is she? :P

Do you like the Jonas Brothers?
Until now, the hype did not yet spill over from the US to Germany.
Besides, I don't think much of that kind of stars. ;)

What kind of phone do you have?
A Nokia 9300i (it's a communicator celly). But to be honest, I don't need a state-of-the-art phone like that. Got it from my dad when he got a new one from work.

Are your nails painted?
Nope.

Favourite person to be with?
In real life, my dad and my mum. :)
In my virtual life... I won't tell. But the appropriate person knows that it's him. :)

How many friends do you have on Facebook?
I dislike "social networks" and consider them to be antisocial.

Ever been on a blind date?
Gosh, no.

Who is the last person you kissed?
My mum, some months ago.

Do you believe in God?
I'm trying to figure that out.

One place you will NEVER eat at?
In a library.

Would you date anyone you met online?
Yes, there are some people I would love to meet in real life. :)

Do you download music?
Only legally and only to a certain degree (for example when I like just one song of a group). But if I really like a music group, I buy their music (IN A REAL MUSIC STORE, NOT ON THE INTERNET).

Opinion of Chinese symbol tattoos?
I don't know anything about those symbols and wouldn't want any tattoos on my skin anyway (body modification never made anybody more attractive to me).

Are coloured contact lenses sexy?
:O What!? I never saw coloured contact lenses before!
But... again, I don't like modifications of one's true looks, so I wouldn't wear them. But I guess some may find it sexy if it suits to the person who wears them. :)

Have you ever been white-water rafting?
Well, the river on which we were rafting (when I was 7) was not really wild - it was a tributary of the Rhine. But still, it was very exciting for a boy my age. :)

How many pets do you have?
I have four cats (together with my mum and bro) of which two are only inside the house and two only in the garden. Mum refuses to let them inside because they already loitered here when we moved in. :/

How is the weather right now?
I can't really tell because it's already dark and the blinds in my room are already down. But I think it's still about 0°C and sunny. Oh, and we almost have a full moon. :)

What was the last movie you watched?
It was "The Interpreter", which I really liked.

Where was the last place you went besides your house?
I was in the city this morning (school) and this afternoon to order some books and look for a new wallet.

What do you usually order from Starbucks?
I've never been in a Starbucks café before, so I don't know what's on the Starbucks menu. ;)

Have you ever fired a gun?
I have an airsoft gun - does that count too? :P

Last wedding you attended?
My godfather's wedding - it was in year 2004 or so.

Has anyone ever said you looked like a celeb? / What celeb do you look like?
When me and my class went to the Krabat movie in the cinema, I was told a few times that the protagonist (David Kross) would look like me.

Have you ever been caught doing something you weren't suppose to?
I'm sure there were moments like that, but I can't remember any, right now.

Ever been in a cop car?
No, lol.

Do you like Michael Jackson?
No, I don't like Michael Jackson at all and I especially don't like the MJ-hype that came up again, after his death.


I like questionnaires. :)

Later,
Lunario

Family values

Probably there are not many boys my age who think so, but I would really like to have children, one day.
Of course that would be difficult because of my sexuality, and I'm not sure whether adoption would be a satisfying alternative (both for me and the kid). I have my doubts about that.

Before I write anything more about this issue, I should also make clear that I consider our society's attitude towards family and tradition to be disreputable.
Nowadays, most families are either split up or solely consist of a husband and a woman (who are both working most of the day). Children grow up with nobody at home with whom they could play in the garden or do their homework. Even worse, they are put into day-care centers so that parents don't need to care about their kids well-being anymore.

Why does the current system demand such an extreme adjustment of the people to their work? What about faineance? Time for oneself and friends?

Shouldn't we work in order to live our life and not the other way around?

It's not like I'm a completely conservative person; In terms of welfare and market economy, I have a more socialist point-of-view. However, as far as education, family and social values in general are concerned, I am conservative.

I could never be alone for the rest of my life. I know, it will be hard to find a partner and all. But even if I won't find one, I would probably spend a lot of my leisure time for social work or something like that.

However, my dream is it to live together with a man and educate children. As I said before, I'm not sure about adoptions when it comes to homosexual couples.
At the current situation, it would certainly be a burden for a child to grow up with two gays as fathers in a society that doesn't tolerate homosexuality as much as it should, in my opinion. Also, the society probably won't change its stance on homosexuality in the next years.

The other possibility would be to become a teacher. As I already discussed in an earlier post, I would love to become a teacher. It interests me to learn about the possible subjects themselves (languages and social studies) and I am into teaching, too.
The only problem is my shyness and incapabality to think clear in front of a group. :|
I should definitely work on it so that I could at least take something else than studying law into consideration (even though law would be fine, too).


---

So much for the personal part... some random stuff about the last days:
I spent Saturday and Sunday distributing the city mag. Because of the winter weather I always need to look out for slippery grounds. :/ It rains every day and people here are crazy about those red bricks which they use on their driveways. They are even more slippery when they're wet, so I am really hampered by them. In turn, I need more time for the work, so I feel even colder. :x It's a vicious circle. :P By the way, I use mum's bicycle when I distribute the city mag because it has a carrier and a basket and a pannier. :)

--

Today I took the last test for this term! :D
It was an Ethics test about the necessity of religion in these days, and the author of the text that we had to analyze and comment on considered god to be the only absolute value in this world. In the "comment" part of the test, I basically disagreed with him and explained my opinion on it (which would be far too complicated to put it down here. Maybe I'll do that sometime else.).
Anyway - now there are only three weeks left till Christmas holidays and the first winter month is also over! :D
I know, November factually is still part of autumn, but to me there is only winter (starting in October) and summer (starting in April). :P

Hmm... I have nothing else to post right now.
Tomorrow I'm going to fill in a little questionnaire that I found on another blog. :)


Bye for now,
Lunario



PS: Just found out that the first two lessons are cancelled. :D At least I now have a justification to be up so late. :P

Je me noyais

Hello :)

It's been almost a week since I made my last blog post. Nothing worth blogging about happened. :/
I only had a few lessons of school, this week. Obviously a lot of teachers are sick (Swine flu? :P). On Tuesday I didn't have school at all. The first two lessons - German class - still took place, but I didn't go. Cheeky, I know. :P

But hey, I really think it would have not been very senseful if I would have attended to them. If I had done so, that would have meant getting up at 6 AM and spending 1.5 hours on the bus. Just for 90 minutes class - German class!
First off, I don't like German class. It's really boring to analyse German literature all the time. Reading it is ok. But not analyzing! :(
Also, I would have been tired all day for getting up so early.
So the cost-value ratio was on my side. :P

Hmm, what else... My school got a new library and some other new rooms. :)
The library is much bigger than the old one and is connected (without any doors inbetween) to a computer room that is free to use for each student. As yet, you could barely use the school computers for the web because of website filters (you couldn't even access Wikipedia, lol.).
This has changed now, which is good - after all, I think the school is the only place where it can be monitored (by teachers) if somebody visits illegal / porn websites. ;)

As for the new library + media room, I also noticed that only very few students really use the library and it's working places. I am one of the few who do, the rest is usually not older than 13.
How come nobody in my age is interested in books and well-groomed (school) work anymore? The computer room is always full of students, usually chatting, playing video games or just talking to each other...

I hate using the web for homework or research at school because it's so banal and bromidic: You search the web for any kind of information with Google, then you usually copy extracts from a Wikipedia article or any other article (no matter who the author is).

How are we supposed to know how to write a dissertation at uni if we never learned at school how to do proper research?



By the way, I'm currently reading a book discussing the nowadays' delusion about new techniques and its consequences on our self-reliance and thinking.
For those who have a good command of German, it's called "Payback" and is written by the German FAZ publisher Frank Schirrmacher. I encourage you to read it.
It basically corroborates what is also my attitude towards computers and tv, by now: So many people, especially young ones, are depending on it. And by "depending" I do not just mean that they need it for school work or watching a movie - they are addicted to it.

I have experienced that kind of addiction some years ago - it was like a shelter to me, which brought a kind of hold-up in my real life - I retreated from it because I considered my virtual world to be so much better and full of advantages.

Sometime in my life, I could escape from it. I don't even know how it happened, but with the benefit of hindsight, I am happy that I could abandon my urge to turn on the computer in every free minute.
After overcoming it, I also found time for real life activities and enlivened my interests again - reading, nature and even learning. Yepp, learning - I luckily developed interest for certain things like languages, photography, gardening and so on. But I wonder what is supposed to happen to those who do not develop other interests apart from the computer?
I'm quite sure that it will be too late to change one's bad habits at some stage in one's life. Bad habits are hard to change either way, but it gets even harder when you have accepted them for many years.

I just used the word "accept" and it reminds me of something: It's hard for me to accept that it's not my duty to advise those who are like that.
Even a former friendship of mine went into pieces because of that topic.


Probably I don't have many advocates of my attitude among my readers. New technologies, the internet above all, has helped gay people a lot, especially closeted gays.
I absolutely agree on that and I also don't condemn the internet, computers, tv and other type of media lumped together. That would be a generalization.
However, when it comes to an excessive use of those technologies, they are definitely not conducive for one's character and for one's life.





:/ I didn't intend to write so much about that topic. But that's what blogging is all about, huh? :P Letting your mind wander. :)
As far as that is concerned, I took to write some short stories and poems, lately. They are certainly not on the same level like those that I saw on other blogs. But hey, I'm just breaking new ground. :D


---


Yesterday, I was at the hairdresser. Everytime I was there, I wanted to ask her what my hair color is because that's really difficult to say.
This time I brought up the courage to ask her (but I felt really silly asking that :P). She showed me some tufts with different blonde hair types and we came to the conclusion that the covered hair and the hair on the back of my head is honey blonde. The rest is normal/dirty blonde, but much brighter during summer time.

Weird, huh? :P


Finally, here are some pictures of the past days. :)


1. My cat sitting on the backrest of mum's old sofa. :P






2. I'm not sure if she just yawned or if she wanted to scare me. :P






3. My other cute cat, sleeping on a chair. :D





4. He didn't want me to take any more pictures, sorry. :P





5. This picture I took yesterday evening on my way to the hairdresser. :)




Bye for now,
Lunario

Purchase | Advantages of being gay

Hello guys :)
So yesterday I was at the doctor and got vaccinated against the swine flu. It wasn't as bad as the media and most people put it, lol. The injection itself didn't hurt at all - I barely noticed it, and I also didn't have any side effects afterwards. Merely my left upper arm hurts a little, but I think that's obligatory when you get an injection. :)

---

I just bought a new bicycle. :P

Yesterday I was at my dad's the whole afternoon and evening.
(I ate a coconut there and found out that they taste GREAT! It happens rarely that I really like something. I'm a very picky eater, but coconuts are great! :) )

We went to a small bicycle retail nearby. My dad knows the owner well because he often bought things for his motorbike there. So they talked for a while and I looked for bicycles. There was one that was really really nice and of very good quality (a Gazelle touring bicycle from the Netherlands).

Unfortunately the price was far too high for what I aimed at spending. I said to my dad and the retailer that that bicycles would be perfect, but not within the financial limits. Then the retailer told us he would sell it cheaper because he wants to get rid of the 2009 models. :D So he made it only 70% of the original price, which was still a little more than what I aimed at, but absolutely worth the money.
I also made a test run with it and loved the handling.
Dad said that I would have to ask my mum whether she agrees on it. So I asked my mum in the evening and she said she would think about it. This morning then, she told me that I can buy it if I don't spend any more money before Christmas. :D

I called the retailer right away and bespoke the bicycle. On Monday we're going to pick it up. :D


I actually didn't plan to buy a bicycle that early ('cause I can't use it often in winter anyway), but that one was just too good to miss the chance. :D


---


As for something completely different: lately I've been asking myself a few times whether there are any advantages of being gay.
What do you think?
I believe that at least a few aspects also have a good side.

For example the pressure that we grow up with.
We learn how to cope with (peer) pressure and "being different" in a way. This at least gives you self-confidence and a "hard shell", as we say it here. As long as we stay like we are , at heart, that's surely advantageous.


Another aspect that came to my mind was rival-thinking and courting.
I can tell from my own social environment that males (especially at school) are often focused on courting girls. It's so annoying when you talk to a classmate and he doesn't even listen to you because he courts a girl. >.<
And apart from that peeve, I think we are also more trustworthy for females than straight males.


Also, I asked myself whether many of us (surely not all, though) appreciate true friendships more than straight people.
Maybe we are somehow sensibilized when it comes to socialising because we know that it's hard to find friends for us as well. So maybe we are also more responsive towards others and appreciate them more.
But maybe I'm at fault here. It's just a thought.

Storm

Yesterday was an exciting day. :)
First, me and a girl friend planned to cycle to school. We wanted to do something weird and funny - Cycling 25 km back and forth in winter when it's 0 degree Celsius and is weird enough, I'd say. :P
However, when I got up yesterday morning (15 minutes earlier than usually!) I already heard gusts of wind outside...
The weather forecast also said that a winter gale is going to blow over this region the whole day. So we decided that we're going to postpone our cycle tour by another day - Cycling with wind speeds of 100 km/h is quite arduous and also dangerous. :(

After school, I was walking over the city rampart (which is full of trees) towards the bus station, when I saw a big tree falling on the ground with a horrible noise! There were also big and heavy branches falling from other trees. Luckily it was only some hundred meters that I needed to walk through the rampart. I survived. :P


In Spanish class, I accidentally and in a funny way insulted my Spanish teacher. ^^
She asked (in Spanish) what eclecticism is because we talked about it the lesson before. So I said it's a type of architecture, "pero no sabes mucho de eso tema" (= "but you don't know much about that").
I originally wanted to say "pero no sé mucho de eso tema", which means that I don't know much about it, but somehow I mixed up the words. I guess I should learn irregular verbs more often. :P
Anyway, she had a sense of humor about it. :)

---

Tomorrow I eventually get vaccinated against the swine flu. :)
I'll go to the doctor right after I have finished the English test, so I'll miss some lessons... I put up with that. After all, it wasn't even definite till today whether the vaccine will be available tomorrow because there currently is a shortage.

Mum already takes preparations for the possible side effects of the vaccination, lol. She and my brother are not home tomorrow, so she wants me to stay at my dad's for some hours in the afternoon and see whether I stay fit or not.

All respect for her care, but I think she is totally manipulated by the bad coverage about the vaccine. And probably she's not the only one. The coverage is so confusing and there are always reports about people who supposedly have died because of the vaccine, but they do barely correct their statements afterwards (as yet, the deaths always turned out to be unrelated to the vaccine).


That's all I can think of, right now - I'll probably spend most of the weekend inside the house. If I have it my mum's way. :P


See you soon,
Lunario

Tricky Dream | Peeves about school

This night I had a funny dream. :D
I got an own car - an old BMW - and sped with it really fast. Later on I also got a motorbike with which I somehow ended up in a rut in the forest, lol.
I can't remember much else, but at some point I "woke up" and noticed that I had been dreaming, lol.
When I looked at my alarm it said 2 PM, so I thought I would have slept away half the day. I rushed to school and ran into my Ethics class. Also, it was very hot outside, like in summer.

Then I really woke up and it was 5.50 AM in the morning. :P First I thought it was still weekend, but then I told myself that my alarm wouldn't ring at 5.50 AM if it was a Saturday or Sunday morning. :P
The weird thing about last night is that I was absolutely not tired this morning, though I am always tired on Mondays. Normally I don't get much sleep on Sunday nights because I am so well-rested, but this night was somehow different...
Anyway, I was grateful for it because I much more prefer being well-rested on Mondays. It's my favourite school day because I have all my favourite subjects on that day: History, Politics, Spanish and Ethics. :)


--

You know what really annoys me? When people at school copy texts from me without asking.
This happens so often, especially when I'm sitting next to certain people who don't really work on themselves.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem at all with classmates who don't understand a question or task. But when that's the case, they should ask me (or somebody else) for help and not just copy it from my sheet of paper. It's even worse when they peek over from the side and pretend not to copy when I turn to the side. >.<

Also, I endorse seperate buses for every type of student.
In the US and in most other countries you all go to the same school, no matter what your education is. As I already mentioned before, here we are seperated into three types of school... However, we all still use the same bus to get to school.

It's suuuuch a nuisance when there are people vandalizing in the bus or offend you on the busstop. :( This happened to me today; When I was about to enter the bus, I stopped walking almost in front of it because I wanted to check on the readout in front of the bus whether it is the correct bus. Two girls walked behind me and one of them just continued to walk and jostled me while telling me to walk. How unfriendly is that? :/ Also, when somebody bumps into you in the city or anywhere else, they barely ever say sorry. And even if you say sorry yourself (though it wasn't your fault), he or she either makes an angry face or simply ignores you.

Why can't people just walk around you when they say you're in their way?
Are they all too stressed out or have no time to be a little more careful? Or do they just not care about other people?
When it comes to teenagers, like the two girls from the busstop, I really believe that they are looking for a way to present their "coolness" or "self-assuredness", so when there is an opportunity to do so, like accosting and jostling somebody who is in their way, they use it gladly in order to prove their dominance among those who are on the same level of thinking.


That's basically why I like the German school system more than those systems in which all students go to comprehensive schools (high schools, for example).

I am in one of the few age groups that still had to visit such a comprehensive school in class 5 and 6. Afterwards it was luckily abolished so that you now visit one of the three type of schools after class 4.
Those two years on a comprehensive school were a complete waste of time, and above all they did not subserve my education at all.
We were all mingled together in one class and the pace was geared to the worst students, so you often just sat there and were bored. Sometimes me and some friends didn't even have to show up for a few days, or were allowed to leave school earlier because the teachers didn't have any more mandalas for us to color in, lol. (that was one of the most common works your teacher gave you when you were done with the real tasks). If that's what teachers and politicians call individual education, I can renounce it.


Apart from the badly shaped lessons, there were always problems within the groups of students.
Those who couldn't keep up with the better ones often felt blue about it. I understand that, and that kind of a system is not fair for anybody.
But then they often vented their anger on me or my friends, for example they stole your bike, bedaubed your clothes or something like that. And of course, the teachers didn't care about that 'cause they were already too disaffected from those students.


I detested those years.

---


Hmm, I departed a little from what I was originally planning to blog about - something gay-related.
I think I'll do that in my next post. As far as the next days are concerned, I'm going to be busy studying for some tests, so I'll probably not be back before weekend. :/


Have a nice week! :)
Lunario

Martinmas | Tests

The first week of tests is over. :)

On Monday we took the Politics test, which was actually the one we already copied before (please read my second latest post to get more info about this :P). I feared our teacher might have played a trick on us and give us another test, but he didn't - good for us. :D

Yesterday then we took the History test. For those who don't remember: History, Politics and English are my main subjects, so the marks are very important for my final graduation (Abitur/Matura). The History test was a little weird - You didn't have to know anything about the subject matter (French Revolution) because we had to deal with two text sources. I always fluster myself because I fear that I didn't study enough, but this time it was obviously unnecessary. :)

All in all, I think I did quite well in both tests. As for History, I also made some efforts to impress my teacher with really long sentences and words. It's a quirk of mine to do that anyway and I always need to control myself about this. :P

As far as the Politics test is concerned, I will have at least 10 points (of 15). My teacher told me this today while we discussed the oral marks (where I got 12-13 points).


All in all, I'm planning to maintain my current mark level. After all, I have to maintain it in order to get a good Abitur and be able to go to law school. :)

By the way, I decided that if my plans about studying law don't work out, I'll study English, Spanish and Politics or History and then become a teacher. Teachers are sought-after in Germany (especially on the Gymnasium) and they can not be dismissed because they mostly have tenure (which also makes them earn good money).
Besides, I think teaching would be fun. I like the academic world and I also like teaching things to others. So learning more about pedagogy would be interesting as well. :)


---


We have a religious feast called Martinmas in Germany, on which it is a custom for children to go from house to house (like Martin Luther, the German church reformer), sing a song and then get candies from the people.
It is celebrated on the 10th of November every year.
On Tuesday evening, I was home alone, so my mum told me to give candies to the children if any come along. Since I live in a quite big settlement with many families, there were many children standing at the door when it got dark. As it is the custom, they all had a light with them, which looked cute. :)
After singing or reading a poem, they turned around so that I could tuck candies in their backpacks, which was even cuter. :D
This went on for about two hours and everytime I went back inside, I couldn't help but eating some of the candy bars, too. :P I guess when mum came home, she thought that I gave all candies o the children, but there weren't enough candies, but many of them were on me. :P After a while, the candies were all up, so I gave apples to the last children. :P (That is usually only done by old people or people with a big health awareness). But hey, at least they are sugary, too. :P

---

I noticed that I didn't post any new pics in the last weeks. That's mostly due to me not being outside as much as in summer, anymore.

Here is one pic of a falling November sun, taken in the backyard. You can also see the funny cow (or at least one of them) on the field. :P





And that's one of my cats, who sadly didn't want to cuddle in the bed with me. :/ Her eyes look sort of demonic because I used the flash light of the cam. :D


---

I don't have anything else to post right now... Next week I'm going to take three (!) more tests, which means I won't have much time for blogging. Sorry. :(

However, when the next week is over I am basically done with studying for the rest of the year, which means I'll spend more time in blogland and with my blogland friends. :)

Bye for now,
Lunario