Survival In the City Of Geeks

Well now here I am...

I haven't written here anything for...a long time in the interwebz world, that's because I'm in the Big City now, also known as Tartu or Tarbatu/Dorpat if you're really nerdy. I'm studying to become a quite nerdy person - a pharmacist(from there the picture in the beginning, little professional humor). Anyways life here isn't funfunfun but it is interesting. Lets start with a little list:

• When I first arrived to Tartu I realized that this is not Kansas anymore, Toto. When I stepped out of bus with my 200kg of bags and started to cross the road I saw couple of punk-rockers coming to my way. Well never having seen a punk-rocker in my periphery-neighbourhood I panicked and started to think where to run and where to hide. I knew I could take out the taller one when using one of my bags as a battering-ram but other would be much more difficult. Also my knife was packed among the things. They did not attack me but from the first instance I've understood that this is considerably different life than one before.
  
  


• Food! Sometime ago I wrote here a little post where I criticized the quality of food that I served to us as well...as food that it clearly is not. Now I'm eating this since I have a considerably low budget and lot of what I eat is shit. Not really, but close enough. First days were hard. I didn't have much to eat and almost no dishes. I strutted along the streets of Tartu and thought about...food...in shops I realized a critical concept about good and evil. That being that shoplifting would be bad only when I thought it was bad or got caught by some one who thought that it is bad. Not a big suprise or a person with an immoral view towards life like me but disturbingly appealing considering my situation. One point I saw a half-eaten McDonalds hamburger on the bus-stop bench. The thoughts that went through my head...let's say it wasn't the brightest moment in my life. Now I'm eating normally food is good, not high-quality or high quantity but keeps me going.
  
  


• Strange thing that I have noticed here is that it doesn't matter how shitty situation you are in, there is somebody who is envious towards you. Seriously. I live in a crappy dorm room that reminds me soviet era so much I've taken up studying russian and maybe the soviet anthem and there are people who would trade places with me. And I don't mean homeless people or those who have even shittier place but people who live in warm, spacious apartments with lots of luxury....And there are other examples. Only thing that nobody has desired from me...at least yet...is my lack of social life...
  
  


• My apartment. Or dorm room. How ever you might call it. It is, as mentioned a crappy two roomed apartment, that had it's last repairs some days before the death of Khrushchev/Hruštšov. First thing that happened here to me was that when I started to put my clothes to the cupboard I´it fell apart....twice... As I'm coming from reasonably shaggy home my first reaction was: "Oh my fucking devil/god/whothefuckever. I've come from one shithole to another....!" But I'm used to it by now...
  My roommate must be the most introverted person in the planet. During this month and a half I've lived with in in the same room we have spoken 3-5 sentences. I'm not quite sure what is his name for example. He's quite strange but at least is quiet...
  ...which cannot be said about other people in this building who think that the best time to put their speakers to the max is 2.00 or so...but I don't mind...well except my neighbours in this box. I don't mind that they are doing what they are doing considerably loud. I mind that what they are doing is having sex. Occasionally...with their girlfriends. Luckily quite rarely. There are few things that annoy me more than listening other people having more fun than me. Especially 6.00 in the morning after I've had a catastrophic night. I wouldn't talk about it but it seems they didn't take much effort to be silent about it so I believe it's morally only little wrong.
  
  


• Anyways some other topic...if you are from the part of Estonia where I'm from and you hate it because it's small, provincial and decadent then fine but you are underrating it way too much. I like Tartu and stuff but it's tremendously big...at least it was when I arrived to this place. Around where I live, things are much more comfortable and closer. In Tartu I have almost destroyed my tendons. Only place that is worse than Tartu is Tallinn where walking from one part of city to another seems to be 2 day camping trip.
  


• Even though I like home I can't go there much. I really should go there at all. Why? Life there is way better than what I have in Tartu. Think: plentiful of warm food, TV, computer that won't shut down in every 10-30 minutes.... What is the motive for me to come back in this big place and in my depressive existence here?
  
  


• Dogs around here are much friendlier around here though. Around here people but on their gates signs that say:"Warning, dog is out." How nice. There is a dog and they have let it outside. Good for them. In my old neighbourhood people put out signs a'la:"Our dog was trained in special forces to rip out your windpipe if you cross one step in to our territory, motherfucker."
  
  


• About my studies...they are tough, but no the toughest. Doctors have harder time. Nothing hard. I just have to put my head into it. I have only very small regrets very rarely because I didn't get to become a doctor. Our training is much more relax while paychecks in the future will be somewhat equal...at least they are now. Maybe slightly smaller.
  
  


• One of my lectures looks like a historical figure...more exactly, like Adolf Hitler. In the first class I laughed half an hour. There are rumours that passing his subject is like for a jew to pass Holocaust in Poland...not even as joke but quite statistical. Others are cool.
  
  


• My social life, non-existant though, has had a little boost as I've started going in parties almost in every week....calm down...I do it only when I have nothing to study, I still avoid alcohol and it's not an urge to go some orgy...it just happens. It seems to be a part of life in university.
  
  


• If I told you how a prepared human body looks like, some would not look cooked chicken in the same way.
  
  


• I've seen things that are fascinating and amazing...
  

....but due to my Alzheimer's I can't recall so much of it...but I have heard and discovered stories that I can recall. Some I might tell you... Some of them I can't tell you for they are not mine to share. Some I won't tell you for their sheer intimacy and lack of general meaning for anybody outside my head. And some haven't come to their end like all must come...not just yet.

Then we'll see.

I'll see you some day. But for so long stay alive, stay healthy, stay gay.