three cheers for fischer-fix-it-pads

heute mal wieder aus der beliebten Serie: Die Frau und das Gewürzregal - a success story! Weil auch wenn drei der Bohrlöcher ausgerissen sind - mit insgesamt 4 fischer-fix-it-pads ist das überhaupt kein problem! Und jetzt Gewürze in 2 Reihen!
Oh, und beim Friseur gewesen endlich ... falls euch also wo ein brav-mädchen-kopf-der-den-helm-nicht-abgenommen-hat entgegen kommt, das könnte ich sein! Lass mir nämlich ja mal wieder die Haare wachsen, vielleicht....

And: The status of 'gray' moved from 'noted presence' to 'visible minority'

South Asians everywhere!

Ok, on the outset lets once again state: I DON'T DO MUSIC .... so this is maybe really only surprising 'news' for me and no one else... and even the news part of the ethnic origin of a celebrity long dead is questionable... but I just found out that there is a distinctive South Asian component to Austrofred (mit dem ich ja die Volks- und Hauptschulbänke gedrückt habe ... unter großem Amüsement)! Farrokh Bulsara! I know, I am naive and uninformed, but this really is new to me and rather funny :) and I love the name Farrokh! And he loved Lata Mangeshkar - all the more reason to be thrilled in this current exercise of procrastination.

oh ... the deliciousness of 'p'

Just having a rather unusual dinner - as in total I realized that I completely changed my eating habits and cooking activities since living alone... have hardly ever any of the foods I used to regularly eat in Vienna - for no known reason except maybe a bit of cooking lazyness and a lot of new-found rice addiction. As for today's food - that at least would fit into familiar Vienna patterns of nerdiness because all foods start with 'p' (be assured: alphabetic eating can never be wrong!) Today it's pistachiorice and papaya - never had either before, but they ended up on my dinner table together and are here to stay - metaphorically speaking, as literally speaking they are already gone, save for a last few spoonfuls of rice ... oh and the pistachios were persian! extra personal import and another 'p'

shopping time

if you are not seriously given to alcoholism but the only thing your fridge sports in sufficient quantities is alcohol it is time for grocery shopping (and some bathroom supplies while at it). Just realized that even my staple supply - breakfast food - has come down to one and a half uninspired varieties (out of milk and fruit)...
But had great Iranian rice-lentil-meat dish for dinner yesterday - because (lucky for me) Javad's laptop refused his advances and would not let him log-in. And self-appointed busybody I claimed I could help ... I did (with rist's help) set up the wireless connection - although I think the mistake I first had was not the PPPoE because I found that preset anyway I think, but that I had not exited the set-up wizard yet and thus the system maybe had not yet saved the configurations... However, as for Javad's computer he had isolated the issue already, found a web-guide to help us, realized where I (only cursorily reading the guidelines) went wrong, corrected me and the only think I actually did was read dos-commands for him ... eat a lot of great food, lie around on their floor, chat away, feel very comfy and only reluctantly ran to get the last train back into town....
Of course, we got hardly any reading done and today is dentist day again... but maybe after having my tooth refilled with medicine and then enjoying the Turkish grocery store I might still maybe possibly head to the library?!?

a world that doesn't want me to change...

started my work-week (as yesterday was make-up-for-previous-slackness-day) with bravery and finally opened the e-mail subjected 'reminder' ... and here is what was in there:
"I hope you are all well and able to enjoy what I hope will soon be a nice and sunny spring. Not that we have seen much of it yet in Germany. Since we are currently having a term break here, we are eager to make progress on the publication of the conference proceedings. I would therefore like to ask you to submit your contributions to the volume by mid-April at the latest or, if you should have decided against sending us your article, to please let us know." Another month! yeah! or rather ... damn immediately my finally kicked-in stress level subsided again....
but the funniest part of it all was the list of recipients: not only were all three of the group I hang out with during the conference (looong and very tasty whiskey nights) on that list, but - not unexpected - my former boss as well... thus, at least the impending danger of being just like him should keep me on my toes...

...desperate measures...

desperate situations call for desperate measures ... which landed me in the library on sunday morning - though already 1 hour later than hoped for ... but as nothing got written yesterday and I still have not opened the 'reminder' e-mail received friday (oh yes - chicken! that's right!) and the next overdue deadlines are already swooshing by... maybe I should at some point try and get professional help ? not for the writing! for the life-running :)

on myself as an academic life-form

two insights on my little academic strugglings
1. the academic world and life-form is probably by now the only one where I will ever be able to almost function ... because nowhere else is the idea of a deadline rather perceived as a vague temporal guideline than a rule to be obeyed or even an inclusion/exclusion factor. (i.e. the answer I got this morning after announcing another due-paper's-late-by-at-least-3-weeks-arrival for mid-march: "That's fine. No Problem, Asha." Although, the same day also saw the arrival of a yet unopened e-mail with the subject 'Reminder' ... but then again, I had promised that paper for mid-January and am thoroughly ashamed of myself AGAIN
2. Just realized one reason why I am so totally stuck in this essay (for which the kind reminder is intended) ... because a lot of readings and discussions over the last weeks also lead to a total re-evaluation of my phd-project and the theory I could base it on - all of which is only in the very beginning stages of being researched by me (i.e. most things I just heard about but have not yet read myself) - thus the paper I gave at that conference in July is really no longer what I want to submit ... but in rewriting and restructuring I catch myself in trying to get my whole (yet undeveloped) argument into 15 pages and still analyse 2 books of short stories and try to make sense at least to myself. But, realization is not always the first step to solve a problem .... because what I want to say about these short stories is exactly based on these changed premises of my PhD project ...
and finally the usual update on procrastination activities: as I am back on facebook, my procrastinating life (and as I am still new to my new playtool) has become almost hectic with commenting, checking, wall-writing, ... thus too little blogging recently but hope that gets better again, because facebook really is to public to put myself out there!

another reason to like canadian's approaches to

in this case the arts and politics:
Yann Martel getting the Prime Minister to be still and read or so it can only be hoped, but like the idea

and then again - am I really cut out for this...

While the appeal of literary language is undiminished, my continued struggle with academic writing at some points makes me wonder.... points like encountering sentences like: "There is no real alternative between Spinoza and Hegel" - and my trouble does not root in disagreeing or agreeing with the statement but with my lack of knowledge to do either or even form a third opinion beyond the grammatical of whether one could really talk of an 'alternative between' ... would alternative not per se imply the notion of 'beyond' .... (so yes, at least Luita's class on writing shows impact)

'Even Things That Are True Can Be Proved' Even They?

This line from Agha Shahid Ali's poem "By Exiles" from his terrific collection of Ghazals "Call Me Ishmael Tonight" - any questions why I had to buy that one? - served as the title of a conference presentation last summer and I love it ... still... and too much... because now that I finally and seriously sat down to write that essay (slightly overdue since November...) I would so like to keep the title but it throws me into constant conundrum of how to argue it - especially as I combine it with other lines of the poem ... and, as if this would not eat enough of my time and hirnschmalz I find the whole paper given then just unorganized, horrible and unusable for the essay I should construct from it ... and yes, it is one of those papers I wrote on the train and the night before presentation, and no, I am not really surprised....
But apart from a few useable paragraphs I might be better of writing just a plain new essay with ideas collected since then... oh and of course the few books I would need to check sources and quotes are all out until the end of the month ... and I have decided that I would write this essay this week, definitely! (and I mean that in the real and not the ed-ed sense of the word).
My Monday motivation is wearing thin ...