The Annual Czech 'Maintenance Vocab' Lesson

So here we are, another year, another maintenance guy visit.  Another opportunity for me to put my foot in it and accidentally use the 'Ty' form of the verb instead of the polite 'you', 'Vy' form with a complete stranger.  Way to go, me!  Nice one.  Without enough practise of talking to people I don't know who are older than me and require a certain polite demeanour as a result, it's bound to slip in there once, no matter how hard I try!  Damn.  And I was doing so well on the other stuff.

Lesson one:  Kitchen vocab: 

Tap (or 'faucet' to my non-existent American readers) = kohout*  

Sink = dřez

Lightbulb = žárovka

Cooker = sporák

Screw = šroubek

Greasy = mastný

Firmly = pevně 

Torch (or again, 'flashlight' in American English)= baterka

Glue = lepidlo

(*This unfortunately also means 'cockerel'.  How odd.  But in-keeping with the kind of language these sorts of things sound like, according to an old 'Bit of Fry and Laurie' sketch)

All of these words formed part and parcel of the delightful conversation that I had with the lovely maintenance guy.  Who of course, had to go out to his van in between to get a part he didn't have on him, but I was quite impressed he didn't do the 'worried intake of air through his teeth', nor go on to tell me about not having the part, having to order the part, how long it would take and how much it would cost me.  I'm amazed.  I thought that tactic was universal.

So all, in all, a good Czech lesson was had for free and now my flat has things that work in it.  Which is both a revelation and a delight.

The Inside Outsider

It occurred to me as I walked back home from Václavské námĕstí last night that I am now an expert at spotting foreigners in Prague.  I am an 'inside outsider' now.  Not inside enough to belong here, but not an outsider enough to be clueless about what living here entails.  I can now usually tell which couples are here on a city break weekend.  They are the ones determined to dress up and find a nice restaurant to go to in the centre or the Old Town Square.  I saw one such couple last night, the woman dressed in a bright red layered skirt, optimistically looking all set for a night of either a romantic meal or for flamenco dancing, it could have been either I suppose.  

I imagine they'll be disappointed.  Prague has an uncanny ability to disappoint anyone who comes here with a romanticised view of the city due to its stunning architecture.  It's not lived up to by its inhabitants.  They know they've got some amazing buildings to show off, but there seems to be no corresponding desire to enhance that by providing excellent customer service and fine red wines to at least attempt to fulfil a romantic fantasy.  It's only other foreigners who cash in on that gap in the market and provide better service and import better food and drink to compensate who will offer an opportunity to live a fantasy for a weekend.

If you want the real Prague experience, you have to accept not having much choice, being dealt with matter-of-factly, not appreciatively, and settling for a down-to-earthness in place of a succession of attempts to please.  The only way to make Prague work in that romantic way is to go for walks by the river or pay for a table at a really overpriced restaurant with an enviable view and try to ignore the waiting staff's lack of smile or kind tone of voice.  

Prague is like a perpetual working class family who've stopped hoping for things to improve and have settled for a cup of tea and fish 'n' chips as fine dining.  The only way the middle class or the very wealthy manage here is by being able to leave on a regular basis and do their shopping and dining largely elsewhere.  You can have a nice life that way.  Lower rents, lower prices for basic meals, but an opportunity to get to another country quite easily as long as you have a car.  But if you're poor, you don't earn foreign money, then you're stuck because airfare and good quality food and wine are at international prices (or not available here so you have to travel to get them) and you cannot earn enough to reach international prices for things on a Czech salary.  The only answer is to earn money abroad at the same time.  Otherwise you are doomed.

And so it followed that I was thrilled by something small yesterday, that no-one in London would get excited about.  But there in the small branch of Tesco, on the shelf with the cabbages and leeks, was a clear plastic box of fresh basil.  Not once, in all the time I've been here, have I ever seen any fresh herbs in the small Tesco.  I'm always having to travel right across town to go to a big enough supermarket to get exotic things like basil and then there it was on my doorstep yesterday.  I was shocked and amazed. 

It meant I could add it to my comfort food meal of pasta and tomato, mushroom, carrot and bean topping, which I grated some cheese on and finished off with some basil leaves on top for my best efforts at good presentation, as well as yummy food:

(Yes, I know it's rather a big portion.  I was tired and cold and miserable.)

Me and camera three

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."  Steve Jobs

It's so sad that I only got to read this today because Steve Jobs died.  Why hadn't I read this quotation before?  I am reassured by the fact that someone so successful thought the same as me about work.  I can't come anywhere near his level of success, but maybe I can at least try to match his dedication.

I'm certainly putting in the hours.  Today was supposed to be mostly a day off, but it's not possible when I've got such a full-on day to prepare for tomorrow.  I spent all afternoon, and I mean all afternoon just doing the necessary admin and prep work!  To nesnáším!

At least I managed to post a couple of old songs and videos to the ReverbNation website and had a little reminder of the day I spent in front of old BBC cameras that moved forward and back around me like dancing daleks (with red 'recording' lights instead of plungers).  I remember camera three was the 'close up' camera.  It danced towards me from time to time and then its light came on...  What a strange relationship.  'Me and camera three.'  It even rhymes.

Postal failures and other dramas

"Little things break, circuitry burns, time flies while my little world turns, every day comes, every day goes, a hundred years and nobody shows..."   Happy Rhodes '100 Years'

Another night of strange dreams linked back to places from my childhood and very little sleep left me feeling really tired this morning.  Then I discovered that the meet-ee I was expecting hadn't confirmed and thus wasn't coming, so I needn't have got up quite so early.  I was also stupidly hoping beyond hope for something to arrive in the post from the following list:

1) An emergency tea (and possibly also coffee) parcel.  (Lapsang Souchong tea, I need you now!)

2) A surprise parcel, with surprise things in it, one of two in fact, sent from family

3) A month overdue edition of a monthly magazine

None of which appeared.

The Czech postal system's apparent competition with the UK to win the top prize for Europe's worst postal service is now within reach... 

In other 'news', if complaining at the Czech postal system and then moving on to 'emails I have received' could be deemed 'news', a former drama teacher sent an email to say that she'd left London and moved to LA.  From all the things (very few, actually) I knew about her and from reading her new blog, which can be found HERE , I read between the lines and put two and two together and sensed that she may well have gone through something not entirely dissimilar to what I went through over a year ago.  I could be wrong, and like many moments in acting classes when I was convinced that something I'd performed had come over as wholly inauthentic, but others hadn't 'registered' that at all, I could merely be putting my own biased and entirely unfounded spin on it that isn't true and isn't perceived by others.  Nonetheless, the pain and loss that I read between those lines (real or imagined) had a profound effect on me, especially as, if my hunch is right, she had put a positive and optimistic slant on it that I would never be able to achieve nearly as successfully, nor that perhaps, I would I want to.

It's also strange, to read about someone being able to be spontaneous (something she's an expert at, and I'm only good at on 'good days') about travelling.  I wish I could feel that the world is open to me, that I could travel whenever I needed to.  (Or that I would ever have the option of moving abroad again.)  I suppose it helps if you have friends or family in far-flung places who have somewhere to live so that you could stay there too, if funds do not cover accommodation as well as travel.  (Which is ALWAYS the case for me, and I'm sick to death of that being the problem all the bloody time...) Even so, I still marvel at her bravery, her sheer 'force of nature'-ness.  I just hope she's ok and that she has far more support than I do to get through whatever difficulties she may be facing.

I sat and looked up at the clear blue sky in Prague this morning and even though I was crying, from sheer exhaustion and feeling trapped, I thanked Prague for getting one up on London and being consistently sunny for so many days in a row.  And that made me think, hmm, I can see why Gaby would want to move to LA after years of being in London!  There's only so much rain a girl with a sunny disposition can take, and there are limits even for those of us with no such predilection.

Last call for summery shoes and acts of selflessness

I ended up going out this evening, for what I suspect is the last evening until spring next year, that I'll be able to walk the streets of Prague in summery shoes like these:

It was a sad evening for other reasons too.  I'm sorry that this time it's someone else who's suffering huge bouts of self-doubt and feels that the future's bleak, as that's normally my state of mind, not his.  Have I infected him?  I hope not.  I also wish I could do more.  Preferably magic-wand like so that he never has to feel like this again, because it's been an ongoing battle for him.  

In some cases, I could do a fraction more, (e.g. send more texts/emails, give up more of my limited free time and energy) but I've already gone at least 60% above and beyond the support I get in return and I must pull back, lest I end up the one who's in tatters.  In my position, I think avoiding personal nuclear fall-out needs to be a priority, as I'm not far from that at any one time anyway.  (Though it was this thought above all - that I'm not doing the absolute maximum I could - that made me burst into tears out of sheer anguish at being utterly torn by differing areas of rationale.)  In light of the emotional support give/receive imbalance, I have to reign myself in and stay on the edge of the platform (for now) instead of throwing myself onto the tracks.

Sweet Little Something Else

"I get a bit understanding, I see my soul's gonna light my fire/will anybody believe seeing sunshining takes me higher/I do believe when ya legalise, I'll no more mind it/So would ya make up your mind even though I can't tell it is worth trying/Sweet little something in my mouth rolling, it's easy/ sweet little something me swallowing, it's easy..."   

Support Lesbiens:  'Sweet Little Something'

I watched the film 'Jumper' today.  A sci-fi film with Samuel L. Jackson in it.  It was a bit rubbish, but it was fun to imagine for a while what joy would be mine if I were able to instantly transport myself to New York when I felt like it, or anywhere else for that matter.  

I missed New York today.  I wished I could be sitting in Central Park overhearing someone's amusing conversation (hard not to, as so many people talk loudly to each other or on mobile phones without a thought for the fact that everyone around can hear them) or else attending the screenwriter/playwright's group I went to a couple of times.  They used to put on rehearsed readings of their plays to a very professional standard to see if they'd be any good or not and got the group to critique them, almost bluntly honestly, so that they could re-write and edit accordingly.  I also miss the blue sky mornings, sitting and reading The New York Times in a cafe on the Lower East side and writing little diary entries.  Ah, if only, if only, if only...

So it was in keeping with my wishful thinking/surrealist's day that I listened quite a few times to the Drum 'n' bass remix of the Support Lesbiens' track, "Sweet Little Something".  I marvelled at their cunning plan of writing a song with totally nonsensical, non-native English lyrics that could be passed off as merely an expression of how 'off-their-heads' on drugs they would be if they were to take a 'sweet little something'.  Clever ploy boys.  I can be won over by drum 'n' bass when it's this good. 

Fashion, freaks and frivolity

"Crazy ideas are better than too normal ideas."  Karl Lagerfeld

I suppose it was inevitable, having watched so much SATC recently, that I would feel drawn to flicking through fashion magazines and adapting what I've been wearing to be at least a little bit more adventurous.  Having a full day off to myself has done wonders.  A day off, on my own, in my little flat.  I almost never thought I'd get to enjoy this kind of delight.  As such, I had time to both catch up on sleep and read, oh my god, read newspapers, magazines and online articles (see THIS  fashion page linked to the Chicago Tribune site.  Picture number 9 is of a girl with a mismatched set of colours and layers, someone after my own heart) - what a revelation!  I feel so much better for it.  I even had time to form a little idea of how to at least try to improve my circumstances, and even play the keyboard, so I feel like I'm getting back to my old self.

Last night I spoke to the architect about how I'd been discussing an article in the Czech version of Elle, on the last page, written by a well-known Czech actress, Ana Geislerová, and I said how funny it is that she gets to write a monthly column.  The architect personally thinks she's nine tenths a prostitute, which, given her recounting numerous lovers in her latest article is perhaps only an exaggeration, rather than an outright character defamation, but he rested his case that of course a well-known actress would get a column in a fashion magazine, because she will help tell women what to wear.  And this, he attested, is what fashion magazines are all about: getting women to feel inadequate and buy more stuff.

I can't say I disagree all that much, except I know that in my case, buying a fashion magazine, if it's any good, gets me to try to adapt what things I already have to wear them in more interesting ways or try a free make-up trick (rare, as actually, I  usually avoid the 'beauty' pages because the word itself puts me off) or keep me up to date on the latest film/music/literature releases.  I simply can't afford to go out and buy anything as a result of what I see in the magazine.  (Quite frankly, the purchase of the magazine in itself usually uses up the last of my disposable income and causes me to re-think another trip to Tesco to get more food, opting to scale down on bread and anything nice and try to live off apples and cereal for a bit longer instead.)

So in light of this, I wondered how guilty I should feel about my terrible fashion magazine addiction.  I don't buy magazines every month, but some months (such as September) I might buy two, so it's the equivalent of one a month I suppose.  I also bought more in August, because I wanted something to read while travelling and I wanted to enjoy a week 'on holiday' so I did holiday things.  Plus, I wanted to buy a couple of Czech magazines to get me to look up and learn some more vocab.  But is the architect right, and I'm merely being caught in a pre-organised industry trap, which seeks to do me out of all my remaining money and make me feel insecure enough to buy more stuff when I can?  Well, largely, no.  Because I simply don't have money for clothes anyway, and I can use some articles from the magazines I've bought as meet-ee fodder, so it's not entirely wasted money.  And when I do have enough time to really look through some interesting pages of fashion, I actually feel inspired to do other things too.

Like, for instance, today, I had already leafed through pages of shoes, and found some delightful piano-print ones in Paris Vogue, but that didn't influence what I wore.  I nonetheless felt inspired to dress more eccentrically and put on some purply pink things because I was in the mood for colour and something non-classic today.  A couple of weeks ago I got a surprise package from the Russian Countess with two pairs of earrings in it, so I've been wearing one pair on and off most of the time, but decided to try the super-big purply ones today. 

It worked.  I felt so much better.  And that in turn, lead me to play the keyboard and sing a few made up little bits of nonsense that also made me feel more alive.

A month or so ago, I watched this video from Harper's Bazaar (see it HERE) and felt comforted and reassured, because all the famous designers in it seemed like such freaks (with one or two exceptions) and I laughed at the strange little fantasy world they get to live in and how they are allowed to live like a crazy person and it's ok.  So my being an eccentrically dressed nobody in Prague is hardly the crime of the century, right?  It's good to know that there are indeed even weirder people than me out there.