about a year and a half ago I posted a list of 100 Things I Want To Learn (More) About…. I wrote the list when I was in a more active phase of my DIY Masters, a very slowly ongoing project which I can say has led to many good things in my life even if I haven’t yet earnt and given myself a DIY degree. Anyway, the list had a lot of random skills and activities which ranged from learning how to cook family recipes to more advanced work skills.

A couple of friends started to write their own lists and a couple even made it up to 100. Recently Pete Hindle, returned to his list of 50 things and updated it with comments as to what had been achieved and his current thoughts on his list. Pete almost died and so has a) a really good excuse for not finishing things on his list b) his life has changed drastically which definitely changed his opinion about some of his learning items. It will be interesting to see if the life changes I’ve gone through (finally meeting a good man, getting a job, getting another job, travelling away from Berlin a lot) have affected how I feel about items on my list.

100 Things I Want To Learn (More) About… Updated!

1. Botany
   Hmmm. I haven’t yet learnt to identify plants using a taxonomy. So. No.
2. A musical instrument: guitar or cello
   Let’s just say that 360 days ago I was given a beautiful guitar and can barely play 3 chords. So this learning task is active, but moving slowly. Actually taking lessons might be the next step.
3. Haircutting
   I can cut boys’ hair if they have some curl to hide the mistakes. The mistakes aren’t as often or severe as they used to be. But I haven’t learnt any fancy techniques (yet).
4. How to make a sponge cake
   Really, why would I make a sponge when there are so many other amazing cakes to bake out there? Not Yet.
5. How to maintain my bicycle
   In general I’m better at working with bikes thanks to a couple of sessions at Regenbogen Fabrik’s bike workshop. But my bike in Berlin is not currently maintained – sadly the type of maintenance I know won’t make it better, it will just keep it existing for longer.
6. How to make bagels
   Nope. One day, when I’m making brunch for people. I do finally have a recipe I want to use.
7. Throat Singing
   Hah. I find the idea of throat singing fascinating, but I don’t want to learn it that much. Let’s just say I may have still wanted to impress my ex at this point.
8. Bookbinding
   Not yet. I don’t have anything I want to bind at the moment, and it’s pretty easy to get amazing notebooks in Berlin.
9. Basic Arabic
   Nada. But my amazing new flatmate is doing Islamic studies and she can write essays in Arabic.  I know who I’m going to ask for help.
10. How to make better Karelian pies
    I’ve not made a Karelian pie for ages. I think that visiting friends in Finland and buying Karelian pies has to be higher priority than making my own… I’m getting really good at making Spinach pancakes, one of my other Finnish food desires.

    (more…)

There’ll always be times when keeping up with your mindapples (the mental health 5-a-Day) just aren’t enough – and you find yourself overwhelmed with anxiety or the sads. For example, I know that the heavy grey skies of Berlin can really affect my mood, regardless of any steps I’ve taken to avoid depression.  So I’m always looking for ways of walking and talking myself out of a sad or anxious mood.

A couple of years ago I posted a step by step approach to dealing with bouts of anxiety or depression. It was some home brewed cognitive behavioural therapy that got me through some heartbreak. The bad times passed and then I deleted the post.

And even though I still followed some of my own advice, I’d forgotten how specific and useful a paper (or electronic) set of the reminders could be in times of the crazy sads.

A few months back an old housemate asked me where the post was and I couldn’t find it in either my archives or anywhere online. But yesterday I hit paydirt and found the text again. I twittered it and was told by a follower that she’d forwarded the link to a friend who’s going through some tough times – and that her friend had printed up two copies to keep by her side.

Which of course made me feel all happy, that maybe this list of actions might help more people than just me.

So… here is the In Case of Emergency list again. Please feel free to leave comments or further advice.

from on .

Fabienne (aka FBZ) of fabienne.us and HardHack (May 28, 29, @ C-Base) drew a map of California for the nottoscale project.  The first Berlin Geek Picnic was rained out as you can see by the water stains on the map FBZ drew.

from on .

I am having a marvellous time.

This week I’m overwhelmed with visits by half a dozen lovely people primarily from Adelaide band . It’s an absolute pleasure to be showing the first arrivals, Matt and Elizabeth around my new city.

I’m almost shaking with excitement for Thursday when some of my most absolute favourite people in the entire world come to visit. I think I’ll need to visit some more fotoautomats so that I can record their visits too!

One of the things that motivated me to start learning more about friendship is the modern and instant types of “friend” as represented by social networks.  I sometimes feel that the meaning[s] of ‘friend’ are somewhat weakened by the more binary Yes / No labelling of friendship prompted by “Do you want to add person x as a friend?” *

As part of this learning I’ve started listening to a series of short lectures by  Mark Vernon, author of , recounting and responding to Aristotle’s philosophy of friendship.

In Lecture 3, Vernon elaborates on Aristotle’s idea of 3 types of friendship: Useful,Pleasant and Good friends.  A lovely Australian friend, the zinestress extraordinaire  Maddy Phelan, describes these relationships as Situational (school / work), Activity (music, hobby) and Excellent (life long friends) friendships.  You meet most of your friends at work, school or in situations around your hobbies and passions, but not all of those friendships will last once those situations change. The friends who last despite life changes, are your Good or Excellent friends.

Before listening to these lectures, I’d already begun thinking of people I know as belonging to those categories. It prompts a series of questions: Why do some people stay friends while others drift away? Is this drifting something you can predict? How do you know when someone’s become an Excellent friend? Do you need a life change (new employment, travel) to really find out which friendships will survive? Do you need to share specific experiences / spend a certain amount of time with someone to strengthen and form a long-lasting friendship?

Mark Vernon describes Aristotle’s Good / Excellent friends as people you love for what they are or who they are in themselves. They’re the people you are friends with because of their “depth of character, goodness, passion or joie de vivre”.

As a personal exercise as part of 150 Things I asked myself to write a list of my most Excellent friends. I ended up with 7 people who I feel are my truest soul friends – people who I’ll continue to be friends with for the rest of my life, even if I only see them every few years. These are the friends I know intimately and who refresh my sense of self and personal energy whenever I see them.

I also made a list of about 15-20 people who might be in that Excellent friend category if I could have enough chances to spend time / communicate with them and develop a friendship further.  Luckily several of those people live here in Berlin. After only five months living in this town I feel very happy and lucky knowing that I have potential Excellent friends.

“The better these friends are as people, the better the quality of the friendship. This friendship is therefore also the rarest. And it takes time to grow: they must savour salt together, Aristotle says, and trust one another…

…What is quick to arrive is a wish for friendship – what is not quick to rise is friendship itself.”
Mark Vernon,

*To tangent away from friendship itself, I want to add that the social networking sites I feel most comfortable with and trust more as brands are those which are more honest about the type of connection / relationship that is being made: Do you want to follow person x? (Twitter) or Do you want to add this person as a Conact? Are they a Friend or Family member? (Flickr)

For me, the phrasing of the questions also encourages me to think more about the type of information I’ll share with members of those social networks. Facebook seems to encourages people to share far more information online by the use of the word ‘friend’ to describe contact: “of course I’ll share my home address with this person who I’ve met once – they’re my ‘friend’”.

One of the reasons that I’ve become so interested in the process of friendship creation is that over the last 3 years I’ve been moving from place to place. I’ve stayed in Helsinki, Sheffield and Berlin for a minimum of three months each, which is long enough to develop a collection of acquaintances and friends in each city. As a result of actively trying to make new friends with each move, I’ve increasingly become aware of how my friendships begin.

I think that I’m most interested in the ‘betweenness’ of two people becoming friends and one of the topics I wish to explore is how a developing friendship is acknowledged: how do they negotiate and acknowledge that transition, what level of formality is assumed, are there cultural associations marking the transition of friendship?

To elaborate on this point, I’ll paraphrase my Quebecois flatmate:

How many of your Facebook friends do you kiss [on the cheek]?

I have close friends in all of the places I lived who I hug or kiss upon greeting, but from my perspective that is not part of my formal culture as it is for other, particularly French speaking people.

At a language level does the shift from the formal to informal pronoun (vous/ tu in French, Sie, du in German) happen before, at a similar time or after the cheek kissing? I have a feeling that traditionally, language shifts would have been a more important signifier of intimacy in Europe, but what about with languages such as Japanese of Korean?

I’m interested in exploring this cultural friendship marker further, at some point after first meeting, two people decide that they are now “kissing friends”. What type of developments and conversations happen to encourage that transition? At what level of intimacy and shared personal histories does this happen? Are most people unaware of this transition or do they make a conscious decision to move a friendship forward?

This article from the Psychology Today website that has really helped me focus some of my thoughts about the process of how we become friends. I’d particularly like to get hold of a book by Beverly Pehr called which is mentioned in the article and unavailable in Berlin libraries.

If you’d like to support my DIYMasters you can make a donation, or you could buy Friendship Processes or another item from my Amazon wishlist.

Primarily it’s the fact that I’m pretty tired of cold, wet weather but my thoughts are turning to magic portals and instant travel back to Adelaide in the next couple of weeks. While I love Spring in Adelaide and would happily return for visits in October, future returns home will probably happen in February and March as that’s the time when Adelaide really comes alive!

Visitors to Adelaide during festival season (Adelaide Festival of Arts, Fringe Festival and Womadelaide) are given a strange impression of the town, there are people energised and out partying on the streets every night! There’s culture down every alley and even if you don’t like ‘culture’, there’s also a very loud car race which happens around the same time. The rest of the year, while it can be difficult to remember the party face the city puts on, it is still a lovely place that I miss.

Foolishly I’ve managed to miss out Adelaide Fringe and most frustratingly, Womadelaide for the last few years as I always seemed to book my flights back to Europe in winter just in time for slushy side walks and freezing winds.

If you’ve never experienced Womadelaide festival you really should. For three days the most beautiful park in Adelaide is full of world music, hippies and happy, relaxed, white-middle class families wearing ethnic clothing bought at the previous year’s festival. It is a time of picnics, temporary camps under amazing old trees, children wandering around and playing diablo, amazing art installations and all my favourite people.

This year I feel even more sad that I don’t get to be in Adelaide at this most wonderful of times as during Fringe there’ll also be the first Format Festival, run by some very dear friends of mine. Only last week did I realise that maybe I should have tried to organise a simultaneous Academy of DIY here in Berlin as part of my DIYMasters project. So while there won’t be a Berlin Academy of DIY this March, I’m hoping that in the next couple of months I’ll organise a similar event celebrating self-organised learning and informal teaching and community.

I won’t be around in Adelaide for the festivals this year, but if you’re in Australia make your way over to my home town and have fun on my behalf. During February / March 2010 though, is when I’m planning on making a short return to a festival filled Adelaide, my friends and family and the smells of dry earth and eucalyptus leaves. Until then, I’m looking forward to watching Berlin move from grey skies to blue and experiencing this city as it wakes from its winter hibernation.

I finally bought a package of jasmine tea today. Along with the recent purchase of a proper hairdryer, it’s a sign that I’m letting myself feel more comfortable in Berlin. It might not properly feel like home, but I’m beginning to feel normal and myself. It’s a little silly, but access to (jasmine) tea and dry hair are some of the things which make me feel more together.

Jasmine tea has always been important to me when living overseas. My odd penchant for cold and wet places means that I keep on missing out on important stuff like sun and flowers. One of the ways I’ve got over that is by drinking jasmine tea, closing my eyes and thinking about Adelaide.

I think that one of the reasons why I’ve begun to focus on friendship is that it actively draws my mind back to people I care about. I have a strong academic and creative interest in the theory of friendship which is very important in motivating me to explore the area. But there is also the payback of regularly acknowledging the presence of the people I know, whether they are my most intimate friends or people I used to serve beer to.

, originally uploaded by .

I’ve been thinking that in a community with a size of 150 (commonly cited as Dunbar’s Number), not all of those people will be friends.

Even though I have a Facebook friend list of over 450 people I wanted to see if I could quickly name 150 people who I wanted to actively maintain, create or repair friendships with. I gave myself a limit of about half an hour to make the list.

Some limits:

• I didn’t look at Facebook.
• Family members and “romantic” partners were eligible.
• I had to have met people ITRW.
• People on the list had to be alive.

At the end of half-an-hour I had 89 people on the list. Compared to my Facebook friends, that’s not that many people.

The vast majority of people were between the ages of 23 and 40. I felt a little sad that I don’t have that much interaction with much older or much younger people. In the future I want to return to this topic as I feel age range is an important element of community.

Only two people on the list were from Berlin and I’ve known them for longer than the two months I’ve been here. I think that’s a sign of how friendships evolve – there are some lovely people who I like in Berlin, but I’m still not sure if they’re going to become friends.

I intend to repeat this exercise in the future so that I can compare how people drift in and out of the list. I won’t compare the lists until I’ve done several.

For a few reasons I won’t reveal the list:

• Even though I’m consciously and publicly thinking about friends – they are still personal relationships.
• I feel weird about listing people’s names on the internet without their permission.
• I don’t want awareness of whether someone’s on the list or not to alter their behaviour and our friendship.
• Future Things may be dependent on the secrecy of the list.

Prompted by: the Love / Hate lists I wrote in diaries in primary school.