Over the last year, one of the things I’m most proud of  is having stayed put. I didn’t move to a new country*, I barely took any planes and apart from regularly visiting the bearded maths captain [BMC] in Linz, Austria, I was VERY stable. For me at least.

Even though I fell head first, properly and oh so significantly into love with the aforementioned BMC, I didn’t suddenly drop everything and move to Linz. Considering the catalysts for the last two moves to Sheffield and Berlin, this is incredibly surprising.  But maybe, despite having no regrets and being rather grateful for those experiences in their own odd ways, it appears that I’ve learnt something.

Or perhaps I feel at home.

And when considering learning from my experiences or finding a home, I should add in finally. I mean, to move countries on the spur of the moment for a man is romantic, but to do it twice (in one year, and for different men) is not just careless, but also incredibly foolish. I don’t know what Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell would say about a third time, but considering how she felt about the loss of a parent, I can’t imagine she’d be very kind. So maybe I should focus more on the fact that I feel at home in Berlin, and one of the things that has helped that has been that I’ve been very happy in my apartment.

I’m in a great position in Kreuzberg, my room is south-facing and full of light AND has nice floors, and the bathroom and kitchen, while not perfect – do satisfy my requirements by having a good, hot shower and a stove and oven that don’t suck.  I’m friends with several of my neighbours and know almost everyone in the building by name and have babysit half the kids and shared cake with their parents. And until recently, I had managed to maintain a relatively good relationship with my flatmate, only to have it sour from some hideously poor communication on their behalf in the last couple of weeks.  Myeh. I could go on for hours. But I won’t.

Anyway, I might be looking for a new place to live and that honestly petrifies me.  Of course there are the general considerations of whether there’s enough light to keep my happily provided with Vitamin D,  and building repair and cost which are tempered somewhat by the bright sides of maybe finally having a native German speaker for a flatmate. But then there are some more Berlin specific challenges to deal with, like whether I would end up with coal heating and what discount supermarkets are nearby.

I’m unlikely to move away from Kreuzberg, and from all reports coal heating is rarely in use in the former West German parts of Berlin, but I’m wary.  I spent a month in a coal heated sublet when I first moved to Berlin and despite the coziness of having an actual fire in your bedroom, the novelty of hauling fuel and old ash up and down stairs and waiting 3 hours for your room to defrost is over in about a week.

More realistically I’m worried about what stores might be nearby. I’m pretty sure that besides the weather and the state of the S-Bahn, discount supermarkets are one of the most frequent topics of conversation amongst people living in Berlin. Unlike weather and public transport which are more universally recognised, the matter of Berlin grocery shopping is very localised and has its own language: Is Netto or LIDL better? Does your Penny Markt actually carry any stock? Is visiting ALDI a soul destroying experience for everyone? Which place has the best range of organic goods? Why did PLUS close? Why is Edeka easy to forget about? Do you find visiting the Karlstadt basement (a ‘proper’ supermarket) akin to a religious experience for you?

Of course, there are proper supermarkets which have everything you’d expect in a store – but due to both cost and convenience, most people end up shopping at their nearest discount store only to find that it doesn’t carry certain products. Then, because they have a favourite type of cheese or coffee they end up schlepping to the store that does stock it anyway.  In the end you develop favourites, and even though it’s a little further away than a couple of other supermarkets, Netto seems to have won me over, they’ve got a good  range of organic food that I can actually afford, stock Spreelinge pickled cucumbers and have a proper section devoted to baking goods.  So that’s another reason why I love my apartment and am hesitant to leave it, I might end up far from a Netto store.  And what would happen if there was only an Aldi nearby? I’d be liable to turn suicidal.

* Unlike 2008 in which I started in Adelaide, re-visited Helsinki for 4 months and would have stayed if I’d been able to find a job I loved, moved to Sheffield in the UK temporarily and then, after making a temporary stop for a couple of weeks in Hong Kong and Hanoi, went back to Adelaide to properly pack up before moving to Berlin. Eek.

I volunteered at Transmediale the other week and one of my responsibilities was guiding participants on and off the stage during The Long Conversation.  It was a cruisy job and so in-between reminding the conversationalists to look at the camera (but just be natural) I listened to the talks and took notes.

The broad theme of the conversation was “futurity” and some people responded to that topic better than others.  It was set up as a chain conversation and also a little like Chinese Whispers – how would Richard Barbrook’s keynote influence the final conversation and would Drew Hemment (first and last speaker) be able to draw all of the ideas together?

Ken Rinaldo pretty much jumped on stage for his first conversation in order to respond to Alan N. Shapiro’s musings on “the car of the future”:

“I’ve got one thing to say – The car of the future? That’s called a bike.”

Inevitably there was a lot of talk of the future regarding technology, but the conversation immediately switched to people and futures once Maja Kuzmanovic came on stage.  When Joy Tang started talking with her there was even more discussion about people. I really appreciated Maja and Joy’s conversations, though I’m not sure if it was a conscious programming decision, for it seemed that binary oppositions of men / women and technology / humanity were somewhat exaggerated.

I came back about 8 hours after everything started and by that stage it seemed that people had forgotten to talk about the future, but they did seem to be talking vaguely about time. The one thing that really stuck in my mind was Andy Cameron asking Julian Oliver whether he could name a piece of media art that was timeless.

And Julian was unable to name a single piece. And quite reasonably so. It’s a really tricky question to ask anyone, let alone a media artist, particularly when he’s sitting on stage in the middle of an increasingly vague conversation, under lights and with the responsibility of looking at the camera (but to just be natural).  Julian did frame his lack of specific response far better than just anyone would  – how has it (piece of art) been mediated, what is the context of its presentation  and what is the viewer’s relationship to the artwork.

Of course, I’d be challenged to name any piece of art that is timeless and universally acknowledged to be so, for example Picasso’s Guernica is very specific to a certain time and place and the Mona Lisa (for me) no longer seems to be an artwork, it is a highly mediated, replicated and scrutinised image.

However, the question made me think and without the pressure of looking at a camera (but remaining natural), I could name two new media / non traditional art pieces which, if not timeless and significant to humanity, ARE incredibly important to me

Jesper Just’s No Man Is An Island (really poor quality video over at )

and

Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand’s Camera Lucida (project description)

One of the challenges when talking about new media / time based / art-science-technology art works is that they can’t be [re]presented with any great ease. There is no way that poor quality YouTube videos and flat stills of quasi-scientific apparatus can replicate the experience of watching a video art piece in a dark, quiet room on a big screen or in any way convey the feeling that some amazing scientific performance was happening right under in front of your eyes.  So you’ll have to trust my judgement when recommending these pieces to you.

see also:

Ken Rinaldo’s Farm Fountain

FLOSS manual’s Collaborative Futures book

The Puma Hardchorus sing ““

When speaking German, one will ‘make’ a pause when taking a break from something. For example in university a teacher might say “Sollen wir eine Pause machen?” before sending students out for a 10 minute coffee and cigarette break.

Let’s just say that I’ve been making a pause on this here blog.  It’s a relatively large pause made up of inertia, wondering what happens next, paralysing fear and the overwhelming feeling that I should somehow summarise my last year in just several sentences and oh gosh I didn’t do anything worth writing about… But you know, while I was pause-making I did do some other interesting stuff. Like start building a [small] boat.

So that time wasn’t entirely wasted if one is thinking from the perspective of a blogger – “if you did it, but you didn’t publically document it, did it really happen?”.

At least I started work on The Imperial Punt.  But there’s more (unblogged things) that I did over the last year or so. I’m going to try to do this summarising thing – to make the experiences real.

• I fell in love with a bearded maths captain!
• I turned 30!
• I was given a guitar (which I’m scared to learn how to play)!
• I learnt to understand and speak a bunch of German!
• I made new friends!
• I started a really good job teaching and geeking!
• I got health insurance!
• I taught people how to use HTML and CSS!
• I decided on a graduate program!
• I became far more mentally healthy!
• I started running regularly!
• I [kinda] snowboarded!
• I made my room and apartment look lovely on a limited budget!
• I went to Linz, Austria so many times to see the bearded maths captain!
• I went to Norway!
• I knitted a lot of stuff!
• I baked cakes and learnt how to make pies!
• I thrifted an amazing vintage 1970s Husqvarna sewing machine and a great food processor!
• I bought a lot of plants!
• I started to crave Sauerkraut!
• I stopped dying my hair!
• I bought a bed!
• I had visits from lovely friends!
• I learnt a lot of new things!
  • (but that’s another list)

And on and on it goes. There’s so much stuff I’ve done – but haven’t felt motivated or confident enough to record.  And while a lot of those things are only significant to me (buying a bed for instance is a symbol that I feel really happy, secure and at home in Berlin) it suddenly feels quite amazing to write them down.  And what is particularly good is that I have done all these things in the first year of living in Berlin!

I think a lot of this thought that I haven’t done anything worth blogging is a direct result of the interest that people showed in the DIY Masters concept and my progress with it.  I feel like I owe them something and that writing about anything unrelated to my list of 100 Things to Learn was an insult to them.  So I stop writing altogether which is probably a greater insult! Foolish eh?

Far more foolish is the fear that I couldn’t mention the graduate program I’ve finally enrolled in as it’s “formal education” and very much not a DIY Masters – despite my intention being to explore non-formal, online and flexible learning (particularly Open Course Ware). For the record I’m going to be studying a Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching and Learning (GCTT) online through the University of Southern Queensland.

The program is designed to enable educators in the tertiary sector who already have a degree or diploma, to acquire an innovative credential in tertiary teaching and learning. The program focuses on applying educational theories to practical situations in university and other tertiary educational settings in order to design, develop, implement and evaluate emerging learning environments.

So yeah. That’s about it. Thing I’ve done, things I’m going to do. I also wanted to publicly give myself permission to write / videoblog about whatever I want – there’s no way this can ever be an environment where I only write about one topic.  Because not writing is worse than writing about everything.

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.

Over the last while, and most especially the last couple of days I’ve been struggling against thoughts of poor self-esteem and self-criticism all tied up with a sense of perfectionism which would never allow me to complete anything even if it let me actually begin something. Tricky.

Luckily I can recognise these thoughts for what they are, thoughts. But they are thoughts clever enough to swoop in when I’m tired, under the weather or hormonal. The thoughts, once they’ve invaded, perch along the edge of my outlook crowlike and squawking.

“Hah! We’re better than you, you’ve never done anything worthwhile and you never will!”

the ideas behind urbicande counter cities with characters such as jules verne

the short story – adieu paris – that led me to helsinki

and the books of neal stephenson, particularly anathem (in which a character named jules verne floats through space)

implementation v you v posters from chris

• broccoli soup
• potatoes, carrots and celeriac roasted in Gänseschmalz (goosefat) and olive oil with rosemary
• ruby chard cooked down with onions and garlic and then baked with egg, sourcream, feta and blue cheese
• hummus (soaked chickpeas, and lots of parsley and cayenne pepper added)
• lots and lots of peppermint tea with the odd addition of jasmine green tea and mellisa (lemon balm).

and beyond food it must be autumn. I didn’t arrive in Berlin until mid-November last year so I was shocked by how punctual and quick the change was from late summer to autumn.

sure, it might just be autumn, but for a girl originally from Adelaide it feels COLD.

even though i’m layering my clothes and wearing socks and uggboots while working at the computer i had to turn the heating on to low or else my fingers were freezing up.

over the next week i start a new job doing some teaching and geeking a couple of days a week. actual jobs aren’t that easy to come by in Berlin so i’m incredibly grateful and enthused about the opportunity. also i turn 30 which feels just right.

i still need to decide what cakes to bake. i wish that friends from the rest of the world could come celebrate with me. oh well, a small berlin posse (with a ring-in from upper austria) will have to suffice.

And just like that, summer is officially over!

I guess it must have happened while I was walking home last night with .

There’s still blue sky over Berlin, and hopefully it remains (long sleeve) tshirt weather for a while longer.

I have to admit though, I’ve been looking forward to Autumn as that means a different kind of food. The other day I made up a leek, ham, corn and potato chowder and then there was roast pumpkin with blue cheese another day. And yesterday I finally made munggo guisado – a Fillipino dish that I’ve had my eye on for a while.

There must be something kind of hippie earth mother about me that lies below my more public nerd identity. Maybe it’s the knitting, the jam making or the gardening, but something made my neighbours give me a bag of mung beans saying “We don’t know what to do with these, maybe you’d like to sprout them or something?”

Damn straight I’d like to sprout them.

So I sprouted some mung beans which was kinda satisfying. But then I started thinking of the “something”.

If Berlin wasn’t satisfying me already with interesting icecream flavours such as licorice, or quark with sesame and honey, I’d have considered making . So I googled mung bean recipes and found out about munggo guisado.

Munggo Guisado is Filipino comfort food, a blend of mung beans, seafood, pork meat and assorted greens like morning glory or spinach that’s usually served with rice. I had some quinoa I wanted to play with so I served it with that. Though I’m pretty sure munggo guisado could be good served over toast.

Let’s just say, I think I’ve found a new meal, one of those recipes like spaghetti sauce or ratatouille that you return to again and again because it’s so easy to modify.

But for now, here’s a writeup of my initial foray into Munggo Guisado. I didn’t have spinach, but I substituted in a couple of handfuls of parsley as I always have a bunch in a jar on my windowsill.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back at the start of April I bought this for €1 from some kids running a stall outside the front of their building.

They had a box on a piece of string acting as a cargo elevator from the floors above, and a range of things made out of bits of old wood, computers and hot-glue-gun glue.

I think my favourite thing about this is that the “Bild” (picture) key points at a tiny painting on a stamp. That’s so clever.