Ugh.

Alright, I'm so not amused right now.
I was like already halfway over the guy and then my scumbag subconscious decided to troll me with some bitch-ass dream that just basically ruined all my progress and now I feel like a little girl with a crush. Again. 

I so do not need this right now!

D:.


~Levyathan

Listen

I know I keep saying I'll start up again and then a month passes with no posts. That's why I've decided that this time I'm not going to say there'll be more frequent updates.

In more important news, I'm writing this post from my new room in Nijmegen, a 1.5 hour's drive away from home. Yesterday I moved, and it was hell because the weather is horribly warm and just basically unsuited for anything but lazing around.
Which makes it a little annoying that from today until next Sunday, I will be participating in my university's Introduction Week. It's going to involve a lot of roaming around the city and activities and whatnot. I've actually got this whole schedule thingie but I haven't even read all of it yet, I will just prepare for it day by day, I guess.

Either way, I'm really excited, although it was weird to wave goodbye to my parents last night, knowing I wouldn't be seeing them for two weeks because I'm now technically living somewhere else. It's two weeks instead of one because the day after the introduction week (which ends in a weeked camping experience that's supposed to leave you dead tired) I have to be at the uni at 09:00 for a remedial course of maths. I'm not quite sure I need it, because I can mostly follow maths pretty well, but it's free and I did have a 6/10 on my end list... Anyway, it's better to do this extra thing and have it turn out I don't really need it than be stubborn and not do it and have it turn out I do need it.
Also it's a lot easier to ask the professors for help in the future if I grab onto this opportunity to show that I'm willing to work to be better. It would be quite audacious to refuse this offer of help because "I don't need it" and then come crawling back when it turns out I did. That's not gonna warm anyone towards me. x'D.

This does mean that while I've got a friend now who's coming over to my place here so we can head to uni together to sign up, she probably won't be here next week, since she basically aced maths.
However, it's probably not so bad, because the introduction is mostly meant to get us to meet other people and make friends, as well as to become familiar with the city.

I'm pretty stoked, but also kind of hesitant. Let's hope it's gonna be great. :'D.


See you when I see you,

~Levyathan

Z: Zelfvertrouwen

Meaning self-confidence.
For me, personally, self-confidence is a fickle and fluctuating thing. What I see and think when I look into the mirror heavily depends on the moment, as well as whom I may or may not be standing next to. It's kind of funny how the same image can look so completely different depending on one's mood and feelings when presented with it.

I tend to be more critical of things I do. I say 'more' as opposed to the sometimes pretty damn positive view I have of my reflection. I tend to be disappointed by anything I accomplish because for some reason I have delusions of grandeur even though the image I have of myself is not always that great. I can sing and draw reasonably well, and my academic accomplishments are pretty okay, but I'm always expecting more of myself.
Which makes it really annoying when people go all overboard and start telling me to sign up for talents shows and stuff even though I'm really not that good. Actually, I would kind of like to try that sort of thing, but the fact that there's little to no chance I'd actually win anything makes me reconsider. I don't like to pale in comparison to other people, so I generally just shy away from competitive stuff. In fact, when I encounter someone who is significantly better than me, it just makes me lose all will to continue for a while.

I'm basically constantly comparing myself to others. Where anyone else watching The Big Bang Theory would be like "whoa, those guys are just too smart", I would be more likely to conclude I'm not smart enough. That's just this sort of kink in my brain, I guess. It's really more trouble than it's worth.

Sorry I just sort of went off on a tangent there, hope it wasn't too annoying. :').
On the other hand, you could've just stopped reading.


~Levyathan.

Y: Yakult

"the ~ (m) Milk drink for a healthy intestinal flora" (very roughly translated, my brain isn't really working).

WHY is this in the dictionary? It's a brand name. You don't find 'pepsi' or 'fanta' in the dictionary.

Yakult is apparently Japanese. It's a milk beverage containing probiotics, that's supposed to help improve your intestinal workings so that you don't feel bloated.

I still wonder, though. The fact that the brand name is representing the drink in my Dutch dictionary tells me that there is not really anything else like it. Probably, then, the drink was immediately heavily patented when it was first produced in 1935. On the other hand, I don't know how this works for the rest of the world, but in the Netherlands the patent rights are only applicable for 20 years. So I guess that still doesn't explain it?
I asked my parents and grandparents, who are all conveniently downstairs right now, but the best they came up with is that somebody may have gotten some money for that little trick. (Putting it in the dictionary, that is :'D).Also apparently there ARE non-'official' products like it. The plot thickens...

Any of you got an idea? :').


~Levyathan

L: Liefde

Ah, love. Quite possibly the most obvious choice when discussing a random topic starting with the letter 'L'.

Love can be quite a broad subject, depending almost entirely on one's definition of the term. The words "I love you" are said too often, yet not often enough, as they say. Real love is hard to come by, and people tend to overreact when they like someone, hence the words being said 'too often'. On the other hand, there could be a lot more love in this world.

(Disclaimer: The things I do or do not say in this post about love are mostly derived from observing others. Basically, I have little to no first-hand experience of what I'm talking about here.)

Now, there are different types of love, in different orders of gravity. ('Gravity'. I'm making this sound so... grave. x'D)

The types of love most important to me as a person are familial love, and love shared between friends. I like all of my friends, obviously, but there are only a few I'd say I really love. And even though my family is made up of individuals I'd probably steer clear of in any other situation, I really do love them.

...I'll spare you the sob-story that is my dysfunctional and mostly one-sided relationship with romantic love. :/.

I can only say I hope that love, and it's applicability to me as a person, will evolve and grow with the years, and that I may be open to it when it is ready to come to me. (So poetic. :'D).


~Levyathan

J: Jaloezie

Hey, Jealousy.

Ever had a visit from the green-eyed monster? I'll bet you have. Everyone has. Some people are more susceptible to jealousy than others, the same way people differ in music tastes and hair colors. Well, maybe not necessarily hair color, because that's easily modified and you don't change the foundations of your character quite that easily, but I digress.

Jealousy comes in many varieties, and when it's slight and easily controllable it's generally harmless, but it can deal a lot of damage to relationships, because generally a jealous boyfriend or girlfriend is seen as having a lack of faith in the relationship and partner, even though jealousy is a quite natural reaction to have when you feel as if something that is 'yours' in some way is in danger of being taken away from you.

It's really quite an illogical thing, the way people react to jealousy.


~Levyathan

H: Hiernamaals

The afterlife. There are so many different perceptions of it, and there is no way to tell what is or isn't real. It adds a sense of mystery: you'll only know what's to come once your life is over, everything before that point is mere speculation.

I personally don't really know if I believe in an afterlife. I guess I'd quite like to, but the mechanics of such a place always bother me. Namely: Is it another life, from birth to death, like an endless cycle? Is it a sort of paradise in which one can life in peace forever and be happy with all of their dead loved ones?

The second possibility in particular always makes me wonder. How do you appear in such a world? The way you see yourself? The way others see you? In case of the latter, you'd have no actual corporeal form, but I guess that wouldn't be all that strange in context. Or rather, if you appear the way you were in life, what point in your lifetime does your appearance base itself on? Is it what you looked like when you died? Because that would, for many people, not exactly be optimal. How can everyone you love be in the same place with you and everyone they love and everyone all those people love, etc? (Like in Titanic. She'd grown old and had a husband and a child and then she died and in the afterlife she looked the way she did when she was with Jack, and that was who she met in that place. How does that work, logically? Was her husband left alone in there, knowing then that his wife didn't even love him enough to have him be one of the loved ones she had the chance to meet again? How sad is that?) Is nobody actually there, is everything just a figment of memory or imagination?

I always ask myself these questions when faced with the possibility of an afterlife. Maybe that's why I'm not sure I can really believe in it; I tend to want to know how things work before blindly accepting them...

I'm interested in knowing other people's views on the subject. ;).


~Levyathan

D: De

Or: "On the subject of articles".
(Articles? Really? Seems a bit strange of a word to indicate 'the' or 'a(n)'. My translator tells me it is so, however).

One of the major problems most foreign people encounter when learning the Dutch language has to do with our articles. You see, we have 'een', which is the same as the English 'a(n)'. Nothing much of an issue there. It starts getting problematic when we get to 'the'. You see, in Dutch, we have two different words for this. It can be indicated by either the word 'de' or 'het'. There is no clear distinction I'm aware of that indicates what to use when, and even natives sometimes have to guess at which to use when we come across words that are utterly unfamiliar to us. On the whole, though, either Dutch people have some sort of born affinity for recognizing which to use when or it's just been hammered into our subconcious from a young age. In short, one of the surefire ways to recognize a foreigner is to pay attention to what articles they use for what words. Apart from the often quite obvious accent, of course.

With a lot of other grammatical distinctions in our language (not for the articles - thank god) that are for whatever reason hazy to most natives - Really guys? They're perfectly clear to me! - it seems that the preferred way to get rid of the problems is to simply renounce the rules concerning them. I am strongly against this. It might have something to do with the fact that I'm one of those people who actually talks with grammatical correctness on a daily basis, but I just don't like the idea of our language being subject to 'dumbing down' simply because our natives can't be bothered to remember whether to use 'dan' or 'als'. It would basically be an incentive to stop caring about what you're saying - not the best solution in any situation.


~Levyathan.

B: Beleefdheid

Which, for everyone's information, means 'Politeness'.

Because - excuse me for sounding like an old lady - I feel like it's something today's youth could really use an extra helping of.

It's actually really bad how many teenagers think they're all that and feel like they don't have to respect their elders. Most notably, you see this at schools. Now, while I may or may not be somewhat of a stickler for the rules anyway, I can get really annoyed when people in my classes basically lack any form of respect for the teachers. Don't get me wrong, I don't think you should respect a teacher who is either simply a really BAD teacher or who doesn't respect you. I do however think that you should be at least cordial to figures of authority, especially before they've had the chance to prove whether they're going to earn it.
It gives a really bad starting point if you just sort of disrespect teachers before they've had so much as the chance to open their mouths.
But really, even if you've had them for a while, that's no reason for you to start talking to them as if they are your dog or your idiot little brother. I can at times be really embarrassed for the classes I'm in.

Even more poignant, we're watching this movie in French class about a school in France (shocker!), where the students talk to the teachers as if they're talking amongst themselves. They're constantly demanding outrageous things and because it's a whole class full of these troublemakers, the teacher is basically powerless against them. It's really disrespectful and it almost hurts to watch it, it irritates me to no end.


Okay, looking back at this thing, this sounds kind of pretentious and goody-two-shoes. It's not that I'm always super-respectful when talking to adults, but I don't let it get too far out of hand. Don't get me wrong - I scoff at my father too when I'm saying something a bit too colloquially degrading and he's all like "I didn't go to school with you! Respect your elders!", but I do think there is a line that shouldn't in good conscience be crossed.

Not sure if this made any sense... Be sure to tell me if you think differently, and especially why you think this is the case.


Peace out!

~Levyathan

A: Angst

Which is not that depression thing particularly teenagers tend to experience.
It's actually the Dutch word for fear.

Now, there are many forms of fear. There are also many irrational fears that only make sense to the ones they concern. Also, words for fears are not always very logical. Take 'hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia', being the fear of long words. Not very logical at all. "Really, you've got a phobia? Tell me about it." "Well, see, I'm afraid of long words." "Oh, you mean you have hippopotomonstroses-" "AAAAAAGHHHHH!!".

But really, fear is all around us. There are people who are deathly afraid of peanut butter. It happens!

Apart from the strange and often trivial fears of generic objects, though, there are also for example people who can't be in deep water, even while they can swim. I have a bit of this, I think. I dislike being in very deep lakes or the sea because it makes me uncomfortable to think about all the things beneath me that I can't see.

But really, the thing I personally am the most afraid of is time. Time, which just keeps passing and is unshakably determined. You never get it back. You just keep getting older and older and being in worse and worse condition while having fewer and fewer prospects for your future - which, incidentally, gets shorter and shorter - until eventually you die.
I'm also afraid of being trivial. I don't like to think I'll spend my life in this small town, working for some nameless company and never making a difference in the world. I don't understand people who choose to live that way. Like my parents. On the other hand, I can't really say what should be wrong with that. There are so many people on the world nobody has heard of. It's inevitable, and I shouldn't expect to be 'better' than that. In fact, I'm not sure I would want to. I don't really think the life of a celebrity is one I would ever choose for myself.. too little freedom, too much forced socialization. It's not for me.

I guess that's the most annoying thing about fear. Even when you realize it's unfounded and meaningless, that doesn't make it any less potent or real.


~Levyathan