On Mercenaries

OK, another post. I've arrived into our second lecture hall and have some 45minutes before the lecture starts. So, instead of using the productively, I'll tell you a little story about my father and myself.

He recently attended an employee evaluation testing that lasted for two days and consisted of various tests analyzing you motivation, efficiency, loyalty, role skills and other relevant variables. At first they had to sort seven colours according to, I don't know, how they appealed to their sences, how they made them feel, how they energized them and whatnot. Then there were over 200 (!), around 250 terms ranging from "work" or "family" to "interstructural networking" or "signal encryption modulation" that had to be allocated three colors ranking from the most suitable to the third most suitable. This was then evaluated (obviously if you had purple as the colour that made you feel the worst and then allocated it to work, you were found disloyal etc) and they were given their position on loyalty/efficiency scale.

The four ranks you could score were "evangelist" for loyal and efficient, "resident" for loyal but inefficient/not motivated, "mercenaries" for not loyal but efficient and finally something I don't even remember the name of that was neither loyal nor efficient.

My father, quite unsurprisingly, was foud to be extremely unmotivated, not loyal at all, but highly efficient. He gets his work done superbly, as long as he is paid enough, then goes home and doesn't give a damn about the company at all.

This is how I tend to feel these days, only related to the college, not work. I want to get it over with, waltz through the exams and get back to doing whatever it is I find enjoyable. I think, though, that this attitude is higly unsuitable for medicine in particular. Many of the people that I see around myself are evangelists, they live the school, and I fear that is the only way one can get through this place.

Most importantly, though, finding myself feeling this scared the shit out of me. Hell, I'm just half a year (well, less, but...) into what I "chose" to do for life and I already find it a neccessity I must bear with, not an interesting domain where I can realize myself. Perhaps this will pass and I will finally take off. Till then, I remain dubious.

Adam

Tuesday Morning

I have yet to discover the biological mechanism behind this, but mornings can be both extremely joyful and extremely depressing time.

Sadly, today was one of the latter, I guess that was mainly because I had to go to school for the first time in like a fortnight or so. Snoozed the alarm twice, then, with an iron will, stumbled out of bed, tumbled into the kitchen, made myself a cup of ambition (tea), prepared a snack box into the school and had a very determined and focused breakfast. Each and every move I made was intended solely to keep me awake and finish the tasks I have to finish before I can leave the house – there was no joy or grace in any of them.

One thing I avoid at all costs when trying to get up is looking out of the window. It's cold, dark and unfriendly outside, the near-twilight being slit through by the occasional solitary street lamp... Not a sight for those weak of heart. And definitely not a sight that would improve the morale of someone who knows he has to leave the appartment in the matter of minutes anyway.

Everything seems pointless in the morning. School, work, hobbies, relationships, life...it all fades into insubstantiallity. All that matters is the bed, the alarm clock and the blanket.

Well, at least I'm warm now, sitting in the bus with my trusty laptop on my, well, lap, tucked in my headphones, hat, coat and sweatshirt. What gets me through the day is the vision of my bed I will be returning to in the evening.

This concludes my first 2009 dated and fairly pointless post. Surprised that I didn't mention the Christmas and New Year's Eve? Yeah, well, just you wait for it. Much like everything else right now it's faded into insubstantiallity ;)

Adam

The sad life of a college freshman

This is a sad era for Adam the Klocperk. Days pass by, one by one, all the same shade of grey, boring and interchangeable. Mind you, this is not the early winter and downfall of public greenery talking, I suspect my new lifestyle to be the underlying cause.

When I look back at my high-school studies, I envy myself so much it actually hurts a little. I was so young, carefree, easygoing, had so much time on my hands, whole life in front of me... Now I'm an old fart with little humour, declining physical condition, average academic achievments at best and an empty flat to sleep in. But the motive for me to write this post, besides the uncontrollable urge to whine a little, was the lack of diversity in the days that I manage to live through.

My time consists of attending lectures paying variable amount of attention, attending seminaries trying to get the most bang for my actual presence, hours spent in the public transport, studying at home, wasting time in front of the computer calling it "rest", too sporadic meetings with my girlfriend, ravening whatever food is currently the easiest to prepare and finally the highlight of almost every day, sleep. This life is now measured from one anatomy test to the other. This is not life how I imagine it. This is simply spending the hours we were given hoping that something better will come along in...around 15 years.

One of the initial sparks that ignited this fire of disgust, nudge that pushed me down the slippery slope of hating my life may have been the new movie "High School Musical 3: The Senior Year". I have not seen it yet, but Eva is as I'm writing this post. She, as you all know, is also in the senior year, graduating this May. I've realized these days of my life are gone now. I'll never again be a high school senior. Movies won't be filmed about me. The amazing fun all the characters are undoubtedly having in that flick is now gone and I won't experience it anymore. Man, did this revelation suck.

True, I may be a little more mature now, more self-dependant and generally somewhat more "advanced" in life, but is this the advance I want to go through? Might it not be the case, that the true advance is towards what people like doing the best – having fun, friends, sex, making money, doing sports... The moral still is: I'd trade my high-school years for this anytime.

How do you feel, are you as disillusioned as I am? Would you too prefer being in high school? Does seeing how much fun others have make you feel so crappy as it does to me?

Loved talking to you lot,

Adam

Whatever shall we do with old people?

OK, an idea occured to me just this morning as I was waiting for the tram. There were too many old people around. Yes, that might sound a little too harsh, but it really got me thinking about how our society works and what can we really expect from the future. More than one half of all the people at that tram stop were seniors, quite obviously not productive and working anymore. Now, we spend on average 45 years working and 35 years leeching on the society in one way or another during the course of our lives. The first twenty are quite fair, in my opinion – your parents feed you, clothe you and take care of you directly, thus being able to see what happens with their money and all in all being quite content with it. Most importantly, though, those years have a reason – you're being trained how to function properly in the society you're going to live in. Not much anyone can do about that, to be honest. Perhaps make school a bit more intense or something, but that's about it. The last 15 years of your life, however, say 65-80 years of age, you don't really have an excuse for yourself, do you? While your skills might remain the same, the amount of work you'd be able to accomplish diminishes rapidly and its quality deteriorates at a saddening speed and there's no real future for you either – not exactly a promising outlook. So, if you have no expecancy – unlike the 0-20y.o.'s – you should be either doing something in the present or live from what you did during your life. Here I seem to be reaching a conclusion of some sort. We should either abolish taxes that fund pensions and leave people work/save up for themselves. Or we should make pensions scale directly with the salaries the person had during his/her life, as to accomodate some mechanic of fairness – who did more and better work during his life should be better rewarded in his old age. This, of course, would require salaries to be just indicators of the real VALUE of the particular job, which, frankly, is far from the case. Then again this would require someone to judge the importance of individual jobs and that is dangerously close to playing God. Seems like my reasoning reached a dead-end here J

Guess my point is, that I dislike the idea of paying high taxes just so that a bunch of old chaps and chappettes can goof around on a shitty pension (seriously, 6,5k CZK or how much it is, that's a spit in the face) for a couple years. I think we should probably abolish the taxes and let people save up money for themselves. Yes, Honziq and other lefties will spout sulphur about how everyone should have the same pension, but that's nonsence. If you sucked during your productive age, you're likely to suck in your fall of life and there's no reason why the society should give you the same amount of money as to someone who did better.

This argument is very flawed, but I have a lecture right now and need to end it. Might finish later.

See you guys around.

Adam

Hello, dearly beloved

Hello, dearly beloved.
This entry might get a little long, so you’d do well to bright a cup of tea, perhaps a slice of cake, blanket to warm your legs or a cat to pet in your lap while you’re reading. Inspired by Daněk’s blog (http://waste4noreason.blogspot.com) in which his author presents existential topics with the skill of a seasoned essay writer and makes them look witty and interesting at the same time I decided to stitch one of these together myself. Sadly enough, the read will be much less tasty. But it will be in the Swan’s own language.
I’m sitting in a one-and-half-person bed, wrapped in sheets and surrounded by cushions on all sides. I also feel like crap. This is one of the things that suck oh-so-very-hard about living by yourself. There’s noone to tell you „Man, you look sick, go lay in bed some and I’ll fetch you some Coldrex from the pharmacy“ or something, offer consolation and prepare a bucket next to the bed. Even though I completely kicked ass this morning during the beach volleyball practice, I’m now quite certainly ill. I remember once in Oundle I had a flu. I didn’t know about it, I was just a little tired and woozy. It took my Gov. & Politics teacher telling me to go to the sickbay to make me break the school routine. People say doctors are the worst when diagnosing themselves. I concur.
But I have to say, it’s mostly nice to live by my own. I get to decide what’ll be for lunch, I get to buy the food (while I do not enjoy spending money, I love the feeling of acquiring a tasty piece of something I can eat without a moment of hesitation afterwards), I get to decide when’s the bed time, I get to hide from everything in my bed listening to music and there’s noone to disturb me, I get...lonely, from time to time. Luckily enough, I’m now living a romance of some sort which I’m quite thoroughly enjoying, hence I also get to have a free appartment whenever I want to have the girl come over. That’s nice, yes, it is.
Back on the track. The school’s successfully „offblasted“ (as Vladko would say) and is keeping me extremely busy. I study all the time and whenever I don’t, I think about how I should be studying instead of whatever I’m doing. Unfortunately, even with all this effort I don’t find enough time and energy to allocate evenly among the various subject we’re being taught. 90% of the time I study anatomy. The remaining 10% are stretched among histology, latin and some biochemistry.
Ugh, my stomach hurts. And I’m cold. This might be flu, but I’m not experiencing the neck-muscle ache which is a trademark of the classical flu...
Aaanyway, I’m quickly losing my will to study this hard. We all know the prospects of a young wannabe doctor – 6 years lost in med school, the hardest field of study around, 4 years of acquiring the attestations, low salary, night shifts, being a slave to the patients... This may not apply to ALL of the medical branches out there, but it does to those I find interesting – urgent medicine and with the exception of low salary also surgery. Now, people say „Your fault, you shouldn’t have gone to med school, you knew what it’d be like“. Yes, they are right. I was warned and what I’m experiencing now is vanilla ice compared to, say, pathology. Still whenever I stop for a while and think about what I’m doing and where am I going, I’m terrified. Much like Dan I ask myself „What do I want to do, where do I want to go?“ and I’m finding that my current life is not the answer. Still, I think I will simply and blindly push on and hope for the best.
Seriously, my insides feel wrong and I’m shivering.
Also I’m experiencing a streak of low-confidence induced/inducing events. Bowling with my family and my dear’s family this Saturday I didn’t even score 100. ONE HUNDRED! I usually get over 140. Also, I feel fat. The scales at my parents‘ showed 78kilograms, my all time maximum. My headset appears to be having some technical difficulties. And I’m sick. And I write a test tomorrow for which I planned to revise today, which I can’t do as I am now. And there’s no way I’m going to memorize the 150-200 latin words along with their declinations for this Wednesday.
Unless I want to delve deeper into my love affairs – which I don’t, at least not here – there’s not much else for me to write about. I wish I could just go throw up again to ease the poor sac of meat that calls itself my stomach, but I fear there’s nothing left in it. Apologies for the oral diarrhoea and various disgusting lines and references.
I’ll be back in a day or two. Stay tuned.
Over and out,
Adam

Matriculation

So I was officially accepted into the ranks of academics and can wreak havoc on the reputation of such a well-established institution as Charles University undoubtedly is. Oh, by the way, it will be commemorating its foundation's 666th anniversary the year I get my title. How timely.

I must say, the event was not as comical and meaningless as I thought it will be. After one failed attempt to commence the ceremony (the organ started playing, we all rose and were quite solemn only for the music to be stopped without any warning mid-beat and us all being told to sit down and wait a bit longer after about a minute of silent waiting) it went rather smooth.

As the music played and professors in stylish black robes and hats strolled in from behind I was moved. While the university's anthem sucks donkey balls, our national one is cooler than it used to be. We all touched the head of the vice-chancellor's staff (pretty shiny, but his outfit could use some update - bright red gown with white ermine and squashed hat was funny, if anything) and shook hands with our dean taking vow not to...I already forgot what.

It turns out that us young medical students can tell right from left - we were clearly instructed to touch the staff on the left first, THEN shake hands with the dean on the right. Of course, the first person got it wrong and noone had the balls to change the precedent.

One last thing - the spoken English of the professors (dean, the secretary or god-knows-who and others) is apalling, simply apalling. They said a few words to the foreign students and boy, was I ashamed of them. Pearls such as "change in 180 percents", "fulfil a promise" where "make a vow" was intended were on sentencely basis. Then again, who am I to criticize. My Latin is awful, as is my German.

Be back for more updates later.

Adam

P.S.: I'm doing this so that I have an excuse not to study, because whenever I huddle with a textbook in my bed I fall asleep. Studying outside bed is out of question, it's far too uncomfortable.
P.P.S.: The weather is terrible, it should really get a grip.

Blog CPR

Hello lads and ladies,
it's been some time.

As I was walking from my parent's to my appartment just minutes ago, showered gently by tiny droplets of cold water falling from the sky and thoroughly enjoying the cold and fresh air, I decided that holding a housewarming party wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.

I know, I know, I'm not much (or any, for that matter) of a party person, so it seems a little weird. True, I'm troubled by numerous things. Will people enjoy themselves? How many should I invite? Should I think a lot about the entertainment I and my place will be able to provide, or just leave it up to the visitors and booze? Those are just a few things that race through my head right now.

I was thinking of inviting many different people that don't usually meet each other - or know each other at all! Some of the BS crew (well, most of it, if not all), some of my other ex-schoolmates, some of my new schoolmates, some of Eva's surroundings (and her as well, of course)... It might be interesting to see if some of the people click together. What do you think, is it too much of a dangerous risk?

The date is not set in stone yet, nor is it set in anything else. I was thinking Friday night, because - you know - that's when the best parties take place. 31st might be the day, who knows. When would you lot like to come?

In completely unrelated news, I learned today, that I'm a proud owner of not just one, but TWO vaginas! They are called vagina synovialis musculi bicipitis brachii capitis longi. Yes, all that. And I have two.

Also, I'm beginning to like it here. Might be thanks to the weather, which most people find horrible and depressing - yet I find it, in its own peculiar way, strangely invigorating and fresh. I like cold weather and now it makes me appreciate my comfy appartment even more, so it's a win-win.
The only downside now is the trip to Točník. I want to be there and I promised a great many people that I would see them there. But I don't want to get smashed too much, as I write my first anatomy test on Tuesday and need to study for it quite a bit, and if the weather keeps up, it won't be pleasant AT ALL. Especially because I don't intend to go by car and therefore I would need to sleep in a tent - much less comfy than a car, believe me. Oh, and by the way, the forecast says it will be below zero on Saturday morning. Joy.

I might even go vote tomorrow. As much as I'm ashamed of it, I will admit one thing - I had to ask my parents who to vote, because I haven't been paying ANY attention to the political scene lately.

Awright, this was the adrenaline injection for my beloved blog. Peace out, suckers, and get Facebook accounts y'all!!

See you in the afterlife,
Adam