How does the skin feel after derma rolling

I used 0,3mm roller on a small patch of the face and another patch on the body, for comparison. There are no marks on the skin visible but in both places the skin feels a bit irritated. It feels like after having put your hand into a cactus pot that has those very fine needles that you're later trying to take our but you can't find any. Ah so that's how a tiny punctures in the skin feel like! Fascinating :) it's been one night and the sensation is this still the same.. I guess until it stops I should be careful with it..

[Update]

So after a few days I tried it on the face. Same sensation but it was gone after 1+ day. After that the skin was a bit redish, and after it it became kind of.. thicker.. at least when I touch it I feel it less.. not exactly what I was looking for.. I have the impression that all the impurities became even more pronounced since they are sticking out more.. will wait some weeks to see if there is any other improvement, but regarding wrinkles or skin pores - no difference so far.

Meditation and Vipassana is not magic!

I do not quite like it when people refer to meditation as "new age bullshit", or accuse people who say it works of magical thinking.

When you go to a doctor, he prescribes you pills, and you believe that those pills will work. Why do you believe it? Because one person - the doctor - said so? Because there was a research done that proves that those pills work? Who told you there was a research done? People on the Internet? And you believe them? Why? Is it about sufficient amount of people before you start believing? Why don't you then become a Muslim or Christian - is there not a sufficient amount of religious people around? Or is it maybe about what the most people around you believe in?

I say until you study medicine and do the research yourself, all you can do is magical thinking that goes like this: "for some reason it works even though I don't know why". Then why is a person who says "I don't know why meditation works but it works" is accused of magical thinking and being silly?

In the end there is nothing mystical or magical in how meditation works. The basic technique of focusing on your breath - is simply an exercise drill in the ability to focus. It's focus training, nothing else! And it is not exercising staying focus, it is exercising bringing the focus back, and not understanding it is why many people give up on meditation thinking that they cannot stay without thoughts running through their head. Almost no one can. When you do muscle training you do not progress by trying to keep them flexed for maximum amount of time, you usually train them by doing repetitions. This is what the moment of bringing the focus back is - a repetition. The more times you bring the focus back, the better you become at it. The easier and faster you bring the focus back to what you are doing in your life, the more of your life you will spend in a focused state. And it goes without saying that a living in a focused state makes your life better.

Why focus on the breath, not something else - breath is the only thing in our body that we can do both voluntarily and involuntarily - you can control you breath, but when you stop you will not stop breathing, the body will take over. Therefore focusing on breath is especially efficient as it makes you constantly balance between two polarities: you do not want to go into doing mode and focus on controlling your breath, at the same time you don't want to go into watching mode where you space out like in front of the TV and start thinking about something else. It's simply tricky enough, and as a bonus it forces you to make some contact with your body (more about it below). And your breath is always with you, you can use it any time.

And now about how Vipassana works, the technique that comes from Buddha. Religion aside, the 10 day courses of Vipassana are nothing more than putting you in a very extreme and difficult prolonged situation (similar to a prison), where yes it is fucking hard to fulfill the expectations you had towards yourself when you joined. It's a set up for a failure. And of course in that hard situations everyone will freak out, and everyone will freak out in their specific ways, and of course it is your personal stuff that you would rather not deal with that will come up. And since you are not allowed to interact with people there, you are not allowed to read or write, you are not allowed to use any distractions, you are forced to actually deal with your emotional shit. And since all happens in a controlled almost sterile environment, where they even feed you, it is much easier to do it than it would be in a real stressful life. That's how people go through "spiritual transformations" in those courses. This "spirituality" is nothing more than ability to look into yourself, know your shit and deal with it.

I think that the actual Vipassana technique works in different way and - just as they say in the course - it is unlikely that someone will get a real benefit from it just after 10 days. So what is Vipassana - it is a kind of body scan. As it is now known to science, there are two kinds of long term memory - the explicit memory in hippocampus - a kind of registry of past events, as well as implicit memory - that is the way your whole body has been affected by your life. People have car accidents after which their body posture changes - the trauma gets trapped in the body. So what does body scan do - it brings the awareness to what is in the body, so that again - you can deal with that shit. As a bonus, you gain more awareness of your body, which lets you know far in advance when you are about to freak out or say or do something that you would regret and gives you a possibility not to do it. Yes, our body is a part of us! Something many people forget. Emotions start in the body, not in the head. They should really teach this in school.

Now why all this religious stuff around meditation. Well, this is where it historically evolved. And I think what is the other benefit of it is that it is easier to be brave when faced with your emotional shit when you entertain the possibility that there is a higher meaning behind it, that there is an entity that wants you to do it, that will guide you. It is simply the trick to believe that you can do it before you start trying - which, as we know, is super important for the outcome.

Vipassana in Pushkar, India

I have attended and completed (!) a 10 day Vipassana meditation course in Pushkar, India. Before going there I was of course looking for information and other people's impressions, so now I'd like to give something back and write about my experience. I will not describe what Vipassana is about as it can be all found on their website (www.dhamma.org). I want to write about two things: the centre I have been to (since myself when going to do Vipassana in India I was very concerned that I don't end up in some shabby place), and my experience in connection with what kind of person I am. Many people write about their experiences and they vary a lot, but it is out of context of what kind of people they are. For someone considering to attend a Vipassana course this context is important in order to appropriately judge whether it is something for them or not.

The Pushkar Vipassana centre

The centre is located close to a town Pushkar, which is in Rajasthan, a part of India that is very popular among tourist. Rajasthan is located a bit on the north side of India, and it is a desert area. That means hot days and cool nights. In January that means warm fresh days and cold nights.

Location. It's not located very conveniently for accessibility, we took a cab there and that was probably the best choice. It's a bit on the outskirts of a town. On the way back we adventureously took a bus to Pushkar (which stops right in the centre), which was an.. interesting experience. But nothing tragic or not even bad :) just crowded loud and shaky. They also can organize a cab for you if you wanna go back by cab.

Facilities. Of course basic, but not dirty. We were supposed to clean the accommodation ourselves before leaving, I kind of left it a bit cleaner than I found it. The bed has a mattress, also thick heavy blanket. Small flat pillow. We got clean bed linen. I needed a sleeping bag in addition to the blanket though (of course there's no heating). They are tiny houses with 2 beds and a private bathroom in each. I was lucky enough to be alone in mine, only two girls out of around 10 had to share a room (how do you share a room when being forbidden to communicate? According to our course organisers "surprisingly easy", luckily I did not have to verify it :p). It's important to note that all the buildings were built with the intention that they stay cool inside. Stone floors, high ceilings, probably isolated roofs, windows pushed a bit "in" so that they get no sunshine.. As it's possible to imagine in January with 9 degrees at night it was not exactly optimal. The meditation hall got enough warmed with the bodies of participants though. There is a place on the door handle to lock it with a locker (if one brought one), there are mosquito nets in the windows, and there is warm water, from sun batteries. There's a fan on the ceiling, electricity, even a power socket.

The meditation and me

Was it worth it? Definitely yes! But I was quite surprised to find out at the end of the course that few people (aka women, as men and women are separated, so I didn't speak to men) shared my opinion. That is what inspired me to write about my experience in the context of what kind of person I am.

Discipline and tough work. The course is difficult. Every day 10 hours of staying focused, interrupted with few breaks. The longest meditation segment is 4 hours, only with 5 minute breaks, which is barely enough to take a pee (drinking water and taking a pee become an issue to be scheduled btw). Getting up at 4am. Such regime is hard both physically and mentally. This meditation is about doing tedious mental job, and it is tiring, and it is not rewarding. You hear all the time "work patiently, patiently and consistently", and yes this is what you do, minute by minute. You need a lot of inner motivation. Determination. I think I am kind of good with that. It's not that it was easy for me, it was super hard, and for last two days I felt like mentally puking with it, but I knew I can make it till the end. Before my knee accident I used to do jogging 10km and I also ran an (unofficial) half marathon twice, and while the first days felt like 10km runs, the 8th and 9th day felt like mental half marathon. And how one other (dissapointed) person put it at the end "Sometimes you do this enormous effort, like climbing a big mountain, you are sweating and sweating, and everything hurts, but then you get to the top, you look at the view and you know it was worth it. This felt similar, except the last part.". Yes that is what I mean about being not rewarding. Do not expect a feeling of achievement, there is no immediate results. If you usually motivate yourself with expecting a feeling of achievement then you may get very dissapointed unless you change your attitude for Vipassana. Actually Vipassana is exactly about not expecting anything, not craving anything. Let me add one more thing, it is not true that being not a super disciplined person makes it useless for you to go to the course. I guess everyone does as good as they can. Also the fact that you are not allowed to speak with other people but you see them doing well motivates you not to give up. You will actually work much harder than you thought you were able to. But at the end of the course you will not be relaxed. You will be exhausted. But it is the good kind of being exhausted.

Perfectionism and overthinking. This would be a big trap for me, but luckily I read about it in some other Vipassana blog post (thank you someone!). Having perfectionistic attitude is very bad when it comes to Vipassana (is actually bad in general ;)). And also, having this attitude plus knowing that having such attitude is bad (just in order to be more perfect) is still not the point :D As Mr Goenka put it in one of the lectures: "If a house lady wants to wash a piece of clothing, she takes a soap, rubs it into the clothes, and the clothes get washed. She does not need to know about the chemical reactions that occur between the dirt and the soap, she does not need to help those reactions happen. She is just doing a simple activity of rubbing the soap, without caring about how the soap works. That is what the soap was invented for, so that anyone can use it". Exactly same with Vipassana. Just follow the instructions. This technique is made for "an average intelligence person", and is supposed to work just by applying it. One does not have to understand it inside out. And next, it is also hard to keep away from the perfectionist trap. Seeing other people, imagining how well they are doing, comparing yourself to them, even comparing yourself to yourself from 1 hour ago - all dangerous. Any act of evaluation of oneself is already bringing a judgement into play, one of the attitudes that should be avoided. It's hard, as of course you always want to know how well you are doing, where you are on the scale of progress. Just like you want to know how much time is left until the end of meditation hour. Patience, patience and tedious work. Not craving anything.

Not being allowed to speak to anyone (except the teacher or the course helpers). I loved it! No stupid small talks like "how are you?", "how was your day?". Seriously, I hate exchanging such superficial bullshit. And because our days were completely filled with agenda items, if we were allowed to talk, such stuff is all we would be able to speak about. For me - perfect! You get a chance to socialise on the 10th day anyway, so it is not that you will not have a chance to exchange your experiences.

Fear of religious stuff. Many people get suspicious when it comes to anything that is connected to religion or spirituality. I am not sure why that is, but since I was brought up Catholic, I have nothing against people believing in things and telling me about what they believe in. I am not afraid that someone will brainwash me. I do not think that it is so easy to influence my thinking, if I did then I would be more concerned about that than anyone religious or spiritual talking to me. Even though Vipassana is told to be non sectarian and totally religion agnostic technique, you do hear about Buddism beliefs as well as other religions during the evening lectures. Some people could get freaked out by this, or just simply shut down. I liked what one girl said "I am not afraid of fanatic people, I just listen to them and I take what I want, and the rest I do not take". I have a kind of similar attitude. Not that anyone was fanatic there, I'm writing it just to make my point. Also the morning chanting could make someone conscious, but same here, I do not see why I should be concerned. When I now think about it, of course it was kind of obvious that we will hear about Buddism, in the end it is not that easy to separate the two, as the technique was invented in the context of Buddism. For me it was actually interesting to hear about this theory. I understandd it as the historical context. In the end if I ever get enlighted by any chance, and see what Buddha supposedly saw, then I can still change my opinion ;)

Listening to the evening lectures. This guy in the video (called Mr Goenka) really explains everything well. Some things he even repeats multiple times. Yet still I get the impression that some people just don't listen. Either they don't listen or they don't understand, or they don't want to understand. Even having read other people's blog posts about Vipassana I already see that some people do not listen to those lectures and fall into the traps that are mentioned there. Please, listen to the fabulous instructions. I know that they are a bit longish and the guy is not the most concise fellow on Earth, but still, he knows what he is talking about. And he is speaking from experience of teaching many people. He knows what mistakes people tend to make. I am a software developer and it a kind of reminds me of people who do not read the documentation and then are complaining about the piece of software being useless.

Benefits

What are the benefits of this whole affair. While some people write about being high or almost out of the body experiences (btw focusing on it is one of the traps), I think that the sensual or audio-visual experiences are really not that important. It is fascinating though what the brain can start doing when left on its own with minimal input from the outside for long enough time.

There are obvious benefits coming already from how the course is organised. Because you are not allowed to talk, read or write, you give away your mobile phone (!), you really have nothing else to do than focus on yourself. And you have all the time in the world for that. It made me realise how little time we actually have for it in everyday life. I would say it is close to zero. So, introspection, forced introvertism. And it is not that you start thinking about situations from 10 years ago, or you remember about how it was when you were a child, no. You actually live very much in the moment, you go to the meditation hours, go for lunch, take a shower, go to the meditation hours. But in the meantime you react to what happens outside you in your typical way (in the end there are still people around). And because there are no other distractions, your typical reactions are very exposed and clear to you. I became shocked to realise my typical reactions. It's making your problems very visible, as long as you are attentive to them and not get washed away with "omg this is so annoying why did I come here". Better pay attention. One can learn a lot about oneself just because of this.

Then, meditation. First three days is practicing Anapana, which is supposed to help you focus. I am a very "multitasking" person, and usually find it really hard to focus on what someone is even saying to me for more than few seconds. Sometimes I find myself having more than 1 train of thoughs at a time (or at least it feels so to me). These three days actually did make a change. The time of spacing out while watching the evening lecture got descreased from my typical 10-30 minutes to 2-10 seconds! Of course now, after 2 more weeks of vacation this effect is almost gone, but that is because I have not practiced it since then (still planning though, once I get into my normal week work rhythm).

Next 7 days we were practicing the actual Vipassana, which is about doing whole body scan, part by part, while keeping certain state of mind. A side effect of this was that I realised how small I am. I realised that being trapped in all my thoughts and projections about what other people think about me, I imaginerily expanded myself way beyond my physical body. When I entered a room I would imagine I take all the space of that room, while most of the people would not even notice me. Realising that you are only actually as big as your physical body takes away so much weight from you. It made me feel much lighter. Smaller. Humbler.

And now to the real effect of Vipassana. This is what the actual point of this meditation is, though I am not sure if I got that benefit yet. Purification of the mind. While you meditate emotions come to you and those emotions feel very familiar. You are supposed to acknowledge them but not react to them emotionally. I am not sure if what I experienced was caused by Vipassana, since every time I had those emotions coming they still came in response to some external event, though right after meditation. It happened twice, on the 7th and 8th day. And yes, both of those emotions were very intense and they brought up really deep negative beliefs about myself. I have been crying but without tears. Yes, I felt those emotions coming in waves. After the second episode I thought to myself "wow, now I feel like I felt when I was 23". I am not sure if those beliefs got eradicated now. When I think about them now they feel untrue to me, but maybe when I am in some very bad mental state I may still believe in them? The time will show.

Guilt versus abuse - completely unprofessional psychological theory

I remember the beginnings.. the moment when I went down the stairs, I was playing with my tooth that has almost completely gone out, and I was feeling.. this kind of weird-guilty mixture. As if the world became a bit darker. I remember noticing it and thinking that it is most likely just temporary mood and will soon go away.. or maybe was it was the fact that there was never enough light downstairs? - I thought. Or was it because my grandparents are old and will soon die? - I was asking myself. Or maybe it is in the end all about the tooth, because yea, it did feel a bit odd to be able to feel the bottom of the root with my tongue and suck the blood while later watching TV in my grandparents' bedroom.

But yes, what is this strange weird-guilty mixture? Isn't it the same feeling you get after someone else caused you harm? How bizarre is it to feel guilty after being abused, yet this is such a basic and universal human reaction, and it really amazes me how the world still seems not to have acknowledged it. Why do we feel the same way when someone does us bad as when we did something bad to someone? What if I challenge the concept by saying that the feeling which we call "guilt" is actually primarily felt when someone else hurts us, and we also feel it "extra" when we hurts someone else only because of empathy. Mirror neurones. Empathy allows us to feel what the other person feels after we have hurt them, which is.. guilt. Is it really not just the very same feeling on both sides of the action? Yes when you are hurt you may feel resentment, anger too - but aren't those just learned reactions? What does a small baby feel when it's abused? I think it does not feel resentment or anger, so it is likely that what it feels is: guilt. I don't mean here feeling guilty for doing something, I mean this weird feeling of feeling guilty in general, it feels a bit like having lost a part of oneself, forever. I think that as we grow, we learn tools to prevent ourselves from even getting there, we learn how to fight back, how to start an argument, how to blame, sabotage, and what not. But before that, when we are just children - we are defenceless, and - my theory is that - what we experience at young age when being abused is pure guilt.

So I was standing there, in my grandparent's hallway, feeling guilty and weird. And not, this feeling never went away since then. Slowly, over weeks, it started to change into a conviction that I must be faulty. Broken. Like, because something just literally broke. I used to be fine and then one day the world became darker, and it would never go back to how it was before.

The danger of being with a young guy

As of the year 2016. They are young, they feel powerful and have a vision for their life. They wanna shape it, they don't want compromises. They feel  enthusiastic. They feel entitled. They will not want to see fault in themselves, they will blame others, they will blame the world. They wanna choose. They will say "we don't match each other", and move on to picking the next one. Not because they are heartless, but because they still believe that they can shape their life. That they can decide on how the other person should be. That they have all the time in the world to find the relationship that will feel effortless and successful, just like they want to be successful.

Armenia and Georgia trip

We have two friends from Armenia, and one day there was this idea: let's make a trip to Armenia! The two friends we know independently from each other, and they got to know each other through me. We also decided to make a trip to Georgia while we were there. Initially I hoped that the main focus of the trip would be hiking, but since I had my knee injury, the focus shifted from hiking to eating. Both of our friends were in Armenia at this time, spending their vacation there. They said they will organise everything we want and show us around. But not everything what they said about Armenia was how we imagined it. I want to write about what really surprised me, and which things i found really awesome. I will also mention something about Georgia, though that was too little time to gain any cultural insights.

Khor Virap

Pride

Armenians are really proud of their country, of their culture, of their everything. That strucked me especially when I compare it to how Polish people think and talk about Poland. I could even say that this is a complete opposite. Also the behaviour of our friends confirmed this, and since they both work in IT field and are rather smart people, I could not attribute this to primitive instinct of belonging to a group (which some poorly educated Polish people show e.g. during football matches). It is also not the nationalistic kind of pride, more like a very strong sense of where they come from, where they belong, almost as if it was something sacred. On one trip we were told that the national identity of Armenians has always been very tightly connected with religion (as this is where apparently the first Christian churches were built), so maybe that is where my impressions came from?

People

People seemed nice. Of course it is a different thing when you are a tourist in a contry and you actually live there (I can say that especially after moving to Germany), but I cannot help connecting those impressions with what I already know about my Armenian friends. It seemed to me that people treat any other people with respect. I did not see any sign of "I am better than you" attitude, even in man-to-woman relation. That may of course just be only a superficial impression, or biased with the fact that I knew some people from there before. It was also visible that people are not afraid of being not perfect, which is again completely opposite to what I see in Germany. A street musician which sounded as if he just started learning to play guitar, or people singing terribly out of tune in Karaoke parties, dancing and having loads of fun there. I would say that this is way more healthy way of living, and I presume that because of this people there must be happier in general.

Visual taste

A hotel covered in blinking lights, making it look like a toy castle for a princess little girl. Casinos lit up with orange and light green colours. Flea market souvenirs with awful lot of flowers and decorations. Many times what crossed my mind was the word "kitsch", but I suppose that this is just the fact that it is another kind of taste that is foreign to me. But isn't it worth attention, that things like taste in visuals can vary between people, but when you think about music, what is out of tune is simply out of tune for everyone. I also learned once that the notes that sound good when played together sound good for everyone, because of how our brains are wired. It is interesting that it is not so when you think about visual art, especially as sight is supposed to be our primary sense. I remember the girls being amazed at one kind of jewerly where real flowers were sank in some kind of solid transparent medium, and I was thinking that even though the idea is neat, I would never wear something that looks like piece of transparent plastic with a dead plant as a bracelet.

The window of a stationery store..

Food

Since my recent idea of being a vegetarian I did not explore a lot of meat dishes, and meat seems to be main type of food in Armenia. Everyone, but everyone would immediately make jokes when they heard of someone being vegetarian, even the waiter. I did try some meat dishes though, and I can say again that the dish called "barbecue meat" is just awesome, and once I tried it, I do not see any point in eating meat prepared in any other way. Luckily, same kind of meat can be found in Munich's Georgian restaurant, it's a little pricy though.

Armenian barbecue at my friend's home

What I liked the most of all the foods that I have tried was a dish called "barbecued vegetables". Well, one of the mistake our friends made when presenting us Armenian foods, was calling the dishes by their name, for example not explaining that "BBQ vegetables" is not simply vegetables that have been put on a grill for some time, but they are special sort of vegetables, barbecued in certain way. And here it is: tomatoes, eggplants and peppers are put in fire until they are cooked inside and burned outside. Then the burned part is peeled off. Here, surprisingly the burned part is just a layer of the width of the vegetable skin, so it is actually not that much that is left out (I was lucky to help preparing it at my friend's house). Later, the vegetables can already be served, or they can also be smashed together, creating a kind of vegetable mash.

Grilled vegetables in Georgia

Does not look very inviting, but tastes just amazing. You can even feel a tiny bit of the burnt taste but without any bitterness. The whole dish is very juicy and the vegetables look as if they were sank in oil, but in fact it is only the vegetable juice. This dish has so much taste, that you could easily distribute it into 3 times the volume. Definitely the best thing I ate in Armenia and Georgia, and the next thing to do is to learn to prepare them myself.

Another popular dish is "kebab", but it has nothing to do with the kebab we eat in Germany (good that this semantic difference was mentioned to us by our friends :P). It can be made from any kind of meat, and to me it felt like a kind of cooked minced meat that is formed in something of a shape of a long sausage. I am not a fan of this dish, mainly because the meat feels very soft and loose, and this is simply not the way that meat is supposed to be. But I know that some other people loved it.

The remaining dishes, like khachapuri or khinkali can be googled of course ;)

Taking a taxi/car

Taxi is the main means of transport, also within the city, and it's cheap. And again, the semantic difference has not been clear to us. Taxi can mean both the car with a TAXI sign on the top, as well as a kind of private car which you order with a smartphone app. I am still not sure if the latter is a legally approved ways of transportation, but it seems that when people say "take a taxi" they mean this. Even the hostel ordered this kind of "taxi" for us to bring us to the airport.

Apart from taking a taxi, you can also take a car. But that does not mean renting a car, which apparently can be quite pricy there and is not popular at all. What it means is renting a car together with the driver. He will take you wherever you need to go, wait for you, and bring you back. And all is very cheap.

That said, it is interesting how getting to a nearby town becomes same kind of affair as going to the other side of the city. When one uses public transport, getting to another town has to be planned in advance, one needs to check the bus schedules, compare it with train schedules, compare the prices. Here you get into a car and tell them where you want to get. Not very environment friendly, but so convinient.

Traffic

At the beginning I did not quite understand what my friends meant by saying that renting a car and driving in Armenia/Georgia without prior experience of the traffic there (or other 'non-paranoidly-ordered' countries) is a sure way of getting into a car crash. Now I understand. Let me try to explain.

Firstly, it is not that people drive in a mean way, or agressively - which one may assume when somoene says that it is tough. They seem to always pay attention to all the other drivers and pedestrians, and whenever the have to slow down and make space for the other to compensate for their mistakes they do it gladly. People watch out for all other participants of the traffic a lot.

And they do it in order not to have to strictly follow traffic rules. The lanes are just a recommendation, the "don't overtake" signs are just a suggestion, moving your car to the side so much that one wheel almost drives on the grass is perfectly normal manouver, so that the car from the opposite direction can overtake another car next to you, on a two-lane road. Logical, isn't it :P Changing the lanes is also simple, you do not have to change them one-by-one, if you see that there is a passage opened, you just quickly drive across, and of course all other drivers will see that and slow down if neccessary. Indeed, huge room for cultural misunderstandings here :D

Also pedestrians.. I have seen two pedestrians crossing a road outside of a pedestrian crossing in the way that they got to the middle of it, and then stood there and waited for an opportunity to cross the second lane. All is good until now, except there was no grass or any other gap between the lanes. They were just standing on the white double line separating the lanes, in the middle of heavy traffic, and no one even bothered. The cars would just pass few centimeters behind and in front of them, and it seemed that this is a very normal way of crossing the street.

I would say this is a lot of trust for other people, and the traffic seems to function as whole, rather than a set of independent units. It is also less dummy proof, of course.

One more think, honking. Car honking is not just a way of expressing anger or strong disagreement, it is means of communication. They have this funny way of barely touching the wheel, quickly two times, which makes a very indecisive short double sound. From what I got, they use it to say hi, or just to say "hey, here I go, please watch out for me now". Even in Yerevan standing on a hill and looking at the city panorama we could hear the double short honk here and there. I am tempted to say it is almost cute :)

Georgia

The first thing we could say about Georgia was that the capital - Tbilisi - at least its center - is very beautiful and modern looking. Of course not without overwhelming amounts of blinking lights, but by that time we have gotten used to it ;)

Freedom bridge

Tbilisi at night

Cafe at the end of the cable car

The freedom bridge made the biggest impression, by its light effects, even despite looking like a huge snail ;) There is also a park with singing fountains and a caste on the top of a hill, with a cable car going there over the city. Definitely a great place to be for 2 days, but I am not sure how much there is beyond that. Also we could see that it is only the centre that has been strongly invested into, of course the other parts of the city look less stunning.

The food, the food is just amazing. It is hard to answer the permanent question of our friends "is the food better in Armenia, or Georgia, Georgia right?", as we have simply tried just a very limited sample of both. But yes, the restaurant we were taken to by our driver in Georgia was definitely awesome. And yes, the wine in plastic bottle I bought there for 10€ was finished during next 2 days :)

And that's it

I definitely want to go there again, both Armenia and Georgia, maybe best separately. The duration of this trip - 9 days - was definitely not enough. I want to go hiking there and sit in the nature. I want to visit some music/jazz concerts, for which we simply didn't have the time/energy. I would like to hang out with some local people, going to some local events or hikes. So simply feel the place, rather than rushing through with a camera in my hand. But for what we had available I think that this was a good overview :)

Being vegetarian - after 3 months

That has been much easier than I thought :) What I learned in last 3 months:

• self-made vegan (even not vegetarian) food can be super tasty, even without artificial flavours
• self-made vegan food does not have to be something complicated or following some fancy recipe - simply fry onions add peppers and then all the other vegetables that you have, add garlic, and lentils, peas or couscous; vegetables do taste awesome!
• if you add sunflower seeds to a salad, it becomes much tastier, and heavier (which is good in case you don't eat meat)
• there are meat grill replacements (other than grilled cheese), if you still want to attend barbecues
• in many Asian restaurants you can still order your favourite dish just ask them to make it without meat

I think I still eat too little protein though, my plans of eating more beans and lentils did not really work. I started to eat even less eggs, which does not look good combined with the above. I started eating couscous, but that does not have much protein either. I am adding sesame flour to muesli now, but that is not much (tastes good though).

Is it possible to find a flatmate for a walk-through room flat

I was asking myself the above question.. And the next question would be: even if I find someone, will this person feel good in such a setting, or will I find only desperate people..

Now I know the answer - of course yes, it's possible. It all depends on the cultural background, and on the person. There are countries where even sharing a normal flat would be unimaginable, and for others sharing a room is natural and even preferable.

So the conclusion is: don't listen to people telling you that something is not likely to be considered good by others even if you consider it good - especially if your live in a multicultural setting, where there's a variety of different people. People are in general so different that you can find all kinds of opinions, and all kinds of people, and for sure you can find people who are similar to you. Just be patient :)

"But why?" My subjective observations of German culture

I plan to put here my observations about Germans, but not stuff like "oh how can they use this kind of packaging for cheese", as I think this is not that relevant for someone who thinks of moving here. I want to put here such kind of observations about people that was exactly what I would wish to know when I was about to move to Germany.

Reaction to unexpected

I still do not know what is the motivation of such reaction, but in Germany it happens to me really often: when I say that I do, or did, or I am going to do (especially if it is about the future) something that is not common to do (around here), people will ask me "but why? why would you do that?!". And it is not only the content of the question, at the time of asking it they seem to be really unsettled by the fact that was just revealed to them. To me it feels that they are upset that I am about to do something that is not the mainstream thing to do, and try to stop me from that - but I am aware that this is just my impression, and the real motivation, or feelings behind it could be different. At the beginning it would make me feel guilty of doing things my way, and after some time - when I realised what has just happened - it would make me really really angry at those people. In the end I understood that this was all just my own reaction to their words.. but still I wonder, how it comes to that. I have been often pondering about it, and I think that the next possible explanation to me is that many people here are afraid of unknown. But, doesn't this explanation seem a bit too naive too?

I also noticed that something similar happens when they are able to somehow explain to themselves why. I say I am going to do that and that, they have this terrified face expression, and after a second they say with smile "ah, probably because of this and that", and then they go back to what they have been doing. While saying that "no, that's not the reason", I notice that they are at all not interested whether their explanation was correct or not. It is enough that there is one. And, btw, an explanation "because I feel so" is something totally incomprensible to them.

So maybe it's some national paranoia of fear of not having consistency in facts? Of needing to have cause->result pattern in everything they do or observe? A kind of mental framework, that, sadly, forces many people to think "in the box" throughout all their lives.

Trying to become vegetarian

Okay, about two weeks of hardly eating meat have passed. Once I told myself that it does not have to be 100% vegan, but also vegetarian, and occasionally even meat (when there are no other tasty options), it actually was not that hard. In the end I ate chicken soup once, and sushi maybe 3 times during this time. I also switched to soya milk completely and with no pain (the vanila one is super tasty, not sure if that healthy though:P).

But now, to the point.. I guess I should start watching what I eat, not to make my body lack some basic nutritional elements, right.. like.. protein? :P

Disclaimer: all pictures are from an awesome Polish page called Ile Waży (http://www.ilewazy.pl/). It tells you how much each product weighs and its nutritional value, together with a photograph of how much it actually is :)

Protein

So, how much protein do I need per day?

According to here, it should be "0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight", which means 47g for me. That is 325g per week. How much do I eat now?

Soya milk - let's say, I drink maybe 2 glasses of that per week. That, according to Google, is:

16g soya milk

Then, I also eat oatmeal with it, which in my case is maybe.. 100 gram of oatmeal, 4g of flax seeds and 4 gram of quinoa seeds per portion.. which is 13g + 0,8g + 0,8g = 14,6g per portion, so per week it will be:

29,2g oats

Getting close to daily intake, but I'm actually calculating the weekly one :D

Pasta, I must eat pasta at least 2 times a week, or maybe even 3 times. Accroding to this amazing Polish website, a portion of cooked pasta could be sth like 1,5 * 10,6g = 15,9g, which would be 3 * 15,9g per week, which is

47,7g pasta

If there is pasta, there should be rice. Also 3 times per week, that is 3 * 4,2g, that is:

12,4g rice

Great, what do I eat on other days. I guess half a pizza could happen at least once. Accodring to here, that could be sth like 65,7g / 2 = 32,85g.

32,85g pizza

Bread, maybe 5 slices per week. Again, looking it up, that will be 2,5g * 5 = 12,5g.

12,5g bread

Chocolate :D let's say one chocolate per week

6,6g chocolate

Sushi :) once per week, the regular size is 8 pieces, 8 * 2g = 16g

16g sushi

Sour cream, because whenever I eat out they must be adding it to anything that has a sauce like consistency.. so that maybe 6 spoons per week? this is 6 * 0,6g = 3,6g.

3,6g sour cream

Falafel, that would be, according to Google 13g, so:

13g falafel

Eggs, 2 per week, that is 2 * 6,3g = 12,6g

12,6g eggs

I did not know that there is such huge difference between pasta and rice regarding protein. Salads, beer and similar stuff I don't count of course :) In sum this is 202,4g. 325g - 202,4g = 122,55g is missing.

Let's see what would happen if I added meat on every day:

Chicken, 3 days: 17,5g * 3 = 52,5g
Pork, 3 days: 19,5g * 3 = 58,5g
Ham 3 days, 2 slices: 6 * 2,4g = 14,4g
And I should remove the falafel, as then I would rather eat chicken kebab, that is -13g.

Allgother that would be 112,4g. Pretty close to 122,55g, so it makes sense!

That means I am currently missing between 112 and 122,55 gram of meat per week. Let's make it 117g, to make it easier. That is about 17 gram of protein per day is missing, out of 47g.

Protein replacements

This blog seems to have neat overview of which protein types are neccessary in the body and frequently missed in vegetarian diet :) So, after removing the weird stuff and spinach (because they write everywhere how useless it is, containing self inhibiting ingredients), it seems like:

Egg white is source of all of the important proteins. Apart from eggs: sesame flour, sunflower seeds and kidney beans contain most of the important proteins, one protein is contained only in tofu or cottage cheese (out of the ones I found and consider available), one in sesame flour only, one only in kidney beans. Also asparagus and mozarella contain some random stuff.

I guess I could replace flour with sesame flour.. whatever it would mean. Sunflower seeds - that is easy, just put it in a salad (or eat alone:D), kidney beans - it is easy to add it to cooked lunch once in a while, I will have to find out how to prepare tofu (or start ordering it in a restaurant), and consider eating more eggs. Even though the poor chicken.. Okay, so:

100g of sunflower seed per week, hopefully I will find a pack that contains 100g or 200g. That is 24,4g.

24,4g sunflower seeds

Kidney beans, in this page the serving size is 256g, I guess it is ok, and that has 13g of protein:

13g kidney beans

Cottage cheese - let's start with eating one package per week, that is 22g.

22g cottage cheese

Eggs - let's add 1 egg per week, so now 3 eggs per week - that is an extra 6,3g:

6,3g extra egg

Extra egg sounds quite funny :P Sesame flour, I will buy it, and do something with it.. I don't know, let's say a glass.. I can eat pancakes each weekend.. oh that has a lot of protein!

71,9g sesame flour

I guess that would be it. Now I have extra 137,6g, I guess that is enough. Or more than enough. I guess I will not manage with the sesame flour every weekend, so every second weekend could be also fine (and more affordable:P) :)

Other macro micro somethings

I guess also other stuff than protein is missing in vegetarian diet. Let's just use this first Google search result page, it seems to be talking about the right stuff. Soo, that is:

1. Iron - okay, makes sense. They say I should not drink tea or coffee (great), and not eat spinach, nothing more useful. But here they have some list, good I will cook lentils, I like them :)
2. Zinc - eat soybeans, cashews, and sunflower seeds, wash stuff before eating (oh good that they pointed that out :P) - am already adding a lot of sunflower, I guess I could add some nuts to my oatmeal mix.
3. Calcium - since I would like to stop milk and milk product in some future, that could be tough. They say I could also eat "soy yogurt, tofu, beans, almonds, and calcium-fortified foods". Again, adding almonds to my oatmeal and snack mix.
4. Vitamin B-12 - well there's basically 2 things to do: buy supplement from pharmacy, and look for anything with B-12 on it while shopping. Got it :)

To sum up, what I need from there is: some pills with B-12 and iron, almonds, cashew nuts, lentils, and yoghurt (can be soy yoghurt).

Summary

So, it was not that hard :) I will try to go with the plan and in another few weeks I will try to research how much of each ingredient do I actually need. For now it is more important to include them in the diet, and get used to them. I think this way will be easier.

Mallorca trip

It's the second year I found myself booking last minute short trip in April. Again it did me good I think. The original motivation was to lie down on the beach for two days not giving a shit about anything. I learned something though - now it's still too cold to bear laying on the beach without actually wearing more clothes than just a swimsuit :D But instead I did a small overview of the island, by car.

Yes, the places that have palm trees can look like this too.. 

I don't think I managed to see the best of it (in the end I had just two days, and no time before to do the preparation), but at least I know some places that are not worth to go to.

There is nothing interesting on the southeast side for example, this one I could have skipped entirely. Maybe except a small city on the coast with a lighthouse, called Cala Marcal. I was lucky to see a very beautiful sunset there, with a lot of pink and violet (even though the coast is facing more east than west), but I guess that was just luck. The city seemed quite nice too.

The natural park Mondrago is on same side of the island, but the area around it consists of a net of very narrow roads with private properties around. Maybe navigating towards the park's tourist information office would have been better idea than brute force using GPS location of the geographical middle of the park :P I never got to the park, but it didn't look too promising, with all the fences around.. later I read on the Internet that it is actually almost completely privatized nowadays - well, that makes sense now :)

Mondrago natural park..

Cove de Drac - a cave. Oh yea, there are also caves on eastsouth side (acually many other sides too). Many of them you access from the water by boat (ahh that would be too much hassle for me), but that one was accessible forom the land. It was okay, at least it was warmer there than outside. But the classical music concert inside it, played by musicians floating gently by on a lit up boats.. that was a bit over the top..

Next stop, Castell de Capdepera. Just because it looked nice from far away :)

I forgot that looking nice from far away, will not look same once I'm there. But the panorama was ok too ;) And weather got a bit nicer, finally.

Next, I decided to check out the viewpoint marked on my map, between Cala Mesquida and Cala Torta beaches. And also check out the Cala Torta beach, as it seemed that there is no road leading there, only hiking path. On the way there was actually the first nice view of the coastline.

Cala Torta

Hiking trail markings

I also saw, for the first time, the real trash thrown by the sea..

The beach itself turned out to have a connection with the road (not marked on my map grrr), and actually there were surfers in the water. But almost impossible to stay on the beach without full clothing, because of wind, and well still not so high temperatures.

North side: Can Picafort and Alcudia. Finally the touristic places. Few years ago I we went on vacation with my mother and sister in Can Picafort, and I was struck by how much it felt like German speaking place not Spanish. Plus there was literally nothing else besides the main promenade along the beach and restaurants there (German speaking), as if the regular inhabitants of Mallorca didn't live there, didn't need to go out or simply have a beer somewhere. So I was curious to check out the nearby bigger Alcudia.

There is a lake in the middle of Alcudia, and actually it did look nice (if you didn't look at the shore that was full of seaweed).

The city was more Spanish sounding.. it's bigger, but still, of course touristic. It is dirtier. The food in restaurants is cheaper and there is more choice (maybe it seemed cheaper because there was more choice;)). There is more of those big hotels complexes with all inside, parks, minigolf, shops, restaurants, outdoor pools, slides, karaoke bars, etc.

I actually stayed in one such big hotel complex, as the last minute price for one night was the cheapest in the area. And that was, a disaster. Fist, no heating, as of course, this is for summer season, when all you could wish for was air conditioning. But not when the temperature at night is around 10 degrees Celcius. Second, dirty. They didn't even bother to clean it properly. Third, everything was old. Like 10 years old at least. Mouldy bathroom. White paint on the door became yellow already. Outside it was beautiful, but inside I had to struggle not to puke. Now I think that Airbnb is far better choice for Mallorca. It those huge hotels they can simply afford not caring.

The promenade looked a bit more modest there as well, though it was painted blue, which gave it an interesting effect.

To compare Alcudia and Can Picafort - Can Picafort is a bit of an artifical place, but it has high standard. It is neat and clean, and a bit overpriced. All you can do there is go to the beach and back, or buy an overpriced meal or drink at the beach. And everything is in German. Alcudia is more of a real place, but also loud and dirty. I think it would be best to stay in Can Picafort and travel to Alcudia from time to time (it's just ~10 km distance).

Ah, and in April the beach in Can Picafort was completely not maintained. I did not know how a non maintained beach looks like before, but now I can say: well it would not be possible to swim there, even for me :D

This is how an unmaintained beach looks like.
Full of.. something that looked like scobs mixed with seaweed.

Far the Cap Formentor - this is the place that is a must see, best during a sunset. About 30 km from Alcudia, it's a piece of headland that goes very high and very far into the sea, with a lighthouse at the end of it. There are many other lighhouses around the island, but this one is located in a realy good spot.

I did not make it to the lighthouse before the sun was gone, but I presume that the view on the lighthouse (well, direction of the lighthouse at least) must have been better than the view from the lighthouse itself. There was also one path up from the place where I took the photo, to some kind of fortification, and I think that place must have had the best view - but it was simply too late at the time I arrived. It was actually funny to see all the people arriving late and running towards the viewpoint, hoping to see at least a bit of the sunset. Many of them were too late :P

The way up there is not the easiest, it's rather steep and on the way back I saw a rock falling off the cliff right in front of my car. But it was definitely worth it :) Pity I didn't arrive a bit earlier.

West side and Sóller. I read on some webpage that Sóller is the home for hikers in Mallorca. And I should have probably arrived there ealier. Many hiking routes start from around there, and they are actually marked, marked in the way you would expect a hiking route to be marked :D It was crazy to park the car there, apparently the infrastructure does not follow the people's interest in the place fast enough.

Coming back from the hike, some cars have gone

The views were cool: mountains plus sea next to it. Plus those funny kind of trees that made the mountains look as if they were covered in some kind of green cotton wool pads.

I managed to do only 1/4 of the whole route as the day was ending and I had to return the car. But I am sure the views would be amazing from top. As it turned out later, I was also doing this hike with ruptured cruciate ligament in my knee. I was happy to get into the car where all I had to do with my lelt leg was moving the foot occassionally.

I am actually happy I did this trip, there will be not many trips now, after the knee surgery :D

the atheist's argument

the atheist's argument: "if me, who is thinking, concluded that there is no God, then those people who claim that there is one, must not be thinking". can you spot a logical mistake here?

i recently spoke with a friend who is atheist or agnostic (i still mix those up) and asked what would she do if her kid, raised without religion, would choose to become a member of religion. the answer is she would be fine with it, but she would not be happy about it, and consider it her failure as a mother. where is the freedom of choice here? how is this not different from what the members of a religion are constantly accused for? how is that not brainwashing?

it is not religion which is making people do bad things. it is people. people are bad, selfish and egocentric. and they want that others agree with them, no matter on which topic. this discussion about religion is like discussing color of someone's hair when they are getting behind the wheel drunk. it is simply not the point. if there was no religion people would find something else to fight over. maybe the color of the hair.

i just honestly don't care. the point is to be content with your life, without damaging the life of others. and how you do it i really don't care. and if you teach your kid to do the same that worked for you - i will say that's a very good idea, whatever it is. but don't think it's a disaster if they don't follow, if anyone doesn't follow. this is all so simple to me. am i an ignorant? if yes, then i can't even see why.

It's much easier to be in a one sided love, secretly.

About inequality and prejudice

I had this thought today and it stroke me. Maybe it's as simple as making the best of what you have been given. You are ugly, people think you steal because you were born in a poor country, people misjudge you because of your natural unfriendly face expression.. you are fat.. or you are a female software developer.

Yesterday I approached a group of guys on a software conference meetup, I had no make up and no mood for anything else than just having a beer, I wanted to get a bit tipsy and switch my mind off. Maybe to listen to some people voices and interact with them occasionally. So there is this group looking like they are having a relaxed conversation, and I am approaching them. As soon as they noticed me - puff, magic, the backs straightened, the eyesight started to nervously wander from the speaker to me and back, next one of them got a talk attack about some bullshit, the other desperately tried to interrupt, and after 10 minutes of trying to follow whatever whoever it saying to me I realized that a) I can't follow the conversation b) the whole "relaxed" atmosphere went to hell, and the level of the conversation below it. And of course, finally, just to finish me up, came the awaited question: "so what are you actually doing here (at a software conference)? Oh really, you are a software developer??".

And at that point I could get pissed off, like I usually do, and then I thought: ok sometimes you have a bit slower machine, but does it mean you should give up learning to program, sometimes a bit worse startup in life, does it mean you should give up learning and going to university, maybe your parents did not buy you a car and a house, does it mean you are justified to live under the bridge. Does it mean that something is not fair? I think long time ago I decided there are no unfair things, things are as they are, and it is up to the person involved to do sth with it. I was born as a female, yes, and it is up to me to learn to use the advantages of that, and avoid the disadvantages, or, simply, not give a shit.

Ignoring exceptions

I just wondered, is this clean code?

..
} catch(InterruptedException ignore) {}
..

I'm not sure, but I like it :D

The most reliable stain remover..

Stain?

 No stain! :D

Seriously, nothing else helped, even the special stuff I bought in the shop.. next time I won't waste my time :D

A thought about a dog that happened in a doctor's waiting room..

A dog without one leg jumping happily, why does it trigger this funny feeling inside us, something between disgust, hope, relieve and happiness.

Maybe because it means that even if something goes entirely not the way we wanted, we will still be able to be happy? And maybe we will not even remember how it could have been otherwise, as the reality in which we will end up well be the only reality we will know. Just like the dog does now.

So maybe it's also not that scary to bend your limits or accept things you were not willing to accept, or actually try to understand the other person's point of view, despite being afraid that this will change your settled views. Despite the feeling that you do something against yourself. Maybe a change, even if painful, even if at beginning it feels like we are losing or sacrificing something, maybe with time it will feel as good as before. Because we will know no other way.

Because, does it really matter which way it is? If it's the best one or second best or second worst? In the end it will be the only way I know, so why should I bother.

Some words of wisdom by me

Don't be what other people expect you to be, confront them with who you are.

Reactive programming vs reactive behaviour

.. such paradox