Christmas Holidays
2007-01-07 07:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rodoWhat follows is a very long entry about what happened while I was away during the holidays.
Well, my mother is not the youngest anymore – she will turn sixty in a few months. And she was never particularly good at dealing with new technologies. “New” in this case means anything younger than the radio. So my brother and I expected there would be problems once we moved out. And of course we were right. Before I came home for Christmas, my mother at least managed to get the internet fixed. With help, of course. It didn’t work because she told her super clever internet security program not to allow any access to the internet or something like that. And because the program was expecting her to know how to handle it, she could not fix it herself.
The TV and the heating, on the other hand, were not fixed when I arrived. The TV, as it turned out, didn’t need fixing at all. The receiver just wasn’t plugged in, so naturally my mother thought it was not working. On top of that, she managed to put it on stand-by somehow, and because she never quite understood the concept of “stand-by” she thought she destroyed the TV. It took me half an hour to figure out that the TV was working because I thought even she was able to look if everything was plugged in. Apparently, I was wrong. I really should have known.
The heating, at least, really wasn’t working properly. It hadn’t done so for a few weeks, but my mother only thought of calling my father’s old friends (he was a technician for heating and air condition) when I was about to come home. Before, she just added another four or five layers of clothing if she felt cold. The heating just needed a new regulator. Or should I say a new old regulator, because there are no new pieces available. And because my mother didn’t quite know how to buy something on ebay, I had to do it instead. The heating was finally fixed one hour before I left again. So through the whole holidays, someone had to go to the cellar and restart it manually every few hours.
On the morning of the 26th I woke up to the phone ringing downstairs. When I finally got up I asked who called.
B: Family. Thomas died this morning.
D: What? Of what did he die?
B: Oesophageal cancer. Didn’t you know?
D: How should I? Nobody told me.
Now, Thomas was a really nice guy. My cousin’s husband and one of the few people of the family I actually talked to. Willingly. But this is quite typical for my mother. We have a lot of these conversations. For example when I was away on a class trip and she drove me home:
D: Did anything important happen while I was away?
M: No.
A few hours later. My father enters the room.
F: Hey Doro, back again, do you want to see my new car?
It took me three weeks to find out that my father was diagnosed with diabetes because I was in Amsterdam at the time. He told me when I offered him some of my chocolate. It was similar when our neighbour died and when the birch in the middle of the garden had to be cut down because of a storm (I noticed the gap). In fact, this happens a lot since I moved away.
Now, on the 28th there was the traditional Schumacher family reunion. My brother and I decided not to attend. The reason was that the last fifteen times we were bored out of our minds. We spent the time taking a stroll through the village, regardless of the weather. Nobody wants to talk to us anyway, unless one counts the feeble attempts of Aunt Elvira and Eva (the wife of one of my mother’s cousins, I think), and the jokes about my choice of studies. Every year, my mother makes a diabetic-friendly cheesecake (a variation of my aunt’s recipe), and people don’t eat much of it because of the label. When she came back this time, my brother asked:
B: Did you bring back most of the cake again?
M: No, after all, there are more diabetics in our family every year.
B: Yeah? Who?
M: Frank.
B: Who’s that?
D: Isn’t that the one with the fat children?
M: Yes, exactly.
My brother remarked that I should not call them fat. But they are. We had to sit opposite them once for a few hours. But I am not surprised he does not remember, because our family is huge (I think I have 17 cousins, but I am not too sure) and nobody ever spends time with us. So it’s hard to memorize how you are related to whom and you always meet new people whenever you go to a reunion. An example:
B: How are we related to Maren anyway?
D: She’s our cousin.
B: A real cousin?
D: Yeah, Aunt Elisabeth’s daughter.
B: Wow, if you had told me she was mum’s aunt’s grandniece I would have believed you.
Personally, I would have rather believed that as well. I mean, who besides us ever met a third cousin. By the way, Maren is Thomas’ wife and Frank’s sister and his fat children don’t get along with their skinny ones. And that’s about all I know about them.
I got:
- Wisława Szymborska – Hundert Freuden (poems)
- The Lord of the Rings (the old German translation I wanted)
- Brokeback Mountain OST
- Gackt – Crescent
- Various Sweets
- Grave of the Fireflies DVD (German)
- A big map of Europe
- A ticket for The Departed
- Lisa See – Snow Flowers and the Secret Fan
- Jelly Beans
- Various Japanese manga that have not been delivered yet
- A book for drawing
- A cute candle
- Pencils, a rubber and a sharpener
- Earl Grey chocolate
Because I am a terribly lazy person, I did not do anything useful during the holidays. I preferred to watch movies or read books.
The Departed: We went to watch it on my birthday, and I so wanted to watch a film without a happy end. And I was not disappointed. Not that the end was terrible, in fact I quite liked it. But the best about the film were the characters, especially the ones who were not nice, which includes almost all of them.
Dil Se..: A Bollywood film with Shahrukh Khan. Not something I normally would watch, but it was two in the morning and the film was subtitled. That was probably the reason why I liked it so much. It was also quite controversial, I suppose, and not as… colourful as other mainstream Bollywood films. But of course there was dancing and singing and a foreseeable end.
Girl with a Pearl Earring: I love half of the films about history. I more or less hate the other half. So I was sceptical when it came to this one at first. But the rather simple story and theme, the lack of open emotion and the realism made me love it.
HMS Surprise: I not only love movies about history, I live the books as well. If they are well written, of course, and if the main character is not a Mary Sue. Patrick O’Brien can write and his characters have something real to them. They all have their faults and I can’t help loving them for it, especially Steven Maturin, one of the two main characters.
Ratcatcher: A book by James McGee. I read the German translation, and I am not sure if that was the reason I did not like it all that much. The story was okay, just like the characters, but all things considered the book was mediocre. But the translation… well, let’s just say it’s a bad thing the publishing companies try to save money by not using any editors. And if this book was read by an editor, it was not a very good one. Some things were translated word by word, and even though they were grammatically correct, it just did not feel right. And some of the typos… the best one was “Geißel” (scourge) instead of “Geisel” (hostage). I could not stop laughing for a minute after that.
As always, my birthday was spent in Bremen. I went shopping with my brother and![[insanejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/ij-userinfo.gif)
sevilemar, we ate sushi and last but not least we went to the cinema.
In the bookshop (we always go to the bookshop first) my brother and I were complaining about how we never find books we would like to read. He likes antiheros, and according to him, books with good antiheros are quite rare. And I currently like historical novels. But please without a female main character. For some reason most of them end up being Sues. But because most readers of historical fiction are women, a lot of writers write about someone they can identify with.
After the bookshop we went to Saturn and looked for CDs and DVDs. I bought Hunky Dory and a surprisingly cheap version of Dr Strangelove, and my brother did not find what he was looking for. But then again, he never does. I still remember how we looked for a The Streets (a rapper) CD. In the end, we found it in the world music section, next to some didgeridoo music. I will never understand their category system.
I also wanted/needed to buy new shoes because my old ones are falling apart. Most people underestimate how difficult it can be to find a good pair of new shoes even if your feet are totally average. The shoes I like are always sold out except for people with big or small feet.
New Years Eve was spent at home with my family eating fondue and playing Trivial Pursuit. After I watched Dinner For One, of course. I love Dinner For One. I know, most people my age think it’s boring to watch it every year, but I don’t. It’s tradition.
Normally, my brother doesn’t celebrate with us. He didn’t intend to this time either, but his friends decided to fly to London for a few days and didn’t tell him until a few days before. On my birthday he met some friends in Bremen and when he told them he was going to do nothing the next day, they looked at him as if he’d grown an extra head. Is it really so strange not to go to a party on the 31st?
Well, my mother is not the youngest anymore – she will turn sixty in a few months. And she was never particularly good at dealing with new technologies. “New” in this case means anything younger than the radio. So my brother and I expected there would be problems once we moved out. And of course we were right. Before I came home for Christmas, my mother at least managed to get the internet fixed. With help, of course. It didn’t work because she told her super clever internet security program not to allow any access to the internet or something like that. And because the program was expecting her to know how to handle it, she could not fix it herself.
The TV and the heating, on the other hand, were not fixed when I arrived. The TV, as it turned out, didn’t need fixing at all. The receiver just wasn’t plugged in, so naturally my mother thought it was not working. On top of that, she managed to put it on stand-by somehow, and because she never quite understood the concept of “stand-by” she thought she destroyed the TV. It took me half an hour to figure out that the TV was working because I thought even she was able to look if everything was plugged in. Apparently, I was wrong. I really should have known.
The heating, at least, really wasn’t working properly. It hadn’t done so for a few weeks, but my mother only thought of calling my father’s old friends (he was a technician for heating and air condition) when I was about to come home. Before, she just added another four or five layers of clothing if she felt cold. The heating just needed a new regulator. Or should I say a new old regulator, because there are no new pieces available. And because my mother didn’t quite know how to buy something on ebay, I had to do it instead. The heating was finally fixed one hour before I left again. So through the whole holidays, someone had to go to the cellar and restart it manually every few hours.
On the morning of the 26th I woke up to the phone ringing downstairs. When I finally got up I asked who called.
B: Family. Thomas died this morning.
D: What? Of what did he die?
B: Oesophageal cancer. Didn’t you know?
D: How should I? Nobody told me.
Now, Thomas was a really nice guy. My cousin’s husband and one of the few people of the family I actually talked to. Willingly. But this is quite typical for my mother. We have a lot of these conversations. For example when I was away on a class trip and she drove me home:
D: Did anything important happen while I was away?
M: No.
A few hours later. My father enters the room.
F: Hey Doro, back again, do you want to see my new car?
It took me three weeks to find out that my father was diagnosed with diabetes because I was in Amsterdam at the time. He told me when I offered him some of my chocolate. It was similar when our neighbour died and when the birch in the middle of the garden had to be cut down because of a storm (I noticed the gap). In fact, this happens a lot since I moved away.
Now, on the 28th there was the traditional Schumacher family reunion. My brother and I decided not to attend. The reason was that the last fifteen times we were bored out of our minds. We spent the time taking a stroll through the village, regardless of the weather. Nobody wants to talk to us anyway, unless one counts the feeble attempts of Aunt Elvira and Eva (the wife of one of my mother’s cousins, I think), and the jokes about my choice of studies. Every year, my mother makes a diabetic-friendly cheesecake (a variation of my aunt’s recipe), and people don’t eat much of it because of the label. When she came back this time, my brother asked:
B: Did you bring back most of the cake again?
M: No, after all, there are more diabetics in our family every year.
B: Yeah? Who?
M: Frank.
B: Who’s that?
D: Isn’t that the one with the fat children?
M: Yes, exactly.
My brother remarked that I should not call them fat. But they are. We had to sit opposite them once for a few hours. But I am not surprised he does not remember, because our family is huge (I think I have 17 cousins, but I am not too sure) and nobody ever spends time with us. So it’s hard to memorize how you are related to whom and you always meet new people whenever you go to a reunion. An example:
B: How are we related to Maren anyway?
D: She’s our cousin.
B: A real cousin?
D: Yeah, Aunt Elisabeth’s daughter.
B: Wow, if you had told me she was mum’s aunt’s grandniece I would have believed you.
Personally, I would have rather believed that as well. I mean, who besides us ever met a third cousin. By the way, Maren is Thomas’ wife and Frank’s sister and his fat children don’t get along with their skinny ones. And that’s about all I know about them.
I got:
- Wisława Szymborska – Hundert Freuden (poems)
- The Lord of the Rings (the old German translation I wanted)
- Brokeback Mountain OST
- Gackt – Crescent
- Various Sweets
- Grave of the Fireflies DVD (German)
- A big map of Europe
- A ticket for The Departed
- Lisa See – Snow Flowers and the Secret Fan
- Jelly Beans
- Various Japanese manga that have not been delivered yet
- A book for drawing
- A cute candle
- Pencils, a rubber and a sharpener
- Earl Grey chocolate
Because I am a terribly lazy person, I did not do anything useful during the holidays. I preferred to watch movies or read books.
The Departed: We went to watch it on my birthday, and I so wanted to watch a film without a happy end. And I was not disappointed. Not that the end was terrible, in fact I quite liked it. But the best about the film were the characters, especially the ones who were not nice, which includes almost all of them.
Dil Se..: A Bollywood film with Shahrukh Khan. Not something I normally would watch, but it was two in the morning and the film was subtitled. That was probably the reason why I liked it so much. It was also quite controversial, I suppose, and not as… colourful as other mainstream Bollywood films. But of course there was dancing and singing and a foreseeable end.
Girl with a Pearl Earring: I love half of the films about history. I more or less hate the other half. So I was sceptical when it came to this one at first. But the rather simple story and theme, the lack of open emotion and the realism made me love it.
HMS Surprise: I not only love movies about history, I live the books as well. If they are well written, of course, and if the main character is not a Mary Sue. Patrick O’Brien can write and his characters have something real to them. They all have their faults and I can’t help loving them for it, especially Steven Maturin, one of the two main characters.
Ratcatcher: A book by James McGee. I read the German translation, and I am not sure if that was the reason I did not like it all that much. The story was okay, just like the characters, but all things considered the book was mediocre. But the translation… well, let’s just say it’s a bad thing the publishing companies try to save money by not using any editors. And if this book was read by an editor, it was not a very good one. Some things were translated word by word, and even though they were grammatically correct, it just did not feel right. And some of the typos… the best one was “Geißel” (scourge) instead of “Geisel” (hostage). I could not stop laughing for a minute after that.
As always, my birthday was spent in Bremen. I went shopping with my brother and
sevilemar, we ate sushi and last but not least we went to the cinema.In the bookshop (we always go to the bookshop first) my brother and I were complaining about how we never find books we would like to read. He likes antiheros, and according to him, books with good antiheros are quite rare. And I currently like historical novels. But please without a female main character. For some reason most of them end up being Sues. But because most readers of historical fiction are women, a lot of writers write about someone they can identify with.
After the bookshop we went to Saturn and looked for CDs and DVDs. I bought Hunky Dory and a surprisingly cheap version of Dr Strangelove, and my brother did not find what he was looking for. But then again, he never does. I still remember how we looked for a The Streets (a rapper) CD. In the end, we found it in the world music section, next to some didgeridoo music. I will never understand their category system.
I also wanted/needed to buy new shoes because my old ones are falling apart. Most people underestimate how difficult it can be to find a good pair of new shoes even if your feet are totally average. The shoes I like are always sold out except for people with big or small feet.
New Years Eve was spent at home with my family eating fondue and playing Trivial Pursuit. After I watched Dinner For One, of course. I love Dinner For One. I know, most people my age think it’s boring to watch it every year, but I don’t. It’s tradition.
Normally, my brother doesn’t celebrate with us. He didn’t intend to this time either, but his friends decided to fly to London for a few days and didn’t tell him until a few days before. On my birthday he met some friends in Bremen and when he told them he was going to do nothing the next day, they looked at him as if he’d grown an extra head. Is it really so strange not to go to a party on the 31st?
