all hail vic

sometimes...

sometimes something so aggravating happens that you want to throw chairs and kick things and kill people.

i was informed a moment ago that somebody's folder in the common folder on our computers here at my school was invaded and a lot of the lesson plans contained therein were erased. this was undoubtably the work of the school's IT man.

i think i will have to put a bounty on his head.

he erased my entire folder containing hundreds of lesson plans dating back to my first week here (September 2003). of course, the lesson plans also happen to be my record of what i have and have not taught to each class. not to mention that if i ever want to teach the same lesson to a different class, i cannot now refer to my old lesson plans.

they're gone. bye bye. no more.

and i want to kill someone.

it's alright

so, in light of my most recent posts (which i will be temporarily removing), i just want people to know that i am completely over it. there ain't nothing there now. i think i successfully rejected the unavailable in favor of being friends - this is all just on my own part, of course, nobody else involved at all.

on a different note, i went to a beer tasting last night where i had the opportunity to sample some of the microbrews from around the Czech Republic. it somehow ended with us drinking champagne on the charles bridge at midnight. it was a great night overall.

i stumbled home at around 1 in the morning in the cold. right after i got home it started to snow like mad and now there is about two inches of snow in the parks around here - any snow that fell on pavements has already, more or less, melted... which means wet streets... which means icy streets in a matter of minutes, since it is now dark and the water will be freezing momentarily. i expect a few accidents tonight, for sure.

expansion

so, thanks to everybody who has written words of support, so far.

i thought i might clarify something without, unfortunately, being too specific.

simply put, the circumstances surrounding my current pining (and why i'm not acting on it) are too vast and unless something drastic happens in the next few months are quite unlikely to change.

i am not lacking in any confidence surrounding the situation. if the circumstances surrounding the issue weren't so complicated and vast, maybe i'd act on it. in particular, i have moral issues with one part of it - that which i've already explicated regarding having a current boyfriend.

nor am i dispirited. i quite understand that my mind is acting irrationally (by pushing her away). nor do i feel like i'll push people away in a romantic sense (or back to their old boyfriends) due to lack of confidence... maybe that was the circumstances before, but with my maturity has come the confidence, it's more a matter of where i apply it. this particular occasion does not warrant application or even thought of application because it's something i refuse to engage myself in.

in other words, i don't ask out that many people simply because i don't want to. i'm too picky, probably, and maybe one day i'll get over that. nor am i worried about my physical looks, as i know i'm attractive to many - i don't mean that arrogantly, i just tend to find out that people are attracted to me but typically the feeling is not reciprocal. as i said, i tend to be very picky, a problem which will probably continue indefinitely.

i know this was a vague clarification, but i hope you can at least empathize if not understand...

and for the friend who asked for pictures of more hot babes:

don't know much about blogging, don't know much about romance

well, amongst other things, i'm simply not encouraged to write. i guess i like an audience and when i feel like i'm typing to myself, i simply don't feel as much impetus to write. thanks to those of you who have posted comments in the past, but i think i'm just going to start cutting down on my blog entries because i don't a) want to type an entry asking for comments, nor do i b) want to make anybody feel obligated to leave comments.

it seems people only read this when i remind them of this. it kind of makes me feel like i'm trying to allow my friends to keep up with me, but they simply don't... and i don't hold it against them, either. a blog is like getting a mass e-mail, except worse. i never reply to mass e-mails because it's so impersonal and so i can imagine why others don't either. but by posting here, i don't even send people the text directly... so even the paltry few responses my mass e-mails elicited have been eliminated..

i mean, sometimes i'll get in touch with somebody i haven't seen in awhile and remind them of this blog. they'll read a few posts, maybe post a comment, and that's that. not until the next time i write...

plus, this thing probably ain't too interesting. as it stands...

on a different note, i'm reading Kenneth C. Davis' Don't Know Much about History and it is a nice easy way to digest history and set some things straight in my already crowded mind.

on yet a different note, i'm thinking ultra-psychoanalytically today.

it seems that i push away those that i might ever hold any romantic interest in. i know this because i'm doing it now. the opposite party has no clue, but i can tell i'm doing it in my mind.

whenever i'm told (by them usually) or realize that something will never work romantically with a girl, i immediately start to distance myself from the situation and thus the girl too. maybe i'm destroying perfectly good relationships - people with whom i could otherwise develop wonderful friendships. it doesn't matter if the obstacle is mental (on both our parts), physical or geographic, i want to distance myself (pun intended or unintended, you choose).

i'm currently finding myself rejecting somebody who i care tremendously about because i have recently developed a mental attachment to them - the worst part is that they don't know anything about it and probably never will. we'll just "fall" out of contact by silence on my part and it doesn't matter if they're in the same room or not.

and now i'm stuck. simply stuck. my current fixation is in its reaction phase - meaning that i'm at a point where i absolutely have no interest in seeing them. it's a protection mechanism - if i see her and spend time with her, i'll just fall in love again and then i'm going to have to go through this again. so my mind tells me that i have zero interest; it will be a big disappointment it tells me. i know better, i do. i really do.

and, in this circumstance, the obstacles are so great that i don't think there would ever be any possibility of anything anyway. but by thinking that, i just play it safe and i never give anything any possibility of success. but the current circumstances for my current situation provide me rationale enough to repeat the process. (to note: there is an obstacle this time around that makes me morally obligated not to interfere - a current boyfriend - even though i know that the feelings are possibly reciprocal.)

way back in high school, i didn't know jack about romance. i thought i did. i was wrong. i asked two friends out. they both turned me down. i can understand now why they said no. i was naive. i didn't present an attractive option.

now i know otherwise. girls have told me that they were attracted to me, but always after we're comfortably in "friend" territory. heck, somebody told me the other day that my ass looks good in this new pair of jeans i got over break... "but then you turned around and i said, 'oh, it's iain.'" but i'm way more confident now than i ever was in high school.

my reluctance to deal with my romantic insecurities is leading me down a path of transience and bachelorhood. i don't say 'loneliness' because i don't feel lonely. lonely, to me, means depressed about being single. certainly i do feel some nights would be better with someone to cuddle, but at the same point, i like my big bed and i like it being big, empty and all-to-myself.

i'm also not in a hurry. love will find me as much as i will find it. i don't necessarily need a girlfriend right now but i don't want to be 60 with a big, empty and all-to-myself bed. again, though, i'm not in a hurry and this is not a worry at the moment. it's something i merely wanted to make clear.

and why does this come up now? why am i writing now? this might make it apparent to some who might read this - i will, in a short time, be able to see said girl, for a short time. i don't want to see her and simultaneously be acting morose and ho-hum as it is against my personality type. i'm an optimistic, fun-loving person. so it's a little bit of a crisis for me at this point. i need to force myself over the hump of unconscious repression and let myself reform.

and, of course, i do and always will (probably) over-romanticize anything, everything and everybody. i am a dreamer, that's for sure.

on a related and less serious note, i was doing this bit on Ki Astrology with one of my classes (two students - Jan and Jana, there used to be another student named... Jan) and we calculated our own Ki signs. i came up as a number 3 soil sign. as i read the description it said that people are attracted to me because i have a "dynamic personality" and i questioned it out loud. Jana turned to me and said: "no, i think you do have a dynamic personality." is that why people would find me attractive? because i have a dynamic personality? i mean, i know i'm not a supermodel nor am i hideously ugly by any means... i don't know... something just struck as amusing about that. of course, i think astrology is bullocks anyway. yes, i just said bullocks.

here comes another monster!

so, i think i might finally be back in the Czech Republic, both mind and body. my internal clock finally decided to cooperate. after staying awake until 9 a.m. yesterday, i slept until one in the afternoon. i then stayed awake until 9 p.m., to a point at which i simply absolutely positively could not for the life of me keep my eyes open. so i slept until 6 this morning. i woke up and finished the last 100 or so pages of Johnny Tremain, had some breakfast, and watched some episodes of the second season of Quantum Leap on dvd. an all together unremarkable day today, i guess. plus, my class tomorrow morning was cancelled. so my preparations for waking up early tomorrow are all for naught.

anyway, now to the point of this post:

HAPPY NEW YEAR to one and all!

may this year be better than last... it certainly can't be as big of a disappointment as last year (see November 3rd for further reference), and it has the potential to be phenomenal (Iraqi and Palestinian elections come off without a hitch) or phenomenally awful (hitches).

last year ended on a horrific note, so let's hope that the aid that has so far been pledged to southeast asia actually materializes. it's not terribly well-known that the U.S. (GWB, in particular) pledged around a billion dollars (i think) to help Africa way back in 2002. they have yet to see a penny. i also read somewhere that a majority of americans think around 24% of the national budget goes to foreign aid, when in reality it is less than one tenth of one percent. maybe it's time for a reality check.

then again, maybe i'm too idealistic thinking that the entire world should be on equal footing - everybody should have equal opportunities. but this (human) world has always operated in a caste system and, for now, it seems it might always do so. i'll hope for that not happening.

it's time to put food on people's tables. it's time to learn about the world and there are many places available online to do so. sure, i mostly read entertainment websites, but i also devour news wherever i can get it. whether it's trivial "odd news" bits on yahoo as i close my e-mail account or in The Economist, to which my school has a subscription, for in depth international affairs coverage, i like to be informed. i just wish that more people (and americans, in particular) shared that trait.

for example, i cannot count the number of times i've been asked if Prague is in Czechoslovakia while home on the few vacations i've taken there - Czechoslovakia doesn't exist any more, it's two separate countries: the Czech Republic and Slovakia. it has been that way since 1993. but that's just a minor complaint, really. it's just that, it kind of makes me ashamed that people are uninformed - don't get me wrong. i don't hold the Czechoslovakia thing against anyone. heck, i was in their shoes a few years ago.

living abroad has opened my eyes to the world at large. but one shouldn't have to live abroad to take a few minutes everyday to peruse the international news section of any newspaper or website. all you really need to do is read the headlines and small notes - just a glance will tell you a lot.

please, inform yourself. take interest in the world around you. to me, it's an obligation.

and again, happy new year! may the energy it takes to care for the world be better used - starting with me.