Archive for

September, 2008

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Wicking: the business, the man, the life

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So, a week from now I’ll hold her in my arms, in bed, our first night together for a long time. A mere week!! I thought this time was going to take for ever, even though I told YH it would pass in a jiffy – and now suddenly we’re there! I guess…. I guess the time passed really quickly and felt like forever at the same time.

I’m going through my old life now in a way, throwing out a lot of stuff that I’ve accumulated through the years. Luckily my ex would have most of the stuff, so there’s not too much to throw out. Still, I’ll probably fill my trailer with junk in the end. I’m finding cool stuff though, like my really old KGB watch (not KGB, but a russian watch that my grandfather used to have, that he got in Russia back in the day), my Polar pulse watch, loads and loads of old pictures, my first application for change of name which dates almost 6 years back(!!) and a lot of other stuff. And I’ve never thrown so much stuff for all the years we lived in that flat. Feels good, feels like I’m cleaning out my own life, getting to the new and fresh start for real.

My ex had a pretty good idea today as well, regarding how we split stuff like the apartments and the store. I’ll have to discuss it further with both her and a few other parts in this, before I decide if we should go for it. So far it seems quite smart though. And I started the other part in securing total world domination today as I registered the company Wicking. Hopefully I’ll be able to generate some extra cash that can be channelled through that company, and I’ll have a foundation for moving around my other assets in a while. 

Anyway, Leipzig is closing in, both apartments are now empty in the sense no one lives there, and I’ll be working to fix both of them up in the time ahead, as well as sorting out some other stuff. And Leipzig is less than a week away! :)

Paul Patrick Wicking – now and forever!

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So, finally, I am Paul Patrick Wicking. The infamous ‘å’ is gone, making me all the more international in name. I’ve updated my facebook account, and I have to wait till October to get my bank card and passport updated. Funny, huh?

Getting this done was far from easy, and I don’t think I would bother writing it all down. Perhaps some other day. Right now I’m really tired, and I just wanna hit the sack. Of course, knowing iTunes had been updated tonight, with the release of the new iPod’s, I just had to install the update and check it out. So far…. it seems slower, to be honest :)

The new iPod Nano looks nice though, so hopefully that’ll be a good seller – and hopefully Apple will be able to meet the demand before christmas this year, they really blew it last year with the iPod touch.

I went over to Mac’s place tonight and watched a spanish movie called El Laberinto del fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth). It’s good, recommended for viewing if you haven’t seen it – and it was really weird too, I think I’ll need to watch it again sometime. And now I’m in the middle of the first episode of an Italian mini TV series called Il capo dei capi – which has been given the Norwegian title Corleone, So far looking good, it’ll be interesting to watch the rest of the series I think.

Oh, and yes baby, I love you ;)

My day summarized

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This post will be a short one I think, just need to get a few somethings out of the system. A very good friend had a very bad thing happen in her life today, and I really feel sorry for her. I have no words that can make it all better. I finally got the post office to understand where they are supposed to deliver my mail, so now I’m getting it where they used to deliver it. I’ve been painting the house and repaired the steps outside the front door today. 

Mom is still happily playing around with her Facebook account.

I bought Cinema Paradiso on DVD again today, as I don’t know where my old copy is anymore. And Major Payne was on TV, which was good fun. I still know most of the dialogue for some reason. This evening I spent working on this website, and I discovered through a friend that Internet Explorer doesn’t display it correctly. What else is new? So I’m gonna try to fix that one of these days I guess.

I’ve tried to learn how to write my baby’s name in chinese today. For some reason, the chinese course I’m following online didn’t have the character strokes for her name, although I found the characters on there, so I had to figure them out myself. I hope it went well, and I’ll repeat them tomorrow to be better able to remember them.

The other chinese words today I’ll get back to, I’ve gotta hit the sack now.

Happy one month anniversary, baby!

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So this is for your eyes only… I uploaded it to youtube (which is embedded below), and you can download the file from your directory on my server (just log on and go to the YH folder, remember?)

I love you baby. See you soon I hope :)

Mom on Facebook

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Strange days indeed. For some weird reason, I’ve the feeling everything is proceeding as I have foreseen. Or is it? Maybe I’ve tricked myself into believing what would be the best solution for my current situation, and then I choose to interpret current events to be something I would want? 

It doesn’t really matter – I still think todays events will work as some kind of catalyst in bringing the future, and I’m excited that the wheels are now in motion. 

I finally finished reading the Penhaligon Trilogy. Yes, it has taken a very long time. What matters is it is done. Of course, it is only natural to question my stayer ability when looking at my track record at a glance – and if so, look at it again and have your questions answered. Besides – why stay if your life is better somewhere else? I’m thankful each and every day that I finally decided to go for what I wanted the most in life. Every day I’m thankful, and every day I experience happiness because of it. So I decided to stop and get out of a few things, and my life was turned up side down. Am I paying the price or enjoying the benefits, folks?

I watched a little bit of a movie today, called “Ondskan” (meaning Evil). A swedish film, set in the 50s or 60s at some boarding school. The movie was brutally honest. One to watch. Whilst watching, I kept working on this site for a bit. I discovered a bug in the source of WordPress. I wasn’t the first one to discover it I think, the funny thing is that it hadn’t been fixed for several releases though. I managed to help some other guy out at the WordPress support forum after figuring this out for myself though, which was nice.

My girlfriend is on a trip with her mom this weekend. I know I’ll see her sunday evening, which is actually on our 1 month anniversary – imagine that, huh! Still, I miss her a lot, and knowing we should be together and celebrate makes it all the more hard to be away from her. Another two and a half weeks and we’ll be together in Leipzig though – and I’m really looking forward to that like a five year old looks forward to Christmas Eve. 

In other news, mom got on Facebook today, I didn’t receive the letter I’m waiting for from the name registry thingie, I’m seriously considering filing a police complaint with those god damn hip gangsta wannabes down the street playing ridiculously loud music at frigging 2:30am, and I’m still waiting for that other package as well. I hope it shows up in the mail tomorrow, as I really hoped for it to show up way earlier – having it here tomorrow will still make me happy. If not, I’ll just have to figure something out I guess.

No chinese words today, I made my own list of words on the chinese course website though, so now I’m learning words I wanna learn. My vocabulary is now about 10-12 characters – not much yet, but we’re getting somewhere I think. This language is really hard for a westerner to learn, I have quite some difficulties remembering how to write the characters and pronounce them, what they mean – basically anything. I need my cheat sheet to be able to do anything with them. Hopefully I’ll get to a point where that’s not necessary in a little while though, that my understanding of the characters are to such a level that I’ll manage to remember them. And I’m starting to realize the true complexity of the different tones etc. Interesting :)

To be born, five, may I ask

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Okay, so I think the titles are funny this way. No, they don’t mean ANYTHING except the words of the day. Anyway, without further ado, here they are:

生 – sheng (1st tone) – to be born, to give birth

五 – wu (3rd tone) – five, 5

So, adding a number is nice. I’ll need to learn counting soon I guess, something useful. And speaking of useful, the next phrase really is – and it is so far the most complex set of characters I’ve learned, consisting of two characters of 15 and 11 strokes.

請問 – qing wen (3rd tone, 4th tone) – excuse me, may I ask

And, earlier today I managed to create my first sentence that almost made sense – well actually it didn’t make sense at all. 我是貓。(Wo3 shì4 mao1) English: I am a cat. Okay, signing out, gotta get up early tomorrow.

Empty cat is thread

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So, another day, another chinese character. Four other chinese characters, actually! Today I got help from my baby to study, she added the word 是 and helped me with the correct stroke patterns for the other characters. As Microsoft’s Messenger on the Mac doesn’t support webcam (thank you, Skype!) or whiteboard etc, we used an online whiteboard service which is free of charge and requires no registration of any kind that we found at www.scriblink.com. Awesome.

空 – kong (1st tone) – empty, hollow

貓 – mao (1st tone) – a cat (we’ll get to chairman Mao later – a lot later)

是 – shi (4th tone) – verb: be. Also means is, are, am

線 – xian (4th tone) – line, thread, wire

I got a card from a friend in Sweden today, that she made herself. Totally made my day! And the name registry thingie told me to call them back when I had the receipt letter in my hand (the one which hasn’t arrived yet of course) and they would correct the mistake of how my name is spelled. Obviously this was ahrd to do while looking at the letter they sent me on a monitor, me holding the letter in my hand and talking to them on the phone would be a lot easier. I wonder how many people would be unemployed if it weren’t for bureaucracy in government offices.

Oh, I watched a great movie with Mac tonight, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, called The Bucket List. Warm, funny and just serious enough not to be silly but rather make a point. I really enjoyed it. And it was amazing how those two actors could hold together the entire movie like that, based on dialogue, and (almost) no special effects at all. Recommended by me.

Me, dollar, woman

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Okay, so the title is easily misunderstood and feminists will probably feel their blood boiling by reading it. Good! I like to be able to provoke with a headline, and especially with something like this. The title; Me, dollar, woman, is based on the first three chinese characters I learned to write, as I finally started on my plan to learn one chinese word or phrase every day for the next year. My goal was one, and I think I’ll try to stick to my goal to make sure I don’t get in over my head, today I just got so enthusiastic about the whole learning process though that I just couldn’t do with one. Anyway, three’s a charm, so I guess I shouldn’t be worried.

我 – wo (3rd tone), meaning I, me

After writing this like a gazillion times, I decided to get some more to work with. Enter a word that I’ve seen in a lot of places, and that keeps popping up at webshops and in newspaper ads (yes, I have a chinese paper at home to study the characters – when I can finally read it, I’ll know I can communicate quite well in chinese).

元 – yuan (2nd tone), meaning dollar, monetary unit or the Yuan dynasty

Half a page of this character later, I decided to add a final word for today. This word actually consist of two characters, where the first character means female, and the last one means person. Female person, then.

女人 – nü-ren (3rd tone – 2nd tone), meaning woman

This word requires a bit of more practice on my part, I have some difficulties with the pronunciation not feeling quite comfortable – ergo something must be wrong. I also discovered when writing this entry, that I have managed to forget certain details surrounding the pinyin reading. Good thing I’ll be repeating this tomorrow!

On a side note, it seems my server is acting funny a lot these days. The tech at Leaseweb suggested to Sgt (server admin) that the hard drive be swapped for a new one, as they thought that might be the problem. This means we’ll need to back everything up, move it to some other server, have the disk swapped and then replace the backups – in other words, downtime, regretfully. Better to have a little bit of planned downtime now than several days of unplanned downtime later on though – and hopefully this will sort out the problems for good.

Oh, and the chinese course I’m studying can be found at www.chinese-course.com. Anyway, some other funny things happened today. I found the new Metallica singles on iTunes. Quite good, not the same kind of feeling I got from listening to AMOLAD for the first time, but good. And I got Fear Factory’s Obsolete from iTunes as well. I hadn’t heard that album for 8 years or more even, so that was good fun. I discovered I can actually enjoy eating a vegetarian meal (yes, I made a veggie meal all by myself and it was wonderful). My family name is now officially Wicking, although the nice people at the name registration office thingie managed to forget to change the spelling of Paul, so I’ve still got that funny little a with an o on top (å). I tried calling them to ask them about this, and of course they had closed 15 minutes earlier. Maybe I’ll get ahold of them tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll get this sorted quite quickly and without another 4 weeks or more of papers back and forth.

Baby told me today that I am everything she dreamt of. She said “You have my heart”. I answered “And you have mine”. I hope for humanity’s sake more people will experience this kind of total and unconditional love for another person – I actually think it has made me a better man in just a couple of months. Imagine what it could do to the world in a decade.