October thoughts (1!)
I’m always surprised by how quickly men drop the pretence of acting masculine behind closed doors. And how effortlessly they put the mask back on once it’s time to leave. I wonder if I also do the same thing, but I’m just not aware of it.
I don’t know what it’s like to have a man’s libido, but I know what it’s like to sit in front of the candy bar section at the supermarket for 15 minutes, thinking “maybe I should just go home instead”. But I know that if I do, I’ll just be thinking about candy bars all night.
I managed to walk 26k steps in one single day this month. That’s almost 20km (12.4 miles). Was surprised how fine I felt the next day.
I bought my father a wool flat cap as a gift for his birthday from this store that sells only mens hats. It was a lot more awkward than I thought it was going to be, I felt so out of place in this super manly space. Now I know how men feel when they buy lingerie. You just want to get out of there as soon as possible.
I recently saw someone in Mitte wearing the same Patagonia fleece jacket as me and I got overly excited about it. I half considered showing him that we match, but then I thought “this is not the german way”.
There is this rock song me and my friends used to listen to when we were kids: Nickelback – Rockstar. Which was hilariously inappropriate for our age, but we had a lot of fun. We even had a whole dance routine and everything. I recently got back in touch with this childhood friend, and we reminisced about our “concerts” in my living room.
I got into this habit of just spontaneously trying out random restaurants or cafes that I’d usually never go to. I end up regretting it most of the time. Sometimes it’s quite bad and I just resign myself to the experience, sometimes it turns out to be surprisingly interesting or comfortable. It’s really worth it when I discover some place I‘d usually never go to.
You never realise how well a cashier does their job until they suddenly don’t. I had this supermarket cashier accidentally scan a pack of cigarettes and a block of cheese, then insist these were my items. No ma’am, they are not. What a random combo.
Whenever I go through the list in my mind of all the men that ever rejected me, I’m always grateful nobody else has it but me. You couldn’t water board that information out of me. I guess no matter who you are, there’s always someone out there that just doesn’t like you no matter how hard you try.
Two of my most favourite places in Berlin in winter are: the greenhouse at the botanical garden in Steglitz, and the Alte Nationalgalerie. One of the reasons is because they’re both spacious and quiet (warm too!), which is not always easy to find in a big city. Another is that they’re not commercial spaces, nobody’s trying to sell you anything. My friend warned me that I should never mention online where I like to go, in case I have a stalker. But I find the idea of someone waiting for me all winter next to the Pieter de Hooch painting quite funny.
And here’s Pieter de Hooch, retroactively added this photo after my last visit. I can’t believe this painting somehow survived all the wars that happened since the 1600s.
I saw someone in Berlin wearing no more and no less than a “Duck dynasty” cap. It was this pretty obscure and lowbrow US reality tv show that stopped airing 10 years ago. Imagine if you found someone casually wearing a “Dschungelcamp” t-shirt in Cincinnati, Ohio. You’d be compelled to ask them “Why do you own this?”.
I’m sometimes too honest for my own good. So now I always ask: how honest do you want me to be? 60%? 70%? That’s the recommended setting. Anything past that and we’re getting REALLY honest. (Later edit: I just remembered that this is actually a reference from Interstellar. Cooper had this robot called TARS that had a 90% honesty parameter.)
This is me.
