On Kraftwerk naps, AI love and childhood thoughts

Man, this cold is really getting the better of me. I hardly have a voice anymore. Half of what I say comes out as a squak, and the other half as a whisper. Day two of staying home from work is proving to be far less eventful than day one, but I think that's what I need right now. Staying in and not speaking.

I'm finishing up the Interview task for the job in Japan, and it's pretty hard trying to understand what they want and what I should say, but I think I'm doing a pretty okay job of it. It needs to be in by tomorrow, so I'm not in a huge hurry or anything, which is good. Taking things at a slow pace feels good sometimes, especially when everything else related to all of that has gone so seamlessly so far. I managed to get the reference letters in on time. I'm still on schedule.

So please please please hire me.

Despite my massive cold, I went to hang out with the Philosopher yesterday. Looking back it probably wasn't very tactical and I should have probably tried to cure myself at home, but I'd been looking forward to seeing him and I really needed to get out of the apartment, cold or no cold. Even if it was completely stupid from a physical health point of view, I felt really happy all day. I guess sometimes emotional health trumps physical health concerns. Besides, no-one's going to die from a cold. At least I hope not.

We went to see Her, and while ten minutes in the sad love story between Theodore and his wife made me wonder if seeing a sad romantic movie really was what I needed after how the past few weeks have been, but I really loved it. It was a great movie that looked at the love between a person and A.I. that didn't feel tired, or technophobic, or even pink and rosy. It was a realistic setting, with realistic characters posing realistic questions and expressing realistic feelings, and instantly settled into my favorite depressing movies list right up there next to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. People who know me in real life know what a compliment that is, seeing as I watch that movie almost obsessively and I know every single word by heart. I wonder if this is what it will be like - every ten years they release a new depressing love story that becomes my favorite, and I will watch it like a crazy person for ten years before moving on to the next.

It was an excellent film though, so feel free to jump on the crazy person bandwagon with me and we can watch it together fifteen times in the space of one month or something equally insane. I really hope it wins Best Picture at the Oscars, even though I'm guessing it won't. I'm going to go ahead and blame Joaquin Phoenix's totally creepy mustache for that. If I could change one thing about that movie, the mustache would be it.

Afterwards we went for bagels and then swung by Moderna Museet to see the Kraftwerk exhibition, or rather what I thought would be a Kraftwerk exhibition. There was a room playing Kraftwerk videos in 3D, which while nice wasn't all that riveting, and other rooms that handled art and music as an item. I don't know if it was my sickness shortening my attention span or whatever, or maybe I just don't have the appreciation necessary for that kind of modern art, but I wasn't all too interested. There were large bean bags in the Kraftwerk room, and the Philosopher and I ended up taking a nap to Autobahn.

I don't really remember how we got in on the subject of my childhood, or if it was that we were talking about my time in Liverpool, but the Philosopher and I had a long discussion about the move and the decisions leading up to it, especially my parents' decision to not let me have any say in the decision at all, despite being 16, and the effect the move (and all the other moves, ever) had on me as a person. Living in my family was never really a democratic thing. The clan was always directed by my parents, and their children were to just follow along for as long as they were under 18 and living under their roof. The Philosopher seemed pretty shocked at the lack of epathy and consideration for someone's feelings, especially coming from my minister dad. I've never had the luxury of considering it as something strange. Living with my family has always been like this.

"Your parents betrayed you," the Philosopher said. "They made the wrong decision, and they made it over your head, without consulting you at all. They acted very selfishly, and I understand that you still have not forgiven them for it."
I tried to half-heartedly protest at this point, because it did sound rather harsh. I don't like to think of myself as an unforgiving person.
"But I hear it in the way you talk about it," he continued. "No wonder someone may have a hard time trusting others when the people who are supposed to do what's best, to act in your interest, do that to you. I think they were unfair to you, and I think it's caused you problems you shouldn't have had to deal with. Do you think you'll ever really forgive them?"

I find it interesting, because I hadn't really thought about it like that before. Mostly people only see the bright side about moving around so much (with the obligatory comments such as "Oh, but you have so many experiences, that makes up for it!") or just pushing the occasional negative remark about how sucky it must be to not really have roots, but I've never met anyone who so adamantly disapproves of it as the Philosopher does. And yeah, thinking about it, a lot of why I am my neurotic self probably has to do with my strange family and our strange family ways. I don't love them any less of course, but I don't agree with everything they did growing up. I do think that the decision to move to Liverpool was one of the worst they could have ever made, seeing as it struck me just as I was beginning to make sense of things here. I just wasn't allowed to be angry with them then. I wasn't really allowed to be angry at all. They would probably be really upset if I was angry with them, even today. Anger was the ugliest of emotions in our home growing up, I think. Raised voices were uncommon and scary to me because they were extremely infrequent and meant serious business. The family way of dealing with anger seemed to be to either go the passive aggressive route or to just bury it and let it eventually subside. I'm still to this day not comfortable being openly angry. So no, I probably haven't forgiven them, and I don't know if I ever will stop resenting their decision. I'm not actively angry. I don't really know if that's a good or bad thing either, it's just something. And I don't know why I can talk to the Philosopher about stuff like that when I don't like opening up to others. He's just good that way. I feel like I can really trust him.

I ended up crashing at the Philosopher's place, exhausted after a day of walking, being super cultural and just generally being super sick, and when he had to get up to get to work in the morning he let me sleep, telling me to get whatever from the fridge for breakfast if I was hungry. After a really slow and tea infused morning, I was about to leave when I noticed that he had accidentally locked the top lock that can't be unlocked without the key, essentially locking me in the apartment. I didn't really have plans apart from to sit around and feel sick, so I texted him about it and curled up in his sofa with a good book and proceeded to just sit there and feel sick instead, which felt really nice.

I mean, I do wear a lot of black draped clothes, but a burqa is a lot of look.

As soon as work permitted he got on his lunch break and hurried home to release me, joking when he arrived that he'd gotten a lovely burqa for me to try on. Apparently his friends at work had made fun of him quite a bit for locking me in. "So that's how you get girls?" He felt really bad about it, which made the situation funnier I guess. Personally, I just kinda like hanging around by myself in apartments that aren't my own. I know that sounds totally weird, but there's something so peaceful about an apartment when there's nobody else there. When it's someone else's apartment, you can wander around looking at everything and it's like you're surrounded by the person, and yet there's just you there. I like to imagine that it's like taking a walk inside their head without them knowing it. You can see what they read, look at their music, check what they have in their fridge or bathroom cabinet... it's like you're making a quick stopover in their lives. Apartments are personal. I like it that way.