Italy Holiday Day 13: Friends

Just a quick one about my friend P. whom I met up with yesterday. He is LOVELY! One of those people I only see once or twice a year (every time I’m down here basically), but to whom for some reason I’m very close. One reason surely is that his now ex-GF (I found out yesterday they’re no longer together, after 8 years w00t. Must have been something in the air this year 😛 ) was German. East German, if anyone’s interested, and from Berlin.

I’ve met her a few times and she was very nice, and quite organised/structured/strong, and P. was very comfortable with that (he tends not to be too keen on the regular Italian women who are often dolled up and very feminine etc. Of course not all are like that, but this stereotype is very strongly promoted in the media here). Actually I think that GERMAN women on the other hand are very good relationship material! At least those that I know 🙂

Either way, P. is also open-minded and himself quite ‘non-Italian’ in many ways. He’s travelled a bit and did an Erasmus-exchange programme I think to Heidelberg when he was a student (he’s 33 now so it’s some time ago). His being slightly different makes it easy for us to get on and appreciate one another, also he’s very intelligent and has good political views (his dad used to be very involved with the Communist or Socialist party hehe. Now of course Italy is Berlusconified).

It makes me think that I get on with people from all nationalities and ways of life. I.e. nationality, colour, creed, or anything like that doesn’t feature at all in what makes it easy for me to form friendships. Thinking about my friends, they tend to fit into either one or more of the following:

• lower/working class ‘made good’ (people who didn’t have much growing up but who are sorted due to application of own intelligence, work ethic, and motivation)
• exposed to other cultures/ways of thinking and seeing (by that I don’t mean having to understand or relate to cultures completely opposite to our Western one. Just appreciation for and engagement with the fine differences even within Europe for ex.)
• being fine-tuned and sensitive psychologically, enabling a fuller and more complete understanding of social relations between people and the world in general (often, in younger people this has a more negative effect i.e. ‘psychological problems’, which aren’t really problems as such but just arise due to their not being able to manage this special power and different, multiple viewpoints yet)
• being geeky (techheads including programmers, netheads, into strange films, know their way about the Internet i.e. not just thick consumers)

And I think that’s it! I’m pretty sure that all of my friends fit into one or more of the above. As to criteria for enemies (hehe), I’ll do those some other time. What I can’t stand most of all is people who were born with a silver spoon in their mouth and who have been set up by their mummy and daddy, without any drive inside themselves. People without drive or motivation in general, whatever class they’re from.

Der Sommer geht zu Ende

Image via Wikipedia

und lenina muss einen Post auf deutsch schreiben. Doch selbst auf deutsch kann sie nicht wirklich schreiben, was passiert ist, wie gehabt – diverse Subjekte, die ggf diesen Blog lesen, sollten erstmal nix verstehen.

Dann muss ich also nicht nur deutsch sondern auch kryptisch schreiben. Vielleicht sollte ich es ueberhaupt nicht schreiben. Ich habe eine [deleted] und zwar dem aehnlichen Muster von anaj nach, naja du weisst was ich meine, ich hatte dich vor ein paar Wochen per email etwas gefragt. Ist alles ziemlich [deleted] glaube ich, sonst wuerde ich ja gar nix sagen. Sehr komisch hehe und ich peile es gerade nicht, aber das Subjekt ist ein unglaubliches [deleted] zu meinem [deleted].

Und all das geschieht nur, weil lenina aktiv und produktiv ist, und nicht passiv am Leben leidet.

Who to Choose as Friends

I had a very relaxing week-end. On Sat. evening, I went to a ‘get together’ at my friend J’s flat (J the single male, not J the pregnant best friend 😉 ) and thoroughly enjoyed myself. There were a number of people I’d never met before or that I’ve only met once, and it was very interesting to talk to them, observe them, etc.

While they’re all nice, I would however never be proper friends with any of them. You meet these people and you get on, talk, and then they say something and you think ‘Good grief – you’re so not ever going to get close to me’. Not that they *want* to be close to lenina, or want to be her proper friends. But I find it hard to have superficial ‘friendships’, i.e. where you just talk about any old shit, smile and nod, and spend waste time with them. Why would anyone do that?

The bottom line is: I like talking to new people, and some were interesting, but I don’t just become friends with people. I could list precisely what I didn’t like and why, but I fear that one of the people there may still know my blog address and go and read it, then tell everyone, etc. (it has happened before).

I LOVE my real friends and I would do A LOT for them (not die, but you get the picture), but everyone else I just don’t want to engage with. At all. I don’t do the in-between, ‘hanging out’, with people where there is no future (as in: I’ll never want to be friends with them; why would I hang out with them when I can read or play Zelda instead?).

So, it’s fine to see ‘these people’ (mates of my friend J.) about once every six months, which I have been doing come to think of it 🙂

My Friend is Pregnant!

lenina will be an auntie 😛  – that’s the text I received yesterday from my dear friends D&J. We’re going to see them tonight, and I’ll make sure I’ll be bringing a bottle of champagne and some flowers.

J. has been ‘broody’ for years, and she must be absolutely over the moon. Of course, this also means life will change, and maybe our friendship will too. After all, it is a well reported fact that motherhood changes a family, making it centre around the needs of the little one. Topics of conversation change too, and the interest, at least in the first few years, will narrowly focus almost exclusively on the baby and everything related to it.

I’m not sure how I’ll fit in to that – I quite fancy myself looking after the baby some week-ends, once J. is back at work (she works in retail and does a lot of week-ends, while I work Mon-Fri). The only problem is I am quite non-maternal. I guess if you had to put a gender on it, I’d see myself more as some kind of ‘uncle’ figure – trying to be a good influence on the kid without too much of the caring, emotional, maternal stuff.

But we’ll see – the baby isn’t here yet! And in any case, we’ll have to see what happens. Once they’re a family with a young baby, their priorities might change, and the nature of our friendship might alter and become something else. Either way, I’m delighted  🙂

My Friend No Longer Owes Me 60 Quid

Roughly two weeks ago I blogged about my friend who still hadn’t paid me back some money (I was quite harsh because of previous similar experience with said person). Yesterday, we phoned him and ‘had a word’, and he said he’d put it into my account a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t really believe him to be honest, because it’s very difficult to do so when the person has been shifty/untrustworthy in the past.

Nevertheless,  today I went to the cashpoint and got a mini-statement, and w00tage: He paid it in on the 26th October – 6 days after my blog post. I wonder whether that was a coincidence, or if someone saw my post and promptly phoned him, telling him that ‘that evil lenina bitch is slagging you off again’ (I’ve had this problem in the past).

So, all is good(ish) – there’s still the £40 that he owes my BF and which he ‘had forgotten about’ when we phoned 😛

I do like J. and we’ll undoubtedly spend some time with him once we’re up in Edinburgh – but lending him money? Never fucking again!