After Microbiology

After Microbiology everything seems so much more fun! Even though it was easier this time around, taking into account that I now knew how to prepare. And it is not like it would be a boring subject, on the contrary, it is probably my favorite subject at the moment. There is just so much to learn, all those tiny details!

Anyhow, the next test will be in the beginning of May, plenty of time to relax (a bit). I hope to finish some books I have started with. I could not resist the temptation to buy the book that the movie Never let me go is based on. Then there is the book My Estonia by Justin Petrone. And all the others that I once started with but never read more than some chapters.
Yesterday I decided that I will have to start writing down when I buy a book, so that I can see it black on white. Maybe this will stop my uncontrolled hamstering of them...

Today I am so grateful for these persons in my life:



All the three of them are my siblings and my best friends, I feel so blessed to have them in my life.
(Otherwise growing up would have been B O R I N G! :D )

Weekend movies

Jane Eyre written by Charlotte Brontë is probably one of the best books I have ever read. Now there is a new dramatization of the book, done by BBC films. There are a lot of movies based on this book, which I unfortunately have not seen.



In this version we can see Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre. A year ago she was the leading actress in Alice in Wonderland. Even though she is quiet a young actress, I think she has played these both roles very good!
Rochester is played by Michael Fassbender. He has done some movies, most famous of them is Inglorious Basterds. He will play in several movies during 2011 and 2012.

The good thing was that it is about 5 years since I read the book, so I did not remember that much. But of course, a book with several hundred pages can't be squezzed into a two hour movie. But I think this was a good film based on an amazing book.

The second movie I watched this weekend was Never let me go, based on yet another book, which has the same name and is written by Kazuo Ishiguro. I have so so many times had this book in my hands when browsing through books at the book store, but I never bought it. And what an amazing story, at least according to the movie! It not only has a beautiful storyline but also wakens medical-ethical questions. Here stars such as Keira Knightley, Andrew Garfield (social network) and Winnie Gekko (Wall street; money never sleeps) were playing the lead roles.


So now you have two nice movies to watch and two books to read! What a good start for a new week ;)

Resa lätt?

Gör det som har blivit en vardagsrutin, nämligen kollat på bokbloggarna och bli inspirerad. Samtidigt blir man också lite sur med tanke på hur lite man själv hinner läsa, speciellt under terminerna.

Skrattade massor åt det här inlägget en bloggerska hade länkat. Även om jag inte tar med en bok/resdag så är jag känd för att packa med mig tonvis med böcker. Fråga inte hur ofta jag t.ex. har släpat vissa böcker mellan Jakobstad och Tartu, jag kommer inte ens själv ihåg. Plus att jag är duktig på att packa med saker överlag. Jag går efter principen: "Tänk om jag sen en dag blir sur över att jag inte just har med den boken/skjortan/byxorna/nagellacket...". Jag är helt h o p p l ö s då det kommer till att packa. Samtidigt har jag lärt mig den ädla konsten att packa med allt jag vill ha i lämplig resväska. Det är sällan den inte är millimeter noga fyllt. Sen bannar man sig då man går i tuben till och från färjan. Eller måste springa efter en buss. Eller har sista tågvagnen av 12 stycken...
Till mitt försvar måste jag säga att speciellt resorna hem -> Tartu är det ju naturligt att ladda på med en massa saker man vill ha till sin studerandebostad. Sen om man inte slipper hem hur ofta som helst brukar sakerna man vill ha med ju anhopas.
Eller då man far till Tyskland, där hardcovers är mycket billigare än i Norden, samt prisskillnaden mellan pocket och hårdpärmat inte är särskilt stor. Och man måste ju upprätthålla sitt andra modersmål genom att läsa böcker på tyska. Sen om man far dit en gång om året... You get the picture.

Men förra helgen då jag var hemma såg jag en ljusglimt i mörkret. Jag hade endast med mig en liten resväska, inte ens varproppfull, plus min ryggsäck. På hemvägen hade jag bara en plastpåse till. Rena rama miraklet.

How to get to Estonia/Tartu

This will be the first post of (hopefully many) about some practical stuff when visiting/moving to Estonia, and especially Tartu.

From Helsinki there are ferries leaving frequently every day of the week. Here are some of my own opinions about them.


Linda Line

This is a catamaran leaving many times a day, and the trip only takes 1,5 hours. This is not an "entertainment" ship, but it is a good way to get fast from A to B. Since it is so small it depends upon the strength of the wind if it will travel. But if you have bought a ticket you can come and get a "free-pass" ticket to any other ferry without extra charges. Also it does not travel wintertime or when there is a lot of ice in the springtime.
The prices vary veru much depending on which time and day you want to travel. But they have student prices and are in general quite cheap.
But be warned, since it is a small ship you should place yourself in the center of the boat to avoid overstimulation of the internal ear, aka sea sickness and following vomiting.
Also you can't take your car with you on this boat!
Personally I like this alternative the most

+Fast
+Cheap
+No annoying cruise tourist (which are often drunk and want to sing karaoke)

-The urge to throw up
-Half of the year it is not traveling
-Annoying if you get your trip canceled and you have to go to the terminal, get your free-pass and on to a ferry's terminal

Viking Line
In my opinion the second best alternative. This trip takes 2,5 h and is a regular cruise/ferry ship with all those entertainments and the chance to get an own cabin (unnecessary if you do not spend the night in my opinion...). This has only 2 departures per destination.
Again, prices depend on day and time. There are no student prices, but you can get the Viking Line Club card ordered for free and get some discount with it.

+the Finland-Swedish atmosphere, homey
+can be the cheaper alternative

-only a few departures/day

Tallink
Most departures all around the year, the most popular alternative for Estonians. The trip takes 2 hours normally, there are cruise ships leaving once per day which take 3,5hours.
They do not have any discounts, only if you have been able to get a club one card. There are different stages, bronze, silver and gold. Often (at least in Finland) they will offer you a silver card for free. Otherwise you will have to travel for some specific amount of euros to get a higher staged card but also to keep it. Again prices depend from time to time.
Here I have often found the most annoying travelers; everything from a ship full of ERASMUS students to one full of pensioners wanting to sing or dance.

+Good prices after achieving at least a Silver Club One card
+Fastest way wintertime

-Most annoying co-travelers
-Very precise with being in time for boarding the ferry

There is another company, Eckerö Line, which I have never used and takes a lot of time. Many trucks at least used to use this company.

To get around in Tallinn
I usually use Tallink's yellow taxis(you can get a 10% discount with ISIC/Club One cards). Other taxis sometimes want to charge you bigger amounts than they should. The taxi drivers usually know a bit Finnish and English.
Sometime I have also taken the tram, but I can never recall which numbers go to which terminals... This is a cheap way to get around, I think the tickets cost under a euro.
And if you feel like it, you can also walk. The city center isn't that big, and from Tallink/Viking Line terminals it takes approx. 30 min to walk to the bus station and some 10min to all the big shops. Probably the cheapest way to get around ;)

How to get from Tallinn to Tartu
The most convenient way is to take the bus. There is at least one bus leaving/hour, but there can be up to 2-3. The trips takes around 2,5 hours.
Some lines (täistund ekspress) have free internet access which is working very good. Then there is a discount for elderly and people under 26y. Normally this discount is 10% but on Saturdays it is 60%. Full price is just under 10€.
Some lines, called noorte ekspress, are buses for students and other less fortunate ;) These are cheaper, can't recall the prices though.
If you buy a bus ticket it could be good to know some short phrases in Estonian, especially in Tallinn the ladies at the bus station are not willing to talk anything else than Estonian or Russian. In Tartu they are more willing to compromise :)

I have once taken the train from Tartu to Tallinn, but I do not think it is any better than the bus. It takes the same amount of time, costs about the same... The downside here is that the train station in Tartu is not directly in the city center, and in Tallinn we were in trouble since there were no taxis at all waiting at the train station.

Okay, this was my personal opinion about traveling to Estonia, of course from the Finnish point of view. International flights are arriving many times a day in Tallinn. Baltic Airlines has a flight from Tartu to Riga and loads of destinations from Riga. From Stockholm there are daily coming in ferries to Tallinn.

Hope this was of some help, now you can all come and visit me in Tartu!

Home alone

Things to do when your roomie is away:

-Make onion-containing food

-Overdose the wonderful world of internet

-Be a good student and start making own microbiology notes

-Fall asleep without even being aware of it, wake up at 2am and notice that all the lamps are on, you trip almost over yourself since you are still half asleep. In the morning you can't record when exactly you switched off the laptop, the only thing you do know is that it was switched off in the morning

-Suddenly forget to lock the toilet door, doing dishes, simply in general take care of the apartment

-Read a lot of book blogs (look at the right column, scroll down. They are mostly in Swedish), go book crazy. Buy a new book, My Estonia which tells about an American falling in love with an Estonian girl and his life here.

-Speak aloud to the apartment in your wonderful Estonian.

-Browse through stores just to kill time

-Try not to go crazy!

Endagsläsning

Igår läste jag en mycket gripande bok, en liten en, med luftig text, perfekt för att sträckläsa en dag. Bara 200 sidor hade den. Pärmen såg ut så här:



Det är alltså en självbiografisk bok av Ann Heberlein som heter Jag vill inte dö, jag vill bara inte leva. Ann berättar rakt på sak om hennes vardag som professor i etik och som kvinna som under 20 år har lidit av sjukdomen bipolär typ 2, eller manodepressivitet Och nu, "dagen efter" vet jag inte vad jag skall säga om boken. Det första jag reagerade på var att jag inte tycker om hennes sätt att skriva. Hennes vulgära uttryckssätt. Men självaste berättelsen är helt fantastisk om man ser bortom de språkliga gränserna. Det väcker frågor om psykvården i dagens samhälle, om hur man skall förhålla sig som anhörig till en manisk person och så mycket mera. Och till en viss del så kan man väl identifiera sig med henne också (även om det är det hon absolut inte vill att man skall göra som läsare). Då menar jag inte att det bor en psykisk sjuk människa i var och en av oss. Utan att de flesta har kämpat med något av det hon har gått igenom. Panikångest. Självmordstankar. Depression. Hyperaktivitet. Listan kan göras lång. Jag rekommenderar boken absolut till alla, men be warned, den faller inom kategorin blandade-känslor-utan-att-veta-om-det-är-på-ett-bra-eller-dåligt-sätt.

Ann berättar också i sin bok att hon har dragit en kurs (om jag inte missminner mig var det på Lunds universitet) där humanist och läkarstuderanden skulle mötas och diskutera etik och debattera. Det slutade med att humanisterna inte kunde frambringa pengarna som behövdes, men hon höll kursen ändå. Hon berättar bl.a. hur hon kontrade läkarstuderanden med frågan "vad tror ni att ni som blivande läkare eller praktiserande läkare har för rätt att hindra era patienter från att ta självmord?". Mycket intressanta frågor. Det förde mina tankar till en bok jag köpte på bokrean då jag bodde i Helsingfors för några år sen. Det är Merete Mazzarella (prof. på litteraturvetenskapliga på Helsingfors universitet) som har skrivit Den goda beröringen-Om kropp, hälsa, vård och litteratur. Den boken blev inspirerad av att Merete under flera år har erbjudit en kurs för läkarstuderanden om medicin och litteraturen. Dvs. vad man som läkare kan lära sig via litteraturen. Den får bli mitt nästa projekt (började på den i något skede men den lämnade liksom på hälft...), mycket matnyttigt med sådana böcker!

Ja, sen då ni har läst Jag vill inte dö, jag vill bara inte leva, får ni läsa följande intervju som gjordes med Ann Heberlein en månad efter att boken kom ut.

Saturday at home

Good morning to you all!

Strangely enough I woke up at 7am a Saturday morning. Insane, I know. There was an orange cat scraping on the front door begging to let him in. Instead I finished my book (spot of bother), and let him in some hour later. And no, the book did not get markably better. Or maybe it was because I read it in Swedish. I don't know. But now I have to start reading something else. As you probably know I have plenty to chose from. I will keep you posted about what book I will choose.

And writing about books, I do strongly advice you not to visit Suomalainen Kirjakauppa if you look for books in Finland. I was very disappointed yesterday as I was in Kokkola, shopping and of course wanting to check out the new books also. But they have the same titles as a couple of years ago. I just got pissed and will not look for books there anymore. If you want to buy books in Finland, go to Akateeminen Kirjakauppa or Pocketshop. They will not disappoint you and you will find books in at least Finnish, Swedish and English.

The sun is shining and I will go to my spinning class in a beam of sunlight!

BBC booklist

The ones I have read are in bold, and in italics the ones I own but still have not read:

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
28 A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Only 18/100, I am quite ashamed. Maybe I should take the challenge to read all this books until a specific time? Let me know what you think about it.

Post numero 200

I am safe and sound at home, even though I probably had one of the longest trips ever. Some of it was my own fault, I just got 3 hours of sleep the night before (the reason for it I explain later), but somehow I managed to catch a ferry that was awfully full with a lot of less enjoyable people. A lot of foreigners (by that I mean other nationalities than Finns and Estonians) and everybody decided to go and sit exactly where I wanted to. It was so stuffed that a man even asked me if he could sit with me at my table (something that I hate when people do it, I do not want any stranger's company even though he is quiet and does not bother you.

But I figure that I need to say something nice too and not just whine. It was really nice spring weather both in Tallinn and in Helsinki, the sun was shining, the streets were free of snow... And since I finally learned how to travel with minimum luggage, I walked 30 min from the bus station to the ship. In Helsinki I met up with Jenny and ate a nice(compared to those we get at our school everything we get in Finnish universities seems like heaven!) student meal. Fortunately for me she was just as tired as I was so communication happened on the same level ;)

Another nice thing was that I got to read a real book and I am halfway through it. It is Mark Haddon's A spot of bother. But I am reading it in Swedish (got it for my birthday from Mom)

I can already now say that I am a bit disappointed about this book, since I really really loved his bestseller The curious incident with the dog in the night time and I had hoped that he would do something in the same stil as that book. Well anyhow, it is nice to read a real book once in a while. I am secretly hoping that I would have time to read loads and loads later in life when I am pregnant and at home with a baby. Or just next year when the worst semester of med school is over. One can always dream!

Maybe somebody of you is wondering how my and Fanny's challenge went. We did excellently and enjoyed a nice McDonald's meal on the international women's day :) And we watched Tudors and talked all night long, and that is why I went to sleep at 3am.

Enjoy the early spring all of you!

Cause you had a bad day...

Bad day today. The test was really frustrating because I realised writing it, that I did not know the stuff as well as I should have known them, taking into account that I read a lot. And it hit me that this is a really really difficult subject, if you think about that one should know a lot and lot of microbes and write an exam about it, solving clinical cases etc. The virulence factors and antibiotic treatments are frying my brain. But to all microbiologists' defense, this is a interesting subject. Just a lot of info to take in...

Also this day was just generally crap. You know, one of those Mondays. Where the bus is way too late, you get a annoying e-mail and the dishes are just piling up; the world just summa sumarum hates you.

But thanks to my roomie, the day did not end as bad as it was midway through it. She got me a lifeline on her way home (Coke light), was just in need of some ex tempore pancakes as I was so I had an excuse to make them again. We talked all the crap stuff through, we realised the test did go as bad as we thought and vips, my day was saved. As Juno would put it: The sun was shining on my ass again.

Tomorrow we have our last day of 500grams, oh joy! McDonalds here we come. No dishes. No cooking. H E A V E N.

Hope your week started better than mine, and if not, just make the sun shine on your ass and get a roomie just as good as mine :D

Sunday

Go and die all you bacteria already. I hate you. I do not want to know anything about you anymore. I want it to be Wednesday so I can take some days off and travel to Finland!

Congrats to my little brother S, he has his 15th birthday today and can finally cruise around on a vespa. Or soon at least ;)

American Pancakes

Me and my roomie decided a couple of days ago that we would have a American pancake brunch on Saturday. Said and done!

We used this recipe:

2,5dl flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar (just noticed I forgot this, oops..)
1 egg
2,5dl milk
2 tablespoons butter

Mix the dry ingredients in one bowl. Melt the butter and put the butter, milk and egg in a separate bowl. Mix.

We used honey, whipcream and strawberries as toppings. Halfway through the process we were sort of disappointed that we only got 6 pancakes total, but after we added all our toppings and started eating we quickly noticed that you do not need a lot of them :d Here is the result:


If you are a pro (like me :D) you can flip the pancakes just like they do in the movies! Lätt som en plätt.

Otherwise this is one of those shabby stay at home and study day. Still on the to do list is cleaning the apartment, it's my turn this week. And some dishwashing. Yesterday evening/night I got some ex tempore plans, so maybe I can watch a movie instead tonight.
(yes I feel kind of optimistic today, the sun is shining outside and everything so.)

Family Doctor

In Estonia they have a family doctor system. It works something like this: You come to any family doctor's (or perearst as they are called here) office and ask them if they have a free space for you on their patient list. There is a maximum amount of patients one perearst can have, this is regulated by law. Each perearst gets money from the state (as I have understood it) for each patient on their list. Because these doctors work is like a private business and they need to get all appliances themselves there are a lot of perearstcenters where a lot of these work.

As a patient, you will always visit the same perearst, and this doctor also is the "first contact" in your health care chain. He/she will send you to specialists and other medical investigations.

Today I got to be with a female perearst for 3 hours, it is included in our course "Perearst". Earlier I was quite sceptic to this system, mainly because I just was not used to it. In Finland you can be glad if you can see a doctor the same week, and you will always visit a different one.

But, I find this system very nice, now that I have seen it in action. The doctors have a very personal relationship with their patients, they know their names and faces and their history. Also these are the doctors "in charge" and specialist have to contact and consult with the perearst during treatment and investigations. The doctors also want to follow up their patients more and do easily give second appointments. Very nice, thumbs up. Maybe I will have to get one now too :)

The time went by really fast, but I did not get to do anything practical, the patients visiting were mostly follow up patients, being to other specialists and consulting back to their own doctors.

Thumbs up also for my lost and found Estonian language self-esteem. It was killed this autumn due to a bad teacher, now that I ditched her I suddenly speak more and understand better what people talk to me. Väga hea. But I find it harder to keep my languages apart. I sometimes just can not speak any language, not even Swedish. Yesterday I only knew Finnish. Today I mixed my Finnish with Estonian. I hope it is only temporary.

I and my roomie will continue with weekly challenges after our 500gram per day challenge. We will chose one for each week and also what kind of prize we will get after a completed challenge. After this week's challenges, which stops in Tuesday, we will go and eat McDonalds :P Looking forward to it already!

For those visiting Tartu sometime and like Sushi; go to Tasku's sushi bar which can be found on the third floor above Cinamon's café! Yummy Asian food that is not eating big holes in your purse.
For a nice cake, go to Tasku's second floor right left from the escalater. Take the Napolia kook, enjoy!
(Now you also know what I did with K after our perearst practical. Also we avoided studying by going to some shops. Now I sit here bloging rather then studying. Does it sound familiar?)

On Monday we will have kontrolltöö/test in Microbiology. We will have to get acquainted with these guys:

Staphylococcus aureus


Vibrio cholera

Microbiology is a very very interesting subject and one that I will need in my everyday praxis later as a doctor. But there are a LOT of details, and a lot of similarities between the bacteria. Another problem is how to get all those antibiotics into my head (last semester's knowledge...). No other choice but to continue where I stopped yesterday.

A nice weekend to you all!

Date a girl who reads

I found this amazing text on one of the blogs I usually read:

"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes."
— Rosemary Urquico (via nn)

Weekly Challenges

Me and my roomie started Weekly Challenges, just to have something else to think about during the weeks.
You already knew about my personal Pepsi-challenge, which I managed fine, even though the amount of sweets consumed were higher than normal :D So I came to the conclusion that it is like choosing the lesser evil of two alternatives. But anyhow, I managed and needed something new.
This week we are having the "500grams-of-fruits-and-veggies-a-day"-challenge. I am kind of lazy eating them, even though I buy them. So let's see if it will change my life or what. Harvard School of Public Health will give you some motivation, and maybe you want to join this challenge too?