Things I HAVE done before 30: Part 3 – Education and skills

It’s been aaaaages since I started writing this series. Berlin and day trips and other happenings got in the way and made me forget about it. But now I’ve remembered I’m back with the third (and final) installment of things I have achieved before turning 30. I decided to call this post “Education and skills”, for want of anything better. If you haven’t read Part 1: Travel and Part 2: Experiences, feel free to click the links. Right here, you can read about all my education and skills related achievements.

Before 30, I have…

Got two degrees

A Bachelor’s in German with International Relations and a Master’s in Translation, to be specific. I did the Master’s part time via remote learning while working full time, and managed to pass with a merit – an achievement I am genuinely proud of!

Passed two Open University short courses

Start Writing Fiction and Science Starts Here.

Learned to speak another language

German… in case that wasn’t obvious I wouldn’t say I’ve reached native speaker level (I’m not sure that’s possible after the age of about 6), but I’m pretty fluent! I’ve been trying to learn Spanish for about 4 years now, but unfortunately haven’t been getting very far. It’s sooo much harder than German!

Read many, many books

Open Book (Photo credit: White Magnolia Photography)

I’m counting reading under education simply because it didn’t seem to fit in either of the other two posts, and I really have read a lot of books. I wouldn’t even know where to begin counting them all! I have always loved books and reading, starting with Each, Peach, Pear Plum in nursery, then moving on to the likes of Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, the Narnia books and later Point Horror and The Babysitter’s Club, and my first “adult” books by Agatha Christie. One thing I was always guaranteed to get for my birthday, no matter how little money there was to spare, is new books. Forever grateful to my family for that!

Learned to use several computer programs

There weren’t that many computers when I was a kid (I still remember having an old BBC computer in the primary school classroom!) and even once PCs did appear we never had one at home. My first introduction to a PC was in IT lessons as a teenager. Since then I’ve learned to use most of the usual programs (Word, Excel, etc.) and also four different translation memory softwares… soon to be five as I’m just starting with a new one at work! My computer scientist boyfriend would probably laugh at my so-called “skills” but personally I’m amazed that I can do anything on a computer! I’m still convinced they’re plotting to take over the world…

Learned to cook (and bake)

I consider cooking and baking to be a skill (and also something pretty much anyone should be able to do. Following a recipe isn’t that hard!). But I will be the first to admit that I’ve gone beyond the basics and can now whip up some pretty amazing concoctions. Being able to make an excellent Christmas dinner may not be particularly glamorous, but we can’t all be musicians, artists or geniuses and there aren’t many people who don’t enjoy a good meal (or delicious chocolate brownie…)

Aaaand that’s all for this series. Next time I ask myself what I’ve been doing all my life I’ll have to look back at this and remind myself that, actually, I have done quite a lot. Now if only I could figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life (other than not end up as a career woman, that is, however convinced my family may be that precisely that is my fate).

Time to lose the belly!

For about two months, I’ve been complaining that I’ve out on weight, and for that same amount of time the boyfriend has been telling me that “I’ve been that shape ever since he’s known me. Well… maybe a little thinner, but not much. Not noticeably so…”. Then, last weekend, I put on a dress that I hadn’t worn for almost a year. You know… the last time the weather was actually warm! I immediately noticed that it didn’t fit the same way it used to. There’s a definite bulge in the belly area. I pointed it out to the boyfriend, and this time his response was different. “Oh yeah… that dress didn’t used to do that on you.” At that moment, it became official. Even Jan has noticed that I’ve put on weight! It’s most definitely time for operation lose the belly fat!

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Since I don’t actually have any scales here in Germany (GASP! I know.. terrible, isn’t it?),  I decided I was going to measure the size of my waist instead. After measuring between 2 and 3 times a day for around a week, I’ve discovered that my waist size fluctuates between 79 cm and 82 cm. Whether that’s due to genuine fluctuations (I’m convinced my stomach is flatter beofre breakfast!) or my inability to measure correctly, this still means I have a waist size of around 80cm. The only problem was, that didn’t actually mean anything to me! I know what weight range I’m supposed to stay within the be considered healthy, but waist size? Not a clue! Time to check in with my good friend Google. I entered “waist to height ratio” and found the following:

On the NHS website:
You have a higher risk of health problems if your waist size is:

• more than 94cm (37 inches), if you’re a man
• more than 80cm (31.5 inches), if you’re a woman

80cm? Eeeep! That means I’m way up at the top the scale. In fact, depending on which measurements were correct, I may even already be at risk of health problems!

Next, I clicked on a waist to height calculator on shapefit.com.
http://www.shapefit.com/calculators/waist-to-height-ratio-calculator.html

According to that, my ratio is 48.8, which, for women, falls under category 4: Ratio 46 to 49: Healthy and Attractive. Yay, healthy and attractive! But what’s that I see… only 0.2 off the next category… “Ratio 49 to 54: Overweight”. Uh oh!

A second waist to height calculator, this time at a site called Weight Loss Ladder (http://www.weightlossladder.com/waist-to-height-calculator-372/) gave my ratio as 0.49, healthy. But by adding on a mere two centimetres, I can change the result to “overweight”.

fat pig (Photo credit: nishwater)

Ironically, most of the people who see me regularly would probably tell you I’m still as skinny as I always was. I’m usually pretty good at dressing to hide the belly bulge, and with it being cold for so long, I’ve been able to disguise it under bulky jumpers for longer than usual. But three websites and my pretty summer dress can’t all be lying… the fat explosion is real, and it’s here. Operation get thin for christening starts now!

-Filler post-

Today’s post was supposed to be about a baking fail, but the photos I need for it are still on Jan’s phone (which is currently at work with him and will be until at least 8:30 pm!). Plus a planning mix-up at work has resulted in me being given 18 and a half hours of translation to do despite the fact that I have Thursday and Friday off this week. 18.5 hours of work in a 16-hour working week = overtime, which doesn’t leave much time for blogging!

Luckily, I still have hundreds of photos on my computer that you – my readers – have never seen, so I thought I’d pick a random one to upload for you.
I went into my “Photos” folder and chose the 13th sub-folder from within it (because 13 is my favourite number). Within that sub-folder, I then selected photo number 13. And that photo is…

The botanic garden in Karlsruhe! This was taken in August 2008, when my mum and brother had come to visit for a few days. They were actually staying with my uncle in Munich, but decided to make the journey down to Karlsruhe to see where I lived. For the two days they were here, we had perfect weather and I was able to show them everything there is to see in Karlsruhe (which admittedly isn’t much – if they’d been here any longer we’d have had to start taking day trips!).

Spot the difference…

After posting about the snow the other day, it occurred to me that I had taken a strikingly similar photo back when this never-ending winter first started. Once the idea was in my head, I naturally had to go and find the other photo. So here you have it:

2 December 2012

25 March 2013

The difference? This time there are no Christmas markets to make the cold more bearable…

An unexpected day at home

Hello! You may have noticed that I haven’t blogged for a few days (or not…). I was far too busy this weekend to get on the computer! Live music, watching England get absolutely stuffed at rugby in an utterly embarassing performance, cocktails, a full Irish breakfast at the pub for St. Patrick’s Day, watching Newcastle undeservedly lose at football, night out for St. Patrick’s Day…

Photo credit: Daniel*1977

This morning, I got up expecting life to return to normal after my unusually full weekend. Before leaving the house, I quickly checked the Internet to see whether my train was on time. “Warning,” said the Deutsche Bahn website. “Due to strikes, trains in Baden-Württemberg may be subject to delays or cancellations.” My train, it transpired, was delayed by 110 minutes (Deutsche Bahn don’t seem to believe in hours…). And the next train I could have taken was cancelled. The regional trains were apparantly running as normal though. So I sat back down for a bit before heading out to catch a regional train.

I arrived on the platform to find that the train was not already there. This is unusual – it leaves 10 minutes after my usual train but is normally already sitting there 5 or 10 minutes before mine even arrives. Today, there was no sign of it although the information board mentioned nothing about I delay. I waited, along with a number of other people, but the train never came. Then we noticed another train with the same destination sitting on a different platform. So off we went to platform 5. The train driver was standing looking out of the window, so we asked him whether his train would be going to where we wanted to be. “Yes, at some point,” he replied. It was 5 minutes to 8 at this point, and he informed us that his train was actually the 6:55 one but he hadn’t been given permission to leave yet, so he’d been sitting there for two hours waiting for something to happen. A few people got into the train anyway, but I chose to head home and spend theday working from there. Luckily I have the option to connect to work remotely!

I later read that the strikes were supposed to be from 6 a.m. til 8 a.m., so if I’d hung around I may still have made it into work at some point. But by that stage all the fast trains were already delayed by two hours or more and the regional train that I would have ended up taking is the slowest of them all, so it would have taken over an hour for me to reach work even once the driver was finally allowed to set off! Working from home definitely still sounds like the better option! Hopefully tomorrow I’ll actually be able to make it into the office…

Where did THAT come from?

I’ve always had a big bum. Not that I was ever fat – I’ve never gone above a size 12 in clothing – but even as a child I remember my mum making comments about, and once, when I was about 13, my granndma refused to buy me a pair of trousers because “They’ll make your bum look even bigger!”. At the time I was quite hurt, but I got over it and learned to live with my oversized behind. There are certain items of clothing that I need to avoid, and I’ll occasionally have a two-year old style sulk over some gorgeous dress that just looks awful with my body shape, but on the whole my bum and I have managed come to learn to get along over the years… or at least I thought we had.

The Crown Princess Bootytron (Photo credit: JoeAlterio)

Getting out of the shower on Saturday, I caught sight of my reflection in the bathroom mirror and got a huge shock. As I said, my bum has always been on the large side, but now it’s completely out of proportion to the rest of my body! After heading to the bedroom to get dressed, I got my second bottom-related shock of the day. A skirt that I only bought last summer, and that I swear fit perfectly only a few weeks ago, had to be coaxed over my derrière centimeter by centimeter. Not cool, people! I like that skirt!

There’s only one thing for it… starting this week, I’m going to have to start getting my Jillian on again. I know I’ll never have a neat, sexy little bum, but I won’t give up my pretty skirts without a fight!

The wanderer returns!

Photo credit: Rebecca Withers

I have my boyfriend back! Minus a little piece of him, but not looking any the worse for wear. He’ll have this week off work to recover (so I’ve taken the opportunity to order some things online while there will be someone hoe to open the door to the postman). I’m taking Friday off – just waiting to get my signed holiday for back but it’s already agreed – so we’ll have a long weekend together.

And now I’m going to eat my first meal with my boyfriend in over a week.

“Message sending failed”

Yesterday afternoon, I was following the Newcastle v Swansea match on the BBCs Premier League live service. I thought it was going to end in a draw, but about a minute before full time Swansea scored. Meh! I immediately sent Jan a text, thinking he might like to know. As usual, minutes after I sent the message my phone beeped – I have delivery reports switched on. I checked the message, expecting it to read “Delivered”, as it always does. Instead, I was confronted with the following: “Jan Mob. Message failed.” That has never happened before. If the recipients phone is off, my phone doesn’t beep and I receive a message saying “Pending”. Once they switch their phone back on, the phone beeps and the “Pending” message changes to “Delivered”. I tried again. Beep beep. “Message failed”. I went and fetched the house phone to call him… “The person you are trying to reach is currently unavailable. Please try again later,” said a female voice – first in German, then in English. Hmm, odd. But he’d told me the night before that he might be allowed to go to the beach. Perhaps he was somewhere with no reception. I went to distract myself by reading some blogs.

Half an hour later, I could stand it no more. I dialled his number from out house phone. “The person you are trying to reach is currently unavailable. Please try again later.” I went into the kitchen and plugged in the hoover. Another half an hour, another attempt. “The person you are trying to reach is currently unavailable. Please try again later.” I made a cup of tea, ate a packet of Monster Munch and tried not to worry. For half an hour, then I tried again. It was 7:30 pm by this time, 8:30 in Turkey (he told me the night before that they’re an hour ahead). Even if he had been to the beach, surely he couldn’t still be there? Again “The person you are trying to reach is currently unavailable. Please try again later.” It occurred to me that if anything had happened, I wouldn’t find out until a member of his family thought to contact me. In emergencies, the authorities call your next of kin. Parents… siblings… wives. Not girlfriends. I pushed that thought out of my mind and resolved to try again later.

After each failed attempt, I tried to force myself to wait longer before dialling again, thinking up different things to distract me each time. I washed dishes, played Freecell on the computer, ate a small tub of icecream sitting on the floor in front of the radiator, got out the playing cards and had a game of Patience (sorry, but no it’s not called Solitaire… that’s a game with marbles!).

Half an hour ago, I sent another text message, asking how he was and whether he’d been allowed to go to the beach. It failed.
I know he’s probably fine and the issue is with his phone. If anything had happened I’d have heard by now, right? But still… aargh! I cannot wait to have him back here where I can keep an eye on him (at least while I’m not at work). One more sleep…

*Update* I have now spoken to the boyfriend via Facebook. His phone has been blocked for security reasons (pesumably because he went over a cost limit, leading them to think it was stolen), but he is fine. Good job I managed not to worry too much!

Things I HAVE done before 30 – Part 1: Travel

Venice from the air

I said I was going to have a think about the things I have managed to achieve in life before hitting the dreaded 30, and since I currently have nothing else worth saying, now seems as good a time as any to start blogging about what I’ve come up with. I thought I would start with some of the travel-related things that I’ve done. Here they are…

Been to Rome – twice!
I have been to lots of places, actually. But Rome seems to be one that’s always mentioned when people talk about places  they would like to go, or think that everyone should really have been to.

The first time I went to Rome it was an 18th birthday present from my uncle. I went with him, his partner and my sister for a long weekend. I mostly remember delicious pasta, my uncle walking off in his own little bubble – crossing roads like the traffic wasn’t even there while the rest of us struggled to keep up, queueing for absolutely ages at the colloseum, but finding it was worth it once we got in, deciding Trevi fountain was my absolute favourite place on Earth, falling asleep under a tree in a park and drinking cocktails in an Irish bar. It was a good weekend.

My second trip to Rome was with Jan, my mum and step dad, my sister (again) and her boyfriend and my brother. I wrote a little about that trip here. My main memories of my second visit to The Eternal City include walking until I got blisters on my feet, finidng Trevi fountain to be just as beautiful as I remembered but much more crowded (I’m sure it must have been just as bad the first time and I’d just erased it from my memory), feeling like I was going to pass out from the heat at the Roman Forum (it’s impressive but there’s literally no shade!), creepy monk bones in the Capucin crypt (which you can read all about in the post I linked to) and queuing for ages to get into St. Peter’s Basilica.

Foro Romano: Impressive but severely lacking in shade!

Travelled first class
In Germany, it often works out cheaper to get the first class savings price than the regular price for second class (once the savers price for second class has run out). Jan and I did this on the way back from Hamburg, among other trips. I was also once allowed to take a seat in first class when the car where I had reserved a seat was not actually part of the train (this happens quite a lot in Germany… why?!). First class seats have more room, but other than that travelling first class on a train isn’t all that amazing.

I have also flown business class. The day we went to Rome was my 18th birthday. My uncle, at the time, was working at the airport – as was his flatmate. The flatmate was on duty that day, so he took our tickets and passports to wherever those in charge hide out when they’re not telling you what to do and had them upgrade us as a birthday treat for me. We also got free champagne on the flight. And before take off the co-pilot came to me and said he’d heard it was my 18th birthday and would I like to come in the cockpit for the landing? I was too stunned to reply, but luckily my sister said yes on my behalf – so when we landed in Rome I was in the cockpit of the plane! There’s an experience I doubt many people have had.

Lived in four different countries
Specifically England, Northern Ireland, Austria and Germany. Critics may say that, because we lived on an army base, we were technically in England, not Northern Ireland “proper”. I say that’s silly – of course we were living in Northern Ireland! And if anybody tries to tell me that England and Northern Ireland are not, in fact, countries but mere regions of the “country” that is the United Kingdom I may have to track you down and hurt you!

Feldkirch, Austria, where I lived for 10 months

Been to the USA
Yes, I’m aware that it’s a big country, but going to the US is our equivalent of the Americans’ “go to Europe”. Where we go isn’t necessarily important, but everyone should (apparantly) have at least set foot on American soil.
Going to America had never been a particular ambition of mine, but Jan was there and I hadn’t seen him for 6 months, so when my dad offered me flights for Christmas I obviously leapt at the chance. I enjoyed my time there – my favourite of the places I saw was Philadelphia – but I have to admit I like Europe better. There’s just so much more history here! It was fun to visit a place called New Castle though – named after England’s very own Newcastle Upon Tyne! (Sorry, no photo. I have absolutely no idea where mine are!)

Seen Stonehenge
And Hadrian’s Wall, the Eiffel Tower, the Colloseum in Rome and the Statue of Liberty (from the ferry rather than up close, but still seen!).

Stonehenge on a cloudy day

Spent New Year in various places
Specifically New York (USA), Vienna (Austria), Prague (Czech Republic), Paris (France), Brussels (Belgium), Padua (Italy), Edinburgh (Scotland), Salzburg (Austria) and Luxembourg City (Luxembourg) – in that order. Next will hopefully be Madeira (Portugal).

The city of Brussels knows how to do fireworks! New Year 2008/09

Spent the night on a train
Once in the Liegewagen (couchette car) – the non-private, uncomfortable sleeping compartment where you get to smell complete strangers’ feet all night – and once in a proper sleeping compartment, which has more comfortable beds (with something resembling mattresses) and is for two people only. There’s also a wash basin in there (and the posh ones even have a shower!). The sleeping car I would recommend, the couchette not so much!

Been to all four countries of the United Kingdom
England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales. Admittedly, I remember very little of Northern Ireland (I lived there for two years, but we left when I was 7), but I’ve still been!

Loch Lomond, Scotland

Visited 30 German towns
At least that’s the plan. Hopefully by the time I reach 30 I’ll have completed this challenge! You can read all about my German travels on this very blog (check out the page on the right).

Travelled to numerous other places in Europe
The Channel Islands, Greece (Rhodes  – I would love to go the mainland), Spain, Portugal, Malta, France (not only Paris), Switzerland, Liechtenstein… I wonder if I’ve missed any?

A “living statue” on La Ramblas, Barcelona

If you’ve got this far, thanks for reading! Part two will look at some of the experiences I’ve had – such as trying different foods. Watch this space!

Down with salads!

After consuming an entire packet of biscuits all by myself on Sunday, on Monday it was time to resume my healthy eating plan. New week, new start and all that.

I had bought a cheese and ham salad from Aldi that I was quite excited about. It’s very unusual for a salad to contain no ingredients that I won’t eat, but this one had managed it. No cucumber, no pepper, no boiled eggs. Cherry tomatoes (good!) rather than ordinary tomatoes (I only like them when they’re cooked). It should have been the perfect Bevchen salad… except it wasn’t.

The grated carrots were mushy, half the croutons were soft and I found one hard piece each of ham and cheese (those went straight in the bin!). Even the bits of ham that weren’t hard didn’t taste particularly nice, and I ended up feeling slightly sick. On the bright side, that meant I didn’t want anything else to eat for the rest of the afternoon (a good thing because I didn’t have anything else with me… and by the time I’d forced down the salad my lunch break was over).

In future, I’m sticking with the biscuits!

 

Brief update on Jan: He has to stay in Turkey until Monday as he won’t be safe to fly until then. I suspected that this would be the case despite his initally assuring me that he should be able to fly home with the rest of them. Major disappointment, but better than him flying when it’s not safe.

And on an entirely unrelated note, how and why did two people manage to find my blog by searching for “girls playing with noose”? Should I be worried?…