Footprints

Wherever we go, we always leave traces behind and we might not even be aware of that at the time. It can catch us by great surprise when we notice them months or years later. It is like finding footprints in a place where you have not been for a good while and realizing they are yours.

A few weeks ago I spent a couple of days in my old dorm on my old campus with my old friends and groupmates, and I found footprints I had left there completely unconsciously. It was so good to see how happy both students and teachers were to see me back there, but the most memorable incident happened somewhere I would least expect such a thing to happen: in the canteen. On the first day of my visit I did not have lunch there, I just popped in to say hello. I had a little chat with the chef and his mother, who works as the cashier there, and I told them I would come the following day. The next day I arrived to find that my favourite meal was on the menu.

Words cannot express how I felt. You have to try what it is like. To experience such a feeling, first you have to go away from somewhere. Only by leaving a place can you get to know what it is like when you return.

Successful Advertising

 

A fascinating example of advertising success failure caught my eye this week. Among posters inviting secondary school students to the university's open day, I found this cartoon on one of the billboards at the Institute of English Studies. I knew I should laugh but I couldn't. This is not funny. Sad, but this is the truth. I really wondered how it was possible at all that there are still students in the MA program in TEFL. Everyone knows what it is like to be a teacher today, no wonder that fewer and fewer people choose this profession. And if this were not enough, the institute posts such cartoons on the billboard to discourage those who show at least a little enthusiasm for teaching.

For some inexplicable reason, at the moment there are some students who still choose to apply for the teaching program. What I do not know is for how long this will be so.

Belga vs Phil

It happened many years ago, still I remember it as if it were yesterday. I performed an act, so insignificant and so trivial that you would not think it is worth a separate blog post: I turned on the radio. But immediately after pressing the button I wished I had not done so. Perhaps it was only because of the shock that I did not turn it off at once. Words cannot explain how I felt. I really did not know whether to cry or laugh. The only thing I knew was that I would never in my whole life forget this experience and it would haunt me till my dying day.

Is this the way love is expressed in today’s world? Disappointing. Shameful. Disgusting. I am sick, really! Even if this song was intended to be a joke or parody – and it probably was –, it does not make the situation better. This dreadful piece of music was composed, there is no turning back now. We cannot make it cease to exist, and this is already the worst thing that can happen on earth.

I might be conservative. I am perfectly aware of that. But for me a love song is still like this one. I might be conservative, but if I had to choose between two men on the basis of which of these two songs they sing to me as a proposal, I would not hesitate for a second to say yes to the one singing this latter piece. I listened to these songs one after the other several times, trying to understand modern culture. No success so far. I might be conservative, but for me there is just no comparison.

16.11.1991. - 16.11.2011.

Twenty years ago, some time in the middle of November a group of youngsters who had left secondary school shortly before went to see their music teacher at her house. After telling her how much they missed  music lessons and choir rehearsals from school, they presented their idea of establishing a choir for adults to join, and kindly asked her to take on the role of conductor. She must have been surprised, but she did not refuse her former students' request. When everything was discussed, they all agreed on the date of the first rehearsal. This is how the Ad Libitum Choir was born on 16th November 1991.

I was only one year old then and I had no idea that a choir was formed 30 kilometres away from the village where I lived. Little did I know that it was the choir I would later join at the age of seventeen. Nor could I foresee that this choir would largely determine my daily programmes during my secondary school and university years, with two rehearsals weekly and performances at many weekends. And I could not know how many unforgettable experiences I would have this choir to thank for. They were celebrating their 10th anniversary in the year when my family moved to town – I was eleven and even then I did not know I would celebrate the 20th with them as a member.

Now I am 21, and the choir has just turned twenty. 2000 copies of our new CD have been sent to local shops, ready to be purchased. The exhibition we organized for this occasion will be opened in a few hours' time. The decorations in the concert hall will be put up the day after tomorrow. Two more rehearsals and we will be ready to give our jubilee concert on Saturday. Perhaps the biggest one we have ever held.

Happy birthday Ad Libitum, and may you have many more returns!

A smile costs nothing

A smile does not cost you anything. This is so true, still so many people fail to realize it. Or at least this is what certain incidents make me conclude.

Some days ago I went to the neighbouring shop to buy some salami for dinner. I was not overjoyed to see that the grumpiest of the shop assistants was on duty. "10 dag of that kind, please," I told her. When she put some on the scales, the screen showed 12. She asked if it was OK but I told her to put the uppermost slice back. She looked at me with the deepest possible hatred on her face, as if I had committed a terrible crime, and said, "Yeah, I should have known you were used to chemists' accuracy!" I should not have been surprised, after all, she was always making this kind of remarks. If it had been the first such occasion,  I would have started to wonder what she disliked so much about my mother and her being a chemist. But I knew that her behaviour had nothing to do with my mother, she talked to everyone like that. She was for some reason angry with the world around her. "Anything else?", she asked, after throwing to me my salami like a dirty cloth she could not wait to get rid of. I think even if I had wanted to buy something else, I would have said "no, thank you".

A couple of days later, on a cold Sunday evening, about ten people (me included) were standing at a bus stop. Most of them were students coming back from their one-week autumn break. They were clutching the handle of their trunks and were shivering with cold. When the bus arrived, they all rushed to the door, assuming they would get on so much faster if they were pushing themselves forward. I waited patiently for my turn, I saw no reason to hurry. It was then that I noticed a sticker on the bus window. It said, "A smile and a little kindness do not cost you a penny."

The bus drivers must have encountered too many bad-tempered passengers, I thought. I remembered my incident in the shop and I was wondering where I should put such a sticker to make sure my favourite shop assistant would read it. I also wondered how many of my fellow passengers had seen the message on the window. Not many of them, I thought, for it seemed there was only one thing in the whole world they cared about at that moment: to get on the bus as fast as they could so that they did not have to stand any longer.

Sometimes I wish today's world was not so fast. We would need more time to pay attention to what is around us because we would not think that the biggest truth might be found on a sticker on the bus.

And the candles burn all night

I do not like this day. Not because of the day itself but because of people’s attitude towards it, which completely destroys the original purpose of this public holiday. And year by year the situation seems to be more and more disappointing. Nowadays November 1 is nothing more than an average day on which people pay a quick visit to the cemetery to light some candles because this is what they feel is expected from them by the society.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not help seeing and hearing what people were doing among the tombs today. Some were chatting as if they had been in a pub. Others were smoking cigarettes beside a grave. Children were shouting, which only their parents seemed not to notice. I also heard a young woman burst out laughing. A middle-aged man was heavily and loudly criticizing the political system. Old women were complaining to each about their health.

The candles were burning silently in the meatime, as if they wanted to show that they had resigned themselves to the situation...

For a couple of more days at the beginning of November some newspaper articles about cemetery thefts remind us that there was a Day of the Dead, but afterwards it is completely forgotten, as if it had not happened at all. The stumps of the candles sooner or later end up in the dustbin, and the last traces of the holiday vanish into nothingness.

Sometimes I ask myself the question why this holiday is needed at all. Commemorating and praying for the loved ones we have lost is something we can and should do during the whole year if we really loved those people. No holiday is needed to keep our loved ones in our heart forever.

I really see no reason for this comedy and I do not think I ever will.