Basket of Ideas

In 20 days I am 25

Sat, 14 May 2011 12:56:02 +0930

I guess this is a big milestone in everyone’s life. It’s been quarter a century since I started to breathe air on this earth.

Few days ago Guardian covered a story about quarter life crisis, which occur from 25 to 35 years of age. And guess what are the symptoms - you feel anxious, lonely, feel the need to reinvent your life, find meaning, feeling of insecurity. I can say some days I feel like this. I am definitely trying to do something remarkable before I am too old (or too lazy) to do something.

There is a cure to help yourself. World is a hard place for all of us and we have to earn what we have.

In my case I moved to another country, started my career, found love of my life and new friends to keep me going.

Yes, not everything is bright, but after finding my balance and investing time into what I love and want to do, relax and do some sport (to release all the energy and endorphins) I feel like quarter life crisis would be just one of the things you look back too and smile.

FOUR PHASES OF A QUARTERLIFE CRISIS

PHASE 1: Defined by feeling “locked in” to a job or relationship, or both. “It’s an illusory sense of being trapped,” said Robinson. “You can leave but you feel you can’t.”

PHASE 2: Typified by a growing sense that change is possible. “This mental and physical separation from previous commitments leads to all sorts of emotional upheavals. It allows exploration of new possibilities with a closer link to interests, preferences and sense of self. Up until then you may be driving fast down a road you don’t want to be going down. A minority of participants described getting caught in a loop, but the majority reflected on a difficult time which was a catalyst for important positive change.”

PHASE 3: A period of rebuilding a new life.

PHASE 4: The cementing of fresh commitments that reflect the young person’s new interests, aspirations and values.

I am currently at phase 3 (I am missing my life and friends back at home), but life is more of a journey than just destination.

Brainless holiday

Sat, 14 May 2011 12:35:32 +0930

My mum arrived to Sydney to see how it is to live in Australia, at least for few weeks.Our first stop was Sydney.

By my fault we were staying close to King’s Cross on a street full of backpackers. It amazed me how you can loose all your sanity and just run around like crazy when you are on holidays.

Behaving like this is not the planet we live on, just some remote place in random place somewhere in the universe where no one cares about consequences.

I couldn’t help myself thinking that life does not work like that. We can’t forget that all our actions trigger reactions.

Next time when I go out and think that I can drink till the morning, smash bottles, and scream on everyone passing, I would think twice.

Call me boring, but my future is in stake.

Sleepless ad

Sat, 14 May 2011 12:35:26 +0930

Since I stayed in a hotel, where other residents kept me up whole night, I had plenty of time to think.

I came up with idea for ad for milk. Yes, you would say,..”really, milk..?”. When I have random thoughts they are truly wild.

Here is the key line for the ad:

“Don’t be rasist, stop discriminating milk, just because it’s white.”

The idea was to compare milk with coke and other colourful drinks, which are definitely more popular than good old healthy milk. Maybe a bit hard line, but we need to face truth somehow.

I can see some problems introducing it, but I guess that doesn’t stop me from dreaming about compering milk with coke.

Two weeks ago Bryan and me won tickets for 127 hours premiere. I...

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 21:00:41 +1030

Two weeks ago Bryan and me won tickets for 127 hours premiere. I couldn’t wait to see the movie since I first saw the trailer.

The movie was all about life in our fast pacing world, so when you are stuck you can see all your mistakes. I would say eyes opening, when you want to look…

Got my ticket to Connecting up 2011

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 20:08:00 +1030

Finally I got some time at work and registered for Connecting up 2011 conference. If you are wondering what the @#!% is Connecting up 2011, let me tell you some more.

When I came to Australia in September 2010 I had no idea about NGO sector here, so I needed to learn. By chance I stumbled upon Connecting up Australia - national NGO aiming on strengthen nonprofits and communities they work in.

I got amazed by their work, when I saw their Online Content Manager giving a speech on Microsoft Connecting Communities Day in Syndey. She was great, to the point and convincing. Shai Coggins gave nonprofits basic guidelines what to do with this strange thing called social media.

Growing a nonprofit social media strategy: MS NGO Day Sydney 2010 View more presentations from Shai Coggins.

After this presentation I wanted to know more! Finding out about Connecting up 2011 and realising that it is also about technology, innovation and interactivity for nonprofits I was sold.

RiAus, the science promoting nonprofit, where I work now, would highly benefit from this information. And I can’t wait to boost up my knowledge and meet some great communicators. So why not?

My first time on the motorbike

Sun, 05 Dec 2010 21:26:14 +1030

Today I fell in love with the bike!

In the morning I woke up, feeling lazy and wanting to spend the whole day in my bed. I am glad that I overcame the laziness in me and did not write to Bryan that we are going nowhere.

When Bryan came and I saw how big is the bike I freaked out a bit. I was thinking about it the whole week. What should I do, how would it feel, I was a bit worried what would happen.

After adjusting my helmet, putting gloves and clumsily hopping on the bike, we were rolling. It felt weird at first to move on something which wasn’t around me and I wasn’t peddling it at all. First few minutes I was a bit frozen, scared and sometimes feeling dizzy. Like when I would do the wrong move we will all die. I was imagining how I will break my legs, and my neck would be twisted in very unnatural way.

After we hit the highway and came to Handorf, our first stop of the day, I was feeling much more safer. I started to look around more, loose the tight grid around Bryan and just enjoy the ride down south. We were heading through Adelaide hills to Goolwa, which is on the coast. The roads were twisted, so there was a lot of leaning to one side or the other. We were passing a lot of horse farms, which surprised me by their amount, and warmed my heart (yes I have lifelong passion for horses).

When we came to Goolwa, my ass was a bit sore and I could not feel my legs. I was holding to tight, and trying to hard. I am glad we had this break, cause lunch was delicious home made hamburger and fish and chips. Great for our hungry stomachs. I couldn’t sit on the bike with such a full stomach, so we walked around the city a bit, found very unusual Sunday market with all the things you don’t need and you definitely should not buy. It reminded me of home and all this small markets where you can find hats you will never wear, or tiny statutes you would be ashamed to show off, even hair-dresser was present. When we looked at the jetty (yes that is Australian word for pier) the rain started to pour slowly. The sound of thunder convinced us to stay a bit longer in a small coffee place called Coffelious - which is very accurate, cause the coffee was amazing and delicious out there.

After heading of back to Adelaide I was feeling much more confident, I stopped trying that hard and was more natural. That was the key! I just flew in the air, with bike under me, I leaned when it was necessary and I felt I should, just the right bit and then back. Then I understood why they have flying scenes in the movies with people just sitting in the air - if felt just like that.

On the way back storm caught us one more time, so we stopped in this small town, sat in the wooden bus stop, watched the rain and talked. After the storm passed we hit the road again. Crossing Adelaide hills with the view of the ocean on both sides, passing along the Christmas tree farm - bizarre place considering Christmas is crazy hot here and then coming towards Adelaide.

During the whole day I noticed that guys, in every age, were looking at us with envy. I got why! They envied us the whole image of freedom and fun connected with bike and fast ride.

Cool Old-school Cinema in Adelaide

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 22:04:19 +1030

Cool Old-school Cinema in Adelaide:

The Capri Theatre is amazing old cinema on Goodwood road. I passed around few times already and never really noticed the building. Is not that significant from outside, but when you enter it, you got instantly charmed by historic spirit of the building. The doors to the cinema are along both streets, the cinema is on the corner, and all the doors were open, like you can see in old movies. The building itself was built and started to function as cinema in 1941. It was rebuilt two times, last time in 2003 to the picture from the mid of 20th century.

The lobby is nicely furnished with soft sofas and welcoming carpet. The toilets had original tails in place and a room for ladies to relax and put their make up on.

Cinema itself was surprisingly big and comfortable. When we entered there was an organ player rolling on the stage. After lifting the curtains we could see organ pipes and different music instruments all operated just by one person. This old guy was incredible.

I can just recommend coming to Capri for organ concert instead of movie.

Are we all environmental alibists?

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 20:34:00 +1030

Today while I was riding a bike down to a beautiful beach I started to think how modern is to be green and environmentally aware. On one hand we replace paper with computers, recycle, reuse things, or use less electricity. All these efforts are honorable, but did you look at the bigger picture?

Everything in the world is connected. So if we use less paper and start to store everything only, someone/somewhere needs to power all these servers, cool them and create storage areas. All this costs money and energy. So we just changed something which is visible and tangible for somobody’s else problem.

Four weeks ago I moved to Australia, which is one of the countries that is environmentally very conscious. Australians are all over green technologies, saving water, electricity and behaving responsibly towards the planet. It`s all nice and admirable. On the other hand when I go for lunch to food court most of the places serve you food on plastic plates, with plastic knife and fork, with tons of papers. They massively use plastic/paper cups for takeaway coffee, drinks, smoothies. Average person does not think about big picture, they feel good that they did something for environment by not printing out that email, but they are happy to buy takeaway coffee everyday. And I believe these habits have bigger environmental impact then printing 2 pages.

Australia is one of countries which still hesitates to use nuclear power. However they don`t have problems with dumping nuclear waste in their country and creating the biggest nuclear dump in the world. To be honest I think Australians should be more afraid about that, then about some nuclear reactor which can bring them actual benefits. I am not a big fan of nuclear power. I still think it need some time to develop and be effective. Currently we are able to use just a small percentage of uranium, most of it goes to waste.

Taking care of our environment, I am saying our because it does not matter which country you come from, should be taken as complex thing. Question is what are we able to sacrifice to do that (In one TED talk I got surprised by a fact that European cat has bigger ecological footprint than average African). Or change our deep habits. Takeaway coffee tastes the same from your travel mug as from the plastic one.

Take yourself out of the box next time you talk about “green”.

I also recommend this video - How I fell in love with a fish - for the ones who believe that there is still a change of having natural farms and food produced on them.

Happiness is inside us!

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 20:29:14 +1030

One beautiful spring Monday morning I was watching video from Srikumar Rao, who is a life coach and graduate school educator, about hapiness in our lives. I have learnt important lesson. We tend to give ourselves conditions when and how we will be happy. “I will be happy, when I would have a lot of money and I could travel to all the amazing exotic places.” Or “I would be happy when I will have a boyfriend, he will make my life complete.”

There is the mistake. When we fall for this, within 6 months we will be the same unhappy us as we were before. Why is that? All the happiness we give ourselves, starts inside, we choose when we will be happy. As Mr. Rao says the process is the most important. When we decide we want to be happy, all the universe will help. We meet the right people, start to be friends with the person we always wanted, go for the good movies, we read the suitable books.

I will tell you my own story. I used to look for happiness everywhere else. I wanted to have the best job, I wanted to be the most successful student and get so much appreciation, have amazing boyfriend who will adore me, all this to feel happiness. I was happy for a while, enjoyed what I got, but then it started to vanish. Slowly, however it went away. My friend told me I need to look for happiness from inside. I should ask my soul what it really yearn for. And I should listen. Then all the universe help me to find it. At the beginning it was hard to change my thinking. I tried and gently it worked. Today when I am getting upset, I switch my thinking to possibilities of happiness. I ask what can I do to be happy again, how can I change it.

I want to be happy and enjoy everyday of my life!

Srikumar Rao’s TED talk - Plug into your hard-wired happiness.

Road trip through four countries in five days

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 21:12:00 +1030

As I said to my friend the day after we returned the trip was so great! I was really excited about putting our crazy ideas into reality. The decision to go was made just five days before departure. I invited Katrin, friend I met in summer school in Korea, and she was crazy enough to say yes! We spoke English all the time, since any of us is a native speaker we invented new words. Our fridge was called George and he did a lot of nice things for us: keeping our drinks and food cold, took care of Korean Soju and Italian Prosecco. In total we made 1770 km in four countries during five days.

Google Map of our trip.

And here it is how it all went: On Monday we left Bratislava in the morning, heading to Vienna, Austria to pick up my friend Katrin and head to Slovenia. We stopped in Wiener Neustadt, cause she forgot something at her dorm, that was like a dream dorm for us. She had nearly nicer room than the one I have at home. Then we headed to the south, singing songs out loud with windows wide open, cause my car doesn’t have air conditioning. Our first stop was Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia, which is to my surprise very small and rural, but we stopped for a while, had ice-cream (in Slovakia ice creams from the south are the best, but this one was not the case), we found Slovak road - which is funny cause Slovenians call them selves the same as we do, we made some pictures of old town and castle, sent postcards. We decided that we send postcards to our friends from every city we go to, and then headed south to see the sea. We went to the port close to Italian borders called Koper, it was so huge, I saw something like this in the biggest port of Korea, the boats were like skyscrapers, and the sea was to clean and bright, it was like a fairy tale. Our camping site was in city called Piran, which was sealed and you could only enter it when you had accommodation there. So we built our tent on the hill, it was a bit south European wild, the car was parked under a small concrete wall and we need to throw it over to get it to the tent. Our first swim in Mediterranean felt so great, even though the bottom of the sea were slippery stones. We went to bed really soon, the funny thing was that the tent was made for 3, but three people can barely squeeze in so we were bumping into each other and could not sleep. Our drunk neighbors came and made some funny noises, you cant imagine what things you could hear in a tent.

Day 2 was a day when we by accident entered most amazing city on our trip -Portoroz, which looks like Cannes in France, but it’s half that expensive and really great. We spent there some time in the morning, had breakfast on the beach, and went to Umag, Croatia. City was old style Mediterranean, with old medieval buildings and water so blue and clear, we couldn’t resist and jumped in. Here we also bought our great road trip club bracelets and had another bad ice-cream. Afterwards we headed back to Portoroz to have pizza for lunch and the best ice-cream ever in a bar called Cacao. On our walks on the promenade we met a local showing us statue of naked girl called the Rose of Portoroz. Next destination was Lido di Jesolo in Italy, 4 hours on a highway, playing fast and furious with all the holiday drivers. After hide and seek we found beautiful campsite for us, called Villa di Mare just next to lighthouse and on the beach. Our spot was so big that when we made the tent and parked the car we still had enough place for us to sleep
outside, to see the lighthouse and stars during the night. In the evening we ran into the sea where were really high waves, which were entertainment for is in a shallow sea. That day we swam in the same Adriatic sea in 3 different countries.

Day 3 we headed for a trip to Venice. No way you can go there by car, so we parked in Punta Sabbioni, took a boat, full of tourists, as we learned later it did not go better when we came to the city. I guess you could meet there half the world of nationalities. The city itself was nice, medieval, but it felt dead a bit, cause you couldn’t meet many local people, crazy enough to live there, after five hours of sightseeing we grew really tired and we started to hate all the Germans (they can be really rude when on holiday) and headed back for some good Italian pasta in Lido, swim and sleep.

Day 4: Last day in Italy we spent laying on the beach, building Bratislava castle with ditch and water in it, everyone passing was admiring it. Just laying at the beach was quite boring for us. We had lunch near tent and admired our neighbors and their inability to build a tent. We offered them our help, but after they looked at our tent they decided they would do it by themselves. At least we had nice entertainment. After having quite unpleasant dinner in small Italian place, we had to make out our evening. Three bottles of Prosecco, some remake music were enough to have funny evening.
Day 5 we packed and went into direction of Salzburg. I though Italian highways were expensive, but to my surprise we needed to pay extra 10 Euros for a traffic jam and really bad road in Austrian Alps, close to Turnau tunnel. In the traffic jam we opened our car doors and drove with them open, singed out loud and counted German cars (plenty of them heading home). When arriving to Salzburg I was really tired, but the city was so beautiful that it woke me up. We parked in a stone mountain, right in it, there was a parking place. The whole city was really old, with Mozart (who was born there) everywhere, so we walked around had some good Munich white Würstel and heading home. This day we drove over 850 km.

My favourite picture of me

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 21:02:19 +1030

My favourite picture of me