Skip to main content

Wichtig und beliebt

So, Tunde is back in the States and my apartment is recovering from around a week's worth of 3 people camping out in my room. It'll probably take the rest of the week to get it back to "normal" -- whatever that means.

My birthday party location has been secured, so mark your calendars (I'll be sending around the date in about a month). For now you can make an educated guess. It's not going to work out with that bunker (sadness), but it gives me at least a goal to work towards. I mean, I'm not going to fully give up on throwing parties, just because I'm turning 30.

At the moment, the worst part is that I don't have time to plan my party. I'm trying to reduce that to the bare minimum. A guest list, a playlist, a basic foundation for a bit of a buffet, and trying to find the best way to impart to people that I'd prefer buffet donations and/or donations to my preferred non-profit org(s) rather than gifts. That should be fairly easy...ish.

Still, between all that, there's work (today's my one year anniversary) and life (I'm behind on friend appointments) and radio show (the last two months were 3 hours of re-runs, one hour of live DJing) and my relationship (I missed Frosty's call this evening and I'm behind on my reading in feminist theory). Also, I hardly update my blog anymore. The last point is more about my lack of time, rather than a lack of desire. I shall continue to forge ahead. Tortoise FTW.

In the meantime, you should check out Schmiddy's blog, iPott. It's all in German. So if you like that heiße deutsche Shiznit...then checkt das, homes. It's beautiful with salt.

Also, you can read the blog Currents Between Shores, which is written by the Haitian-American journalist/author Rose-Marie Clermont. She's been living in Berlin for over a decade and writes aaammaaaaazing things about life in Germany as a woman of color. She also wrote a fantastic book called Busch Girl: Wie ich unter die Deutschen geriet . She's full of real talk. Mulatto Revolution-quality real talk.

I don't know how to segue into the next part. Let's call it, "People-who-are-interesting-as-fuck-and-are-now-friends-of-mine-or-at-least-good-acquaintances"

Graham - he's this skater dude that I met in the Schanze the 2nd time that Tunde came to visit. His parents are British and he was born and raised in Germany, so he's actually kind of more German than British unless he's speaking English. I run into him almost every time that I'm in the Schanze (because he lives on Schulterblatt). Recently, he said I should enter a contest to win a new skate deck. I considered this for a moment and then asked him about the conditions, which required a photo shoot in Rissen. That's too far away from me. Plus, I still carry this guilt about Schmiddy's broken foot and the last skate deck that I procured for him.

B. - where do I start? She is a leftist political activist who immigrated to Germany in the 70s as a pre-teen and political asylum seeker. We met last year at a lecture on "Portraits of Feminity and Masculinity in Fundamentalist Islam" on International Women's Day (March 8th - what what!). The event organizers were having trouble with their multimedia video and Frosty volunteered to help. B. was sitting at the same table and had criticized us earlier for bringing vegan pizza (from Hin & Veg) to the event. We didn't know that a vegan meal was available...that she had helped cook. Anyway, she's a very strong-willed, convincing person and I now help her with her non-profit org's website. She's so left...that she has beef with the public left-wing radio station (FSK, where my show broadcasts) because they aren't left enough.

L'nee - is B.'s ex-roommate. He's from South Carolina, speaks German fairly well (if I do say so myself) and moved to Hamburg from Berlin to study Japanese. He loves Korean Pop, even though he can't speak the language. He's such a youngin and an adventurer. Also, when I told him that he was invited to my 30th birthday, he said the most inappropriate thing I've ever heard in terms of birthday fun. But it cracked me up. And I love meeting people who can crack me up.

Everyone in my department at work - I'm pretty sure we could get a reality show.

In summary, I work, work, work. I know some interesting people, with whom I meet up occasionally.

***Subject change***


This month, for my radio show I want to do a show about my favorite female emcees, but then I saw this new EP from Prinz Pi and Kamp in Juice Mag. And it sounds so good.

Frosty also sent me the video to the track "So Sorry" by Kamp & Whizz Vienna, which reminded me how much I fucking love their album, Versager ohne Zukunft. It was my absolute favorite from 2009/2010. Kamp One is now on my list of rappers that I would like to hang out with.



So on that alone, you should check out the Prinz Pi & Kamp EP (Achse des Schönen). It is so full of win. Imho, this is mostly is due to production by Whizz Vienna. At any rate, it makes Prinz Pi (aka Prinz Porno, as he was known several years back) more palatable to me than he's ever been before.



These songs might end up on my playlist in 2 weeks...
We'll see how it goes with work though. Maybe at the beginning.

We shall see.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Best Taco Bell in Germany

 Last weekend, I crossed off a major item on my bucket list. I went to Taco Bell in Germany. "But Raven, shouldn't you aspire to better, healthier things that have a measurable positive impact on society?" I know that's what you're thinking, but I don't really give a crap... because you are not the boss of me.  I wanted Taco Bell, because it's probably the one thing from back at home that I crave the most. Say what you want about it (again, I don't give a crap), but get at me when you've spent years away from your homeland and are unable to acquire whatever nasty-ass comfort food is available wherever you're from. For me, my nasty-ass comfort food of choice is Taco Bell...with Sonic a close second. However, you can't even find Sonic all over the U.S. and I don't find myself craving burgers and hot dogs all the time (plus, those urges are a lot easier to satisfy than a craving for Mexican or Tex-mex).

The One Who Got Away (Part 6): PLOT TWIST

Quick Translation: This confirms that German citizenship will not be opposed, if within two years it can be verified that the aforementioned person no longer possesses citizenship for Trinidad and Tobago e   and/or has fulfilled the requirements for the loss of this citizenship and that nothing has happened in the meantime, which would forbid naturalization.  I almost forgot what it felt like to receive a industrial size dose of 100% homegrown German bureaucratic pedantry. Luckily, the German authorities will never leave you too long without a fix. You can count on that. As you can see from the picture above (and from my previous posts), Trinidad and Tobago e  had only been mentioned once in passing up until now, when I finalized my application and paid the fee. Mr. S: Your mother was naturalized in the U.S. after you were born? Me: Yes, but she never applied for Trinidadian citizenship for me, which would have had to have been done by my 18th birthday.  Mr. S: Ok. (Ac

The One Who Got Away (Part 5)

Pro tip: Don't estimate the amount of time it will take to review your citizenship application based on the amount of time it took to get the results of your citizenship test. So far, this has been the area of the German-side of the process that ran a little closer to my bureaucratic expectations, namely, if an official expresses a length of time -- e.g. 3-6 months -- things will start moving closer to the six month mark than the three month mark. Getting down to the wire, I was (and still am) slightly concerned that this would drag on and I would have to renew my U.S. passport first, since it's getting kinda close to the point where it's only valid for six months. This would have cost me 1.) more money 2.) plus a trip to a consulate that actually does shit for U.S. citizens 3.) money and time off work for a trip to Bremen, Berlin, or Frankfurt. As luck would have it, I finally received notification that the Germans are letting me in! The full term is that they are