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You Are 28 Years Old

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Yesterday I had already the first opportunity to comply to my plan. There was a reception and concert in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian uprising of 23 October 1956. What I would have preferred is to wear my final-exam-outfit: Black shoes, dark blue Jeans, grey T-shirt, black jacket. It's sportive but elegant. At least in my opinion. I can't see why nice jeans are considered so much worse than cord trousers. But anyway. As Erzi was not satisfied I thought, what do I lose by going home and taking my suit? It's funny. I brought that suit and so many people in Austria were asking me: "What, you are taking your suit with you? Why." And I'm so glad I did, I had no idea I'd need it so much. It's funny. My colleague Premek has two suits, ten shirts and ten ties here - which is only half of his total suits, shirts and ties! (What a good lawyer and Diplomat.) While I have only this one suit - and at home two or three more shirts and one other tie. I guess my granny will be happy now because finally I found something which I'd like to have as a present for the completed studies. A second suit because I've got the feeling I might need them more often in the future..

Anyway, the preparation for that concert was interesting. Earlier this week, before knowing about the event, I saw Sylwia and Erzi setting up this Hungarian flag with a huge hole in the middle and holding a golden "50" into the middle. So I thought: Obviously some important member of the Hungarian community is celebrating a birthday or marriage anniversary .
I assumed that this flag was made for such events, for putting different numbers or photos into the middle, and as a joke I said: "Oh, is that an old communist flag?"
Erzi didn't hear it and soon afterwards explained: "The hole is where the communist symbols used to be."
So I asked: "Oh, did one of the Hungarian refugees bring it to Canada."
"No it was made here."
I was puzzled: "Why would someone who fled from the Communist regime later on in Canada sew a flag with the communist symbols" - assuming that those symbols had finally been cut out after 1989 - "instead of producing a plain Hungarian flag without them?"
It took a while until the misunderstanding was solved: The flag was already produced this way in Canada: A flag with a hole.



Thinking about it I feel it's a very interesting sort of symbolism. You are not producing a flag without the despised symbols, or with the preferred symbols instead, but still a complete flag. No, you're leaving the flag, the nation, incomplete. A hole instead of a whole. Would an outsider have recognised that the symbols were missing? Probably not. But this way, it's unmistakingly obvious. Everybody realises: It's damaged. It's wrong. At present there's something in the country which should be cut out. It represents dissatisfaction of the present, without making clear what the future should be like. Also it so strongly conveys that idea of future action, of a change, because usually the symbols are only cut out after the regime had fallen. It's a wish - a wish that in this case eventually became reality..

Theory
You know what I've been thinking these day? Maybe I should become an adult, or to be more precise, maybe I should act in such a way that people perceive me as the adult who I am.

Example 1: Clothes
When going to work I've been dressing rather informally. It's not at all different from what I used to wear for going to university - which would be OK if I had been into law or social sciences but not as an arts student :-) - or from what I'm wearing when going out. I think lack that semi-formal style. Most is informal and rather sportive. That's the way I am (well, more informal than sportive :-) and the way I feel good. I was assured by Sylwia that the way I dress is fine, so I know that in practice it's no problem. Yet, I concluded that maybe I should change my attitude. The English translation of "sich leger kleiden" according to LEO is quite telling: "to dress down" - to make myself smaller, younger, weaker. It may be just a result of my general unsureness and uneasiness when dealing with superiors, maybe it's only his general personality but I sometimes got the impression that my boss does not take me as serious in scientific matters as I would wish. And I concluded that the way I dress may have contributed to that. If I would dress more formal, act more confident, people would in the first place see the serious scholar (which I'm at work) and not the laid-back young guy (which I'm in my free time). It shouldn't be too difficult to find some nice and semi-formal clothes in which I'm not looking boring?

Example 2: Lifestyle
Self discipline. Routine. Yep, that topic again. Also in my life style I feel that I match much more the stereotype of the young, chaotic, untidy student then that of a nearly 30 years old, settled adult. Both Kinga and Matthias were actually quite surprised (if not shocked) when I admitted that my frequency of doing dishes or cleaning can rather be described as "occasionally" than as "regularly". The situation of moving out made the whole dilemma plain clear: My landlord was obviously well aware of the state of disorder the apartment has been in for most of the time, although I think he got a worse impression than it actually was. So the day I mentioned that I would move out he suggested that I should hire a professional cleaning company because I had to clean everything and that would be a lot, a lot of work. Some of my colleagues assumed he just wanted to take advantage of the situation but I've come to a different conclusion. I think he was sincerely convinced that I actually did not know how to clean properly. At least when I made clear that I was determined to do it by myself and confident about it he didn't resist - but I felt that he was not convinced. Which in turn appealed to my honour. I did not ask any of my female colleagues for help as he suggested - no I wanted to do it all by myself. (Which I guess I would have done anyway because I have lived there so it's my job to get rid of my dirt, and also it's a good way to say farewell to the apartment.) I'm sure he assumed that the fact I needed until today was due to a combination of the basement being horribly dirty and of me not really knowing how to deal with it. Which is not entirely untrue: As I said stove and fridge were hard work indeed, and also I wouldn't say that I'm the quickest cleaner. However, the prime reason was that I was cleaning with meticulous care. Cleaning all shelves, even those I never used, and not only dusting them but really scrubbing them. Cleaning every possible spot, trying not to leave a single hair - and I knew that my predecessors have not been that careful. So when I had finished today and he came down to check (as we had agreed) he was just surprised. So I said: "You see, I'm a bit chaotic by personality, but also if I have a job or duty I try to do it perfectly." "And you've succeeded. This is really perfect." Hehe. I know. I could see that he had not expected this. Which was of course a satisfaction but was it worth the work?

Conclusion
I think the basic problem is similar to the one about clothes: I don't care too much about the appearance so an observer will think worse of my qualities than they are, which in return puts me under pressure to prove what I can achieve, by which I make my life a lot harder than necessary because in the end people get something better than they actually expected or deserved. The theory of the day. Well, that's it, these are the thoughts which have been running through my mind these days. Plans, plans, planss - am I not having so many good plans these days? Let's see what happens. This here again was something completely against the plan. I was so tired after the tiring weekend that I had planned to go to bed early today. And now it's already quarter past one in the morning. Forget about plans, live as you feel.. (As long as nobody sees it .:-)