Number One

Why, hello there! You decided to read my blog, I’m excited!
I want to use this platform to share all the little bits of wisdom and ponderings, daydreams and wonderings of my life with you, gentle reader. Ahh, makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, doesn’t it?

Well, if you’ve read the "about me" part of my profile, you already know what my life is all about – jobs, school, private life – and that’s where many of my insights come from.

I’m the nanny of three sweet children, ages two through six, henceforward referred to as monsters one, two and three. I love hanging out with them. Well … cater to their every snotty need, more specifically. You can learn a lot from children: silly songs, patience, what not to feed the dog. You name it.
So that’s part-time job numero uno.

Numero dos requires a lot less responsibility, but a lot more endurance. I work the Rent-A-Segway booth in the Salzburg city center. I rent out the Segways, teach people how to ride them, do city tours (yes, on a Segway), etc. Less responsibility as in one Segway = 7000 bucks; one child = priceless. More endurance? You see, I can handle listening to the Hi-5 Christmas Special for the umpteenth time regardless of the season. However, I find it a lot harder to handle a choir of Segway-riding, camera-wielding Sound of Music enthusiasts on a two-hour tour around town.

But I digress. So you see, most of my inspiration comes from working with children and tourists, two categories of people who have brought forward some of the most fascinating specimens of our kind. I enjoy my work immensely and would never give it up even though my jobs do cut into school time quite a bit.
Ah, yes. School. I go to university in order to learn, to entertain myself, to meet people, to feel smug for later on in life. But mainly in order to learn, of course, and because my parents made me. I still manage to suck some inspiration out of school and out of the things I learn there, the books we read. But studying philology has killed 90% of my love of literature. Quite dead. However, I’m fairly certain I’ll be able to revive it within a week or two of having received my diploma.

And my third major fount of inspiration besides the above-mentioned and eavesdropping on old ladies on the bus is my life as the helicopter mom of the apartment I share with four other people as well as a crazy cat and a Methuselah of a hamster. (And five to ten Mediterranean flour moths. I wish those doggone things would just go and die already!) There is always something going on at our house and usually whatever is going on is accompanied by our housemate M practicing her hammered dulcimer in the background. (You can get a degree in that, by the way. See, you learn something new every day.)

So, as you may have figured out on your own by now, gentle reader, I can recycle many a trivial experience into some jim-dandy worldly wisdom. And you can be part of it all!
Ever wonder how the things I do to afford my degree in this beautiful city make me feel? How does my degree as a whole make me feel? How does the beautiful city make me feel?
Learn all about it in my blog!
Also, discover how being aware of the fact that the only monster-approved recipe for waffles is on page 142 of the Baker’s Bible saves my life every Tuesday. Learn how using the words “cebu” and “water buffalo” in a simple song not only produces a most incredible effect but may also turn out to be crucial for my progress at the University of Salzburg (which I so diligently attend). Find out why I’m haunted by visions of the Easter Bunny on a Segway. And not a cute, fluffy pink Easter Bunny either. More like … well, have you seen the movie Donnie Darko?

To be continued …