Fanart, Fanfiction and Fangirling

Dear American people, I have a question about university/college. Yes, it's for a fic. When a university accepts you, do you need to go in for an interview as well? Would it make sense for a student in 11th grade to use spring break to have a look at different colleges? Or is that something you usually do after you've been accepted, so in 12th grade? Or you don't do it at all?

Sorry for the stupid question, but the university system is completely different here and I really have no clue.

Thanks!

Oh God, it's only Tuesday. *collapses on desk*

The final paper for the master's is finally finished and printed, I'll hand it in on Friday, discuss it on the 14th (HAHA, Happy Valentine's to me) and then it'll be over. *sigh*

I'm still sending CVs around (I've sent 20-something in the last couple of weeks) but I'm getting more and more pessimistic. I know I have to wait, most of the announces I answered to were quite new and offices usually collect answers for about a month and then proceed to contact the potential candidates, so I just need to be patient, but only one place answered me so far, saying "Thank you for your CV, we'll let you know something after we're done collecting replies." Well, at least I know they got my email. I'd really like to get that job, but they probably won't choose me because I don't have a specific experience in that field. Why did I fucking accept this fucking job as a programmer back in 2004? I should've waited and chosen something I liked, or at least something I found interesting, but with my mother bugging the hell out of me about getting a job, it wasn't easy. And I really thought changing job wouldn't be so fucking difficult, but I was obviously wrong.

On the positive side, I got the ticket for the DÄ concert in Berlin on the 12th July. On the negative side, maybe my parents won't be home in that period and I'm supposed to be cat-sitting. Why does everything have to be so complicated?

Random discovery of the day: Los Helmstedt on MySpace.

And the making of Sumisu: http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=aEa-3bjJqOg

Farin in vampire make up = ♥♥♥♥♥

Rule #1 for a good karaoke night: sing at least one kitschy '80s song. And when I saw "Venus" by Bananarama I couldn't resist, I get totally carried away when I hear that song. Also, apparently I have a "very powerful voice" and can hold notes. I couldn't hear myself at all, but my friends assured me I did quite well. But "Venus" is a very easy song to sing, maybe next time I should try something a bit more... challenging? I was so tempted to sing "What's up" by Four Non Blondes, but I didn't want to butcher it. :P

And my friend Ste, who went with me to the Farin concert in Düsseldorf last year, told me to let him know when Farin goes on tour again, because he wants to see another concert! Hahaha, I turned him into a real fan! :D

I also bought the plane ticket for Berlin, I'll fly with EasyJet this time because it's much cheaper than AirBerlin, I paid 68,98€ instead of 129€. I'm leaving on the 2nd August and coming back on the 27th, which means I'll be on holiday for more than 3 weeks! YAY!

But I still don't know anything about my internship, neither when it'll start (end of September? October?), nor where they'll send me. There's a remote possibility I'll go abroad, either in England or Switzerland or Germany, but no one knows anything yet. I'm a bit worried I won't be able to see those Ärzte gigs I got tickets for, I had a look at various flying companies sites just in case and things aren't so bad, if I'm lucky and can take a day off I should be able to go with either RyanAir or EasyJet even if I'm in England. It would actually be cheaper leaving from London than from Milan.

But I can't make plans until I know something for sure. Argh, I'm getting impatient! :O

Law exam: done. I answered to all the 7 questions, let's hope I didn't write utter rubbish.

But who cares! In 24 hours I'll be in Nürnberg! I'll sleep over at my friend's place tonight and we'll leave at dawn tomorrow, hopefully we'll be in Nürnberg around midday. I can't wait! :D

I didn't go celebrate last night because I had to study, but I'm very glad to announce that

WE WON THE ITALIAN FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP!!! *cheers*



There are still 5 matches to go, but there are 16 points between us and the second team, so the first place is all ours. Finally, after years of suffering and being made fun of by all the other teams, we won. The last time was 18 years ago and our best players were Matthäus, Klinsmann and Brehme. So yes, it WAS a long time ago. I admit I was sceptic at first and thought Rome was going to win this year, but we made it. Era ora! And of course I wore my black and blue shirt to go to university today. ^__^

I've finally sent the request to join the DÄ fanclub, I don't know if I'll have time to go to the bank and send the money tomorrow, otherwise I'll just do it on Friday. Which is also my dad's birthday, damn, I have to buy him a present! Luckily I already know what to get him and where.

I'm so tired, I wish this exam was over already. I'm nervous about it because music is my "field of interest" for this course and I don't want to cut a poor figure with the professor. And her exams are extremely long, up to 75 minutes! How am I supposed to talk about electronic music for 75 minutes? *panics*

I didn't disappear from the face of earth, I've just been busy with university. I've been studying for the first exam of the master's, the one about theatre, and talked with the professor about the internship. Everything is still very vague, but I hope I'll be able to do something interesting. The exam is next Friday and after that I won't have lessons for 2 weeks, I'll use that time to study for the music exam. I'll probably visit my aunt in Abruzzo and hopefully go to Rome for a couple of days. It's high time I visit my own capital. :P

Last night I took a break from studying and drew a cartoon:

http://www.doitcomics.net/loshelmstedt/bbylh005.html

The nurse costume is an inside joke, but I hope you'll find it funny too.

And I bought the tickets for Rock im Park! YES! :D

Off to eat something now, I'm starving.

Why do I never have the energy to update anymore? I only have lectures in the morning, I shouldn't be so tired. Last night I pretty much collapsed in bed around 9 pm. 9 PM! I must be getting old.

Anyway. We played in a new rehearsal room on Monday, it was smaller than the old one but the sound was much better, the bass sounded great. But the volume was MUCH higher, I got up with my ears still ringing yesterday morning. Ouch.

And our keyboardist told me he and his girlfriend want to go to either Rock am Ring or Rock im Park and I can go with them! YES! RiP is closer so we're probably going there, but we haven't decided yet, he told me he just wants to live the "festival experience" and he doesn't really care where we're going. As for me, as long as I can see Die Ärzte, I'm happy. :D

There shouldn't be problems for Bela's concerts either, I'll have to do an internship but it's supposed to start after the summer, so I should be free all August. I still haven't decided if I'm going just to the solo gigs or to the festivals as well, but if I'm going from Potsdam to Mannheim, why not Mannheim - Taubertal? It's not that far. Now that I think about it, I could leave a couple of days before the Potsdam gig and visit my friends in Berlin too. Mmh.

But I'll have to concentrate on studying now, I'll have the first 2 exams in a couple of weeks. We have to choose a theme and do a little research on it, for "Theatre and Society" (or whatever that course is called) I'm doing Greek theatre and for "Music History and Management" I'm doing the development of electro-acoustic music. Some of it is very technical, but it's very interesting too.

And now I'll go to bed. Gah, I'm really getting old.

As the title of this entry says, I've finally started studying Japanese! :D I'm doing a conversation course, at the moment we're just learning sentences like "Hi, my name is...", "How old are you?" "I'm ... years old", very simple stuff, but I'm so excited! Sugoi desu ne! :D (Which means: "So cool!" ^_^)

I'm not often online these days, I started the master's last Monday and would use the uni lab, but they haven't activated my account yet, so I'm stuck with my slow dial-up connection at home. Also, I was about to strangle the prof when she said "If you listen to a violin in real life and try to record it, the sound you get is different, but with amplified instruments (electric guitars, basses etc) the recorded sound is identical to the real sound, so if you go to a pop concert the sound is the same as the one on the CD." WHAT??? :O

Talking about the internet, I don't have a site at the moment, my old one got deleted along with all the other sites hosted at arithmancy.net (RIP), I have some free webspace I could use, but I'm thinking of buying a domain and creating a portal for all my stuff, such as the DoitComics project, the Los Helmstedt comics and, of course, my fanfiction and fanart. And eventually adding other little projects if I have the time and energy to do them. It will take some time getting it all back online, but hopefully I'll make it, I've already found a hosting service and decided the domain name, I just need to actually buy it.

I want to play "Du willst mich küssen" and "Erna P." because, damn, the bass lines of those two songs are just brilliant. *goes to tune bass*

But before I go, a little eye-candy. Oh, Bela...

( Oh, Bela... )

Found on http://spiesser.regio-tv-portal.de/default.aspx?ID=3194&showNews=67822

Oh, and happy Carnival everyone. *throws confetti in the air*

Damn, my site is gone. I had a subdomain at arithmancy.net, apparently someone else who had a subdomain there was hosting illegal material (as in, copyrighted material) and when the hosting service found out they deleted the whole domain. Luckily I have a back-up of all my files on my PC at home, but it'll take a while to upload them all again. *sigh*

But I have good news too! I got the official confirmation that I was accepted at the masters! YAY! :D Two more weeks and I'll be back to being a student. Gah, that's so strange. The negative thing is that I won't have money (well, I could work in the weekends and/or evenings, but I won't have a steady income like I have now); the positive thing is that I'm going to have 2 months holiday in the summer. :D

And, uhm, when a colleague says "Why don't you come over for dinner tomorrow, my flatmate's away and I'm home alone", he's only saying that because he knows I'm at the hotel all alone and I may like some company, right? He's just being friendly, right? RIGHT? *paranoid*

But tonight was fun, I went with these two colleagues of mine to see Giuliano Palma & the Bluebeaters in Turin for free. They're really good musicians and even played "Shame and scandal" by Madness! Oh boy, I love that song. And "Messico e nuvole" was brilliant, it was at least 20 minutes long with lots of improvisation and bits of 5 or 6 other songs thrown here and there.

And I met schwimmerin yesterday! She's in Italy with her mother for a couple of weeks, I met them in Milan in the afternoon and showed them around a bit, I hope I didn't make a total fool of myself. She gave me a little tiger plushie with a Harvard T-shirt on and I gave her a Farin drawing. I'm SOOO predictable. :P

I'd better go to bed now, I woke up at 5 this morning and I'm starting to feel a bit tired now...

But I must show off my new icon first! It's Wayne and Olsen from Los Helmstedt! The caption is courtesy of Paule. Oh, those two...

I didn't go to the concert on last Saturday, but I saw Afterhours last night. I'd never seen them live before (*cough*Ididn'tevenknowthelyrics*cough*), but the concert was quite good. Demi's boyfriend told us we were lucky, the singer is very moody and gets annoyed easily, sometimes they play for 45 minutes and then just walk away. Insulting the audience. Last night they seemed to be in a good mood though, it was the last concert of the tour, so maybe they wanted to leave a good impression.

Anyway, the mood was ruined when Demi told me she'd heard a few people complain about the Master's I want to attend, saying it was badly organised and that she thought I should look for something else. Damn. Maybe it's just because it's a new course and the first year there are always problems, I hope it'll be better next year. I'm going to the interview in January anyway, I don't want to give up on this, I really don't. She also said "Why don't you go abroad then? Go to Germany!" Well, as much as I'd love to go abroad, I don't have any kind of practical experience in that field, that's why I want to attend this course, to see what it's like from the inside. And then, when I have some experience, I'll think of going abroad.

And in the meantime I'll try to improve my German, which is quite awful at the moment. All right, that's not true, I was one of the best of my class in the course I did in Berlin last summer (typical scene: "Does anyone know what this mean? No one? I'm sure Alex does" :P), but I'm fucking scared of talking in German. Which is stupid, I know, just like I know the only way of overcoming my fear is to actually speak. Being in Berlin on my own helped a lot, even if there were times when I simply gave up and talked in English, because it would have taken me an hour to say what I wanted to say in German. =/

But the night ended on a more positive note. Little premise: there are a few bands I've heard of from people on my flist, or read about on magazines, but I've never actually listened to their songs. Sometimes I discover them by pure chance and think "Oh, that's what all the fuss was about!" Well, last night I finally heard a song by a band I've read much about and that I've been wanting to listen to for some time.

I was driving home with Radio Rock FM on and at one point I heard a song in German, which was very surprising, as the only German band who sings in German known in Italy is Rammstein and that was obviously not a Rammstein song. (All right, there was "Ein, zwei Polizei" too, but that was a looong time ago. :P)

I turned up the volume and tried to make out the lyrics, I'd missed the whole first strophe, but I could clearly understand this:

Ich geb euch Liebe
Ich geb euch Hoffnung

I liked the song very much and was very curious to know who the band was, then the chorus came on:

Gott ist ein Popstar!

And I said "Fuck, that's OOMPH!" I was shocked, I'd never thought I'd listen to them on an Italian radio station. And when the song was over, "Amerika" by Rammstein came on. So weird, two German songs in a row. Maybe if I pester ask nicely they'll play Die Ärzte as well? *big shiny Puss in Boots eyes*

And I dreamed Danny Young was playing in our band and I accidentally met him in my garage. My brain is seriously messed up. XD And while I'm talking about Los Helmstedt...

( Oh, I'm such a fangirl... )