Ho Ho Ho!

It's christmas time! Christmas songs, decoration and present all over the place. The time of year that goes by so fast and you find no time doing anything except the preparation for christmas. What did I do?

Presents

While I still was in Graz until the 18th of December, I had to get presents before driving home, since Graz has a lot more than my little town Steyr. My students home had problems, as so often, with the internet so I decided to get my shopping for presents done.

Depot - CityPark

I decided to go to the shopping center "CityPark", which is near my students home. Once arrived I already was clueless what to get. I discovered a nice decoration shop when I walked passed all the other shops and I decided to have a look in there. The shop is called "Depot" and is at the first floor or the shopping center. 

I was so surprised that they had so many neat things you can easily gift someone without having to worry if they'd like it or not, because they definitely would! They have all sorts of decorations starting from nicely decorated cups up to cushions and small but effective decoaration. It was the perfect store to find all the presents I needed, well most of them.

Since I wasn't done yet buying presents for everyone, I went to "Saturn" at the top floor and bought a few more things.

Unfortunatey there wasn't enough time to wrap them on my own and because I'm so lucky, I discovered a wrapping place which was all for free. The, as they called themselfs, fairies were really amazed by my presents and asked me straight away where I got them from, so I told them. I have a knack for presents :)

Decoration

Since I came home very late and my family didn't have much time either, we decided to decoarate the christmas tree just yesterday. My family is very fussy when it comes to decorating. Everything always looks spot on perfect and is always nicely decorated. The table has a different kind of tablecloth and fitting napkins with reindeers and other decoration on it. All the windows have christmas stickers on them and ornaments hanging down and a lot of athmospheric lights, like candles and holiday lights.

But back to the christmas tree. I couldn't be there when my family bought the christmas tree, but for an accident they bought a premium tree which was a little more expensive than a normal one. It is also a lot better looking than the normal ones.

Once the tree was settled we started decorating. First we started to spray the tree with artifical snow spray to give it a snowy look. We still have no snow yet, so it is nice to have the tree a bit white at least. Once that was done we continued with hanging up the fairy lights. The fairy lights are such a pain to get perfect onto the tree, especially when they are not one-ended. After a half hour we managed finally. Now we set the main clothing of the tree, we continued with the ornaments. My family tends to buy a few new ones every year, so our collection is quiet big. We have birds, reindeers, butterflies, angels, snowflakes, ornaments with glitter and of course some casual ornaments.

As always the tree turned out very nicely. I can't wait until tomorrow, because I really love seeing the happy faces when everyone unwrapped their presents. Last year we had way too many, but this year it's luckily not as much, because we had problems fitting them all under the tree.

Everyone a very merry christmas and enjoy being with your family!

What happened after the PC2?

On Friday the 12th of December I had my second >Progress Check< for english and afterwards I needed some relaxing time with a friend and fellow student of my english class. We said we would go to the christmas market in Graz at the Hauptplatz but getting our mulled wine wasn't so easy. 

The beginning

After we successfully finished the PC2 we wanted to have a drink together and have a chat with each other on one of the many christmas markets of Graz. Since the PC2 ended at around 10 p.m. it was really hard to even get there, since most busses weren't driving anymore at that time. 

Hauptplatz Graz

After 30 minutes of waiting time at the bus stop, we finally made it into the fully crowded bus and drove to the Jakominiplatz in Graz. Then we thought we would get a mulled wine right away but we descovered that this market was already closed by the time we reached it. We continued walking to the Hauptplatz and as expected, everything there was closed as well. Unfortunately it was already 10 p.m. so it was to be expected. 

But we didn't give up and continued our journey. 

The place of hopes

As we continued walking and looking for a pub or something similar to a christmas market where we could get our mulled wine, we heard some electronic music, which was really terrible to listen to, we followed.

As soon as we found the place we hoped to get our mulled wine, we were happy. It was a very tiny market with only 4 shops to get a drink from. We finally got our mulled wine and then were completely dissappointed. It tasted awful. It tasted like just normally brewed up wine with sugar.

We put them down and continued trying to find a pub then, where we could have a drink.

The long walk

We walked down from the Hauptplatz back to the main station in hopes to find a place where we could have a drink together. On both sides of the street we couldn't find 1 pub. Once we reached the main station we got hungry and forgot about our mulled wine and tried to find a restaurant or something similar we can get food from.

For our happiness, we failed as well trying to find a place where we could eat something together. We tried restaurants, which had open until 11 p.m. but didn't serve us, we tried finding cafés, which also had open quiet a long time but once we reached there they had closed by then, and our last attempt of getting food was McDonalds, and guess what, it had closed.

Rondo

As we stood there, fully disappointed that even McDonalds had closed, we decided to give it one more attempt and looked for a few cafés etc. online. We thought we found something so we drove with the bus to the Lendplatz and tried to find it. We failed.

That was it, we had enough and decided to go back to the main station and walk home. As we walked down the street we descovered "Rondo". It seemed that people were sitting in there eating and drinking, so we gave it one last attempt. 

The end

We entered the bar / restaurant (we have no idea what this place was), and finally got to have a drink together, it wasn't anything alcoholic but still. We asked if they got some food as well and the waiter told us they wouldn't serve any food past 11 p.m. so we asked if he could suggest us a place where we could get a snack from. As you might guess, he couldn't.

We decided to have our drink and then go home but the waiter was so kind and offered to make us 2 sandwhiches. Of course we accepted his offer and once he was gone making it, we thought it wouldn't be much of a big meal, just a tiny snack. Once he came back we were totally surprised of the (almost) meal we got. It was delicious. 

Once we had finished our midnight snack (yes, we ate it a exactly 12 a.m.), we gave him a generous amount of tip and walked home.

What a journey!

The 2 types of people

Swimmers and Divers

I like to think about everything and I always analyse everything that happens to me in real life. Be it small or big. I think psychological and I get deep in thought very frequently.

This time I came up with this: Why do we have 2 types of people, extroverted and introverted or how I will call them; why do we have the swimmers at the surface and the divers at the bottom of the ocean? Generalizing these types will make it easier to understand my thoughts, that's why I will call and describe them differently.

Swimmers

When people are together, talking to each other, anyone can clearly see that a few talk more than others. As you know, the ocean is very wide but also deep. It can be used as a scale to ascribe people. People talk and talk, but what do they talk about? Mainly about nothing seriously interesting or that is from important matters, it's what they call "small-talk". They swim at the surface of the ocean, communicating about the wide and totally obvious topics of the ocean. It's the type of people who you talk to when you want to just talk about the simple facts or stories of the daily life. Swimmers like to know the obvious things. Swimmers also don't see the beauty of the unknown territory of the ocean. They see a little bit of the depth but they will never get to see the bottom of the ocean and it's misteries.

Divers

Now we're getting to the thoughtful side of the ocean. While swimmers talk about daily and simple topics, divers tend to talk more about their feelings and what seriously matters to them. They have the possibility to talk about more meaningful matters. Whether it is about their private life or something they care about. Divers most of the time also want some kind of responce - a piece of the other person's life. 

When divers talk to swimmers they feel like they are not taken seriously, that is why divers usually don't talk as much, because most people, the swimmers, are talking less about meaningful things. In contrast to swimmers, it is not easy to understand how divers think or feel. They like to explore the unknown, that's why in public they are mainly in the background and don't have much to talk about. It doesn't mean they are not interested, they just like to talk more personal to the other person. Divers can see the surface clearly and that's why they don't bother talking about general things they already know. For them, talking to swimmers feels like answering questions. Divers like to see what's under the surface.

Swimmers and Divers are completely different in every way, but yet they both rely on each other. They both live in the ocean and can learn from each other. Both, swimmers and divers, want to understand other people, just in a different way.

Instructions - Why do we need them?

Starting simple; what is an instruction? 

There are many definitions and meanings of the word instructions, but let's just name the most common and important ones. 

• the act of teaching
• an instruction of a device/game
• a command 

An instruction is a task that is done by someone or something. An act of teaching, steps that must be followed in a specific order (instructions for devices/games) or an order (command).

Synonyms

A few synonyms for "Instruction": tutoring, coaching; training, drill, exercise; indoctrination; schooling, command, mandate.

Why do we need instructions?

Imagine a world without rules or structure. We wouldn't know how to do what we do everyday. They might sound silly but just to name the most stereotyped things like opening the door, blowing your nose or even eating, everything you do is technically instructed, the question you ask yourself is always; how am i going to do this? 

School and teaching is the best example for instructions. In school you need instructions to know how to do things correct. What would be mathematics without instructions? We would fail to understand the procedure, fail the task and fall into despair because we don't know how to solve it.

Strict rules are needed to fulfill a task. If you tell a child; "Eat with the cutlery!", but the child never did eat by themself with cutlery yet, you need to tell them how to do that. "Take the fork into the hand, push it into the meat and cut off a piece of the meat with the knife in the other hand. Then you can take it with the fork and put it into your mouth."

What about the difference between COMMAND and INSTRUCTION?

Order (command) and instruction are one an the same thing. You are told to do a task. The only difference is that in a command you are told to do one specific thing; "Cook a meal!". In an instruction you get explained how to do the task; "1. Heat up the pan to 150°. 2. Put butter into the pan an let it melt 3. Take the eggs an crack them in the middle. 4. Carefully put the eggs into the pan. ... "

Examples

Instruction of Origami

Instruction of a card game

Instructions from a teacher - Best example: Mathematics