This came into my mind when I was thinking about a suitable
title for my first non-introductory post.
I read an article named like this
today. Well, I added the parentheses and first "in", but this edit perfectly
summarizes how I understood it. It was quite a hard reading, though, and it
could have been influenced by the fact that I was reading it, half-asleep,
during breaks on today's work training course, which was by far the most
complicated one (mortgages and everything related to it). The reading was
assigned as a bonus material in Social Psychology course, in which I'm
enrolled, but I wanna write a whole post on this topic later so stay tuned!
It was actually pretty hectic today, I'm surprised that I
finally decided to start writing this. 4 hours of sleep, 7 hours of training
course, arranging living in Olomouc (I hope I'll get that flat on Tuesday, I'm
really sick of it) and choosing a new phone. I thought I would order it as soon
as my salary appeared on my account, but I never know how much I'm going to get
and I obviously got less than I had expected. I forgot about one debt to my
manager (boom, 3.5k down) and commissions for some contracts aren't apparently
paid out in 100% amount. I was told why so there is no reason to whine and it's
actually smart. But it has an impact on the phone because I wanted to buy
high-end Chinese one, which costs like mediocre smartphones in here, but it's
still quite a lot. Now I feel like phone-geek, knowing all the shit about relatively
unknown Chinese smartphones. And I still haven't decided yet, I might flip a
coin in the morning, haha. But it's probably better to buy a cheaper one, the
market is progressing really fast and in a year I might be able to buy a
transformer with lightsabers for the money I planned to spend originally. And
for instance, this is pretty close to it. Chinese quad-core phones are starting from $120 or so and it even includes
shipping, but it's better to pay extra for DHL to increase the chance of
avoiding customs duties and VAT. I'm already excited to experience the process of
buying a phone this way.
Damn, I wanted to start straight by the topic, but today was
no day like the others and I felt the urge to write about it. As I wrote in the
introductory, the idea of setting up this blog was spurred by some recent
events. Well, I should rather write it in singular because I'm not talking
about anything else than Sziget! Island of Freedom, Sluníčkovej ostrov (deal
with the Czech, it wouldn't sound well in English), probably the best week of
my life, not-giving-a-fuck-week, etc. I can't
believe I was thinking about selling the ticket when I got robbed and I didn't
have much money in June. It would have been the biggest mistake of my life.
When I wrote this sentence I started thinking about worse mistakes and even
though I thought some things really sucked, this would have been the worst one.
Not sure if it means that my life is great or I'm still overly enthusiastic
(love this word). Either way it's perfect :)
You might start getting the title now. In short, the article
was about sane people, pseudopatients, getting admission to hospital facilities
where they were diagnosed and labelled with schizophrenia and manic-depressive
psychosis. Just by pretending to be sane in insane places. There are
obviously more factors, but the power of everything around us, especially
milieu, affects us the most. I'm used to the fact that people are rather
repulsive and nasty than nice and kind. It particularly applies to those who
are "working". In Sziget, I haven't met anyone who seemed disgusted that they're
working. Imagine you're working in a food stand, it's 40°C outside and a grill/any
other appliance is heating up your ass even more. Yeah, those people were still
nice and I didn't feel any forced or insincere smiles. In Czech it's not rare
to feel like pain in the ass when you "annoy" the staff. And it doesn't matter whether there are leprechauns sliding down the rainbow or a complete shitstorm outside. I
guess I don't even need to write how nice the other people were. Just
unbelieveable. It was really great to be at a festival where you're below
average age of visitors. I can't help it and I'm probably growing old but I'm
little sick of drunk/high 15 years old kids everywhere.
Before Sziget, some friends asked me why am I going there,
meaning which bands I wanna see. I told them that I wanna feel the atmosphere
of a major festival and the bands are secondary. Of course, there was a lot of
great bands, artists and DJs, but frankly, the line-up itself wasn't that great
this year. At least it's what I thought before going there. Nowadays, being
addicted to electronic music more than ever, I would have claimed the line-up
to be epic :) I went there for the atmosphere, I got something I would have
never expected and it was even intensified by many great acts. See, I wrote
acts. Besides great music, the programme was full of other artistic
performances such as Giant Street Theatre or shows in Cirque du Sziget. I wrote about
the biggest and the most famous ones, but there was something like a cultural
enrichment behind every corner. There was no boredom or a chance to be unhappy. Sunny-sunny
mood all the time (actually a nice English alternative to "sluníčková").
I was tired so from this moment on it's written the next
day. And I finally bought that mobile! I was going to buy one at a discount
(from like $280 to $200) in the morning, but the discount was already gone
because they set it up for every day and I kinda didn't understand in which
timezone they run. Now I know that it can't be Chinese local time, shit
happens. I ordered the one I liked the most, but not according to the hardware,
the design enthralled me. I somehow feel like a woman now but I really didn't
fell in love with the others. They weren't ugly but they all looked so boring
and alike. To my defense, there weren't many differences in the hardware, but
from what I read, most of those "Androidfans" would recommend buying the other
candidates. But it's just for the sake of community, the more people have it,
the better base for a certain phone is. It's not gonna be completely hipster, there
is a community, but how many of you have ever heard of Jiayu phones? I wanted to buy
something even more exceptional but they ran out of stock everywhere. Greetings
to Venca and Seba who have phones made by that brand, I was planning to buy
their improved brother. Alas (another word that I love), I wasn't able to. But
let's get back to the topic, I was just happy to have that phone ordered. :)
I wanna write something about my recent feelings which are
related to music and concerts. I would say that until now I was listening to
like 70% metalcore/hardcore, 15% electronic music and 15% rock + other genres
(damn, I need some quality hip-hop, any suggestions?).
I thought quite a bit about how I feel listening to
different genres and what I do. Core music makes me sing (well, scream and
growl) in my head, I can relate to some great lyrics, I can play some songs on
guitar if there are no crazy hell-difficulty parts, it gives me
goosebumps sometimes. Too bad I can't almost have these feelings listening to electronic
music, but it still makes me happy. However, most importantly, at the concerts
I can let everything out of my head, go crazy and feel some kind of reciprocity
with the audience and a particular band. The last thing about reciprocity
doesn't actually apply to DJs that much.
In the context of Sziget, the concert of Hadouken! was
definitely the best one there, being followed by Enter Shikari whose set
was probably better than those five I've seen before, I guess Sziget makes
festival concerts better than those in clubs. Speaking of the top concerts there, I was really looking
forward to see Biffy Clyro, but this kind of music can't reach the top of my
imaginary concerts list. Only Foo Fighters were able to enter the top so far
and not being core/electro. I'm not saying that Biffy were bad, the concert was
great, but you can't simply go crazy to this kind of music and that's the
point. The other top acts were dnb, including an unknown Italian band called
LNRipley. They combine dnb with live vocals, drums and bass guitar and their
concert was pretty crazy. We found them coincidentally, we were passing by a
stage that was completely on the other side of the island so we were there just
once. Which leads me to many other mindfucks we've experienced there.
From what I remember:
1) We were given classic deuce cards by some random guy
playing cards and he told us to change it for shots at the information desk.
Honza tried it some days later and he was told that they were changing
deuces for drinks. Unfortunately only for tea. I can't still believe it, either
the girl from Sziget crew or Honza must have made fun of us. :-D
2) Random guy came to Váza and warned him that he has
red back and might get sunburnt.
3) I was waiting for Alena, sitting in front of our tent and
another random guy came by. He told me to pay attention, that there were weird
people going around and they might have been stealing things. Immediately as he
left, some other weird looking guy approached me and told me that I had seen
nothing, picking up some dismantled tent which belonged to some French guys. I
asked him what the fuck he was doing and it came out he's one of their group
and that "you saw nothing" was meant to be an insinuation on a quarrel between
some of those French girls, which was by the way fairly rough. At least I asked
him what was it about but he answered only with "girl’s stuff".
4) Tarot Labyrinth! One of the venues, real life
role-playing game. I don't wanna get into describing what was it about, it was
just something extraordinary.
5) We were in Luminarium, which is another venue, a huge colourful tent
making special light effects. We went there right after yoga class, it was
really hot outside and of course even hotter inside. I was so exhausted, sweaty
and only thinking about going to the Sziget beach. Suddenly a girl from the Luminarium
crew approached me and told me something about my tattoo. I asked her to repeat
it because I didn't hear her properly and she said that my tattoo was the most
beautiful one she had ever seen. I was like: "Eh, okay, thanks", smiled and
walked away. I don't even remember how she looked like, but it could have been
the simpliest ask for a date ever. Oh no, she might have been the chosen one!
:-D
6) Ceramic and maintained toilets with well-working showers.
Something you wouldn't expect to be available without VIP camping.
7) Yoga classes, wedding tent, those theater and acrobatic
performances, fireshows and so on. The things that make you feel like there's
everything on the island. I didn't mention that we never left the island during
the festival, there was no need.
8) I'll end this list with a story that happened when we
were leaving. Although we came as a group of 4, only me and Alena were leaving
together. Honza decided to go to Bulgaria afterwards and Váza seemed to enjoy
dnb at 4am that much that he wanted to stay a few hours more (sounds funny this way, haha). So we packed our
things, arrived to the official Sziget taxi stand and nervously integrated
ourselves into an unbelieveably long queue. Who would have thought that there
would be something like this at 4:30am. We waited there for like half a minute
when some random girl asked us if we were going to Keleti railway station. She
and her friend were looking for two other people with whom they would share a
cab. Her friend was already in the front of the queue so we just followed them
and it only took a few minutes. Not only they probably saved us from missing
the train but we also saved some money for the taxi. Greetings to Lia and Shelly (I probably wrote it wrong) from Switzerland, you're nice and I hope
to meet you next year :)
I hope you can relate to me now about how delighted I am. I
was sober the whole festival, yet I had the time of my life. I've seen
countless great things, met some really nice people, deepened my relationship
with friends, tasted some great food (I must try lobster and all kinds of ice
cream next year!) and felt like in a paradise.
Two days from the homecoming, we
went to Prague to Aerodrome festival to finally see System of a Down. They had
a bit shorter set than usual but it was a beautiful ending of incredible 9 or
10 days. I'm speaking for myself because Alena right after that flew to Iceland
for like another 2 weeks. That's one of my most favorite places in the world
and I envy her so she'd better have a fucking good time there, making it the
best month of her life with all these events altogether. But I know that I will
get there too in the future, "we've only just began!" (Enter Shikari - The
Paddington Frisk).
We already have a plan for the next year, from now on it's a must to go there. And I also wanna try some other major festival. Too bad no one in the Czech Republic is able to organize something like that. For example, I think Rock for People is only 1 year younger than Sziget and try to compare them. I'm not saying that it sucks, it's great for the money but I'd much rather pay more to get more. Yet some Czechs are still complaining that it's overpriced, what a joke.
Rock
am Ring/Rock im Park, Novarock or Leeds/Reading look the best from the
perspective of line-ups but I'm more inclined to try Kubana, if I get more into
electronic music then Tomorrowland or even something not in Europe. Gotta work
hard, this is the best motivation! :)
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