Woohoo! The tip-off of a brand new NBA season tonight, which is always one of my most anticipated dates of the year. Not that I'll be able to catch any games, since NBA coverage is pretty lousy here in the Netherlands (you need one of those pay tv channels), but reading the recaps, analysing the box scores, and watching the highlight reels on NBA.com is at least as much fun as watching the games :)

It will be even more exciting this season since I'm playing some of those fantasy games for the first time. I have no idea if I even know what I'm doing. I'm just picking players and hoping that they'll score lots of points for me, but it sure is a lot of fun!

I've been surprisingly positive about myself for most of the year, but due to certain circumstances I find myself falling back into the same old pattern as before, and I'm starting to feel negative about myself again.

One of these circumstances concerns the thing I wrote about at the end of my last post. I know I'm supposed to do so much more about that situation than I'm currently doing. But I just have such a strong resentment toward the situation, and much worse, to the person involved. This resentment is so strong, that I wish I could just let it all go, and don't care about it anymore. Coupled with my tendency to hide behind my self-erected walls, this makes it nearly impossible for me to really do more. This makes me feel really guilty, and it sometimes makes me question the kind of person I am.

The other circumstance isn't nearly quite as dramatic, though my feelings certainly won't agree. I really believed that I had a pretty good connection with a certain someone, but that belief has come under fire the last couple of weeks. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, it wouldn't be the first time, but I just can't shake the feeling that that person has grown distant toward me. And I just can't stop wondering if it's something I might have said or done. What makes it much worse is, again, my tendency to hide behind my walls in situations like this, even towards other people, instead of talking about it. Maybe I'm just afraid of the truth.

I know I shouldn't form such a negative opinion of myself, but the truth is, despite all the progress I made over the years, I still don't like myself that much. If something goes wrong in social situations, my first thought is still always that it must be my fault, even though I have absolutely no clue what that fault might be.

At least I'm glad I have this blog, which in some ways I can consider as my therapy. Writing seems to be able to provide me with a release that talking could never do.

We went offsite on a teambuilding session on Monday with the whole department at work. I wasn’t really looking forward to it, as I tend to be a very individualistic person. Nothing brings out the skeptic in me more than having to attend a teambuilding session.

But it turned out pretty well. The people holding the session clearly know their stuff, and the things they talked about made sense. The funny thing is that 90-95% of the things that were brought onto the table are already widely known within the department. So the session didn’t provide any shocking revelations. What the session did provide is a framework and starting point for the discussions, so it was very good in that sense.

Too bad I became sick during the session. I had an upset stomach, and I had to go to the bathroom all the time. After a while, I just couldn’t stand it any longer, and I had to go home early. I missed the self-cooking part which was planned for the evening, but I’m not sure whether that’s a good or bad thing.

During the session, I also got a phone call. I’m not going to say what’s it about, but it definitely wasn’t good news. It involves something that has been dragging on for years, and perhaps even much longer than I realize. It’s something that I often find myself incapable of coping with, and to be honest, sometimes I just wish I didn’t care anymore, which only makes me feel guiltier than I already feel.

All in all, not a very good start to the week.

Well, I was actually planning to limit this blog to my own experiences, but since I lead a rather uneventful life, it was getting very hard to come up with an interesting post 2 or 3 times a week. So I decided to broaden my scope dramatically, and just write about anything I feel like writing about.

For today, I thought I’d write something about the bill that France approved last week which makes it a crime to deny Armenians suffered genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1915. Apart from the question whether this is really any business of the French government at all, and whatever the hidden motives of the French may be, this bill represents a serious violation of freedom of speech and thought. Furthermore, this law will not be able to alter the opinions of other people. The only thing this law will achieve is to oppress those opinions, and to generate more anger and hatred among the Turks toward the French.

This is not to say I sympathize entirely with the Turks. I can certainly understand their outrage, but it seems somewhat hypocritical in light of Article 301 of the Turkish penal code. Writer and Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, for instance, was faced with charges under the article for stating in the Tages Anzeiger that “Thirty thousands Kurds and a million Armenians were murdered. Hardly anyone dares mention it, so I do. And that’s why I’m hated (source: Amnesty International).” Also, Turkish comments that the French should look at their own history of violence may be a good point, but is totally irrelevant to the discussion. A country which denies its own history of violence, is not a valid excuse for another country to do so as well.

I have to admit I’m not too familiar with the relevant history to form a definitive opinion. However, the Turkish attitude toward the Armenian killings reminds me of the Japanese denial of the atrocities committed in Nanking during the second World War. Iris Chang, in her excellent book “The Rape of Nanking” states that “Japan not only carries the legal burden but the moral obligation to acknowledge the evil it perpetrated in Nanking, (…) and to educate future generations of Japanese citizens about the true facts of the massacre, (…) which is crucial for Japan if it expects to deserve respect from the international community – and to achieve closure on a dark chapter that stained its history.” If there is even an inkling of truth in the allegation that the Armenian killings amounted to genocide, then the same applies for Turkey as well.

Today is exactly three months since I started at my new job, so time for a short recap.

The first couple of weeks have been pretty hard. I was just overwhelmed with so much new stuff, and I wasn’t sure I could handle the responsibility. It also has been hard emotionally. I really missed my old colleagues. Luckily we still have lunch together (since I still work at the same company), but for weeks, I found it very hard to cross the street back to my department after my lunch breaks. Pfff, I’m glad that phase is over, I felt so stupid about the whole thing.

I’ve really learned a lot during the last three months, and there is still so much to learn. I think I’ve made a good impression so far (or so I hear). I seem to be starting to make a name for myself in the company, which I owe in large part to certain people, who have been dropping my name around to others (if by any chance you are reading this, I really appreciate it a lot J).
It’s also been soooo busy, it’s almost crazy. There are soooo many open requests lying around, and there are soooo many things I still don’t know. Our department is looking for new people, which we desperately need. At least I can’t say that it hasn’t been interesting the last couple of months, and I have the feeling that it will stay that way for the time being.

If love is blind,
Why then do we keep looking for love?

Because it is better to be blind
And not be able to see what you have
Than to have your eyes wide open
And be able to see what you do not have

Sometimes I wish I was as blind as a mole...

I feel depressed today. Several people I care about a lot have some major issue they have to deal with. I wish that I could just do something magical and make everything ok, but that's not possible. These are issues only they themselves can resolve (which I think they are entirely capable of, since they are very strong people, perhaps even more so than they themselves think). I guess the only thing I can do is lend a friendly ear should they need it.

The fact things are going great for me at the moment somehow makes me feel guilty. I know it doesn't make any sense at all. But then again, I've always felt that most of my feelings don't make sense anyway...