The meaning of life...

Dear duck-billed-platypuss,
After watching a video by my friend Tobi, I want to ask you, what's the meaning of life? Well to begin with there's no mathematical formula for it, as we all see the world with different eyes and have varying goals and perceptions. To me the meaning of life is leaving golden footprints, some sort of a change, something that makes the world at least a tiny bit better for the people after us. It may sound pretencious but that's how I feel about it. It's not about money, work or material things; at least not to me. It's more about diving deep rather than staying on the surface. About feeling the texture, rather than seeing it. So is life more of a box of chocolates like hollywood portrays it or an onion. In Guenter Grass'es biographical book, the author compares his life to an onion, peeling layer of skin after layer after layer making his eyes burn and then feeling relief in the end.
Often people realize when they're close to death, what life really means to them, often it's because they begin to actually think about it. It's often extreme situations which make us value and appreciate what we have. Many people live into the day, the wake up, go to work, school etc
just live in monotony.
I don't feel like continuing maybe some other time
I'm hungry
I'm off
love
anna

Blogspot Experiment: (A) Smell

Dear duck-billed-platypus,
Breathe in and tell me what the air is like near your lake...
Can any perfume or showgel top the smell of fresh morning air right after it has rained or the scent of yasmine when it tickles you and makes your lung smile? The smells of cherry-blossom-spring accompanied by a whole orchestra of rainbow colored birds, of rose petals, of basil or lemmon grass leaves, of strawberry fields, of pizza? Wait or should I say Smareni Kureci Jizek z Hranolkami (czech for chicken steak with fries)? Prague, oh where should I begin... When my brother was around 5 or 6 they used to have these "horrible histories" books at kindergarten and school; you could smell the different epoches like the medival times or the Renessaince. Well, trust me after 10 years of Prague, those books were nothing.

Prague Public transport during summer makes me wonder if people know that deodorants have been invented (and showers too btw). Hold your nose because I'm going to tell you one of the stinkiest stories; even the smell of rotten fish and cheese is nothing compared to what I smelled.

One morning, my brother and I were travelling to school and we entered a very crowded tram; people pushing from all dirrections made me feel like an old car getting squashed to a metalic square. There was an empty seat; we had to ride for 50 minutes so an empty seat was perfect and kind of out of place. I didn't feel like sitting so my brother sat down. Something smelled really weird. All of a sudden I noticed my brother jumping up. The tram doors closed. We were all trapped. I noticed that the people were opening windows everywhere. There was a beer-dead shabby looking man sleeping in a puddle of piss and he smelled like he hadn't showered his entire lifetime. He was drooling. People where trying to move away but there was nowhere to move to. We had to suffer through it as of course the traffic lights went red and the tram stood still. We pushed ourselves to the front of the tram but the smell was just everywhere. Let me draw it for you:

seats--free seat (not so FREE at all)----mr.stink (not to be confused with mr sting) -- door-------
anna+michael+people+people+more people


I never smelled anything this bad. It made ME want to take a shower. It's sad people let themselves go so much; maybe something tragic happened in his life, which resulted in his addiction to alkohol, maybe not. How can people like that be helped? Ok. This was a person in an extreme situation but how about your average czech person, if you don't know what I mean take the public transport (it's the fastest way to get around but also the smelliest). I'd like to award a special award to Prague as the city with the biggest: SPC (smelly per capita). I was talking to this german girl at school who had just arrived and she told me about how every time she smelled the "pleasant odeur" in the metro, she sprayed arround madly with her spray deo so everyone thought she was mad. Got any interesting stories about smells? Wether positive or negative, let me know about them, I'd be really curious.


To me smelling good is a plus. If you don't smell like perfume, smell at least clean!!!


Here are some of the products I use or liked (can you smell me)?

Favorite Showergel

-DKNY Energizing (Woman)


-pretty much anything that smells like roses or honey and milk (by Palmolive)
-Cindy Crawford Summer Days





Favorite Shampoo


-ok if I judge by the smell it was this japanese shampoo+conditioner (can't remember the name) that came in really pretty pink bottles with little silvery flowers all over. It smelled very natural. A whole rose garden came out of it when I opened it but it made my hair all fizzy and it did something really odd to my hair, when I used the dryer at the swimming pool it had made my hair so weird that it knotted up sooo badly that I had to cut some of it.
-Right now I'm using Head and Shoulders Lime (don't know if it's my favorite though, it fullfills it's intention)




Favorite Soapsmell
-Mango or Coconut by Oriflame
-Milk and Honey's the best for soaps

Perfume

Oblique by Givenchy "play" is MY smell (-:P

Good Deodorant/Evil Deodorant
I wonder how many Axe responses I'll get on this one. You, yeah you! I bet you're using Axe if you're a guy. Am I being prejudiced? Luckily, you platypuses (platypies with tomato sauce) can't be influneced by one of the best deodorant advertizing campaigns. You probably smell like the grass you walk on and maybe the flowers around you. I don't use sprey deodorants because they have a negative effect on the ozon layer. I sometimes wish that more people acted that way because if the demand went down for them they would produce less or non at all. The roll on's are better anyway, they don't contain those chemical substances, which damage our environment and they're much better for your skin. Not to mention when a puffy cloud of the "greatest" smelling deodorant almost blinds you and makes you wish that your nostrills evaporated; or guys spraying male deodorant on girls so if P.E isn't your last subject, you'll smell like it for the rest of the day. Please do me a favor will you? If you usually buy spray deodorants, buy an alternative one next time. You might think, "oh what effect can this one bottle have?" As the chinese proverb goes, the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step and our enironment in these days of global warming does need every possible thing we can do, especially if it's this simple.

The Big Blogspot Experiment INFO

Dear Duck-billed-platypus,
How have you been? I haven't gotten around to writing to you these days so now I'm glad I'm finally managing to.
Partly out of curiousity to see if it works and partly to get many youtubers involved in my next video series, I've decided to start an experiment. I'm going to make 3 blog entries in the categories: (A) smell (B) taste (C) sight. From the 1.4.-10.4. people can comment on those entries preferably answering some of the questions posed in the text and they can take polls related to the entries.
My aim is to get 1000 comments overall in the three categories and to select some of the entries for the videos. If they aren't signed up on here, they should make sure they include their youtube user names. So yeah, that's the concept. What do you think about it? I soo hope it works. I can't wait to start working on it and look forward to what everyone will have to say.
I'll catch you later
Anna

3.35am One of those I'll delete on the following day kinda blogs

Dear Duck-billed-platypus *-*
I try to silence my head and let my heart speak. Not listening to your head might get you in trouble but not listening to your heart can burn more. People with laughing eyes are rare. A lot of eyes can speak but only very few say something and yours are deffinatly the ones which speak without you having to move your lips. They don't smile, they laugh and looking one second into them makes the world spin a million times faster, making me feel all dizzy with joy. I try to dive for the pearl and there are moments where I have to break off as I'm running out of oxygen and sometimes I'm close to suffocating but I keep trying to reach the bottom of the ocean. I fight sharks and I see pretty exotic fish on my way.
A sandgrain once got caught in a shell and over millions and millions of years, it has turned into a pretty pearl. A lot of people go for the sandgrains or pebbles around the shell because their easier to get and more common and some of them dive for the pearls. What if you know theres a shell but don't have any diving equipment? Would you risk diving in or would you wait until you get the diving uniform? How do you know though, that the shell with the pearl will still be there when you have your oxygen flask? Yet to me diving in seems the only way to reach you and to be close to you, even if I suffocate on my way.
Love Anna

The Fall of the House of Usher (?) by Anna

Dear Platypuss *-*,

This is a quicky again. Thought I'd share this picture with you. It's one of the favorite ones I ever took. It's a building somewhere in the Czech Republic. Perhaps, it's from Kutna Hora, a small, interesting city with a magnificent gothic cathedral. It has an big coin museum I've never been to (as it was always closed when I arrived) but I've seen some of the coins from outside; they were really beautiful but soo thick. It all started around the 13th century silver mining flourished there and german miners arrived to experience the village's "silver rush" and it grew into one of the biggest cities in Bohemia. However, these days, the city seems very empty and it has a rather spooky atmosphere I've never experienced in any other cities. It kind of seems dead, if you don't count the groups of tourists which occasionally stop by in their tourist buses. Overall I was there two or three times, the first time when I was around 12, as a part of a class trip and I must admit I didn't like it. At that time, I went into a church and there were millions and millions of real skulls and skeletons all showcased and finding a great audience. It made me feel rather dizzy and uncomfortable. Everyone was looking at the magnificent crown entirely made of skulls and bones but I had to walk out because I didn't see the sensation part in it.

Oh, it's soo late, I gotta go to sleep. Let me know what you think; isn't it extreemly disrespectful to expose the dead like that, even if it's a piece of artwork. Even years later when I go back to the city of skulls and bones, the spirits of the dead seem to haunt me. (If you want to see more pics of skeletal artwork check this site out): http://www.artgraphica.net/art-shop/prague-kutna-hora-bone-church.htm

Sweet dreams
Love Anna

Popcorn: Sweet or Salty?

There are tiny explosions inside your pot and as they hit the lid there’s a ring that’s immediately silenced by the soft landing. The air fills with a pleasant buttery smell as the little, hard yellow ducklings morph into pretty, fluffy swans.

Dear platypus *-*,
Do you like to eat popcorn? Do you make it yourself or do you buy it and is Australia more of a sweet or a salty popcorn country type? You may wonder what I mean by the last question. Well, let me tell you. At the age of 12 I moved from Munich to Prague, from Germany to the Czech Republic. It was also a move from sweet to salty popcorn. We usually associate this great Native American invention with movie evenings at the cinema. The first time I asked for sweet popcorn there they said something like “bohoujel, mame jenom slany popcorn” and they looked at me as though it was the most unusual thing to ask. I went to watch movies with my best friend G. in cinemas all over Prague, pretty much every weekend if something was on and I asked in the other movie theatres too but they didn’t have any. At the beginning, I had an inner protest; I wouldn’t eat the salty stuff. Then I bought my first half size portion; it tasted too salty and too buttery. I didn’t like it but I didn’t hate it either. I slowly became accustomed to it and when I had had grown quite accustomed I saw, beautiful rainbow colored bits gleaming like exotic fish from an overcrowded gigantic fish-tank. Ohhh haaaappy daaaayyyys! Kino Galaxie in Haje became our most regularly visited cinema: we watched it evolve in the 10 years we lived there and change the location by two buildings to the left to become Multikino Galaxie. The sweet popcorn disappeared and they introduced a variety of flavors like pizza or cheese and bacon. You may wonder wether I like pizza flavored popcorn now. I must tell you that, if you come out of the cinema with orange fingernails, you won't want to buy them afterwards. They tasted good but they were more orange than chicken tika masala and more overloaded with spices than a bazar in morocco or turkey.
So overall as you may have figured, the salty or sweet country types are determined by the higher rate of consumption of either sweet or salty popcorn divided by the amount of time taken to eat a pack or portion. Take a Vote, it would be interesting to know which is more common.
I'm opening a pack of sweet fluffy white flowers now and at the back of the 100g packet, it says that the average life expectancy of the popcorn after opening a packet is 11.5 minutes, for a15 year old freaks.
Hope you're swimming in a pool of popcorn, enjoy the rest of your weekend
and I'll probably see you Monday
Love
Anna

Refriendtionship 7.22am (haven't slept)

Dear Platypus,

In a lot of cases, we fall in love with people who won't love us back. We make headstands so that those people pay more attention to us and somewhere deep inside we all hope that everything is going to end well. There are moments where we feel like we have wings and moments where we feel like we're being shred by a million daggers and a single smile can heal all wounds for the next few years. What if, that person never smiles though or all of a sudden stops smiling? What if the person looks at you and drinks the blood from your wounds too feel his power over you? What if you tell a personal story, so that he confides in you because you do by telling him and he picks it as a target because he knows it's going to hurt you?

im gonna get some sleep and continue this later

love anna

Getting a Uke

Dear Duck-billed-platypus,
This is a quicky to let you know that I just ordered a uke and a book with instructions on how to play. I browsed around for a while and I found this the prettiest. What do you think, isn't it awesome? It's the first time I ordered something online and I can't wait until it arrives. Speaking of Instruments; which instuments do you play? I can play the piano but I haven't played for a few centuries.
Keep dancin and let the sunshine in
the suuuuunshiiiine in.
Love
Anna

Candy of the Present and the Past

Dear Duck-Billed-Platypus,
I’m writing to you while eating Nostalgia Candy chains and candy clocks from the 80’s. You may be wondering what difference there is between them. Well, let me tell you the candy clocks are half the size of the candy chains and in-between the candy beads there are way too sugary hard clocks mostly showing 3.45 am (or in some rare instances also 8.00am). I didn’t know they were from the 80’s before I googled an image for you.

I was born in 1984 so the first time I got to taste them was in the 90’s when I moved from Georgia to Germany. As soon as I got pocket money I used to run to the nearby store and buy Candy chains, eatable paper in three different colors (washed away pink, green and yellow)

and my favorite sweet, a marshmallow like round little cushion that came in two colors, white and pink and that had coconut freckles all around it.

The candy paper tasted like nothing; the pink one had a slight aroma of strawberry and I’ve heard rumors that someone had written all the answers to a test on it and when the teacher arrived he just ate it, how convenient. I’ve been wondering how someone could have written anything on it without making holes in it. With a pencil it would have been impossible and with ink pen the poor test cheater guy would have gotten bad stomachache. It was one of the candies that didn’t make a sound while eating unless you crunched it a bit with your teeth within the first few seconds. I preferred other sweets and very rarely bought those. They are still sold nowadays. As to my favorite marshmallow pillows, I’ve been searching for them over years. I’ve seen imitations but was unable to find the original; every time I saw something similar looking, I bought a pack of it but was disappointed over and over again. Perhaps I came across them and didn’t recognize them because the memory of the taste was different to the real taste; then again when I think about candy chains and eatable paper, they taste exactly the same now as they tasted in my childhood. Do you have favorite sweets from your childhood platy?

When I was in the first and second grades in Cologne, we used to have gummy-bear reading, spelling and dictations. If we spelled everything without even a punctuation mark fault, the teacher made us stand up and walked around with a big jar of maxi sized gummy bears. Most of us used to pick the red or the green ones and we’d suck on them for a while to get the full pleasure and taste. We’d also get a stamp inside our notebooks (mostly marine or creme colored ladybirds from what I remember). It was pretty to look through the notebooks afterwards; I still have mine somewhere. My current favorite German sweets are Raffaelos, Rochers and the local marzipan.

As to International sweets, I doubt anything can top Turkish Floss Halva. I don't mean the regular Halva, I specifically mean the floss kind.

Ranking My Top International Sweets
1.Turkish Floss Halva: if paradise were a sweet, this is heaven.
2. Georgian Kaklutji: privately made by some secret recipe, nuts covered in honey. I wonder why they aren’t marketing it internationally; it would be a huge success. Not even too many Georgians know about that sweet. It’s round and hard, kind of reminds me of dark amber with something caught inside.
3. Swedish Daim: chocolate covered caramel, you can get at IKEA Speaking of international sweets, Japanese candies are pieces of artwork; however, when it comes to taste, I like them but I prefer others (perhaps I haven’t tasted the right ones). How are the sweets where you are platy?
I’ll talk about something special next time
Enjoy the sun
Love Anna.

Anna-rcho Duck de Balsac

Dear Duck-billed-platypus! *-*
How would you start your online diary with a hi? You'd probably put your paw onto the screen and smile. How's the weather over there? Yeah, I know. A lot of people are saying it's really cold and windy these days but I'm gonna write you every day and maybe add a handfull of amber colored rays here and there, so you feel a bit warmer. In fact I'm going to cut my head open for you and let it all pour out, hope you're not too sensitive when you see blood. Do you have days where you spend half of the day sleeping like a groundhog?
Today, was one of those days. I woke up at around 1pmish and went to the university library. It's only a five minute walk from where I live. Are you wondering what I took out? Two red books by Honore de Balzac; based on my moms recommendation to read some more french literature as I've only read Hugo, Dumas, Camus and Merimee (Camus and Merimee in french). So yeah I haven't read anything by him yet. Have you? Isn't there a monument of him by Rodin in Paris? I think I saw it when I was there in 1993. My favorite sculpture by him is
"The thinker"


which one do you like? I think most platypusses don't care about sculptures but I could be wrong. So, I got out of the library with my 2 red books under my arm and walked for a bit thinking "should I get a duck, should I get one?"... For several days I've been passing a shop and looking at the vitrine, 4 pretty ducks smiling at me. Well not really AT me they were more on the side but I'm sure if they had been facing me they'd be all smiling but have lonely eyes. "La profile" is of great advantage, even for ducks I guess, they wanted to present their pretty dresses. How is it for you platypusses? I was hearing some quacks and I'm sure they didn't come from the river nearby. I'm sure! Yeah I'm really sure; stop doubting me. I'm certain I wasn't the only one who heard them but I guess one person at a time can hear them. So they all wanted to be adopted but "which to pick?"

They were all pretty but I was kinda down to two; I couldn't resist I had to adopt one. I went into the shop and signed the adoptation papers for Punk Duck. This was a duck with personality; in fact he was the revolution in duck. He's was black with a pretty pink beak and a pink mohawk with tatoos saying "A", "dont vote", "punk", "sex pistols (on his ass)...So a perfect son to raise? While I'm writing this letter to you platy; let me know what rhymes with duck. Oh wait! Duck-Balsac-duck-balsac-duck. Duck de Balsac? What do you think?
I'll talk to you later
Love
Anna

PS: In real life, Honore de Balzac wasn't an aristocrat but he was trying to become one (and there was no de in his name). He constantly lived in the denial of his background and when he finally had earned his aristocracy, he realized how the human traits he tried to escape through changing the circle where the same everywhere.