adastra

30 December 2016

Twenty Sixteen and Me (and Games)

The year is almost over, meaning that it’s time for my traditional “what I did this year” post. The year of 2016 is universally hated, in my opinion wrongfully – it’s not the fault of a slightly arbitrary measurement of the earth’s rotation that so many bad things have happened. Many inspirational people have died, but many more will likely die in the next couple of years. Many bad things have happened around the world, but considering that soon one of the most powerful nations in the world will be led by a group of imbeciles, I don’t even want […]

21 October 2016

Stamps and Letters

Well… I’m prepared for my retirement, as I have recently unearthed my stamp collection. Though this is probably the most old-man hobby ever, I actually spend some time in my teens collecting, or rather, organizing stamps. At some point back then, I discovered bags and boxes full of stamps in the attic, which apparently my grandmother had collected. Since apparently I had nothing better to do as a kid, I started putting those stamps into a stamp album… and for a while, I collected stamps of the letters we received. I also got a bag of stamps from some store […]

12 September 2016

A Tall Giant

Majestic mountains misted in silver, Stand surrounding a spectacular secret A hill, hidden among them, hedged by streams. From afar it looks feeble and small, Dominated by the dwarfing, distant peaks. As I approach the apex that expands across the plane, across the vast valley between the valiant summits, that modest mount mesmerisingly grows. Through rills and rushing rivulets I walk, that weave a web, wreathing like earth’s veins, until at my toes a tall giant stands. I clamber and climb up the craggy path, Through sparse grass and greenery that grows on the rocks, Past cattle that cowers cautiously […]

3 July 2016

Postcards All Around the World

Earlier this year I decided to sign up for postcrossing again, and in this blog post, I’d like to share my experience with this project. It’s a project with a very simple concept – first, you request an address of a random stranger somewhere in the world and send them a postcard. Once you’ve done that, you will receive a postcard in return, but not from the same person – from another random stranger somewhere in the world. In our increasingly digitalized world, this project aims to bring joy to mailboxes that otherwise only see bills and spam these days. […]

1 May 2016

The Magic of The Magicians

“Hogwarts for adults” is how Syfy’s new show The Magicians is popularly described – but it’s SO much more than that. I admit the parallels are pretty obvious; both The Magicians and Harry Potter are about a guy who discovers magic and proceeds to go to magic school. Both stories have a truly terrifying, seemingly omnipotent villain. And in both stories, the school teachers seem surprisingly unhelpful in solving problems. But compared to the complexity of characters in The Magicians, Harry Potter seems terribly flat. Actually, I would argue that The Magicians is rather the spiritual heir to Buffy the […]

21 November 2015

Tutorial Time Management

I’m five weeks into the semester – and into being a tutor to students of English Studies. As you might recall, I was terribly nervous about this before the semester began. By now, I’m not that nervous anymore, but some of my doubts persist. In particular I’m having a bit of trouble with the time management of my tutorials, that is, figuring out how to fill the hour with meaningful content. So far, this has worked moderately okay-ish, depending on tutorial and topic. One of the tutorials I’m giving is on Academic Writing and Research. This tutorial is basically a […]

29 September 2015

The 100

Yet another TV show about a post-apocalyptic world? Well… yay! (Honestly!) I’m a big fan of this genre, so big that I actually wrote my bachelor’s thesis about it. And quite a few blog posts / reviews ([1] [2] [3]). So here’s another one of those review blog posts: this one is about The 100, a TV show that began airing on The CW (US) in 2014. The 100 begins loaded with teen drama (or whatever you want to call it), as the premise of the show is that 100 juvenile delinquents are banished to a post-apocalyptic earth which is […]

26 September 2015

Red Dog

Australian films – do they exist? Well they do, but a lot of them are not exactly great. Also, a lot of them try to hide the fact that they’re Australian, such as for example the first three Mad Max films. So when I came to Australia, I tried to finds some good ‘real’ Australian films just to learn a little bit more about the culture. And perhaps the most unexpected film I came across was Red Dog. When I first heard the name of the film, Red Dog, I just couldn’t imagine what it could possibly be about. “Red […]

25 September 2015

Blood and Chocolate

Yesterday I finally finished watching the latest and likely final season of Hannibal. Sadly, Hannibal has been cancelled by NBC and by now it doesn’t look like the show will be picked up by another production company, as most people involved in it have already moved on to other projects. Though I always did admire Hannibal for its writing and cinematography, I did not always necessarily enjoy watching it – it’s just a bit too disgusting for me, and way too sick. I think that’s pretty obvious if you read my profanity-laden post-season-one review of Hannibal. Therefore, I have to […]